Albums recorded in "unusual" locations....

*Bedroom. In a small rented house he was temporarily residing in at that time, somewhere in Colts Neck, NJ.

 

Part of The Beatles Let It Be album recorded on the rooftop of their London office building.

 

'Doel EP' by the Dutch folk duo Woody & Paul was recorded in a barn near the cooling towers of the nuclear plant in the Belgium town of Doel. It was recorded on a portable tapedeck. Highly recommended if you love alt-folk. It's avalaible on a compilation album:
Work and Sing (2CD), by Woody & Paul

 

There are claims that Radiohead thanked Drew Barrymore in the liner notes for The King Of Limbs because the album was recorded at her LA home, though I don't believe this has ever been confirmed.

Another strange example I can think of is the single version of Heroes & Villains by The Beach Boys, which had at least some of its vocals recorded in the emptied swimming pool at Brian Wilson's house...

 

Remember reading somewhere it was the kitchen - and that his chair could be heard creaking on a least one track. Or my memory has failed, which wouldn't be a stretch

 

Am sure this has been mentioned; the loading dock area @ Contemporary Records by the legendary Roy DuNann.

 

Not sure if it's been mentioned yet, but the first one that came to mind was the Beach Boys "Holland" album.
They literally flew an entire recording studio to Holland to record the album. After months of setting it up, it went up in smoke and they had to start all over again. Supposedly, according to Brian's autobiography, it was to get Brian away from bad influences, but he was so out of it that he woke up in the morning, looked around and said "what the hell am I doing in Holland?" He found other Holland-only substances anyways, negating the entire thing. Great album though and sold better than some of their previous ones.

 

Mary Lou Lord - Live City Sounds - two outside locations in Boston

Ronnie Lane - Anyone for Anymore - outside at Fishpool

 

Already been done...McCartney II:

Presumably Paul was after a sh-tty sound for the drums...

 

The Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith recorded his "Into Silence" album in the Hamilton Mausoleum to capture the natural reverb of the space.

Laura Cannell did her "Simultaneous Flight Movement" album in Southwold lighthouse in Suffolk, then her new album, "Hunter, Huntress, Hawker" in the old church at Covehithe, just north of Southwold.

Howe Gelb recorded his rather wonderful version of "Can't Help Falling in Love" mostly in his bathroom, but some in his living room.

Many "classical" recordings, especially choral ones, use churches for the echo and reverb.

 

Recorded outside a cafe on St Mark's Square Venice

 

I forget the book I saw this in, but wasn't Brian originally found asleep at the airport, not actually getting to Holland until about the third attempt to get him on a plane? Also, I don't recall any mention of the makeshift studio in Baambrugge going "up in smoke," though I have seen quotes regarding various technical issues. For one, engineer Stephen Moffitt supposedly had to rewire most of the facility the same day most of the band members were on their way there, and I believe it was Al Jardine who once said there were problems with the wrong voltage being used for the equipment brought in from the US, which could be heard on the recordings. Once they were back in California, several further tracks were cut at Village Recorders, including Leaving This Town and much of Brian's fairy tale, not to mention Sail On, Sailor - a song added to the final running order at the insistence of Van Dyke Parks, then in charge of his own division at Warner Brothers, who remembered a demo he'd made with Brian that might work as a potential single the project otherwise lacked. Of course, the part about Holland and a certain substance is absolutely right. Curiously, it seems as if Dennis was more concerned with driving around, and there's a documentary that was aired on Dutch TV in which a local car dealer joked about the group buying several luxury models for everyone in their entourage, keeping the small business running for years to come!

If what I've read is correct, the only real instance of fire meeting The Beach Boys is when Brian had been recording the instrumental tracks for Mrs. O'Leary's Cow (AKA The Elements: Part 1) during the SMiLE sessions. Looking to create more of an atmosphere for the players, he instructed that someone light a bucket of burning wood in the middle of the studio, and some mixes even include this sound effect. However, it's believed one of the key reasons the entire album was initially scrapped is because he became paranoid after learning that a nearby building had burned down as they were recording this song, which he felt was a result of him tapping into some force beyond his own control, so he allegedly threw the resulting tapes in a fire. Of course, the circulating variations of this song - both official and others less so - confirm that at least something survived, though I still don't doubt that he destroyed something, as he was quite consistent in this story for years.

Oh, and there's also the blaze that ultimately led to Caribou Ranch closing in early 1985, though The Beach Boys weren't there at the time. However, they did make a visit in late '74 for an ill-fated album that produced at least some of the basic instrumental track for Good Timin' and Brian's initial piano demo of California Feelin' (both were revisited later in the same decade for the Light Album, though only the former made it to the end result).

 

didn't they end up recording in a corridor ???

 

The Associations first album "And along Comes the Association... " was partly recorded in a bus. And not a bad sounding record either. Terry Kirkman: "The sessions turned out to be “And Then…Along Comes the Association.” It was our first album.... we hooked up with Kirk Dutcher and we recorded it at R&B Studio and then we did the basic tracks on the bus in Gary Paxton’s driveway. We were trying to figure out how to record music in a way that it hadn’t been recorded before. The largest machines we had were four tracks, and we were playing games back and forth between four tracks to make the eight tracks, and that was an unthinkable thing to do at the time."

 

Maybe not too unusual as i believe Bernard Herman used to like the acoustics and so made some recordings there but i'd like to nominate my town hall in Barking in East London. Neil Young recorded two tracks with the LSO there for Harvest in early 1971, if you look for man needs a maid on you tube you can find it. It was probably recorded there because of the LSO's working connection with Herman who lived in London for the last ten years or so of his life.

Cool to have a couple of tracks from one of the best albums of all time ( top 100 anyway easy ) to be recorded just a mile or so from where i would have been at school at the time. It was called the Assembly Hall and was an annex of the Town Hall. It's been heavily re-vamped with a new facia but otherwise its still there.

 

It's been a while. But I think Roger writes about that and there are some photos of said corridor in the booklet of the Machine Head 25th Anniversary Edition (1997).

 

It was in Brian's fascinating autobiography "Wouldnt It Be Nice, My Own Story", he said that they basically had to fly half the studio over to Holland a second time after the first one went up in smoke, maybe because of the voltage issue you mentioned. He even said that there was so much equipment being flown over to Holland that the pavement cracked when the plane landed!!!

The part about the paranoia after the building burning down during the "fire/elements" sessions has been confirmed by Brian and the others that were there. After that Brian said that he "threw the tapes in the fireplace", which 40 years later he admitted was not true. That's why we can hear them today in the Smile Sessions, etc.