Recording a rock album is tough. There are a thousand things that can go wrong along the way, and many artists don’t finish what they set out to do. This results in unfinished records or unreleased albums that appear in the public domain later.
It means musicians often go to great lengths to get their record right, and location is a key factor. Legendary rocker Neil Young recently released his album Barn after he used the farmyard location to add atmosphere to his tracks.
He’s not alone in doing something like this: here are five records recorded in strange locations.
Nine Inch Nails – Charles Manson’s house
The dark, heavy sound of Nine Inch Nail’s first two albums needed a location to match, and they don’t come much darker than a mass murderer’s house.
The notorious Charles Manson and his cult lived at 10050 Cielo Drive during the 1960s, during which time they committed the infamous Tate murders. It fit just right for the band’s records, particularly the second, ‘The Downward Spiral’, which documents the breakdown of a man leading to his eventual suicide.
NIN frontman christened the house ‘Le Pig’, a darkly humorous reference to the word ‘Pig’ that was daubed in blood on a wall by one of the murderers. He commented afterward that people left dead roses and lit candles at the front gate which led him to question who they were honoring: the victims, or Charles Manson himself?
Foo Fighters – Dave Grohl’s garage
Global rock ‘n’ roll fame hasn’t changed the Foo Fighters. Despite being able to afford a prime LA recording studio that only a lottery jackpot could buy, the band chose to go back to basics for their record Wasting Light. They set up in Dave Grohl’s garage to capture a heavier, rawer sound reminiscent of the rocker’s former band Nirvana.
The recording took 11 weeks, one week for each track. Producer Butch Vig, who had worked on Nirvana’s bestseller Nevermind, described it as like ‘each track having its own life’. Mixed with the location’s intimate atmosphere, it gives the album a unique sound, one that makes it the band’s best record, according to some critics.
Proof that the garage doesn’t have to be just somewhere you keep the car.
Red Hot Chili Peppers – A haunted house
On a similar note to Trent Reznor of NIN, Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis was drawn to the eerie atmosphere in producer Rick Rubin’s Hollywood mansion. The place was reported to be haunted after a woman was murdered there in the 1930s and had even been the home of famous escapologist Harry Houdini.
The band, clearly fans of ghost stories, loved it so much that they slept there in between recording. That is, apart from drummer Chad Smith who disliked the idea of spooky housemates. Despite this, many reports speak of it being a happy, productive period for the group.
The resulting album offers no clues of any supernatural sounds caught on tape: in fact, it proved to be anything but cursed, selling over 10 million copies and propelling the Chilis to international fame.
Black Keys – A rubber factory
Black Keys are known for their garage rock style, but, for their third album, the duo moved away from drummer Patrick Carney’s garage where they had recorded their first two releases.
Instead, they chose an abandoned tire factory, hence the album’s title Rubber Factory. Unfortunately, things didn’t quite go to plan: the band was hit by equipment malfunctions coupled with the location’s bad acoustics.
So why record the album there? Carney mentioned in an interview how they were attracted by the huge amounts of space the empty site had, and they enjoyed the fact they had ‘free rein’. By the time the problems started, it was too late to cancel.
The factory was pulled down in 2010, but you can still see photos of it in the album’s record sleeve.
Johnny Cash – Folsom Prison
Johnny Cash had suffered a dip in popularity prior to this recording in 1968. He had been arrested for several drug offenses, and his previous two albums had both flopped.
However, his choice to record a live album in one of the USA’s toughest prisons paid off – the record shot to the top of the charts, selling over three million copies in the process. It’s one of the most famous live recordings of all time.
The singer was inspired by a prison documentary he had watched years earlier, showing what life was like behind bars. He chose the maximum-security Folsom prison as he saw it as one of the most extreme examples of jail culture. In the album notes, he speaks of prison ‘making the outside world unreal’ and bringing out inmates’ ‘animal instincts.
The recording certainly has a unique sound – a raw live sound mixed with the shouts of the inmates makes for an absorbing listening experience.