I’m trying to get more comfortable with creative iteration.
My tendency? To work in an all-out, single period of intense effort. Most of my past songs were made in 2-4 hours: write, record, export. No demos or drafts. Get it right the first time. Straight from idea to DONE.
Instead, this time around, I’ve been hacking away at a 21-minute instrumental prog-metal suite for a year and a half. I’ve started over from scratch several times. (You can hear all my attempts on Patreon.)
Getting it “wrong” so many times can be discouraging.
But things like this give me hope:
In 2021, Metallica released a colossal box set (14 CDs!) for The Black Album.
Just last week, I heard it for the first time. And golly…
It contains everything from early riff ideas on cassette tapes to final album mixes (and every chaotic work-in-progress version in between).
They spent a YEAR: recording just those 12 songs together over and over, remixing the album 3 times (allegedly), and making a thousand little creative decisions. They took their time experimenting with song structures, tempos, and overdubs. They focused. They argued a lot. They distilled their ideas.
Along the way, the material didn’t sound great. (Far from it!) Honestly, if I were them, I would have quit… but they kept going. They made it just a little bit better each time.
Here’s one particularly amusing track, in which the nonsensical vocals undermine the libertarian / proto-MAGA message:
Don’t Tread On Me (Demo)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEKfCoaXW10
The box set is full of examples like that.
The end result? An album that sold 30 million copies.*
…and one of my most listened to albums of all time! (It’s either that or Steve Vai’s Sex & Religion.)
Metallica allowed themselves to sound dumb, sloppy, and unfinished for a very long time. I clearly don’t have the natural resilience they do.
The Lesson
“Wrong” might just mean not done yet.
And sometimes it’s “wrong” until the last moments.
Some Personal Observations
1 – I don’t think Bob Rock is responsible for The Black Album’s straightforward arrangements. The template of slower, heavier riffs with 4/4 drum beats was already established on the early tape recordings (James’s Riff Tapes). It’s fair to assume Bob Rock wasn’t around for Hetfield and Ulrich jamming in a little room with their 4-track.
2 – The alternate takes with unedited drum tracks reveal just how off Lars’s drumming was, even as early as 1990†. There’s conflicting info out there, but engineer Randy Staub claims to have edited all the drums on analog tape! Either way, without severe editing, the drum tracks were, to commercial standards, unusable.
3 – My favorite part is the placeholder lyrics by Hetfield. “Wa-na-na-na!”
Extra Credit
Another strong example of this is the Faith No More boombox demos before they made The Real Thing. They recorded this to send to their manager, like, “Check out our new singer!”
Faith No More / Mike Patton Vocal Audition Tape
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gA5maVwATs
Something I notice about this one: Cowboy Song is in a bad key for Patton’s voice. In the lower octave, he can’t get enough power. And in the higher octave, he’s struggling because the belt is too high. No wonder he sang in that nasally tone through most of the record…
*Of course, there’s no guarantee that iteration leads to those results. Survivorship bias, and all that.
†I sincerely don’t understand why Lars can’t play a straight beat or do a basic fill and stay in time. This isn’t a personal attack on him. I love his drum parts on the albums! But some of those takes were shocking to hear.