Troubled Production / Music Albums Artists F To M

F

• The making of Donald Fagen's The Nightfly was a difficult affair due to a mix of Fagen's perfectionism and his insistence on using digital equipment at a time when the technology was still nascent. The engineers took extensive courses to learn how to use digital recorders so that they didn't need to constantly call up 3M for maintenance, Fagen struggled with writer's block thanks to the absence of Steely Dan bandmate Walter Becker and insisted on overdubs instead of live recording (to the consternation of the session musicians and engineers), and the staff faced problems with the studio building itself, including humming from a nearby subway and the stench of a dead rat in a drainage pipe. The Nightfly took eight months to finish, and its turbulent making contributed to the 11-year gap between it and Kamakiriad (which tellingly reunited Fagen and Becker).
• To say that Faith No More had it rough while making King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime would be an understatement. Where do we start?
  • After firing guitarist Jim Martin due to creatives differences the group spent four months finding a replacement. They would finally settle on Trey Spruance thanks to his affiliation with Mr. Bungle, singer Mike Patton's other band at the time. Unfortunately, he left the band shortly before production finished. FNM stated that his unwillingness to tour with them led to his dismissal. As a form of retaliation, the group credited Trey as a session member in the album's liner notes. However, this did nothing but reinforce Spruance's claim that he was never meant to be a member to begin with. As if that wasn't bad enough, his live replacement, roadie Dean Menta, slowly could no longer get along with the group so he, too, got sacked after touring ended for KFAD and was never heard from again.
  • Mike Patton, being the workaholic that he always is, had to devote his time between making this record, crafting Mr. Bungle's second album Disco Volante with Trey and preparing his marriage with his now ex-wife Cristina Zuccatosta.
  • During the recording sessions, three members (Patton, Spruance, and drummer Mike Bordin) were involved in a serious car accident that almost killed them. Fortunately, they survived the crash.
  • Keyboardist Roddy Bottum was greatly affected by the deaths of his father and his buddy Kurt Cobain, whose widow, Courtney Love, is Bottum's best friend. As a result, Faith No More had to make the record without him for the most part. This explains the notable decrease in keyboards on the album.
  • Despite receiving two nominations at the Bay Area Music Awards, it didn't seem like it was worth it at the end of the day, as the album got mixed reviews. It also didn't help that it came at a time when FNM's 15 minutes of fame where long behind them. It wasn't until during the band's break-up that King for a Day's reception got better to the point that it's now considered one of the best releases the group has to offer.
• Flaming Lips had this happen for the Zaireeka/ The Soft Bulletin sessions.
  • Having lost guitarist Ronald Jones, they were left having to improvise compositions. Their drummer, Steven Drozd, became a multi-instrumentalist, putting a lot of pressure on him. The recordings were preceded by two of the band members getting involved in some major incidents (Michael Ivins ended up in a car accident and Drozd got a major infection caused by his frequent heroin use) postponing recording by a few weeks. Vocalist Wayne Coyne started experimenting with the concept of different stereos playing different parts of a same song and came up with the idea of Zaireeka. The format for the album was complex; it was released as four discs, and each of the discs had separate elements of each song. This proved to be difficult to record for, as most Flaming Lips songs before this point were recorded more straightforwardly. The band started feuding, causing Coyne to have to say "We don't have to be friends, but we do have to record this album."
  • That's not even the whole story. The reason why the two albums were recorded together was because of demands from the band's label, Warner (Bros.) Records. They were on bad terms with the label after their previous album, Clouds Taste Metallic flopped big time. The label was iffy about funding the recording and kept telling the band that it would take several months to produce such a project. This pushed The Flaming Lips and their producer to build their own studio for the sake of saving time (yes, Warner Bros was being that uncooperative). The label finally promised funding as long as the band recorded another, more accessible album at the same time. The Lips agreed and received a $200,000 advance. Zaireeka sold just enough to break even and did not get a warm reception from critics at the time (though has been Vindicated by History to become one of the band's greatest albums), and The Soft Bulletin is now looked at as a classic.
• After Fleet Foxes faced major critical and mainstream success with their first album, they wanted to get a second album out quickly. This backfired immensely as the drummer, J. Tillman, had prior commitments with his solo project (he had been an established solo folk artist before the group had become successful, and would later find fame when he began recording as Father John Misty) and their producer also had commitments of his own. When they did get to record, the results were less than satisfactory and were scrapped, costing the band $60,000 of their own money. With pressure from the label to get something of quality recorded, Robin Pecknold, the lead vocalist started pushing for a fast recording. The band, stressed already from what had been happening did not appreciate this, and thus the album took a few additional weeks to finish. They also had the rush hiring of a new member as a multi-instrumentalist which affected their complex compositions all the more. Vocals were expectedly a breeze for the band. When mixing was due, Pecknold spent so much time trying to get the levels perfect that his own girlfriend (who he was already feuding with) broke up with him due his constant business. Ultimately what was supposed to take a single year to release took 3, but many fans and critics praised the album and were all happy so much work was put into it. A rushed release would probably not have been as satisfactory. Helplessness Blues is considered to be one of the best albums of 2011 and Pecknold's girlfriend took him back after she found out how genuine the work is.
• Fleetwood Mac's most commercially successful period also saw some of their most troubled productions.
  • Their 1977 album Rumours was a huge critical and commercial success and regularly appears on lists of the best albums ever made, but its fraught recording process is the stuff of legend. The sessions were marked by extensive cocaine use, and all five principal band members were having serious relationship problems which found their way into many of the songs on the album.
    • Bassist John McVie and keyboardist Christine McVie had divorced after eight years together, toward the end of which she had been having an affair with the band's lighting director, Curry Grant. Her songs "Don't Stop" and "You Make Loving Fun" combined a desire to look forward after the demise of her marriage to John and euphoria at her new love with Grant (though she told John during the recording sessions that "You Make Loving Fun" was about her dog out of concern that he would refuse to record it otherwise).
    • But this was nothing compared to the vitriol flying between guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and singer Stevie Nicks, whose decade-long on/off relationship had become certifiably toxic. Nicks' "Dreams" and "I Don't Want to Know" saw her telling Buckingham that while she was happy to let him go, she believed that he would regret abandoning their love one day; Buckingham fired back with "Second Hand News" (the lyrics for which he carefully hid from Nicks until they were ready to record, as he knew they would offend her), "Never Going Back Again", and especially "Go Your Own Way", in all of which he wrote of how much she had hurt him and how much happier he was with the women he had been seeing since their breakup. The lyrics "Packing up, shacking up is all you wanna do" from "Go Your Own Way" particularly enraged Nicks, who tried unsuccessfully to get them changed and later said that when Buckingham performed those lyrics on stage, she "wanted to go over and kill him".
    • Drummer Mick Fleetwood's marriage to Jenny Boyd collapsed after he discovered she was having an affair with his best friend; Christine McVie has sometimes claimed that "Oh Daddy" was inspired by a short-lived reconciliation between Fleetwood and Boyd,^note  The moniker "Daddy" being a nod to Fleetwood being the only band member with children at the time. but Buckingham's ex-girlfriend Carol Ann Harris and Nicks' biographer Zoe Howe believe she originally intended the song as another love ballad to Grant.
    • Nicks laboured long and hard over "Silver Springs", an acidic Answer Song to "Go Your Own Way" in which she dialled the "You'll regret spurning my love for you one day" attitude of "Dreams" and "I Don't Want to Know" up to full, but when it proved too long to fit onto the album, the other band members replaced it with "I Don't Want to Know" despite strenuous objections from Nicks (who later recalled going into the studio car park and shrieking with rage at the news that the song had been dropped).^note  Fittingly, when "Go Your Own Way" was released as a single in December 1976, "Silver Springs" was put on the B-side. It didn't gain its rightful place on Rumours until the 2004 CD re-master.
  • The same problems continued, just turned up a few notches, when they went back into the studio to make the double album Tusk:
    • The album's size and change in musical direction started with Lindsey Buckingham going to Mick Fleetwood, then stuck acting as the band's manager, with a bunch of songs. While the conversation went pleasantly and ended with the two agreeing the band would record them, the two later admitted they'd read other things into it: Fleetwood thought that Buckingham was threatening to leave the band if he didn't get his way, while Buckingham thought Fleetwood was giving him permission to record each and every song for the band's next album. This had a lot to do with how things turned out over the next ... two years.
    • The first attempt to record the new songs took the band to Sausalito, California. After three months in a studio there all they had to show for it was drum tracks.
    • Fleetwood tried, and failed, to get the label, which had been hoping for (basically) Rumours II, to pay for the band to build their own studio. Instead, the label agreed to pay for improvements and customizations to the Village Recorder in L.A. ... work that wound up taking longer and costing more money than building a studio would have.
    • Unbeknownst to anyone else in the band, Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks were having an affair. Then he left her for her best friend, adversely affecting her mood and leaving her in no condition to work with Buckingham.
    • Buckingham was largely in charge, and he found yet anther way to piss off Nicks off, by cutting "Sara" down to six and a half minutes from the original 14. He was influenced by the New Wave sound of the time, and it shows. For the title track, they got the USC marching band to play along.
    • Tusk cost a million dollars to make, the most expensive album ever recorded at that time, and although it generated three hit singles ("Sara" among them) and sold four million copies, it was widely regarded as a failure because that was nowhere near the business Rumours had done.
  • By the time Mirage came along, barely anyone could stand being in the same room with each other. While this actually made the album itself comparatively less tempestuous to produce — everyone was releasing tension through their own solo projects and generally worked on their individual parts separately — the real drama came during the making of the music videos for "Hold Me" and "Gypsy", now a key part of the process thanks to the rise of MTV. The (not-so) eagle-eyed viewer of both will notice that there are a lot of close-up shots in both and the band members rarely seem to be on screen at the same time. Matters in the former weren't helped by the decision to film it in a desert, meaning everyone was hot, uncomfortable and irritated all the way throughout leading to much tension and prima donna behaviour, while in the latter the director freely admitted that he completely lost track of exactly who hated each other and was supposed to kept separate, leading to Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham accidentally having a scene together; you can tell she's uncomfortable and furious throughout. Nicks was also making her first efforts to kick her by-this-point very serious cocaine addiction, which didn't help as they kept having to confiscate smuggled vials of coke from her.
  • And to wrap up the Buckingham / Nicks era and it's many, many problems; while Tango in the Night was, like Mirage, comparatively less troubled than their previous albums, the word 'comparatively' is still doing a lot of heavy lifting here:
    • Several members of the band still hadn't fully kicked their hard-living lifestyles; Mick Fleetwood's problems with cocaine in particular were reportedly worse than in the Rumours days, and a Winnebago was placed in the driveway specifically for him to go and dry out in. John McVie, meanwhile, had spent most of the five years since the last album drinking and sailing around the Caribbean; attempts at going cold turkey to cure his alcoholism went so bad that he was worried at points that he'd lost the ability to play entirely. Lindsey Buckingham is quoted as saying this was probably the point where "everyone was at their worst ... everyone was leading their lives in a way they would not be too proud of today".
    • Stevie Nicks was also coming off two solo albums and her own attempts at kicking cocaine, and so was pretty checked out of the whole process; in an eighteen-month production period, she spent about two weeks in the studio, and most of what she recorded either had to be trashed or heavily edited in order to be usable (Nicks herself has admitted that most of her contributions were probably not great).
    • As Lindsey Buckingham was once again put in the position where he was the one basically keeping everything moving and keeping everyone on track, the pressure was increasingly getting to him, particularly as the whole project had originally started as a solo album which he had been convinced to make a Fleetwood Mac album. This culminated in a meeting prior to the album's release which was supposed to be about the tour but at which Buckingham instead chose to announce that he'd had enough and was quitting the band. It didn't go over so well; it led to a blazing row between himself and Nicks which got so out of hand that the latter physically attacked him, and which eventually spilled out into the street.
• Foo Fighters have two troubled albums to their name.
  • Their second album The Colour and the Shape started pretty roughly, mainly because after doing a "solo" record, Dave Grohl now had to deal with a full band. He had clashes with the album's producer Gil Norton, was dissatisfied with the work of drummer William Goldsmith, went through a divorce, and was not enjoying living in Los Angeles during production (something that later inspired the song "Stacked Actors"; Dave has since had a happier life in LA following his next marriage). Dave then decided to take a break. After doing "Walking After You" all by himself, he decided to re-record the drum tracks, without warning Goldsmith. Once the drummer found out, he quit the band. The album sessions also featured a number of songs that didn't get finished for the album. And all the turmoil also made guitarist Pat Smear decide to leave Foo Fighters, only remaining in the tour while his eventual substitute finished other commitments.
  • Two albums later, One by One had the band struggling again. Probably helped by the band being burned out by years of touring, no one was satisfied with the recordings. Then during a UK mini-tour, drummer Taylor Hawkins had an overdose. As he left the hospital, the band rushed back to their Virginia studio, eventually moving to a top-notch LA one... and not only the frustration continued, but tensions were escalating. The band eventually decided to take a break - where, to make it worse, Dave Grohl went touring with Queens of the Stone Age, raising some ire from Hawkins. The band eventually decided they'd at least play the Coachella festival - where the rehearsals were mostly silent until guitarist Chris Shifflet (who was recording his first album with the band) said "Man, is it just me or we can cut the air here with a knife?" and fights broke out. But the concert was done, and since the band enjoyed their performance, they decided to re-record the album from scratch (aside from a track featuring Brian May) in Virginia during just two weeks. As Dave put out: "This version of 'All of My Life' cost $1 million and sounds like crap. This was recorded in half an hour in my basement and is the biggest fucking song we've ever had!"

G

• Garbage's Bleed Like Me. The first sessions were mostly fruitless and led the band members to fight each other. After a four month breakup, they decided to resume recording with an outside producer, John King - who was eventually ditched for the band to finish themselves, though one of his tracks is on the final album. The thing still burned the group so much the album's tour was cut short and the band entered a hiatus afterwards, only playing together again two years later. The band blamed new label Geffen for the bad vibes - singer Shirley Manson declared that "We got dumped on a label who did not give one flying fuck about us. And it just became a very joyless process. Something that should be really incredible, exciting and adventurous became like a noose around our neck. And we sort of turned in on each other as a result, I think."
• Genesis's 1974 offering, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and the accompanying live tour:
  • For starters, Peter Gabriel insisted on writing all of the lyrics himself, feeling that a consistent story would be necessary. Between the isolation resulting from this, and his marriage to his then-pregnant first wife becoming troubled, most of the backing tracks were written in his absence by Tony Banks, Phil Collins, and Mike Rutherford, who were gelling into the main creative force of the band.
  • The location of the recording, Mick Jagger's Stargroves mansion, which was often a favorite recording location for Led Zeppelin, turned out be be rundown, infested by rats and was believed by band members to be haunted. The group had very little sleep, and what was supposed to be a way of solidifying group unity actually led to stress and strain for the band.
  • Arguments included songs and lyrics. The other members of the band would occasionally rewrite Gabriel's lyrics to better fit their music, and Gabriel wrote several songs on his own (to bridge already-written sections) without the rest of the band's input (one of them, "The Carpet Crawlers", would be a live staple for the post-Gabriel band). Gabriel's responsibility for the album's story also left him in charge of the order of the songs, and other bandmembers felt the album order started with all the strong songs and left all the dross tracks for the second disc. Gabriel also ran into writer's block with "The Light Lies Down On Broadway", leaving Banks and Rutherford to write both music and lyrics.
  • In the middle of the album sessions, Gabriel received an offer to work with William Friedkin on a movie screenplay, and couldn't see why the rest of the band thought leaving in the middle of an album session might be a bad thing. Genesis' manager Tony Smith had to call Friedkin and get him to back off, which led to discontent on Gabriel's part. Gabriel made it clear he was leaving the band, although he stayed to do the live tour.
  • While recording the album in Wales, Gabriel's wife gave birth prematurely, and his infant daughter (who was not expected to survive, but fortunately did) was placed in an incubator. During the recording process, Gabriel would frequently shuttle from Wales to London and back. The other members of the band, all of whom were childless at that point, were not understanding of his predicament, something Gabriel still carries resentment for to this day.
  • Due to stress from being creatively sidelined on the album and his own failing marriage, guitarist Steve Hackett snapped a wineglass in his hand during rehearsals, injuring tendons in his thumb and delaying the start of the tour. After some juggling of venue dates, this meant the first wing performed was the American wing, where the album hadn't been released yet. Ticket sales went "meh." Hackett would record his first solo album shortly after the tour, and leave the band within two years. Hackett mentioned in an article for Prog magazine (made by the publishers of Classic Rock) that what triggered his wine glass accident had something to do with someone at a backstage party Hackett went to after a Sensational Alex Harvey Band concert he attended saying, "The band is good, but they'd be nothing without Alex Harvey", which reminded Steve of what people said about Genesis and Peter.
  • The live show was troubled by faulty equipment (including the slides meant to visually display the story). The band performed the entire double album, and only performed older, more recognized material in encores. Gabriel eschewed his trademark costumes for most of the show, and when he donned them for the second half, the overly elaborate designs prevented him from getting a microphone near his mouth, rendering the lyrics incomprehensible.
  • In the end, the album tanked on the charts, was savaged by critics and fans alike, and the band lost their ass on the tour, nearly breaking up in the process. For obvious reasons, almost all the members of the band treated it as an Old Shame for many years, only beginning to warm up to it much later when they could put the stress of creating it behind them. The album itself also became Vindicated by History, and is nowadays regarded as both Genesis's artistic peak and one of the greatest Progressive Rock albums of all time.
• Ghost's third album Meliora is routinely seen as the band's best album, as well as the album that made them a household name worldwide; however, its production history, along with the ensuing tour, was the start of the many tensions between the band that would culminate in a lawsuit two years after its release. The short version of the story is that its process was, according to Tobias Forge, "a lavish, stupid procedure". The long version?
  • The band managed to make a real killing over 2013-2014 with their sophomore effort Infestissumam. At this point, it was common knowledge that Tobias Forge was the mastermind behind the band, and routinely used different musicians at concerts than on the albums, save for Martin Persner, then known as "Omega.” However, Forge was impressed enough with Alpha Ghoul guitarist Simon Söderberg that he decided to let him be the lead guitarist for the album. Additionally, Tobias Forge made the decision to record the album in his home country of Sweden, as the band had difficulty recording their Satanic themed music in studios in the Bible Belt of the US.
  • Once recording actually started though, things got super frustrating for Forge. Forge's work ethic is known for being hyper focused; Söderberg's relaxed and jam-oriented style rubbed off onto other session musicians, who would be likely to be playing video games while Forge and Persner were working on structuring the songs. Forge and Persner would be ready to record a part, but would have to wait for drunk or high session musicians to sober up enough to be able to record.
  • Söderberg's behaviour didn't stop at mere laziness; when he actually was willing to work, he would intentionally play parts that Forge had written wrong so he could give it "the Alpha touch". In one particular instance, he tried to claim songwriting credits because he played a solo wrong, something that he would later use against Forge in the lawsuit over royalties. While it was never confirmed why fan favourite bonus track "Zenith" was left off the album and relegated to a vinyl box set found in Sweden, a number of people speculated that his overtly egotistical behaviour may have been to blame for this.
  • Adding to this all is that the band had recently signed over all their distribution rights to Loma Vista records, who helped co-produce Infestissumam with Sonet, resulting in the album being Christmas Rushed to meet a Summer 2015 release (also two weeks before tour mates Iron Maiden had their hotly anticipated double album The Book of Souls). Despite this, the album took almost twice as long as it should have to record, to the point where the mastering was done up to two weeks before its release, and it was no small miracle that they were able to get lead single "Cirice" out, along with a video in this time.
  • The touring for the album started off fine, despite the band having to time to properly rehearse new tracks, though this did result in a number of incidents such as an incorrect "Papa III" mask being sent to Tobias Forge for the show where the band would debut the Papa Emeritus III character, multiple incidents during a leg where the band supported Iron Maiden where Forge would accidentally fall into stage gaps and injure himself. But things didn't get truly bad until the second half of the tour cycle, titled "Popestar". Söderberg was growing bitter over not being able to collect songwriting credits for his efforts on the album, and this rubbed off onto other band members. So much that this resulted in the departure of Martin Persner (both due to the ghouls voting him out and because Persner was suffering from severe stress and mental health issues at the time and needed a break). Forge did not take kindly to the ghouls' actions, and by the time they hit the road, nobody in the band was talking to each other, with Forge worried the ghouls would outright not show up.
  • Once the first half of the Popestar tour was over, Forge decided he had enough and fired all the other ghouls. Months later, said ghouls filed a lawsuit over songwriting royaltie. Despite this, and despite Forge's then-anonymity being blown, the second half of the tour, with new session musicians, went peacefully. However, at this point, the damage was done, and Forge decided to overhaul his next album's process entirely, by having producer Tom Dalgety accompany him during the sessions and having session musicians record their parts one at a time, and having his songwriter friends help him with writing, so only people who actually deserved the credits could claim them.
• Guns N' Roses had Chinese Democracy. 11 years of development, millions of dollars spent, at least 11 musicians involved, and much pressure on getting the album released. The joke for much of that time was that actual Chinese democracy would likely come before the album was released.
  • After the extensive Use Your Illusion Tour wrapped, the band was unsure on their future. Their Cover Album The Spaghetti Incident? did not sell as well. To make matters worse, Axl Rose was still missing guitarist Izzy Stradlin, who was his primary songwriting partner and an old childhood friend. Stradlin had left in the midst of the last tour due to his recent sobriety and anger at Axl's behavior. He had been replaced by Gilby Clarke (though Izzy was brought back to some UYI concerts after Clarke injured himself). However, in the midst of this upheaval, Clarke was fired and Axl's old friend Paul Tobias was hired without consulting anyone else. Slash in particular hated Tobias, but Axl stood by him. The final straw came when a cover of "Sympathy for the Devil" for the Interview with the Vampire soundtrack had Tobias' guitar part mixed on top of Slash's. Slash officially quit two years later, but was pretty much done with the band at that point.
  • The band did try to record a new album, but it never went anywhere. Axl and Slash both have stated that the other tried to take over all writing and have the other fired. Slash in particular has repeatedly stated that Axl took the rights to the Guns 'N' Roses name by force (refusing to go onstage until Slash and Duff signed the name over to him - which actually wouldn't work at all legally) and treated all members as session musicians. Axl denies this and claims he was the one repeatedly shut out and threatened with dismissal. He does own the rights to the name, but this was apparently after a complicated legal battle.
  • After Slash's departure, Nine Inch Nails guitar player Robin Finck was hired as the new lead guitarist. Tobias stayed on, but eventually drove drummer Matt Sorum and bassist Duff McKagan away. This left Axl and keyboardist Dizzy Reed as the last two members from the Use Your Illusion tour. Tommy Stinson of The Replacements, Chris Pitman, and Josh Freese joined the band around this time and officially started work on Chinese Democracy. However, after cycling through many different producers and recording for a full year, the band only released one song in 1999. That song,"Oh My God", was only ever featured on the soundtrack to End of Days and was not critically or commercially well received (eventually being left out of the finished album despite some live performances of the song).
  • Finck quit for the first time before 2000 to rejoin NIN. When he returned to the band, Buckethead had already been hired as a replacement. The two toured together starting in 2001, and they didn't get along, because Buckethead was mad that he had to "share the spotlight" with Finck. Freese also quit and was replaced by Bryan "Brain" Mantia of Primus.
  • Buckethead was also hard to work with in the studio. Among other things, he demanded a chicken coop be built for him to record his parts in and when a puppy had an accident in the studio, Buckethead demanded that the feces not be cleaned up as it gave him inspiration. He also tried watching hardcore pornography while recording until Rose forbade it. Also, after several festival performances, Paul Tobias announced he would stop touring with the band and was replaced by Richard Fortus. Tobias did remain as a recording partner of the band and still appears on several tracks on the finished album.
  • Despite these problems, the album was mostly finished by 2002, but a terrible performance at the 2002 VMAs and a North American tour that imploded after only half the promised dates had been performed set everything back. It's also rumored the album was rejected by the record label for not having any potential "hits."
  • The album was then tentatively set to be released in 2004, with an accompanying tour. Right before the tour was supposed to begin with a performance at the Rock in Rio festival, Buckethead left the band. Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal was hired to replace him in 2006 and would end up rerecording many of Buckethead's parts, while Frank Ferrer replaced Bryan Mantia on drums during the 2006 tour. (Mantia said it was because he wanted to take some time off to spend time with his newborn daughter.) The album again was to set to be released in 2006, but didn't happen due to the line up shift. However, a number of leaks from 1999-2006 came out that year.
  • Weeks before the album was finally released in 2008, lead guitarist Robin Finck again quit the band, which cancelled a hopeful tour. Axl Rose did zero promotion for the album for the next year, barring a few message board fan interviews. The band hired DJ Ashba (who played with Nikki Sixx in Sixx AM) as the new lead. A year after the album was released, the band continued the Chinese Democracy Tour (which had been going on since 2001) with a band that only had three contributing song writers left. To top it all off, the booklet and promotional materials were rife with errors and some have said the album was actually intended to be a TRIPLE album (Axl Rose has said he always thought of it as a double. Skid Row's Sebastian Bach claims to have heard four albums worth of material at one point). Instead, one record with the majority of the songs being nearly 10 years old was released with no further albums in sight. The band would continue to tour for Chinese Democracy until 2012. A whole decade of (mostly successful) touring on one album that took 12 years to be released as 1/3rd of the intended content. And that doesn't mention the multiple lawsuits, including one over plagiarized ambient music before a track (a track that was completed and performed live in 2002, yet had the offending sample added shortly before release in 2008), and a major one with a former manager of the band.

H

• Happy Mondays' New Sound Album Yes Please! was a production so troubled that it bankrupted the label that financed it, Factory Records. The album went way over budget, some members became addicted to crack (while attempting to kick a heroin habit), to the point of selling some studio gear in exchange for some more crack, and a recording session in Barbados resulted in recorded instruments but no vocals (due to Shaun Ryder forgetting to write the lyrics). When the album was released, it was universally panned and failed to sell.
• While mild compared to most examples; a case of this developed in the lead-up to the recording of Hillsong's 1996 album "Shout to the Lord" when Geoff Bullock, the main worship pastor at the time, abruptly left the group^note in 2002; Bullock revealed having been diagnosed with bipolar disorderjust days before the record date; resulting in Darlene Zschech, writer of the title track, to be elevated to lead worship pastor on short notice. Ultimately, the actual recording went on without a hitch and was a success, with the album becoming Hillsong's American debut album when Integrity Music picked up distribution rights for the United States^note in the process, marking a first for Integrity as this would become the first album produced or distributed by that label where the primary vocalist was a woman
• The Human League's third album Dare had a much more troublesome production than the band's previous two albums, which were flops.
  • The band's two lead members, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, left the band in 1980 and formed a new group, Heaven 17. The press pretty much declared The Human League dead right there, as the only two members left were the ones that they perceived had the least to do with the band's musical direction: vocalist Philip Oakey and visual artist Adrian Wright. To add insult to injury, the band was already in crippling debt and Virgin Records was looking to drop them, but they still owed another album to the label.
  • Oakey recruited two local teenage singers, Susanne Sulley and Joanne Catherall, to sing for the group and recruited keyboardist Ian Burden to round out the band. Oakey went on tour with this lineup, with Sulley and Catherall not intended as full members of the group. The tour was poorly received by the band's old fans, who heckled them at pretty much every concert. However, Oakey and Wright were so impressed by Sulley and Catherall's professionalism, that they made them full band members.
  • When the new iteration of The Human League arrived at the studio to record their new album, they discovered that the artist in the adjacent studio was, of all bands, Heaven 17. The toxic atmosphere between the two bands led The Human League to book a new studio outside of their native Sheffield, which resulted in the still-underage Sulley and Catheral having to frequently take bus trips back to the city to attend school.
  • While still working on the album, the band issued the single "The Sound of the Crowd", which Virgin reluctantly promoted, only to see it become their first Top 40 hit. Virgin then asked for two more singles, again before the album was even finished, causing some stress with the recording process. Virgin's idea paid off: "Love Action (I Believe In Love)" and "Open Your Heart" were even bigger hits, both reaching the Top 10. Around this time, guitarist Jo Callis was added as the band's sixth and final member late in to the album's production.
  • When Dare was finally released in October 1981, it was a massive smash for both the band and label...but Virgin still wanted one more single, and picked "Don't You Want Me". Oakey begged them not to release it because he thought it was the worst song on the album. They rebuffed him, and he was sure the song would embarrass the band and ruin the career they worked so hard to rebuild. He didn't need to worry: In a rare case of Executive Meddling gone right, "Don't You Wan't Me" was the biggest of all of their hits, a #1 in both the UK and the US, and one of the most popular New Wave songs of the entire 1980s.
• Hüsker Dü had a pretty hectic history, but nothing can even light a candle to the production of their last studio album, Warehouse: Songs and Stories. The band had signed to a major label for the release of their previous album Candy Apple Grey. That album did not meet sales expectations with Warner and received lackluster critical reception. The band was already under heavy pressure, but internal conflicts proved even worse. Every member was arguing with each other. Drummer Grant Hart became a heroin addict at the same time that singer/ guitarist Bob Mould decided to sober up completely. Hart tested positive for HIV, causing him even greater distress, increasing tensions that much more (although, it was revealed after the band broke up, that it was a false positive). The band had so much material, it would make for a double album, something of which Warner tried to convince the band to shorten down to no avail. The label ended up convincing the band to accept royalties for a single album to allow for the costs to be covered. They then insisted the band get a manager, which the band didn't want. After being pestered to death about it, the band rush-hired their close friend David Savoy, who was not anywhere near the mental condition to handle the job. After dealing with the band's ridiculous antics, he lost it one night and jumped off a Minneapolis bridge to his death. Savoy's death hit the band hard. Warehouse actually did pretty well for an alternative rock album in the late 1980s, helped by Warner sending the group on a high-profile promotional tour that included performances on Today and The Late Show with Joan Rivers, but the band wasn't especially comfortable with that mainstream attention. While the album hit the label's sales targets, the band actually made less money than they would have if they had stuck with independent label SST, even without all the promotion. It's regarded as one of the band's best albums in an already incredible discography.

J

• Michael Jackson's Invincible is a particularly spectacular example of this.
  • Over 50 songs were recorded for it over the course of four years; 16 made it to the final product. Production costs soared to a reported $30 million before it was finally ready in the fall of 2001 under pressure from Sony chief Tommy Mottola (who was appalled by Jackson's wasteful habits — renting out whole recording studios that were largely left vacant, etc.); it had originally been promised for Christmas 1999. Jackson was planning to leave Sony over contract disputes regarding the rights to his own work and their co-ownership of the valuable ATV Music Publishing catalog. But he was deeply in debt owing to his personal spending having spiraled out of control, so the album had to be at least as successful as his Glory Days output to make up Sony's money (plus another $20 million, by Sony's estimation, for promotional efforts).
  • He wanted "Unbreakable" as the first video/single; Sony wanted and got "You Rock My World". According to friend Frank Cascio, the directors of the video wanted Jackson to wear prosthetic makeup to make his face appear more normal-looking for the shoot, and he refused. Instead, director Paul Hunter convinced him to wear his hat in a way that covered most of his face in close-ups. The video cost $4 million to make, with $1 million of that budget going to Marlon Brando for his appearance in it. According to the biography Untouchable, Jackson continued to press for another $8 million for promotional efforts, including a video for "Unbreakable".
  • Sony wanted Jackson to do a North American tour; after all, he hadn't toured in the continental U.S. or Canada since 1989. He refused, instead staging two Madison Square Garden concerts with others paying tribute to him as the lead-in to a set that reunited him with his brothers for the first time in years. The first concert was plagued by delays. The second night went better...but it happened to take place on September 10th. The 9-11 attacks near-completely wiped discussion of the shows off of the media's table, with its highest-profile exposure an Entertainment Weekly cover story by an unimpressed attendee a few weeks later. Again, according to Untouchable, Jackson also cancelled several publicity appearances to spite Sony over not supporting his 9-11 Charity Motivation Song "What More Can I Give" (see the "United We Stand" concert under Concerts/Tours).
  • When the album arrived at the end of October it under-performed in the wake of mediocre reviews and disinterest from pop music fans of the *NSYNC/Britney Spears generation, and an edited TV broadcast of the Madison Square Garden shows in November did well in the ratings but didn't goose sales. Two follow-up singles were modest successes. Sony stopped pushing the album after those, and Jackson proceeded to claim that the album hadn't been a blockbuster because of...racially-motivated sabotage on Sony's part. Jackson family members, particularly Jermaine and La Toya, have since claimed that Sony's efforts to ruin him were also behind both his arrest on child molestation charges in 2003 and his death in 2009.
• Keith Jarrett's The Köln Concert is considered a classic live album of 70s jazz, but the circumstances of its recording were a circus.
  • Jarrett requested a Bösendorfer 290 Imperial grand piano for the concert, roughly the equivalent of asking for a spin in a Rolls-Royce. However, some stagehands found a baby-grand piano also made by Bösendorfer, and brought that onstage instead. By the time the mistake was caught, it was too late to get the right piano, so the staff had to make do with the baby-grand...
  • ...which was in poor condition and horribly out-of-tune. The piano had to be re-tuned for several hours, and even then had audio problems; its high end was really tinny, its bass end wasn't very resonant, and its pedals were broken.
  • When Jarrett arrived, he was exhausted from touring and sleep deprivation, and was in enough pain to warrant a back brace. He was, naturally, miffed that the piano he ordered was swapped out for the baby-grand, and almost cancelled the performance mere hours before it was supposed to begin. Not helping matters was the fact that the concert organizer rented out a table at a local Italian place, but the waitstaff had a mixup so Jarrett didn't get much food before the show started... at 23:10, after an opera performance.
  • All that considered, Jarrett worked with the limitations of the baby-grand masterfully by concentrating his playing in the middle register of the piano, and using bass ostinatos in lieu of low bass notes. The audience of about 1400 enjoyed it, and went on to become Jarrett's best-selling album.
• Like The Rolling Stones before them, and Pink Floyd and Duran Duran afterwards, Jethro Tull found that going off to France to record your album so the Inland Revenue can't lay a finger on the profits was more trouble than it was worth:
  • When they headed off to Chateau D'Herouville outside Paris to begin work on A Passion Play, the band was in the unusual situation of, for the first time in its history, having the same members as it had had during the previous album and ensuing tour. Apparently, this was too much stability for them.
  • Martin Barre and Barriemore Barlow started off the sessions still getting over a stomach bug they believe they got at a show in Bombay near the end of the previous tour. The poor quality food at the studio did not help them in the slightest and they often had to interrupt sessions and songwriting to go get friendly with the toilet.
  • The equipment was also poor and broke down frequently. The tension started to get to the band members, aggravating the homesickness they were already feeling. Nevertheless they managed to lay down most of the tracks for a planned double album, one meant as the real progressive Concept Album Thick as a Brick was a parody of.
  • But finally, with the band at their breaking point, they decamped back to England, having among themselves renamed the studio Chateau D'Isaster. Once there, Ian threw out all (or most, depending on who you believe) of what had been recorded in France and started afresh, writing most of the songs himself (whereas in France most compositions had been collaborations) for what was now a single album.
  • That album is either masterpiece or mistake, depending on which fan you talk to. The release of the original, Chateau D'Isaster tapes in more recent years has not settled this debate.
• J-Live's The Best Part was met with a turbulent production. Live was new to music production but was also incredibly ambitious, wanting to bring back the "Emcee" image that had been abandoned by the hip-hop scene. Live had to take on odd jobs and spent much of the production in poverty. Due to his inexperience, lack of funds, and studio interference, the album took 3 years to make. It was slated for a 1999 release when Live became yet another victim of the record label mergers at the time. Raw Shack Records demanded Live make several changes that would have tarnished the album's artistic message. Live then took the album to London Records which then got bought by Universal Records, who also refused to release the album. Now without a label and distributor for an album that he spent 3 long years to produce, Live spent the next 2 long years shopping around the album, constantly getting denied. He decided to take it upon himself to bootleg the album, with vinyl copies finding their way on the black market by early 2000. Listeners loved what they heard but Live started getting criticism for the production being slightly behind other rappers with the slow transition to purely digital means of production. This lead to Live overhauling his overall production process with his work on his follow-up All Of The Above. By the time The Best Part finally found a record company to release the album, Triple Threat Productions, Live was already halfway through the production of All Of The Above. While both albums are looked at as classics now, The Best Part was behind it's time due to the delays caused by the record companies and All Of The Above was seen as too confusing for it's own good by critics and listeners.

K

• Toby Keith had this happen in 1998 when he intended to release his fifth album for Mercury Records Nashville. They rejected the material he had submitted except for two tracks, "Getcha Some" and "If a Man Answers", which were both put on a Greatest Hits Album and released as singles. While the former was a modest hit, the latter became his first single not to enter top 40 on the country music charts. He then submitted another album's worth of material to Mercury, and when they rejected that too, he quit the label and followed his producer James Stroud to DreamWorks Records Nashville. While his first DreamWorks single "When Love Fades" was a bomb, he persuaded the label to pull it in favor of "How Do You Like Me Now?!", one of the songs that Mercury had rejected. Despite a slow start, that song went on to become a Breakthrough Hit for him, as well as the biggest country airplay hit of 2000, leading to a new leg of his career that lasted for most of the first decade of the 21st century.
• King Crimson has had its fair share of troubled productions over the 50 years of its existence:
  • Most of the band quit after their first US tour in 1969. Ian McDonald and Michael Giles wanted to play a lighter musical style. Greg Lake didn't think the band could survive without McDonald and left himself to join Emerson Lake & Palmer. This left Fripp alone with lyricist and later keyboardist Peter Sinfield, just as they were trying to record their follow-up album In The Wake of Poseidon. Lake stayed just long enough to record the vocals, and the album was completed with session musicians.
  • Fripp and Sinfield recruited Gordon Haskell and Andy McCulloch, but all three were at odds during the recording of Lizard. Fripp's interest in free improvisation and European classical music clashed with the soul and Motown music preferred by Haskell and McCulloch and Sinfield's love of jazz. Haskell and McCulloch left immediately after completing the album. Fripp called Lizard "unlistenable" for decades, only revising his opinion when Steven Wilson created a surround sound mix Fripp preferred. It wasn't until after the following album Islands that the lineup began to stabilize, until Fripp disbanded King Crimson to pursue his spiritual awakening in 1974.
  • The early 1980s line-up of King Crimson had its own troubles. At one point during the recording of Beat, Adrian Belew threw Robert Fripp out of the recording studio. They later reconciled, but Belew called it "the most awful record-making experience of my life and one I would never choose to repeat."
  • Crimson's 1990s double-trio line-up met in 1997 to work on a follow-up for Thrak, but the rehearsals broke down in arguments, mostly between Fripp and Bill Bruford. Bruford left, and the band divided into a series of smaller groups called 'ProjeKcts'.
  • While they've released no studio albums, King Crimson's most stable (and, according to Fripp, happiest) lineup has been its most recent, from 2013 to 2021. The only lineup changes were caused by Bill Rieflin's sabbaticals for ongoing cancer treatments and later passing.
• Korn's Untouchables was the first rock record recorded in 96 kHz digital sound, and producer Michael Beinhorn wanted to capture a sound unlike anything else before it. The band spent two months on capturing drum sounds alone (with forty-eight tracks!), and Beinhorn would outright cancel vocal sessions if he felt singer Jonathan Davis' voice wasn't sounding right that particular day. He also insisted on re-recording all the guitars at the last minute after he found a better sound through the 96 kHz process, which the band had to admit did indeed sound better. The whole time this was going on, they were keeping their road crew on retainer, and they were apparently "partying harder than the band". Bassist Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu also admitted in his biography that his drug issues were getting bad enough that the band was considering replacing him. Both he and guitarist Brian "Head" Welch would quit drugs after both their marriages fell apart. While the album was critically acclaimed and went platinum, the final price tag (both the recording and living expenses for their crew) of three million dollars ate into their profits somewhat, leading to the quick release of Take a Look in the Mirror the following year. Still, Davis looks back on it as a positive experience.
  Jonathan Davis (On Beinhorn): "I wanted to fight this man. I wanted to punch him in his fucking face. But at the end, I just wanted to give him a big hug and say 'Thank you'."
• The Kovenant's fabled fifth album, Aria Galactica, has been in Development Hell for nearly a decade.

L

• The La's self-titled debut (and only) album may have been one of the most acclaimed indie-pop records of the 90's, and produced a beloved hit single in "There She Goes", but the road to getting it made was long and tortured.
  • The band first started recording the tracks intended for a debut LP in July 1987, releasing their first single "Way Out" in October, and the original version of "There She Goes" in October of 1988. Both singles were greeted with critical acclaim, but performed poorly on the charts. A third single, "Timeless Melody", was intended for release in May 1989, but was pulled shortly beforehand, due to frontman and songwriter Lee Mavers being unhappy with its production - the first sign of him being The Perfectionist.
  • Meanwhile, recording sessions for an eventual LP were going poorly. Mavers was obsessed with recapturing the sound of 60's Merseybeat, and went through producers (including notable names like John Porter, John Leckie and Mike Hedges) at a rapid pace, claiming that every one of them "didn't understand our sound" and could not achieve the feeling he wanted. Band members rotated rapidly too, with Mavers and bassist John Power as the only constants. They would eventually settle on a consistent lineup in 1989, with Mavers' brother Neil on drums and Peter "Cammy" Cammell on lead guitar. Over the course of 1987-89, the La's would re-record the intended album almost a dozen times.
  • They entered London's Eden Studios in December 1989 to make another attempt at recording the album, this time with Steve Lillywhite as producer. Mavers immediately clashed with Lillywhite, claiming again that he did not understand the band's style and was making them sound too slick, and had made him record to guide vocal tracks against his will. He had also fallen out with the La's label Go! Discs, who had spent a large amount on recording and promotion without anything to show for it. Mavers' behaviour became erratic - in his attempts at making a "rootsy" and "raw" recording, he attempted to set up the microphones in trees, and insisted at one gig that the band sing through 1940's radio microphones. (One story that he rejected a vintage mixing desk because "it hasn't got original Sixties dust on it", however, is apocryphal.) Increasingly frustrated, the La's simply gave up on recording after a while.
  • Lillywhite ended up piecing together what he had managed to record at the sessions, and this was ultimately what became the debut album, released in October 1990. While it was almost universally regarded as worth the wait by critics, and a new mix of "There She Goes" became a hit on both sides of the Atlantic when it was re-released, Mavers was not happy with it, feeling that it didn't represent his vision. (Power and other associates have suggested that he was never able to make a song sound like he imagined it in his head.) He repeatedly slammed the album in the press, and made suggestions that he would re-record it before a new second La's album came out. Neither came to pass, however; Power quit the band in December 1991, frustrated at having played the same setlist since 1986, and attempted recording sessions for a second album fell apart when Mavers' perfectionism reared its head again.
• Tracy Lawrence had this happen with his 1991 debut album Sticks and Stones. On May 31, 1991, right after he had finished recording vocals for the album, he was walking a friend out of her hotel room in downtown Nashville when three robbers jumped them both with the intention of raping his friend. Lawrence was shot four times while protecting his friend, who successfully escaped to safety. As a result, Lawrence underwent surgery (one bullet stayed in his hip) and his album was delayed until November 1991 so that he could have time to recover before promoting it. The delay was worth it in the end, as Sticks and Stones was certified platinum and produced a #1 hit on Hot Country Songs with its title track — with some critics even noting that the shooting was a likely factor in boosting his profile right out of the gate.
• Led Zeppelin somehow dodged this trope for their classic first 6 albums, however it was on their seventh album, Presence, that things started to get dramatic. Vocalist Robert Plant suffered a serious car accident that left him having to recuperate in locations he was unfamiliar with for tax reasons. This delayed work on the new album, which disappointed fellow bandmates, who were eager to get back to recording. When recording finally started, they booked at a studio right before The Rolling Stones were scheduled to record, limiting the amount of time they had. This led to Jimmy Page to work 18 to 20 hours daily to finish recording, doing all the album's guitar overdubs in one long shift. On top of that Plant seemed to be going through heavy amounts of stress from the accident. He became claustrophobic, had to perform from a wheelchair, missed his family, and was starting to re-think his priorities in life. The album was released in 1976 to mixed critical opinion. Though it's not as beloved as the first 6 albums, it's still very well liked within the fandom.
• Lift to Experience's one and only album The Texas Jerusalem Crossroads.
  • The album was an idea as early as 1997; it's a double concept album about the end of the world and the "holy ground" being Texas. It deconstructed many American and Christian ideas and was just nearly too ambitious. Many record companies refused to sign the band because of how anti-commercial they were. It took a whopping 4 years to finally get a producer that was willing to work with them.
  • After a few live sessions with John Peel that yielded dissatisfaction (rare for a Peel recording), they finally settled on Simon Raymonde of Bella Union Records. His ex-bandmate Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins also showed interest and helped produce the album. By the time the band started getting the album recorded, they had started feuding so badly that it would take hours to record a single track. Their ambition was getting in their own way and the members couldn't agree on how to deal with the complexity of the concepts. Whole tracks which were frequently played by the band live were scrapped as they could no longer agree on composition.
  • To make matters worse, Guthrie was a living hell to deal with. His perfectionist nature caused for constant re-recordings of takes that the already on-edge band members thought were perfect. Raymonde was also facing a crumbling financial status as his assets were getting liquidated left and right, and he hadn't been getting along with Guthrie since the Cocteaus' acrimonious breakup. He was quoted as saying that it was the band's music that helped keep him going, even though mixing was difficult as shoegazing was a venture he had never tried before.
  • The album was met with mixed to highly positive reviews. It wouldn't be for another 10 years or so that the album would be recognized for its achievement in lyrical and musical complexity. The band situation was apparently so bad, LTE disbanded just a couple of months after release with a disastrous tour. Lead vocalist Josh T. Pearson would not release anything for another 10 years due to the stress of this release.
• One of the reasons why Limp Bizkit's Results May Vary became one of the worst reviewed albums can be traced back to its rocky production. After losing Wes Borland, the band brought in several guitarists for jam sessions, including Brian "Head" Welch, Page Hamilton, Rivers Cuomo and a string of session guitarists. Terry Balsamo, the band's original guitarist from 1995, also briefly rejoined; Fred Durst learned to play a little guitar himself just so the band could work on new material. Then, after recording an album's worth of material with Mike Smith, Smith quit acrimoniously and the band started from scratch. Al Jourgensen of Ministry was hired to produce three songs, including the single "Crack Addict", all of which were left off the album. During the recording, Jourgensen decided to troll Durst by convincing Fred to strip naked and wear a cowboy hat while singing. This revolving door of creative input, the many Creative Differences that came with it and frustrations over having nothing to show for all their hard work resulted in the final album being cobbled together from the best of whatever was left over just so the band could release something.
• Lorna Shore's Immortal creative and promotional process was a case study in how much shit one band could take and not break up or go on hiatus.
  • From the start, the release of "This Is Hell" (a standalone single at the time and their first release with then-new vocalist CJ McCreery) was stymied by their label at the time; the song had been written, recorded, and mastered and had a finished video ready to go for months, and the original plan was to release it during CJ's first tour with them. Outerloop didn't grant them a release until September of 2018, well after the tour had finished, and the next few months were spent trying and failing to get anywhere with the label, and "Darkest Spawn" (another standalone single) was the only thing they could get done.
  • When they were finally able to get into the studio to record a full-album in early 2019, it was with a barebones lineup (as Connor Deffley had left, leaving only Adam, Austin, and CJ), they had broken their contract with the label just to survive, Adam and Austin spent over a month in the studio (during which Austin missed his birthday and Adam got kidney stones and spent part of the recording session with them) while CJ (who had already become a hated presence in the band, and the other two had long since come to regret hiring him) spent most of the session MIA and only came in for four days, brought poor-quality lyrics, and half-assed his sessions.
  • The band took an offer for the 2019 Summer Slaughter Tour as another survival measure while they worked with prospective labels (all the while growing more and more ready to fire CJ from the band, as he was an outright scourge by this point and they were sick of his selfishness and laziness and of regularly being embarrassed by his rude, trashy, and obnoxious behavior on tour), followed by another tour supporting Fit for an Autopsy (which, all things considered, did very well) after they had formally signed a deal with Century Media Records, during which Immortal was formally announced as well.
  • Then came Christmas week of 2019, when CJ's most recent girlfriend privately contacted the band with years worth of evidence of CJ's abusive behavior, serial infidelity, and sexually predatory conduct, which made the band fire CJ in sheer disgust almost instantly and forced them to figure out how they were going to handle an album with his vocals on it that was a month away from being released and a busy touring cycle in support of it. While everything worked out in the end (as the remaining members received an outpouring of support, while their streaming stats skyrocketed; Immortal alone had over four million all-time streams just a week after it was released), the band has made it clear that their survival was a miracle.
• Love and Rockets: A fire broke out in the studio during recording for Sweet F.A.. The band were unharmed, but visiting friend Genesis P. Orridge was injured, and their gear and months of work on the album was lost.

M

• Perhaps the most morbid example was Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas.
  • Back in 1991, before most of the songs were fully written (initial songwriting began in 1987), lead singer Dead offed himself by hacking his wrists up multiple times before blowing his brains out with a shotgun. Almost immediately after Dead's suicide, stories about guitarist Euronymous taking pictures of the body and even making a stew out of the brain (along with Euronymous's generally poor treatment of Dead when he was alive) had prompted bassist Necrobutcher to leave the band.
  • Mayhem, lacking both a vocalist and a bassist, brought on Attila Csihar and Euronymous's then-friend Varg Vikernes to help finish recording. From the start there were issues with finishing what Dead started. Meanwhile, in 1992, Varg and Euronymous were out burning churches along with the rest of the "Black Circle" started by Euronymous. However, tensions soon rose between the duo over both priorities (Euronymous feared Varg was using Mayhem and the Black Circle's crimes to boost Burzum record sales) and politics (Euronymous leaned far to the left, and Varg was just as far to the right).
  • The details of what eventually happened are still disputed, but by the end of it, Varg had stabbed Euronymous to death in 1993, with recording just finished. He was arrested and sentenced to 21 years in prison for both the murder and the arsons. Drummer Hellhammer was asked by Euronymous's family to remove Varg's bass and redo the parts, but eventually he simply left it in, most likely because he had no idea how to play bass; he did, however, lower their volume in the mix as a compromise. The album would not be released until 1994 due to the controversy surrounding the murder. (Oh, and their next album? 1995's Dawn of the Black Hearts, an LP with one of Euronymous's postmortem photos of Dead as the cover.)
• Metallica did not become one of the most high profile metal bands without a few troubled productions. Namely:
  • Their earliest case was the recording of Ride the Lightning, which was no easy feat.
    • Songwriting went well for the most part; it was when they got to Copenhagen, Denmark, to record at Sweet Silence Studios where the problems began. Lars Ulrich still had no idea how rhythm theory worked and required roadie Flemming Larsen to help guide him through the songs; making things worse, Ulrich had to record his drum parts in a warehouse at the back of the studio, with absolutely nothing in the way of acoustics, which explains the overly reverb-y drum sound on the album. Sound problems occurred throughout the production because the band's gear was stolen three weeks before they arrived in Copenhagen (including Hetfield's favourite guitar and amplifier, which served as the inspiration for the song "Fade to Black"). The band also had nowhere to stay, so they had to sleep during the daytime at the studio and record at night, as they didn't have enough money for a hotel vacancy (hotels in Scandinavia were notoriously expensive at the time). Worse yet, the band had only 29 days to record, as a number of European shows were quickly approaching (this left them running on fumes by the time the shows arrived).
    • And none of that is anything compared to the post-production bullshit they had to put up with. With the budget having ballooned by $10,000 already by this point (starting at 20k), while recording, Metallica was still looking for a major label, and several A&R representatives visited the studio during recording. Metallica were originally set on signing with Bronze records, but Gary Bron didn't like the material recorded in Denmark, and signing them would have meant re-recording the whole album in America. Disgusted by his disrespect for artistic integrity, the band decided to can his ass and keep searching, despite the fact that Bronze was already advertising them as one of their bands. Their European label Music For Nations paid for the studio costs because Megaforce records owner Jon Zazula couldn't afford them, and given the band's already increasing frustration with his constant meddling, decided to sever ties with him. It wasn't until during a concert in New York that they got noticed by the then-current Elektra records head and signed an 8-record deal with them. Luckily by the time work for Master of Puppets began, the band had remedied most of these problems and decided to return to Sweet Silence, but even that wasn't completely angst-less. They ended up being there much longer than anticipated (past Christmas too) due to their growing perfectionism, and their nasty drinking habits were beginning to rear their ugly head, though the band stayed dry on recording days.
  • A lesser case was ...And Justice for All. The band brought in producer Mike Clink having been impressed with Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction, only for Clink and Metallica not to work well together, leading Lars to call Flemming Rasmussen, who had produced the previous two albums, for a return. The only result of three weeks under Clink, whose sole credits on the album itself are engineering drums on two tracks, were the covers of "Breadfan" and "The Prince". Cliff Burton's death two years prior still loomed large for Lars and James, who ended up making a dark, moody album with angry protest lyrics (Lars said it was "the CNN years", where he and James would seek subjects to complain about on the news) and a dry, sterile production, noted for the bass of Cliff's replacement Jason Newsted being basically removed from the mix (Rasmussen said "I'm probably one of the only people in the world, including Jason and Toby Wright, the assistant engineer, who heard the bass tracks on ...And Justice for All").
  • Their mainstream breakthrough Self-Titled Album, Metallica, also counts to a certain extent. To recap: the band members got sick of hyper-complicated prog-metal songs that were "too fucking long" during the recording of ...And Justice for All, so they hired Mötley Crüe producer Bob Rock, who proceeded to alter the band's schedule, actually challenge them on songwriting (something previous producers Jon Zazula, Paul Curcio and Rasmussen never did; in one specific example, Rock told Hetfield up-front that his original, crib death-themed lyrics for "Enter Sandman" sucked hard and he needed to write better ones), and emphasize the still-picked-on Jason in the mix (in contrast to Justice's infamous lack of bass); lots of arguments ensued. Metallica themselves said that they somehow bonded during the sessions through finding new ways to torment Rock — Hetfield claimed that at one point, he was browsing a magazine which happened to contain a gay ad that startled Rock, so the next day he plastered an entire room with gay porn. Despite all the animosity, Metallica stuck with Rock due to the success they had with Metallica (which is still the best-selling album of the SoundScan era and the best-selling Heavy Metal album) all the way up to St. Anger.
  • St. Anger itself, as handily proven by the Some Kind of Monster documentary, filmed during recording of the album and showing how everyone was experiencing a Creator Breakdown (not helped by Jason finally jumping ship, forcing Rock to play bass before Robert Trujillo was hired) that led to overtly angsty songs. It says much about the band's level of dysfunction at the time that the documentary was originally going to be edited into a reality TV show before Metallica bought the rights at the last minute.
• Moby's breakthrough album, Play was not an easy feat for him. After his previous album, Animal Rights was lambasted by critics and audiences, the pressure was on him to make a triumphant comeback. The techno artist spent many sleepless drunken nights in his Little Italy apartment meticulously crafting the songs that would appear on the album. After a couple of delays and threats from his label to drop him, Moby finally submitted the finished project around early 1999... just for Warner to drop him and leave the record in limbo. Many labels refused to so much as even listen to it, as Animal Rights turned him into a laughing stock. When V2 Records took it in, they slapped the ambitious goal of 250,000 copies to be sold. Within the first few months, Play had barely sold and half the critics that would later give it rave reviews refused to even touch the thing. It was at this point Moby and his management figured out a solution - every single song of the album was licensed out to use in movies, TV shows, and commercials, figuring it could get played there if the radio didn't want to play them. This, combined with word of mouth, finally got it the glory and acclaim it deserved. By 2000, it was selling 150,000 copies a week; by the end of the 2000s, it became the best-selling techno album of all time. It is now considered the artist's seminal work and helped save Moby from a total disaster.
• A mild example, but it still counts. Modest Mouse's The Moon & Antartica was recorded in an unfinished studio and Issac Brock was attacked before vocal sessions, causing him to have to do much of the album with his jaw wired shut.
• The Moody Blues went on hiatus in 1974 after an extended world tour that left them exhausted; three years later, they were ready to record again, but as keyboardist Mike Pinder had moved to California with his second wife, Tara Lee, the band and their producer, Tony Clarke, decided to record the new album, Octave, in the United States. However, the recording sessions were fraught with intra-band tensions, and after the first studio they were using was shut down following a fire, they moved to Pinder's house in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, where torrential rainfall caused a landslide that blocked the only road back to civilisation, effectively leaving the band stranded. Although Pinder contributed to recording sessions, he dropped out before the album was finished and, concerned about the effect the accompanying comeback tour would have on his young family, decided to leave the band permanently, to the anger and embarrassment of his bandmates (particularly drummer Graeme Edge in the former and flautist Ray Thomas in the latter). The band tried to downplay Pinder's absence while promoting the album, but a Decca executive let the cat out of the bag when introducing the other four band members at a UK press party by saying that Pinder was absent in the USA. He was replaced by Swiss ex-Yes keyboardist Patrick Moraz,^note  Coincidentally, Moraz had joined Yes after their keyboardist, Rick Wakeman, left the band following a troubled production, 1974's Tales from Topographic Oceans. whom the other Moodies would later say was never a good match for them in terms of musicality or personality.
• The late '90s saw Mötley Crüe struggling to adapt to the rapid shift in popular music tastes triggered by the rise of Nirvana. The result of their desperate attempt to stay relevant was 1997's Generation Swine, which did the exact opposite. As Todd in the Shadows explains:
  • The years preceding the album's release had been tumultuous for Crüe. On top of the Hair Metal genre having been displaced by Grunge, there was intense internal strife between the musicians which eventually culminated in lead singer Vince Neil leaving after 1992's Decade of Decadence. Neil was replaced with John Corabi, who was painfully aware that he could not fill Neil's shoes as the voice of the band.
  • After the critical and commercial failure of their self-titled album in 1994, Crüe's management and record label demanded that Neil be brought back for their next album, even though the musicians (including Neil himself) thought it was a bad idea. Not surprisingly, the recording sessions were a very unpleasant process for all involved, with the band taking their frustrations out on Corabi and ultimately leading to his firing. Scott Humphrey, the band's sound engineer, was promoted to producer and found himself unable to rein in the dueling egos.
  • But personal drama wasn't the only issue affecting the album. According to Corabi, each of the band's members suggested taking their material from wildly different influences and sources: Nikki Sixx wanted to emulate Manic Street Preachers and David Bowie, Scott Humphrey wanted to emulate Cheap Trick, Tommy Lee wanted "heavy like Pantera but lush like Oasis." The end result was an album that constantly switched between musical styles which it did a poor job at imitating.
  • The record's poor reception upon release wasn't the end of the messiness, either. An ugly war of words erupted between Crüe and Elektra Records, in particular executive Sylvia Rhone, which led to Sixx leading a chant of "Fuck Elektra" during a performance and calling Rhone "that cunt" in an interview. In their autobiography, the band blames the album's failure on Rhone not promoting it properly, despite lots of archival footage showing the band performing songs from the album on multiple major talk shows of the time. The band would sever their ties to Elektra and start their own label the following year.
  • Corabi ended up suing Crüe for alleged breach of contract, fraud, and slander, claiming to have been responsible for 80% of the album's content yet received credit for only two of the songs in the liner notes, as well as having received no compensation or royalties for his work. Even a quarter of a century later, in interviews Corabi continues to look back at his time in the band with bitterness.
• Motörhead has had a fair share of troubled productions over the years:
  • Another Perfect Day was a "fucking nightmare" according to bassist/vocalist Lemmy Kilmister. He claims that guitarist at the time Brian Robertson would take more than 17 hours recording his guitar parts for each song and would enter conflicts with Lemmy and drummer Phil Taylor. During the following tour, Brian was fired due to his behaviour and constant style of clothing when he would perform.
  • The early stages of 1916 weren't easy, as they had initially hired Ed Stasium who, without their knowledge, had added claves and tambourines into the mix of the song "Going to Brazil" and was fired as a result. Stasium claims that he left because of Lemmy's extreme drug and alcohol addiction at the time.
  • During the recording of Sacrifice, guitarist Wurzel had suddenly out of nowhere entered conflicts with the rest of the band. It would take him six hours to even perform a guitar solo and one time he slammed the guitar and walked out of the studio, quitting on the spot.
• My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. You can probably get the whole lowdown on The Other Wiki or the band's own page, but just to recap: main vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Kevin Shields is perfectionist to the point of James-Cameron-ness, 19 recording studios were used, 16 engineers were credited (most of them just ended up bringing Shields tea; only Anjali Dutt and Alan Moulder actually engineered anything), Shields and vocalist/guitarist Bilinda Butcher didn't allow the engineers to actually listen to them while recording vocals, drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig couldn't take part due to illness and homelessness (his drumming was sampled, and he only played live on two tracks), they took two weeks to master the whole thing and it was almost all ruined when the computer they were using threw the entire album out of order and Shields had to piece it back together from memory. For years their label head Alan McGee claimed they spent £250.000 and almost bankrupted Creation Records, a claim Shields always disputed as exaggerated - his most recent explanation was that only "a few thousand" were actually used to record while the rest was "money to live on". However, it is true that the production of Loveless ended up terrorizing Creation's staff and draining their finances, with the label's second-in-command Dick Green having a nervous breakdown and tearfully begging Shields to just get it over with already - one publicist even commented that Green's hair turned grey from all the stress.
• My Chemical Romance seems to be a magnet when it comes to Troubled Productions. Every single album they've done has been, on some scale, a troubled one.
  • I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love was recorded in a stuffy, small basement studio. Vocalist Gerard Way suffered an emergency dental procedure, which left him in pain during vocal takes. When he was complaining, the band's then-manager punched him in the face before he went in to do a vocal performance. Guitarist Ray Toro also struggled with the complicated compositions, not knowing how to take his musical ideas and simplify them enough for one guitarist to pull off. They ended up rush-hiring friend Frank Iero to help out.
  • Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge showed the band facing problems with alcoholism and drug addiction. Gerard has described the recording process as a blur. He had an emotional breakdown that resulted in him having to face his inner demons and defeat his alcoholism. Being part of a major label for the first time also created tension among fans, who were not enjoying the new "commercial" direction the band was heading in. They also had to fire their drummer, Matt Pellissier, who caused an internet backlash over the situation.
  • None of the other albums can hold a candle to The Black Parade. Frustrated from the seemingly directionless concept of Three Cheers, they wanted to aim for a higher concept circulating around death and morbid situations. The problem was that they may have very well overdid the exploration of the concept. The band bickered constantly. Gerard trapped himself alone in a room, forcing himself into a depressive stupor. His brother, bassist Mikey Way, had to battle his alcoholism and drug addiction now, taking a vacation away from the band for nearly half the production. The media was also hounding MCR at this point, as the emo controversy had reached its peak. Shortly after the album was released, they embarked an exhaustive three-year-long tour that left them hating the songs they had just written so much that they were enjoying re-exploring Bullets-era songs to try to make up for it. A 13-year-old fan-girl also committed suicide during this time, and Glenn Beck accused them of being occultists. This led to the problems that would later lead to the band's breakup.
  • For Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, the band threw out an entire album's worth of material and started from scratch. This album, titled Conventional Weapons, wouldn't see any form of release for almost four years, until a series of five singles with its planned songs came out between 2012 and 2013. Having even more bad luck with drummers, Bob Bryar parted ways with the group. The controversy surrounding the band caused them to become frustrated and attempting to aim for a more light-hearted, fun sound. However, Gerard ended up going with a rather complicated storyline anyways that the band did not entirely care for. Other members were also still sour about Conventional Weapons being ditched. After another exhaustive tour, the band were simply too burned out to keep going and broke up in 2013. They are now seen as an important band of the 2000s, with the controversy surrounding them having fizzled out.
• My Vitriol's follow up to their 2001 debut, Finelines has been in Development Hell because of quarrels with their record label. Due to demand in drastic musical changes, and despite giving a large song sampler as bonus track on a live album, only a 4-track EP was released. The band has been so dissatisfied with results that we may never see a true follow-up to the album.

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