I have just listened to Fiona Apple’s account of the making of Extraordinary Machine, which I have written two previous posts about.
This is a 10 minute interview called the Making of Extraordinary Machine, which is in her recently released iTunes Originals. What follows is my rough transcript of the parts which I found most interesting.
[Of the original version with Jon Brion:]
I really wasn’t prepared to make the album
Rushed from writing the songs to recording them
I had no idea what I liked or didn’t like, regarding Jon’s production work on the album – I didn’t have ears (or a brain) for my own songs
And it was scary for me and I’m sure it was frustrating for him
The stuff that we did was beautiful
But it wasn’t what I had in mind – and I didn’t even know what I had in mind because I hadn’t had time to figure that out.
But I did know that it didn’t have the exact right heartbeat that it should have
Although (and I have to stress this) that I do love the other versions of the songs.
It’s just that you can’t be satisfied with something just because it’s great, it has to be what you intend to do.
And so for lack of intentions and lack of the ability to make any decisions, I just thought, "well I think I have to kinda start again and try them in a different way."
Sony never shelved the album – we never finished that first one, it was never handed in as a finished product.
I don’t think that they were happy with it. I don’t think that they thought there was a hit. I know because they asked me to write more songs. ...
They never had an opportunity to say that it was shelved because I wasn’t done yet.
[About the collaboration with Mike Elizondo]
On hearing Mike Elizondo’s initial work with the songs, it was like “Whoa! Ok, I’m awake now, ok I can build meat onto this skeleton, I know what I want now.”
It was like a fresh start and I just felt more ready to do it.
[About the difficulties with Sony]
So we put a budget together, we were all ready to go and record and at that point a representative of Sony told my manager and I, "Wait a second, hold on, we’re not so sure that you should be doing this." (basically, "We’re not so sure we want to spend the money on this because we’ve spent so much money on it already", which is understandable). They said, "You’ll have to do one song at a time, and then, we’ll hear the song, and then we’ll give you the money to do the next one – oh and you know we’ll give you the money to do the next one. We just have to hear it first."
I got so insulted by it really, because what it implied was... If I’m going to go in and make another recording of a song and hand it in to you, that’s pretty much the same thing as saying, I’m happy with this. So if I hand in something which I’m happy with, and then you wait to give me the money to do the next one, that implies that you’re going to say we’re not happy with this and then they own a master of something that I’m really satisfied with – which is unthinkable. And they shelve that, which is what I felt could happen. Or they say, "we don’t like it but you should change the chorus a little bit" and then I’m dead – because then they’re starting to write my songs with me and that’s just the death of me.
So I remember sitting in my kitchen and all of sudden going, I’m not going to do it this way. So I called up my manager Steven and I just said, this is the death of me. So I remember sitting in my kitchen and all of a sudden going, I’m not going to do it this way. So I called up my manager Steven, I just said, really quick, "Steve, call up Sony tell them I’m not going to record for them anymore. And don’t call me back."
I’m unplugging my phone, I don’t want to hear it because I’m a terrible doubter of everything that I do but I was like, I know that this is right, and don’t ask me again, this is what I want to do, I’m not recording, I’m not doing it, I’m not doing it. I hung up the phone. I didn’t hear anything for months – and pretty much figured, that’s it. That’s over. But I felt really good, I felt like incredible about myself, when I had said that I wasn’t going to record anymore because I really felt like … it would have been wrong to do it that other way, it was not the way to work, and I kinda felt like well, I don’t want to be anywhere where they’re not thrilled to have me there so much that they trust me with any amount of money – which is, you know, egotistical of me, but fine. I didn’t want to be anywhere like that, so … I felt really good about living by my own principles.
[About the Free Fiona campaign]
After a few months the Free Fiona people surfaced. And they created through these protests – and I still don’t know exactly everything about them because that’s one of the icky areas where I don’t want to know too much about. I love what they did and I’m really grateful to them, I thanked them in the album and I’m in awe of anyone who can organize to reach a goal. I’m not organized and I’m not goal-oriented. So I’m very impressed with anyone that can do anything like that – let alone, you know, something like that for me and my music – that’s just incredible. But through what they did, and through a combination of the heat that they created for Sony and also I think that Steve Barnett coming into Sony (he’s really cool) made it so that I got the phone call going, "you can do it with Mike Elizondo, you can record them all, no one’s going to ask you to listen to them one by one, no one’s going to ask to listen to them at all, and go, be free, be happy, do what you want to do." And it was just great. So we went and that took like 2 months, a month and a half, we recorded it, and it was so easy I can’t even remember recording it.
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