I don't like recording studios - except my own, which is just a little room above the garage.
Ego is like a room of your own, a room with a view with the temperature and the smells and the music that you like. You want it your own way. You'd just like to have a little peace, you'd like to have a little happiness, you know, just gimme a break.
And for me the only way to live life is to grab the bull by the horns and call up recording studios and set dates to go in recording studios. To try and accomplish something.
Recording studios are filled with technology. They are set in their ways. And to update them means you'd have to change them back. That would be my idea of upgrading. And this will never happen. As far as I know, recording studios are booked all the time. So obviously people like all the improvements. The more technically advanced they are, the more in demand they become.
I've not really spent much time in proper studios. The room itself where you're recording, and how you live while you're there is what appeals to me.
And sometimes, I'd be allowed to be hanging out in the studio, which I just loved kind of, like, being in the room with these big recording desks, with all these, like, buttons and knobs and watching the guys use them.
I like recording by myself wherever I can, just because then I feel like I have ultimate freedom, and I can just control whatever I want to put down. There's something about going into your own little world.
That's the way I came up, writing and recording at home. I developed by playing everything myself. I was a drummer first and that's my favorite instrument to play. Once I get the drums done, everything else comes real quick. Also, we track in my friends' garage, which is really small ... there's not really room to record live with a band.
I always feel like there's something magic in recording studios. There's a reason good music continues to be made in them. It's just some mojo element.
Motley never once sat down and said, 'Well, the music scene's changing. We need to make this record a little darker or heavier musically or lyrically.' It was just four guys sitting in a room like a bunch of 16-year-olds in a garage and jamming on riffs.
The recording companies are continuing to look at ways to buy short and sell long. So now they give recording deals to groups of people who we refer to as 'garage bands' - they are amateurs who are bought for nothing and it's really a shame.
I don't particularly like recording studios, they tend to be lifeless and without any natural light, so I wanted to record wherever we lived. We just don't want to be bound to a studio to who we'd have to pay untold sums to.
It's a completely different way of working when you have your own place for recording. It's like if you were a painter, and you do loads of painting, and you just pick which paintings you want to exhibit. It's a much nicer, freer way of making work; you're not limited to anything, and you can make these cool, weird little albums.
I could never work in a recording studio where you have this lovely view and a beach and the waves are crashing. For me, it's all about being in a tiny room with little windows. It's almost like you have to be in a prison. And you can create beauty when you're in that sort of deprived environment, which is a re-creation of your formative years.
I used almost every penny I ever made to build recording studios in every city I lived in. I don't have much to show for all the TV money except a lot of musical gear and a lot of songs.
The late '60s and the '70s, a lot of this really beautiful equipment was being made and installed into studios around the world and the Neve boards were considered like the Cadillacs of recording consoles. They're these really big, behemoth-looking recording desks; they kind of look like they're from the Enterprise in Star Trek or something like that. They're like a grayish color, sort of like an old Army tank with lots of knobs, and to any studio geek or gear enthusiast it's like the coolest toy in the world.