Drinking with Strangers by Butch Walker

Author:Butch Walker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

Jerry was never that egotistical, insecure guy who was scared that someone, if he learned too much, might steal a job from him. Jerry actually encouraged me: we had long talks in the studio about how he wanted to share his knowledge. Between Jerry and Jim Ebert, they taught me everything I knew about how to be a real recording engineer. I knew how to produce, but I was self-taught, so I definitely needed someone to show me the best techniques for miking amps, using compression, and so on. But, luckily, there was no telling me what to do on the songs. Half the tracks we kept from the demos I’d already recorded, and at the end of the day, we had this big, arena rock–sounding record that was very misunderstood and, as usual, five years too early.

Several bands came out later, dressing and sounding kinda like we did on that album. At the time, the main ­people who didn’t get it were at the label. “Sugarbuzz,” the first single, was oddly like “Pour Some Sugar on Me” meets “Baba O’Reilly,” with a snarky, cynical lyric. The style suited me at that point in my life; Elektra Records, not so much. The A&Rs always gave me the same rap: “Arena rock is never going to sell, blah, blah, blah.” ­People thought I was unfashionable then, but I just looked at it as doing something different and individual; I didn’t want to be muddled up doing the same thing as everyone else. Sure enough, six months after ReadySexGo came out, Andrew W.K.’s first album was released, and then a few years later, The Darkness made a big splash with ironic cock rock that felt all too familiar. As all this stuff started happening, everybody began to kick me under the table, saying, “Can you believe this?” I could believe it, but it’s not something that made me feel bad. I felt great about it—I felt relieved that I was actually not crazy but that my instincts were right.

We had proven a lot at this point in our life, but we had a lot more to prove, because our last record didn’t live up to everyone’s expectations—or our own personal ones. “Cigarette Lighter Love Song” off ReadySexGo is probably the most important song to me from the Marvelous 3 era: I still play it live, and it continues to hold a lot of meaning to me. “Cigarette” reflects a really dark period where I almost lost my wife, due to me being an idiot, getting caught up in success, “the road,” and all the clichés that come along with it. That song in particular reminds me of coming home from tour and things being very weird between Nora and me. The lyric goes, “I know you’re not asleep/I can feel you moving over there/You’ve been playing with the seam in your worn-out underwear/My lips are raw as hell from biting on them just to stay awake/It’s not like I’m going to need them/You won’t be around to see them bleed and break.

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