10 Classic Songs That Were Recorded Incredibly Fast
2. Would - Alice In Chains
Everything that people tend to love about Alice in Chains can be distilled into the track Would?. In just a few minutes, every single aspect of Alice's typical dark sound is accounted for, from the gnarly bassline courtesy of Mike Starr to the massive vocal harmonies and tradeoffs between Jerry Cantrell and Layne Staley. In the beginning stages though, the song was actually fairly easy to actually lay down.
Written during some downtime after the touring for their first album Facelift, Cantrell was initially commissioned to make the demo of the song for the movie Singles and given free studio time to make the finalized version. As it turned out though, the touring life had whipped the guys into shape, leading to them nailing it in just a few takes during the session. To put everything in perspective, the studio time even afforded them enough time to make an entirely new album.
Using the rest of the studio time to flesh out some more material, Alice also managed to finalize the mixes for what would become their first acoustic EP SAP during the same session it took to record Would?. While it's hard to get it right the first time, you know you're on another level when you can write another album in the time it takes most bands to make one song.