Five classic songs that band members tried to sabotage
No one walks into a studio intending to fumble through every one of their songs. Time is money whenever the red light is on, and as soon as the song is counted off, you’d better believe that anyone is going to play like their life depends on it for however long the tune lasts. Sometimes, a tune just doesn’t win someone over, though, and artists like Radiohead spent time intentionally trying to ruin their own recording sessions.
Despite being stone-cold classics, not every musician understands the power of the music they have in front of them half the time. Sure, they might think they have a hit on their hands, but once they put their best foot forward, they’re usually trying to make fun of what they’re recording rather than putting together the perfect take.
Still, some of those mistakes actually sounded pretty cool out of context. Not everyone likes the same style of pop hit to happen again and again, so when someone intentionally tries to mess it up, it makes everyone perk up and rewind everything back to hear just what the hell the person was actually playing.
While sabotaging these tunes ended up backfiring on these artists, it’s far from a bad problem. After all, people will always be imperfect, so why not make a foul-up spectacularly imperfect while you can?
Five songs band members tried to sabotage:
5. ‘Without You’ – Harry Nilsson
Working a song to the point where it becomes a hit is never a straight line. Most people have to worry about going through loads of demos before they have the makings of a classic and then spend hours trying to put together something that works for it. If it’s all in service to a mediocre song, though, you end up getting what Harry Nilsson tried to do when shredding his voice on the demo for ‘Without You’.
Despite it being a masterpiece composition for Badfinger, Nilsson thought that it was far too lightweight and insisted that a subpar demo should be the version people heard. When talking about the song’s creation, producer Richard Perry remembered having to force Nilsson into cutting it the way it should be, saying, “He said, ‘You never hear a performance like this on a record,’ he insisted and I told him there was a good reason why. I felt like I literally had to twist his arm to do.”
While there’s still a little bit of smarminess to the way that Nilsson sings it, it doesn’t lose any of its sentimental value along the way, either. It wasn’t the kind of rock and roll he had looked for, but it’s a testament to the song that such pop fluff could be a powerhouse vehicle for Mariah Carey decades later.
4. ‘Creep’ – Radiohead
The number-one rule behind any great alternative act is that the mainstream is not your friend. That’s the corporate world that belongs to the suits, and no amount of royalty checks will ever get someone to sell out just because they want a seat among the big guns. Radiohead didn’t even pretend to care about how much Pablo Honey sold, and if it wasn’t for Jonny Greenwood being cheeky, we probably wouldn’t have ‘Creep’ in its initial state.
When combing through their demos, the producers wrote the tune off as a Scott Walker cover tune, only to insist that they record when they found out it was an original. Now, the band had a problem on their hands, which Greenwood fixed by running his guitar through a massive amplifier and undercutting Thom Yorke’s vocals by adding those massive stabs right before the chorus.
Then again, those stabs have since become legendary for Radiohead, becoming one of the first things that people remember from the song outside of the chorus. The band have continued to have a complicated relationship with the song but left it to Greenwood to turn his intentional screwup into one of the most dynamic moments in their discography.
3. ‘Black’ – Pearl Jam
Out of all the grunge acts that came out in the early 1990s, Pearl Jam may have been the most emotionally potent. They didn’t necessarily write the best songs, but if Kurt Cobain started the revolution, Eddie Vedder was the one helping everyone get in tune with their own problems on their debut album, Ten. But on the most open-hearted song in their discography, Vedder thought ‘Black’ was in danger of being maimed before it reached people’s ears.
While grunge isn’t known for its ballads, ‘Black’ is one of the most gripping tunes that Vedder would ever write, complete with lines about his broken heart bleeding on the floor. Right as the song reaches its apex, though, Vedder remembered having a massive argument with the band about when the song should fade out.
Since the rest of the group wanted to cut out the line about Vedder’s ex being a star in someone else’s sky, the frontman insisted that it stay in, knowing that it was the key section that tied up everything in the tune. And when listening to the song out of context, having it cut off just one line before would have been too much. It still had that raw power, but Vedder gives the song that last piece of empathy at the end.
2. ‘Across the Universe’ – The Beatles
How can an act as flawless as The Beatles deliberately try to screw up their own material? Sure, they were taking chances that would have seemed unusual at the time, but it was always in service to making a piece of musical art. It all may have had a point, but John Lennon thought that ‘Across The Universe’ may have been sabotaged under everyone’s noses.
While Lennon was used to having things sound weird, ‘Across the Universe’ is among his finest ballads, complete with the most poetic lyrics that he would ever write. Once it got into The Beatles’ collective mind, though, Paul McCartney’s insistence on making it sound raw led to a version that included everything from an out-of-tune guitar to backup singers that were plucked in from off the street.
Up until his death, Lennon would consistently talk about how frustrated he was that the song never got its just due, even pointing the finger at Macca for intentionally throwing it out of whack. A lot of these musical accidents happen for a reason, but judging by the fact that he eventually recorded another version of it with David Bowie, Lennon was clearly not that thrilled with how his song was treated.
1. ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ – Guns N’ Roses
Nothing about Guns N’ Roses screams ‘wholesome’. This was the kind of band that seemed like a street gang with guitars, and the minute that they burst onto the scene, they were every mother’s worst nightmare once the video for tracks like ‘It’s So Easy’ hit the airwaves. They did have a sentimental side, and Slash has never forgiven himself for adding to it on ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’.
Because when the group first cut the tune, Slash hated the idea of having a cliche ballad among the heavier tracks. This was supposed to be a hardened rock act like The Stones, so to get around it, he started putting together the equivalent of a circus melody, which he wrote as a joke to get everyone to drop the tune.
Once he moved it into the right key, though, it sounded almost too perfect, becoming the intro of the song and the constant lick that plays throughout the piece. So let this be a lesson to anyone trying to sabotage one of their tunes. Even if you try to suggest something as a joke, don’t be surprised when it accidentally becomes your greatest strength.
