Which album took the longest time to record in the history of music?
Creating an album is an ambitious endeavour. It involves penning enough songs to fill up two sides of vinyl, recording and rerecording them to a satisfactory standard, mixing and mastering, and that’s not to mention all of the steps that come after you leave the studio. Sequencing the record, picking album artwork, organising the production of physical copies, marketing and promotion. It’s no easy feat.
Expectedly, many artists have taken their time with this process, by choice or by circumstance. They pore over songs, over tracklistings and production choices, until they’re completely happy with the product that will hit streaming services or record store shelves. For example, Axl Rose dragged out the process of production for Guns N’ Roses’ sixth record, Chinese Democracy, for years.
Although Guns N’ Roses began recording Chinese Democracy in the late 1990s, the album wouldn’t be released until a decade later. This was partly down to Rose’s way of working, as well as external issues. Similarly, shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine took their time with their third full-length offering, m b v.
After defining the genre with their sophomore offering, the iconic Loveless, fans were left waiting two decades for another dose of fuzzy goodness. m b v finally arrived in 2013, 22 years after Loveless first hit record shop shelves. They had begun recording back in 1996 but only completed it a decade and a half later in 2012.
While both Chinese Democracy and m b v boast lengthy production timeliness, neither come close to taking home the Guinness World Record.
So, which album took the longest time to record?
In late spring 1968, a California-born artist named David Axelrod began work on his self-titled record. He started out by recording the rhythm section, but it would be decades before the musician finalised all elements of the songs and completed the project. In fact, David Axelrod’s record would be released in an entirely different century from the one it had been conceived in.
In between starting work on David Axelrod and the release of the record, the musician managed to record and release 11 other albums. His debut arrived slightly later in the same year he had started David Axelrod, and he released one record a year for the next four years running. He released records throughout the 1970s, but he couldn’t quite finish David Axelrod until the dawn of the 21st century.
David Axelrod was completed and unveiled to the world in 2001, over 30 years after Axelrod had started recording. In total, the album took 32 years and 123 days to be completed, with remixing taking place in the autumn of 2000. This makes it the album with the longest recording process in music history.
On the other end of the spectrum, some artists rush through the process of penning and producing an album. Some of the music’s most well-known and well-respected songwriters have even hurried recording and releasing. Bob Dylan recorded Another Side of Bob Dylan in a day, and Nick Drake recorded Pink Moon in a couple of days.
But there is one artist who takes the title for recording and releasing an album quicker than anyone else in music history. On August 15th, 2008, Volgas Kompanie recorded Live. By the next day, it had been released. While Axelrod took decades to complete his self-titled album, Volgas Kompanie had completed the album cycle in just 24 hours.
Neither process seems better than the other. There are certainly benefits to taking your time with a record, allowing yourself to sit with a record before releasing it, and perfecting every strum and every vocal part until it perfectly matches the artist’s vision. But there are also advantages to shorter-term releases, such as removing the possibility of over-perfecting an album or keeping fans waiting for too long.
Perhaps there’s a healthy median length for album cycles, somewhere between 32 years and one day.
