Back in the mid-late 80s, I think I probably enjoyed Queensryche's "Rage For Order" and Dokken's "Back For The Attack" the most, for different reasons. RFO was a very exciting and fast paced album, where the workflow just clicked and every idea spawned others that worked. It was very exciting in that sense. We were making a sort of hybrid album, heavy AND electronic, that fortunately ended up being somewhat groundbreaking, so there were lots of things that we did that were really unconventional. I used lots of very different sounding rooms for recording things (I like doing that a lot anyway), particularly drums and percussion etc. Also for some guitar sounds I used hallways, cupboards, stairwells etc. to get weird jarring effects. Lots of fun indeed.
BFTA was almost the polar opposite of RFO in the sense of that we had a very successful album to follow up (ULAK) and therefore we had to make sure BFTA was at least as successful. I worked on the song arrangements with the band for over two months prior to tracking as the material was somewhat skeletal going in. The tracking of BFTA took ages - so long in fact that I was completely burned out when it came time to mix the album, and I had to ask some friends of mine to mix it for me due to my being exhausted. The album was originally supposed to take 3 months but it ended up taking 10 months to track. I didn't mind that part - the most disappointing aspect was the fact that as it was going so slowly I was unable to work on the followup to RFO, which I was supposed to produce at that time. That was a major disappointment to me, but I had to finish up the Dokken.
Neither of these bands had groupies - they all had wives/girlfriends etc. Sadly I think the groupies tend to gravitate more towards the live aspect of things. I'm sure there's nothing less exciting for a groupie than watching someone go over and over the same vocal line/gtr part to get it just right. Doesn't really have the same vibe as seeing the band up on stage. Sad but true...
On ULAK Michael and I worked really well together. We did realise that we were sort of duplicated in a sense and decided that once the drums and bass were tracked, which we both worked on together, we'd save time by splitting the rest of the stuff up. We both spent time working on guitars and vocals, sort of in rotation etc. which did speed the process up a bit, plus it kept the band busier and out of each other's way etc. We then mixed the album together and also flew to NYC together to the mastering with Bob Ludwig.
Back in those days there certainly was a lot of pressure from the labels to write hits. That's why I would spend quite a while working on the song arrangements up front. I still like to do the same thing of course, whenever possible.
Neil K.
