All of the reports that have been coming out had all suggested that around 85% of the album had been recorded before you came in so it was more a case of demos had been put in place?
Well when I came in they had a good layout of the songs and I got a good idea of the tunes and I was singing, I was literally singing to two tracks, not like separate stuff, I was singing to two tracks that they gave me of basic stuff from the get go. I didnt find anything finished at all, in fact there were times I was singing to the wrong cut [laughs]. They would just turn round and say oh youre singing to the wrong thing, we gave you the wrong one for that but that could kind of work so they were far from done, not even close to it. Even if it was to a point where it was more done than not done it still didnt really factor in to me as I didnt think of it that way. I would know what is done or what doesnt sound finished I should say, so at the same time if it was finished then that would have been fine but I never considered anything they gave me as being complete. I had to listen to all of the music to see where I was going to sing on there and how it would come together and it was pretty easy. Whatever I was using as a guide track was good enough for me as I do at home all of the time. I could finish the guitar and drums for a track and sing to that today without any bass guitar or any lead guitar as Im so used to doing things like that. They could have given me a whole tune but there would have still been a lot of work to do on that song because it is empty without the vocal on it and nothing would really happen if we had not dug in deep and made everything work. You have to make all the elements work somehow and that wont happen unless things change.
I saw an interview where Scott was talking about this and he was saying how they wanted to give you as much freedom as you needed, more or less an open door policy, to come in and change things as you seen fit to make the songs work.
I made changes but they werent so much like scrap that part, take that part out, move this part in, there werent a lot of enormous changes. I had a foundation of the riffs and the arrangement was fairly close but there were times I sang and they decided to re-record to my voice by putting down new guitar, new bass and new drums. Even Fight Em [Till You Cant], we did that on the road for quite a while, we did that whole song and some others that they havent even heard vocal takes that I did which I was really happy about but there were just so many different kind of things going on. So yeah they gave me as much freedom as I could take without me wandering off or making so many changes that they didnt want me to make. I didnt make it hard for them and they didnt make it hard for me at the same time as I think we work together quite good. When it came down to finishing the songs we didnt have a whole lot of time to spend on it and Im one who doesnt like to spend a lot of time on a song, I dont tend to dwell on a song for too long before Id just say lets write another one. If it is what it is and there are no changes to be made then fair enough but a lot of time they dont allow you to do a lot things as they are what they are. If you take a song like In The End, I mean god that is a long song but then if you start thinking oh that part is too long, why dont we shorten that you just need to say stop, it works the way it is and you dont need to touch it. Back in the day or any other band might say wow seven minutes, what the hell are we going to do with that, we need it to be like four minutes and twenty five seconds but its cool the way it is and there is space to edit it if you want to but why bother.
