I think when you get past your second album, it all becomes something of a routine. So you have to struggle against that, find a way of making what you do sound fresh and new each time.
When you record an album in six days, you don't have time to work out a lot of stuff.
I don't like overdubs, never liked them.
For the 'Load' album, I was experimenting so much with tone that I had to keep journals on what equipment I was using. For 'Hero of the Day,' I know I used a 1958 Les Paul Standard with a Matchless Chieftain, some Boogie amps and a Vox amp - again, they're all blended.
When I started making my own records, I had this idea of drowning out the singer and putting the rest in the foreground. It was the background that interested me.
I never write. Never! I do not even remember if I can write … This is a true freestyle in general. I put a beat, I said some stuff, I retain ideas, I do it again, with a particular intonation, I test, and especially I record live.
I know that if I went to other studios, like in Vancouver, that those are set up to be as professional and as true, so it's just a different flavour, it's a different sound, but I think both have their place.
The best recording is the one you bring with you in your mind.
The whole thing with recording is you have to know when to turn off the tape machine and just stop recording because you want to keep fixing, fixing, fixing, you know?
On 'Metallica,' I recorded six or seven different guitar solos for almost every song, took the best aspects of each solo, mapped out a master solo and made a composite. Then I learned how to play the composite solo, tightened it up and replayed it for the final version.
A lot of times, when you record something, the album becomes less about the music and more technical.
'The Last Five Years,' we sang almost everything live. When we're in a convertible on the West Side Highway, there was no point - it's not going to be usable sound. But any time we were indoors, we were singing live.
I love loud music. I listen loud, and that's part of how I've learned how to do this. Record softly and play back loud and a whole other thing happens.
I've got a song on every album, two songs as a matter of fact on every album without Auto-Tune, and that's the song that nobody talks about. It's weird.
It's so easy to make albums with overdubbing and editing these days, but I really prefer playing live and just getting the music to sound right because the musicians, the songs and the performances are good.
Back in the day, I used to be in the studio recording 20 hours a day. And that was all of the time. I still record a lot of hours, but I don't go as long as I used to.
I'd often use a Leslie cabinet on its own in the studio because everyone in the late Sixties and Seventies was experimenting with them. We'd stick anything through a Leslie because it made everything sound so good.
Some of the songs I've made, I'm really disappointed in how I mixed them.
People say I play real loud. I don't, actually. I'm recorded loud and a lot of that is because we have good engineers. Mick knows what a good drum sound is as well, so that's part of the illusion really. I can't play loud.
You've got a fairly good idea as to what the questions are going to be. But how to record the best answer is another matter.
We listened to a lot of Rolling Stones and Beatles records when we were recording. They were really good at not playing loud, but generating really big sounds out of everything.
I always record far more than I can use. There's probably twice as much recorded as comes out.
You can do a lot to shape the feeling of a song by the way you record it.
I would give anything if it went back to analog age. I mean, music was so real, and you had to sing everything on a record; you had to play everything on a record. There was no cut-and-paste - you couldn't get the chorus right one time and then paste it every other time; you really had to be good at what you did.
The first songs I made brought me to the Grammys. I was a five-times nominated teenager off voice memos and songs that were clearly recorded off different mics.
