How a Guided By Voices Song was Recorded in 1994

By the time I got there Bob was playing guitar, as usual, running through a new song with Kevin two or three times until Kevin understood the structure, which was not overly-complicated. I didn't at first fully understand what was going on, which is to say that we were in fact already recording the song, and that this was the way we often recorded songs. When Bob was satisfied that Kevin had grasped the structure, he turned to Toby and said, "Okay, let's do the vocals." Toby had in fact been recording each of the two or three run-throughs, and I should emphasize that his was a song no one besides Bob had ever heard before. Bob put on a pair of headphones, picked up the mic, and sang in one take the entire song. He may have listened back once, and then, satisfied with the performance, handed them to me, and told me to record a bass line.

I'll admit to a slight panicky feeling, especially when I listened to the song through the headphones and could barely make out the chord progression under Bob's vocal, which was hypnotizing not just for the beauty of the melody but for the weirdly plangent lyrics. Everyone was watching me (I thought). Everyone was judging me (I thought). In fact no one was watching, and no one cared, but on my first run-through I flubbed badly a couple of the transitions. Bob picked up the guitar and ran through the structure standing in front of me, in double time. I got most of it, and had another go at recording. Somehow, I got through a mostly mistake-free take, and by the end had finally figured out what I wanted to do; but we were done. I don't mean just that I was done. The song was done. And when I heard the mix that Toby played back a few minutes later, I realized: the song was perfect.