HEADING FOR THE SUN | BEING HERE | CREATING AN IMAGE | COVERING PEARL JAM
FINDING A HIT
| During those tough years, record companies
agreed that Smash Mouth lacked that one song that would push their collection
over the top. Every album needs the catchy tune that radio stations
will play and listeners will want to buy. Without it, you're just
another band going nowhere.
In March, the guys decided to try one last time with every ounce of energy, creativity and ambition they had. They needed to make their own album and try to persuade local record stores to carry it. If it sold, great. If it didn't--maybe they weren't meant to be. "Oh, is this what you wanted to do?" their manager, Robert Hayes, said when they told him. "I'll give you the money." With Hayes' $10,000, they paid producer Eric Valentine (he produced the new album by San Francisco-based Third Eye Blind), and he booked them into his Redwood City studio for three weeks beginning April 24. Great. But isn't this the same group of songs record companies said lacked a hit? |
 |
Two weeks before they went into the studio.
Coleman borrowed a tape Camp had made as a birthday present for his wife.
It was a collection of old songs from his
"audio photo album"--hundreds of tapes holding every song he has written
since grade school. Deep into the tape, Coleman heard "Walkin' on
the Sun." Camp had written it five years earlier but had never played
it for the Smash Mouth guys.
"I loved that song," Coleman says. "I was thinking 'this could be great.'"
Coleman ran downstairs to Camp's apartment.
"I said, 'Dude, we have to do that song.'" Coleman says.
Camp hadn't even considered it.
"The guy I was playing with back then said he didn't like it, so I figured it sucked," Camp says. "I totally give Kevin credit for finding it. And, oh, the other day, that guy called me from New Mexico and said "Oh s---. it's on my radio and I feel stupid.'"
Camp's diary, 4/24/97, 1:30 a.m., after the day in the recording studio:
It's so intoxicating when you can actually
hear what's been in your head. In the last few months we've gone
through all kinds of s--- that normal people go through but it's different
cuz we're abnormal also. A completely separate set of problems arise
when in a band. You've got your personal s---, your artistic s---,
your financial s---, your s--- s--- and it goes and goes....I feel sorry
for anyone that has never experienced it.