In the Studio: Albert Hammond, Jr. Falls Down, Gets Up and Reinvents Himself on Second LP

While the Strokes remain on a nice long break, guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. figured he'd use his spare time to get another solo album out. "I wanted to show a different side of me," says Hammond. For the follow-up to Yours to Keep, he re-teamed with his band--drummer Matt Romano, guitarist Marc Eskenazi and bassist Josh Lattanzi and engineer Gus Oberg--for five weeks at New York's Electric Lady Studios last fall. Hammond's goals included crafting "shorter and harder" tunes, like the ska-tinged "Miss Myrtle," as well as instrumental numbers, like "Spooky Couch." For "Boss Americana," Hammond and Oberg used "the Van Halen technique" for miking Romano's drums, connecting two kick drums by a long tunnel made from a blanket. And for the Cheap Trick-style power-pop song "In My Room," they plugged three amps into one another to achieve an enormity of sound in stark contrast to the first disc's bedroom vibe. "When we started, I would collapse with fear," Hammond says. "But it's amazing how people around you help you get back up, and that gives you the freedom to go weird places."

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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