Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, and then-guitarist, Dave Navarro, found themselves working with Alanis Morissette on the lead single from her 1996 Grammy-winning album, Jagged Little Pill. It is said that they had only the vocals to work from.
According to Navarro: “We basically jammed until we found something we were both happy with.”
Flea’s bassline had to be fixed
During an interview with Produce Like A Pro’s Warren Huart, mix engineer Chris Fogel looked back at the making of the track. In doing so, he recalled that Flea’s bassline wasn’t as precise as he would’ve liked.
Fogel was questioned whether Flea and Dave Navarro worked together on the song. “They did. They were recorded at the same time,” he says. “It was recorded by another engineer, but the tracks were brought back to me to mix and we had to really time a lot of it. Particularly Flea. Flea was way out of time on this.”
“Did you have to push him back, was he a little bit more on top?” asks Huart.
“He was way on top, that’s exactly what it was. At some points he was a good quarter-note on top. And if he’s watching then I apologise! But, that is not your performance, that’s your performance timed quite a bit through the genius of the ADAT and the BRC [Big Remote Control].”
