Verve Pipe Has Seen 'Faces' More Than 200 Times

07/07/1999 4:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(7/7/99, 1 p.m. PDT) - Anyone who thinks being a recording artist is cake should listen to what the Verve Pipe's Brian Vander Ark had to go through with producer Michael Beinhorn.

The producer, who is considered by some to be one of the best in the business, has a reputation of being very demanding. He proved that was the case with "She Has Faces," which was written by drummer Donny Brown. Vander Ark says he sang the song more than 200 times until he cut a vocal that Beinhorn and the band agreed was acceptable.

"I would sing it 24 times and then Michael would come down and listen to it--listen to one I thought was good--and he'd say, 'Nope. Do it again.' I'd sing it 24 times, and 24 more times, and 24 more times...I sang it over a hundred times. And finally he said, 'Well there's something here on this track, but let's go from there.' And [it was] 24 more times, and 24 more times.

"By about 160 times we finally had something that he liked. So we decided to go with that, and then three days later he said, 'You know, you really should do it again--and again 24 more times.' At that point you're getting so sick of the song that you need to do something. And I think it's subconscious, but suddenly it started to sound really, really good to me. And to him, it started to feel really good. It had to do with phrasing. That's the thing that Michael's really great at."

Fans will be able to hear the Verve Pipe's hard work when its self-titled album is released on July 27.

Look for an interactive feature and performance by the Verve Pipe in issue No. 31 of LAUNCH on CD-ROM. To read a LAUNCH.com Verve Pipe feature, click here.

-- Darren Davis, New York

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