LOS ANGELES – For many musicians, a live album is an afterthought — a way to quickly appease insatiable fans or make some easy money.
But when Adam Granduciel, the frontman of the anthemic rock band The War on Drugs, set out to make their newest live album announced Wednesday, it was a labor of love that is anything but quick or easy.
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For “Live Drugs Again,” out Sept. 13, Granduciel wanted to do justice to the ways in which the band has grown, both literally (they’ve added a member since their first live album was released in 2020) and figuratively as musicians who have honed their sound. So he combed through about 100 hours of recordings from their shows and even spliced different parts of the same songs together.
The album comes in tandem with the start of their co-headlining tour with The National, which kicks off Sept. 12 in New Hampshire. Granduciel spoke with The Associated Press about how performing a song live changes it, whether the band has new music in the pipeline and how he came to play guitar on Beyoncé’s “II Most Wanted.”
The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: Talk about what went into making this live record.
GRANDUCIEL: I think we used maybe like 50 shows total. There are a few songs where it’s four shows spliced together, and part of that too is just having fun with the process. You know, you go into it remembering specific nights, like there are a few songs from a show in Bentonville, Arkansas, which is a town we had never been to in 20 years of being a band. And we kind of rolled into this town and it was this really beautiful little young artist student community. It was incredible. We had an amazing day and the show at night was outdoors, and it was just one of those memorable nights.
You kind of start there, and then you get so deep into the process of mixing versions and maybe doing a little post-production, like all great live records do. I just wanted to put as much work into it as myself and the band put into our live show, you know, just the amount of time it takes to sort of hone a set, it’s years really. And we wanted to kind of put that into the record.
AP: You’re a bit of a gearhead. Did you use anything interesting for this album?
GRANDUCIEL: Well, unlike our first live record, we used a lot of the actual ambient mics that we recorded. Sometimes it can be tricky with phase and all this stuff. But for this one, we used a lot of the actual just source ambient mics so all the crowds are real to that moment. I think most live records these days are just going to be sort of put into digital spaces. You just have more control over everything. But this one, I think we had like 12 different ambient mics throughout the stage and the venues.
AP: Does the anticipation of performing your music inform your songwriting process at all? Do you factor in how it will sound live or do you just think about that part after?
GRANDUCIEL: Definitely after. I think things just naturally progress. And they sort of end up in a whole new place once the audience is part of the equation, you know? I mean, if we went back and made a re-recorded “Under the Pressure” the way we play it, it probably wouldn’t be the same thing on a record. But whenever you come off a touring cycle and things reach that next tier from the band dynamically, it always informs the next thing you do.
AP: Do you have new music in the works?
GRANDUCIEL: In theory there is new music.
It’s nice to be home for a bit and sort of get into the flow of everything when you start making a new one. We’re always working, whether it’s mixing live stuff or recording a new song or whatever.
AP: How did you end up playing guitar for “II Most Wanted,” the Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus duet?
GRANDUCIEL: I worked on my last two records with Shawn Everett. And he’s producing Miley’s new album. And he called me one day, and I was taking my kid and his friend to an indoor playground in North Hollywood. And he was like, “Do you want to come over tonight and play on this Miley song?” And I was like, “Yeah, definitely.” And then on the way over, he was like, “I think it may be a Beyoncé thing too. I’m not really sure.”
But it was very quick and I played on two songs. But I kind of thought it was gonna be submitted as a song, and then they would redo my parts or whatever, you know? And then literally five weeks later, I saw that it was like a Beyoncé-Miley song. And I was in the parking lot on a Saturday night on Hollywood Boulevard at the studio, and it was like really loud. And I was like listening on my phone. I was like, “Is that the song?” And I was like, “Wait, that is the song I played on.” And I texted Shawn and I was like, “Did they redo my guitar?” He’s like, “No, that’s your guitar.” And I listened to it on the way home in my car and I was like, “This is amazing.” I couldn’t believe it.