There is no law saying that, as a recording artist, you must use a traditional recording studio to make your work.
Once you take that idea into account, the possibilities become truly endless and it can often be great fun to create music in a space not usually used for such purposes. And many times, simply changing the scenery around you can spark inspiration, or at least excitement and motivation.
Consider Wings’ 1978 album, London Town. Though parts of it were recorded in a place Paul McCartney was intimately familiar with – Abbey Road Studios — a significant portion of it was recorded on a luxury yacht in the Virgin Islands.
“The captain went spare when he saw all the instruments,” McCartney told Melody Maker at the time. “We remodeled his boat for him, which he wasn’t too keen on. We converted his lounge into a studio and we turned another deck into a sound control room, and it was fantastic! We had a recording boat and two others we stayed on. We didn’t have any problems with saltwater in the machines or sharks attacking us. … The studio worked out incredibly well and the very first day we got a track down. There was a nice free feeling. We’d swim in the day and record at night.”
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In the below gallery of 37 Rock Albums Recorded in Unconventional Places, there’s everything from prisons to castles to more boats…
37 Rock Albums Recorded in Unconventional Places
Gallery Credit: Allison Rapp
