Session Information
With the recording of the music for their third album completed the band headed across to the West Coast and Conway Recording Studios in Hollywood, California. Bringing producer Adam Kasper along with them the plan at this studio was merely to complete mixing of what they had worked on in Virginia but as it turned out, more recording work was undertaken. Given a few days off before the mixing session was due to begin Dave Grohl found himself coming up with a brand-new riff and brought it to the studio for the rest of the band to hear. Despite having a solid number of songs ready for the album Grohl was eager to put to tape this new idea.
“Fuck it. Let's record this” he told his bandmates of the song which would be titled ‘Live-In Skin’. In just a day and a half whilst also mixing the band recorded the new song with Grohl writing impromptu lyrics “about the place the band is in now”. Explaining the lyrics further, he would note the song “has a lot to do with me going head-on with my hate and I'm amazed that I'm still standing, and I demand that we all blend in.”
‘Live-In Skin’ was not the only song worked on during their time in Los Angeles. Seemingly unhappy with some aspects of the recording in Virginia, ‘Learn To Fly’ received further work with a new vocal track recorded as well as some guitar overdubs.
With the extra unplanned recording complete the focus of the session returned to mixing. Including the new song, a total of twelve were mixed by Adam Kasper - ‘Stacked Actors’, ‘Breakout’, ‘Gimme Stitches’, ‘Generator’, ‘Next Year’, ‘Headwires’, ‘Ain’t It The Life’, ‘MIA’, ‘Fraternity’, ‘Learn To Fly’, ‘Aurora’ and the new ‘Live-In Skin’. Assisted by John Nelson, Kasper worked with the Solid-State Logic SSL9000 console at the studio.
For reasons that have never been divulged three songs received a second mix by Andy Wallace at Larrabee Sound Studios in Los Angeles - ‘Learn To Fly’, ‘Aurora’ and ‘Live-In Skin’. The final album featured Wallace’s mix for those three songs and Kasper’s original mixes for the other eight.
The original Kasper mixes of those three songs were never released and remained unheard until 2011 when ‘There Is Nothing Left To Lose’ was re-issued on 12” Vinyl. Rather than using the original masters used for the 1999 pressings, fresh lacquers were cut by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering and those new lacquers were cut from a master featuring Kasper’s original mix of all songs.
