It started innocently enough. The producer called me to feel me out and see if we'd work well together. The artist called, came by and booked some time. "Awesome", I thought. I would be able to focus on being an engineer, get good sounds and not be as responsible for the artist's performances, arrangements and such. It would be an easy week I thought.
One hour before the sessions were to begin I was cleaning up the studio, calibrating the deck and printing tones. Ready for anything. I got a call from the artist telling me the session might be off because things had gotten really weird between the artist and producer. I thought this was unfortunate but noted that I would still need to be paid my daily deposit whether they came in or not since it was such short notice. I got called back with a green light — we would go ahead and start the album.
As soon as they entered the studio with the rhythm section you could sense tension. Not a good way to start an album. As the producer and band laid down rhythm beds and parts for the songs it seemed weird enough that they didn't need the artist to sing or play guitar on anything and even weirder that the producer would shut the artist down any time there was a question of whether a tempo, arrangement, key or such would work in the end. Then there were incidents outside of music that seemed too surreal to be true, like arguments about what food to get for lunch. And then if things got tense between the producer and artist the drummer might become the brunt of this "hostile creativity" for a while. I tried to lay low and let it all run its course, not wanting to get involved and just glad they were in the other room most of the time.
Halfway through the week we were getting into overdubs which brought the producer into the control room to lay down tracks. This was going okay until more issues of whether certain overdubs or even whole takes would work were fought about in a very hostile manner, with me practically in the middle. At one point the artist's foot went down that a take just wouldn't work, which we'd been hearing all along, and the producer started trying to get me to set up for creating a new take out of drum machine parts and loops. The hostility had hit a high.