Three weeks into The Stone Roses' 1993 recording session at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales, the band's producer John Leckie placed a phone call to their American A&R man Gary Gersh to express some concern. Using the legendary studio where Queen recorded Bohemian Rhapsody, Rush recorded A Farewell To Kings, and more recently Sepultura had recorded Chaos A.D. was costing Geffen Records £800 a day, and Leckie felt duty-bound to tell Gersh that the Manchester band had recorded precisely nothing.
Gersh, the executive who had signed both Sonic Youth and Nirvana to Geffen, took the news in his stride,
"He said, 'No problem, just let them be creative, don’t worry about the budget'," Leckie said in a recent interview with MOJO magazine.
"The programmer hired to do loops for £400 a day was just sitting there. They had the best drummer in the world, and they wanted to use drum machines! It was a nightmare."
