Apart from being Jack White’s last band before the White
Stripes, the Go are best known for their throwback musical tendencies
and near peerless vintage pop palette. Okay, maybe some folks still
fuss over their high-drama feud with Sub Pop but, otherwise, it’s all
about all things non-contemporary where the Go—vocalist Bobby
Harlow, guitarists John Krautner and James McConnell, and drummer Marc
Fellis—are concerned.
Their new album, Howl on the Haunted Beat You Ride, wasn’t
merely influenced by golden oldies—it was recorded under the
loving supervision of one. Even more important to the band’s latest
opus than the Go’s love for the Who and the Stones is a retired General
Motors worker named Richard Bowen, who let the band record in his
basement. A family friend of Krautner’s since childhood, Bowen became a
huge fan of the band and, subsequently, let them record Howl in
his Detroit home.
“He is hearing-impaired, sharp as a tack, and he’s 92 years old,”
explains Krautner. “We were in his home at all hours of the day,
practicing and recording, simply because he was not bothered by the
sound.”
Recorded in a circle of tape machines, every detail of Howl seems to have been afforded the kind of scrutiny and natural precision
that could only come from a free recording endeavour. The first single
“You Go Bangin’ On,” a free-spirited flower rock rambler, was
ultimately rearranged and recorded in five drastically different ways
before the band was satisfied with it. With Harlow behind the boards
for the first time in the Go’s history, the band felt the impact of
tracking, too, especially since the frontman regularly worked gruelling
18-hour days on the disc.
“He had the burden of this record on his shoulders,” remembers
Krautner. “He spent every available minute on the record, stressed out
over it. He was also a good psychiatrist for us when we were having
nervous breakdowns. Which was a lot.”