Fuel Takes Control

September 22, 2000 -- When Fuel went to New York City to make its second album, Something Like Human, with producer Ben Grosse, the quartet wasn't prepared for some of the problems it would face in the studio — particularly the assorted microwave signals that brought radio stations and other frequencies into the studio via the pickups of Carl Bell's guitar.

"They lined the whole inside of the place with copper wiring, copper screening, trying to keep out the radio frequencies," Bell recalls. "We'd hear cab drivers coming through the guitar, in the amps. It was crazy. One night, late at night, we had this collage of some maniac gospel preacher preaching the word mixed with some kind of suicide hotline. We thought about putting it on the record, because no one would believe it happened in real time."

Despite that, Bell is confident that Something Like Human is not only a worthy follow-up to 1998's million-selling Sunburn but also a more accurate representation of what he and his bandmates want Fuel to sound like. "That whole first record is a little vanilla, generic," says the guitarist. "Demos of our songs, like 'Shimmer' and others, had much more grit, and were a little bit harder, than what came out on that record.

"When you make a first record and you've never been in a major studio, you listen to a lot of other people's opinions, and the learning curve was pretty steep. This time, we went in and said, 'We're taking control of this one,' and that's exactly what we did," he adds. "On this record, we wanted to develop the sonic landscape of what was going on, get more textures and more depth and just broaden the sound of what was there."