Keyboard magazine
September 1992

Co-producer Eric Rosse
The three lives of Little Earthquakes

“The record was essentially done in three phases”, says co-producer Eric Rosse of Little Earthquakes. The first batch of tracks [“Crucify”, “Silent All These Years”, “Winter”, “Happy Phantom”, “Leather”, and “Mother”] were cut at Capitol Records in Los Angeles with Davitt Sigerson producing. “The piano and vocal tracks were recorded first, and then everything else was built around them.” A 40-plus piece of orchestra added layers of sweetening under the skillful guidence of arranger/conductor Nick DeCaro.

After hearing the first group of songs, the record company, surprisingly, balked. “They sort of pulled a Linda Blair”, recalls Eric. “They came back and said ‘What’s this?’ to this beautiful work.” So Eric and Tori disappeared into Eric’s home studio for phase two, which yielded the songs “Girl”, “Precious Things”, “Tear In Your Hand”, and “Little Eartquakes”. “It was the buck-and-a-half phase where money was really, really limited”, laughs Eric. “Everything was pretty much done by the skin of our teeth. We used my old 3M 24-track analog machine, a decent commando-style Allen & Heath board, and a Yamaha CP-80 piano. We also went outside to a little place called Stag Studios, where they had a nice Yamaha grand.”

For phase three, Tori jetted to England where she recorded several B-sides and the songs “China” and “Me and a Gun” (produced by Ian Stanley). During those sessions, Tori surprised her team of collegues with an impromptu performance. Eric recalls, “One of the B-side cuts came together on the spur of the moment. It was a tune called ‘Thoughts’ and she wrote it as the tape was running, literally. We were getting sounds while she was doodling on the piano and I said, ‘What’s that?’ So we just hit record and she wrote it in one pass.”