Two weeks. That was all Ryan Adams needed to make his fourth studio album, Rock n Roll, a record he later called the most rock thing he had ever done. The singer-songwriter recorded at Stratosphere Sound in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, and on November 4, 2003, the finished album appeared in the United States on the Lost Highway label.
A rejected album and a fast reply
Why the hurry? Because Lost Highway had just refused to release Adams's next planned album, Love Is Hell. Adams did not sulk. He went back into the studio and, by his own account, had a hell of a lot of fun making an album of rock and indie rock.
The dispute with the label was eventually settled the diplomatic way. Rock n Roll became the main release, while Love Is Hell slipped out quietly as two separate EPs. Adams got his loud guitar record into stores. The album also produced two singles. "So Alive" arrived on January 19, 2004, and "This Is It" followed on March 22 of the same year. The first reached number 21 on the UK Singles Chart, number 38 in Ireland, and number 97 on the Dutch Top 100.
Parker Posey and Billie Joe Armstrong
The album pulled in a striking cast of guests. Parker Posey, Adams's girlfriend at the time, took part in the recording and co-wrote the song Note to Self: Don't Die. Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong added backing vocals, as did Melissa Auf der Maur, the former bassist of Hole and Smashing Pumpkins. Several songs on the record grew out of collaborations. Adams wrote "This Is It," "Burning Photographs," and "Boys" with Johnny T. Yerington, while "Wish You Were Here" was co-written with Brad Rice. On "Luminol," Adams, Yerington, and Tony Shanahan shared the writing credit.
Critics could not agree on what Adams had made. Rolling Stone gave the album 4 stars out of 5, and Blender went all the way to a perfect 5. But Pitchfork scored it 2.9 out of 10, and The Guardian offered just 2 stars out of 5. The average on Metacritic landed at 66 out of 100. It reached number 33 on the Billboard chart and number 41 in the United Kingdom. In Ireland it climbed to number 11, while Norway, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands saw it land at 19, 29, 71, and 81 respectively.
The division made a kind of sense. Rock n Roll leaned away from the alt-country and singer-songwriter material many fans expected from Adams. He leaned into volume, speed and attitude, and the record's compressed two-week creation gave it a raw, immediate edge that thrilled some listeners and left others cold. Different editions of the album carried different bonus material. The Japanese release included the extra track "Funeral Marching," and the French edition added "Hypnotixed." These variations gave collectors a reason to seek out more than one version of the record.
For Adams, the album was a release valve. A rejected record had become a burst of noise and motion, made in a studio owned by guitarist James Iha. What began as a standoff with Lost Highway ended with a new record, a quieter compromise for Love Is Hell, and one of the most debated albums in Adams's catalogue. The album runs 48 minutes. Producer James Barber oversaw the sessions.