The Fallen Soldiers

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The "Fallen Soldiers" are the colloquial name (originally dubbed as such by Karl Koch) for a group of songs recorded during the sessions for Weezer's fifth album, Make Believe that did not make the final album. Sought after highly by fans for years, some of these tracks have since been released elsewhere.

History

Amazon.com tracklisting of Make Believe as of March 25, 2005

Throughout the Make Believe Sessions, many different songs were recorded, and the band abandoned some recordings in favor of new tracks. As the sessions continued, several tracklists, including preferred A-Lists and secondary B-Lists were written, recorded, re-worked and re-recorded.

At one point in the fall of 2004, Rivers returned to Harvard, leaving the other members to finish some recordings he had been present for. While he was away, the band brought back several songs that Rivers had slowly forgotten about from previous sessions such as "Freak Me Out" and "The Damage in Your Heart".

While the album grew, several songs fell by the wayside until Rivers finally had a somewhat clear idea of where he saw Weezer's next album heading. He tentatively was calling the album Either Way, I'm Fine. However, shortly before the album was finalized and mixed, the band expressed that they saw a new direction for the album.

Said Karl: "Clearly, things were shifting rapidly. After practically forgetting about the recordings from Cello in 12/03, a group listening session with Rick Rubin revealed that they loved some of those recordings after all, and in fact a slew of the fall '04 work was tossed in favor of the earlier work. Of course, most of the old recordings had never had their proper overdub and final vocal work done on them, so the band got busy in Rick's home studio (and possibly another LA location) in February, hammering out what was needed to be finished."

At the time, Geffen Records was pushing for a spring release, so the final masters would have to be handed in by early March at the latest - not much time! (Not to mention the artwork, title, etc, all of which was under way by this point too). With less than a month to go, new recording sessions happened at a blistering pace, and the tracklist was still not finalized yet. Even at that late point, more changes were being made, such as the re-introduction of "The Other Way", in addition to other tracklist changes.

Final major changes included the removal of "Average Person", "Losing My Mind", "You're The One" and "Love Is The Answer", and the addition of "The Other Way", "Pardon Me", "My Best Friend" (all a bit out of left field, and last seen in Rivers' "Non A-List Contenders" list of 7/3/04), and "Haunt You Every Day", which had always been a strong 'maybe' to that point. All four of the new additions were 12/03 Cello recordings (like "Peace" and "Drugs") that were finally finished up at this late hour."

A short clip of "You're the One" could be heard on the Making of Make Believe CD-ROM featurette. In a stickam.com chat, Koch played a few short clips of several "fallen soldiers" songs including "Last Chance".

"Love Is The Answer" appeared on Sugar Ray's album "Music For Cougars" released in 2009, given to the band by Rivers. In addition, Rivers did additional vocals on the song and the guitar solo was lifted directly from the Make Believe era recording of the song.

In an interview in 2010, Rivers Cuomo stated that "Unbreak My Heart", a Toni Braxton cover, will be included on Death to False Metal, as will "Losing My Mind," Outta Here" (a bonus track in Japan) and "I'm a Robot".

Song list

All of these songs have been completed, but are lacking a final mix and have not been released:

All of these songs were completed without a final mix, but were later mixed and released on the 2010 compilation album Death to False Metal:

"Love Is the Answer", which was part of the October 2004 sessions at Grandmaster, was later revised, re-recorded, and released by Weezer on their 2009 album Raditude.

See also

External links