The band had only existed for three months when they booked Nada Studios, a pokey set-up run by John Naclerio – a friend of the band’s new label, Eyeball Records – and situated in his mother’s basement. The first track that the group laid to tape was Vampires Will Never Hurt You, the same song that had persuaded Thursday’s Geoff Rickly to climb aboard after hearing a demo. What was intended to be a preliminary recording wound up being used on the finished record, thanks in part to an anguished performance from Gerard – extremely riled from his toothache and lack of painkillers – which left nobody in the room in doubt that they were working on something unique.
“Nothing beats that recording of Vampires…, even the stuff we’ve spent a lot of money on,” Gerard would later say. “We were worried Vampires… wouldn’t work. But it was the greatest thing we’d ever fucking heard. We piled into the van and drove home afterwards and we couldn’t stop listening to it. It was just the loudest, gnarliest, darkest, most melodic song I’d ever heard. It was fucking amazing.”
It was after the recording of Vampires… that the members of MCR took the idea of adding a second guitarist seriously, as they were now being urged to by Geoff and Eyeball head honcho Alex Saavedra. As for who it should be, that was a no-brainer. Frank was already a friend of the group. They were big admirers of Pencey Prep, and he had been in the studio during the recordings.
“I was hanging out while they recorded the demo of Vampires Will Never Hurt You and I got really, really high,” Frank told Kerrang!. “Ray had laid down 14 guitar parts and somebody said, ‘If you add another guitarist, you could play this live.’ Someone replied, ‘The only guy we’ve considered is too high to get off the couch.’ That was the first time I thought I might play in my favourite band – it scared the shit out of me.”