Incubus Discusses Its Most Seminal Album, Which the Band Will Perform on Tour in Denver

Hanging out and making music with your friends in a Malibu mansion sounds pretty chill, especially when it results in a killer album. When José Pasillas, the founding drummer of Incubus, recalls the circumstances surrounding the band's 2001 record, Morning View, he can’t help but get a little nostalgic about the process behind the band’s fourth studio release that shot it to fame.

The SoCal group — which Pasillas, vocalist Brandon Boyd and guitarist Mike Einziger started in high school — had spent nearly a decade incessantly touring at that point, but finally began to break into the mainstream with hit singles such as “Drive” and “Pardon Me.”

They were just beginning to make it, so the idea of living together and writing an entire album seemed necessary, while also providing a brief reprieve from the rapid pace of rising stardom. Plus, they were living right across from the beach.

“It’s really one of the best memories of recording a record for me,” Pasillas shares. “I think I can speak for the rest of the guys, too. It was really the first time we were outside of your typical recording studio and in a setting that was more conducive to inspiration, just by our natural surroundings of the beach and being in a cool house.”

Immortalized in a 2001 episode of MTV Cribs, the musical manor afforded the musicians to bust out songs whenever they wanted. Boyd has previously shared that taking a break to jump in the ocean helped, too. But that sense of freedom factored into the thirty total songs that were created there in over four months.

“It was really the first time we all left our parents’ homes. After years and years of touring, our beds and vehicles were still stored at our parents’ houses,” Pasillas remembers with a laugh.

“Moving into a home semi-permanently for four-and-a-half months was super exciting,” he continues. “All the memories of being there and writing that record and the setup that we had was so awesome.”
The resulting record is considered awesome, too.  Its title taken from a street near the Malibu property, Morning View blew up after it released in October 2001, thanks to such standout tracks as “Wish You Were Here” and “Nice to Know You.” The record went double-platinum, making it the band’s highest selling album at the time, and has since gone triple-platinum. The thirteen songs that were eventually chosen on the final cut are a balance of alternative and soft rock, mixed with alt-metal moments, and marked a move away from the band’s early nu-metal sound.

Incubus, which also currently includes DJ Chris Kilmore and new bassist Nicole Row, is celebrating the seminal record with an anniversary tour and the recent release of Morning View XXIII, a re-recorded version of the original material. The band plays Ball Arena on Monday, September 9, with openers Coheed and Cambria. Other than playing Morning View in its entirety, Incubus plans to share the hits, too.

Pasillas remembers when Incubus made the jump to being an arena band over twenty years ago. Looking back now, it felt like the logical next step, especially after following up Morning View with 2004’s A Crow Left of the Murder..., another double-platinum banger.

“It’s kind of a big progression from theaters to arenas. It had been growing for so many years,” he explains. “It wasn’t like playing bars, big single, now we’re playing arenas. It seemed like a natural progression, but it’s not lost on us that a lot of people don’t even make it into that big arena stage. We were definitely the tortoise, and I think it’s really paid off because of that, too.”

Now, Morning View, and the Morning View House as the mansion's since been called, hold a certain level of lore in the Incubus backstory. The band never tried to recreate that living and writing situation, though A Crow Left of the Murder... was recorded in a similar home studio.

After twenty years, Incubus returned to those old digs for a special livestream of Morning View that would later be released as a special anniversary edition. The funny thing, Pasillas shares, is that only his drums were used from that show, while the other parts, including Boyd’s vocals, were re-recorded for Morning View XXIII. It offered the members a chance to add a little flavor to the songs that they’ve been playing for so long, too. Not to mention, it’s the first release that includes Row on bass.

“We’ve been playing a lot of those songs over the last two decades anyways, and there’s a lot of things that we did change along the way, and you hear them on this new recording,” he says. “We have little extension pieces on ‘Circles’ in the beginning that’s a little different, and the end of ‘Echo.’

“There are a lot of things that we were doing already live, so it was kind of nice to cement them on the rerecord,” Pasillas concludes. “For us, all of those songs are fun to play, so it was really a pleasure to be able to go back and rerecord it twenty-plus years later.”

Incubus, with Coheed and Cambria, 7:30 p.m. Monday, September 9, Ball Arena, 1000 Chopper Circle. Tickets start at $32.