Coheed and Cambria‘s 2005 album, Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness, turns 20 on Saturday. Coming off the band’s previous album, 2003’s In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, which spawned their first radio hit in “A Favor House Atlantic,” frontman Claudio Sanchez remembers being “met with real feedback from the label” for the first time with Good Apollo.
“When we got signed to the label, they were just like, ‘Let them do what they do, they’re kind of an oddity, that’s working for them, let them go with it,'” Sanchez tells ABC Audio. “But then it came time to [pick] the single, and we as a band — we had a strong opinion that ‘Welcome Home’ should be the single, and the label had chosen ‘The Suffering.'”
As Sanchez explains it, “Welcome Home” got a soft launch before “The Suffering” was released as an official single. While “The Suffering” was successful and has remained a staple of Coheed’s live show, they were right to believe in “Welcome Home,” which has become one of their signature songs and their go-to closer.
“Welcome Home” is known in particular for its epic opening guitar riff, which has a very humble origin story — Sanchez first came up with it while living in his parents’ house.
“I was in the kitchen area, and I had an acoustic guitar, and I think I was in my boxers,” Sanchez says. “I was just fooling around, and I came up with that riff into the verse area and started to hum a melody. I just remember being so thrilled and so excited.”
“As I’m, like, losing my mind, I’m like, ‘This is awesome,’ my mom comes [in],” he laughs. “I was so embarrassed!”
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