Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is a producer engineer, Billie Bill. What's
Speaker 1: keeping you busy these days?
Speaker 2: Well, basically the same old thing, maybe not quite in
Speaker 2: the same way and certainly not quite as much, but
Speaker 2: you know, especially mixing, which is my favorite aspect of engineering.
Speaker 1: So what kind of stuff you're mixing these days?
Speaker 2: Well, I've just done the singles for Steve Percaro from Toto,
Speaker 2: which he's got with a record company. They seem to
Speaker 2: be promoting it pretty well, whatever that means on social
Speaker 2: media at least. It's definitely not the same old game.
Speaker 2: But and there's a new band, I'll call it a band.
Speaker 2: It's with a guy out of Chicago named Joe Vanna
Speaker 2: and he's got quite a few Well Michael o'martian, you know,
Speaker 2: the great producer, he and I started together in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty seven or eight. He's in the band. And I
Speaker 2: love that they're calling it a band, considering no two
Speaker 2: people ever played in the same room at the same time.
Speaker 2: But I'm getting ready to start that mixing that and
Speaker 2: they've sent me the rough mixes and it's really good.
Speaker 1: So what's the appeal of mixing for you.
Speaker 2: Just you know, it's what started it off. I suppose
Speaker 2: once I decided to engineer the creative aspect of putting
Speaker 2: the elements together and making it come out of a
Speaker 2: couple of speakers so that it moves me, which hopefully
Speaker 2: will move the listeners.
Speaker 1: Now, are you still working out of your own studio?
Speaker 1: You're working out of your home.
Speaker 2: Well, if you can't beat them, you join them. And
Speaker 2: you know, when I had a big studio in Los
Speaker 2: Angeles for thirty five years, and when people started building
Speaker 2: studios in La not a lot of them. This is
Speaker 2: back when it cost you know, at least one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty two hundred thousand to build a minimal studio.
Speaker 2: You know, before the digital revolution, there was all the
Speaker 2: studios got together to get those outlawed because they were
Speaker 2: messing with whatever they are so so and I remember
Speaker 2: at the time thinking, you know, I know it's in
Speaker 2: the house, but I kind of like getting up in
Speaker 2: the morning, going to work at the studio and then
Speaker 2: coming home at night and going to bed. Now, I
Speaker 2: kind of like getting up at six thirty and mixing
Speaker 2: in my underwear.
Speaker 1: So what'd you do with your studio that you owned.
Speaker 2: I basically I sold it basically to the studio next door.
Speaker 1: And all the equipment in there.
Speaker 2: What happened to that. I took it with me and
Speaker 2: I've been parsing it off, so to speak. I've been
Speaker 2: selling it off as I don't need it anymore. But
Speaker 2: there was a lot of very ESO custom equipment. It
Speaker 2: was a very unique studio in that regard, including the
Speaker 2: console that we built from scratch and those we are
Speaker 2: now have a gentleman here that has a company. He
Speaker 2: builds pre amps and microphones and so on, and he's
Speaker 2: actually taking my pre amps two at a time and
Speaker 2: putting him in a package and we're repurposing those that
Speaker 2: way and all of the I had a huge collection
Speaker 2: of vintage microphones and I've been selling those off as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what do you actually have in your house
Speaker 1: and how much of that is from your old studio.
Speaker 2: What I have in the house. So when digital came out,
Speaker 2: I absolutely hated it. I didn't think sixteen forty four
Speaker 2: to one on the technical side, I didn't think that
Speaker 2: sounded very good, and I still don't. But I've done
Speaker 2: everything I can over the year. Of course, we've gotten better.
Speaker 2: We've learned a lot about filtering and sampling rates and
Speaker 2: all different things, so that we're in much better shape
Speaker 2: with digital than we were in the early eighties. But
Speaker 2: I did have in my studio a very technical homemade
Speaker 2: so to speak, from a guy named Josh Flori at
Speaker 2: JCF Audio. So what I have now is I come
Speaker 2: out of pro tools twenty four wide, and those go
Speaker 2: into sixteen custom made by Josh, sixteen transistor DTA a's
Speaker 2: and eight tube DTA a's and then that gets summed
Speaker 2: in a very simple analog summer with no amplifiers and
Speaker 2: goes into a patch pay where I can put any
Speaker 2: one of one, two, three, four, five, seven, seven analogue compressors.
Speaker 2: So I keep as much at the point between the tube,
Speaker 2: especially the tube DTA a and and the tube compressors.
Speaker 2: I keep as much of the old school as I can.
Speaker 1: Okay, why are some transistors and why are some tubes
Speaker 1: in the d DA A.
Speaker 2: I learned early on in my career that there's a
Speaker 2: special there's a special bond between tubes and transducers, either
Speaker 2: microphones or speakers and in and uh so when it
Speaker 2: came to the digital life, we live in now, I
Speaker 2: thought that having a tube DTA A would give me
Speaker 2: something and which it really does. It's a you know,
Speaker 2: it's a it's a much warmer, richer even though the
Speaker 2: frequency response is essentially the same as the transistor ones,
Speaker 2: it's a warmer, richer sound. So that works great on
Speaker 2: anything acoustic, anything you know, from a piano to voices
Speaker 2: and even electric bass, which tubes do a nice thing
Speaker 2: on base. So that's the basic reason.
Speaker 1: So if you have tubes and transistors, when would you
Speaker 1: use transistors.
Speaker 2: Well, the transistors in general, transistors are faster, meaning they
Speaker 2: you know, the sound is quicker. They don't. Tubes react
Speaker 2: a little slower. Tubes are a little rich, definitely a
Speaker 2: little richer, but the transistors are definitely faster. And so
Speaker 2: in fact, in fact, I'll remember I did a short
Speaker 2: stint at CBS as an engineer, and I noticed that
Speaker 2: the old school engineers that were all fifteen years younger
Speaker 2: than I am. Now, all the old school engineers were
Speaker 2: using that a tube mic called the U sixty seven,
Speaker 2: and young three young guys were using the eighty seven.
Speaker 2: The sixty seven was two and the eighty seven was
Speaker 2: the new transistor one. And I asked the older engineers,
Speaker 2: why do you guys use that. He said, well, Neiman
Speaker 2: came over from Germany with the eighty seven. They were
Speaker 2: so excited for us to try it, and they left
Speaker 2: it with us, and then they asked for a report
Speaker 2: a month later, and we told them. They called us
Speaker 2: and we told them, you know, we just liked the
Speaker 2: sound of the sixty seven better, and they said, what
Speaker 2: do you mean. He said, well, it's just kind of
Speaker 2: the eighty seven was kind of harsh. And they said, no, no,
Speaker 2: you don't understand. Transistors are very very fast. You're hearing
Speaker 2: for the first time what's really on the floor. And
Speaker 2: whereas they were correct that the transistors were faster, I
Speaker 2: don't know that anything. Do you really hear what's on
Speaker 2: the floor. It's really a bat matter of whatever sounds,
Speaker 2: you know, whatever's euphonic to the guy doing the work.
Speaker 2: And so they said, okay, but we're going to continue
Speaker 2: to use the old one because we just think it
Speaker 2: sounds better.
Speaker 1: Okay, you wrote a book, Chairman of the Board, Recording
Speaker 1: the Soundtrack of a Generation. You go in that book
Speaker 1: about using different mics for different situations, some ribbon something.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit more about that.
Speaker 2: Wow, I didn't know you were going to be so
Speaker 2: tech today. Fun. Well, yeah, there's you know, within the
Speaker 2: basic let's say put it down to three basic types
Speaker 2: of microphones condenser, dynamic, and ribbon and not. You know,
Speaker 2: it's a matter I think as you learn, as an
Speaker 2: engineer learns what the palette can do, the different colors
Speaker 2: that different microphones can do, you try things out, maybe
Speaker 2: what you've seen someone or maybe you try it yourself.
Speaker 2: I did a lot of experimenting my early years myself.
Speaker 2: And nothing's worse than trying something and you can't and
Speaker 2: you're in the middle of a session now and you
Speaker 2: can't change it. But oh that's not as good as
Speaker 2: what I used last week at all. But you don't
Speaker 2: make that mistake again anyway. Within each of the those types,
Speaker 2: you know, there's obviously a lot of different models of
Speaker 2: each of those types, and you just you know, have
Speaker 2: to have to figure what works. There's you know, dynamics
Speaker 2: will take level you can put them in, you know,
Speaker 2: in high level situations and they won't crumble. Condensers, some
Speaker 2: of them, a lot of them, almost most of them
Speaker 2: can't take the same kind of level, but they have
Speaker 2: a more extended frequency response, you hear a wider sound
Speaker 2: from a frequency standpoint. Ribbons are great usually most of
Speaker 2: them are good with level also, and they have a
Speaker 2: unique kind of sound that's tough to describe between those
Speaker 2: other two. You just have to experience, I mean, hear
Speaker 2: it to know it.
Speaker 1: So, before you started selling microphones, how many did you own?
Speaker 2: Oh? I don't even know. I couldn't tell you. I mean,
Speaker 2: if there's any tech people listening, I had nine two,
Speaker 2: fifty one, five and forty nine six and fifties eight, eight,
Speaker 2: fifty four's, ten fifty six's, seven fifty threes in that
Speaker 2: Noman old Noyman range, the fifty range. I am a
Speaker 2: huge fan of them, so it was a pretty big collection.
Speaker 1: Now, another thing you mentioned in your book is you know,
Speaker 1: I read Mike Campbell's book and he's talking about working
Speaker 1: with Jimmy Ivan and Shelley Yakis taking a week to
Speaker 1: get drum sounds. You said that a you worked faster,
Speaker 1: you got drum sounds faster. What was your style different
Speaker 1: in how did you make different from the people who
Speaker 1: were spending so much time or was it just a
Speaker 1: matter of they were on their own journey.
Speaker 2: Well, I came up. The first studio I got a
Speaker 2: job in was a very not a very good studio.
Speaker 2: It had egg cartons on the wall for sound absorption.
Speaker 2: It had one wall between the studio and the control room,
Speaker 2: one piece of glass, one door, and it was just stereo.
Speaker 2: It was only you only had two condenser i'll call
Speaker 2: them professional microphones. And the great news about that was
Speaker 2: you I got to learn mixing immediately. It wasn't a
Speaker 2: matter of starting out like most guys you know in
Speaker 2: the last sixty years have with fifty five years anyway,
Speaker 2: I have with the multi channel you know, tape recorder,
Speaker 2: and then taking as much time as you want to mix.
Speaker 2: So when everything was two track, they're playing, you're mixing,
Speaker 2: and the mix is done. And so what was the question,
Speaker 2: I'm off it. The question is Viking drums? Oh so
Speaker 2: one when I started on my own with the experimentation,
Speaker 2: I had met Glenn Johns who has a very unique
Speaker 2: micing for drums with basically three mics, one on the kick,
Speaker 2: one overhead directly overhead, and one off to the side
Speaker 2: equal distant from the overhead to the snare, so that
Speaker 2: when you put them left and right the snare is
Speaker 2: in the center, and I loved the size that he
Speaker 2: would get, but I didn't like the sound of the
Speaker 2: snare without a snare mic. So I started somewhere in there,
Speaker 2: and I was people that trained me were all the
Speaker 2: old school people that you know it starts, you know,
Speaker 2: because when everything was stereo, there wasn't all the equipment
Speaker 2: and all the equalizers. You know, it was basically a
Speaker 2: professional console had just tone controls, a top end boost
Speaker 2: or cut, and a blow end ten thousand cycle, one
Speaker 2: hundred cycle. So the idea was you picked the microphone
Speaker 2: for the sound. You learned about mike placement because that
Speaker 2: can change the sound dramatically. You put, if you don't
Speaker 2: like the sound, you change the position of the mic,
Speaker 2: or you change the mic or both. And that, you know,
Speaker 2: that's what you had to you had to rely on
Speaker 2: to get the sound that you wanted. So then came
Speaker 2: Elton John and I loved him as an artist, and
Speaker 2: there was no question when I heard the early drum
Speaker 2: sounds that were done in a studio called Trident by
Speaker 2: some very good engineers that they were using a lot
Speaker 2: of EQ a lot of microphones. There was a mic
Speaker 2: on every drum and a lot of equalization. You could
Speaker 2: hear it. My joke at the time was the snare
Speaker 2: sound on some of those records was it wasn't the
Speaker 2: sound of a stick hitting a snare, it was the
Speaker 2: sound of a stick hitting an equalizer. Because that's what
Speaker 2: I heard. That's what I heard first, was that equalization.
Speaker 2: But there was something about all that I really liked,
Speaker 2: and so to incorporate that into what I was doing
Speaker 2: and came up with my own version of it. As
Speaker 2: to the speed that you're talking about some people, yeah,
Speaker 2: because I came up in an era where you know,
Speaker 2: everything was live or even went to four track mostly live.
Speaker 2: You know, you had to move fast. Now obviously things
Speaker 2: changed and you had a lot more multi track, and
Speaker 2: you had bigger budget, big budgets than you could take
Speaker 2: more time. But I can't do it. I get bored
Speaker 2: very easily. I like my creativity works when I'm moving fast.
Speaker 2: I move fast and everything, and so I wanted to
Speaker 2: to I couldn't. Let's put it this way, I couldn't
Speaker 2: do what some of these people do, spending you know,
Speaker 2: all kinds of time on it. I mean I trained
Speaker 2: a guy initially named Jack Puig who's gone on to
Speaker 2: have a big career of his own, and he got
Speaker 2: some of the best drums in my studio that anyone did.
Speaker 2: But it was we're talking a day making a high hat,
Speaker 2: getting a high hat sound. I couldn't do that to myself,
Speaker 2: let alone to the drummer, and it was it was
Speaker 2: a band, a real band, and so you know, they
Speaker 2: didn't mind so much. But you know, I grew up
Speaker 2: working with studio musicians, and you know they got You've
Speaker 2: got minutes to get the drum sound and let's get going.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's your career and all these things about Mike Polaceman,
Speaker 1: has it been trial and error? Or to what degree
Speaker 1: have you had people who've instructed you mentor types?
Speaker 2: Basically, well, the initial I'll give you a brief history
Speaker 2: of me. So I my parents moved to southern California
Speaker 2: senior year of high school, and I was a very
Speaker 2: shy person, so I didn't make many friends, but I
Speaker 2: did make it with a couple of guys that were
Speaker 2: starting a band, and I played different instruments, but I said,
Speaker 2: how about an organ? The English Movement was out and
Speaker 2: several bands had used an organ, and so we started
Speaker 2: our band, and funny enough, we thought we wrote some
Speaker 2: pretty good songs and we made some demos and one
Speaker 2: of the kid's mothers knew someone who knew someone that
Speaker 2: was in the business. That guy was Gary Usher. He
Speaker 2: was friends with the Wilson family, the Beach Boy family,
Speaker 2: and actually wanted to be in the Beach Boys, but
Speaker 2: didn't make it, but he did write two of the
Speaker 2: Beach Boys big hits in My Room in four oh nine.
Speaker 2: He wrote with Brian and he had a deal now
Speaker 2: with Decca Records, and so we got a meeting with him,
Speaker 2: went in and he heard I mean, we sent him
Speaker 2: the tape and he liked it. So he said, come
Speaker 2: in for a meeting and he said he really liked it,
Speaker 2: and he thought one of the songs was a hit,
Speaker 2: and he signed us. Uh. We recorded the initials recordings
Speaker 2: at Capitol Studio B, and he brought in a guitarist
Speaker 2: to augment the band. Our guitar player wasn't that good, uh,
Speaker 2: and that his name was Richie Podler, and he was
Speaker 2: an outstanding musician. He just he just passed away recently.
Speaker 2: He was an outstanding musician and as it turns out,
Speaker 2: a phenomenal producer. And engineer as well, and I we
Speaker 2: got dropped. You know, in those days, it was called
Speaker 2: a singles deal. They signed us for four singles we've made.
Speaker 2: We did four songs and they put him out and
Speaker 2: if anything hit, you ran in and cut six more
Speaker 2: and then you had an album. So there was no
Speaker 2: La Teens album. And I always chuckle at that that
Speaker 2: Decker Records, who passed on the Beatles, signed the l
Speaker 2: A Teams. And it's not so much that, not so
Speaker 2: much that they signed the l A Teams, but what
Speaker 2: kind of longevity were they were they hoping for? You know,
Speaker 2: I was six seventeen years old. What did I know
Speaker 2: about longevity? But anyway, so when we got dropped, I
Speaker 2: went over to Richie Podler's studio and told him the
Speaker 2: sad news, and he said, oh, you guys were really good. Here.
Speaker 2: I've got a good connection. I can get you a
Speaker 2: record deal. On my word, go see this guy Mike Curb.
Speaker 2: He's going to go places. And indeed, Mike Curb has
Speaker 2: gone to incredible places. But he signed us to our
Speaker 2: second recording contract and we went in to work with Richie. Now,
Speaker 2: when we worked with Gary Usher at Capitol and actually
Speaker 2: Western and two of the best studios in LA still
Speaker 2: to this day, if Capitol will reopen. You know, they
Speaker 2: were fancy at the time, albeit three track, but that's
Speaker 2: all there was nineteen sixty five. And now we went
Speaker 2: into Richie's studio, which was much funkier, a little homemade
Speaker 2: console and whatnot, and you know, not the cleanest place.
Speaker 2: But I came in for the first playback. We went
Speaker 2: out and did a made a track, came in for
Speaker 2: the first playback, and I remember like it was yesterday,
Speaker 2: looking up at the speakers while while a two track
Speaker 2: basic track was playing, and I heard, and maybe more importantly,
Speaker 2: felt something in what I was hearing out of the
Speaker 2: band that I had never heard or felt at those
Speaker 2: other great studios, and I knew it had to be
Speaker 2: what Richie was doing. And when the song was over,
Speaker 2: I literally pointed at all the equipment and said, can
Speaker 2: you teach me how to do this? And he said, no,
Speaker 2: I'm teaching this guy, Bill Cooper, go out and do
Speaker 2: another take. We got to get a better take. But
Speaker 2: that was the moment that sealed in my mind what
Speaker 2: I would do, as it turns out, once I got
Speaker 2: away from my father. But you can relate to this.
Speaker 2: My father was a Jewish doctor, so you know what
Speaker 2: that means. And I told him, no, Dad, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to be a doctor. Well, then a lawyer, I
Speaker 2: don't know. In fact, In fact, I did start law
Speaker 2: school at Loyola on the part time program when I
Speaker 2: was working for Richie. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Speaker 2: But I couldn't. I got the grades and the second
Speaker 2: semester started and they were all season of B. I'd
Speaker 2: been faking it because I didn't have time to do
Speaker 2: the reading, go to class and do sessions. Anyway, after
Speaker 2: that first aha moment where I want, I want to
Speaker 2: know how to do that, because that was like magic
Speaker 2: to make the band sound and feel something so different
Speaker 2: than what I'd heard in those other great studios. So
Speaker 2: I went off to that studio I described earlier with
Speaker 2: the egg cartons on the wall and got my start
Speaker 2: learning there and where my left brain and right brain
Speaker 2: met in the middle. Engineering came very very quickly. I
Speaker 2: was very fortunate to meet someone who was an engineer
Speaker 2: that was very patient and heard what I was recording
Speaker 2: in that studio and thought that I had some real talent.
Speaker 2: And he was working in another studio, and I was
Speaker 2: I was back in college at this point, and I
Speaker 2: went over every night after school and would ask him,
Speaker 2: just nail him with question after question after question until
Speaker 2: he couldn't take it anymore, and he would say, all right, enough,
Speaker 2: go ahead, go home, I'll see you tomorrow. But engineering
Speaker 2: came very quickly, and so had we had upgraded that
Speaker 2: Mickey Mouse studio a bit. Still wasn't what I would
Speaker 2: call really professional, but it was closer, and I started
Speaker 2: doing some work that there was an engineer that worked
Speaker 2: for Richie Podler that was quitting the business. He was
Speaker 2: going to move back to Florida. And we're tug boats.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that has to do with engineering,
Speaker 2: but anyway, I said, do you think Richie and This
Speaker 2: would hire me? And he said, well he should because
Speaker 2: he'd heard all of what I was doing. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: let's bug him. And so for two months. I don't
Speaker 2: know how many times Tommy, the other engineer ever bugged him,
Speaker 2: but I bugged him like crazy for two solid months,
Speaker 2: and finally he wouldn't answer my calls a lot of
Speaker 2: the time because he knew why I was calling. I
Speaker 2: went over to corner him one day, and I said,
Speaker 2: you know, just give me a shot. That's all I'm
Speaker 2: asking for. See, I'm telling you now, I don't blame
Speaker 2: him because it only been like two and a half
Speaker 2: years since I had that aha moment where I didn't
Speaker 2: I barely knew what an equalizer from a limiter was.
Speaker 2: So here I am by now that studio American Recording
Speaker 2: was the hottest rock studio in Los Angeles. His biggest
Speaker 2: client was a guy named Gabriel Meckler who produced Three
Speaker 2: dog Nights first album and Steppenwolf's first album. And so
Speaker 2: Richie was really kicking it. But I begged him to
Speaker 2: give me a shot, and finally he said, all right,
Speaker 2: there's a demo session tomorrow morning. Come in and do that.
Speaker 2: Tell me what you know, let's see what you can do.
Speaker 2: So I went in. The demo sessions were like for publishers,
Speaker 2: where songwriter would come in, record four tracks, four new songs,
Speaker 2: put vocals on him, quick mixes, and go out the door.
Speaker 2: And then they would go make acetate little one off
Speaker 2: records that they would send to different artists or record
Speaker 2: companies to try to get their songs placed. So they
Speaker 2: were just demos, and he felt comfortable, comfortable leaving me
Speaker 2: with that. So I did that for screen Gems Lester
Speaker 2: Sills Company and I and I called him that you
Speaker 2: know that afternoon. I said, well, they said, well, they
Speaker 2: said you were great. I said, okay, what now? He said, well,
Speaker 2: tomorrow morning there's a different company, come in and do
Speaker 2: their same thing. Okay. So I went and did that,
Speaker 2: called him the afternoon, same thing. Okay. Now he said,
Speaker 2: all right, come tomorrow night and record three dog night. Okay,
Speaker 2: what now? What sense that makes? I have no idea.
Speaker 2: This was his biggest client and he throws this kid in.
Speaker 2: I don't get it. Scared to death. I went in
Speaker 2: the next night. Both the producer and the band were
Speaker 2: really nice, sweet to me, and I cut a track
Speaker 2: with him and called Richie the next day and I said,
Speaker 2: what did Gabriel say? He said, you were great? Okay,
Speaker 2: what now? He said, come tonight, do it again. Okay.
Speaker 2: I went in and cut a second track next morning,
Speaker 2: same thing, all right. Third night, I'm in with the
Speaker 2: band and the guitar player, Mike alsoon the guitar player
Speaker 2: wanted a guitar effect, and I'm sure that from the
Speaker 2: first album that Richie engineered that he knew that Richie
Speaker 2: could do anything with the guitar and so, and I'm
Speaker 2: being a keyboard player. I didn't know how to get
Speaker 2: any of those effects. So I had to call Richie
Speaker 2: and he came down and finished the session. That was
Speaker 2: the end of me tracking on that album. But I
Speaker 2: did do overdubs, and most importantly, I got in that
Speaker 2: room every chance I could to watch Richie because he
Speaker 2: really was an unbelievably brilliant engineer, and that's what pushed
Speaker 2: me off.
Speaker 1: Let's go back a chapter. You get involved with Bike Kurb.
Speaker 1: Anybody who's ever involved with Bike Kerb could never get
Speaker 1: out of his tentacles. Whereas you say, hey, a couple
Speaker 1: of sides and that was it. There are people might go,
Speaker 1: you know, you still owe me two more albums this
Speaker 1: and that. What was your experience with bike CERB. Was
Speaker 1: it as clean as it what you said just now
Speaker 1: and in the book?
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically it was. It was because you know what
Speaker 2: happened was Richie started. We cut one track, one track
Speaker 2: that day that I had my AHA moment, and then Richie,
Speaker 2: you know, I said, Okay, when do we come back?
Speaker 2: He said, it'll be a few days. I kept calling.
Speaker 2: Finally he said, Mike and I are on the outside.
Speaker 2: Don't think I'm going to be able to work with you.
Speaker 2: And so I went to Mike Curb to his office,
Speaker 2: which at that time was down on Sunset. It was
Speaker 2: Sidewalk Productions Curb Sidewalk. Yeah, and the office consisted of
Speaker 2: his sister Carol. That was it. And I said, well
Speaker 2: what do we do now? And we're sitting there in
Speaker 2: the office and I remember and what a cheeky little
Speaker 2: kid I was, because you know, he started making a
Speaker 2: suggestion of some kind. I said, maybe I could produce us,
Speaker 2: and he said we could try that. He had his
Speaker 2: own studio, so he said, yeah, go ahead and try it. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: when we got dropped from Decca, our drummer, our drummer's
Speaker 2: father made him quit the band and get a real job,
Speaker 2: and so I said, we don't have a drummer, and
Speaker 2: he said, well, the engineer in my studio is a
Speaker 2: really good drummer. And I said, and he can play
Speaker 2: the drums. And engineer, oh, yeah, it's possible. It'll be fine.
Speaker 2: And so we went in did that. Cute stories about
Speaker 2: that in the book, But the bottom line is everything
Speaker 2: fell apart with the band, and and because he had
Speaker 2: next to nothing literally invested in us, there were no
Speaker 2: there were no tentacles to get wrapped around. So it
Speaker 2: was it was basically a short and sweet relationship.
Speaker 1: Although you did interact with Mike. Did he know anything
Speaker 1: about music? Did you have the sense he was going
Speaker 1: to go somewhere? What? How did he come across back then?
Speaker 2: No, I had no idea he knew anything about music.
Speaker 2: He didn't talk in musical terms. Uh, now I'm going
Speaker 2: by what my meant. My mentor, Richie Podler said the
Speaker 2: reason they broke up was Richie was doing all the
Speaker 2: work and Mike was getting all the credit slash money,
Speaker 2: and Richie demanded that he get credit and or you know,
Speaker 2: points for the work he was doing, and Mike refused.
Speaker 2: That's Richie's story. I'm sure Mike has a different one.
Speaker 2: I will say, however, that in those early years when
Speaker 2: I was able to talk Richie, when he allowed me
Speaker 2: to start working there, a couple of the producers quote
Speaker 2: unquote that I worked with were very much like that.
Speaker 2: They found out that I was very musical and I
Speaker 2: basically was doing more producing than they were, and they
Speaker 2: got all the credit. So there was a bit more
Speaker 2: of that back then. As you know, the business was
Speaker 2: kind of transforming, because you know, in the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 2: the producer most often worked at the record company, and
Speaker 2: it was about you know, finding maybe finding songs, and
Speaker 2: then getting the arranger and the studio and putting it
Speaker 2: all together and there was your record. There were exceptions,
Speaker 2: but that was the bulk of what went on back then.
Speaker 2: And so as we're transitioning into i'll call it rock
Speaker 2: air for lack of anything else, as multi track, and
Speaker 2: ultimately engineering would become a lot more part of the
Speaker 2: production process than just capturing what was going on live
Speaker 2: in the studio. This had this transformation brought in different
Speaker 2: kinds of producers, and unfortunately a lot of them were,
Speaker 2: as I said, kind of that's what they did. So
Speaker 2: I have no first hand experience about Mike in that regard.
Speaker 1: Your father, who wanted you to be a professional, did
Speaker 1: he ever ultimately respect what you did.
Speaker 2: Put it to you this way. Two years before he died,
Speaker 2: I had I had two Grammy nominations and maybe eight
Speaker 2: or ten No, No, six or eight gold records, and
Speaker 2: he literally sat me down and said, Bill, when are
Speaker 2: you going to get a real job. And I looked
Speaker 2: him and I looked at him and I said, Dad,
Speaker 2: I think I found my job. It's something I love doing.
Speaker 2: I think I'm good at it, and I've already had
Speaker 2: some success. I really want to do this. No, you
Speaker 2: can't trust it as a profession. You know a lot
Speaker 2: about that. So he was old school, you know, old
Speaker 2: school guy from Austria, and what can I say? He
Speaker 2: was self made guy and very bright and from what
Speaker 2: I hear, a very good surgeon. He went to NYU
Speaker 2: undergrad and then went to France actually because it was
Speaker 2: cheaper for med school, came back and opened up his
Speaker 2: practice on Long Island. World War two came and government
Speaker 2: said we need you, and so they put him at
Speaker 2: Ford or to California, where he put something like twenty
Speaker 2: six hundred servicemen back to other And when the war
Speaker 2: was over, he was he'd had it with medicine. So
Speaker 2: he took a couple of classes in business and got
Speaker 2: into administrative medicine, managing a clinic or hospital or something.
Speaker 1: And how about your mother? Was she supportive?
Speaker 2: Yeah? She was. Everything Billy does is great, So yeah,
Speaker 2: she was very supportive. But you know, The funny thing
Speaker 2: about that is only since the book, since the book,
Speaker 2: and the people that write me having read the book,
Speaker 2: it may sound silly, I don't know of it. I mean,
Speaker 2: I figured it out halfway through writing the book. I
Speaker 2: just lived my life, you know, and I went from
Speaker 2: this project to that project. And I knew I'd worked
Speaker 2: with a lot of big people. I knew I had
Speaker 2: a lot of awards and all that stuff, but it
Speaker 2: didn't coalesce into something that I could actually be proud of.
Speaker 2: And about halfway through writing the book, and since writing
Speaker 2: the book, the people that write me, some of the
Speaker 2: stories I'm told just are amazing to me that the
Speaker 2: music pop music, R and B music and whatnot meant
Speaker 2: so so, so so much to so many people. And
Speaker 2: I'm especially tickled by the professionals. I've got two aerospace
Speaker 2: engineers in Florida that I communicate with, the head of
Speaker 2: legal for Coca Cola. I communicate with him and he
Speaker 2: actually went to Atlanta and had lunch with him once.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I always used to joke that when I
Speaker 2: tell that about my dad, and I say, if I
Speaker 2: ever go to a psychiatrist, I'm sure that's where it
Speaker 2: will start. Well, funny enough, I've never thought about it
Speaker 2: that way, but I kind of did it in reverse
Speaker 2: when all these people started telling me how much what
Speaker 2: I did meant to them, because I didn't get that
Speaker 2: from my father. So that was cool.
Speaker 1: Okay. Also peeped picture of the music scene in LA
Speaker 1: when the La teens are forming. You know, at that
Speaker 1: point in Los Angeles there were a lot of independent labels.
Speaker 1: There was a lot happening. Was that palpable to everybody
Speaker 1: living in the Los Angeles area? Were people music crazy
Speaker 1: or it was just something you were into? What was
Speaker 1: the scene like?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, as I've learned after becoming professional and
Speaker 2: going back and you know, listening to the records back
Speaker 2: then with a new light and so on. You know,
Speaker 2: we were just we were in a suburb of LA
Speaker 2: doing our own little thing, and you know, we had
Speaker 2: really we did a Battle of the bands and were
Speaker 2: shocked to death. We didn't win, but in Hollywood, amazing
Speaker 2: the things you remember, the hurts. But I have to say,
Speaker 2: we weren't aware of anything really of what was going on.
Speaker 2: We were just were doing our own little thing and
Speaker 2: it happened to work out kind of good.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're working for Richie put Alore and you're doing
Speaker 1: some sessions. What's the next step after that?
Speaker 2: The next step is Richie took over producing. After that
Speaker 2: second Three Dog Night album, he took over producing Three
Speaker 2: Dog Night and he actually produced the lion's share of
Speaker 2: the hits for them through the seventies into the eighties,
Speaker 2: and he took over Steppenwolf and now he was, you know,
Speaker 2: a year and a half, two years into it, he's
Speaker 2: really popular, and so he's getting all kinds of offers.
Speaker 2: And I went to him and I said, Richie, I
Speaker 2: got a great idea. Let's close the studio to outside clients.
Speaker 2: You know, groups are going to be hitting you up.
Speaker 2: They already are you funnel them to me and get
Speaker 2: my production career going, and you know, they signed to
Speaker 2: your production company. And he loved that idea. He said
Speaker 2: that that's great, we'll do it. And so he signed
Speaker 2: a band and gave him to me, and I went
Speaker 2: in and cut one track with them. They were called
Speaker 2: The Realm, and they and then Richie started a See
Speaker 2: in those days, I should back up. In those days,
Speaker 2: in the studios they were a lot of them were
Speaker 2: basically divided to a day client and a night client,
Speaker 2: so quite often that's what it would be. You'd have
Speaker 2: to reset up every night if you were the night client,
Speaker 2: if you had a long booking. So he was starting
Speaker 2: a three dog I mean a Steppenwolf album, and he
Speaker 2: didn't want to have to tear down, so he said,
Speaker 2: you know, you're going to have to take a break
Speaker 2: till I get all my tracks done. Well, you know
Speaker 2: that one week turned into two weeks, turned into I
Speaker 2: don't know how many, and funny enough, his production company
Speaker 2: was only paying me when I was in the studio,
Speaker 2: so I said, I'm going to have to go independent, Richie,
Speaker 2: and he said, fine, go go. So that's when I
Speaker 2: went off on my own, and which was frightening for me,
Speaker 2: because he his studio, he knew what he was doing,
Speaker 2: and I did. I just copied everything he did in
Speaker 2: terms of micing and so on. And I tried doing
Speaker 2: that when I went into the first studio I went
Speaker 2: to and the second, and even though they had brand new,
Speaker 2: beautiful consoles and you know, newer speakers and newer this
Speaker 2: and newer that, I couldn't get anything close to the
Speaker 2: sound that I got at his studio. And that's when
Speaker 2: my experimentation started full bore. So I'm I'm humping along.
Speaker 2: And so that's by the way. Right before I left
Speaker 2: Richie's was when I had started law school to shut
Speaker 2: my dad up, and so I'm independent. When when the
Speaker 2: second semester starts and I said, you know, I quit
Speaker 2: my band. I quit college for two and a half
Speaker 2: years to chase my band. What I'm going to do
Speaker 2: is quit law school for a year and a half
Speaker 2: and see if engineering, producing whatever can support me. So
Speaker 2: that's what I was doing the best best I could.
Speaker 2: And I did get one one record company. It was
Speaker 2: one of my clients that I did all the work
Speaker 2: for had managed to get a job at a record
Speaker 2: company and he I found a gospel a black gospel group,
Speaker 2: and he let me do four sides with him. We
Speaker 2: put them out. There was no hits, but we so
Speaker 2: here I am and was a little over a year.
Speaker 2: It's about time to register for the fall, and I'm thinking,
Speaker 2: I'm pretty much thinking I've got to go back and
Speaker 2: get the degree. Shut him up. Maybe he's right, Look,
Speaker 2: this isn't working. I mean, I'm making a living, but
Speaker 2: I don't know. And so I'm mixing one day and
Speaker 2: the girl in front buzzes in and by myself, and
Speaker 2: she buzzes in on the phone and says, Clive Davis
Speaker 2: on one for you, and I'm going b blah blah
Speaker 2: blah blah blah whah. I picked up the phone very nervously. Hello,
Speaker 2: Hi Bill, Clive Davis, I said Hi. He said, Joel
Speaker 2: still tells me that you are a very good musician
Speaker 2: and engineer. Oh thank you. He said, what do you
Speaker 2: want to do with your life? And I said, well,
Speaker 2: I would love to do music, but and I was
Speaker 2: starting to say but my dad wants me to and
Speaker 2: he said, wait, wait, stop, I went to law school.
Speaker 2: You don't need to go to law school if you
Speaker 2: want to do music, you know. And I said yeah,
Speaker 2: but and basically he took the butt away. He said,
Speaker 2: what if I let you? What if I sign you
Speaker 2: and let you give you a chance to produce? And
Speaker 2: I said, well that works. I'll try that for sure.
Speaker 2: And so the first thing, the first thing I did
Speaker 2: was actually with Joel again, with me basically doing the
Speaker 2: lion's share of the work. And it was a group
Speaker 2: called Sweat Hoog and we funny enough, we got lucky,
Speaker 2: and the first single was a hit, not big one,
Speaker 2: so I think in the high twenties or something, low thirties,
Speaker 2: I don't know. And but that that led led the way,
Speaker 2: that's what and that's what got the ball rolling higher
Speaker 2: and faster.
Speaker 1: Okay, you worked with Clive, he did you a solid,
Speaker 1: he gave you the gig. But what was your experience
Speaker 1: working for Clive to the degree even interacted with.
Speaker 2: Him very very good, And not just because he gave
Speaker 2: me that shot, Because I mean all of my dealings
Speaker 2: with him throughout the years have all been have all
Speaker 2: been good. Did I agree with everything he said or
Speaker 2: wanted to do. No, we all have our opinions, but
Speaker 2: we're not all, you know, the chairman of the board,
Speaker 2: of the head of the company and whatever whatever. And
Speaker 2: I so but everything that all of my in those
Speaker 2: early years, I learned a lot from him. You know,
Speaker 2: he leaned you know, he was seeing what the kid
Speaker 2: could do, and it was really great. One funny one
Speaker 2: funny story is I think the very first thing he
Speaker 2: gave me to do was Boz Skaggs, who I would
Speaker 2: later go on to produce Boz Skags. It was his
Speaker 2: first album for CBS, and again Glenn Johns had produced it,
Speaker 2: and there was a single and you know, in those days,
Speaker 2: especially AM radio, We're talking nineteen seventy AM radio was
Speaker 2: the playlist had to be. You know, they varied, but
Speaker 2: it was like, you know, three minutes and thirty seconds
Speaker 2: and blah blah blah. So he said, I need a
Speaker 2: radio edit on this song. See what you can come
Speaker 2: up with. So I made the edit. He loved it.
Speaker 2: And then the next year was when Glenn came to
Speaker 2: America to master Who's Next Who album And that's when
Speaker 2: I met him at the mastering lab where I'm mastered
Speaker 2: and where Glenn mastered, and I was very nervous meeting
Speaker 2: him for the first time, and I said, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm the guy that did the radio edit on we
Speaker 2: were always sweethearts. And he looked at me in his
Speaker 2: typical dry voice and said, oh, you're the idiot that
Speaker 2: mucked it all up. And then he broke right away
Speaker 2: and said, I'm just kidding. It was a good edit.
Speaker 2: And of course, now to him, I would have said,
Speaker 2: your darn right, it was a good edit. But right
Speaker 2: then I went, thank you.
Speaker 1: So how long did you work for CBS and what
Speaker 1: did you do there other than boz guys.
Speaker 2: Okay. So from there one Sweat, Hog Hit. So went
Speaker 2: to New York to do Blood, Sweat and Tears, the
Speaker 2: new Blood album after which is new Blood because David
Speaker 2: Clayton Thomas, the great singer in those first couple of albums,
Speaker 2: had left the band and they wanted to record near
Speaker 2: their houses. So we recorded a studio and at New
Speaker 2: York and we cut like five tracks, and then the
Speaker 2: plan was we went into the city to record vocals
Speaker 2: with the new singer, who I hadn't met, and so
Speaker 2: we showed up one night and waited and waited, and
Speaker 2: of course no cell phones and everyone's trying to find him,
Speaker 2: and he didn't show And the next day they called
Speaker 2: me in the hotel and said, well, we got a problem.
Speaker 2: We just found out he's an alcoholic and he's on
Speaker 2: a binge. So we got to find a new singer.
Speaker 2: So okay, So, knowing that that was going to take
Speaker 2: a long time, called Clive and said, I don't know
Speaker 2: what to do. He said, well, come back, I'll find
Speaker 2: something funny enough Steve Tyrell. After they found a new singer,
Speaker 2: Steve Tyrell, who many years later I would do it
Speaker 2: mix all of his records was took over and finished
Speaker 2: that new Blood album. One of the many tie ins
Speaker 2: with people from the beginning to the end. That's kind
Speaker 2: of neat. So I came back to LA and he said, okay,
Speaker 2: White Trash. I said, oh great, you know that'll be great.
Speaker 2: I said, who, do I talk to Edgar? And he
Speaker 2: said no, actually Edgar has left White Trash, but the singer,
Speaker 2: the great singer, Jerry Lacroix, is still there. So okay.
Speaker 2: So I met with Jerry. We started talking production ideas.
Speaker 2: He played me the songs he had written, and he
Speaker 2: was not a big writer on Edgar's album, and I
Speaker 2: didn't care for his songs. So I got some songs
Speaker 2: and he didn't care for the songs I did. So
Speaker 2: I got started and it was just an uphill battle.
Speaker 2: It wasn't working, and one of the guys in his
Speaker 2: band really wanted to produce the band, and I called
Speaker 2: Clive and said, you know, I don't think I can
Speaker 2: work on that. You know, you're going to have to
Speaker 2: figure out it's kind of a scene here and he said, okay,
Speaker 2: all right. So that was that and before now you
Speaker 2: can imagine here I thought I was. I thought, oh boy,
Speaker 2: my big break well. Sweat Hog broke up after the
Speaker 2: first album, Sweat Hog breaks up, Blood, Sweat and Tears,
Speaker 2: we can't finish the album, and now White Trash isn't working.
Speaker 2: Every time. It was maybe my dad's right, that's all
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, Maybe my dad's right. And CBS had a
Speaker 2: very strange policy studios at the time. It was very, very,
Speaker 2: very very that's three varies, I'll give it four varies.
Speaker 2: Strange policy from their union, and the union rules were
Speaker 2: that nobody but a union engineer could touch the console
Speaker 2: and okay, and so in the meantime. The other strange
Speaker 2: thing they did. They had a big section I don't remember,
Speaker 2: but about nine ten engineers, but only one assistant engineer.
Speaker 2: And so what they did was if you weren't working
Speaker 2: either mixing or recording, book to record or mix, they
Speaker 2: put you as a second on a session, which was
Speaker 2: kind of weird because one day you could be recording
Speaker 2: some huge artist and the next week you're engineering an
Speaker 2: assistant engineer on a demo. Very strange, but whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I was sitting around with nobody calling me to mix,
Speaker 2: and so they were trying to be respectful, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm sure Clive had told them about me and the
Speaker 2: plans that he had for me, so they didn't let
Speaker 2: me work. But some of the young guys were really
Speaker 2: upset about the fact that I was sitting around not
Speaker 2: doing anything. See, I had been I had been an
Speaker 2: independent engineer, as I mentioned earlier, one of the first
Speaker 2: in LA and I didn't think it was a tremendous
Speaker 2: amount of money, but it was more more than you
Speaker 2: could make working for the CBS. So Clive I told
Speaker 2: him about that problem, and they hired me at top scale.
Speaker 2: And so the young guys were very perturbed about that,
Speaker 2: needless to say, and in fact, I'll never forget when
Speaker 2: I'm the night manager took me around. They put me
Speaker 2: on the night shift. First, took me around to meet
Speaker 2: whoever was there working. And I went into the break
Speaker 2: room and here are the three young guys and one
Speaker 2: of them, you know, he introduces me. That guy introduces me,
Speaker 2: and the one guy looks at him says, are you
Speaker 2: a cop? And I said, no, I'm not a cop.
Speaker 2: And I had been told that they were trying to
Speaker 2: get them fired because they knew they were doing drugs,
Speaker 2: well pot anyway. And so later when I became friends
Speaker 2: with that guy. I said, do you think if there
Speaker 2: was a cop being hired that they would hire him
Speaker 2: at top scale? They'd hire some guy that, you know,
Speaker 2: mealy mouth guy that sat in the back of the
Speaker 2: room and did nothing. You know, you must have been high.
Speaker 2: I don't get it. So they put me in to
Speaker 2: shut those young guys up. They put me in as
Speaker 2: a second on a Barbara Streisand session with Richard Perry producing,
Speaker 2: And I'm just there running the tape machine and you know,
Speaker 2: doing whatever the engineer wants. And after about five days
Speaker 2: in the studio, and I never asked him why, I know,
Speaker 2: I had a You may know, I had a very
Speaker 2: long and prosperous relationship for both of us with Richard Perry,
Speaker 2: a lot of very very big albums. But for some reason,
Speaker 2: after five days of recording, he turned to the engineer
Speaker 2: and said, I want to build an engineer tomorrow. And
Speaker 2: the engineer wasn't too happy about that. He hadn't done
Speaker 2: anything wrong as far as I knew. But that's when
Speaker 2: I started, you know, with basically with Richard, and also
Speaker 2: when I started realizing what engineering could be. Because here
Speaker 2: I was sitting with a holding a fader, hold a
Speaker 2: knob that fifty feet away is a microphone that this
Speaker 2: unbelievable singer is emoting into. And one of my first
Speaker 2: titles for the book was going to be best seat
Speaker 2: in the House, because boy, when you're doing that, you
Speaker 2: have the best seat in the house, a seat that
Speaker 2: might include swearing even sometimes. But no, Barbara didn't swear.
Speaker 2: I don't remember Barbera swearing. But she and I hit
Speaker 2: it off really really well, and had hadn't have a
Speaker 2: great relationship. I worked with her over the years, and
Speaker 2: I may not be the only one, but I'm the
Speaker 2: only engineer that I know of that's worked with Barbara
Speaker 2: any excuse me, any amount of time that I have
Speaker 2: to say, I never had a problem with her. You know,
Speaker 2: she's very demanding, she's extremely intelligent. She is demanding. But
Speaker 2: i've other than other than on a live orchestra session,
Speaker 2: she didn't like her headphone mix. I had to work
Speaker 2: work that out a little bit. You know, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of pressure. You know, I realized that she's sitting
Speaker 2: there with eighty pieces out there, and she has to
Speaker 2: give a performance and so on, so I understand a little.
Speaker 2: But I got her headphones together and everything was fine. Anyway,
Speaker 2: what happened is people like Richard Perry that wanted to
Speaker 2: touch the controls. He wanted to ride the faders, and
Speaker 2: some of the engineers would report him to the union
Speaker 2: and so they would come in and you know, bark
Speaker 2: at Richard. And he wasn't the only one, but Clive
Speaker 2: was getting other people that wanted to be able to,
Speaker 2: you know, touch I don't know that any of them
Speaker 2: wanted to engineer necessarily, but just to be able to,
Speaker 2: you know, touch the faders if they wanted to play
Speaker 2: with the balances. And so he went to the union
Speaker 2: and said, you need to change that rule and they,
Speaker 2: I'm sure, with all the pride they had, they went, well,
Speaker 2: we're not going to And he said, you don't understand.
Speaker 2: I can't let you in your rule affect my creative
Speaker 2: creativity in my record company. I have to be able
Speaker 2: to hire people that I want and if they won't
Speaker 2: work because of your union rule, that that's not going
Speaker 2: to work. And they said, we're sorry, and he said,
Speaker 2: one more time, I'm closing the studios if you don't
Speaker 2: change your rule. He closed the studios, but I don't
Speaker 2: know how many people out of work, just a snap
Speaker 2: and who can blame him? I have to say, you know,
Speaker 2: like I said, the business was definitely changing. And uh,
Speaker 2: you know obviously right after that the engineer producer became
Speaker 2: a thing in England and here, uh and you know
Speaker 2: it wasn't going to work and they didn't, you know,
Speaker 2: they didn't change with the times.
Speaker 1: Okay, Richard's he says, he wants you to engineer. There
Speaker 1: must have been something that Tree inspired, something that you
Speaker 1: did that he wanted you.
Speaker 2: If I knew, Bob, i'd tell you. I promise I have,
Speaker 2: you know, I think of it my time. Back then
Speaker 2: we were in Studio A, and the tape machine was
Speaker 2: in like this secondary room, no walls, been a secondary
Speaker 2: room off to the left of the control room where
Speaker 2: you know, he can see me and I can see him.
Speaker 2: You know, you could you know, throw a tennis ball
Speaker 2: and hit him in the head. But you know, and
Speaker 2: I was, I was so shy, and you know, I
Speaker 2: wasn't scared to run the tape machine or anything. But
Speaker 2: I don't know that, I said. Maybe he asked me
Speaker 2: a couple of questions and I answered them the way
Speaker 2: he liked. I don't know, I have no idea, like
Speaker 2: I said, considering how many hours, days, weeks, months, years
Speaker 2: I spent in a control room with him. I'm really
Speaker 2: sorry I never asked him what was it that made
Speaker 2: you want to give me a shot at the first chair?
Speaker 2: But I never did it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So now you're behind the board with Richard.
Speaker 2: Ay.
Speaker 1: How sophisticated is the board at that point? And what
Speaker 1: does he tell you to do or not to do? Well?
Speaker 2: He he was trying to figure every he you know,
Speaker 2: he was pretty young in his career, he was, yeah,
Speaker 2: he and he was still learning things about about recording.
Speaker 2: So he didn't know what a compressor did or a
Speaker 2: limitter did, but he knew equalizers made things brighter or
Speaker 2: duller or basier or whatever. But I remember, I don't
Speaker 2: remember him even turning those. The main thing he wanted
Speaker 2: to do was, well, the thing was playing. He wanted to,
Speaker 2: you know, pull the piano. Rather than tell the engineer
Speaker 2: what to do, he wanted to just do it, you know,
Speaker 2: so he started That's what he would do, is just
Speaker 2: start playing with the balance on a play back. And
Speaker 2: and not all the time either, but uh, you know,
Speaker 2: basically though, he would trance, you know, he would give
Speaker 2: me his whatever thoughts he had on what to do,
Speaker 2: and I would do them. He was he was very eloquent.
Speaker 1: What was his special sauce? You work with a number
Speaker 1: of producers, what was special about him vis a vis
Speaker 1: somebody else?
Speaker 2: Uh, let's see where do I start? I guess I
Speaker 2: start with a great song, since, especially if he's if
Speaker 2: he's finding songs for an artist, like he did obviously
Speaker 2: for Barbara or the Pointer sisters. He found, you know,
Speaker 2: all the songs for their illustrious career. He gave them.
Speaker 2: He worked best that way. He didn't work as well
Speaker 2: with single artists. I remember I'm independent now and he's
Speaker 2: in England doing the No Secrets album, your Sylvaine album
Speaker 2: with Carl Simon, and he still thought of me. He
Speaker 2: knew that I was this guy that came from Richie
Speaker 2: Podler's rock studio. So and I had done rock, produced
Speaker 2: rock stuff, or tried to when when I was at CBS.
Speaker 2: So that's how he thought of me. So he recorded
Speaker 2: the album and mixed all but two songs in England
Speaker 2: with Robin Cable, and he called me and said, there's
Speaker 2: I'm coming back and next week I want you to
Speaker 2: get a studio. There's two rock songs. That I want
Speaker 2: you to mix and I said okay, and so he
Speaker 2: that's what I did. And he was late for this session,
Speaker 2: as he always was, but Carly was on time the
Speaker 2: first mixing session and she we got She we hit
Speaker 2: it off right away, with her telling me what a
Speaker 2: it was a nightmare. I've never I've never screamed at
Speaker 2: anyone before I had to. I was I had to
Speaker 2: go and get sedatives in England. I said, really said, yeah,
Speaker 2: he was you. He's so stubborn. She's just going through
Speaker 2: all this, you know. Wow. In fact, I remember when
Speaker 2: we mastered that record, she was dating James Taylor and
Speaker 2: James went outside, I think, for a cigarette and I
Speaker 2: went out to talk to him while Doug Sax was
Speaker 2: mastering the album and he was sitting there and he said,
Speaker 2: I told him. I said, you know, she said it
Speaker 2: was really rough on her. And he said, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: I'll never let her work with him again. And of
Speaker 2: course you know how that works with success. And now
Speaker 2: maybe we can make another exception or two or three.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so yeah. But then so Richard, I mixed
Speaker 2: the two rock songs, and Richard, always looking for something better,
Speaker 2: said why don't we try and mix on this song.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, and that came out great, and yeah, I
Speaker 2: mixed the whole album over.
Speaker 1: Yes, But ultimately he went with Keybles mix of your
Speaker 1: Sylvain correct.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I promised myself I would I would forgive
Speaker 2: Doug for doing this, for he was because of Doug
Speaker 2: Sachs and what it was. I thought my mix was
Speaker 2: better in every way, and Doug did until one time.
Speaker 2: I see about the fourth time he's listening to it.
Speaker 2: Initially he said, oh, yeah, this is really good, and
Speaker 2: then he noticed that before every chorus when Jim Gordon,
Speaker 2: the drummer starts off with Clouds in my Coffee, that
Speaker 2: there's starts with the bass drum going to the toms.
Speaker 2: That the bass trum that was the only the bass
Speaker 2: drum on my mix was a little bit softer than
Speaker 2: it was on Robin's. And it's the kind of thing
Speaker 2: I promise you that the compression on both AM and
Speaker 2: FM radio would more than have taken up and stated
Speaker 2: for But as soon as he showed that to Richard,
Speaker 2: that's all it took. So he went with the mix
Speaker 2: and it is what it is, and it am there.
Speaker 1: So let's say I listened you know you're close to it.
Speaker 1: But if the average person, not completely unsophisticated but not
Speaker 1: a pro, listen to your mix or the single mix
Speaker 1: that went out, how different were they?
Speaker 2: Well? How do I put that in words? Mine? Certainly,
Speaker 2: not Night and Day. Certainly not night and day. There's
Speaker 2: some guitars in there that mine were a little louder
Speaker 2: that when I hear it that because they're down they weren't.
Speaker 2: You know, I know the compression would have done that
Speaker 2: because the only thing playing before every chorus is that
Speaker 2: drum and her voice. And even though even though she's
Speaker 2: louder in every mix than the drum, it would have
Speaker 2: caught it. It would have pulled her to that and
Speaker 2: the drum would have come up. But like the guitars,
Speaker 2: the things that I like about my mix better very
Speaker 2: to this day when I hear it on the radio. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's one of the things I know was better about mine.
Speaker 2: I don't know that I'd have to hear it again
Speaker 2: to remember to hear them back to back.
Speaker 1: You remember, okay, you track the Barber Streiss in the album.
Speaker 1: Then when it comes to mixing some of it, some
Speaker 1: of it, okay, Then what happens when it comes to mixing.
Speaker 2: Again. The album was halfway done when I got involved,
Speaker 2: and some of it was already mixed by the other
Speaker 2: engineer and whatnot. But the songs that we finished, I mixed,
Speaker 2: I think just about half of them. And that I
Speaker 2: had heard people had told me about working with Richard
Speaker 2: what it was like on the previous album, which is
Speaker 2: the album that that put Barbara in the modern era,
Speaker 2: out of you know, out of her Broadway stuff. They said,
Speaker 2: they said that, you know, they talked about the maniacal
Speaker 2: ways of Richard, and they said, for instance, that he kept,
Speaker 2: whether it was he or Barbara or both, they kept
Speaker 2: an orchestra till one in the morning, which they went
Speaker 2: into overtime. It was at seven o'clock start. They went
Speaker 2: into overtime at ten oh one. And I don't know
Speaker 2: when Golden Times started back then, but you know, those
Speaker 2: musicians made a lot of money. You know, they're also
Speaker 2: not the kind of musicians that are used to playing
Speaker 2: that long, that hard, but my orchestra, but they kept
Speaker 2: them there. So the mixing, another thing I had heard
Speaker 2: is that he'll do lots and lots of mixes, and
Speaker 2: indeed he did lots and lots of mixes. The only
Speaker 2: thing in the mix he he insistent on riding the
Speaker 2: vocal and that would stay till till whenever. The last
Speaker 2: thing I did with him was he always rode the vocal,
Speaker 2: which drove me a little crazy because I like to
Speaker 2: ride the vocal. You know, I'm really big on the vocalist.
Speaker 2: I really try to protect them and put them in
Speaker 2: the best light always because that's that's what they live by.
Speaker 2: And not that he didn't do a good job, but
Speaker 2: it was just frustrating for me with the track because
Speaker 2: I'm kind of usually the vocalist following the track, leading
Speaker 2: the track, albeit but following the track. So here I
Speaker 2: am with the track following him. But we did okay.
Speaker 1: So other than riding the vocal, you do a mix
Speaker 1: and what kind of complaints would he have? What would
Speaker 1: he want redone? What would you want change?
Speaker 2: Oh? He was famous for finding anything and everything. You
Speaker 2: know up you know, it starts with you know, maybe
Speaker 2: the congas are too loud, Okay, turn the congress down. Maybe.
Speaker 2: And by the way, when we started with like with
Speaker 2: Barbara and uh and no Secrets for sure, uh. And
Speaker 2: I think the next album with her, I think there
Speaker 2: was no automation. It was definitely every time you're mixing,
Speaker 2: you mist and that was I love doing that. I
Speaker 2: loved it. In fact, when we finally got moving fader automation,
Speaker 2: where you would move the faders and it went into
Speaker 2: a computer and then the computer would play back your
Speaker 2: moves which you could override. But I had to get
Speaker 2: used to letting the computer help me. I didn't want
Speaker 2: any help. I wanted to do it all myself. And
Speaker 2: so anyway he would find, he would find some excuse
Speaker 2: always and kept doing it. And you never you never
Speaker 2: were satisfied. You never bore that sounds great, you know,
Speaker 2: you never got that. It was like he'll he'll go
Speaker 2: listen to it and mastering, and quite often we'll come
Speaker 2: back and mix it again. In fact, the funny story
Speaker 2: about that if I can jump ahead, although not that
Speaker 2: far ahead, is on the Ringo album. Well before that,
Speaker 2: speaking of that maniacal Ways, Jeff Percaro, the great drummer,
Speaker 2: told me a story about his maniacal ways. This is
Speaker 2: like in nineteen eight, seventy eighty one or something. He said,
Speaker 2: we were doing a tracking session and you know, Richard
Speaker 2: in his usual wake, you know, we did two or
Speaker 2: three takes, and then they came in and listened, and
Speaker 2: he found something to do, and they went out and
Speaker 2: did another take or two came in and listened and
Speaker 2: just one more guys, So they went back out and
Speaker 2: did one more. Jeff said, they came in, they listened
Speaker 2: to it and everyone's that's the one. And Jeff said,
Speaker 2: I turned here and I said, Richard, that's the one,
Speaker 2: and he went, yeah, it's really good. But I think
Speaker 2: if we just do no, Richard, you don't understan that
Speaker 2: is the one we're going with. He said, But just
Speaker 2: what Richard, next song or we leave? And that was it.
Speaker 2: He threw down the gauntlet. But on the Ringo album
Speaker 2: eight years earlier, something we knew that the song Photograph
Speaker 2: was going to be the first single, and so Richard
Speaker 2: and here, you know, this was arguably his biggest shot
Speaker 2: at that time. It was working with all the Beatles,
Speaker 2: and so I knew we were going to mix it
Speaker 2: several times. So we mixed it and again each time
Speaker 2: we mix it, it's like, you know, five mixes printed. You know,
Speaker 2: who knows how many we did that weren't printed. He
Speaker 2: goes in the mastering lab and listens to to it.
Speaker 2: And he goes, you know, I think if we do
Speaker 2: this and do that, we went back in. He said, okay,
Speaker 2: So we did another group of mixes, went back to
Speaker 2: the mastering lab, same thing. Okay, we got it. Now,
Speaker 2: we got it. But can I just hear that first
Speaker 2: mixed first day? Yeah? See that was better there. Okay
Speaker 2: again there's I have to do this by hand. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not like going back like we do today and
Speaker 2: the computer has everything exactly where it was. It's you know,
Speaker 2: it's a new mix every time. So back we go,
Speaker 2: and I thought we had it. We go into the
Speaker 2: mastering lab, play it and he plays them. Doug says, boy,
Speaker 2: I think you got it, Richard, And he said, yeah, Doug,
Speaker 2: it's really good. And he turns to me. But I
Speaker 2: know that if we just and I interrupted him. I said, Richard, no,
Speaker 2: He said no. What I said, you me and that
Speaker 2: sixteen track tape will never be in the same room
Speaker 2: at the same time again. If you want it mixed,
Speaker 2: get someone else, or I go in alone. Oh funny, Bill,
Speaker 2: I've got Richard. I'm not kidding. And I went in
Speaker 2: alone and mixed it by myself, as if I didn't
Speaker 2: know what he wanted out of it after all those.
Speaker 1: Times, okay, all those times. Did it make a difference.
Speaker 2: To the studios in my bank account? Of course not,
Speaker 2: you know, a difference to who. That's the way you
Speaker 2: have to answer that question, because that's what we do
Speaker 2: as creatives. You know, does it make a difference. It
Speaker 2: matters to me. I go through all these gyrations that
Speaker 2: we spoke about earlier with trying to make digital as
Speaker 2: good as I can possibly make it. And I have
Speaker 2: a friend, an engineer friend who's constantly telling me, is
Speaker 2: does it really make a difference? And that's what I say.
Speaker 2: It makes a difference to me. Is it different? Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's that much better. But when I built my studio,
Speaker 2: I knew, I mean, that's just how I've always operated.
Speaker 2: I knew that when I built a studio, how do
Speaker 2: I make an incredible studio? Well, this one, this studio,
Speaker 2: they all have the same stuff. They ad mites got headphones,
Speaker 2: they got you know, they got what they got. But
Speaker 2: this studio has incredible mics. This studio doesn't have such
Speaker 2: a good headphone system. Bail blah blah. You just got
Speaker 2: to have everything nailed. So that's that's what you tried.
Speaker 2: To do and by by you know, by ten percent
Speaker 2: here and ten percent there, and ten percent here and
Speaker 2: five percent there, and eventually you get up to forty
Speaker 2: five fifty percent. That makes a difference. So today with
Speaker 2: the digital, especially with the way things are recorded, so
Speaker 2: many you know, I get so few sessions that are
Speaker 2: done by all professional people. You know, so many people
Speaker 2: are recording. You know, they send it to the bass
Speaker 2: player who puts on the bass, and they send it
Speaker 2: to the drummer who puts on the drums in his house.
Speaker 2: And some of those are very very good, don't get
Speaker 2: me wrong. Some of them are not very good and whatnot.
Speaker 2: But you know, I mean I remember when it started,
Speaker 2: you know, decades ago, with with people and doing home recording,
Speaker 2: and uh, it's just and it doesn't hold it. It's
Speaker 2: not like it used to be that one engineer primarily
Speaker 2: for most parts, sat through the recording process, the tracking process,
Speaker 2: and the overdubbing process. Now maybe they didn't mix. They
Speaker 2: would send it to somebody that who was known for mixing,
Speaker 2: like myself, and they like that because they get a
Speaker 2: fresh look on it as opposed to the guy that's
Speaker 2: been in the trenches for months doing it. But uh,
Speaker 2: you know, I think it's a it's a worthwhile way
Speaker 2: of looking at it. So that's you know, did it
Speaker 2: make a difference to Richard? It did?
Speaker 1: Okay, let me use it because I'm sure Richard was concerned.
Speaker 1: Do you think it made a difference in the commercial success.
Speaker 2: For the most part, And if we're talking about from
Speaker 2: the first time we mixed a song, I won't. I won't. Well,
Speaker 2: from from the first time he mixed a song to
Speaker 2: the whatever time didn't make a difference. No, probably not.
Speaker 2: Those were all close enough on Richard with me mixing
Speaker 2: now what I did sometimes and I remember I had
Speaker 2: a friend from the east visiting me, East coast visiting
Speaker 2: me once and I think it was David Sanborn album
Speaker 2: and had I had the mix before Richard. You know,
Speaker 2: I would get the mix where I liked it, and
Speaker 2: Richard would come in and my friend heard it and
Speaker 2: watched it, watched him destroy it, and uh, and it
Speaker 2: wasn't that album, but on another meaning, meaning what we
Speaker 2: ended up with wasn't as good as where it started.
Speaker 2: And it was one time I can't remember what album,
Speaker 2: but there was definitely one time where where I made
Speaker 2: him go back and listen to the first mix, Richard.
Speaker 2: I want you to hear where I had it when
Speaker 2: you showed up three four hours go. And I played
Speaker 2: him that first mix, and he goes, you're right, it
Speaker 2: does feel better kind And I said, you know, here's
Speaker 2: the thing, Richard could never think. He the way I've
Speaker 2: said is that I want a mix. It's it's not
Speaker 2: a great analogy, but it's the best one I got.
Speaker 2: I want a mix to be a beautiful.
Speaker 1: Lush forest.
Speaker 2: This forest has all kinds of different trees, and I
Speaker 2: want it when you look at it, just to go, wow,
Speaker 2: that is beautiful. Richard wants to investigate every tree. Is
Speaker 2: that pine tree in the back high enough? Okay, let's
Speaker 2: try it higher? You know what? You know? What about
Speaker 2: this palm tree over here? You know, okay, let's try it.
Speaker 2: You'd start playing with all those things, and you got
Speaker 2: all the trees trimmed the way he wants them. And
Speaker 2: it doesn't. But it doesn't feel the same. And you can't.
Speaker 2: You don't know why it isn't you know, because how
Speaker 2: something feels, it's definitely it's a mix. You know. I
Speaker 2: was talking to someone yesterday. Cooking is exactly like mixing.
Speaker 2: To me. Unfortunately, I don't have that skill I wish
Speaker 2: I did. I love eating, but I can't put the
Speaker 2: ingredients together. But really good chefs know how to put
Speaker 2: ingredients together so that when you taste it, you're not analyzing.
Speaker 2: It's just, oh my gosh, that's great. And that's what
Speaker 2: I always wanted from Richard, but he couldn't do it.
Speaker 2: He just he had to look at every single tree.
Speaker 1: So some albums you tracked but didn't mix, how'd you
Speaker 1: feel about that?
Speaker 2: Well, there weren't many, but there were some because of
Speaker 2: scheduling primarily, or like I know on a couple of
Speaker 2: Carly's albums where I did some of the recording and
Speaker 2: then he went to New York to work with New
Speaker 2: York musicians, or in the third album, her second album,
Speaker 2: she was pregnant because she didn't want to be away
Speaker 2: from home so long, and whatever different reasons. He worked
Speaker 2: in New York and there when he had some things going,
Speaker 2: mixed some of the stuff there, and some of them
Speaker 2: I remixed when he came back to LA Some of
Speaker 2: them stood. But I mean the answer to your question
Speaker 2: is I'm insecure enough that I would want to mix
Speaker 2: the things I recorded just because I don't want to
Speaker 2: hear someone critique me and say, oh, wow, that's the
Speaker 2: best Shna could do. I don't know if that ever
Speaker 2: happened or not.
Speaker 1: Okay, how about let's say you're mixing and you get
Speaker 1: an album that has different engineers, different studios. Can you
Speaker 1: make it all sound of a piece or inherently are
Speaker 1: they different?
Speaker 2: Well, that's what I was alluding to earlier. No, I mean,
Speaker 2: you do the best you can with what you've got,
Speaker 2: you know, and if you if you're handed something like
Speaker 2: like the No Secrets album that Robin Cable did an
Speaker 2: outstanding job of recording, you know, I just balanced the
Speaker 2: thing up and go with it. And you know, some
Speaker 2: of the other ones. I know, there was one year
Speaker 2: when I was double nominated for Best Engineered Album, and
Speaker 2: I didn't think either one deserved to be there. But
Speaker 2: that's okay. There's a couple of several albums, three or
Speaker 2: four albums that I always thought should have been nominated
Speaker 2: that weren't. But whatever. But I was double nominated, and
Speaker 2: I remember one of them. It cracked me up because
Speaker 2: it was recorded by the kind of thing you're talking about.
Speaker 2: It was several engineers. They were all professional, but it
Speaker 2: definitely there was not a cohesive kind of thing. You know.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of engineers. I've always thought of
Speaker 2: myself as a musician that happens to who learned how
Speaker 2: to engineer, not an engineer that learned how to engineer,
Speaker 2: and that's what they want to do. I just it's
Speaker 2: like music. For me. First, it's all about music, and
Speaker 2: so when you get something that someone else is recorded
Speaker 2: and you're adding to it, you want to think about
Speaker 2: what's there now as you start to add other things,
Speaker 2: things to make it fit in. Richie Podler taught me
Speaker 2: in the beginning that the mix starts with the tracking session.
Speaker 2: You start right away with the first thing you put down,
Speaker 2: and then you know, he said, and I've tried to
Speaker 2: do it. Every overdub you make, you're putting it where
Speaker 2: you want it in the mix. You're trying to do that.
Speaker 2: The joke with another guy that was like that, Al Schmidt.
Speaker 2: The joke with al Schmidt was if he recorded it,
Speaker 2: you could put all the faders in a straight line
Speaker 2: and with a ruler put them all up at a
Speaker 2: certain level and just push the vocal up a couple
Speaker 2: over that and there's your mix, and whereas that's not
Speaker 2: one hundred percent accurate, it's not that far from the
Speaker 2: truth either. The idea of again of trying to make
Speaker 2: the mix as you go. But a lot of times
Speaker 2: some engineers they know the kind of sound they like
Speaker 2: to get on any instrument and it doesn't fit with
Speaker 2: what's going on, but they're going to do what they
Speaker 2: want to do. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Okay, someone sends you a tape for at this point,
Speaker 1: it won't be a tape in a file. You put
Speaker 1: it up. Then how do you build your mix?
Speaker 2: Okay? For the most I always ask for a rough mix.
Speaker 2: I always want to hear what I'm what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: I may if I if I if my initial reaction
Speaker 2: is oh, that's neat, I may want to listen back
Speaker 2: to that while I'm mixing. If it's like I don't
Speaker 2: get it, then that may be the last time I
Speaker 2: listened to it. But it depends on the kind of
Speaker 2: song and a lot of different aspects. But for the
Speaker 2: most part, if I can generalize after I've listened to
Speaker 2: the to the rough, I usually start with a drum
Speaker 2: sound that I think is going to make sense, And
Speaker 2: that depends on you know, how the drums are recorded
Speaker 2: and what I can do to them for what I think.
Speaker 2: If it's a powerful song and the drums aren't that powerful,
Speaker 2: I'll do whatever I can to make them more powerful, uh,
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. And and I'll usually build the track,
Speaker 2: you know, with the bass bass then and then if
Speaker 2: it's a guitar song, the guitars, if it's a keyboard song,
Speaker 2: the keyboards, and flush out all that stuff to get
Speaker 2: a track that feels good to me, and then put
Speaker 2: in the vocal and background vocals and then start adjusting
Speaker 2: things to surround the vocal and background vocals.
Speaker 1: Okay, my experience in the studio, which is certainly very limited,
Speaker 1: but traditionally the engineer only says yes or if they
Speaker 1: have a different opinion, it's very mild. They don't stand up.
Speaker 1: What's your experience being an engineer vis a v being
Speaker 1: a producer, which you've also done.
Speaker 2: Well before. When I had extremely limited experience going back
Speaker 2: to CBS and Babs, is that I remember, not on
Speaker 2: that first album, but I remember on a subsequent album
Speaker 2: standing up to her and saying, no, you shouldn't do that.
Speaker 2: And I said, I wrote that in the book. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's whatever I said. We had
Speaker 2: hit it off pretty well from the beginning, and I
Speaker 2: really enjoyed and I've always enjoyed working with her. But
Speaker 2: I'm not afraid to tell an artist no if they've
Speaker 2: got if they've gotten us up on a branch and
Speaker 2: they're wanting me to saw it off, so you know,
Speaker 2: tell them no, But you say and here's why. And
Speaker 2: most of the time they'll respect that. You know, they
Speaker 2: they've hired you to do a job, and I'm telling
Speaker 2: you that. You know, if I'm doing my job, I've
Speaker 2: got to tell you that I don't think you should
Speaker 2: do this, and here's why. So that doesn't have to
Speaker 2: happen that often, but it does happen now. In mixing,
Speaker 2: that's a different thing. I've always said I'm not I
Speaker 2: have no ego with regard I don't think there's a
Speaker 2: proof I don't have any or with regard to mixing.
Speaker 2: I get a mix, I think feels good, you got changes,
Speaker 2: I'll start making changes. We're not going to lose that
Speaker 2: mix anymore these days, especially, I can always go back
Speaker 2: and pick it up where I left off. But but
Speaker 2: I don't I don't mind you asking you know, I
Speaker 2: don't think there's anything as one perfect mix and nothing
Speaker 2: else works. We talked about that already, and I want
Speaker 2: I want the artist to be happy. As I always said,
Speaker 2: their name is in big letters on the front of
Speaker 2: the album. My name is on little teeny letters on
Speaker 2: the back of the album, if not inside. So I
Speaker 2: want them to be happy. And as far as I know,
Speaker 2: I have very good relationship with everyone I worked with.
Speaker 1: So for you personally, what was the difference between producing
Speaker 1: and engineering.
Speaker 2: Control? I mean, in a word, you know, obviously much
Speaker 2: added responsibility producers the person responsible for there once was
Speaker 2: nothing and now there's an album. It was literally produced
Speaker 2: from nothing, so you've got a lot more You've got
Speaker 2: a lot more control, but a lot more pressure on
Speaker 2: all the different pieces. And that's I mean, that's what
Speaker 2: I love the most. But it just you know, it
Speaker 2: doesn't always work. You know, it's a matter of you know,
Speaker 2: both of them, I've always said, both of them are
Speaker 2: servants roles. You're there to serve the artist and their music.
Speaker 2: That's the most important thing. So it's not about my way,
Speaker 2: like I have no problem arguing with somebody. But again,
Speaker 2: their names on the front, so Okay, if you want
Speaker 2: to do it, we'll do it. But I don't agree.
Speaker 1: As a producer, how much did you put your tentacles
Speaker 1: into the creative end of it? Whereas an engineer is
Speaker 1: kneeling the sound, a producer, certainly talking about Richard, be
Speaker 1: selecting the material, but also could say, hey, you need
Speaker 1: a bridge here, let's flip it out, let's start with
Speaker 1: a chorus, or you know, to what degree would you
Speaker 1: put your hands in there.
Speaker 2: I've always equated that aspect as as a contractor. A
Speaker 2: guy that comes into paint or fix whatever's on. He
Speaker 2: goes into one room and it's perfect, doesn't need anything,
Speaker 2: if paint's good and everything. He walks into the next room.
Speaker 2: Oh this this needs a paint job for sure. He
Speaker 2: goes in the next room. Oh my gosh, look at it.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have to bust open that wall and put
Speaker 2: new drywall in, then mud it, and then we'll paint it.
Speaker 2: You do what's what's required, and that that that varies
Speaker 2: within the same album, sometimes not just from artists to artists,
Speaker 2: but for a group that some people hate Pablo Cruz
Speaker 2: wink wink, that that I produced, for instance, I was
Speaker 2: the I was much more involved in on the second
Speaker 2: album I did with them, which was their fourth album.
Speaker 2: I was much more involved in the trenches than I
Speaker 2: was on the previous album because the previous album, which
Speaker 2: was the one that had what You're Going to Do,
Speaker 2: that had the first big hit. They now it was
Speaker 2: like the fourth record was like most artists sophomore record
Speaker 2: if the first record hits, Now they're out on the road,
Speaker 2: they're doing interviews, on and on and on. They don't
Speaker 2: have time to write. So we did a lot of
Speaker 2: that writing in the studio, and so there it was.
Speaker 2: I was a lot more involved.
Speaker 1: For instance, Okay, they were in the seventies and certainly
Speaker 1: the sixties, there were people like Richard who were producers.
Speaker 1: They came from the musical creative inn and then as
Speaker 1: the years went by, you had more engineers that became producers,
Speaker 1: and you were sort of different that you straddled both camps.
Speaker 1: But I thought that when the engineers became a producers,
Speaker 1: a lot of them weren't really that creative. They could
Speaker 1: nael the sound, but sometimes you know, when a being
Speaker 1: needed more. Did you any observations.
Speaker 2: There, Well, you know, I don't I'm not going to
Speaker 2: bad mouth any particular people. But yeah, I mean some
Speaker 2: people are are better at whatever skills. You know, just
Speaker 2: because someone's a great engineer doesn't mean that he has
Speaker 2: the horsepower on the creative side to help an artist.
Speaker 2: So you definitely could see that. And the other The
Speaker 2: other thing is that a lot of times, you know,
Speaker 2: I got to tell you when Clive, when I had
Speaker 2: that first conversation with Clive, my nervous conversation on the phone,
Speaker 2: you know, he didn't even believe that engineers should produce.
Speaker 2: He said, look here, you know what you should do
Speaker 2: has come to work for me. As an engineer. You
Speaker 2: work with an artist like Roy Holly did with Simon
Speaker 2: and Garfunkel, and then when they fire or their producer,
Speaker 2: as they always will, you're in the driver's seat. You
Speaker 2: step into the driver's seat. And I literally said to him, no,
Speaker 2: I don't want to do that. That's not what I
Speaker 2: want to do. You know, if I can't make it
Speaker 2: on my own, then I don't make it, period. And
Speaker 2: what can I say? It's funny, I haven't thought of
Speaker 2: that until just now in a long long time that
Speaker 2: I stood up to him kind of in a way,
Speaker 2: and he went with me anyway.
Speaker 1: So you work with Richard on Barbara Streisian. What do
Speaker 1: you do after that?
Speaker 2: Well, we talked about no secrets, I.
Speaker 1: Well, no secrets for Electra. So at what point do
Speaker 1: you stop working for CBS.
Speaker 2: When Clive closed the studio, plain and simple, I think,
Speaker 2: which was yeah, which was actually very good timing because
Speaker 2: you know, Richard had done the first Harry Nielsen album,
Speaker 2: Nielsen Schmielsen in England, and Harry was good friends with
Speaker 2: Ringo and he introduced the two of them and they
Speaker 2: talked then about doing an album someday. And so when
Speaker 2: you know, Clive has closed the studio and I'm working
Speaker 2: independently and whatnot, and then Richard calls me one day
Speaker 2: and says, I'm going to do an album with Ringo
Speaker 2: and I want you to do it with me the
Speaker 2: whole way. And I said, wow, well that sounds like fun,
Speaker 2: and indeed it certainly was.
Speaker 1: Okay. Everybody has their heyday where you don't have enough
Speaker 1: time to do all the work that you would like
Speaker 1: to do. But at what point do you start you know,
Speaker 1: you just wait for the phone to ring or do
Speaker 1: you start working in in order to get jobs?
Speaker 2: No back and Clive one of the things after he
Speaker 2: hired me. One of the things he said a lot
Speaker 2: of I've got a lot of different pieces of wisdom
Speaker 2: from him, and it's something I'd never thought about. But
Speaker 2: he said, Bill, this is a business of what have
Speaker 2: you done lately? The credits mean everything. And that went
Speaker 2: with what Richie Peddler had told me, you know, a
Speaker 2: year and a half or something before that, when he
Speaker 2: said basically the same thing. He said, the credits are
Speaker 2: more important than the money you make on a project,
Speaker 2: the money you're going to spend and it'll be gone,
Speaker 2: the credit you're going to live with. And Clive modified
Speaker 2: it to say what have you done lately? And so
Speaker 2: that was it. It was just, you know, the record
Speaker 2: companies have the golden goose philosophy, and if this guy
Speaker 2: laid golden eggs with this artist, bring him over. Let's
Speaker 2: get him here and have him lay some eggs for us.
Speaker 2: And that goes. It goes for producers, of course, and
Speaker 2: to a less lesser degree, maybe not from the record company,
Speaker 2: more from the other producers that making the same observation
Speaker 2: and hiring of an engineer, well.
Speaker 1: You've been doing it for sixty years, so is it
Speaker 1: the type of thing where the work has always come
Speaker 1: to you, or if you had to flush that it
Speaker 1: has you haven't had to say, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: better network, or I better you know, make relationships, or
Speaker 1: I may call people. What do you got going? It's
Speaker 1: always come to you.
Speaker 2: No, it's always come to me. And I made a
Speaker 2: big mistake. Well I don't know how big it was,
Speaker 2: but it was when the era of managers for producers
Speaker 2: and engineers started. I remember having a meeting with Michael Austin,
Speaker 2: Mo Austin's son at Warner Ruthers, who was the head
Speaker 2: of A and R at that point, about an artist
Speaker 2: something for me to produce, and he said, you know what,
Speaker 2: I don't have anything right now. But you know, Bill,
Speaker 2: I don't even I don't even pick producers anymore. I call,
Speaker 2: you know, there were five or four or five at
Speaker 2: that point managers of producers. I call one of them
Speaker 2: and I say, I've got this artist, who do you
Speaker 2: think would be good for it? They do my job
Speaker 2: for me. And I met with a couple of them,
Speaker 2: and I always thought, you know, if I want someone
Speaker 2: to quote represent me, I wanted them to, you know,
Speaker 2: to represent me. And I didn't like the people. You know,
Speaker 2: I just didn't hit the right ones, I guess or whatever.
Speaker 1: Well, do you feel you missed out on any work
Speaker 1: as a result?
Speaker 2: Thereof absolutely, without question. Like I said at the point
Speaker 2: that you know Michael Austin, I'm sure it wasn't the
Speaker 2: only one and I made out of I don't remember
Speaker 2: if I had met with any of them. That may
Speaker 2: have been. That meeting with Michael may have been the
Speaker 2: exact reason I went out and met with a couple,
Speaker 2: but I'm pretty sure that they could. They could have
Speaker 2: done it, They could have got me work.
Speaker 1: But it sounds like you had enough work anyway, or
Speaker 1: is that untrue?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think I think the the heyday
Speaker 2: shall we call it, could have lasted longer, that's all.
Speaker 2: But I'm not complaining in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 2: I've had a very rich career, that's for darn shore
Speaker 2: and still do. I mean, you know, I'm fortunate that
Speaker 2: I'm seventy eight years old, healthy as I can possibly be.
Speaker 2: That's what the doctors just told me two weeks ago,
Speaker 2: and had The main thing is which a lot of
Speaker 2: my guys, peers my age don't have. I have all
Speaker 2: the energy and passion for music that I had in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty four when we got signed to Decker Records.
Speaker 2: I still there's nothing I'd rather do then, you know,
Speaker 2: I noticed something early on in the business about all
Speaker 2: the musicians getting divorces and going on a second marriage.
Speaker 2: And I have I wondered if you know, musicians are
Speaker 2: a weird lot and creatives in general, I guess, but
Speaker 2: they you know, it's they're very passionate, you know. We
Speaker 2: I'll put myself in there, We are very passionate about
Speaker 2: what we do. And that to a woman that, for instance,
Speaker 2: grew up with a dad that wore a suit and tie,
Speaker 2: was home at five o'clock every day eating dinner, that
Speaker 2: doesn't always flush well with the guy that will stay
Speaker 2: after work for two hours hanging with his buddy's jamming
Speaker 2: or whatever. And I know I saw that in the
Speaker 2: divorces of a couple of people, for sure. And it's
Speaker 2: funny and funny enough. My wife of forty years now,
Speaker 2: my first wife who divorced me, was a musician, so
Speaker 2: I had nothing to do with that. But my current
Speaker 2: wife has had a father that was an oil executive
Speaker 2: who was home every day at five o'clock at mowing
Speaker 2: the lawn on the weekends, but she sawned up. I
Speaker 2: insisted we had a long engagement. She was in law
Speaker 2: school in Waco. She was at Baylor Law when I
Speaker 2: met her, and I insisted she do her last year
Speaker 2: in la so that she could for a year she
Speaker 2: could see the crazy people, the crazy schedule, everything that
Speaker 2: was there. And funny enough, she did her last year
Speaker 2: at Loyola where I did my one semester, and I
Speaker 2: went back and sat in the same classrooms a couple
Speaker 2: of times to watch a session.
Speaker 1: So when you would say, hey, I got to work
Speaker 1: for the weekend, what would your wife say?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I did my best to make
Speaker 2: the family a priority, so I would do my best.
Speaker 2: You know, the the initial the knee jerk is no.
Speaker 2: But if it was something that I really thought that
Speaker 2: I had to she was very understanding and accommodating, and
Speaker 2: so if the relationship worked beautifully.
Speaker 1: So the first wife who was a musician, was it
Speaker 1: the music business and the music business lifestyle they caused
Speaker 1: the divorce or just like everything, it doesn't necessarily work out.
Speaker 2: The latter, for sure had nothing to do with the business.
Speaker 2: She loved the business. In fact, The odd thing was
Speaker 2: she said she was divorcing me because she was tired
Speaker 2: of being missus Bill Schnee. And then as soon as
Speaker 2: we were divorced, she went out and tried to get
Speaker 2: work as a producer with the last name Schnee. So
Speaker 2: go figure. I don't know what to say. No, it
Speaker 2: had nothing to do with the business.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you work with Richard Barber Skreis in Ringo
Speaker 1: no secrets. How did things other than Richard projects come about?
Speaker 2: Just what you were talking about earlier? You know, someone
Speaker 2: calls me to mix a record. In fact, here's a
Speaker 2: funny story. Early on. I'm gonna say, I have to
Speaker 2: look up Touch Me in the Morning, whatever you that was.
Speaker 2: I'm mixing in a studio seventy something, and the girl
Speaker 2: buzzes in and says, there's a phone call for you
Speaker 2: online one. I pick it up and goes, hi, Bill,
Speaker 2: this is Michael Master. You may know me if my
Speaker 2: Touch Me in the Morning by Diana Ross that I
Speaker 2: wrote and produced, And I hung up the phone and
Speaker 2: that I was a little wild in my early days,
Speaker 2: and I just thought, if that's the way the guy
Speaker 2: introduced it, if that's for real, I don't know that
Speaker 2: I want to have anything to do with him. But whatever.
Speaker 2: So the girl buzzes in and says, evidently you got
Speaker 2: cut off, and I said, just take a message, and
Speaker 2: I never called him back. Now, my wife, Sally is
Speaker 2: doing law school at Loyola, finishing her last year at Loyola,
Speaker 2: and I'm in my studio and I get a call
Speaker 2: from Michael Master to mix some songs that he's recorded
Speaker 2: on Peeble Bryson. And he didn't give me the same introduction,
Speaker 2: which was a good thing, and so I'm mixing, as
Speaker 2: it turns out, the big hit if ever, you're in
Speaker 2: my arms again, and Michael was. He's no longer with us,
Speaker 2: but he was, by the way. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you know that name, but he was a Chicago lawyer
Speaker 2: that sat up in his high rise dreaming of making
Speaker 2: music and he realized that dream and did quite well
Speaker 2: and as a songwriter and producer. So anyway, we're mixing
Speaker 2: the song and Sally would between classes. There was like
Speaker 2: a three hour break. Loyola wasn't that far downtown LA
Speaker 2: from my studio, so she would come to the studio
Speaker 2: and read or take an apple whatever. So she was
Speaker 2: going back to class and they had met. I had
Speaker 2: introduced them, and she's walking through the studio and Michael says,
Speaker 2: bring her in, bring her in. So I hit the
Speaker 2: talk back and said, can you come in a second.
Speaker 2: Sally came in. He said, let her sit in your chair.
Speaker 2: So she sits in my chair and he said, I
Speaker 2: want to play her the single, you know, average person
Speaker 2: kind of thing. So he sits. She sits in the
Speaker 2: chair and he's right next to her, and he looks
Speaker 2: at her and I say this by she had to
Speaker 2: meet some of the interesting people that we find in
Speaker 2: the record business. And he turns to her and says,
Speaker 2: let's actualize our peak experiences. Shall we wait a minute.
Speaker 2: I'm engaged to this woman, you leave your peak experiences.
Speaker 2: So I pushed play and then he's sitting there and
Speaker 2: she's looking straight ahead and he's right in, you know,
Speaker 2: a foot from her, a foot from her left ear,
Speaker 2: looking at her eyes and mimicking the words. And when
Speaker 2: it got to the chorus, you know, the high point,
Speaker 2: he's pointing his finger and raising his shoulders and you know,
Speaker 2: just going, you know, all the emotion you could ever
Speaker 2: ask for. And I'm sure he was very disappointed when
Speaker 2: she was done. She was scared spitless. She'd never seen
Speaker 2: anything like that, and quite frankly, I don't think I
Speaker 2: had either.
Speaker 1: But whatever, So, how'd you end up working with Steely Dan?
Speaker 2: Very good question, and the answer is something that funny
Speaker 2: enough I just found out. So Gary Katz, the producer
Speaker 2: of Steely Dan, calls me one day and says, would
Speaker 2: you like to record the next Steely Dan album? And
Speaker 2: I said, let me think about it. Yes, actually I
Speaker 2: think that sounds like fun. And I got off the
Speaker 2: phone and I went wait a minute, because a couple
Speaker 2: of my friends, Michael Omarty and Steve Jeff Paccaro, had
Speaker 2: played on the previous albums, and it told me about
Speaker 2: their maniacal ways in the studio, and as I said earlier,
Speaker 2: that's not my jam to go quick and move fast
Speaker 2: and keep things going. And so I was a little
Speaker 2: nervous about it. But what was interesting at the time,
Speaker 2: they never asked me. They just said tell us where
Speaker 2: to go. So I picked a studio that was originally
Speaker 2: Mike Kurbs that I went in for my one time
Speaker 2: trying to produce the La Teens, which had been now
Speaker 2: bought by another group, and was a very good studio,
Speaker 2: excellent studio called Producers Workshop, and I just said, Okay,
Speaker 2: there's a studio in Hollywood Boulevard that I really like
Speaker 2: working in. And as far as I know, they never
Speaker 2: went to visit it or anything. So they just showed it.
Speaker 2: They showed up, and we did it. We did what
Speaker 2: we did, and as it turns out, that album was
Speaker 2: different than every album before or after in that they
Speaker 2: did it with entirely studio musicians. I'd used studio musicians
Speaker 2: obviously on the previous album or two in with them,
Speaker 2: but this was all studio musicians, like Union sessions one o'clock,
Speaker 2: one to four and six to nine and all Union players.
Speaker 2: Larry Carlton, the great guitar player, had done takedown sheets.
Speaker 2: The guys had always done a piano bassed demo and
Speaker 2: they would send that to Larry, who would do a
Speaker 2: takedown sheet so of the chords and where things went.
Speaker 2: So the band would hear their demo and go from there,
Speaker 2: and they were just there was a no drug zone.
Speaker 2: I think that might have been unique, and at least
Speaker 2: for the tracking, which is all I did, and it
Speaker 2: couldn't have gone smoother or better or easier. So I
Speaker 2: was completely wrong about all that, but I always wondered
Speaker 2: why they hired me. And so that was for the
Speaker 2: album Asia. So a year and a half ago, I
Speaker 2: guess been almost two years ago now. A company called
Speaker 2: Acoustic Sounds that basically licenses albums puts them on LPs.
Speaker 2: Redid that for Asia at forty five rpm, which takes
Speaker 2: two discs instead of one y for forty five rpm. A,
Speaker 2: it sounds better and B when you're on a on
Speaker 2: an LP, when you the closer you get to the label,
Speaker 2: there's a kind of distortion that comes in. It's almost
Speaker 2: completely unavoidable. So this way stays out farther. So they
Speaker 2: do did it at forty five rpm. And and in
Speaker 2: anticipation of that, the owner of the company Acoustic Sounds,
Speaker 2: called and said, I want to do a zoom interview
Speaker 2: with you and Donald and Bernie Grunman who mastered the
Speaker 2: original in the seventies and mastered this forty five version.
Speaker 2: And I said great. So I did the zoom and
Speaker 2: when there was a lull, I said, Donald, there's something
Speaker 2: I've always wanted to ask you. Why did you guys
Speaker 2: hire me to do that record? And he said something like, well,
Speaker 2: we'd heard that you were this guy that got some
Speaker 2: incredible hi fi albums that just sounded incredible, and that's
Speaker 2: what we wanted to do. And I knew right away
Speaker 2: what it was a little history there, the direct to disc.
Speaker 2: I don't know how many people are familiar with that,
Speaker 2: are you by any chance? Yes? Familiar with director is? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So directed disc is where you recorded one side of
Speaker 2: an album. As the title says, direct to disc, the
Speaker 2: disc that is that they make on the lays that
Speaker 2: they make the LPs eventually out of. So what you
Speaker 2: don't do is you don't go to analog tape twice,
Speaker 2: first time in the multi track, second time on the
Speaker 2: two track. You only go through the electronics of a
Speaker 2: console once and by saving all of that, the sound
Speaker 2: quality is superb. It's very you know, almost identical to
Speaker 2: what's quote coming through the glass. It's a lot of
Speaker 2: pressure obviously because you're you're recording everything from start to finish,
Speaker 2: and when you when you were mixing from tape or
Speaker 2: these days from a computer, when you pull up the piano,
Speaker 2: it's the exact same piano part, the exact same dynamics.
Speaker 2: You know, everything is identical. It's locked in for life.
Speaker 2: When you're doing this. You know, you do one side
Speaker 2: of an album, takes fifteen minutes. Something from one side
Speaker 2: of the album, you take a twenty minute break, you
Speaker 2: do it again. You think they play identically to what
Speaker 2: they did before. No, you're mixing every time from get go,
Speaker 2: and sometimes it you know it. The opening cuts are
Speaker 2: the most dangerous in that regard, But you're the point
Speaker 2: being is that you're constantly mixing and there's no relaxing
Speaker 2: for a second, and if somebody makes a mistake, you
Speaker 2: know you're in You're in trouble. At the last song,
Speaker 2: you're in trouble because there's no editing of any kind.
Speaker 2: It's a lathe that cuts into a lacquer master a
Speaker 2: laquer disc, and so there's no stopping. So I had
Speaker 2: engineered Doug Sachs and his partner Lincoln my orga of
Speaker 2: it had the mastering lab that was directly in front
Speaker 2: of this studio. Had done a couple of records of
Speaker 2: Lincoln's music directed disc specifically for that reason because they
Speaker 2: sound so much better. And after the I engineered one,
Speaker 2: and after I engineered it, that was the most fun
Speaker 2: I'd ever had because theretofore you spent you know, two
Speaker 2: three whatever months six and the Ringo album six solid
Speaker 2: months of working on an album and then mixing and
Speaker 2: then mastering. Here in three days we had an album recorded, mixed,
Speaker 2: and mastered. And so when I went back to normal recording,
Speaker 2: it was like slow slow motion. So I went to
Speaker 2: Doug and asked, I really want to produce an album,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to I want to use a vocalist
Speaker 2: and main thing also I wanted to do contemporary, more
Speaker 2: contemporary music than what Lincoln did. And so it took
Speaker 2: me about a week or so to convince Doug to
Speaker 2: let me do it. It took him two months to convince Lincoln.
Speaker 2: Lincoln wasn't going for it. This is not our record label,
Speaker 2: and if we were going to hire someone, why would
Speaker 2: it be a kid? And are you sure he can
Speaker 2: do it? And on and on. I jumped through so
Speaker 2: many hoops, but we got it done. Funny part of
Speaker 2: that is that at that point in time, I'd only
Speaker 2: worked with two artists that I knew could step up
Speaker 2: to the mic on the last song and give a
Speaker 2: real performance. The first one was Barbara Streisan, who at
Speaker 2: that point I had done her three previous albums and
Speaker 2: I called her manager and got very close to this
Speaker 2: go away kid, you're bothering me. He had no time
Speaker 2: for it, and the only other person that I had
Speaker 2: just worked with. I recorded a couple of songs and
Speaker 2: mixed a new artist on Motown named Thelma Houston, who
Speaker 2: had a gorgeous sounding voice and sang like a bird,
Speaker 2: and so I talked to her about it. She loved
Speaker 2: the idea, and I went to Motown and got a
Speaker 2: loan out agreement, and that's what we did, and we did.
Speaker 2: I got the best band. When I look at the
Speaker 2: credits today, it's just it's astounding. That was. You couldn't
Speaker 2: get a better band if you tried in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: five and did that record and it, yes, it was
Speaker 2: nominated for Best Engineered Album, and yes it was. You know,
Speaker 2: within a year, it was an every high fi store
Speaker 2: in the country. Because the weak link in an audio
Speaker 2: chain is the source. So if you give them a
Speaker 2: better sounding source, their amplifiers sound better, their speakers sound better,
Speaker 2: they just go better. So it was an every high
Speaker 2: fi store and it did incredibly well. Well. That's undoubtedly
Speaker 2: what Donald was making reference to when he said we'd
Speaker 2: heard about these records that you had done. I had
Speaker 2: engineered the previous one that Doug did, and now I
Speaker 2: produced and engineered that one. And what's what's really cool
Speaker 2: is that a I found out about why they hired
Speaker 2: me on that. And then this year in April, the
Speaker 2: film of Houston and Pressure Cooker album was entered into
Speaker 2: the National Recording Registry Library by the Library of Congress.
Speaker 2: Only six six hundred and thirty five records that are
Speaker 2: in there, and I have a couple of records I
Speaker 2: engineered that are in there, but including Asia. But I
Speaker 2: couldn't be more proud of this one. And and what
Speaker 2: what's come from it?
Speaker 1: Okay? Why did you not mix Asia? How'd you feel
Speaker 1: about that?
Speaker 2: Okay? When when we were done with the tracks, they came,
Speaker 2: the boys came to me the last day and they said, okay,
Speaker 2: we're going to go off and do overdubs. It's going
Speaker 2: to be you know, months of you know, experimenting with
Speaker 2: the tracks and seeing what we want to do and
Speaker 2: so on, but we want you to mix it when
Speaker 2: we're done. And I said, guys, don't I don't think
Speaker 2: it would work. And they looked at me and said,
Speaker 2: what do you mean. I said, I have a kind
Speaker 2: of a different mixing style, and I just, you know,
Speaker 2: I knew that they were microscope people. When you talk
Speaker 2: about trees, I mean, you know they should write the
Speaker 2: book because they and they said, well you'll try, won't you,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of sarcastically, and I said, yes, of course,
Speaker 2: I'll be glad to. So I think it was about
Speaker 2: five months later they called with the first song that
Speaker 2: was done, even though it turns out it wasn't done,
Speaker 2: but which was Josie When Josie comes home and we
Speaker 2: went into the studio and I got to mix up
Speaker 2: that I felt was really good, and I don't think
Speaker 2: Walter came in, only Gary Cats and Donald came in,
Speaker 2: and you know, Donald listened to it and he said,
Speaker 2: it feels really good. Oh thank you. He said, okay,
Speaker 2: well let's try this there. Okay, now again there's no computer.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting down. The thing starts. The way I would
Speaker 2: do it back then is I would mark the faders
Speaker 2: on a good starting point and then so I know
Speaker 2: that at least every time I start the mix, it's
Speaker 2: going to have the exact same starting point. Where it
Speaker 2: goes from there is up to my right brain. So
Speaker 2: I tried as he wanted this there and he liked it,
Speaker 2: said maybe we should try that here with that there? Yeah,
Speaker 2: with that there, And so it goes and for an hour,
Speaker 2: two hours, three hours, and finally I think it'd been
Speaker 2: like four hours. I'm worn out. I haven't got it.
Speaker 2: The right brain is asleep. It's on remote control. I can't.
Speaker 2: I don't feel anything anymore. And they knew it, and uh,
Speaker 2: and I pushed back from the chair and I said, guys,
Speaker 2: you've got an unbelievable record here, And you know I couldn't.
Speaker 2: I couldn't be happier. I wish I could be a
Speaker 2: part of it, but I it just it's not It's
Speaker 2: not going to work for me. And so there I was,
Speaker 2: and my good good friend Elliott Shiner, who had mixed
Speaker 2: the previous record, did a mixed most of that. Al
Speaker 2: Schmidt I think mixed one and and Uh did a
Speaker 2: you know, a wonderful job. I wish I believe me,
Speaker 2: I wish I could have.
Speaker 1: Okay, you were in the studio with them. Walter and
Speaker 1: Donald are really opinionated guys. You know what they want?
Speaker 1: What did Geary Katz ad?
Speaker 2: Oh? Boy, not much, not much at all it was
Speaker 2: he he kept the peace and he kept order, and
Speaker 2: nothing creatively, you know, nothing. It was as you say,
Speaker 2: it was primarily Donald and some walter on with regard
Speaker 2: to talking to the musicians and moving things the way
Speaker 2: they wanted them to go.
Speaker 1: Okay, we live in a as you mentioned earlier, inherently
Speaker 1: vinyl is compromised. Yeah, we're in an era of vinyl fetishism.
Speaker 1: What is your take on vinyl visa the digital.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I misheard you or if you
Speaker 2: misunderstood me. I don't look at vinyl as a compromise
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 1: Well, let me state what I'm stating as supposed putting
Speaker 1: words in your mouth. When one is cutting a vinyl record,
Speaker 1: you have to worry about amplitude, You have to worry
Speaker 1: about roll off. The more attracts you put on one
Speaker 1: side affects on. You have a different sound on the
Speaker 1: beginning of the groove, different sound on the end of
Speaker 1: the groove. Lot of those issues that you have in
Speaker 1: vinyl it's still music, do not apply to digital. Now
Speaker 1: there's a couple of other things I'll put.
Speaker 2: In the mix.
Speaker 1: Yes, all this stuff in the seventies, certainly before that
Speaker 1: was all cut on tape, So it's analog to begin with,
Speaker 1: whereas almost everything today is cut digital. So what kind
Speaker 1: of sense does it make to go from digital to vinyl,
Speaker 1: especially now where you can there you know, there are
Speaker 1: streaming services that are streaming way above CD quality. So
Speaker 1: what's your take there on the vinyl explosion?
Speaker 2: Okay, so, yes, you point out accurately that vinyl has drawbacks. Well, again,
Speaker 2: analog tape has, in my opinion, more analog tape has
Speaker 2: a sound. It was never a mirror. And the directed
Speaker 2: disc which goes from the console right to the disc
Speaker 2: and you listen to the clarity and reality of that
Speaker 2: compared to two generations of analog tape and then putting
Speaker 2: it on there, it shows that even with its problems,
Speaker 2: disc the disc is more of a mirror than analog
Speaker 2: tape ever was, let alone two generations of it and
Speaker 2: two passes through the console that said today, you know,
Speaker 2: digital is a thing. And it started obviously with artists
Speaker 2: wanting something to sell, primarily I think, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: I remember when it was gaining traction. I haven't heard recently,
Speaker 2: but you know, it was like in the beginning they
Speaker 2: were saying that, you know, seventy five percent. I'm sure
Speaker 2: it's gone down some seventy five percent of the albums
Speaker 2: sold at least, especially at gigs. It's just for the
Speaker 2: memory thing. And you know they're never put on a
Speaker 2: turntable and listen to I know that turntables are on
Speaker 2: the rise. I know that more people are doing it now.
Speaker 2: To your question about does it make sense, well, no,
Speaker 2: the way you're asking it, absolutely not. When you can
Speaker 2: hear okay, when you can hear something full range. As
Speaker 2: I said in the beginning of the interview, sixteen forty
Speaker 2: four to one, which is CD equality never sounded good
Speaker 2: to me in nineteen eighty two and still doesn't in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, and it never is going to. So
Speaker 2: the deal is, though today now we can record much
Speaker 2: higher as in ninety six or even one ninety two,
Speaker 2: And when you get up and with those and thirty
Speaker 2: two bits floating as opposed to sixteen bits, when you
Speaker 2: get up there, you're talking about a really with great converter,
Speaker 2: outstanding mirror of what's coming through this class. So you know,
Speaker 2: there's there's very little reason to put it on disc.
Speaker 2: To me, if you can hear it in those now
Speaker 2: hear it in those operatues. But unfortunately most people, you know,
Speaker 2: I can't tell you most people still don't even record
Speaker 2: it ninety six. They still record it forty eight, which
Speaker 2: is only a NAT's better than forty four to one.
Speaker 2: I don't understand it. Discs are cheap, you know. It
Speaker 2: was one thing in nineteen eighty five, when you know
Speaker 2: it costs a fortune to put the the bits on
Speaker 2: a computer, you know, on a hard drive. But today
Speaker 2: you buy a solid state drive with a lifetime supply
Speaker 2: for a few hundred dollars, and what the heck? You know,
Speaker 2: it's just like, why not record higher? I don't get it,
Speaker 2: but so and yes, if you can get it that
Speaker 2: way and then stream it, yeah, you get on title
Speaker 2: you know or co buzz. It sounds quite good. Nothing
Speaker 2: like a CD plus plus one last thing plus plus.
Speaker 2: The other thing is with the CD. The other thing
Speaker 2: that hurt the CD was the fact that we got
Speaker 2: into level wars. Now we've always had level wars. We
Speaker 2: had Level Wars in the fifties with forty fives, in
Speaker 2: the sixties with forty fives. My take on it was
Speaker 2: everyone wanted a hot record. Why so, you know, when
Speaker 2: it played on the radio. You know, it would try
Speaker 2: to get through all the compression and jump a little bit.
Speaker 2: And I used to always say, you know, the guys,
Speaker 2: the promotion guys would go into a local, smaller radio
Speaker 2: station where they're trying to get you know, they were
Speaker 2: going around the country doing this in smaller markets, not
Speaker 2: the big ones, and like Nashville for instance, And you
Speaker 2: know the DJ. They going to see the DJ. He's
Speaker 2: on the air and he's got two turntables and he
Speaker 2: puts on the next single and here's the new one
Speaker 2: from so and so and plays it out to go.
Speaker 2: Then he turns the speakers in the control room off
Speaker 2: and says, what do you got, Oh, this is a
Speaker 2: new single from this listen to it. And he puts
Speaker 2: it on and he's just heard the other single and
Speaker 2: it's not loud. This isn't as loud, it doesn't jump
Speaker 2: out of the speakers. Promotion guy goes back to the
Speaker 2: record company and says, you've got to get it hotter.
Speaker 2: It's got to be hotter. It's not hot enough. So
Speaker 2: we've always had level wars, but when we got into
Speaker 2: the you can only go so far without insane distortion. Well, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: in digital land, you can you can go crazy without
Speaker 2: the same kind of distortion, a different kind of distortion.
Speaker 2: So CDs, because you know, we finally got a medium
Speaker 2: that had one hundred and ten dB level of dynamic
Speaker 2: level and we use the top all but the top
Speaker 2: five to eight percent. It absolutely is stupid, but that's
Speaker 2: how it was, So that's what you were comparing to.
Speaker 2: So yeah, if you get on those streamings, those two
Speaker 2: streamings services, I'm not familiar with Apple what their's was light,
Speaker 2: but where they're actually doing ninety six k's In addition
Speaker 2: to them being higher quality because of being that high,
Speaker 2: they're also not compressed to living death the way the
Speaker 2: CDs were.
Speaker 1: Okay, in terms of yourself monitoring, one thing we know
Speaker 1: is every speaker sounds different. How important were the speakers
Speaker 1: to you and what do you listen to on playback?
Speaker 2: Well speakers are I'd like to say they're very important.
Speaker 2: You know, when I started through the seventies, before I
Speaker 2: built my studio, I worked in lots of different studios
Speaker 2: and Doug Sachs, my mastering engineer, said you must mix
Speaker 2: by the meters because I don't know how you can
Speaker 2: relate to these different studios, especially back then when some
Speaker 2: of them just had horrific monitoring, terrible monitoring. But speakers
Speaker 2: are definitely very important, and it's how you relate to
Speaker 2: a speaker. It's one of the most important things. Because
Speaker 2: I've heard good engineers that work with speakers that I
Speaker 2: could never mix on or wouldn't want to. Maybe I
Speaker 2: could would have to. I don't know, and I don't understand,
Speaker 2: and they come out with good mixes everywhere. And that's
Speaker 2: the key, is that you want you want to mix.
Speaker 2: In my early days with Doug, I literally would go
Speaker 2: to hi fi stores where you could go in and
Speaker 2: play something and they had push buttons you may remember that,
Speaker 2: where you could go in and go from this speaker
Speaker 2: to that speaker to this speaker. And it was always
Speaker 2: great to see if all of them were in phase,
Speaker 2: because sometimes one of them here they are trying to
Speaker 2: sell their equipment and the speakers are out of phase.
Speaker 2: It's just a wonderful thing. But I digress anyway, and
Speaker 2: that was very helpful in the beginning to see you
Speaker 2: can't go crazy with that because it'll literally drive you crazy.
Speaker 2: The fact that some speakers could be so incredibly different,
Speaker 2: let alone what room they're in and all of that.
Speaker 2: For me personally, I used Richie Podler monitored on one
Speaker 2: six inch speaker, even in this when we went to stereo,
Speaker 2: and I remember him asking him about that, and he said,
Speaker 2: I mix on one speaker because I want to know
Speaker 2: what it's going to sound like on the radio. And
Speaker 2: he said, if it didn't sound good on the radio,
Speaker 2: no one's going to buy it, so it doesn't matter
Speaker 2: how it sounds anywhere else. And I can't say that
Speaker 2: he was wrong back then. So I started off on
Speaker 2: small speakers before small speakers were a thing. And then
Speaker 2: when most people went to small speakers, there were these
Speaker 2: little teeny cubes. What is that three inch or something
Speaker 2: to it? To that, and you know, I never could
Speaker 2: begin to relate to those because I couldn't hear enough,
Speaker 2: you know, And it's what's real. I don't know. In fact,
Speaker 2: I remember the greatest thing happened when we when we
Speaker 2: found an AM transmitter where you could put it in
Speaker 2: the studio, park your cars parked in the parking lot.
Speaker 2: The transmitter wouldn't go very far, but it would go
Speaker 2: to the parking lot and you could go out on
Speaker 2: an unused frequency and hear what it sounded like in
Speaker 2: your car, because cars were always important, because that's by
Speaker 2: and large where people heard still is and today it's
Speaker 2: clearly most people don't have a good stereo system. They
Speaker 2: have their cars and that's what goes on. But for
Speaker 2: me personally, I ended up with a Tannoy speaker that
Speaker 2: was given to me by Tannoy. When I listened to it,
Speaker 2: I liked it better than their previous model, which I
Speaker 2: never liked. But I thought the crossover wasn't good, and
Speaker 2: I gave it to Doug Sachs's acoustical I mean not
Speaker 2: electrical engineer to work on a crossover, and he and
Speaker 2: Doug came up with what they called the Mastering Lab
Speaker 2: crossover and had a little made, a little cartage industry
Speaker 2: out of it. And so I've been on those ever
Speaker 2: since twenty something years. It's a ten inch coax.
Speaker 1: In your book, you stress that it's about the music
Speaker 1: as opposed to the sound. Can you give us some
Speaker 1: practical applications where you have to make that decision?
Speaker 2: Yes, I remember having a tough decision early on when
Speaker 2: I was you know, oftentimes, if you have a really
Speaker 2: good band, and I'm talking studio musicians or people that
Speaker 2: haven't lived with the music. Obviously, bands will rehearse when
Speaker 2: they come in and put down how they've been rehearsing it.
Speaker 2: But when you've got guys that are hearing the music
Speaker 2: basically for the first time and whatnot, quite often, quite
Speaker 2: often you may get an incredible take on the very
Speaker 2: first take. Not a lot, I shouldn't say quite often,
Speaker 2: but it can't happen. And I remember a tracking date
Speaker 2: where the first take felt great and I didn't have
Speaker 2: it quite together because, for instance, you know, when you
Speaker 2: talk about getting drum sounds, you can get it, you
Speaker 2: can work. That's another thing about why it's so weird
Speaker 2: to me to spend you know, two days a week
Speaker 2: whatever on a drum sound, because all that matters is
Speaker 2: what the sound when the guy's playing the song. And
Speaker 2: you know, I'm I'm okay on the drums. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not my main instrument, but I can I'm doing
Speaker 2: I do okay. And I remember helping someone. Someone said,
Speaker 2: do you help me get a drum sound before the
Speaker 2: guy's the drum drummer gets here, And I went out
Speaker 2: and played for him. He got it. And then when
Speaker 2: the real heat and it sounded really good. The drum
Speaker 2: sound was great. When the guy got there, he said,
Speaker 2: you wouldn't believe it. It sounded totally different. I said, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I'd believe it. And I've had it where I had
Speaker 2: a one professional drummer, Oh my gosh. Jeff Pacara was
Speaker 2: on a session Boss session I was producing, and Steve
Speaker 2: Jordan was in town, the great drummer, Steve Jordan's, and
Speaker 2: he came in and Jeff, who was always looking to
Speaker 2: give anyone and everyone a break, he said, he said,
Speaker 2: let Steve try a take, really, And I thought we
Speaker 2: were so close to getting the take really yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: And I knew why. Main reason was because Steve l
Speaker 2: liked that real pinky sound. So he goes out and
Speaker 2: destroys the tuning of Jeff's drum to get it up
Speaker 2: high pink, and and he tried a couple of takes,
Speaker 2: and the drum sound was not just the snare, but everything,
Speaker 2: the kick, even the symbols. You know, it's all about
Speaker 2: the dynamics of the four appendages of a drummer. And
Speaker 2: you know how they're their ears are, you know, are
Speaker 2: telling the I guess we'll consider the ears as left
Speaker 2: brain how the ears and the left brain are telling
Speaker 2: the appendages and the and the right. No, the appendages
Speaker 2: will be left too, I don't know. Anyway, they're going
Speaker 2: to tell them how to play what that they think
Speaker 2: feels good, and another drummer comes in and it's totally different.
Speaker 2: What can you do.
Speaker 1: Well, Bill? This has been great. I have a million
Speaker 1: more questions, a lot of them technical questions about boards, eques, whatever,
Speaker 1: but we're going to leave it here for now. I
Speaker 1: want to thank you so much for taking this time
Speaker 1: with my audience. Oh it's my my pleasure. Until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob left Sex