How's Ethan doing?
He's doing great, and he said to give you his regards.
That's great. Are you proud of having a son so talented?
No. Of course I am, you twat! I'm very proud. I'm proud of all my kids.
Luther Russell, who you worked with briefly, is a friend of mine. You set up a recording session for him.
Oh, I remember him. Very, very nice guy.
Your console was over at Ethan's. We hung out and I said, "Ethan, would you want to do an interview for Tape Op?" He said, "No, I don't want to." We ended up hanging out for three hours, and by the third...
He told me the story as you're telling it here. He ended up doing it, and he said it was really cool.
I own a studio; I also engineer records and produce. I'm not coming at this like a journalist. I think that's everybody's fear.
I don't have a fear of journalists. I spent 50 years ignoring the press completely, just purely and simply based on the fact that I figured my career would last longer if I did. The minute you start using the press, they get aware of it fairly quickly, as you know, and they will turn to look to ways of knocking you. They'll be critical and unpleasant, because it makes for better reading. I never had a need to promote anything through the press. I certainly wasn't looking for work. It wasn't like I was having a problem in that area. I never went near them. Actually it worked. For anybody starting now, it would be the first piece of advice I could give them. Avoid it. Don't talk to anybody.
Like you said, their job is to sell newspapers and magazines.
I understand that. I've been really lucky, because I've kept my head down. On the very rare occasion that I get my name mentioned, it's nice. It's very pleasant.
I looked at the press around the time your book was coming out.
The book was the first time I've ever really used the press for a purpose, and I was trying to sell my book. Again, because I'd never done any before, it was relatively simple. Fortunately, none was horrid.
It's a positive tale to tell, at this point.
Well, yeah. I didn't slag anybody off.
Were there times you felt like saying something but didn't?
Absolutely.
You're opinionated.
No.
Yes, you are!
Of course I wrote things to get it out of my system, screeds of stuff that were not particularly complimentary. I took it all out, realizing very swiftly that airing your dirty laundry is not what the book should be about at all. I took pretty much everything out. I'm glad I did. I don't think it makes good reading for anyone, as a punter reading the book. I don't think it's good to sit there and hear someone waffle on in a negative way. I made the book as positive as I could, and that's how I felt.
How did you feel about the reaction to the book, the sales, reception, and reviews, at the end of the day?
I was completely blown away, to be honest. I had no idea that it would be as popular as it is. It's doing really well. It's been a really good reaction to it. Initially it was very strange to me to even accept the fact that everybody was treating it like a book. I'm used to it now.
Has anyone optioned it for a film? Would there ever be a possibility of a movie based on your book?
There's been a lot of talk. In fact, Ethan and I have already started on a documentary based loosely on the book itself. It's not about me. It's about the era, which is what the book is supposed to be about.
Near the end of the book you talk about being really lucky to have been a part of what happened at that time. How do things look to you these days, with the music industry and recording — especially our end of it?
To be honest with you, I'm so far out of touch now. I don't work very much, and when I do, I go in with blinkers and do exactly what I always did. It's not like I'm looking to learn a new technique or anything.
You're not Pro Tools certified?
I won't have a screen in my control room of any sort. I'm not terribly qualified. I've lost touch a bit. I talk to people obviously. Ethan and I have been talking about it a lot. In part of the film that we're making, we're obviously going to go up to date as to where things are, and why and how. We're talking to people who know and are in the business now. As far as I'm concerned, I think it's rather sad that the digital age has taken over to the extent it has. Obviously there are massive benefits. I did an interview on Friday and the same question was asked. I am now where my mum and dad were with me. My mother and father didn't understand one note of any piece of music I was listening to, or the way that people dressed or behaved. It was completely alien to them. Now I'm right where they were. So it's normal. I don't feel upset or anything. I feel a responsibility of sorts, as obviously you do or you wouldn't be doing what you're doing, to encourage the young of today and hopefully pass on a little of the knowledge I've got, so that at least that way of recording is made available. It's very rare... most kids wouldn't know how to record more than one instrument at a time.
Would you ever think of writing a book that was more technically oriented?
Yes. I got approached to do that, in fact. I think it would more likely be a pamphlet than a book. I don't think there's quite enough for a book, to be honest.
Are you sure?
Yeah, pretty much. I've never really thought tremendously about the way I work. I've just sort of got on with it. I probably forgot more of what I've learned over the years than what I can remember now. Anyway, it's been discussed for some years now. I might do it. I dunno. I don't know that I want to do another book, to be honest with you. One was enough I think. I might do a DVD. I think that might be better.
Right. Something more hands-on.
Yeah. At least you can actually demonstrate. You can't always put things down in words easily. Describing sound is not easy to do.
You're one of the few people, after [Alan] Blumlein, to have a mic technique with your name affixed to it, right?
Yeah, which 99 percent of the representations are complete nonsense. That's why I wrote about it in the book. It's the only technical thing in my book.
My friend, David Kennedy in Cleveland, had you come over to Cuyahoga Community College and demonstrate that at the studio there.
Exactly. Somebody filmed it. It's on YouTube. I didn't know someone was filming it.
You can't do anything anymore without it being recorded. One of the things David said to me was that you weren't taking the measuring tape and going from the snare...
Look, here you go. When I was a kid and learning, I was a tape op. The studio that I worked at was the only independent studio in the United Kingdom that had its own remote gear. We did quite a lot of classical recording with symphony orchestras. We'd take a lot of gear out, set up in a venue, and record. I can't remember who the engineer was, which is terribly sad. I was a junior, and I'd slave my ass off from very early in the morning, setting up the symphony orchestra, all the chairs and music stands. Then it comes to mic'ing it. I looked at this guy and was like, "Now what?"
A hundred mics?
He just looked at me and said, "Listen. There's nothing complicated about it. It's all common sense." Mic'ing is common sense. He said we could easily do this with two mics in stereo, and it would be great. He said, "If you think about it, if you know the pattern of the microphone, what the microphone that you're using is actually seeing, and then you figure out the distance, you apply the angle of the capsule to the distance away it is, then you'll know what it's going to cover." We put half a dozen mics up. We rarely used more than that. That was the best lesson I was ever taught. I went back to the studio and got the literature that came in the boxes for all the microphones, and I studied the patterns of all the mics. Most engineers now would not have a clue what a [Neumann U] 67 sees accurately, because they've never looked at the diagram. There's nothing clever about it. It's just common sense. Whatever instrument you're recording, if you go out into the room and are impressed by the sound you're hearing from the musician (which is hopefully the idea), then your job is to try and capture that sound. Unfortunately now, that very rarely happens. First of all, engineers rarely go out into the room. They might send their second out there to move the mic or something. If there's a problem when they lift the fader up, if the sound isn't what they want, they'll immediately try to get clever and reinvent the wheel by employing techniques in the control room to get the sound right, rather than going out and listening to what the guy's giving him in the first place. It almost certainly won't be what he's hearing in the room anyway. I could ramble on for hours, but you know what I'm saying.
Exactly.
I'll shut up, because you already know.
But I'm not learning anything, Glyn! I'm here to pick your brain. I need to be a better engineer. I think also you mentioned earlier that it's instinct, in a way. It's also like when we're good at this, you hear what's coming through the mics, you walk in the room, and you instinctively know what to do.
That's because I've done it for 50 years. For 30 of those years, it was pretty much six days a week. In the early days, it was three sessions a day with different musicians. It was nothing like today. The massive learning curve in the late '50s and early '60s when I got my hands on a console, everything was live and in mono. The client would leave after a three-hour session with songs finished. Done. You had to be on your toes. It's a great way to learn. I still hold that method of recording dear to my heart. Delaying decisions to the end of the process is absurd, and it is the biggest time and money waster altogether that can possibly be. I know it's gone way beyond that where I've left off, with 24-track.
You can have 300 track sessions.
Exactly. It's just absurd. Frankly, all it means to me is that people don't know what they're doing. They don't. They're incapable of making a decision. The net result is that if something is pondered over and farted around with to the extent that it is capable of being done now, digitally in particular, the music becomes clinicized beyond belief. It loses a massive element of substance as a result. To me, music is an emotion. It's an emotive experience to play it, to perform it, and it's certainly an emotive experience to listen to it. The performance of a piece of music by more than one person should be an interaction between those people. It should breathe between whomever is playing it. If you overdub something, the person overdubbing can respond to what's come down already, but they don't affect it other than adding another layer of sound to it. What's happened now is that almost everything seems to be recorded one instrument at a time. Some people are brilliant at it, but some are not. The end results are then farted and fiddled around with to such an extent that it takes all the human element out of it. Some of the best records ever made have mistakes in them; the tempo changes, but there's nothing too horrendous, and it's all part of the process. What won on those performances was the fact that there was an emotive content between the people playing it. That made this magic bloody sound that we're still listening to today. Those records all hold water in some way, and I believe that's the reason why. There are lots of other reasons too, but I feel very strongly about that. Obviously it depends on the music, but to me that is essential for the performance of the piece of music to work for me.
When you work with an artist these days, such as Ryan Adams or Band of Horses, do you have discussions beforehand to say, "This is how I see us working on the record"?
Oh, absolutely. The reason why anybody would want to work with me is because they know the way I work. Equally, if somebody that I really wanted to work with wasn't happy about that aspect, I'd try and meet them halfway because I wanted to work with them. I'm not completely shut up and closed. Obviously there have been loads of cases where I've been forced into a situation where I had to build [songs]. But I don't think it makes for great records. There are certain musicians... Joe Satriani is a classic example. I made an album with Joe ]. Joe had previously had massive control over pretty much every note that was played by everybody. He was very strict about exactly what was played. He made a fantastic record with my brother [Andy Johns], in fact. Brilliant record, with the Bissonette Brothers [Gregg and Matt] on bass and drums. Then he comes to me, and I say, "What I'd like to do is put you in a room with musicians that I consider to be as good as you, and I want you to play the guitar. That's it. They'll join in." He wasn't quite sure if he was going to be able to do it; but he did it, bless him, and he did it brilliantly. We only made one record, so he's immediately gone back to the way he's always worked. Obviously that has been hugely successful for him. However, I know for a fact that he enjoyed the experience. That was him meeting me with my suggestion. It was very difficult for him to do, but he's gone back to the old way.
Like Belly's record that you did, King, was one where I know you talked about , as opposed to constructed.
Yeah. Ryan Adam's record [Ashes & Fire] . Well, maybe the strings were overdubbed, or a keyboard part or something. He might overdub an electric guitar part, but we could have easily released everything we cut without one single overdub on it.
You really know if it's happening that way.
Well, of course. It's so much better for all the musicians if the singer's actually giving you a performance while they're playing, because they react to it. That's the point.
I had a band send me the rhythm section to start laying down a song. I thought, "Where's the rest of the band? How do I produce this? I don't even have a demo."
There's something quite fun about building [songs]. It's like being given a couple of bricks, and then the next day, two more arrive.
It's different.
It is different, and it can be fun. I could wang on for hours. I think people waste so much time. Look, I've probably overdubbed on every record I've ever made in some form, either percussion or a vocal thing, or somebody in the band wanted to play another instrument. Lots of times the vocalist obviously needs to become more familiar with the song [in order] to enable him to sing it the way he really wants, so he'll do a guide of some sort. Very often with the Stones, the lyric was never even written. It was just mumbled, or Mick [Jagger] just made noises. But it made a huge difference. If it wasn't there at all, or if there wasn't any kind of structure to the melody that everyone was hearing. It makes a massive difference.
I know. Time marches on, and it's "progress," but there are a lot of changes that I feel have been detrimental to certain recording scenarios. I hate to say, "That's not the way to make a record," because there are so many different ways.
No, that's just from my perspective. I respect all the other genres. I'm not saying I don't. I don't particularly like the results, but I accept the fact that it's me being a boring old fart. Things move on. It's fine. Good luck to them. Certainly there are some of those records that I think are really clever. The recording process was invented originally to capture the performance of a piece of music. That's what it was there for. Unfortunately now the tail's wagging the dog a little bit. People don't write songs the same way because of the recording process, and they certainly don't make records the same way. It's sort of taken over. Some people would argue that it's given us far more opportunities to be sonically inventive. Okay, I don't argue with that. It's just not my cup of tea.
Picking the right producer is important.
Let's get to that. That's an interesting point. I think the most difficult choice any artist ever has is picking the right producer. I wouldn't want to be an artist for all the tea in China if I wasn't experienced, or hadn't actually had the opportunity to work with the producer before. It's all very well, someone having a reputation, and you liking the records they've been involved with; but you never really know, as an artist, to what extent and what type of influence the producer had on the record. I've made loads and loads of records where I was just lucky to be in the room, no question about it. I wouldn't want to take any credit, at all. The artist takes the credit. There are very few where that isn't true actually, if I'm honest.
Especially in the UK, you were really one of the first people to transition from engineer to producer and freelancer as well.
I was the first freelance engineer in the world, I think, for some years actually. It's very strange. I don't know why that was. I've never really paid much attention.
But making that transition, being seen as an engineer and then saying, "At times, I'm producing." Sometimes people get confused about what a producer is — it's the ultimate question that's always impossible to answer.
This is from the foreword of my book: "Someone asked me the other day, 'What exactly does a record producer do?' My answer was, 'You just have to have an opinion, and the ego to express it more convincingly than anyone else.' Every time I start another project, I wonder if I'm going to get found out." That's pretty much how I feel about it. There are so many different types of producers, as you know. All of them, most of them that I ever worked with, specialized in one aspect of production, maybe two, but very rarely all. The one aspect they specialized in was strong enough to give them the gig. They all had an opinion and were capable of pronouncing it in a convincing way. Some guys were not really musical, but they had a good idea about song picking. Mickie Most was a classic example of that. He could pick a song and put it with the right artist. I engineered a session for Mickie Most years and years ago, and he read the paper. He didn't say a word. Other guys were all over it like a hot cloth, interfering with it on every level. Wrong. It's somewhere in the middle. The idea is to provide the environment for the artist that allows them to be who they are and create in a happy and healthy way. My responsibility has always been to the artist. It's their career on the line every time they go into the studio to make a record. I'm very much aware of that. I try to find out from them what exactly they want from me, and I try to provide it. In a lot of the bands that I've worked with, different individuals in the band want quite different things, never mind the whole band.
That's a learning curve.
It's a massive learning curve. Being an engineer for so long, working with so many different producers, I learned a tremendous amount of what I liked about what they were doing, as well as what I didn't like.
Early on you were working with Shel Talmy on some iconic recordings for the British Invasion years. What kind of things did you learn from working with Shel?
He was a classic example of somebody who spoke with authority. You would never have a question about what his opinion was. He certainly was involved with what I was doing. He commented constantly about the sound I was getting, or the balance. I don't ever remember him specifically getting involved with arrangements, but then again the acts we were working with were pretty together; The Who and The Kinks, in particular. He was impressive; that's all I can tell you. He and I were incredibly close friends for a long time. I engineered almost every record he made for a long time.
Did you work on The Creation albums with him too?
Yeah. It's funny; that came up in conversation yesterday. Great band.
I always assumed you worked on that, but there're not a lot of credits.
Engineers did not get credit for anything then.
Right. , like the violin bow squealing on the guitar. You were banging these songs out. Three songs in three hours or something?
Three or four songs. Maybe just an A and a B side, if you wanted to cut a single. People weren't making albums then.
You got an album, if the singles did well.
Basically you got to make an EP. If you had a hit single, you were allowed to make an EP. If you got any bigger after that you were allowed to make a 10-inch album. And then, eventually, if you were really good and making fortunes, you could make an album. Nobody bought albums, in those days.
What kind of album projects intrigue you now, and what makes you want to work on a record with somebody at this point?
It's based on their personality, as much as anything else. Then their musical ability, obviously. My feeling about working has never really changed. If I'm intrigued by what the artist is doing musically, then I'll meet them. If I get on well with them, then we're off. It's never changed. The last record I made quite a while ago was with Benmont Tench [You Should Be So Lucky]. I did that record for nothing, along with everybody else.
Really? Just because it would be a good experience?
It was bloody marvelous. .
The album feels like that.
People were queuing up to play on it, absolutely. That gives you an example. For some years, it hasn't been a question of being terribly worried about income. I've never been motivated by the possibility of the buck, at the end of the day. I've been very fortunate to hit on some artists who have created reasonable sales, but that wasn't the reason I started.
I'd assume there are royalties still from albums you've been a producer on.
Yeah. It's good. It's ridiculous, really. But I'm not complaining.
No. One of my favorite records you ever worked on was, of course, Who's Next. I know that had the origins as the Lifehouse story. Pete Townshend came in with things very well demoed. Then you had to take something that was huge and conceptual, and make a single album out of it.
From Pete's perspective, he'd written music for a film and the film wasn't going to happen. It would have been ridiculous if the music had gone to waste as a result of the film not happening. It was an obvious thing to point out the fact that we should just make an album from the music.
Yeah, the songs are good.
It wasn't a problem at all. It was very easy to do. The demos were so self-explanatory. He's just extraordinary. He's a very good engineer, on top of everything else. I think probably the major problem we were confronted with was some of the grooves were not necessarily typical of what Keith [Moon] and John [Entwistle] would play. I felt that they needed to be slightly more conventional in the way they approached a couple of the songs. That was what I proposed.
Like on which material?
I don't remember which songs. I'd have to listen.
But to kind of slow down a little bit on Keith's fills?
No, it wasn't even to slow down. It was just being more conventional in the way the groove was played.
I'm always amazed how by solely using your typical amount of mics that you hear all that activity on his kit, as well as the power of it. How can I do this?
Well, the reason you have all the activity of it is because of the mic technique. That's exactly it. Simplicity, Larry.
Yeah, but if I don't put all those mics on the toms, the drummers comes in and says, "I can't hear the high tom enough!"
Tell them to hit it harder then. Real simple.
I know.
Very, very simple.
I wish people could do that sometimes.
Could do what? Hit it harder?
Listen to instructions.
Oh, well if they won't listen to instructions, then it's their problem that they can't hear the tom. Look, think about it. Drums are designed obviously to project sound, right? They're meant to be heard from a distance of a few feet, or even further, depending. But they're designed to project. The sound of each drum actually comes into fruition a good three or four feet away from the actual drum. It depends how hard it's being hit. It's the same with any instrument amplified; acoustic guitars, strings, or whatever you're talking about. No musical instrument was invented to be heard from six-inches to two-inches away. The minute you put a microphone right up against the skin of a drum, or a microphone right up against the hole of an acoustic guitar, you've got a problem because it doesn't sound like it's supposed to. Maybe you don't want it to sound like it's supposed to — that's another thing. But let's say you're trying to get a really good drum sound. I don't know about you, but when I've got session musicians I'll book a particular drummer, not just because he can play well, but because of the sound he gives me and the way he tunes his kit. It's very much a part of who he is. It's the same with a guitar player. If they get a really good sound and have a good comprehension for sound in different styles of music, you want them in the room. You don't want to have to start telling somebody what sort of sounds you require. You want their instinct.
Oh, yeah.
You've got a mic that's an inch away from a drum, so it sounds like shit. It's gotta sound like shit. It doesn't sound like the drum. So you then have to get clever and fart around with it [in order] to try and make it sound like a drum. You're in trouble, but you've created the problem yourself by putting the microphone there. You multiply that by 12, or however many microphones people use on drums now. You've got phase problems, and it just goes on and on. One: the sound of the drummer has got nothing to do with what you're hearing, at all. Two: the dynamics in what he's playing goes [away] immediately. Basically, it's an insult to the drummer. You could say, "It's your job to provide the dynamics of what you're playing, not mine; so it's in your best interest for me to mic it from a distance. Then I can hear absolutely the sound of your kit." If the snare drum doesn't sound right for the song, that's because it's the wrong snare drum, or it isn't tuned correctly.
"Let's change the snare drum; let's get things feeling right. Tune your drums."
Yeah. Of course if it's a band, you're not choosing the drummer. He's in the band. You help him. You might suggest the way you think the drums should sound. But to be honest with you, we could talk about this for hours. It's horses for courses. Again, I've been really lucky. Everyone goes on about my drum mic'ing technique. You know the story of John Bonham really well. This man got the greatest drum sound you'd ever heard in your life. If it hadn't been John on that session, I probably wouldn't have discovered that technique of stereo mic'ing because he is so amazing. Prior to that session, I'd always done drums in mono like everyone else.
What had been your technique there?
The same mic setup. Identical. But what I discovered on the Led Zeppelin session was putting one microphone on one side, and one on the other to create stereo drums.
"The net result is that if something is pondered over and farted around with to the extent that it is capable of being done now, digitally in particular, the music becomes clinicized beyond belief."
How do you feel about your brother Andy's work with them after you? It also sounds fantastic. Was it fun to listen to his perspective on recording?
If I'm really honest with you, I never have.
Never listened to them?
No. I don't even own the Led Zeppelin record I did.
You were busy. What about Andy's work in general though?
Genius. Absolutely brilliant. No question. He took what Led Zeppelin started, the heavy rock side of things, and sailed off into the sunset with it. Fantastic. I wouldn't know where to start.
Were you guys on a similar track when you were young?
No. He was much younger than me.
How much younger?
Eight years, nine years maybe.
That's a substantial amount when you're young.
When he was at school, I was doing the Stones. He got interested in what I was doing, and then when he left school, I got him a job at Olympic Studios as a trainee. It was pretty obvious he was going to follow in my footsteps. He was a very different sort of guy than me. Completely different personality. Astonishing engineer. Completely different approach to recording than me. Perhaps there were similarities, but absolutely brilliant. Brilliant.
Phill Brown [Are We Still Rolling?] assisted you on some of your Small Faces sessions and other assorted projects way back. He told me he felt that the engineers he learned the most from ever were Keith Grant and you, working at Olympic back in the day.
That's very nice of him. I like him a lot. Very nice young man.
He was young then!
He's not young now, of course! Keith was doing a completely different type of material than me. A really fine engineer, Keith. Fabulous engineer.
Were there any engineers that you learned from along the way? You were mentioning IBC Studios.
When I started at IBC in '59, the senior engineer there was a guy called Eric Tomlinson. He was an astonishing engineer, absolutely brilliant. He left there, went into film music and did really well. I learned more off him than probably anybody. We had a huge staff at IBC, and they were all really damn good. There was a guy called Ray Prickett who was really good, and then there was a young guy called Terry Johnson. He was younger than me and left school illegally at 15. He got a job at IBC at 15 years old. When I started, I was 17 and had left school. He was 16, and he was doing sessions! This was in 1959. He was just a complete natural. He and I became really good pals, and I seconded for him for a year, or however long it was. We were sort of like a team. Between the two of us we learned how to record loud electric music, because no one had ever done it before.
You're looking at this era where all of a sudden you've got louder drums and louder guitars.
Yeah, and also the music was different. The senior guys at the studio didn't understand. They didn't want to know about it, so we got the opportunity. Thank god.
One of your earlier productions was The Steve Miller Band.
I produced Steve Miller in 1967 [Children of the Future]. That was the first album he made. For three or four years before that, I'd been working with a lot of producers, and I'd been contributing to the production of the records quite happily. I was very happy to remain being called the engineer. It wasn't that big a deal, but there just wasn't anyone else in the control room. I was in the chair, so I could make suggestions directly to the artist rather than via the producer. The transition was great. It was like being let out of a cage, because I had lots of ideas that I'd been saving.
