Were you born in L.A.?
No, I was born in San Francisco. My father and mother named me after my father's business partner and my godfather, Val Christensen, who was a Norwegian gentleman. He was a very famous orthopedic surgeon in San Francisco. My grandmother was Mayan Indian, and my grandfather was Spanish, so my last name, Guerre, as they say in English, in Spanish is pronounced [Gar+rye]. It's a Basque name. My great grandfather was born in the Pyrenees Mountains in Spain. I grew up in Burlingame, California, which is one of the richest town in Northern California, next to Marin. I grew up next door to the Bing Crosby family. I went to Burlingame High School and then on to Stanford. I went to Stanford School of Medicine. I was in my second year of undergrad when I left. I got in a band, made a hit record, and ended up in the music business.
It turned out all right!
Stanford, too. That's no slacker place. I had a full scholarship.
You've had such a well-rounded body of work.
Well, it's because of [producer/engineer] Dave Hassinger. He attracted all those kinds of people; but he was at a point in his life where he didn't want to do it any more, so he pawned them off on me.
How did you first meet him and get involved at The Sound Factory?
I was being managed by a guy named Michael J. Gruber. He was the Rolling Stones' tour manager in the '60s. He left the Stones to start his own management company. At the time, he was managing myself, Moby Grape, Arthur Lee and Love, a band called Help, and somebody else. He started getting me my very first production jobs and I needed a studio to work in. He new Dave because of his work with the Rolling Stones all those years, so he took me The Sound Factory and introduced me. When I started working with Dave, he was the engineer. Then I realized I wasn't going to get any major clients that way, so I had to figure something else out. One day Dave said that I had a great pair of ears, and that I should come work with him and let him teach me to be an engineer. That's how it happened.
Then he just started giving you more work?
Well, Peter Asher originally came to work with Dave Hassinger, but again Dave was at the point in his life, in his fifties, where he didn't want to work anymore. Peter and I were the same age, and he kept pawning me off on Peter. Peter realized, as smart as he was, that I was actually really good. He told Dave, "Hey, he's great. Go home. I'll stay with Val." That's how that happened.
El Chicano's cover of "Brown Eyed Girl" must have been fun to record.
That was my first hit record, my first time at The Sound Factory, and the first record I ever engineered. Don Buday, who co-produced the record with me, was a dear friend of mine. He got a call from a guy who was the head of Kapp Records at MCA, who El Chicano was signed to, asking if he wanted to produce the next El Chicano record. Why, I don't know, because he's not a producer. He never produced a record in his life. He calls me up and says, "Hey, I've got this job. You want to do this record with me?" I go into the studio, and we're getting ready to cut this record with El Chicano. I can remember sitting at the console at The Sound Factory, just frozen. I'd never engineered a record in my life, and Dave's standing over the top of me saying, "Do this with the congas. Move that over there. Do this to the kick drum." He tweaked the whole thing. Suddenly, the whole session started to turn into something. Then Don got this brilliant idea of re-recording "Brown Eyed Girl" with them, doing it kind of like the "Mexican Everly Brothers." It was a huge hit.
That's a great version. I love that record.
They were a big East L.A. band. I haven't seen them since I made that record.
As you learned more, how did you approach engineering?
What I tried to do when I first started engineering at The Sound Factory on the Linda Ronstadt Heart Like a Wheel album, and everything that exploded after that, was that I tried to turn engineering into more of an art form. I came from a musical background. I was a guitar playing singer/songwriter. I was signed to all the publishers in Hollywood as a staff writer. I did that for eight years. I wanted to make recording an art form. I think I did. People would say to me, "Oh, you just turn the knobs." Yeah, right. I just turn the knobs. I was very musical. My father being a singer helped. I had a really great song sense, because my aunt was Cole Porter's personal assistant for 35 years. I used to go up to his house in Bel Air and hang out. He'd be going around the house like, "Moon, June, spoon. What rhymes with spoon, kid?"
When these great sessions are discussed, the engineer is often overlooked in regards to their contributions.
Well, when I was "just an engineer" I contributed musically to everything I worked on. That's why Linda and I worked together for ten years. I had a lot of great ideas, musically. I came up with things to suggest that helped.
You also worked with Peter Asher quite a bit.
Every record he made for ten years. He never made a record in that period without me, including the fucking Pirates of Penzance album that I had to do for free.
That was a labor of love?
It was a labor of nightmares. My fingers were sore from editing that.
What kind of working relationship did you guys have? Like a team?
Pretty much. I started with him in 1974, and I stopped working with him around 1982, when I was just too busy and couldn't do it anymore. I actually worked with again him in the '90s. When I was producing Sarah Brightman, and he and I produced a track together on her record.
You are doing a lot of work these days with Waves and Manley Labs.
I've always loved the cutting edge of technology, no matter what it was. Whether it was the analog world or the digital world, I was always right at the tip of everything.
Tell me about your introduction to the Aphex Aural Exciter.
Well, there are only three original ones and, to the best of my knowledge, they're all still sitting at Aphex. They were tube powered, and they were in a box like a 19-inch rack, about three spaces high. They never sold them; they were always rented. The ones that we used to create the plug-in, there was only one of them that they could get to function out of the three that they had. They [commercially] made Aphex Aural Exciters after the fact, but they were solid state. None were the original tube versions. I didn't know anything about it. I went to a Wings concert with Peter Asher and Andrew Gold. I was mesmerized by the piano sound in the Forum, because nothing ever sounded good in the Forum. I said to the front of house guy, "What the fuck did you use on that piano?" He said they used an Aphex Aural Exciter. I said, "What?" And he said, "An Aphex Aural Exciter. That's the guy who designed it right over there, Curt Knoppel." I went over and started talking to Curt. I asked if he'd ever tried it on a recording. He said, "No." I was mixing Linda's [Ronstadt] new album [Hasten Down the Wind], and I told him I wanted to try it. I pioneered using that device in the studio.
So he was thinking about using it for live performances?
Live sound is what it was designed for. I'm the one who got him to try it on records.
When you first used it, did you use it on more than just the piano?
I used it on everything. Like I said, it was on each instrument individually. I used it on very little bass, because it doesn't really affect bass. It's more of the top-end [frequencies]. It adds a sparkle to things that you can't accomplish with EQ. Every time, people would say, "Oh, it's just more 15 kHz EQ." I'd say, "Okay, you do whatever you want with the EQ, and you try to match this." They never could do it. It deals with phase. It's interesting how it works.
So when you started working with Waves on the plug-in, how did that process go?
They called me from Israel. They said they were thinking of doing the Aphex Aural Exciter, and that my name was synonymous with that. I was near one of their artists, and they wanted me to help create the plug-in. I said sure. It took almost a year and a half to get it right.
Did they just send you things and you'd give them feedback?
Yeah. Creating an algorithm is not an easy thing. They're the best at it. When I'd tell them, "It needs a little juice," they'd come up with it. It's just insane. It sounds very close to what it really did sound like.
I believe some people are using the Aural Exciter over an entire mix.
Yeah, I would never do that!
What are your thoughts about the device in the studio?
