I did the interview with Blake Mills here at your house last summer. It was great to meet him. I think I missed you by a little bit.
They're like my two other sons.
Blake and Shawn Everett?
Yeah. Blake has been coming here every day for 14 years, since he was 16 years old. Shawn knocked on my door 11 years ago and said, "I just moved here from Canada today. In case you need an engineer, here I am." So we went into my studio. I just liked him immediately. He was the most charming, irresistible guy. I said, "I'm starting a Pete Yorn album. Come by tomorrow." And he was here every day for ten years. What a talent. I mean, the two of them. In fact, Blake is so much like my son, he lives with my daughter. They are two really exceptional guys.
They're making some great records in an era where people aren't necessarily making those kind of immersive albums anymore.
Their standards are very high. Their expectations are very high. I would even say the two of them occupy a very lofty place, in terms of their combination of ability and vision. They're really gifted guys.
Obviously with Shawn and Blake you've taken on this mentor role. Is that something you've done with other people?
A lot of people.
You seem to enjoy that.
I love it more than I can say. I've had this room for 31 years. The people who have been my assistants or engineers have stayed in my life; one of them was a young guy who moved out here from Las Vegas almost 30 years ago. He had no real skills, but he was a wonderful guy with great taste and ambition. He used to do remixes of everything we would do every night. Initially they were quite awful. They got better and better, and then they got really good. I took a job at a record company, so I closed down the studio for a year. He called me one day and said, "You know, I got this call. This little company wants to release my music. Would you read this contract and go through it with me?" I did, and he became the biggest electronic artist in America, with a band called The Crystal Method. That was Ken Jordan, and he was here for four or five years. Joey Waronker was here for a while; a wonderful guy. Jonathan Melvoin, tragically his story ended badly, but he was here for a while. Susan Rogers [Tape Op #117] was my engineer for many years.
We just interviewed her!
I love Susan. She is an extraordinary talent with an extraordinary mind. How lucky was I to meet her! There are some other people… that's a long-winded answer to your question. Yes, I love that role. Someone did that for me very early on, a guy named Jack Nitzsche. I was very lucky when I was in my early twenties to spend every day with Jack, for three or four years. I understand the value of that role.
Was that as a player with Jack, or an engineer?
As a guitarist, an arranger, and kind of a presence. He was extremely generous to me. Jack might be the great unsung hero of the rock age. His contribution is mighty.
He was a legend.
He was a nut, but I just loved him. And he introduced me to so many people, and to such great music.
You started the studio, Zeitgeist, 31 years ago. You were one of the first people to build a studio in your house in Hollywood back then.
I remember when I put it up, there were about seven of us that I knew of. Michael Boddicker, Steve Vai, and, shortly thereafter, Jeff Porcaro, and Chas Sandford, plus one or two other guys. Unfortunately, one of us, who will remain nameless, made the mistake of printing color brochures for his home studio and leaving them in big studios to solicit work. To which the association of studios in town said, "Fuck this," and shut down the home studios. But one guy was very kind to me, as well as helpful and protective. That was Allen Sides [Tape Op #106], from whom I initially bought my equipment to build my studio. He was just as kind to me as a guy could be. I worked without interruption – I was lucky.
I remember reading about that home studio crackdown. You managed to stay under the radar?
I'll tell you what, I never rented my studio out. It was always my own. In fact, I think the only person I've ever rented it out to, if you can use that phrase, is Blake. He and Shawn continued to do projects here. They just finished a great album with Perfume Genius here. I was careful. The reason I built this room was to watch my kids grow up. I used to comp Johnny Rotten vocals with my two-year-old daughter, Z, in my lap. Alex, who's a professional artist now, had her first exposure to art with Edie Brickell scribbling on the console.
Some of your early success as a producer was with Michael Penn?
Yeah. I had been a session guitarist for a long time. I had been a recording artist. I had been the musical director at the Mark Taper Forum downtown for a few years. I was the guitarist for The Rocky Horror Show when it began 42 years ago at the Roxy [Theatre], with David Foster in the band. I'd scored a lot of television and film, and musical directing, but I really wanted to be a record producer. Around '85 or '84 I started producing demos by young artists. It started to go really well, and they all started getting record deals. Bruce Hornsby, Michael Penn, and Eric Johnson. Then I made Michael's first two solo albums. People were attracted to those records. Michael's a very unusual artist. There's a T.S. Eliot quote where he said, "I don't write for undergraduates." Michael is a little bit that way. It's sophisticated; it's thoughtful. I was lucky enough to work with Michael for a long time, and that attracted a lot of other artists. I worked with Public Image Ltd, The Replacements, Edie Brickell, Squeeze, and X. Artists I loved.
Aimee Mann, too?
Aimee Mann, whom I then signed to Geffen when I started working there. If you look at the thread between those artists, they're all great lyricists. I'm attracted to the word and to the idea that a writer has a responsibility to explore a subject. They all epitomize that approach.
It's nice to hear you say that. I've found more and more that I can't work on records where there's even one bad lyric. As a listener, it can be a great record, and you can listen to it ten times and you love it; but then you hear that one bad line, and it wrecks it.
Yeah, I'm with you. I think we've come to the end of the American Idol era in music, which was profoundly vapid. I'm seeing a return to real lyricism and content, and also to virtuosity. But not the wrong kind of virtuosity. Not the technical prioritization, but instead the ability to learn your instrument well enough to express yourself with originality. Blake represents that as well as anyone alive. I'm experiencing that over and over. It's thrilling, and it's a return to the thing that attracted me in the first place.
I just watched Color Me Obsessed: A Film About The Replacements the other day. You started Don't Tell a Soul, but it went south?
It went farther than south, it went subterranean. It was a complicated thing. I guess they had been trying to find a producer for this new collection of songs that Paul [Westerberg] had written, and it hadn't gone well. I got a call from Michael Hill at Warner Bros asking me if I would talk to Westerberg. We communicated, and he said, "Why don't you send me a list of songs you think that were great that were unheralded." Which I thought was a very Westerberg idea. So I wrote a list of 20 and said, "Look, I think these are songs that were significant. I hope you like it. If you don't, you can go fuck yourself." That's what I wrote, thinking that was the right way to communicate with Paul. I got a call the next day, "Come to New York and meet the band." I flew to New York, and I met in their manager's office. We had a conversation that was hysterical. At one point, Paul pulled my boot off my foot, poured a beer in it, lifted it up in the air, said, "You're our man," and drank the beer from my shoe! So I thought, "Okay, this will be fun." Then we began pre-production at Bearsville Studios. They were in a big hurry to make this record, and I was in the middle of making a Charlie Sexton album with Bob Clearmountain [Tape Op #84] at Bearsville. Seven days opened up in the middle of Charlie's record, and they immediately flew out. We did a crash course in pre-production. Paul let me in, which I imagine he hadn't done before. He let me re-harmonize, suggest counterpoint, and talk to him about lyrics. I could see that the band wasn't wholly comfortable with that. I think I was a little too forceful. In any event, we started the record, and, without being too specific, the band was a bit of a mess. Destroyed the studio. Destroyed the rented instruments they had. Destroyed the housing that they were living in at Bearsville. But we got a lot down, some of which was great and some of which was not. Then we recorded a song for a Disney compilation record that was being put together, and we did "Cruella De Vil" [from One Hundred and One Dalmatians]. Paul chose to change some of the lyrics, including a line that I'll never forget, which was, "And I'll fuck you in the face, Cruella De Vil." Clearly that was not going to be on any Disney record, so a few weeks later I found myself in Minnesota to re-record the song at Paisley Park Studios. Beforehand we met at a bar, which was their hangout. It was very tense. Finally I turned to Tommy [Stinson], whom I've since come to really love. I said to him, "Are you deliberately sabotaging this record?" He looked at me, and he said, "Yes. You're too young to produce this record." I got up, left, and I flew home. Eight months later my phone rang, and it was Paul. He said, "I was driving in my car with my wife today, and a song came on the radio. I turned to my wife and I said, 'That is what The Replacements' record is supposed to sound like.' The DJ came on afterward and said, 'That's a new song by the debut artist Michael Penn.'" Paul said, "Oops!" It was a rough experience, but I really appreciated that phone call. He's a serious songwriter, and a serious contributor. It meant a lot to me.
How much of that album, and how much of your work, stayed on that? Matt Wallace ended up picking it up after that.
He started from scratch, but all the arrangements are the arrangements that we'd come up with at Bearsville. That's what we did. But you know what, if they felt I wasn't the right guy at the right time, then they were right. That album did very well for them. They subsequently released a couple songs we did on a compilation record [All for Nothing/Nothing for All], including what I thought was the best song from that whole batch, "Portland," that is quite brilliant.
You mentioned earlier that you took a year off to do A&R. That was with Geffen Records?
All these artists I found had gotten record deals and had done really well, which was great. I had been made an offer to run a new label called Morgan Creek, and I was in the process of finalizing that deal when I got a call from Gary Gersh at Geffen, who asked if I would be interested in being one of the A&R executives there. I was, because it was the best label in the world. The man who was the Chairman/CEO, Ed Rosenblatt, I knew already and had tremendous affection for. Plus David Geffen was a force of nature. I'd met with everyone, and it had gone very well. I met with David, and I was feeling very flush because of this offer I had to run this other company, so I walked in overconfident. The first thing David said to me was, "I see you bite your nails." I said, "Well, yes, yes, David I do. How do you manifest your nervous energy?" He completely ignored me. He asked me another question that made me feel six inches shorter. Finally I thought, "You know what? I'm not going to pull any punches." I just said, "David, I want to thank you for taking this meeting so quickly. I have this Morgan Creek situation looming." He said, "Morgan Creek? Are you leaving show business?" So I thought, "Okay, fuck it. It's his meeting, he wins. I do want to work here." It was a great experience, but I was in an office or flying around the world 16 hours a day for the first year. The studio was dormant. I called up Michael Penn, Ry Cooder, Daniel Lanois [Tape Op #37], and a couple of other guys, and I sold everything in one day. Shortly thereafter Ed Rosenblatt came to me and said, "We really want you producing more." I said, "Ed, I sold everything!" He was great. He said, "Don't worry. We'll help you out." He was really kind to me – a truly great man. So I re-equipped. Even though I continued doing A&R there, and then became head of A&R at Virgin for a few years, I was starting to spend a lot of time in the studio again.
You thought maybe you were done doing production? That's why you sold everything?
I don't know if it was that. I didn't like the idea that the equipment sat idle. So I made a karmic deal with myself, and I sold everything for whatever I had paid for it. What I was thinking? I don't know, because Jon Brion bought a $600 Chamberlin [precursor to the Mellotron]! I sold some crazy stuff. But that's okay. All that equipment got used by some of the best musicians in the world.
How long did the A&R jobs go for?
I was at Geffen from '94 to '99, and then Virgin from '99 to 2001. Then Virgin imploded, sadly, and I left. I toyed with a couple of label concepts. I briefly had my own label, Three, with Eric Valentine [Tape Op #45] and Michael Rosenblatt, Ed's son, through Sony [Music Entertainment]. Steve Barnett and Michele Anthony were very good to us. But, ultimately, Rick Rubin came in and changed things. That ended, and I went back to producing full-time. I signed some unusual things: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, At The Drive-In, and Three Mile Pilot. Then some bigger things, like A Perfect Circle, which is aimed at a larger audience. I saw that labels could be good homes if there was good management, if the artist was properly protective of his or her art, and if the people within the labels responsible for speaking up for the artist were doing their jobs. I think that's still the case.
I miss the good labels, where there was curation.
