You started off engineering and mixing in New York, but you're now mainly mixing and doing a lot less tracking?
Yeah, very little.
I would imagine mixing allows you to work on more records versus tracking and producing. Do you enjoy that aspect of it?
I did produce for a while in the '80s. All of us engineers thought, "I'm trying to become a producer." I went along with it. My favorite part of producing was the end of the day when somebody asked for a rough mix. I didn't actually like producing, and I didn't admit that to myself for years. I finally got it. "Why am I doing something I don't think I'm actually that good at, and that I don't really like?" I'm not a psychologist, and you really have to be one in order to be a good producer. Not only that, but you have to be an accomplished musician. I was a hack musician. I couldn't really go over to the piano and say, "Play these chords." With mixing, I can sit down, push the faders up, turn some knobs, dial up some reverb, and say, "What do you think of that?" That I can do. I think I got pretty good at it over the years. I started to realize that people were booking me just to mix their album; a record that they had finished producing. Not only that, but my manager at the time said, "Why are you bothering with producing? You could do so much better just mixing records." It made sense.
How long does it take you to mix a song on average?
Well, it depends on what it is. Normally, if the arrangements are good, and the producer and the artist aren't dickheads, I'll get two a day. If something's complicated, or we have to make a lot of decisions, it'll take a day. Then sometimes I'll work with somebody like [Robert John] "Mutt" Lange, where it takes maybe a week. I don't really understand why that is.
Do you still enjoy doing this? I mean you probably don't have to do this if you didn't want to, but you're still working at it.
I absolutely enjoy it. It's pretty much my favorite thing to do, still. I love the puzzle of it. I love getting a new multitrack, putting it up having never heard it before, and listening to a rough mix, or something like that, to get a good idea of what the artist and the producer had in mind. Then I'm going through and figuring out what each element is, and what they're doing. I go through the faders. I'll put up a rough mix and think, "Okay, what do these things do? What do they contribute to the narrative of this song?" I always go through the "crisis mode" of putting the thing up and going, "Oh, my god, what am I going to do with this? I'll never be able to make this sound good." Then, after a little while, it tends to come together. I get drawn into it. I figure out what everything does, and then it turns into something that sounds like something. It's so much fun to do that. It's like working on a crossword puzzle. Once I start getting it, it starts to come, and I feel like I've done something.
I heard a comment from someone who worked with you that really intrigued me. They were working on a track and they were lost; they didn't know if the song was working or not. They had you mix it and said that you had cleared the clutter and found the song within a half an hour. All of a sudden, the track was working! How do you solve the puzzle?
Well, there's no particular method. I don't even understand it. That's the problem. It's a little scary, because, to me, it doesn't seem like I'm doing anything. It's like, "Why can't anyone do this?" It seems so simple. I'll find the obvious things that pique my interest in a song. Then I find the things that don't, and I weed them out. I base everything around the voice. To me, that's what pop and rock music is all about. It's the narrative of the song. I learned a lot of this from working with [Bruce] Springsteen, actually. His thing is always that the singer is the focus. If anything gets in the way of the message of the song between what he or she is doing and portraying and the listener, then you have to weed that out. It has become instinctive to me. Probably not just me, but a lot of mixers who do what I do. After a while, you instinctively gravitate to the important things, the things that support what the song's about, and what the music's about.
Do you have go-to tricks, or is coming up with new methods part of what you still enjoy?
I usually start a mix with a blank slate. I'll normal out the console completely, so it's not like I have some template that I use. The only template is that I like certain things: The vocals always come up on channel 24, which is the center of the console. Backing vocals are to the left or the right of that. I'll have the guitars to the left, then the drums over farther left, percussion way over to the left, and then on the other side I'll have the keyboards on the right. If there are any strings, horns, or things like that, they go way down on the right. I group everything so I know where they are, so that I can get to tracks really quickly; like if I hear a keyboard that doesn't sound right, or needs some help. I think most mixers probably do the same thing. Plus, I color code everything. Guitars are blue, keyboards are green, and drums are black on the little scribble strip. Other than that, I start by normaling out the EQs and getting rid of all the effects. I will try a bunch of different effects on the voice. Sometimes there's no effect on the voice. I'll always have the vocals in the mix, unless it's really complicated. Maybe it's down a bit. But I always like to hear the whole thing. We used to mix records back in the '70s before there was automation. The problem was that it was hard to mix a record and hear it at the same time. You couldn't get an overall picture of it, because you're always thinking about these little [mix move] details.
Trying to remember to mute this at that point.
Exactly. Automation was such a wonderful thing, when it got good. You could add to your mix, sit back and listen to the mix while you were doing it, and hear it as a finished record instead of hearing it as little bits and pieces. I mixed something the other day with a brilliant young artist. He was really into breaking everything down and listening. "Let's listen to the drums for a while. Let's listen to the percussion for a while." I turned to him and said, "I'm flying blind. That doesn't make any sense to me. If I don't hear the whole picture, I don't know where I'm going. I can't judge what the drums were supposed to be doing if I can't hear the guitars, or if I can't hear the keyboards."
Are you still using the console automation, or are you using Pro Tools automation now?
No, I don't use any Pro Tools automation. I use the console. SSL [4000] G+ is the best automation for mixing, ever. It's natural. I don't really think about it. I can grab a fader and ride it; I don't have a mouse. There's not a lot of programming involved. It's very straightforward and simple. You actually talk to the computer in a way, because you've got a bunch of command buttons, like, "Go to mix." All these crazy buttons. It's archaic; the last software update was '95.
Sometimes archaic is good; it does one thing really well. You can't send text messages on the console.
Thank god. It really works. It's so natural. It's become a part of me. I got into automation in the late '70s, and the early versions were pretty buggy. I've tried a bunch of different automation systems and moving fader systems, and none even come close to this as far as being able to do what I want. I wish that somebody would come out with a new system based on the way this works that was better.
You've got 64 inputs here?
It's a 72-channel desk. There are eight more on the left. But some of them on the right are returns.
Decades ago that was probably more than you could use, but now I'm sure you get in songs with 200 tracks.
We max it out all the time.
Do you internally sum within Pro Tools?
Yeah, absolutely.
But if you don't have to, do you run everything out to a fader?
If I don't have to, yeah. I'll keep everything separate. For smaller sessions, like if I'm working with Don Was [Tape Op #113], or somebody who keeps it to a nice minimum, I don't have to do that. But there are lots of sessions where I get huge string and horn sections, or layered backing vocals, and I'll subgroup them down to a stem. I have to bring it up on a pair of faders.
You've got quite a few hardware reverbs in here. Do you still use those over most of the reverb plug-ins?
I use [Audio Ease] Altiverb mostly for reverb. I'm using it as an external box, really. It's part of the multitrack session, but I send it to an aux off the console and then it comes back to some returns. Everything comes back through this Apogee Symphony I/O that I use as a line mixer for all my returns. They have an internal low latency mixer built in, and it's super stable. Then there are some other reverbs. I still use the [Lexicon] PCM 70s, because they do some things that nothing else does, and these Yamaha SPX990s are good for a few specific effects.
You've got a few of the Eventide H3000s?
Yeah. I use those for various things. I actually wrote a couple of programs for them for doing tape flanging and effects like that.
What are the Roland units you have here?
These are really basic digital delays. The SDE-3000s are old standbys. They still work great, and they're really simple. The Yamaha D5000 is one of the best digital delays ever designed, and nobody ever even knew about it. It was really versatile. Two inputs and six outputs.
You got your start in New York, right? You were New York-based, and you were working out of the Power Station?
Originally at a studio called Mediasound on 57th Street. I started there in '72, and I worked there for five years. Then Tony Bongiovi [Tape Op #127], who was one of the mixers there, came to me one day and said, "Look, I've done pretty well," off some big disco hits that he had. He did disco Star Wars [Meco's "Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band"]. He said, "I'm gonna build my own studio. Do you want to a be part of it?" Mediasound was a great studio, but they were a little behind the times in certain ways. So, I said, "Yeah, sure." Mediasound was more about jingles and R&B music. I was a fan of British rock. I said, "Can it be a rock studio?" He said, "It can be any kind of studio you want. As long as people come and work there, I don't care." So, first of all we searched for a building for Power Station, and then I helped him design it. He was the main designer, but I threw in my two cents here and there. Then I was a staff guy for two or three years at Power Station. Then I, by default, became independent. People were hiring me to mix and produce, and I thought, "This isn't right. I'm getting paid by the studio, and I'm also getting paid by these other people that wanted to pay me directly." I ended up quitting the studio. Plus, the fact that Power Station had a policy of two sessions per day in each room. There were three rooms, so there were six sessions a day. I was working on a Hall & Oates album, and they wanted to lock the room out; Power Station wouldn't allow that. I went to Electric Lady [Studios], or Right Track [Recording] some of the other studios in town and I ended up totally independent.
We sat down with Tony last year and got the whole tour of Power Station. He's a strong-willed guy.
Oh, yeah. He's a brilliant guy. Kind of nuts also, but in a good way. He built an incredible thing there. It's still the top studio in New York.
