How did you get into music and recording?
I started a band [The L.A. Teens] my senior year of high school, and we began writing songs. We went to a local studio for six dollars an hour, and made a demo of three of our songs in 1964.
What studio?
I couldn't tell you the name. It was better than the barn we rehearsed in, where I had been recording our songs on my TEAC 2-track. One kids' mother knew somebody who knew someone in the music business. That somebody was Gary Usher. He was friends with the Wilson family, and had wanted to be in The Beach Boys. They chose Al Jardine instead, but Gary did write "409" and "In My Room" with Brian Wilson. We sent him the demos cold, and he called and said he wanted to meet us. He had just made a production deal with Decca Records and he signed us. In those days you would go in and cut four sides; if one of them hit you'd run back in and cut six more to make an album. Sadly, The L.A. Teens only recorded the four sides, but on the second tracking day, he brought in an incredible guitar player, Richie Podolor, to augment the band. After the session, Richie told us he was building his own studio in the [San Fernando] Valley. When Decca dropped us, I went to see Richie at his studio [American Recording Company] and told him we'd been dropped. He had a relationship with Mike Curb, who was just starting out, and, based solely on Richie's recommendation, Curb signed us. We had recorded with Gary Usher at Capitol Studios' Studio B and Western [Recorders' Studio] 3, two of the best studios in Hollywood at the time – still even today. So, we went to Podolor's American Recording and cut the first track. When I came back into the control room and he hit play on the Ampex 4-track, I looked up at those Altec 604 speakers and was blown away at what I was hearing. I felt something from the sound of our band that I had never felt in those other great studios. I realized right then how much recorded sound could augment the emotional content of music. I turned to Richie right then, pointed at all the equipment and asked, "Can you teach me how to do all this?" He said, "No. I'm teaching Bill Cooper. Now go out and do another take." "Yes, sir." But that was the "aha" moment for me.
Where did that thought lead you?
I found a studio near where I was living with my parents. It was minimally professional, with only two condenser mics and egg cartons on the walls for sound absorption. No EQ, just a little mixer for the 2-track recorder. I told the owner if he'd teach me how to operate the equipment, I'd sweep the floor and help him with sessions. He went for it, and within six months I was recording all of his sessions. A while later, he brought in a homemade 4-track, and commissioned Toby Foster to build us a small console. Toby soon got a job at Whitney Recording Studios and became my first mentor. I was back in college and would go in after school and barrage him with questions about how everything worked. Toby was very patient and taught me all the basics. All of my aptitude in school was in math and science, and learning engineering came pretty easily for me. About two and a half years after having my "aha" moment, I heard Richie's other engineer at the studio was quitting. I started pleading with Richie to hire me. After two months of begging, he finally said, "Okay, there's a publishing demo tomorrow morning. Come and do that." I went in, did it, and called him that afternoon and asked, "What'd they say?" "They said you were great." "Okay, what's next?" He said, "Come in tomorrow. There's a Warner Bros. demo session and you can do that one." I went in, did it, and called again in the afternoon to see what they thought. Richie said they also said I'd done great. "Okay, now what?" "Why don't you come in tomorrow night and cut a track with Three Dog Night." "All right… what?" Gabriel Mekler, the producer for Three Dog Night and Steppenwolf, was Richie's biggest client. Why in the world would he stick a young, wet-nosed kid in with his main client? What did he hope for? If I had fallen on my face, he would have looked like a horse's ass. I cut a track, and called in the next morning, "What'd Gabriel say?" "He said it went very well." "So?" "Come in tonight and do it again." I went back and cut another track. Same question for Richie the next morning, same answer. However, on night three they wanted some effect on the guitar I couldn't do. I had to call Richie, and he and Bill [Cooper] came down and took over the session. That was the end of me tracking, but I did do some overdubs later on. I got thrown in the deep end of the pool very early on and managed to swim.
But you were also prepared. You were musically knowledgeable and knew about engineering.
I was still planning on being an artist back then, and I thought of engineering as an adjunct to writing songs.
Were there any publications or books you were able to learn from at the time?
Toby made me read the old Recording Engineer's Handbook. Years later I lent it to one of my assistants I was training, and never got it back.
Do you remember the new tape deck track counts coming in? Was it like, "Holy crap, we've got eight more tracks!"?
When I started engineering at Richie's, he had just gone to eight tracks. Coming from 4-track, that felt to me like a ton of flexibility and it was very exciting. No longer did we have to lock in a balance of the rhythm section on one or, at most, two tracks. When I started my first sessions, mixing everything in stereo at that local studio, I was forced to make all the decisions on the session, since everything was live. With no EQ, getting sounds was all about mic'ing, and with only two condenser mics that was a challenge. When I got to Richie's, he and Bill taught me the first order was definitely mics and mic'ing. But their board did have the 251 EQs.
The Langevins?
Yes! The little passive ones. Gorgeous! Actually, they only sound as good as the recovery amp you put behind them to make up gain.
How did you fall in with Doug Sax?
One of the clients I worked with at American was a duo of producers from ABC/Dunhill Records; Steve Barri and Joel Sill. They had started an album with a group called Smith. Bill Cooper had been engineering them but handed them off to me once I got going at the studio. They had a great single called "Baby It's You." After I did the mono mix of the single, I asked Richie, "What do I do now?" He said, "Go to 6033 Hollywood Boulevard, and hand it to Doug Sax at The Mastering Lab. He'll know what to do." I went there, and when he put it on, he thought it sounded great, though that was mostly due to Bill Cooper's great recording. That's where it all started for Doug and I; we went on to become very close friends. I refer to Richie as my second mentor, and Doug as my "graduate" mentor. Doug's brother, Sherwood, had built all the equipment at The Mastering Lab; the speakers, the power amp, the amplifiers for the console, tape machine, and the cutting amp. When he opened, all he had was a UA [Universal Audio] 2-band equalizer, and [Teletronix] LA-2As that were highly modified by Sherwood; the lowest distortion compressor I've ever heard. Doug would go on to teach me that in analog less is more, meaning the less electronics the signal goes through, the better – or more natural – the sound you're going to get. There are plenty of boxes or plug-ins today to make something sound different, but there's no box or plug-in that will make something sound more natural. That principle would go on to be the concept for building the console for my studio [Bill Schnee Studios, now part of Larrabee Sound Studios].
You continued working at American Recording?
Yes, but there was tremendous pressure from my Jewish doctor father to be a doctor. In fact, by the time he died I had three Grammy nominations and ten gold records, and he said, "Billy, when are you going to get a real job?" [laughter] I told him it was my real job, that I seemed to be good at it, and that I loved doing it. None of that seemed to matter to him. I'm sure if I end up on a psychiatrist's couch, we'll start there. Podolor took over producing Three Dog Night and Steppenwolf, and I couldn't get into his studio to work. So, with his blessing, I took the clients I had been working with at American and went independent. I believe I was one of the first independent engineers in Los Angeles, but I had a terrible time getting the same sonic results I had gotten at American. I didn't know that different electronics, proper monitoring, and room acoustics could all make a huge difference in a recording. Podolor's studio had all these nailed, and I couldn't figure out why what I was now doing wasn't working. When I took records in for Doug to master, he was quick to point out how I wasn't getting anything close to what I had been bringing in from American. It was embarrassing! One of the clients I took from American got a job in A&R at Mercury Records. He believed in me, and he said if I had an artist I liked that he would sign them and I could produce them. I came across a Black gospel group [New Glory] I liked, and, as promised, he signed them. This was the first time anyone ever gave me money to produce a record. I mixed the single at Whitney Recording Studios in Glendale, where Toby was now working. They had the first Neve console on the West Coast, before RCA [Studios] bought three. I knew I wasn't getting it right; it didn't sound bad, but certainly wasn't great either. It wasn't moving me. I told Toby I hadn't been happy ever since I left American. He listened to my mix and said it was pretty darn good, and that I was being too hard on myself. "Ninety-nine percent of the people don't know the difference." I went, "Yeah, I guess you're right." Knowing I wasn't happy with it, I didn't take it to Doug to master, and had Toby master it there at Whitney. Ten days later, Mercury called and said test pressings of the single were in. I excitedly drove down to Mercury's office, picked one up, came home and put it on my little KLH system. When it got through the first chorus, I got really ticked. I picked the arm off the record and said to myself, "I know the difference." That was the next "aha" moment in my career, where I decided I was going to do whatever it took to learn how to control every aspect of what I was doing, and I wasn't going to look back. Funnily enough, that's when Doug Sax became my third mentor. I looked at him as "grad school," because I now knew how to record but I still had a lot to learn. After a year of independent engineering things had been going good, but not great. The one thing I'd produced, New Glory, didn't hit. I was about to register for the fall semester of law school. I was mixing at a studio one day when the woman up front buzzed in and said, "Bill, Clive Davis on line 1 for you." I nervously picked up the phone and said, "Hello?" "Hi, Bill. Clive Davis. How are you?" "I'm fine." "Joel tells me you're a very talented musician and engineer." "Uh, thank you." Clive said, "What do you want to do with your life?" I answered, "I think I'm going to go back to law school." "No, you don't want to go to law school. If you've got music in your blood, you know that's what you want to do." I said, "Well, I would love to, but…" He took out the "buts," and gave me a shot. He signed me as an independent producer/engineer at CBS [Records]. The first band I did there was Sweathog. We had a Top 30 hit ["Hallelujah"], and that got the ball rolling.
You're known for having a great collection of vintage tube mics. How did that start?
When I was headed to CBS, Toby said to be sure and check out the tube mics they had. None of the studios I worked in – except American – had any of them. Back in those days, as soon as the [solid state Neumann] U 87 came out, no one wanted the [tube Neumann] U 67. As soon as the [AKG C]414 came out, no one wanted the [AKG] C12. But Columbia [CBS] still had a bunch of those old mics, and Toby said to try the 67s, C12s, and [Neumann] M 49s. I loved them instantly, and I started buying them right away. Because so many studios wanted the new transistor [solid state] models, I could buy the old tube ones for next to nothing. I never spent more than $500 for a Telefunken [ELA M] 251 until 1980, when I bought my last pair; my eighth and ninth. I paid $2,500 for the pair and complained about it for six months. I just turned down $25,000 for one. F. Reid Shippen [Tape Op #125] told me that may still be too cheap, because mine have a rich history. Everyone talks about the Jeff Porcaro Instructional Drum video [I recorded], where there are 251s on the toms. I had Toby internally pad three of them for toms, and they were only allowed on a very few drummers I knew I could trust. I went on to also collect many of the Neumann nickel series: M 50s, KM 53s, KM 54s, KM 56s, and so on. When Doug decided to get into making better electronics for Sheffield [Lab Recordings], he started by thinking through the concept of making a line level microphone. That's what a Sheffield mic is; it's a Sherwood Sax tube amplifier in the microphone. So the microphone is driving a line level signal in, which is better than driving a mic level signal long distances. Doug knew of my love for the 251, and so he bought CK 12 capsules OEM [original equipment manufacturer] from AKG in Austria and built what I think is the cleanest 251 anyone's ever heard. Transformers are both good and bad. The good is that they prevent many problems in circuits, and they add character to the sound. But the bad is that they're slow. They don't let the signal get through quite as pristinely as without one. If that's what you want – something to mush up and get fatness and character – transformers are great. That's what old Neves and all their iron are known for. It won't be fast, but it'll be thick and rich. I don't know exactly how many Sheffield mics Doug made, but aren't there two of them here at Blackbird?
At least one.
Reid [Shippen Tape Op #125] has one, and I have six, including one that I use for vocals which has a [Neumann] 47 capsule in it. They are all the most colorless microphones there are. To my thinking, and Doug's, they give you more of what a vocalist really sounds like. That's not to say that you might not like the sound better with some extra character, like a regular 251 with a different preamp and its transformer. Those Sheffield mics also have painstakingly hand-selected capacitors. We spent many, many hours over the years listening to capacitors, which are the bane of colorless sound. I don't know if I've ever talked to you about Bravura; my live record company that I'm looking for funding? For all the gorgeous recordings I'm doing live at 24/192, I use the Sheffields on the overheads, piano, and the lead vocal. They are spectacular mics.
Speaking of Sheffield Lab, doing the direct-to-disc sessions must have been exciting!
Yeah! Producer's Workshop [now occupied by Boulevard Recording] was the studio right behind The Mastering Lab; they even shared the same bathrooms. When I left American and was having trouble getting great sounds, Doug told me the tracks he heard from there all sounded quite good. I tried it out, and it became my studio of choice. That's where I did [Steely Dan's] Aja and many other sessions. Doug did the first direct to disc recordings there in 1969, with his partner Lincoln Mayorga. They did it to show off the quality of their mastering; to get the business going. They did a second one in 1971, and a third in '73 that I engineered. That was the most pressure-filled time I'd ever had in a studio. In three days, we had recorded, mixed, and mastered an album. Going back to normal recording was like working in slow motion. That's what got me thinking. I soon went to Doug and said I wanted to do a direct to disc album and use a vocalist. It took me two weeks to talk him into it, and it took him two months to talk Lincoln into it. Lincoln argued that Sheffield wasn't a real record company – it was just for him and his music, and if they were going to do a record like that, why would they trust a "kid" with their money? Lincoln finally agreed, but I had to jump through a ton of hoops to calm his fears. When I did Thelma Houston's I've Got the Music in Me, the studio didn't have enough inputs. They built a vocal booth in the back for Thelma and the six background singers, and they added eight inputs; making it 32, which still wasn't enough. We had an assistant out in the studio who would switch [between] the keyboard inputs for the different songs.
When people talk about you, they often talk about seeing you mix, and how it was like a ballet; very choreographed.
On a console, with a zillion things going on, I'm very fluid and can move lightning fast. Other than that, I'm a complete klutz! Back in the day, I mixed for a performance. I rarely mixed in edits, the way some engineers did. I would work out what I wanted to do in different sections of the song, but I would mostly go from the top to the end in one movement. In fact, when moving fader automation came in, I had to learn to let it "help me." I fought it for quite a while. I finally gave in, and now with Pro Tools I definitely count on it to help me. You have to, with 90 or more tracks!
I'm going to throw some instrument names at you, and ask you tell me favorite techniques or microphones. What's your favorite mic or chain for bass drum these days?
It's varied over time, and it also changes a bit from situation to situation. My desert island mic would be an [AKG] D112. I love the speaker sub against the outer head. I have a nice collection of older dynamic and ribbon mics that I got in England decades ago. They come up with quite interesting bass drum sounds, a bit on the vintage side, but they can be quite cool in the right situation. Normally, I might have a condenser a foot or two in front of the bass drum. What a lot of people use a [Neumann U] 47fet for.
Acoustic guitar and mandolin?
I did an album [Collaboration] in the mid '80s at Power Station [NYC] with George Benson and Earl Klugh. On Earl's acoustic, I accidentally fell into something that I have grown to love. He was in a booth, so isolation wasn't a problem. I had already come to realize that quite often I liked a [Neumann] KM 53 very close to the guitar, especially if I was worried about leakage. Because it's an omnidirectional mic, if it's very close it's not going to hear much more than the guitar and there's no proximity effect. There was a 53 and a 54 in his room for me to pick from; I accidentally had them both up, and I loved it [panned] left and right.
Which is on the left and which is right?
