The impression I get, from working with you, is that the lyrics of a song have to make sense, and vocals have to be audible and intelligible.
That's a big part of it. You forgot music! We've been talking about some projects that are in the works. My comments about some of those songs have been, as far as the lyrics go, "What are you saying? What is this song about? Let's get a focus." Vocals that you can hear? That's part of communicating. These are small issues, but all part of the big thing of being a record producer. People often say, "What's a record producer?" I say, "Well, it's somebody other than the artist, whom the artist trusts, values, and can bounce ideas off of." In my case, I'm a musician; I am not an engineer at all. I have no idea. Sometimes I've written down numbers and letters of microphones, and I've lost them, but it doesn't mean anything to me. I've always worked in tandem with an engineer I could trust. I feel that I can get just as moved by a record that was made in the '20s with one microphone as I can by a record that was made with every bit of state-of-the-art equipment now.
I specifically asked about lyrics, because I remember you saying if the interpretation of a song is open to the audience, and can vary from person to person, then the songwriter hasn't done their job.
I sort of feel that way. There are two ways to look at it. But, if they're leaving it totally open, it's easier to do that than to focus a song and get people to think what they want them to think, as well as in the order that they want them to think it. They may start off a song that's about something, and in the middle the listener realizes, "Oh, he's talking about something else." They see how it might apply to their life or situations.
In correspondence to me you said, "First thought, best thought."
That's about inspiration. Before I was a record producer, starting in Cub Scouts, I wrote my Cub Scout's den theme song. I've been a songwriter since I was that age. I've had assignments in my life to write songs. Sometimes, I've come up against a brick wall and couldn't figure out what it was, so I had to go for inspiration. That's why I brought up "first thought, best thought," which may or may not be a Buddhist saying. It's opening your mind, getting all the input needed for the task, realizing it's all stored there, and then opening up your mind to let some bigger power come in and make you be the agent of what the answer should be. Some people are more gifted agents than others. People have different gifts, as agents for inspiration.
Specifically, you'd told me a story about a guitar solo.
Oh, boy. Okay. I'd done a few albums with The Band. I did the first two [Music From Big Pink and The Band]. I hadn't done anything with them for years, and then they reconstituted themselves in 1993 – Levon [Helm], Garth [Hudson], Rick [Danko], and new guys – to do an album [Jericho]. Jimmy Weider, who was a very talented player, had taken Robbie Robertson's place on guitar. We were overdubbing a solo on the song "Remedy" that he wrote with Colin Linden. Jimmy said, "What time do we start?" I said, "How about 11 o'clock?" I show up there at 11 at Levon's house, which is the studio where we did this album [Levon Helm Studios – "The Barn"]. Jimmy has a dozen amps set up, and as many guitars. I asked what it was all for, and he said, "Oh, I want to try this and this and that." I said, "Okay. I'll tell you what. This is your song. You have an idea somewhere in your subconscious of what this should be. Let that all gel and give it your best shot." He played the solo and said he wanted to fix some notes. He asked me to give him another shot. I said, "Okay, I'm going to leave. You've got an hour here with this wonderful engineer. Go for it." I came back in an hour, and you know the answer: He stuck with the first solo. Gil Evans was a fabulous arranger and a friend of mine. He arranged the famous Miles Davis orchestral album, Sketches of Spain. I was working on an album with David Sanborn, and I asked Gil, "Why does David want to do take after take after take of sax solos?" He said, "It's easy. All these musicians are in a recording studio, with the most expensive set of headphones on they could ever have. They have the best microphone in the world in front of them, they can mix the background track as much as they want to their delight to get the support they need underneath them, and then they can play away for hours. Why wouldn't he sit there and play solo after solo after solo?" That's from that perspective. From the producer's perspective, or a record company's perspective, it's too long. A producer can get bored, and a record company can see the expenses start mounting up. The thing is to strike a happy medium. So much of being a producer is psychological; trying to work things out and make everybody happy. I've been doing this for a long time. I started out very young as a producer. I was about 24. I didn't know beans back then. I made a lot of mistakes. But, as time went on, and the music that I worked with and loved became less popular and new music came in, I got more and more qualified to do my job. Now, it's second nature to me to produce, but the music I sync up with has faded off in the distance.
As recording studios went from 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 to 24 tracks, did you find that the records took longer to make?
When I started out, it was going from 3-track to 4-track. The usual standard was that they'd have a three hour window to do four songs. The song would have been chosen and the artist would have rehearsed. The arranger would've already created the arrangement. The musicians were all handpicked and could read anything stuck in front of them. The drums were set up and mic'd. They'd go through the songs, and it was over. When I started on 3-track, the singer was in the middle and the band was in stereo, separated on both sides. Then they added a fourth track, so we could have a couple of options for the singer, with room to add another element. The big change in music came with The Beatles. Prior to The Beatles, youthful acts were controlled by somebody else; either their producer, or whoever was footing the bill. When The Beatles came in, they had an excellent producer in George Martin. But, because of the fact that they brought in so much money for EMI, and then Capitol, they had a lot of power. I was working for Columbia Records at the time. Every record company was saying, "We want our four lads from Liverpool. We want to make the kind of money that Capitol is making." The record company executives would go out and play golf with the managers of groups. When they got to the 18th hole, the managers would say, "Oh, I've got your four lads from Liverpool. They're four lads from Levittown, but you'll love 'em. The kids love 'em. Long hair, costumes, and the kids go crazy for them." The record company execs didn't know anything and were desperate. They'd give the money to us producers and say, "Here are these guys. Make a record like The Beatles with them." Producers like me, in that era, were assigned to make mountains out of molehills; to make great records with these people. Remember, The Beatles had already been together ten or eleven years, rehearsing and playing together. They were musicians. I always prefer live music, because I value the musician. I value the artist so much. These new people were not musicians. They'd go in there and they couldn't play together! Maybe the drummer, if you sat and beat the time in front of him, could keep it steady. Maybe the bass player could stay with him. The guitar player would play the wrong chords, and the singer couldn't sing at the same time. It was a mess, so we had to overdub. We'd have two 4-track machines, and go back and forth, ping-ponging. We'd lose generations and get more hiss every time we went back and forth. Then, Ampex came out with the 8-track. I could take the band, put it on four tracks, and then have four tracks to use to fool around with a guitar solo. We could take the best tracks, combine them all together, and manufacture a guitar solo. That would get three more empty tracks. Then we could put a vocal on those three tracks, take bits and pieces of that, and put that on a track. Then we'd have two empty tracks to put on percussion, or whatever. Once that came in, people began to ask, "How about 16?" They went from 1-inch tape with 8-track, to 2-inch with 16-track, and then to 24-tracks. It became not only a situation where we had more tracks to cover the inadequacies of the performers, but it also gave us all space to create. Go back to The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Brian Wilson, and people who could use these multitracks and do creative work. They didn't need them. They could use them to make a higher art.
There was a production you worked on that got you out of your office job: "Red Rubber Ball" by The Cyrkle.
Times were not so tough then. We'd actually get job offers when we got out of college. Can you imagine that? I had two job offers: both to be trainees. One was for an advertising agency, where my destiny might be to write commercials for aspirin, and the other was to be a trainee for Columbia Records. I chose Columbia, and they put me in their trainee program. I had a guy in the personnel department I had to report to every week. I'd be assigned to a different part of the company, go in there with my little notebook, and find out what the art department did, find out what the pressing plant did, find out what the salesmen on the street did, and all these different jobs. The destination they had for me was the Special Projects department. Goddard Lieberson was the president of Columbia Records; a wonderful, erudite, sophisticated, and cultured man who wrote classical music and also knew jazz. He could intelligently talk to Miles Davis and Charles Mingus on one side, and Leonard Bernstein on the other. He had his pet projects, and they needed some lackey kid to do the grunt work; that was me. I was doing it for maybe a year and a half. The head of the A&R department – artist and repertoire and producing – came in, looked at his staff, and told me that I didn't belong there. He wanted to put me in something more musical. They started giving me pop acts to co-produce at first, and then to produce. Frankie Yankovic and His Yanks' polka band was a lot of fun. A couple of jazz acts, like Carol Sloane and Charles Lloyd. Then a guy, Nat Weiss, walked into my office and represented himself as Brian Epstein's American associate. I knew who Brian Epstein was; he was The Beatles' manager. He said he wanted to play me a tape of kids from his alma mater, Lehigh University. I listened to it, and they played this song, "Red Rubber Ball." I said, "This sounds catchy." I went to my boss and asked if I could have $3,000 to cut a demo with the guys. It was hard for me to ask. He said, "Here, take $5,000." I went in the studio and did "Red Rubber Ball." I played the organ on it and wrote the arrangement. Lo and behold, it was a number two record. All of a sudden, they gave me an office with a window and a plant, and they elevated me from trainee to associate producer.
What happened after that?
The A&R department guys figured I must know what I was doing. They gave me Simon & Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen, and Blood, Sweat & Tears to produce. When I got to Blood, Sweat & Tears, Al Kooper [Tape Op #73] said that I should be on my own; a freelance independent producer. I said, "There are such things? I don't have to work for a company?" He said, "Yeah, and you'll get royalties." "Royalties? What are those?" I did Simon & Garfunkel's Bookends album up to the point where I wanted to leave Columbia Records. They were very slow putting it out. I did a portion of that album, and I did Leonard's album [Songs of Leonard Cohen]. Then I did the first Blood, Sweat & Tears album [Child Is Father to the Man] as my first freelance job. I got hooked up with Albert Grossman, who was the manager of Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary, Richie Havens, Ian & Sylvia, and Paul Butterfield, and I started producing his acts.
When you were assigned Leonard Cohen's first record, Songs of Leonard Cohen, were you familiar with him as a poet and novelist?
No. John Hammond, who had discovered Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen, discovered Leonard as a songwriter and singer. He brought him to the attention of the record company. He recorded the first session with Leonard and had him stay at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan. But, as Leonard told me when I met him, he could wait a month for John Hammond to schedule a session for him, and when he got to the session, John would say, "Oh, I can't make it today. We'll have to schedule another session about a month from now." It was driving Leonard crazy, so he asked for another producer, and they assigned me to Leonard. To plan the album, we went up to my folks' house in Connecticut, because I knew they were out of town. The only thing I think he did when he was there was that he went through my father's library and read everything he could after I went to sleep at night. Then we talked about the material. Of course, I appreciated his writing. The only thing I had done close to that was Paul Simon, but Leonard's was more poetic. I was excited about it, because Leonard had no preconceptions about what he wanted his backing to be. He was very openminded. I got to use some arranging ideas that I had. In particular, I was happy that I could use women's voices instead of horns or strings as background. Not as background voices, but more oohs and instrumental patterns. I had a good time with that. Then I went off to work with Blood, Sweat & Tears after I'd left Columbia Records. There were still a few things Leonard wasn't happy about. I could understand that. He found a band called Kaleidoscope that played odd (to Western ears) Middle Eastern instruments. I wasn't there because I was on a holiday, but they spiced up the album in certain places.
I appreciate the arrangements on that record. There is a lot going on, but it's in no way obtrusive to the lyrics and melody of the songs.
One of the dangers of being a producer making a record is clutter. I've been guilty of clutter. At this point, I've come to appreciate records with clarity. One of the things that always happened with multitrack recording was the artist would say, "Oh, I like that, but I'd like to hear strings here." Or, "No, I don't like that. I want to hear a guitar part here." Or, "Oh, I like that, but save it. I want to hear a different guitar part here. How about some background vocals or something? I like that, but save it. Let's try this." When we'd get around to mixing, we'd have all this stuff. One could make five or six different records with all this, and they don't know where they want to go with it. I've always been one to make a commitment right away. Print the reverb and echo on the original track. Print the reverb with whatever color and attitude it adds to the song, then we're locked into an attitude for the song. To my mind, that's good. Pick something that works. Why not commit and say, "Yeah, that sounds great enough to be part of the song"? Then everything else can fit in with it. That eliminates a lot of other possibilities.
As a producer, it can be tempting to substantiate your own existence by adding complicated arrangements just for the sake of it. I appreciate that your work doesn't get caught in that trap.
I think that's one of the seven deadly sins, making it seem like I've added something, or making it seem like I have some value. The first thing is to go to the artist and ask what they want! If they just want them and their kazoo, great. "What do you want your kazoo to sound like? Great, I'll do my best."
What do you do when you feel the artist is wrong?
Oh, the artist is never wrong. The first thing that Leonard Cohen said to me was, "There's no accounting for taste." Whatever any one of us does is satisfying our own taste. Our taste has to be in accord with the artist. That's why there has to be a good match between the artist and whoever's working on the record.
