I had no idea Rickie [Lee Jones] made a new record [Pieces of Treasure]. She's one of my all-time favorites. It's a beautiful album!
Yes, it is. We did it live in the studio with a band.
Was it done to tape? It's got a real smoky vibe.
It wasn't done to tape, but it was done at a studio where it's all vintage gear. Everything went through old limiters and beautiful, old microphones.
What studio was that?
Sear Sound [Tape Op #41]. It's still going. It's one of the last remaining old studios – well, Power Station is still there because of Berklee NYC. We did [Eric Clapton's] Journeyman at Power Station. Ben Fowler [Tape Op #127] was our assistant. He was like the best assistant that ever existed on earth.
Ben Fowler was my mentor in Nashville, and still a dear friend.
No kidding? Wow. He's amazing.
And you did a Michael McDonald record [Blink of an Eye] together too, right?
Yeah. That's a great record.
"East of Eden" – what a song.
"East of Eden" is such a beautiful song. I get chills now just thinking about the song and lyrics.
Did you do that at Power Station too?
We mapped it out at Power Station with Jimmy Bralower [drums] and Jeff Bova [keyboards]. We also did some work in L.A. at Westlake [Recording Studios]. Michael would play his parts, and then we basically overdubbed everything else. Manu Katché played the real drums, and some of it is a drum machine. David Williams played guitar. I made a live record [Stompin' at the Savoy] with Rufus and Chaka Khan, and he was the other guitar player on that too. He's just so great. We recorded it here in 1982 in New York, when I was still living in L.A. I was born and raised there, and then I moved here to New York in 1983. Then we had the studio part of the record [side four], which opened with "Ain't Nobody." For the studio part of the album, I had suggested that we do "Don't Go To Strangers." We cut that track live in a studio in L.A. We had the horns and the strings live in the studio with the Rufus band. That's John Robinson on drums, Bobby Watson on bass, Joe Sample played the piano, and Hawk [David Wolinski] played the Rhodes. And Tony [Maiden] did the kind of Freddie Green-like thing [on guitar]. It was fantastic.
Did you make a conscious effort, specifically on "Ain't Nobody," to leave a ton of space to let Chaka sing her heart out?
Yes. The track is very, very strict. It's all Hawk's arrangement; he played all the keyboard stuff, including the bass. That wasn't a sequencer. He didn't play it into a computer; he played it live. We had the track, and then I came to New York and put her vocals on. First, she did the background parts. We'd put a part down, double it. Then the harmony and double it. Then the other harmony and double it. And then she sang the lead. I just let her do whatever she wanted for about four takes. Then I said, "Now just do one, but stick closer to the melody." So, she did that, and we had all kinds of choices to make a comp out of. When somebody asks me what this job is, I always say it's exactly the same as a movie director, only we have a different terminology for it. It's like you're working with an actor. When you make a movie, you have these bits of a performance that you have in order to make a cohesive performance.
You were a musician first, and you've played on a few records you produced, but mostly you've stuck to producing.
I wasn't an engineer. I learned how to use the board because I was around it a lot, and I'd ask questions. I found out all these tricks, and then I knew how to make things sound a certain way – like getting a vocal to sound real crisp without fucking it up. When we were coming up, there was no school you went to for this.
You also worked a lot on movie scores. Was that via your connection to Randy Newman?
Some. I already knew Randy, but the Performance soundtrack was the main thing that brought us together. He was the conductor, and he played [Hammond] B3 on "Memo from Turner," the Mick Jagger record. All the rock 'n' roll stuff that's in that movie is me and Ry Cooder and Jerry Scheff, except for "Memo From Turner." That was Bobby West [on bass] and Gene Parsons on drums. I was very close friends with Jack Nitzsche, who did the music for the film. I sort of followed him around. Jack produced Buffalo Springfield's Neil Young song, "Expecting to Fly."
Which you played guitar on, right?
I played 12 string rhythm with David Cohen, who was one of the L.A. Wrecking Crew guys.
That's around the same time that you got to know Lenny Waronker?
Well, I think I met Lenny and Randy at the Screen Gems/Columbia office in 1965 or '63. I don't remember. It was a community back then. Lenny was a publisher at Metric Music, and we'd go hang at his office. He became a friend. Nitzsche and I went over to his office once, and he played us the acetate of [Jackie DeShannon's] "What the World Needs Now is Love." He had the acetate weeks before it came out. Stuff like that happened all the time. And then Mo Ostin [chairman and CEO] hired him to run the A&R department at Warner [Bros. Records]. Then we'd go and hang at his office at Warner's.
Mo gave both you and Lenny room to experiment and try records out, without the pressure of it needing to be a hit. Just go make something you think is cool.
Yeah, that's true. It was his philosophy, "Hire somebody really good and let them do what they do." There wasn't any of this cult of the executive. Mo was modest, and the smartest guy in the room. He had this vision and hired people who shared the same point of view. Lenny signed Van Dyke Parks [Tape Op #145], Ry Cooder, and his best friend, Randy Newman. Lenny produced Randy's first two records. One of them [Randy Newman] was with the help of Van Dyke. Randy, Cooder, and Van Dyke didn't sell many records in the beginning, but they were all great artists.
Did you scout out talent for Warner, or were you a staff producer who would work with an artist once they were signed?
Oh no, we all brought in stuff. The first album I ever made was Little Feat's Little Feat. I brought Lowell [George] and Billy Payne to have a meeting at Lenny's office, which had a little spinet piano. Billy played the piano, Lowell played guitar, and he sang "Willin'," "Truck Stop Girl," "Brides of Jesus," and maybe "Strawberry Flats." We were in this meeting in Lenny's little office, he heard Lowell sing these songs, and he said, "Go upstairs and make a deal with Mo." He didn't even hear the whole band.
Wow. How did you get connected to Rickie Lee Jones and start working with her?
I was in Henley-on-Thames, making an album with George Harrison [George Harrison]. Lenny called me and said, "There's this girl in Los Angeles, and there's a big buzz on her. I'm going to send you a cassette. This is something you and I should do." This was in 1978. Lenny and I had already made the [Randy] Newman Live record, Sail Away, Good Old Boys, and Little Criminals. We'd made a Gregg Allman album in 1977 [Playin' Up a Storm] that's fantastic. He sent me this cassette, and "Chuck E's in Love" was on it, along with "Youngblood," "Weasel and the White Boys Cool," "The Moon is Made of Gold," and "Easy Money." Then, there was "Company" on the demo. Just piano and voice. I burst into tears when I heard that song. I called Lenny and said, "This girl's as good a singer as Roberta Flack!" I got done with the Harrison record, came back to L.A., we had a meeting with her, and we went into the studio right away. Lenny and I hired the musicians. We had Steve Gadd [drums], Andy Newmark [drums], Willie Weeks [bass], Neil Larsen [keys], Buzz Feiten [guitar], Victor Feldman [percussion, drums, keys], Milt Holland [drums], and [George Sylvester] "Red" Callender [bass]. The single off that record was "Chuck E's in Love," and she went on to win the Best New Artist [Grammy] that year.
I have to ask you about a specific song on her next record, Pirates. "Woody and Dutch on the Slow Train to Peking" starts off like some rag-tag kids jamming in the studio, but by the end it's a fully fleshed out arrangement with horns. It's one of my all-time favorites.
