I wanted to talk about the Candy Butchers, not only as your launching point, but also what studios were like back then versus now.
Oh, yeah; let's get into it. I grew up outside of Boston, in the ‘80s. There was an incredible punk rock scene in Boston then. I was a kid playing music and I knew the three chords, I knew how to ape the rock stars that I loved, and I pulled it off. I got gigs around town. And then the press started calling me a rock 'n' roll prodigy – which was absurd, because it's three chords and some kid singing about skipping school and about his girlfriends. But there was something about the androgynous nature of my age and my size. Things happened quickly. I was 13, I was playing in rock 'n' roll clubs like The Rat, The Channel, and Jack’s. I was playing with my friends who were also 13, and we [The Bottom Line] started getting a following. We didn't listen to punk rock. We listened to Foreigner, Rush, and Ozzy [Osbourne]. But when we tried to play that music, we sounded like The Buzzcocks! We went door-to-door in our neighborhood and gathered money to go into a recording studio. We got enough money to buy three hours. And the name of the studio was Euphoria Sound Studios, in Revere, Massachusetts, right on the beach.
Awesome!
It was the ‘80s, but this was built in the ‘70s. It was carpeted everywhere and smelled like stale cigarette smoke. We set up, we had three hours, and we're thinking, “Okay, we're going to record every song Mike has ever written.” [laughter] We set up and the guy gets sounds. His name was Gordon [Hookailo], and he was a very good engineer. He was laughing the whole time because we were just ready for it. My mom was in the lounge, and my dad was there chain-smoking and putting out cigarette butts in our Coca-Cola cans. I remember this so vividly. We're recording, and we're burning. We're killing it. We asked, “Can we do another song?” So, we did 12 songs. We took a break for lunch, and we listened to the songs. The first time I heard the playback, I said, “This doesn't sound good.” It didn't sound like [Rush's] 2112 or Moving Pictures. [laughter] Gordon said, “Well, you’ve got to do overdubs.” I asked, “What's that?” He told me, and I said, “Oh, yeah. Let's do overdubs.” We did overdubs and we finished three complete songs. While we're doing that, my mom picked up a Musician magazine – not the nationwide Musician magazine, it was a local New England magazine called Musician – and Kim Fowley, a notorious L.A. impresario, was on the cover. In the magazine, he says, “I'm looking for the next superstar, so send me your cassettes. I will listen to them, and I will reply to every single one.” My mom, unbeknownst to us, steals the magazine! We finished this recording, and it was good. We ended up liking it. My voice was so high, and we had [Remo] Rototoms – let's leave it at that. [laughter] My mom sent a tape to Kim Fowley. The beige kitchen wall phone rang during dinner one night and Kim says, “I'm looking for Mike Viola. This is Kim Fowley calling from Hollywood, California. I want you to come out and make a record with me.” I was 13!
That’s insane!
I know. My mom got on the phone and they arranged for me to go out for winter break in February. I wanted to bring my whole band, and he said, “No, I'm just interested in you coming out. We will write the songs and then we'll talk about the band.” He flies me out, puts me up at The Tropicana, and there was The Pretenders' tour bus right out in front.
Did your mom go with you?
I was with my mom and my brother. I wrote a record with Kim Fowley, and he got me a record deal. He taught me how to write songs the way I do now. It was a master class in songwriting, freedom, and being a freak. He saw me and said, “You're a superstar.” Like an Andy Warhol superstar.
He saw the art in you.
He said, “It's okay to blurt whatever you're feeling. The odds are that it’s probably better than what you're thinking.” He taught me that the songs are in your body. We wrote these songs, I got home, and I played the songs for my band. My band said, “These songs suck.” [laughter] "This guy sucks, he's a creep, and we need to get back to what we were doing." So, I bailed on Kim Fowley and ignored him. He would call the kitchen phone at dinnertime and start swearing and calling me all sorts of shit. But anyhow, that was my first experience in the recording studio. I learned at a young age how to do it – what an overdub was, don't get too close to the mic, what a pop screen is for, how to get rid of a ground buzz on your guitar, and what an echo chamber is. The recordings are so beautiful, and I love them so much. I tracked down George on Facebook and asked, “Is there any chance there's a closet somewhere in Revere with all the master tapes?” He's like, “No.” That would be so fun to get my hands on that.
Do you only have a cassette?
I have a cassette, and it sounds bitchin’. I also have a 1/4-inch reel as well. I only bring this up because things were happening for me, and then my dad died. I call it my “super kid” phase because I was on this local TV show called Super Kids. I was this young kid whose destiny was clear. Then my dad died, and my family couldn't handle it. It blew up the whole thing. I had to go to work for my family in a restaurant, making subs and pizzas in a mall. I did that for a long, long time, and then I married my childhood sweetheart. Then I started to write really good songs, because I was back on my feet. I got my own apartment, and then she got cancer and two years later she died. All this got in the way of me living my creative musical life. I had love in my life. I had loss in my life. There's beauty in both of those. But I didn't get to be an artist. After she died, my good friend, Adam Schlesinger, had this loft apartment in the West Village [New York City]. We had a band together called Pinwheel that was a tangent from what I was trying to do with the band called Candy Butchers. We were at that age where everybody had four bands they were in, and we were all playing three or four nights a week in Boston. Adam had a loft in New York, and he was at my wife's memorial. He said, “Look, if you’ve got to get out of here, come live with me in New York. I have room.” So, I went and lived with Adam, slept on his futon, and within a week or so I landed a publishing deal. After a month or two, I got a record deal. I found my people in New York. There was a club called Fez, and Joe McGinty – he's still in New York making great music – had this night called Loser's Lounge. It was all the freaks doing versions of Brian Wilson songs. It was almost like a talent show, and some of the people involved were extremely talented. It was a great thing, and it was my launching pad. It got me attention, and it got people to know who I was.
How old were you?
I was 29; almost 30. I felt like an older guy and washed up in a way. But people liked my songs, and I got this record deal. I wanted to work with Mitchell Froom [Tape Op #10] because I loved his records. He was playing on the scene with Dan Zanes, who’s incredible. He made this solo record with Mitchell and Jerry Marotta [#33] called Cool Down Time. I became friends with Jerry and Mitchell, and Mitchell said, “Yeah, I'll do a Candy Butchers record.” I flew out to L.A. to meet with him at Studio B at Sound Factory. I called him from the airport, “I'm here. Where do I go?” He said, “Mike, I'm so sorry. Crowded House is doing a greatest hits record, and Neil [Finn] asked me if I could come to Australia to record a new song or two for it. I'm so sorry, I can't do your record.” I said, “That's okay, Mitchell. It's fine. Can I wait for you?” He said, “Yeah. Can you wait three months?” My manager tells me, “No, you can't wait three months.” I had to find somebody else. I went back to New York and started meeting with producers. I met some of my favorite producers, including Danny Kortchmar, who did the Don Henley record, Building the Perfect Beast, that I love. I loved it in high school. It was a straight up ‘80s album, I know that! To be honest, I have a little bit of a hard time listening to some of it now. I cringe at some of the lyrics. But “Boys of Summer”? That song is bulletproof. Anyhow, I said, “I want to meet Danny Kortchmar.” I met him, and we got along great.
Wasn't he a session guitarist as well?
The guitarist’s guitarist. He played on Carole King, James Taylor, and Jackson Browne [Tape Op #105] records. He's a great producer and a great songwriter. Then I met this guy, David Kahne, who was a straight up freak. He was very uncomfortable in the meeting, but what he was saying was exactly the aesthetic that I wanted to go with. So, I picked him. My manager asked, “Are you sure?” He had some personal issue with him, but I didn't care. I wanted to work with David. We both agreed we should do it to 8-track, 2-inch [reel-to-reel]. There wasn't an 8-track, 2-inch machine at Sony, so we had to rent one. We never put on the mains [monitors], we only listened through the [Yamaha] NS-10s or we listened to playback in mono on the Auratone, which was David's thing. He said, “You will put less on tape if you listen this way. You'll hear more of what's actually going on.” I thought, “Is this guy okay?” I felt like I was getting ripped off, in a way. “What about those huge Urei [monitors]?” “No, don't listen to those. They lie.” He taught me to listen quietly and to listen on small speakers. We tracked live. I would play the song in the control room for the drummer and the bass player. The bass player wrote charts quickly; chord charts and a few notations. The drummer didn't do that at all. Then the drummer and bass player would go in the lounge, smoke a ton of weed, and come back in. I would be in a booth with my Gretsch [guitar] plugged into my Vox [amplifier], no pedals. We'd play the song maybe three times, and if it started to feel right, David would say, “Okay, we got it.” I'd be, “Really? Are you sure?” And he'd say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Then Andy Kravitz, the drummer – who’s also a bitchin' engineer – would cut the tape. He would do window edits on the 2-inch – he would do it fast, and he was stoned! He was cutting like a wizard, with tape flying all around. He'd cut it to get the pocket right. Once the pocket was right, then we'd determine, “Okay, do we have to do any punch-ins?” Some of these edits might've chopped up bass, guitar, or vocal notes. We'd do the overdubs to fix what he chopped in the edits. But it was never song forms; it was always pocket-based. Or, if he said, “I like what I did in take two in the bridge, so I'm going to cut that and put it in." He would do that all the time. That's how we made that first record. It was all on tape and eight tracks, which is the format I work with now. It taught me the economy of ideas. I do like records that are very layered and lush and ornate, where it takes a few listens to absorb what's going on. But for me, as an artist, it taught me, “This is how I can get my ideas across.” It's not for everybody, but it's how I need to do it. I learned that from David Kahne. All around us people were laughing, “Why aren't you using Pro Tools? Or the Sony DASH machine with 48 tracks? Why are you recording on this dinosaur?” My manager would say, “I don't get it. But go ahead, do what you want to do.” But Tommy LiPuma, who'd signed me to Universal, loved it and loved the sounds. He said, “I love that you're doing it this way.” Amos Newman, Randy Newman's son, had also helped sign me. The two of them together were total artistic freedom. It was a dream. David did a fantastic job. We did the artwork for it and everything, and then the label [Blue Thumb Records] folded.
Wow.
This happens with corporations. I wasn't the only record thrown out with the bathwater. But it was significant for me, based on the previous loss that I'd experienced. Losing my dad, losing my wife at 27 years old, and having that screw up my creative trajectory. And then the label folded. We couldn't sell the record because it was too much money. I think the budget for that record was a quarter of a million dollars. You might ask, “What did you spend it on?” It was the ‘90s, and they were giving out million-dollar record deals. This was a "small" deal. We were renting the NS-10s because they weren't in the studio. We had to rent the tape machine. We had to rent a Pro Tools rig for David to do all of his MIDI programming. It's weird that he did any at all, but it was a tool he wanted nearby. I think he was working on a Sheryl Crow record at the time as well, and he was moonlighting. That's what I think that rig was doing there, but maybe not. It all cost a lot of money.
You were spending thousands of dollars a day.
Even hotels. The bass player was from out of town. I would never spend that money now. I make records with big budgets, but I try not to milk the budget just because it's there. If the deal is set up correctly, that money can go back into the artist's pocket. When I was doing A&R for a brief time, I made sure that that was the case. But anyway, from the Candy Butchers’ implosion, all around me everybody that I was making music with started to see success: Nada Surf, Fountains of Wayne, and all my friends. I was in my basement apartment, mourning and beat down. It was difficult for me. I turned to light drugs and that turned into an addiction. Pills, booze, and smoking. I was bummed out.
Was working on the That Thing You Do! film around this time?
Yeah. It happened alongside making the record with David Kahne. In between making that record with David and the label folding, I created the song, “That Thing You Do!,” with Adam Schlesinger and Andy Chase, who were both in the band Ivy that I also played guitar in. It's very incestuous! The three of us made that, we named ourselves Scientist Alexis; we sent it in and they picked the song. I didn't want to sing it. John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band were a Rhode Island band, close to Boston. They were really good. Then they did the film Eddie and the Cruisers, and that was it. He was known as the guy that sang that Eddie and the Cruisers song. So, when “That Thing You Do!” came down the pipe, I said, “Sure, I'll help you, Adam and Andy. But I don't want to do this for real.” But it's music. You put a guitar on me and put me in front of a mic, and I'm going to do the best I can because I love doing it. It came out really good, they picked it, and then they wanted me to sing it and play guitar. I didn't want to do it, but then Don Was [Tape Op #113] called me. He said, “Look, I'm producing it. I'm not going to put you through some wringer. Kenny Aronoff's playing drums and you’re playing guitar and maybe a little bass.” I'm thinking, “That sounds fucking fun.”
Don's a Detroit guy. He's got that Midwestern thing going.
Yep, exactly. He is a Detroit guy, through and through. “It's going to be about music. You're very good at this specific thing. We need you.” Tom Hanks even said, “We cannot do this without Mike.” Other people tried, and they sang in tune and sounded good. It was just not the right timbre. They put me on a plane, sent me the script, and I flew into L.A. I remember going to my hotel and being totally drunk, passing out. I didn't see any mountains; it was so gray outside and smoggy. I remember waking up, seeing mountains on recording day, and thinking, “Oh, wow. There are mountains. It's beautiful.” I had this hope. I remember getting in my rental car and going to the studio. It was Ocean Way, which used to be United Western Recorders, famous for The Beach Boys, but also the Mamas and Papas.
Yeah, that was Lou Adler's room.
Yeah. A historic spot. Don was there, and the first thing he wanted to know was, “What's going on with your music? Is your music like this?” I replied, “No, not at all.” He said, “Play me something.” I’d just recorded an instrumental song, “Death Rattle,” because of all the fucking death in my life. It's just this pretty melody. He loved it. He was saying, “Man, this is heavy. Play me other stuff.” I played him some, and he said, “You're very good.” I'm thinking, “Thanks, Don Was.” Then he puts the reel of tape up and gets me in front of the mic. He'd rented me a Gretsch Tennessean [guitar] and a Vox [amp]. He had me plug into a tuner. I said, “Nope. I'll tune with my ear and plug it into the amp." We did three takes, one after the other, without him saying much except, “You cool to do one more?” At the end of the third take, he said, “Thanks, Mike, I think we got it.” I came back into the control room, “Wait. That's it?” He says, “Yeah, man. You're an assassin.” I left the studio, and they comped those three takes.
This is for the main title song?
Yeah. Then he asked, “Would you be into doing the background harmonies? Who did those?” I replied, “Those are all me.” I slowly started to replace parts they put on there with other singers and other musicians. So, it's mostly me and Kenny playing on that. It was very quick. They had me back in the next day to do the other versions of the songs. Then they had this other song they wanted me to sing that I didn't like. They gave me a lead sheet, I was reading the words, and I was like, “Yeah, I don't think I want to sing this.” Don Was asked, “Why?” and I said, “This is a terrible song. I don't understand the words.” It didn't make sense to me. I didn't know it, but the songwriter was standing right there.
Oh…
I did that a lot back then because I was angry and sad.
No filter, let it fly?
Yes. When I found out it was him, I said, “I'm so sorry.” I was a nice person, but I didn't have a filter, like you said. Years later, when Mitchell Froom and I were working on a Rufus Wainwright project together, he said to me, “It's so crazy. You’re such a different person than who you were when I first met you. That was like your evil twin.” [laughter] I said, “I'm so sorry. Was I insulting?” He said, “No, you were just very, very sad.” Everyone could tell, "That guy needs therapy." During that session, Liz Phair popped over because she was recording next door, and then she was dancing to the song. I was thinking, “This is awesome! L.A. is incredible.” She was super cool. The last time I was in L.A. had been with Kim Fowley, and this time I was thinking, “L.A. is pretty great.”
I want to know how you got your foot in the door, years later, with Get Him to the Greek and Dewey Cox [Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story].
Dewey Cox was written by a good friend of mine, Jake Kasdan, with Judd Apatow. Those guys had done a television show called Freaks and Geeks.
Oh, right.
When Jake was working on the show, he would visit our apartment in New York. We’d chain smoke, drink Diet Coke, and talk about Freaks and Geeks. “How the hell are you going to get away with that? That sounds so great.” It was a show for a season, and then they [NBC] yanked it. But it teed both of them up to have important Hollywood careers, as they both do. I had left my record deal with a different record; it was a Mike thing, but Candy Butchers was attached to it. But the whole identity had been fractured.
Was this Hang on Mike?
No, I made Falling Into Place; a sad, angry record. I feel like somebody should have pulled me aside and put me in therapy a long time ago. By the time I did Hang on Mike, I started going to therapy. Hang on Mike was the therapy record. That was the record where I was thinking, “Oh, this is how I always wanted my records to sound.” I went back to tape, to cutting tape, and doing it live in a room. Right after Hang on Mike, I did a record called Just Before Dark live at Largo here in L.A. Judd and Jake liked that record. They're both astute listeners when it comes to songs. When they wrote Walk Hard, it's a music heavy script. Jake was like, “Look, read the script.” My daughter, Isabelle, was a baby at the time, and I went to the library around the corner with her. She was playing in the little play area, and I read that script, laughed out loud, and was thinking, “I would love to write a song.” I wrote a song right away without even any contract or talk about what I'd get paid. I recorded it and they loved it. It was as simple as, “Will you come out to L.A.?" I had a new baby, and my wife worked full time.
Were you in New York?
I was in New York, living in a storefront apartment. I flew out and they put me up at a hotel with Dan Bern, who was also writing songs. Dan and I became the best of friends and insisted that we collaborate on all the songs. We split the publishing and credits, and we wrote so many songs for that movie. I ended up being a consultant, going to set and seeing if the musicians needed help. I became good friends with [lead actor] John C. Reilly during the course of that movie. He can really sing and play, so we ended up writing a couple songs together. That movie was slated to come out for Christmas, but that Christmas there was a writers’ strike in Hollywood. If you don't live here, you don't really understand how impactful that is on the economy. It's massive. All the talk shows were running reruns, so John didn't get to go on them. Our plan was to go on all the late night talk shows, have John be Dewey Cox, and we would play live. It would blow minds, because John was so teed up and so good in that movie. But that didn't happen. As a backup plan, they agreed to put us on tour. They got a private jet and flew us around to all the major markets, calling it “Cox Across America.” [laughter] John would text me before every show, and he'd throw a left hook. He'd be like, “Tonight we're going to do ‘Rehab.' Just teach the band, okay? See you at the show!” We did that sort of thing at every show. In New York, we did the Beastie Boys' “Sabotage.” It was a great time, and I loved the music on that. Mike Andrews [Tape Op #168] produced all that music. He brought it to living color and did the songs so much justice. He's a great producer.
You have the ability to inject your humor into the music.
Yeah. Also, there's Judd and Jake and the feedback they'd give. There's a song Dan and I were trying to write for the end of the movie, “Beautiful Ride.” It's the big ending song. Dewey loses his sense of smell in the movie. So, in “Beautiful Ride” he looks back on his whole life and synthesizes it into one song – that was the song directive. That's a hard song to write. I had this idea about stopping to smell the flowers – like, “I couldn't stop to smell the flowers." I wrote this whole song. It was really pretty, and Jake said, “I think you’re swinging for the fences on that one.” I asked, “What does that mean?” He's like, “You don't understand what swinging for the fences means? It means it's trying too hard.” I realized, “Oh yeah, it totally is.” The feedback of the writers and the director played a large part. They didn't do the writing – that was me and Dan Bern – but the direction they gave, as well as the feedback, changed everything for us. On Get Him to the Greek, Judd produced that. It was written and directed by Nicholas Stoller, who I'm working on a movie with right now. Judd was my way into that. At that point, I had a full studio in L.A. all set up. With Walk Hard, I was living in New York, but then I'd moved to L.A. and Get Him to the Greek was the first gig that came my way. I had this crappy little Pro Tools setup with BFD Drums and everything was MIDI. But whatever; an artist can make anything sound cool. I played all the drums with my fingers; I never programmed anything. They dug the songs, and Dan and I had written all the ones we were asked to write. When it came to “Furry Walls,” what happened is that when they tested the movie, that scene with the furry walls was everybody's favorite. Judd and Nicholas, because they’re good at what they do, decided that we should swing back to that at the end. They asked me, “Can you write a song called ‘Furry Walls?’” I wrote four different versions, because it was in my wheelhouse more than Dan's, and then he would inject these crazy ideas into them to send them over the top. I'd send them to Judd and Nicholas, and they both said, “It's not quite right. It's too complicated.” I call it “overwriting,” and it's a difficult thing. I was getting lost. Judd sent me this text, and he said, “Dude, it's so simple. It's just got to be about furry walls. ‘Furry walls, blah blah blah. Furry walls, blah blah. Furry walls, furry walls.’” I took that and put lyrics to it. I did give him songwriting credit, because without Judd it wouldn't have happened that way. Working with that caliber of talent really does elevate you, if you let it. If you follow the flow, show up prepared, and are a good listener, you can learn so much.
How do those lessons from the movie world affect you as a producer when you make a record with Mandy Moore, Dawes, or Panic! at the Disco? Does that cross over?
