Is the modern big studio dead or is there just a thinning going on where only the strong will survive?
Well, the large studio's usually live, not dead.
[laughs] That's true, but in the seventies they were dead. All of them.
Yes, unfortunately they were. But we were — actually the counterpart of that would be that Electric Lady Studios was actually a pretty live studio which was the complete opposite of what the studios were in the early seventies. We made some technical errors, but we corrected them with very heavy screens and that. There was some flutter and stuff that we fixed. It was a hardwood floor with carpet on the walls and quite a few reflective surfaces with a fairly high ceiling. But it had a nice, live, feel to it. And it still sounds great today, so we did something right there. But, going back to your question, it is a fact that most of the big studios are hurtin' bad.
Here in the Northwest you can get a lockout with a 2-inch room for about $400, $350.
That's frightening because those prices don't really reflect what the person has invested in the studio. And when you look at what, for instance, The Hit Factory has Criteria down in Miami. There must be $15 or $20 million into that place. I don't know how on earth they're gonna make that money back. I mean, they'd have to run all the studios 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the next 10 years. I don't see it, but hey, whatever.
Have you noticed though, that there is a real downslide right now in terms of rooms having trouble getting top dollar and really squeezing for their rent?
Yes, there is because it's the Pro Tools revolution that has been upon us for the last four, five years and it shows no sign of abating. Unfortunately I'm forced into the position of having to use it. I have a love-hate relationship with it. I mean, I love it from the point of view that you can do amazing things with editing and all the autotuning and all the plug-ins, though I hate the plug-ins because I think they sound like crap. I mean, quite frankly the whole Pro Tools thing doesn't sound that great to me. And in the way that most top twenty record producers are working today, they are going analog first, in order to retain some of the warmth, and it's such an ironic thing. I bring this out in my lecture that ironically here we are in the year 2001 with these multimillion-dollar consoles, you know SSL 9000 for $900,000, digital machines and all the rest of it. And what is the first thing a producer does, he pulls out the tube mic, the tube preamp, the tube equalizer, the tube limiter, to make the digital sound better. So that's saying something, that we haven't advanced that much. However, there is a dividing line, and I think that dividing line is we are now at the stage where 24-bit 96 k is very good, and what's even better is the 192 k. And there we are very close, I would say, to reproducing exactly what's coming out of the console. Now, on the other side of that coin, you still need to warm the sound up. So the sound of tube amps, the sound of tube mic pres, the sound of tube mics- it is an integral part.
It's still a viable front-end...
I mean, digital just doesn't sound good when you hit it hard. It just goes ppllht (you can do what you want with that sound). The current joke now is, "Hey guys," (it's the producer talking) "That really sucked, come in, we'll make it work." And make it work in Pro Tools because who cares how bad it is. We'll throw it in and that horrible old phrase "We'll fix it in the mix" is even more prevalent because you can...
Now it's truly terrifying when someone says that because they sort of can.
It's terrifying. I mean, I really rue the day that this system came on board. And it seems to be taking the life out of these bands. And you listen, yeah, the record sounds great, it's perfect, but where's the feeling, you know? I use the Pro Tools thing and, like I said, I hate it but I know that at some point I have to use the damn thing. And I'm cutting 16-track 15 ips Dolby SR, dumping it over to Pro Tools, which is basically what we're going to do here this week. We're going to be cutting 16- track, unfortunately no Dolby SR but we'll just hit the tape hard and then we'll dump it over to this new Tascam digital machine [MX 2424] and we'll keep working in that mode. So, the two worlds can live together. I just hope that studios just don't throw out all their analog gear. Analog tapes were proven in the fact that here we are 30 years later, and we'll talk about Hendrix — I'm pulling tapes out of the library that are over 30 years old and sound great! No dropouts, maybe a little bit of the top end is going a little bit, but I can make up for that. But at least the basic signal is still there.
Will analog recording last 10 more years with one machine manufacturer and two tape manufacturers?
It has to. We don't have a choice. I mean, there's guys out there buying up Studers and reconditioning them. Or old Ampex machines or whatever they can find. Otaris.
I'm one of those, Ampex MM1100.
Yep. I mean if you can find the parts and keep it working and get the heads relapped or whatever you have to do, you can keep it running and it makes great recordings. I haven't heard anything better. Unless somebody proves to me something that is developed over the next few years that says, look, here's a new digital XYZ machine that can simulate unquestionably the same kind of distortion characteristics that you would get when you smack tape really hard and drive it... That lovely gradual distortion that you get and the saturation and all the rest. And the tape compression. If somebody can show me that — maybe I'll make a change.
Because sound is the most important criteria. It's not like engineers are addicted to gear and it has to be this one machine, it's the sound.
Right. The thing that also disturbs me is the fact that the kids today, if they start in the digital world and they have no reference point of what analog could have sounded like, they're losing so much!
Tell me about this string of events here: Advision Studio, Pye Studios, KPS, Regence Sound, Olympic Studio — that was one year after another. You were flying through studios. What the heck were you doing and why weren't you playing music? Isn't that what you were trained to do?
I was trained as a concert pianist but then I gave up because I realized the futility of that venture pretty quickly. I wasn't gonna make a living at it. And, I didn't want to practice, of course. I think what happened was my mind got twisted. I started to listen to jazz as a 14, 15-year-old and then rock and roll as a 16-year-old. I used to listen to Little Richard and to all the great late '50s artists, Elvis, etc. etc. And then getting involved with jazz, it just sort of turned my head and the rock thing turned my head even further. I left South Africa in 1960, got to England, and I was always into fiddling with knobs and electronics and stuff and trying to make things sound better. I guess after about a year and a half working as a messenger boy in London, I figured out what I wanted to do. I became an engineer by just pestering a couple of the new studios that were up and running and went from Advision, which was a little jingle place...
So, it literally was ad-vision. Like advertisements and TV.
Yeah, it was advertising, television, you know. And I would experiment at night with groups that I would bring in. Like little jazz bands, I would bring them in and...
Was that a 4-track facility?
Oh god, no. This was mono, mate! We had one of those great Telefunken machines that you had to be really careful when you hit the stop button, sparks would fly out of the stop button. You had to hit it hard and get your finger away really quick, otherwise you'd burn your finger. I learned the basic stuff, how to record mono, and then 2-track. I left there, went to Pye Studios, which was the new hip studio. It was an electronics company, and then they had a publishing company, and then they had a record company. And from there I went to Olympic, which was where the career really took off, where I started to work with Hendrix and The Stones...
There's a picture of you sitting at this amazing console that just goes vertical after about a foot. What is that? Is it custom-made?
Yeah. This console was an absolutely brilliant piece of design work. Ergonomically perfect, sounded amazing. I mean, look at all the recordings I did there in '67. The first two Hendrix records, the Stones' Beggars Banquet, Traffic and Small Faces. But, it was designed by this real crazy English guy, Dick Sweatenham, and he had a company called Helios and that, in fact, was where Rupert Neve [Tape Op #26] copied his design, from that particular console. It was beautifully designed.
Where is it now, do you know?
That board, I think is still in England, but there are many other versions of it that are around the world still in existence.
Vacuum tube electronics?
No, no. It was solid state. It was one of the early solid state consoles and it actually sounded pretty good.
How did your producer talents evolve? You started as a kind of gopher and you worked your way through. What kind of milestones do you recall in terms of getting more involved in the making of the music than just being somebody pushing faders?
I think the critical moment really was working with Jimmy Miller, who for me was the greatest producer I'd ever worked with. He was my mentor. Working with him and Traffic and The Stones really showed me what needs to be done in the studio. How to get the band involved and get them excited about what they're doing and help them realize what they are trying to create and how do you communicate that with the listening audience.
So watching him you felt you got a lot of clues about that?
Yeah, he was a genius. I really owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude. He was quite the best. Then after that, once I came to the States I started to realize that, "Wait a minute! Producers are making more money sitting next to me and I know at least as much as they do, maybe more!" They would sit there with the paper and the beer and say, "Yeah man, that was cool." And I would be the one trying to tell the band, "Hey listen, if you play it like this, or, if you you play it like that," and they go, "Oh yeah, okay, duh, oh sure." Now I engineer and produce everything. I'm constantly switching hats. It's a technique that you just learn over the years. I mean, there's a bunch of producer- engineers out there who do the same thing as I do.
Why did you come to the US?
I was asked by Record Plant engineer Gary Kellgren and the owners to come over, because Jimi was moving to the States and they wanted me to continue my work with him.
He'd kind of done his thing in England, it had served its purpose.
I guess so. Yeah. He had made a big name for himself already in America. By the time the second record was out, Axis, he was taking off, and he started working — in fact, we started working on Electric Ladyland in December of '67 and through January and early February of '68 and he'd left England in February. I was two months behind him. I left in April of '68.
Is it coincidence?
We were very compatible and I think we really enjoyed each other in the studio and I think there was a feeling of camaraderie, a feeling that whatever he did in the studio I could make a little bit better sounding, possibly...
You weren't going to argue with him, about it being crazy and weird?
Oh, no, far from it, I would encourage — the weirder it was, the better it was. There was a great phrase that Chas Chandler, Jimi's producer, said, 'The rules are: There are no rules.' And that was it, we started off with no rules, with a blank sheet of paper, and I didn't know what I was doing, I mean, quite frankly. I was just twiddling knobs until it sounded cool.
What I find fascinating about what you guys did is you ushered in a completely different era in terms of composing music. Composing in the studio, which necessitated the need for artists to have studios, which has led to today with the project studios and everything else. You guys totally kickstarted that whole evolution.
It's funny, to illustrate that point, Jimi, in 1970, wanted to move up to Woodstock and hang out and just chill and rehearse and create. His management found him this nice old house out in the woods and he brought up his band and he said, "Well, listen, I want to record up here." So we dragged the 4-track machine, you know the 4-track machine you had downstairs?
The 440?
The 440. That machine, some speakers, a little mixer, some microphones. We set the whole thing up so he could just hit 'record.' I wonder whatever happened to those tapes. They must be somewhere. "Jam Back at the House" stuff like that, that was rehearsed there, but it reminds me, I must ask John McDermott [Experience Hendrix Guru and Advisor] whatever happened to it. This whole thing about being able to record at home, Jimi loved that. He had just a little portable 2-track machine at home that he would record little demos on. And at night when I finished the sessions, I would give him a rough mix of something we were working on and he would take it home and listen to it and study it, so that in case he needed to do a backwards solo, he knew. He would flip the tape at home, put it on backwards, study it, and know. He would come in the next day and say, "Right there, put it right there." And it would be exactly where it was supposed to be, he'd play the solo, and say okay, flip the tape, and it would be perfect.
So it wasn't magic, it was hard work.
