So in the case of projects like Pink Floyd's The Wall or the KISS records. Both had instances of members of not getting along or being "well" per se. How did you go about dealing with conflicts and flakiness? Like Ace Frehley just "not being there"...
Well, we don't want to overplay that. At time of working on Destroyer everyone was completely into it. Everyone was co-operating and trying their very best and certainly there were varying levels of proficiency on their instruments amongst the four players but everybody wanted to succeed. We worked really, really, really hard in rehearsal on that album to make sure that not only did we come up with interesting parts but that the band was capable of playing them well. So contrary to the urban myth that there were a lot of session players on that album — in fact, the band played virtually everything. There are a couple of guitar parts where I had to bring someone else in to help out because Ace was sort of missing in action, but that's all really. The rest of it was the band or me, a few specialists — and of course there was the orchestra. But it was almost completely self-contained. And I think that the band should get some recognition for that because I think when you listen to things like "Detroit Rock City" you hear some powerful confident musicians playing really interesting parts. And, playing well beyond what their previous product had indicated they were capable of. They should get a pat on the back for having done that. And, the only way that they did it was by practicing — being in the rehearsal studio and practicing over and over and over again. We spent weeks in there — 8, 10, 12 hours a day, drilling the material until the band was really comfortable.
And does the rest just become a technical process?
No. Then the rest becomes exactly the opposite. The rest becomes an emotional process. Once you know what you have to do and how you have to do it, you then reach for the feeling. Because far too often, in the studio you go in with material that's just recently been written. You're only partially comfortable with it, if at all, and you spend a good deal of your time trying to play it well. And sometimes, that's sort of "all consuming" and makes it difficult for the player who just experienced the music emotionally. So for most of the music that gets made at studios these days you don't really hear that depth of emotion. And the recordings where you do hear that depth of emotion are either ones that exploded in the studio through a kind of chain reaction of invention and emotion or ones where the band has played them live for long enough that they're comfortable with them, and bring them into the studio and just feel them — play them with all the emotion that they deserve. With the KISS guys, that's what went on — and to a certain extent, the same is true with the [Pink] Floyd guys. We figured out the parts first and practiced, practiced, practiced — and then we recorded them.
The Wall, being a grand concept album, how was it done in terms of linearity? Was it produced in order from the story's beginning to end?
Yes. It was an extremely linear process. It started off with Roger [Waters] having a general concept about alienation and the metaphorical wall between himself and the audience that he considers building.
Did you relate to this concept in any way? Did you go through any bouts of mental wariness and perhaps madness from being in a studio for far too long without seeing daylight?
In fact, though we did spend some months in the studio, the settings were always wonderful and the group took very good care of me. So, I did not get cabin fever. On the contrary, I enjoyed the travel and working in different cultures. The project itself, however, was heady, fun, excruciating, mad, brilliant, passionate and draining all at once. It was fraught with the sort of conflict that accompanies any great work — the sort of dynamic tension that must exist when art is being fashioned.
And he presented the idea of the album in the back of a limousine in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1975 when they did that infamous Ivor Wynne stadium show in the residential area...
That's right! And I guess a year and a half later or something like that I got a phone call seeing if I wanted to come over and listen to some new material and there it was — The Wall. Mind you, not exactly in the form it ended up — but it was a pretty good start with an awful lot of conceptual material and some actual songs that ended up on the album. So we started with that. It gave us the framework. We knew what it was that we were trying to accomplish. We knew it was a double album, we knew it was a concept album, we knew the theme of it, we knew the feel and mood of it, but at that point we had not yet discovered the device that would make it possible to tell the story, which was creating that kind of gestalt character in Pink. At first it was completely autobiographical — it was all about Roger, and I frankly didn't think that the world was interested in the emotional history of a 36-year-old rock star. Especially then, when 36 was old! [laughs] And at that point, there were no older rock stars — very few, like Chuck Berry and people like that. So, with its references to war and things like that — it put an era on Roger that in a sense just alienated him even further from the audience because they couldn't identify with that experience at all. What we had to do was create a character who spanned all the way from the war up till the present and into the future. And, of course they already had Pink, you know, in earlier albums and we just decided that he was good enough. So we decided to resurrect him, give him some "flesh". Roger began using that as his model and began to create composites of people that he knew, and places that he had been and ideas that he had for the real "high character" songs. But the thing that was the key to bringing it all together for me was a template that I wrote in the form of a script — literally a script, called The Wall. It started off with Act One, Scene One, which described the action — described the bomb falling that never hits but explodes into a baby's cry and we go into the first song ["In The Flesh?"]. What I did was to take the material that we had and sequence it in a way that it really made not just thematic but dramatic sense too. It became obvious that things were missing when you did that. It was kind of like lining up a bunch of photographs and saying, "Here, this is telling the story" and there were some steps missing between photograph 4 and photograph 5 and it was obvious that there was something that had to have happen to get you there. So I would write a scene that would say what the action was but not which song it was. It would simply say, "to be written". And that became the framework from which we began to build the record. We already had some songs that we were working on in the studio — but the script was sort of the breakthrough because it gave us the blueprint for what we had to accomplish and also gave us a sense of how long it was going to take. So you're right — it was a very linear process, and then it just became a matter of finding the songs that were the ones that were to be written, and executing the ones that were already written. Now, in recording, we would cut a guide track with a vocal and an instrument — a guitar, piano, drum loop or something like that — for the format of the song. We knew what the song was going to be, and then we would overdub everything onto the guide track, and flesh it out and give it the sound and vibe we were looking for. I think we really did a good job because when you listen to the album, it doesn't sound like things were put together in pieces — it sounds like they were played together, and the truth is rarely did any of that stuff get played as a group. Well, there were a few things that got played virtually live, like the solo on "Comfortably Numb", which Dave [Gilmour] knocked off on his first try! He and I cut the guide track for "Comfortably Numb". I played the piano, which sort of played all the orchestral parts and he played the guitar and we were rocking along to the drum loop and he broke into that solo and played it. I was awestruck! That was amazing — first take — and of course, because Dave is a perfectionist, he constantly tried to better it and never could. We ended up using the original on the record.
Do you think it is good practice to have record on as often as possible?
Not always, but often. Very often. For instance with the solo on "Another Brick In The Wall Part II", we got his sound up and I said, "Just play a little bit of this for me so I can check the levels" and he started playing. I just let him go and there it was — the solo on the first take again! It was ridiculous! [laughs] It was done. Sometimes he was inspired. He is one of the greatest players I have ever worked with, ever, anywhere.
What did you think about the film version of the album?
The problem with the film for me was that it robbed people of their vision of the album. Where The Wall was everyone's own personal "eyelid movie", the film stamped an indelible imagery and meaning on it that everyone was forced to share. Yes, there was some allegory which left room for interpretation, but basically most if not all of the mystery was removed. I didn't want to do it.
A few years later you produced Dave Gilmour's second solo effort, About Face, (and later Pink Floyd's post- Roger Waters records A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell). How did you attempt to differentiate a Gilmour record with a Floyd record, and not make the Floyd record sound like an expanded Gilmour solo record?
Well, there are certain... mood musical... and rhythmical... umm... I don't want to say rules, but tendencies that Pink Floyd has that are fairly obvious...
...like conventions?
Yes exactly. That's a good word. Musical, rhythmical and thematic conventions that Pink Floyd tends to use. On Dave's solo album, we kind of stepped outside of that and tried all sorts of things. Well, there were a few things in there that could play successfully on a Pink Floyd tour and people would accept as part of the set. But, clearly we were much more focused on syncopated rhythms and more sort of intricate bass and drum work on the solo stuff. Floyd bass and drums is typically very simple and very atmospheric and hypnotic. That's part of its power — it just sits there and transports you into another place. The other thing is that you know, on a Floyd record, one does tend to look for more philosophical kinds of things to talk about. Though, obviously that stuff seems to come easier to Roger than to Dave, and it was a challenge for us to get that stuff in there. We reached out for some help. We had Anthony Moore come in to help out, and on the next album, we were helped by Polly Samson, who is now Dave's wife.
What is your relationship with Waters at all these days, if any? Were you ever considered to help out on his solo album — The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking?
I was asked to produce Radio KAOS. Roger and I met in NY and talked about it. But it didn't work out. As well got closer to finishing arrangements for doing the project, it became clear to me that I'd have to move my family over to England for a considerable period of time and I just couldn't do it. In the end, I backed out. He was furious with me, especially when I then agreed to do the Pink Floyd album. The difference was that Dave was willing to split the project between England and Los Angeles and also to build in sufficient breaks for me to get home to the family. It was just a more tolerable arrangement and less disruptive to the family.
You have done a lot of grand concept albums. Did you have an interest in cinema while growing up?
I was really into theater and film. Drama actually — really into drama. I was sort of an actor from the time I was five, and I actually did some TV work when I was 8 to 10 years old, and in my teensI was aspiring to be in the theater — I wanted to do that. I fell into the music business almost by accident, through the theater, because I was working on a musical show and the music director was one of the partners in Nimbus Nine [in Toronto]. We worked very closely together on the score of this particular show and he was sufficiently impressed with my work as an arranger and song picker and stuff like that that he suggested I come in and meet with Jack Richardson and they hired me to work there. At first I started off doing jingles for them and very soon after I was doing pre- production for Jack on a couple of projects when Alice Cooper walked in the door. It all happened within a matter of months.
And just how old were you when you produced the first Alice Cooper record, Love It to Death? (1971)?
Nineteen.
[laughter from both sides]
Yeah. There ought to be a law you know.
Another concept album — KISS' [Music From] The Elder is generally considered to be a flop.
The Elder was a good idea for some other band in some other time. It was perhaps the most ill conceived project that I have ever embarked on. Yes, there was some great music and also some great lyric writing, but over-all, it was the wrong thing for KISS to do. I should have known better.
You're quite the accomplished songwriter, and have co-written many of the hits by that the bands you produced. Do you find yourself just being so deeply involved that you end up getting a credit or do the artists usually ask out-front for aid?
It varies from album to album. Sometimes it is understood in front that I will be writing with the artist — as in the case of Alice Cooper. Sometimes it evolves over time. There are no rules. I try to bring what the project needs to the best of my ability.
I've seen your name billed as an 'executive producer' on some projects — The Heavy Metal 2000 soundtrack...
Well, it says executive producer but that really was producing the album project though not every individual track that went on it. Just some of it. There was a music supervisor so I couldn't be called that, so for want of a better title, we called it "Executive Production". But like on the Babe soundtrack, for example, I did the same job and I was credited as the Producer. I haven't done a lot of executive production — I've done a fair amount of co-production, where I find somebody that I think is really talented and that I think will make a great producer one day, and work really closely with them.
