What got you your start, when this profession was still relatively young?
Well I got out of the Army in 1952, and I went to work for North American Aviation. My cousin was a partner in the studio, Gold Star, and I had known his partner from school days. So I used to hang out there at night because it was a glamorous place to be, although there wasn't much happening at that point — strictly a demos studio.
Is that Stan Ross you're talking about?
Yeah, Stan's my cousin, and Dave Gold is a friend from many years prior. They couldn't afford to hire anyone — they had their wives working as secretaries. After a few months, business was picking up a little bit and they really needed somebody. So we worked out a way where through my GI bill, I could do on the job training, and I could get the money from the government, whatever they could afford to pay me, it was like $30 a week then. It was enough to manage, since I wasn't married or anything... that was the beginning of it.
So were you learning hands-on during demo sessions, on-the-fly? Or was there any experimenting happening at night?
Everything was hands-on. Of course in those days, it was just at the end cycle of recording directly to disc. You know, where you count them down with your fingers, and mouth the numbers and then point at 'em to start playing. So I did some of that.
That was to acetate right? Acetate engraving?
Acetate, yeah. It was generally just a small piano and voice combo, or perhaps with a drum or bass, but nothing of any consequence. Actually, we were doing demos there up until about, oh I guess the middle '50s. The first hit that came out of Gold Star, which Stan did, I believe if I'm not mistaken was [The Champs'] "Tequila". And the first hit record I made there was a little later, with Eddie Cochran.
And that was when the Teddy Bears came in for their first demos right?
Well that was a lot later.
Where did Gold Star stand amongst the other studios in Los Angeles then?
Well up to that point in time, they were at the bottom. Actually, Stan had been working for another studio up until 1950, which is when he and Dave created Gold Star, because his boss at Electro-Vox wouldn't give him a raise. So they started the studio, and that was all dependant on Stan going out and hitting the street and talking to people, you know about coming in and doing it.
Sounds like a pretty classic blueprint for a lot people starting their own studios, after having those types of problems working for someone else. That also really dispels a big misconception of the era. The image of an engineer with a lab-coat was just not really applicable for private recording studios — how people could just come in and start working, without any prior training.
You know, speaking of technical, I always felt that about the process of being a good engineer/mixer, I don't know maybe "engineer" got people into thinking of technical. But I always felt that my job was probably 75 or 80 percent creative, and the rest technical, rather than requiring a large background of training.
What was it about Gold Star that began to attract people?
Part of the reason Herb [Alpert] came to the studio was because of the sound he heard Phil Spector doing. He felt that the studio was going to be more to what he heard the Tijuana Brass being, than Western or United, where he recorded "The Lonely Bull". So yeah, he came there. Those are the things that Herb appreciated at Gold Star, I know that the sound was warmer than the sound at United. Even though Bill Putnam built the console.
He did Gold Star's console right? Was that custom for you guys?
Uh-huh. It was 12-inputs with rotary pots.
Would you say you were you just the house engineer with the storm going on around you in a sense?
That was more or less true, although because of the loyalty to the producer I was working with, there would be some animosity created with other producers who might not feel that way. Phil, as you know, was a very dynamic person, and a lot of people disliked him. After working with him, I grew to love him, but it took a lot of doing to get to that point, and most people didn't get there. Basically the storm was happening around me, I was never involved politically.
Could you describe Gold Star's live room? You've said you wondered how at Motown sessions, they always got the same drum sound, while you had to confront that issue at every session.
Well, in the first place, I've never visited the Motown studio, but Phil told me that they had the drums nailed down in one location, so that they would never be moved. And of course at Gold Star, the room itself was so small...basically we had a 13 or 14 foot ceiling, maybe even 12 feet, a very low ceiling, and the room itself was not big. So the drum sound was always contingent on what the other instruments were doing, 'cause I had leakage that I had to concern myself with. As far as level, a lot of people thought we were running it into saturation. One of the engineers at RCA told me, in trying to go for that sound, he figured it was saturation. And so he ran it in, and it was terrible, obviously! It wasn't saturation — it was just Gold Star. The room itself had the echo chambers in combination with that.
Everything was bleeding into each other in there?
Yeah, because we had acoustic guitars, usually three or four acoustic guitars playing, and it certainly would make a difference, what key we were playing in. If they were playing open strings then there was more level coming out of the acoustic guitars, which meant that I wouldn't have much leakage from the drums because I wouldn't have the mics open as wide. Whereas if they were playing closed strings a lot, then I had to turn up their mics. So there was always this consideration of setting everything in together. I couldn't do a drum sound ever, on its own like they do now of course, where you put a drum in total isolation.
Nothing was in a vacuum then?
Nothing was in a vacuum, everything was in the one room. We did all of the orchestra, the band together.
So were people on top of each other in there?
Well almost! But I think, and it proved pretty much true, that when you fill a room with people, you get a better sound. And if you have a few people in a larger room.
It's just like when a hall or club fills up a little bit, the sound grows softer...
Yeah, it's true. I remember when we did "This Guy's in Love with You", we did it in the room, and it's the first time Bacharach had ever been to the studio. He set it up, and you know he used a lot of strings and stuff — probably the most people we'd ever had in the room. And I put his piano, for whatever reason, at the back of the studio, so he had to climb over people to get back to his piano. And he said, "I can't believe that this is gonna work!"
Well I'm sure his fans would say that it did!
Yeah that was actually Herb's first #1 single. As I said, to have the studio that full of people helped the sound work. But as far as the drum goes, it was ever changing. That was the bane — Phil's bane. He would always wonder why he couldn't get the same drum sound every time. But he knew better, cause Phil was one of the most aware people ever as a producer, of what exactly was going on at all times. So nothing was a surprise to him.
How many of Phil's early experiments with Marshall Lieb were actually being used in all of the hit sessions?
Phil got more unconventional I think, after he went to England and came back wanting to do some things. He'd mention things to me like ADT [automatic double-track] as the newer reverb kind of thing, to double up voice sounds and things like that. But up until then, no it was pretty straightforward. It all happened in the studio.
In "Girls Can Tell", did you guys add in a steel drum? I thought I heard that in there.
I wouldn't be surprised, I don't remember, but I know we did some things with steel drums. You know whenever any musician came into the studio, Phil would put 'em to work playing percussion or piano, whatever, you know, they would end up working. Phil always had ideas for people, if he had extra people, he had extra things in mind.
What was behind the fabled "Wall of Sound"?
Well, the "Wall of Sound," I mean it's just the name of something. No one set out to create anything like that. What happened was that Phil took a new rhythm section, you know, by using three pianos, and three basses, and three, four, five acoustic guitars whatever, you know? Filling the room with all those people, and creating the sound that he had heard in his head, which somebody later dubbed the "Wall of Sound," because it was much fuller sounding than your basic drums, bass, guitar, piano, you know whatever rock was doing at that point. And it was all melded together — it was a meld, it wasn't individual. I think what helped Phil get that meld was the room. The reason we almost never got tape rolling until we were into overtime in the session was because he needed to get the guys tired enough so that they weren't playing as individuals.
Playing out of the mix more?
Right, although they weren't trying to do that earlier, it's just that they were stronger earlier. But all of that...the echo chamber and you put it all together, and it's the "Wall of Sound."
Did you guys normally work with such large groups on other sessions? Would you say sections were doubled the majority of the time?
With Phil yes, but not with other people.
Was that all done live? With doubled drums, doubled bass?
Yep everything was live. The only times we ever overdubbed instruments, well we overdubbed strings, and I remember on "Da Doo Ron Ron" that Phil wanted to hear a bass drum that wasn't included in it. I don't know if you remember the song, but the "pah-poom," it came later, we got Nino Tempo, we came in one night, and Nino was playing the bass drum on those spots. But other than that, everything was done live mono. The one thing about Phil is, as much as he heard a sound prior to recording, he always had an open mind. And if something was better, or needed whatever, he went to that. So, it wasn't like he had the sound and then everything else was blocked out to that end.
How about the compression and microphones you liked, and used a lot? Well we didn't have much in the way of compression at all, as a matter of fact we didn't have compressors on individual channels. Dave Gold built the compressor that we used in our mastering... just mastering. It was a very soft, but nice sounding thing. As far as what we had on the console, we had basic EQs on each channel. When I say basic, they were broadband EQs, and we could push at 3, 5 and 10 in kHz, we could push those, let's see, in increments of 3 dB, up to 12. In other words, we could boost at 5 kHz by 3, 6, 9, or 12 dB. Cutting there were 2 settings, we could cut at 3 or at 6kHz, and that was that. And then on low end we had 60 and 100 Hz that we could work with. But there wasn't much happening, that was more just tweaking than anything else it wasn't like the equalizers that are around now at all. No, this was just strictly tweaking, if you felt you wanted to do it.
So it was all about the mic placement really?
Pretty much.
In that room, was there more ambient mic'ing happening, close mic'ing, or both?
No, everything was as close as we could get it. Ambient, it's a killer. I mean we didn't put any ambient mics up. Ambient was there, you didn't have to mic for it. I don't necessarily think it was the close quarters, it was the sound he had heard.
What sort of mics were at Gold Star?
We were using mostly dynamic stuff, Electro-Voice and Shure.
The SM-7?
I thought it was a higher number than that. The Shure 57 is what I recall, and 58, 56. And then we were using RCA ribbons — 77s and 44s.
Were Neumanns a presence in the studio at that point?
Yeah, we had only one Neumann, a 67 that we would use judiciously for something or other. Then some Sony C-37s, but mostly it was dynamics.
