How did you get involved in this whole business?
I lied my way. [laughter] I was 15 or 16, just playing in bands. I went and saw this band play, and I just thought that they were the most ridiculous band I'd ever seen. They were amazing, but I'd never seen anything like it in my entire life. I really thought they'd just got out of a mental asylum. They were just generally weird people. So after the show it was almost a dare from my friends to introduce myself to them. I spoke to the lead singer and we got on really well, he was really nice. Somehow he asked me if I could mix. And they were just playing in a tiny bar with 30 people and vocal PA. So I said, "Yeah, I can mix." He said, "Do you want to be our mixer?" I said, "Yeah, I'd love to be your mixer." I was living with my parents in the suburbs [and] later in the week I got a phone call from the singer. "We're gonna be playing this Friday night, do you want to mix us?" I said, "Yeah!" So I missed out on school, hitchhiked into town and turned up. They were supporting a really successful band at the time, and they were playing to like 1,500 people and there's this huge mixing desk. I was like, "Oh my God! This is going to be like hell." I was really full of myself, [a] cocky 16-year old, and I went to the guy who owned the PA. "I'm their mixer. I don't really know how to use this particular brand of board. Could you run through it?" And he obviously caught on to what was going on. So he pretty much mixed the show. And he must have done an amazing job. It was probably the first time they'd played through a big PA, and probably the first time they'd had a professional mixer. He just did a great job. There were a lot of people there — their friends, some of their influentials, members of the Birthday Party were there.
Who was this band?
They were called the Moodists. Their lead singer was a guy called Dave Graney. They're from Melbourne. I went backstage after the show to get some beer, and all their friends just told them it sounded amazing, they never sounded so good. So I went in and they [said], "Victor, you're a genius!" "Yeah, thanks. Where's the beer?" [laughter] So I got the job. A couple weeks later, the Moodists won a free day in a 24-track recording studio. And they asked me to come in to the studio. In those days (this is like early '80s in Melbourne) it was a real changeover period. The new music didn't exist. And it was always a battle for bands to do the new music. I just came in and [said to the engineer], "Can't you just make the whole thing louder?" And he'd just take the master fader and say, "It's louder." I was just giving him a really hard time. I'd never been in a studio before in my life, you know. Anyway, it was released on an independent label or something, and they actually gave me production credit on it, which was really nice of them. They liked the fact that I was on their side. The bass player from the Birthday Party brought this single over with him when they first went to England. He's playing it in his apartment one night, and there's an NME journalist with him just partying with him — he gave it as the single of the week in NME. In those days it had never happened before. A young, independent, Australian band just hadn't had oversees recognition, so it was kind of a big thing. All of a sudden I start getting phone calls from all these other Australian bands. I can sort of remember flying up to Sydney, [after I was asked] to make a record. And I told my parents I was going to a school camp. And I told my school that I was going away with my parents. I can still remember seeing the person who flew me up at the airport, expecting this producer with this weird name that no one's ever heard, but [who] was successful in Europe — they all thought I was European. His face, when I turned up at the airport a 16-year old. [laughter]
You must have picked up some knowledge on the first few projects.
I guess I'm blessed with some technical ability. But I think it was more, as I said earlier, just having someone on [the band's] side in the studio was so important to them. Even though I didn't really know what I was doing. And in the early days there was always an engineer there. I was one of the few people around that was really into the same post punk/new wave thing. For my lack of skills, knowledge — all that — I was such an enthusiastic 17 year-old. I think they appreciated that, rather than just having some old- school guy to make them sound like some '70s classic rock band. And that's pretty much how it happened. Eventually I just got more and more work. The Moodists ended up getting a deal in England. I was going to film school at the time. I never thought I'd be doing [music] as a living. They asked me to come over to produce their album for an English label. So originally I thought I would go over for six months but as soon as I arrived I just stayed. [After I arrived] the manager of The Fall, who was like my total favorite band at the time, rang me up and just said, "Look, I've heard about you. I manage the Fall. We're playing a show tomorrow night at Reading University, do you want to do our live sound?" I couldn't believe it. So 24 hours after I landed I'm hanging out with Mark Smith, doing the Fall's live sound. There's no way I'm coming home!
This would have been '82?
Eighty-three, actually. Really soon after that, I met up with the Go-Betweens, I met up with Nick Cave, and all those Australian bands that decamped there in the '80s. And they all liked me being around — partly 'cause being Australian is a like-minded thing. We're all friends, we'd all hung out together. So I was really busy doing small records, and also doing the live sound, touring and stuff. Live sound was my bread and butter, but my ambition was to be a record producer.
You actually started out as a record producer.
Yeah, and worked my way down! [laughter] To an engineer! I taught myself how to engineer on the job.
So at which live sound gig did you actually feel like you were mixing and had a handle on what you was going on?
I mixed my first gig at age 16, so for the first two years I was doing three gigs a week or so. And then in those two years I'd also built a little studio in my parent's garage. I actually recorded a couple EPs, which were quite good. A friend of mine was the son of the guy who had the sole importing rights for Yamaha gear. I managed to get a Yamaha desk on loan and I bought a reel- to-reel 4-track and a couple cheesy compressors and cheesy microphones and we set up in my parent's garage. So I was already experimenting. Those two years were quite formative, I guess. And then when the Birthday Party broke up, and Nick [Cave] was getting his solo thing together, I'd met Mick Harvey, his main musical right hand man, and we got along really well. He asked me to do live sound for the Bad Seeds (which I did until 1995). I had a really luxurious position with them, and they were really great. I wanted to be a record producer, and I was learning the trade, but obviously it took awhile to be able say I can do this full time. And so I'd always been able to pick and choose which tours I'd do for them. I was really lucky. But what I'd always wanted to be was a producer. You can't just say, "I'm a record producer", so that's how I learned. I never was a tape op, or an assistant. I taught myself how to engineer on the fly. The first few records I did in England were so low budget that we couldn't really afford to have an engineer as well [as a producer]. And also, I really didn't know what a producer did, to be honest. I still don't really know what a producer does.
No one seems to.
And so, for me it was a really good way of justifying my presence in the studio. It was like, basically, if the band was getting on with it and doing whatever they were doing, at least I was engineering it, so if I didn't have anything to say, 'cause I had no ideas or didn't know what I was supposed to say, at least I felt much more comfortable doing [the engineering], so I taught myself how to engineer for that. And still today, it's a budgetary thing, as well. Probably also 'cause I'm a bit of a control freak and I find it really hard if there's an engineer there, and I think they find it really hard too, 'cause I keep wanting to grab the desk and go, "No, this!"
Who made the decision for you to mix PJ Harvey's Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea?
Polly's an old friend. She's been a friend for ages, and she came out to New York for six months over one summer. When she came out she found it so invigorating and so enlightening she wrote the album, just in her apartment. Maybe 70 percent of the vocals and even rhythm guitar on that record were actually recorded on a [Tascam] PortaStudio at home. She'd just come home from a night out, or the next morning perhaps, [and] write the song and record it straight into a cassette. And they put that cassette onto the 2", first two channels, and they played along to that.
That's great!
We hung out a bit here [in New York], and we get along very well. She [wanted] me to be involved, but obviously she wanted to produce it herself with Mick [Harvey] and Rob [Ellis], so she got Head, who's worked with her before, and then I came in on the mix. Polly, Mick and Rob are three brilliant musicians, multi-instrumentalists. And they were in a residential studio, they just recorded lots of stuff in six weeks. So the mix wasn't just faders up, it was a lot of work sorting it all out. "There's two different bass lines in this. You decide, Victor." We did a lot of work on the drums, too.
Did you do any overdubs during the mix?
Yeah, we did some vocals and we worked on songs. The vocals and guitar tracks were on cassette [laughter] and some of the songs literally she'd accidentally bounced the two together so it was lead vocals and guitar, so you only had one channel. It would actually drop in for the vocals while she's doing it. [Her voice] would literally cut [the guitar] out. So the guitars would be going along and it would go "ka-chunk", silence, and then she'd start singing. It would be like, "Whoops, there's a second of nothing." So I'd have to find that chord from elsewhere in the song and move it around in Pro Tools. The drummer found it really hard because the timing's all over the place. He's trying to play along to a guitar that hasn't been done to a click track. I talked to him about this and he's like, "I'm pissed off that we can't re-record this song. But you know, she's really attached to that lead vocal and that rhythm guitar. That lead vocal is great but we should try to do this better, at least it'll be tight." And there's truth in that, but maybe in some way 'cause it wasn't tight it sort of charms the record. It wasn't a standard rock record.
If you're just engineering a project do you ever get comments on your tracks? Do you often get to hear back from other mixers that do the stuff that you don't mix?
Yeah, positive and negative tracks. I did a record a few years ago, which I didn't mix, a very famous mixer mixed it, and he hated what I did, he was complaining constantly when he was mixing about the engineering on it. But when I got the mixes back they were just horrible, I thought. Anyway, they were used. But just really horrible. You know, we were trying to make two different sort of records — he was the wrong guy for the job. But, often A&R guys say, "He's had a few hits, he's great." And he does lots of pop stuff, this guy, but he's probably used to programmed drummers. What he did, for me, was squeeze the life out of everything. It was just thin and he just didn't understand. I wanted to make a much more ambient [record]. It was an acoustic record. I just wanted to have the sound of the room on everything, you know? It just sounded like a band in a room. That was the way it was meant to be. And the band has always said they much prefer the way the rough mixes sound. You know, he's a brilliant, brilliant mixer, but not for that. And so he hated what I did.
Just a clash of ideals, basically.
Yeah. Everything was in everything, he said. And everything was in everything, it was meant to be like that. [laughing] But I've also had compliments too. I think it's really hard. You record [in a certain way with an idea in mind], and you give it to somebody else who doesn't understand that. And I'm sure it's been the other way around.
Yeah, conversely with you when you mix stuff.
Absolutely, absolutely. I'm sure the engineers or the producers that have recorded stuff that I've mixed have had real serious problems. You look at it in a different way, and I'm not convinced it's the right thing to do, to send it off. I think that was a period of time, and I think it probably works with R&B or hip-hop, 'cause they do a remix of it, it's an alternative version. But I think with more organic bands, I really believe in the thing of beginning to end. Particularly for me, because I do engineer on everything and I do a lot of mixing and I think that's a huge part of what I've got to offer. And I think it's weird when a record company says, "Oh you just record it and we'll send it off to someone." That half of it is really an important part of what I do. The sound of a record is really important.
It seems to illuminate a bad practice. But it happens all the time, I know. "We'll send it to Andy Wallace and have him mix it." It's very common.
Yeah, totally. Maybe for a single, sending it off to some guy. Like, "This is the radio thing. This guy compresses the life out of everything, makes everything extremely bright, it sounds real exciting on the radio." I can see that — I never have a problem with compromising a song for radio, 'cause it's really an advertisement, isn't it? 'Cause the album, that's where the art comes in. I don't know what Head thought of my mixes on Polly's record. People liked my mixes. But it would have been really different [than] the way he would have done it.
