How did it all start?
As a kid I played guitar, and by the age of 17 I was playing in musical theatre orchestra in Jaffa, near Tel Aviv. It was the late '60s, and like every other Israeli teenager at that time, I was drafted to the Israeli army. I started as a marine, but eventually joined a military band. Two years later I was released and flew to NYU, planning to study philosophy and cinema studies and even fashion design at some stage, but it didn't take long before I made a turn and started studying at the Institute of Audio Research. While still in school I was looking for a way to set my foot in the New York studio scene, so I contacted the World Bank, telling them I intended to set up a studio in Israel, which was my original plan. Back then they had a policy of assisting third world countries, so they were willing to introduce me to some industry people. One thing led to another and at some point, the people at Ampex introduced me to Neil Diamond's producer, Brooks Arthur, who took me under his wing and made me a runner in his 914 Sound Studios in upstate New York. It took me about six months to become a house engineer, and all of a sudden I was recording the likes of James Taylor, Janis Ian, Blood Sweat and Tears and others, which were all Arthur's clients at that time. One day in 1973 a producer named Mike Apple brought a young and practically unknown artist to the studio, with whom I immediately fell in love. It was Bruce Springsteen and we made two records almost right on the spot [Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent and the E. Street Shuffle, both released in 1973]. After these two records were released we started working on a new one, starting with the title track "Born to Run".
Born to Run was released in 1975, so I guess recording didn't go as fast as with the first two?
It wasn't fast at all. On the song "Born to Run" alone we had been working six months! Springsteen kept changing the lyrics and the song got finished only when he was pleased with the text. But we weren't working only on the vocals that entire time. We were tweaking, over-dubbing and pre-mixing until the last moment. In addition to the rhythm section there were strings, glockenspiel, piano, electric guitars, brasses, about four or five acoustic guitars, you name it. You've got to remember it was only 16-track, so pre-mixing and bouncing was the only way to go. There are probably thousands of parts and instruments in it, all bounced down to sixteen tracks. For example, the sax solo was edited from about seven different solo tracks, and for the snare drum we used a big AKG reverb box, maybe it was a BX20, but we didn't have gates so I had to do yet another bounce, muting the reverb after each snare hit. That's the reason why the reverb on the snare sounds different throughout the song. And it took me hours punching in and out, what you can do these days in seconds.
Do you think working like that — making crucial decisions with no way back — had an important impact on how the song turned out?
I can't really tell. It was about using the tools that were available at the time. When you have more tools and options it changes the way you work, but not necessarily for the worse. It's very common these days to complain about how working with computers made the music making process much longer than it used to be, because of the endless options it gives you. But here's a song that was made thirty years ago and took six months to accomplish — so it's not about the tools you have at a certain point, but more about how you use it and whatever concept you have.
Was there a concept or was it just the way things evolved?
I believe we had in mind that Phil Spector thing...
With whom you had the opportunity to work.
Yeah. Prior to 914 Studios, I was for a short period an assistant at A&R studios, so I was in sessions with Phil Spector. But I was just one of the kids, so it was not a one-on-one experience...
Yet something got into Born to Run. I can't really tell. I mean for me, the best school ever was watching great producers at work, but it wasn't just copy and paste, that's for sure. It was more like getting an attitude toward things, learning to know what's important, what's a keeper, how to listen to things, knowing the difference between psychoacoustics and reality, all of that more than anything specific. But being very young I was very impressionistic, so I guess everything had an influence. I don't quite remember the reasons for doing one thing or another, just the general feeling — and it felt great to be young. [laughs]
So for you it wasn't just engineering the song?
The formal deal was that I was hired as the engineer. But it was my baby, working on that song for half a year, around the clock. When the song was ready everyone realized we were on to something unusual, and it became pretty much clear this was about to set the concept for the rest of the album. Unfortunately, after doing the rhythm section recording for the rest of the songs, I had some family matters, which forced me to return to Israel.
So they moved to another studio and used other musicians for the rest of the album?
Yeah, they started to feel that 914 was getting a little old. Nothing really serious, but the piano was croaking — this sort of stuff. And on the other hand Springsteen had already gathered his live band. For example, on the Born to Run song they used [drummer] Ernest "Boom" Carter, who was basically a jazz drummer, and he does that long, unison-jazzy, syncopated fill [sings] in the middle of the song. Later I did the PA sound for Springsteen's live show and I remember that on the first gigs Max Weinberg had that thing with that fill, like he was desperately struggling to get the exact feel of it. After a while he just gave it up and did his own thing, which was great on its own.
So you were doing PA sound alongside the studio work?
I did a two month tour with Lou Reed, and also became the maintenance engineer at 914. In 914 it was a 16- track, 2-inch Scully machine and we recorded to it though a dbx noise reduction system. Now that's a funny thing. I watched the Born to Run DVD [Born to Run: 30th Anniversary 3-disc Set] and they are listening to the soloed tracks and Springsteen says something like, "This is so untypical of Luis Lahav. The acoustic guitars are so compressed." They really don't understand how come it sounds so different from the mix. But you have to use the same dbx system in order to decode the tracks, otherwise it comes out scrambled.
And what about the rest of the gear?
