When Joe Boyd's book White Bicycles came out last year, I was excited. Not only could I finally read more about this amazing record producer/label owner/manager, but there might be a chance to interview him for Tape Op. During Joe's West Coast book tour we were able to spend a lunch together at Portland's Doug Fir Lounge, and I finally got to meet the man who recorded some of my all-time favorite records. From Pink Floyd's firÌ single, "Arnold Layne", Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out the Lights, R.E.M.'s Fables of the Reconstruction, most of the Nick Drake catalog and early Fairport Convention, to some passionate and informed production of world music albums, Joe has helped create, release and guarantee the (sometimes gradual) success of many artists. In some ways you could look at Joe's career as flying under the radar or hidden behind the scenes, but even he has two slightly odd number one hits, with "Dueling Banjos" from the Deliverance soundtrack, and Maria Muldaur's "Midnight at the Oasis". Anyone with over 40 years in the music business is capable of losing his or her wonder of music, but with Joe this is not the case. Yes, he's stopped producing records and running a label, but with White Bicycles he tells eloquent tales of his adventures in music through the '60s and '70s. With his next book he will take us on a journey through world music — and I'll be waiting patiently for this sure-to-be-fascinating tale.
The one thing that really struck me with the book is that everything that happens to you really comes from being a fan of music. I think one of the problems I've had with the music industry lately is that it just feels like too many people in it are just doing a job, not coming at it with a large record collection and a passion for music.
That may be true with the major labels, but I think for most people who work in the indie world, the rewards are so limited and chancy that most people I've met are pretty passionate about music.
That's true. We'll see what happens to the major labels, anyway.
I don't remember saying it, but [in] one of the interviews I read I was welcoming the crisis in the music industry saying, "The dinosaurs will slowly sink into the tar pits and some of their cousins will turn into birds."
There have been periods where major labels worked fine, hand-in-hand with the music. Your book documents a certain era that definitely made a lot of sense — Elektra wasn't part of a major label in the same way it is now. Two things that make themselves apparent in the book are your early loves of jazz and working with jazz musicians. In my vision, that influenced the way you recorded everything from then on. It became more about looking for a space and a performance and capturing something.
It's not just jazz. Certainly, jazz in general has only really successfully been recorded that way, unlike other forms of music. I don't think there was a question of taking a practice that applied to jazz and trying to apply it to other things. I got through the mid-'60s until 4-track tape came in. That was the way all music was made.
That's true. That kind of dictates the process.
Les Paul did some tricks, but they were bouncing stuff back and forth. That was an aberration rather than a practice.
I guess now we take layering and creating in that fashion for granted.
The "Wall of Sound" was live. He [Spector] had three pianos in the studio. He had twelve guitars in the studio. He had the girls in the vocal booth live.
What I responded to was you talking about looking for recording spaces and how that creates part of the environment, and making sure something happened on the floor.
That is one of the problems I have with a lot of contemporary recording. You don't feel like it is taking place in a room. It's taking place in cyberspace or in an electronic environment — close mic'ing in a dead space. If you want atmosphere, you dial it up. I keep quoting these two examples, but I think they're good examples: Buena Vista Social Club and Norah Jones — they really sound as though they've been made in a space. I don't personally think they would've been that successful if they hadn't sounded like that. Norah Jones made her record on Pro Tools originally and Blue Note said, "We don't like it." So they went into the studio with Arif Mardin to redo it. They were right. It could've easily dropped like a stone, but that record had that fantastic warmth and atmospherics to it that you can only get when you've got more than one microphone open in the space at the same time, so it sounds three-dimensional.
In your book you mentioned working with The Incredible String Band and doing overdubs, having access to an 8-track, probably at that point.
The first time it was four.
You were taking a jump from two different ways of working. Initially, what did you learn in that process?
I don't think there were generic lessons. Mistakes were individual and specific. You try putting a harmony on and it doesn't work and you erase it and put something else on. You put a pennywhistle on something and Robin [Williamson] or Mike [Heron] would say, "Oh that works." It was in the air. [In] '67, Revolver was already out and the fact that The Beatles were working on Sgt. Pepper's — and "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields..." came out. It was in the drinking water, those kinds of experiments. It was hugely fun and it worked. They got it right away.
How did you feel your role changed as a record producer working in a situation built more around adding and judging overdubs to a take?
I didn't think about it much. It was all whatever the situation needed. If I was recording Chris McGregor's sextet — that was one job. Doing Nick Drake was a completely different job because then you had to hire musicians to come in and join him. The Fairport Convention — the recording process changes a lot whether you have a drum kit or not. All the problems are different. With The [Incredible] String Band you had tremendous flexibility because there was no drum kit, so there's a lot of sonic space — it's open. A drummer playing a kit takes up a lot of space and if you put an overdub in, it has to assert itself. Whereas Robin, on the first track of Hangman's Beautiful Daughter ["Koeeoaddi There"] where he sings, "Skating on happy valley pond" — he came up with [an] idea. He just said, "I'd like to try this." He had little finger cymbals and he just rubbed them and it sounds like a skate on ice, or you surmise skates on ice. He just went downstairs and John [Wood] set up all the microphones. I think there was a track that had something on it from a previous verse, and he's going to have to put something else on it the next verse. So we did part of that then did "shhh shh shhh" [sound of the finger cymbals] and put echo onto the mix — they just really enjoyed the process. My role was to tell them, "Look, you can do this. Think of an instrument to put on to add to this tune" or whatever. If Robin would say, "I want to put on four layers of this instrument", I would say, "Well, I don't think it would sound so good." We would have to bounce it back and forth. There were also logistical things like, once you learned it and started doing this kind of stuff, it was good to know beforehand what they had in mind — so you positioned the tracks right, so you could bounce things to non-adjacent tracks. You have to sort of plan ahead. We'd do something on track one and we could then bounce it together with something else on track three or four, and then come back to two and then four.
How did you end up finding Sound Techniques and engineer John Wood?
Good luck. When I took up my place at Elektra, I think the first thing I did — aside from some recording outside of London — the first real session I did was that Eric Clapton thing [Eric Clapton and the Powerhouse].
That was at Olympic [Studios]?
I asked Bill Leader, who was this mentor friend of mine and folk producer. I said I had to do this rock session with a drum kit and everything. He knew Keith Grant at Olympic and he said, "Call Keith." So I just called up Keith and he said, "Sure." That was falling on your feet to do your first session with Keith Grant because he is a great engineer. Jac [Holzman, Elektra] wasn't just putting out Judy Collins and Phil Ochs records — he built his label, in a way, on gimmicks.
What kind of gimmicks was he using?
The thing that enabled him to stop writing ad copy or whatever it was he was doing before was a series of records by Ed McCurdy called When Dalliance was in Flower (and Maidens Lost Their Heads)- basically bawdy songs. It was a guy with a Burl Ives kind of voice, strumming guitar going, "Hey ho, nonny, nonny, he took the maiden into the green wood and turned her upside down" — and it sold tons! It was huge. He had this other idea that was probably okay — it was the signs of the zodiac [as] a series of easy listening records. There was an American arranger who Jac would commission every six months and he would put out sounds of Libra, you know — an instrumental record that was supposed evoke Libras. In those days a lot of string players were much cheaper and better than now. You could get London Philharmonic players for twelve pounds for a two hour session. They were probably up to eighty-five dollars in America. He always did his string sessions in Sound Techniques. Jac's doing these sessions for the next three days and he was going to be at this studio, "Here's the address, take down four hundred pounds in cash to pay the musicians" — because you had to pay the musicians in cash. I walked in and I liked the feel of the place and I met John. I think I had to come down the next day again and there was a break and everybody was getting their money and counting it out and getting cups of tea and I started talking to John. By that time I had decided I was going to do a session and I was thinking I might do it in Bill Leader's kitchen [where many folk records were done], but I already had a few misgivings. I loved Bill and I loved what he did, but I wanted to set the record that I was going to do apart. The kind of recording he did — they were wonderful recordings, but sonically they were a little flat. I was sort of in the background thinking, "What am I going to do? I don't want to hurt Bill's feelings." I mentioned it to John Wood. "Would you ever think of doing this record with fiddle and guitar?" and John said, "Yeah, great, sure! Come on down." He gave me good rates and I liked going there — it sounded good. The next thing was the Incredible String Band's first record. John had never heard any of this stuff before. He was a classical guy — he loved violin concertos and things like that — and we're playing things like this and he was like, "Wow. Let's try putting the mic here. Let's try this kind of a mic." It just grew from there. He learned a lot about this music from me and I learned about recording and sound from him.
I like your description of your working methods with John and overlapping a little bit in the production areas. He would not feel timid to say something nor you vice-versa. It's hard to develop that sometimes. Someone thinks, "Well, I'm just the engineer. If they're only asking me to be the engineer, I'm not going to say something." Was it just a rare combination of personalities?
Yes. John is a distinct personality and I think he has always been. I think it was fortunate for him that he found me just as much as it was that I found him, because I think that he probably was not the best front foot forward for the studio. He's a grumpy, curmudgeonly guy who does speak his mind. He was used to doing typical commercial stuff that wasn't very interesting and he'd keep his mouth shut. He was not one to suffer fools gladly. If he had an idiot producer, he'd probably make them feel like they don't want to come back — and to be fair, over the years there have been times when he and I have gone our separate ways when we have disagreed about stuff and it wasn't shrugged off easily. He got out of the business, but he's now getting back in a little bit. Jerry Boys came to work at a certain point, at '68 or '69 at Sound Techniques, and I was booking so much time. I was block booking — just give me this week and the next week, and then Thursday and Friday I'll be away for four days and then I'll book more time. John was part of that so he said, "I'm not doing all of this stuff." He would take certain projects and say, "I'm doing these, but you could do this with Victor Gann, Jerry Boys or Roger [Mayer]." By that time we had three other engineers working there. I think Jerry is in a way temperamental and perfect and I think that John as a recording engineer might have done some things that were more original — but you couldn't really choose between them. They were both great recording engineers.
Did you have different interactions with Jerry?
Jerry is more prepared to shut up, but I never asked him to. I always asked his opinion. He was a little more, "What do you want? I'll get it for you." Jerry as a mixing engineer is fantastic. That's a real strength of his. John, too — I got spoiled working with Jerry. Now I feel like the ideal thing would be to go make a record with John and then take it in to mix with Jerry.
You talk a little bit in the book about the lack of sixties trappings on the recordings, like clichéd overuses of things. Was that a conscious decision at the time?
I had a horror of that. Sometimes musicians would say, "Let's put a phased guitar panning from right to left." That kind of shit. There may be something on The Incredible String Band — there was one thing where they wanted the voice to go left to right very slowly. The one argument like that that I lost, which I really regret that still drives me nuts when I hear it-I tried to look for the tape to see if I could undo it — was Wee Tam and The Big Huge, an Incredible String Band record has a track that I love — it used to be their closing track in their concerts called "Maya", and they end with this coda sort of flourish and it all grinds to a halt. Mike plays sitar. It's a rousing chorus. It's great and you hear it either once or twice — I can't remember if there's one or two verses, but you hear it at least once, if not twice all the way through and then the third verse, as it's just getting to that climax, they said, "Okay, now we want to cut it off and have bird songs going into this next track." It's an absolute — you can tell it's a scissors [cut]. It's not musical. It's technical and I hate it. I said, "No, no, no. We can't do this." They said, "Yes, yes, yes, we must do this. This is the concept. This is what we want to do." In the end, I always felt that for artists' records, I can argue a lot and I would often fight against things, but at the end of the day I couldn't convince an artist that this was [the way]. I might say, "Do it my way and if it doesn't work, we'll try it your way." Sometimes, every once in a while there were situations where an artist would say, "I've heard it your way and I still want to do it my way." That was one of them. It still drives me nuts. I can't stand to listen to it.
What would you have decided, to go naturally where the music was going?
Yeah — where it ends in a live show.
In the '80s you ended up doing R.E.M.'s third record [Fables of the Reconstruction] and 10,000 Maniacs [The Wishing Chair] — these American bands were showing up in the UK to record with you. I remember you had some comments at the time going, "I don't know why these people are coming over here and asking to work with me." What are your feelings looking back on that era for you?
Great experiences. I have great respect for R.E.M. — both groups — particularly R.E.M., as an organization, were quite extraordinarily impressive. The way that they were together and the way with the management — that was before their problems with Jefferson [Holt, manager] and the six of them were very much a unit. The fact that they didn't take advances from the label — they were very much in control of their own career. I just thought these guys were totally on it. I had never met a young rock band with such a mature attitude towards everything. I haven't really seen the guys from 10,000 Maniacs since then, but I stayed friends with Natalie [Merchant]. Mike Mills [R.E.M.] and I became good friends. It was a strange experience because I didn't feel like I finished the [R.E.M.] record properly. I wasn't happy with the mix — probably because I mixed it in Livingston [Recording Studios] with Jerry — but it was when he'd just remodeled Livingston and we booked the big room for eight days to do the tracks, and we moved in the smaller room to finish the mix. I've never mixed another record in that room. I've always insisted on the big room because I can't stand that room.
Just the way things sound?
Yeah, I just don't hear it. I just don't hear things right. I've done recording in there and overdubs, but I just will not mix in there. It makes me nuts. Then the group was making life a bit difficult because they wanted everything to be turned down, which is the opposite of the way most groups are. I was a bit annoyed when I heard the next record — Stipe's voice is right up front. I think at the time I was uneasy about the record. They were uneasy about the record. I think we were all relieved the record did pretty well, but I think we all felt dissatisfied with the final result.
I really like that record. It stands out as a very different record for them.
Now, it's nice that people now come back to it and say, "Hey, I just realized that's actually not so bad! It's pretty good."
It's very different because they had the Mitch Easter/Don Dixon [Tape Op #21] records before that.
I think the second one is fantastic.
Reckoning is one of the best examples of what they were doing. I can't imagine that being any better for what they were at that time. Fables... came out as kind of a darker, moodier record in some respects.
Which — I guess they were feeling that way. To me, it rains all the time — so what? I guess it did affect them. With Natalie and the 10,000 Maniacs, that record has disappeared. It's not even on CD [Wishing Chair]. I really liked that album. One of the things that happened with both albums — and it took me a while to digest this information — I think I sensed it at the time, but when I look back on those records — this is slightly the flaw in my philosophy that I espoused of trying to do everything live in the studio. I realized that I was very spoiled. I worked with a lot of fantastic drummers. Dave Mattacks was a great drummer. I worked with Steven Gadd. I worked with Earl Palmer. Come on, I worked with a lot of really, really good drummers — and Mike Kowalski is a terrific drummer. He was on a lot of the Nick Drake records. The truth is that Bill Berry and Jerry Augustyniak — they're good drummers to be in those bands, but they ain't world class drummers. That's where if somebody wanted to call me on some of the things that I say about the philosophy of recording things live, there aren't as many good musicians around these days. A lot of musicians making records are not that good at playing their instruments and in a way, if you say, the only way you should make this record is by playing and waiting for the best performance — you might never get the best performance because they're just not really good enough to treat it, as you say, like a jazz record. Where is that moment going to happen? The moment needs help. They need the click track and they need something. With both records, I think, the farther along we went in finishing the record, overdubbing and mixing — both records — when you have a great track, you start adding things on — it just gets better. When you have a weak track, you add things on — it exposes the weakness. It doesn't fix it. It makes it worse. If you add a harmony and you add another guitar, it kind of makes the flaws more obvious. It doesn't cover them over. It's very difficult to cover them over. I think I felt at the end of that experience working with those guys that maybe I wasn't the right producer for them. I remember when I was working on the R.E.M. record there was another group working in the smaller room when we were working in the big room, and the two studios share a men's room. So I would find myself standing at the urinal and there was a guy who was the producer or the bass player (I can't remember) of the group in the other room, and we started having a nodding acquaintance. I remember saying, "How are you guys doing?" and he said, "Well, we got five tracks finished." This was four days into the thing. He said, "Yesterday we did the bass drum and we are doing the bass line today." I just would never have the patience to do a record like that. They were doing the A and B side to a single and they laid down the bass drum and...
