LC: So you started working at Sunset Sound Recorders around 1963.
Something like that.
LC: What were you doing before then?
I had my own record label. I was recording school orchestras and things like that and pressing LPs. I used to go to Radio Recorders and cut mono lacquer masters and press with Research Craft using their new, anti-static vinyl. Then I got a job working as an apprentice engineer for Liberty Records' recording studio [Liberty Custom Recorders], the home of Johnny Burnette, Bobby Vee and the Chipmunks.
LC: I interviewed Snuff Garrett a while back [#73].
I worked with Snuff. Lovely man. He's got great stories. We used to record song-publishing demos for Hill & Range Music, which were [songs written by] Jackie DeShannon and sung by P.J. Proby for Elvis Presley. We were doing these all the time and Snuff was involved as a Liberty Records A&R man. He was the shining star, producing the hits. I started there and then Liberty Records was sold to Transamerica [Corporation] and they closed down the studio.
LC: Liberty Records had their own recording studio.
It was upstairs on La Brea Boulevard and Challenge Records used to be downstairs, so we had the Ventures recording there fairly regularly. When I was without a job I just started walking the streets, walked into Sunset Sound Recorders, met [Salvador] "Tutti" Camarata and talked to him about big bands and the way to record them. He was intrigued and that was it.
LC: You mentioned the Ventures. Were those sessions at Liberty?
I did some of the Ventures at Liberty, but when I left for Sunset Sound Joe Saraceno, who was their producer at Liberty Records, brought them to Sunset Sound. So we'd record the Ventures — do side one from 10 am to 1pm and side two from 2pm to 5pm, edit it together, cut masters that night. The album was on the street in five days.
LC: That's pretty fast.
That's the beauty of mono.
LC: Of course. Do you remember which records those were?
I can't remember the names. They were great guys and they really just came in and played.
LC: That's a quick way to make a record. Before Sunset Sound you'd been working at a studio affiliated with a label. Now where were the jobs coming from?
It was affiliated with a label — Disneyland Records [now Walt Disney Records]. Tutti Camarata was the head of A&R [for Disneyland] and he built the studio [Sunset Sound]. We had Annette [Funicello] and all the Storyteller albums. In the morning I would be recording commercials from 8 am to 10 am and then do a Storyteller album where Mickey, Donald and Goofy would come in. We'd take Disney's animated movies and do them like radio shows. In the afternoon I would do some jazz or some rock 'n' roll — mainly surf music at that time.
JB: Was Mickey Mouse in costume?
[laughter] No, he didn't have to be. He had a tail and four fingers. He was born that way!
LC: So you could be doing a children's record and The Doors in the same day? Same day, absolutely — and a commercial for Midas
Mufflers. It was normal! Let's say that I would do this children's record and we were doing songs. We'd bring in a band, maybe eight to ten pieces with Annette in the vocal booth. We'd record for three hours, tear that session down, put up a jazz session for Pacific Jazz [Records] and then tear that down. Then The Doors would come in or whomever else. This went on and on and it was no big deal.
LC: Do you feel like that kind of variety really reinforced your skills?
I loved the variety. In those days radio didn't narrowcast like they do now, where you now have a hip-hop station, an adult contemporary station, an oldies station, oldies jazz, oldies rock 'n' roll and oldies middle of the road. Back then the local stations all around the country played everything. It was popular music. It didn't matter. It could be Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" into a Frank Sinatra song into The Doors' "Light My Fire" into an Aretha Franklin song into Muddy Waters. Everybody was on the station. Because of that there was a whole variety of music available to me. I remember doing six months for Muzak. We'd do a week or two of Mexican music — the most indigenous music through Tijuana Brass. Then we'd do Martin Denny-style Hawaiian music. It went on month after month after month and it was the best school I ever had. We did everything live to stereo and mono, running a 3 -4 track as a protection and that was it.
LC: Did you listen to other records to get an idea of how things could be done?
I listened constantly. I still do. In fact, I used to have my system in the studio of Sunset Sound — not in the control [room], but in the studio. When I wasn't recording I was out there listening to records. Records were cheap then — you know, two bucks. You'd go to the store and come home with 10, 15, 20 albums and you had to listen to them all. Some of them you lived with. Everything influenced me, especially a lot of the contemporary albums of the day. Some records had on the back how they were recorded — what machine and what microphones were used. I remember Crown Records used to do that — Bones Howe [#64] used to engineer them and he was an early idol. When I got my shot I'd put up that microphone and I go, "Oh my god, it is that sound." It was wonderful.
LC: You mentioned Bones Howe. Were there other engineers that you were aware of that you started noticing?
He was one of the first ones where I ever saw a name on an album. Al Schmitt when he was at RCA — at Capitol, John Palladino, all the Sinatra recordings he did — John Kraus, all the Nat King Cole records — and Hugh Davies with Buck Owens. They had some great engineers and great sounds. My mother was in the music business and so was my father. My mother was a music copyist and she used to copy for Sinatra, Nat King Cole and most of the artists that Nelson Riddle worked with. I never got to see a Sinatra session or a Nat Cole session, but I went to some other sessions over at the old Capitol Studios, which was then on Melrose Avenue next to Paramount Pictures — they were great studios. I was just reading this book, Sessions with Sinatra: Frank Sinatra and the Art of Recording, and they talk about that room. I remember that they were old radio studios — they'd put the orchestra up on the stage and put the singer down below the stage. They got enough isolation by putting him down there and the orchestra blowing over his head — no headphones. It was a great sounding environment.
LC: That's pretty amazing. There are still some great sounding rooms, but a lot of people, budget-wise, are forced to record in other scenarios these days. Do you feel like something's been lost along the way — the ambience of a great space?
Sure. I think the advent of the home studio has helped cause the demise of the recording studio — the big ones — and there are very few left. The original ones — there's Sunset Sound, United Recorders (which is Ocean Way), Western (later Cello and now EastWest Studios). Those rooms are still pretty original. Capitol's Studio B is still original — not the control room, but the studio itself. It's much smaller. Studio A has changed totally from when I started recording there. In New York there are very few big acoustic rooms now. They just don't exist anymore.
LC: It's too expensive.
Legacy [Recording Studios] just went under last year. Then in London, same thing — Whitfield [Street] Studios just went down. In New York the RCA Studios, which were famous, were turned into the IRS building with the spiral staircase going down the middle of it — classic studio. As far as L.A. — Gold Star, that was the place. I used to go there to hang out and watch and listen to Larry Levine record with Herb Alpert and Phil Spector. In those days we had Gold Star, Sunset Sound, Radio Recorders and United Recorders — the brainchild of Bill Putnam, a great mixer and studio designer (walls, console and all). I used to spend a lot of time at United. I wanted to work there even though I was working at Sunset, because that's where all the cool stuff was happening.
LC: He was hosting Sinatra sessions quite a lot.
Oh yeah. When Reprise [Records] started that's where they wound up doing everything. Then A&M — they built studios. There are big rooms around. In their original state (as far as acoustically) not too many of them exist anymore.
LC: You know, it's "improvements".
I was reading this Sinatra book and they were talking about the engineers — I've experienced this a lot. Going from studios they really knew if they put the drums "here" that "this" is going to happen and if they turn 45 degrees they are going to get more leakage. They knew acoustically how it would sound. Then they built the new [Capitol Studios] at Hollywood and Vine and they walked in and they hated it. They didn't understand what they were hearing. So the rooms — they worked on them and millions of dollars later they got it to a point, but by then they had figured out what they were listening to and then they could make music in it. I've gone into new rooms, or maybe an old room that I go into and it's new for me, and I don't know what I'm hearing coming over the loudspeakers. I can't figure it out. One of the cool things about the studios in those days is that every studio in town had the same loudspeaker — they were all Altec Lansing 604Es, either in utility cabinets or custom cabinets like Bill Putnam built, and later that [same] speaker with the Mastering Lab crossover. But you could go from studio to studio and relate to what was coming out of the speaker. They weren't the best loudspeakers in the world, so they made you work hard to get the sound you wanted.
LC: One of the things I hear on your recordings is a tangible clarity, a real separation in the instruments and clearness in the mix as they combine. Where do you feel this is coming from?
I don't know where it comes from and I've never tried to find out. It's just the way I hear things, nothing more than that, and I'm fortunate that what I hear other people are able to relate to. It's the way I hear echo and the colors that I hear. I like things to be clear. I like things to be pure. I'm not interested in distortion. It doesn't speak to me, because I think my job is to capture the music. People aren't buying the record because of me — they're buying it because of the music.
LC: With The Doors' song "Strange Days" there's a very distinct vocal effect.
We brought in a Moog synthesizer. We wanted to do something different and we didn't have any tracks open on the 8-track to record whatever effects we were going to do. So we brought the Moog in and through a trigger and envelope follower we were able to get this sound on Jim's vocal. As I mixed live Jim just kept hitting a key on the keyboard. You know, "Strange days have found me," and it would go open and close with delays and echo. So the live mix was it. When I went back to remix Strange Days for 5.1 a few years ago it was a little problematical. Luckily technology had advanced enough that I was able to use two or three different plug-ins to approximate the Moog and it worked pretty well. I was happily surprised because I put Jim's vocal in the center of the surround with the effect — if you had your eyes closed and smoked or ate something you could probably get dizzy and pass out!
LC: [laughter] I remember picking it up on vinyl 26 years ago and really being fascinated by a lot of the sounds on it. There were crazy songs like "Horse Latitudes".
While we were preparing to do Strange Days, Wally Heider (a famous engineer and studio owner) had taken delivery of the very first 3M 8-track — serial number 001. He didn't even get a chance to use it in his own studio — I hired it from him and it sat at Sunset Sound for two years. Having those extra tracks allowed us to experiment. I was recording Happy Together with The Turtles (featuring Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan) and they were very friendly with The Beatles. One of The Beatles gave them a mono acetate of Sgt. Pepper's... a good ten months before the album came out and they gave it to me. I listened to it and I played it for The Doors more than once and played it for Jack Nitzsche. What it served for us was to help us throw off the past and just go nuts. It just said, "It's okay to go out and do different kinds of things." The Beatles did that record all on 4-track — 4-track to 4-track to 4-track — many generations. It's like the first Doors' record — it's 4-track to 4-track, except for some Sel-Sync'ing where we were able to punch in on the fourth track. When I went to remix I was surprised at how many vocals were on one track. If only the Atlantic Records fire [1978, Long Branch, NJ] hadn't happened I could have gotten my hands on the original 4-track tapes. I could have re-sync'ed it up in Pro Tools and had the first generation band against all those vocals.
JH: There's a photo of Jim Morrison with a [Shure SM-57]. Did he really sing vocals on those records with 57s?
No. The vocal mic of choice for him was always a [Neumann] U47 and occasionally an [AKG] C12A. I have a long body U47 and I still use it to this day, and a Sony C37, which was Sony's version of a U47.
LC: Listening to the drum balances on a lot of your early records, I wondered — were you putting up multiple mics?
Three microphones, one track — one overhead, one under the snare and one on the kick, one buss and in some cases locked to the bass.
LC: Did you apply compression or equalization?
No. I would generally limit the bass because it was direct. If we had a Jack Nitzsche session, like a Phil Spector-type of thing, we had three basses. We had a stand up bass, a Danelectro bass (which was really plucky) and a Fender. You'd mix those three together and generally they weren't even limited. Then you'd balance those three against the drums and that was one track. Or that was locked together with the guitars and the pianos all on one track.
JH: You don't want the band sitting there playing for hours and hours just so you can get your levels.
No. Nobody did that, but I really believe that a lot of the people who are starting out today could easily do that if given the opportunity. A lot of the music that I'm hearing today — I don't know how they get it there frankly. It's really heavily, heavily compressed. There's just no air, no breathability. But it's the style of today and that's okay. On this new Doors live stuff I'm using an Oxford Inflator on the buss and I'm compressing. I'm getting a good four to five dB apparent level through it and you can hear it. But it's not sitting there going [smacks hand] in your face. I'm doing that because I do need to compete somewhat with what's happening. But then again, I always mixed with limiters or compressors on the mix busses.
LC: So that's gonna be a similar effect. How do you remix a 4-track album for surround?
It's basically left-center-right as how I recorded it. We always had three loudspeakers in the control room. All the studios did for stereo and mono. But when you were tracking you always listened in stereo, mono or 3-track. Generally the voice was in the center with a bass and the rhythm would be on one channel and the strings and the vocals would be on another. '60s and '70s Dean Martin recordings are a good example of that.
LC: On The Doors, I can hear drums panned to one side.
Drums and bass were on one track and piano and guitar were on the other, locked together. You just get a balance between them and when you had a solo you turned it up and turned it back down. You'd learn the part. Any good mixer learns the music and plays the part.
LC: Did you get chances on run-throughs to get that dialed?
Yes, but luckily I related to what was happening pretty quickly.
LC: Watching for a visual cue of what they were playing?
They were pretty standard on their verse-chorus-verse- chorus-bridge-solo-chorus-verse-chorus-out. Where they deviated was on songs like "The End", "When the Music's Over" and "Light My Fire" — extended songs.
LC: On "The End" — is that a take?
It's two takes that were edited together. On one of them Ray's amp for the piano bass was on in the room, and for the other [take] it wasn't. When I cut it together I had to fake it. When I remixed it I used Altiverb in a sampled room sound to approximate the bloom of the bass so that it would seem seamless.
LC: The Doors have been part of your life for a long time.
43 years.
LC: It's been something that's kind of overwhelmed your life to a certain degree, but it's also provided you with work continually and respect from your peers.
Be careful what you wish for — you may get it. It's a long time to be involved with one act. Sometimes I come in, I'm doing something and I'm just not in the mood to hear that song again. I'll just turn everything off and go home and come back in the next day and I can't get enough of it. It's interesting. I don't know how people deal with that generally. I'm very grateful that it's provided plenty of food on the table. Besides, I'm close friends with all of them.
LC: Do you feel like that friendship is also part of the reason that you are still involved?
I'm sure.
LC: You didn't work on the records that Jim wasn't on that they followed up with.
American Prayer? No.
LC: Or the two records [Other Voices and Full Circle] that aren't even in print anymore — the ones they did after L.A. Woman without Jim?
I produced and recorded Other Voices, but then they did two others that I wasn't involved in.
LC: But there's no guarantee that this job would have followed you.
Absolutely not — that's why I said, "Be careful what you wish for." It's interesting, because in this live box set from the Felt Forum there are some performances that are extraordinary — I mean really, really extraordinary. Even after this much time and as jaded as I can be, they made me sit up and pay attention. They admit that individually they weren't the best musicians. Let me put it to you this way — they weren't individual virtuosos, but together they were.
LC: I hear that on the first record, especially some of John Densmore's drums. I can hear a little push and pull and a little inconsistency.
There is always a compromise between the drummer and the bass player — in this case it's Ray Manzarek's left hand. Half of him was playing bass and listening to John. The other half was playing organ.
LC: Wasn't there also a bass player on some of those albums?
Later on, yes. [On] the first album we overdubbed Larry Knechtel, and on the rest a host of great players who played live in the studio.
LC: So he's got a couple different rhythms happening in a way.
Once it's there with Ray's left hand then the bass player comes in and plays it. It was just aping what Ray was doing and Ray's track is still there. You can't get rid of it because we're locked into a 4-track.
LC: I think that you see a growth in the studio — even just the jump to Strange Days that we've been talking about. But by L.A. Woman you were producing. Paul [Rothchild, producer] walked off because he called it "piano jazz"...
"Cocktail jazz". Paul didn't really mean it that way as an insult. He was just really exhausted. It was a tough call getting through The Soft Parade and Morrison Hotel albums and by that point in time, he was burnt.
LC: Is this an album every six months?
Most artists did two albums a year with no trouble. There was plenty of material. If it hadn't have been for [Morrison's bust in] Miami, we would have probably done more than six albums.
LC: What's this Doors live box set from the Felt Forum you've been working on?
The Doors played four concerts in Madison Square Garden at the Felt Forum in January 1970. Through the years various people got their hands on the masters and pulled chunks out. It was a real archaeological dig to find all of the pieces and put it back together. Some of The Doors' fans that are really big collectors had cassette recordings of the four concerts that I used as a road map to know how to put all the pieces back together again. We're down to the final. I've basically mixed it all and sent it off to the guys for their approval, and it will be a six-CD boxed set [The Doors Live in New York]. That's what I'm finishing up right now.
LC: What kind of master tapes are they? 8-track?
They are all 8 track. We never recorded beyond 8-track. It was 4-track for the first album and 8-track after that. I had live 2-tracks from the Felt Forum where bits, 8-track chunks, were missing and I had to fill those holes and I found what was left (because they've been cannibalized as well). So I would cut from the 8-track to a 2-track. In Pro Tools you can do it and it's not really evident.
LC: Finding all the tapes and stuff — do you get help with that?
No, it's just me.
LC: Just trying to follow leads?
Yeah, that's all I can do. Try to be a detective.
LC: Have you ever had stuff show up after projects have already been completed?
Yes, and we'll generally insert that into the master and re-burn new master CDs and when the initial runs have run out...
LC: Really? So there could be slight changes?
Not really. Let's say the last chorus from "Light My Fire" from one of the shows was missing and we finally found it, but I had used something else that was very close to it from another city — I'd cut it in, right?
LC: Right.
So then we're able to replace it. Then we usually put it up on The Doors website on their blog in the chat room and let the fans know, and they go, "Cool!" We try to be as honest as possible about all of the goings-on that we do.
LC: When you did The Doors' album surround mixes were there new stereo mixes created of The Doors' records?
They were only in that box set — Perception: 40th Anniversary. Some of the new stereos sound better.
LC: I know you had been unhappy with what was it, Waiting for the Sun?
No. Soft Parade. I did some work on it.
LC: Did you ever nudge the timing of anything on these projects?
I've done that. On some of the stuff in that box set I fixed some things that we couldn't fix that I remember we wanted to do. I was able to nudge it so that they all came in together on a downbeat or something like that. But basically I left it alone because it's history — you don't want to mess with it. But I remembered certain things — why I remembered those I'll never know. But I did.
LC: Did you ever hear any feedback from fans that were unhappy with the way some things were treated?
No. On the surround I got nothing but positive responses, and for the most part they liked all the new stereo mixes. [We] were basically running a simultaneous stereo mix and the surround — going back and forth and listening, balancing sometimes just two speakers and then opening it up even though everything had been set.
JH: Along with The Doors, another band you're associated with was Arthur Lee's group, Love. With their album Forever Changes, was the band just ready to go because they'd been playing live?
That album is a product of the times. You've got almost the Baja Marimba Band or Tijuana Brass influence on the brass or Mexican string ideas. David Angel [the arranger] was the one who came up with that direction, but I believe I influenced him initially on where to go. Arthur came up with a lot of the string and brass lines and sang them to David Angel, who then made these arrangements. But that project — the band was not together at all. They were very intimidated by Arthur — not that Arthur was a mean man. He wasn't. It was just that he was a genius and they weren't ready to go. The only way to record it was to bring in the Wrecking Crew. I brought them in to Sunset Sound, Arthur played acoustic guitar live, told everybody what to play and we recorded two songs. The band got the message, got their act together and then we went to Western Recorders' Studio One and did all the rest of the tracks in (I think) three days. Then there was overdubbing for a period of time. I actually have my session book that shows the dates, what we did and how many hours I was doing this and that. From start to finish the album, including mixing, took place over a period of three months because there were a lot of other things going on — I would say it took maybe three weeks total. The results were great.
LC: Neil Young was initially...
He was going to co-produce with me — that was because of my working with Neil on Buffalo Springfield. Then he realized that he wanted to be a solo artist and he came to me and said, "I would love to do it, but I'm ready to do my solo career."
LC: You were working on Love's earlier records too.
On their first album we recorded on 4-track. That was another three-day recording, four-day at the most. Jac Holzman [Elektra Records' founder] produced it. He came in and had his act together. He had the lyrics all written out and knew what was going to happen where and when.
LC: Nice. Was he coming from a background as a musician as well? Jac used to play violin when he first started. He was the
person that taught me when sequencing an album how to do the four corners — you know it was vinyl, your first and last cut of a side and your first and last cut of the other side — and making sure that the songs key-wise went from one into the other smoothly so that it was continuous. He was the first one to do variable spreads — that you finish a song and maybe you need six, eight seconds of silence before the next song started — not the traditional (as in Columbia Records and RCA) three seconds. Last note, boom, three seconds and next song.
LC: You mention things that you learn from folks. Working with producer Paul Rothchild [on The Doors' albums], what kind of different things was he bringing to the table?
Paul had experience doing lots of folk albums, Paul Butterfield and quite a few other things. He was used to recording on the East Coast. They did things quite differently than we did them on the West Coast. I remember the first time I met Paul and we were about to start the first Tim Buckley album [Tim Buckley]. He came out into the studio and looked at all of the microphones I had on the instruments, which ones I was using and where I had them placed and was just fascinated. Paul and I kind of grew together because all of the experimentation with The Doors — a very talented man.
LC: One of the things that I picked up on was that he was really against gimmicky, contemporary sounds that might be a passing fad.
Oh, totally. You'll notice none of The Doors or Love albums had electric sitars, no electric 12-string guitars and no massive use of tambourines that would pigeonhole the album to be a '60s album. I don't know whether he had the foresight. I liked that too. We did use the harpsichord in a couple of cases, but they were used in unique ways, not to do an AM radio song.
LC: You did some of the Pet Sounds sessions. What was the extent of that?
I did two or three songs for it. On that album that came out [The Pet Sounds Sessions], I heard myself on the talkback, which was great. It was great being associated. I recorded the entire track for "Good Vibrations". That was really interesting, because Brian would do a track at Gold Star and then he'd do it with me — he was looking for the feel. He had already recorded the track and he wanted to redo the verses. He brought the Wrecking Crew in, we did the verses, cut them in and took the old sections out and destroyed them. A couple of days later he comes back in and wants to do the choruses. So we did the choruses, took the old ones out, put the new ones in, just cutting the takes together. Same thing with the bridge and all the other stuff until it wound up
the way he wanted it...
LC: That's crazy.
Brian was the kind of guy that got rid of the stuff he didn't want. No second-guessing.
LC: There are archivists out there clenching their fists.
Oh, there's a kind of logic to that. Today if you listened to it, it was probably musically pretty much similar. It was just the particular feel that he was looking for, and a sound. He liked the sound of the echo chamber and used my tack piano from Sunset Sound that I had built.
LC: Right. Putting tacks in...
Tacks on the hammers and detuning. I had the piano tuner make sure it was perfectly in tune, and then de-tuned the left string down one cent and the right string up one cent and that became really wiry. So he began using that piano, renting it like crazy. After a while the piano was just kind of a wreck from being moved around so much, but he loved the sound of it.
LC: "Good Vibrations" was such a trip because you can really hear how pieces are put together in the studio.
And the echo was really good too.
JB: That's our next project at the studio. We're gonna build an echo chamber.
