How did you get your start in studios?
It's the same as when I recorded with my cassette 4-track — just by doing it and being obsessed with music.
Is there any one person you learned from initially?
The first record I recorded, I didn't produce. I was playing, and the producer was the bass player from Slaughter [Dana Strum]. He was this guy that took really big steps down the hallway — clunk, clunk — and he would just control everything. I worked for him after that as a production assistant. I was getting paid 75 dollars a week, but I didn't care. I felt rich. He was pretty full on, and I thought that was so cool, being 17 years old.
What is a producer?
A producer could be just somebody that wants to party, hanging out with bands. My job is to babysit — that's not true-well, it kind of is. It could be a lot of things for different bands. Mainly it's about the psychology of the lyric and turning it into the deepest expression of that — understanding the meaning of the song. People have this thing about me — that I'll make things crazy and it gets violent or out of control. But it's the lyric that pushes it — the song has its way. A lot of kids will write about hardcore stuff and think that they're cool or something, and I'm like, "Are you sure you want to sing about this?" With me they actually get to feel what they're writing down, and most of the time it's really brutal and it wears everybody to the ground.
Is production something you do to a band, or something you do with a band?
The song does it to the band. I make sure that the song is the life form that rules everything — not me or the band.
It seems that you revisit your pre- production methods throughout the sessions, but that initial push is what sets the tone for the entire project. Describe your process.
Rehearsal. Work out the beat, get a piece of meaning of what we're trying to express and then take it deeper and go more psychological with it. To actually record it for real — then that's when we go deep into the meaning. Hopefully the drummer did his homework and he can play it without thinking about playing, and he can be exuding the core intention of what the song is about. With The Cure, normally Robert would record the music before he did the vocals (except for their first record), so nobody knew what the song would be about. It was just kind of like a "vibe" that they would record. With our record [The Cure, 2004] I wanted him to write the lyrics first. The air was thick, because what he sings about [aren't] always the happiest things in the world — so people had to feel it when they recorded their drums and their parts. English people don't really want to feel that much.
What do you see as a great take?
When everybody forgets they're actually on an instrument. If it hits that mark, there are chills as it's going, and something else happens — the body disappears.
How much of the drum editing is done before you start the rest of the basic tracking?
It depends on how technically good the drummer is. It could be wild, and then I'm working on it throughout with Pro Tools. With tape I would have to get it. It's really ruthless.
You like a natural sound in the drums, but you do a lot of edits. How do you reach a compromise and say that it's finished?
When the song says it's finished.
You do some brutal tweaking through your personal stash of stompboxes. You are on your knees finding and manipulating tones on take after take, sometimes a few bars at a time.
It's not really the effect; it's the phasing in between the pedals that creates the sound. With the bass it's consistency in the playing. I'll work on the bass tone a long time to get the phasing correct. If the bass player isn't good at all, I'll just work on finding that phase in between the pedals, the bass and the person's right hand to hopefully find a sweetness in the track. Normally I can find it. It's a process, but it's only inner- guided. I don't know [how to explain] what to go for — it's a craving to be satisfied. I want to record the way it's gonna sound. There are effects on everything permanently before it's mixed and everything.
I'm the vocalist in this process. What are you doing to me?
Giving you the place to feel safe and supported in order for you to expose everything.
Does this help bring out the fire you light under the vocalist in production?
If you like what you're hearing when you're singing it, then yeah.
Do you think I will be a better singer when I get out of here, or are you just getting my best performance for the record?
People will think you are better. It's all relative to what your brain says you are. A lot of people expose so much. I feel a reason a lot of repeat records don't happen [with me] is that it's such a treacherous path of exposing the lyric and finding that part of the singer within them. To me it's obvious. You're talking about yourself so let's find that place and let's really, really bring it out, so you can give people permission to take it to the highest level. If you do it then people will follow, and it's very healing and revealing.
You like using your old Telefunken ELA M 251 mic. [Used on many of Ross' records and by countless artists at Indigo Ranch Studios.]
It's just a really special sounding mic. It's got a Stephen Paul Audio mod, and that's the thing that separates it from the other ones. When a vocal sits in a mix at any level, that signal chain is ruthlessly important, because no matter what the tracks sound like, it cuts.
When did you build this studio? Was it built with a particular project in mind?
It's just stuff. From the beginning I just started collecting things as I needed them in other studios — a guitar, a cord or I'd need a pedal to record something. It wasn't necessarily built "to have a studio." That was the last thing I wanted, because I saw the misery that owning a studio held.
How was your "Sierra room" constructed?
I heard an engineer say "Sierra room" at an old school studio I worked out of. It had rocks and I thought it was really cool — volcanic fiber for isolation, tons of fiberglass, a wall inside the wall and the ceiling's dropped. I got this old school dude, Steve Katz, to design it. He has a little mixing room built like that room — I went in and listened to it and it was perfect. It's like a little cubicle he built inside of an apartment, and it's a completely different world.
How would you compare its sound to larger or more elaborate drum rooms?
It's the best drum room I've ever recorded in. I've recorded in some sweet drum rooms, and this one smokes them all.
You let the bands stay at your house. This makes them available and on call for sessions, but what else does this gesture provide to the recording process?
Venice is a little bit landlocked, so it creates a sense of personality within a group. The group's moment of their lives — with me included — there's a vibe of that moment. When everybody's here it's got a character. That's what I loved about Indigo [Ranch] so much, 'cause you were just stuck up there [in Malibu], and it created a sense of vibe. That vibe can't help but get thrown onto the format you record on.
A bunch of your albums were done at Indigo Ranch.
I saw that Nick Cave, Neil Diamond, Neil Young, Olivia Newton-John, The Go-Go's and all these things that I liked the sounds of were recorded up there. It had the deep '70s vibe. My history is just trying to recreate that feeling that I got as a kid, running around in the mud with those people's music flying through the air. That history's basically conjuring up old school vibes inside myself. My favorite thing up there was the vocal sound. I'm still missing one piece of gear that I need to get.
Perhaps you could compare a record made here at your place to The Cure's record, made over a very long period and recorded at Olympic Studios in London.
The Cure had all kinds of people outside of me and the band — a tech, studio manager, the engineer that I had, the people that worked at the studio...
I looked at the credits...
It was ridiculous. The second engineers that we went through — there were so many people. I feel really clear about what I'm doing — it was still clear there, but chaotic. This here is simple — it's just me and the band.
What about taking on the role of engineer? You have worked side by side with an engineer for most projects. What role does the assistant play in this project?
I just basically didn't know how to plug things in, 'cause I never did it. I was too prima donna, busy working with the band or busy being a band member rather than a techie guy. I think it hurts the record in a way and makes it better in another way. I could see it taking longer to make up for that hurt through having to get rest. Being in front of those speakers and that screen is brutal, and it's not what I would ever normally have done before — ever. I stayed away from it and I would laugh at people doing it. I thought it was funny because they looked so burnt. It would be funny because we all love what we do.
I've seen that burn before, and yours is extreme.
Yeah. The burn that I would have — if it wasn't [from operating] the computer, as just producer — would be emotional.
In previous projects have you been right on the boards, or have you taken a back seat to the engineer?
If I work with an engineer, I'm super hands-on, but I'd step away to get clarity while someone else works on it. For your record I'm engineering it, but I feel I'm doing exactly what I did before, except I'm looking at a screen.
