What was the first music that captivated you?
When I first got into music, it was all about T. Rex, The Sweet, Gary Glitter, Mud, and all those poppy, glam bands.
I know you loved punk rock, but when you finally started working in a studio it was all about the LinnDrum.
Right, the '80s. Growing up on The Clash was definitely an invaluable lesson on what is important — and that is the performance and the song, rather than the sonic quality. That's obviously not an excuse to shirk on the recording, but punk made me realize what is key to it all. The song is king; everything else goes into second place very quickly. The '80s was a whole different time. What I liked about it was that there was a simple, definite, supply and demand curve for young people to get jobs in the studio. It was an apprenticeship, as opposed to, "Give us $60,000 and we'll educate you. You're probably not even right for the job anyway, but we'll take your money." You now have thousands of kids who end up doing nothing but being a runner, and then they get disheartened, run out of money, and give up. When I started there was some fairness in the sense of, "Hey, we need a new guy to clean up and make the tea." And you could get a studio job. I got that call.
Had you gone around to studios looking for work?
I'd written to a lot, and I'd actually visited Utopia Studios, which was run by a record producer called Phil Wainman. Phil had produced The Sweet and the Bay City Rollers. Not only did he have gold discs on his wall, but he also made shitloads of money, which was a bonus. It was the perfect example of those different times, and I was in love with it. I was happy to stay on sessions until two in the morning. Many didn't have the bug and left, but I thought being an assistant was fantastic.
You started pretty young?
I was 18 or 19. I often think about that when I look back now, about how I basically gave up on all the fun stuff you can get up to as a kid. It wasn't until I came to America and had a little bit of success that I thought, "Hang on a minute. I can have a good time now!" I tried to make up for lost ground. I did, unfortunately; maybe too much, in some ways. The '80s were a wonderful time to get a job in the studio. Training was totally hands on. Someone would show you how things worked, and then you'd have to just get on with it. The thing that recording schools teach, that I never really learnt, is the knowledge of the electronics, of the signal path, and the technical side of things. I'm always a little bit at a loss for words when people start getting too technical with me. I was definitely from a school where people say, "That's a UREI 1176; they are great for vocals." I'd plug it in, watch people use it, listen to how it sounded, and then I'd figure it out. That was how we learned. You weren't sat down and taught about nanowebers per square meter. There was a great group of producers coming in to record, like Richard James Burgess who was recording Spandau Ballet, or John Leckie mixing Simple Minds. I got to watch them and see how a session worked. It was great.
What was your job initially?
Make the tea and clean up. The first day I came to the studio dressed totally inappropriately. As it was an important studio, and this was a big job, I thought I had to look smart so I had a nice shirt and jacket on. I walked in and everybody's hanging out in jeans and T-shirts. They said, "Go into the studio. There's a lot of mess. Tidy it all up, and ask them if they want drinks." So I walked into Studio A at Utopia, and the first artist I saw and asked if he'd like something to drink was Stevie Wonder. Now that's a pretty fucking amazing way to begin a job as a tea boy! What a great guy he was too. Being a tape op was something that I really enjoyed. You don't have all the worry of the world on your shoulders like you do if you're the engineer. As a tape op, you're making sure that everything runs smoothly. You've got to try and think ahead. In those days there was a strong studio etiquette of silence from the assistants. They don't need the assistant piping up with his own ideas. It took me a while to get that right! I tended to speak up too often; I noticed very quickly that if I wanted to keep my job, I should keep my mouth shut. I had a very funny experience during one of the first sessions I was on. Do you remember spot erasing on a multitrack?
Oh, yeah.
I had made the tea and crept into the back of the control room. It was a fast-moving session, as it was a jingle session; it was four hours and very union-controlled. The toms recorded on tape were very noisy, and the engineer wanted to clean them up. So he went through, found the front of the tom hit, white china marked it, went to the end of the fill and cymbal crash, white china lined it, next one... and then spot erased using the marker cues. When we went to listen back, he'd erased between the wrong white lines. What we ended up with was perfectly edited spill, and no toms at all! The drummer had already packed his stuff away. The engineer turned to me and said, "Get him back!" But he was gone. I tried to offer help. I said, "Oh, it's all right. You can just add the toms later; hit them separately." I really should have said nothing. He ran straight up to Phil Wainman, my boss, and said, "This kid's gotta go. He can't keep his mouth shut." Phil was cool and said, "Oh, come on. It's his first or second day. Give him a break."
That's how you learn.
It was hairy. Running the tape machine and trying to be one step ahead was great fun. You had to be fast with your drop-ins. I used to run the tape machine for Rod Temperton when he was in producing. Now that's a stressful job, dropping in vocals for the man that had just written "Thriller" for Michael Jackson.
When did you move up to a production role?
I was pretty lucky. I made that jump from assisting to producing really fast. In our studio they had four staff engineers; if one of them couldn't make a session, and they thought you were ready for the gig, they'd ask if you could handle it. "There's a band coming into Studio B. Are you okay? Will you manage it?" So you had to go for it. Pete Smith worked at our studio. He was engineering in the demo room with Sting, doing the demos for the Synchronicity album. Pete rang up one day and said, "My kitchen is flooded, and I'm waiting for the guys to come. Can somebody stand in for me?" There was a very competitive element between us all at that time as well. I said, "I'll do it." They said, "Are you sure you can manage?" I said, "Yeah, I can do it." So I did a demo with Sting. That was an amazing experience.
Sting knew what he wanted to do.
Absolutely, which always makes your job that much simpler. Many times I was also an assistant engineer for Colin Thurston. He had been the engineer on David Bowie's "Heroes," and he also produced early Howard Jones, Classix Nouveaux [La Vérité], and Duran Duran's Rio. At the time he was producing Kajagoogoo with Duran's keyboard player, Nick Rhodes. They had recorded "Too Shy," and I was the assistant on that album [White Feathers]. Colin and Nick were at that point in their lives and careers where they didn't want to be stuck in the studio all night — they had fancy dinners and fun things to do. When they realized I was capable, and it got to about 8 p.m. each evening, they'd say, "Carry on." So I would step into the engineering gig.
You'd do overdubs?
I'd do loads of guitars and overdubs; then Colin would listen and check everything in the morning. When it came to the band's B-sides, Colin and Nick didn't want to record those at all. Why would they want to do the B-sides? They said, "Just get Tim to do it." I asked if I could get a copy of the songs. I'll always remember getting the demos of these B-sides, listening to them at home and writing notes of some ideas that I thought we could try out. We did the B-sides, and they liked some of my ideas. At the end of the session I plucked up the courage and said, "Do you think it would be fair to give me co-production? Because I feel like I've contributed quite a lot to the songs." They said, "Sure. That seems absolutely fair." So I got a co-production on the B-sides. The label really liked them, and they put the tracks on the album. So I went from being the assistant on the album, to co-producing two songs; and I got my first gold record. That was my first big break.
Did you get any points on it?
No. There were ironclad forms to sign saying that I wouldn't come after royalties. But that wasn't important. Sometimes to get involved in the right gig, you have to compromise other things. You have to be forward thinking.
I've been there.
Sadly that's happened more than once.
Did you start taking on sessions as a producer?
Yes. I started to produce; being a mixing engineer was never an option. At that time, as you know, the role of a separate mixer didn't actually exist.
Not in the way that we saw it later.
As a producer you basically did the whole thing: arrange, rehearse, record, and mix. It was your vision, and there wouldn't even be any dream of bringing someone else in to finish up your vision. That is unless there was a screw-up, or you didn't do a very good job. I stayed as a house engineer at Utopia for a while. Here's something that never happens these days: "Oh, can you do the session that's coming into the remix room? It's a new band that Terry Brown's produced, and they're called Cutting Crew. They want you to mix a few songs." So I just went in and mixed "(I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight." It became a number one song, and I was still employed as the house studio engineer. I got a great credit, but it's also an example of how studios were held in such high esteem. In those days you could actually book your artists straight into a studio like Utopia, and be confident to just use the house engineers. I started to build up a clientele of people who enjoyed working with me. After the Kajagoogoo bit of luck, their singer, Limahl [Christopher Hamill], left the band. He said, "I want you to do my solo album." That was one of my first full album productions. I co-produced it with Dave Harris, who was in a band called Fashion (an '80s electronic rock band). Originally we were sort of a team, and we'd work together on projects. I also used to engineer for a German producer called Zeus B. Held, and at one point we did an album with Dead or Alive. That was a blast. The guitarist in Dead Or Alive was Wayne Hussey. I became friends with him, and when he formed his new band, The Mission, he asked me to produce his record. Then I got into that whole indie guitar thing doing The Mission UK, The Mighty Lemon Drops, The House of Love, James, Gene Loves Jezebel, and Catherine Wheel.
The House of Love sounded great.
I did "Shine On," their big hit single, and about two or three other singles. They were a great band. I started to do a lot of work for Phonogram Records around that time; Big Country, Texas, Tears for Fears, and many of the other bands that were signed to that label. I think of my career as being in two halves. The first part was very much in the old school of decent budgets and big studios with fancy gear. I never owned a piece of gear for the first 20 years of my career.
You didn't have to.
No. If something went wrong, I wouldn't know how to fix it either. "Get a tech in here, please! Downtime. Mark it in the book that we've stopped working." This morning I was trying to work on something, and I couldn't get the Pro Tools session to open properly. I wanted to shout, "Where's the tech?" But there's nobody here now. It's just me.
We have to build up these different skill sets.
Totally. It wasn't your responsibility to do that sort of thing in those days,. My job was to be able to work an SSL, or a Neve, as well as the surrounding gear. That was only possible for a certain group of people: the engineers and producers, at that time. You couldn't buy an SSL, have it at home, and learn on it like you can with gear now. Being part of a select few that could run a session definitely kept up your chances of getting work.
I always thought of gear as something that you buy out of necessity. You wouldn't have bought your equipment, unless you needed it to set up the place like you have now.
No. During the '80s the concept of an outside engineer came into play. It was pretty rare, as people would generally book in to work with the studio engineers. At Utopia, we had people like Andy Jackson, who'd worked on [Pink Floyd's] The Wall, Peter Walsh, who'd done all the Simple Minds' albums, and we had John Mackswith — our chief engineer. He'd started in the '60s and had recorded the Dave Clark Five hits. You didn't need to bring in your own engineer. Learning from someone who's made records since the '60s was amazing, because the technology had grown around him. You definitely had to be a better engineer in the "good old days." Mistakes were almost impossible to correct; you had to record a snare properly, no adding samples later. I try not to look back and romanticize too much though; you've got to move on.
You had a lucky early break producing and engineering Robert Plant's Now and Zen album.
Planty lives in Austin now. Out of all the people I've worked with, he's one that still takes the time to call and keep in touch, even though I haven't worked with him in 20 years. He's such a great bloke that he'll call me up and say, "Hey, I'm playing a show. Do you want to come down?" When first he came to Austin, he picked up some cakes, came over to the house, and we sat here having afternoon tea and chatting. Most people at that level don't do that. They forget about the people they've worked with quite quickly. When I worked with Robert I was about 22 years old. He said, "I want to work with some kid who has worked with sequencers and stuff like that." That was me. I ended up getting the phone call, but I really wasn't up to speed with recording a full band yet. Most of my hours in the studio had revolved around a band coming in; and the first thing that they'd record was the LinnDrum or a [Roland TR-]808. I had recorded real drums, but not often. After my phone call with Robert, who seemed super-nice, the next thing I knew I was faced with this drummer who I'd never heard of named Richie Hayward. I was into Adam & the Ants, The Damned, the Sex Pistols, and The Clash. I didn't know about legends like this. I was living in England, and Little Feat wasn't the sort of band you'd hear too often.
You wouldn't hear them on the radio here much either!
So I was feeling overwhelmed on our first day. I think the studio had a Harrison console, which I also didn't really have a clue how to use.
Where were those sessions?
It was at Marcus Recording Studios, which was a great studio near Notting Hill.
You don't see that many Harrison consoles in the UK.
No. Anyway, I was having problems with the headphones because they all wanted different headphone balances. As you can imagine, I was absolutely freaking out. Robert started complaining that the studio wasn't working well. The owners came straight back and said, "No, the studio's fine. It's him! That young kid doesn't really know what he's doing." Luckily Robert liked me enough to say, "We'll work it out," and he didn't fire me. When we were setting up the drum sounds, he'd be picking off reference points from Led Zeppelin albums to help me get the sound where he wanted it: whether it would be "When the Levee Breaks," or whatever. I was like, "Oh yeah, I think I've heard that one." He actually said to me in the end, "What Led Zeppelin albums do you actually own, Tim?" I said, "I haven't got any, to be honest." He thought that was great because here's somebody who is coming into the project fresh, with no preconceived ideas. So he said, "What bands do you like?" I mentioned The Damned, and he said he loved the drum sound on "New Rose." He came into the studio the next day with a big pile of albums under his arm and said, "Check my old band out. See if you like them." That was my introduction to Led Zeppelin. Now I feel totally foolish, of course, but that's just the way it turned out. You discover things at different points, and I was fortunate enough to discover Led Zeppelin after working with Robert Plant.
You might be one of the few people who could say that!
When I was producing Now and Zen, the A&R guy at the US label decided he wanted a Tom Lord-Alge remix for the single. The manager, Bill [Curbishley], came to me and said, "What's this about a remix for a single? Have you not mixed this song already?" I said, "Yeah, but they want to use Tom Lord-Alge. He's an amazing American mixer." He said, "Why can't you just do it?" I said, "Well, I can. The mix I have done was for the album. I haven't really tried to mix it as a single." He said, "Just do it." So I mixed it the next Sunday. Bill sent it to the US label saying, "Here is Tom Lord-Alge's remix." And they loved it, of course.
Oh my god.
They used it. I'm actually credited as Tim Lord-Palmer. I've always wanted to thank Tom for that one time, but I've never met him. These days I have to understand the competitive element of our business. I'll do a mix and try to beat the competition. I'm up for the challenge every time. What have you got to lose?
How did mixing the Mother Love Bone debut, Apple, come about?
I used to go to L.A. with my manager and meet the labels. We got to know Michael Goldstone, who was their A&R guy. He thought I'd be great to do it. The guys in Mother Love Bone really liked the records that I'd made — The Mighty Lemon Drops, The Mission, and all those sorts of things — so it came from that.
And since Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament started a new band after singer Andrew Wood's passing, that led to you mixing Pearl Jam's debut, Ten?
Yeah, Ten was mixed at Ridge Farm Studios. It was a beautiful farmhouse with a little control room and a Neve. There was a recording area, and the whole band could stay in the house. It was like the old '70s "get your head together in the country" vibe. But I think it started to get to the band after a while. It was pretty remote.
How long did it take to mix that record?
About 11 days. It was one of those classic examples of a no pressure situation, because no one expected too much from that album at the time. We all wanted to make the best record we could, but we didn't have people looking over our shoulders. I imagine that was not the case for the second and third albums. It was a very instinctive, easy process. Brendan [O'Brien] remixed Ten about five years ago. On reflection the band has said, "Oh, the album was not the way we wanted it to be. It was too reverb-y." If you look at the timeline, here I am living in England, just back from L.A. where the "glam metal" scene was about to die. I
was not aware of the underground Seattle scene. Radio was all about big sounding records. I'd mixed the Mother Love Bone album before, so the band was clear about how I worked. I wasn't really thinking of a dry, dead sound, like Nirvana, for the album — Nevermind hadn't come out yet. So I mixed the way I always did at the time. You can hear it on the record. One minute everything's dry, and then there's big reverbs on the drums, delays, and backwards reverbs — all trying to make things as exciting as possible, and make the song build from top to bottom. I wasn't looking over my own shoulder, thinking that I shouldn't be doing this. The band came in every morning, and of course they had every opportunity to say, "Can we back off the reverbs here and there? That's not what our band's sound is about." I certainly wouldn't have said, "No, this is the way it's going to be." I would have probably said, "Okay, let's try it." Truth is, at the time, they were a new, young, alternative band out of Seattle; and their record was going to sound pretty great on the radio. They were happy with that.
It fits right into radio.
Yes, it didn't harm them. It gave them the opportunity to continue their path. Even in the band's sound there were elements of new and old. I always felt that Mike [McCready]'s guitar style was pretty traditional rock. So you've got a pretty big sounding record, and you've also got an element of classic rock; but yet they're an alternative, new band. I think this all helped the US market to embrace the band. It's all very well, looking back and saying, "Oh, I wish that we'd done this." But you can't go back to your high school photograph and Photoshop your haircut. By the time that they went to do the remixed version with Brendan O'Brien — which is a lot more raw and dry (and that's cool) — music styles had changed again. Everything goes around in circles. I remember after Nirvana suddenly every album you mixed was about, "No silly delays. No ambient stuff. No big reverb on the drums." It was all about the dry. Well, we went through that, and we have come out of it again. Now bands will come to me and say, "Can you turn the delays up a bit? Can we have a bit more reverb on the snares?" We are now back to where we were in the late '80s. Pearl Jam left it too long to do that remix. But they're good guys; I have a lot of respect for their long career.
It's great to hear that.
