Bill Schnee

Producer/engineer Bill Schnee recorded "Aja," produced Pablo Cruise and so much more!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is a producer engineer, Billie Bill. What's
keeping you busy these days?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Well, basically the same old thing, maybe not quite in
the same way and certainly not quite as much, but
you know, especially mixing, which is my favorite aspect of engineering.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
So what kind of stuff you're mixing these days?

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Well, I've just done the singles for Steve Percaro from Toto,
which he's got with a record company. They seem to
be promoting it pretty well, whatever that means on social
media at least. It's definitely not the same old game.
But and there's a new band, I'll call it a band.
It's with a guy out of Chicago named Joe Vanna

(00:59):
and he's got quite a few Well Michael o'martian, you know,
the great producer, he and I started together in nineteen
sixty seven or eight. He's in the band. And I
love that they're calling it a band, considering no two
people ever played in the same room at the same time.
But I'm getting ready to start that mixing that and

(01:21):
they've sent me the rough mixes and it's really good.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
So what's the appeal of mixing for you.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Just you know, it's what started it off. I suppose
once I decided to engineer the creative aspect of putting
the elements together and making it come out of a
couple of speakers so that it moves me, which hopefully
will move the listeners.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Now, are you still working out of your own studio?
You're working out of your home.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Well, if you can't beat them, you join them. And
you know, when I had a big studio in Los
Angeles for thirty five years, and when people started building
studios in La not a lot of them. This is
back when it cost you know, at least one hundred
and fifty two hundred thousand to build a minimal studio.
You know, before the digital revolution, there was all the

(02:18):
studios got together to get those outlawed because they were
messing with whatever they are so so and I remember
at the time thinking, you know, I know it's in
the house, but I kind of like getting up in
the morning, going to work at the studio and then
coming home at night and going to bed. Now, I

(02:41):
kind of like getting up at six thirty and mixing
in my underwear.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
So what'd you do with your studio that you owned.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
I basically I sold it basically to the studio next door.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
And all the equipment in there.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
What happened to that. I took it with me and
I've been parsing it off, so to speak. I've been
selling it off as I don't need it anymore. But
there was a lot of very ESO custom equipment. It
was a very unique studio in that regard, including the
console that we built from scratch and those we are

(03:21):
now have a gentleman here that has a company. He
builds pre amps and microphones and so on, and he's
actually taking my pre amps two at a time and
putting him in a package and we're repurposing those that
way and all of the I had a huge collection
of vintage microphones and I've been selling those off as well.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Okay, so what do you actually have in your house
and how much of that is from your old studio.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
What I have in the house. So when digital came out,
I absolutely hated it. I didn't think sixteen forty four
to one on the technical side, I didn't think that
sounded very good, and I still don't. But I've done
everything I can over the year. Of course, we've gotten better.
We've learned a lot about filtering and sampling rates and

(04:11):
all different things, so that we're in much better shape
with digital than we were in the early eighties. But
I did have in my studio a very technical homemade
so to speak, from a guy named Josh Flori at
JCF Audio. So what I have now is I come
out of pro tools twenty four wide, and those go

(04:37):
into sixteen custom made by Josh, sixteen transistor DTA a's
and eight tube DTA a's and then that gets summed
in a very simple analog summer with no amplifiers and
goes into a patch pay where I can put any
one of one, two, three, four, five, seven, seven analogue compressors.

(05:02):
So I keep as much at the point between the tube,
especially the tube DTA a and and the tube compressors.
I keep as much of the old school as I can.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
Okay, why are some transistors and why are some tubes
in the d DA A.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
I learned early on in my career that there's a
special there's a special bond between tubes and transducers, either
microphones or speakers and in and uh so when it
came to the digital life, we live in now, I

(05:44):
thought that having a tube DTA A would give me
something and which it really does. It's a you know,
it's a it's a much warmer, richer even though the
frequency response is essentially the same as the transistor ones,
it's a warmer, richer sound. So that works great on
anything acoustic, anything you know, from a piano to voices

(06:07):
and even electric bass, which tubes do a nice thing
on base. So that's the basic reason.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
So if you have tubes and transistors, when would you
use transistors.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Well, the transistors in general, transistors are faster, meaning they
you know, the sound is quicker. They don't. Tubes react
a little slower. Tubes are a little rich, definitely a
little richer, but the transistors are definitely faster. And so
in fact, in fact, I'll remember I did a short

(06:42):
stint at CBS as an engineer, and I noticed that
the old school engineers that were all fifteen years younger
than I am. Now, all the old school engineers were
using that a tube mic called the U sixty seven,
and young three young guys were using the eighty seven.
The sixty seven was two and the eighty seven was

(07:03):
the new transistor one. And I asked the older engineers,
why do you guys use that. He said, well, Neiman
came over from Germany with the eighty seven. They were
so excited for us to try it, and they left
it with us, and then they asked for a report
a month later, and we told them. They called us
and we told them, you know, we just liked the

(07:23):
sound of the sixty seven better, and they said, what
do you mean. He said, well, it's just kind of
the eighty seven was kind of harsh. And they said, no, no,
you don't understand. Transistors are very very fast. You're hearing
for the first time what's really on the floor. And
whereas they were correct that the transistors were faster, I
don't know that anything. Do you really hear what's on

(07:45):
the floor. It's really a bat matter of whatever sounds,
you know, whatever's euphonic to the guy doing the work.
And so they said, okay, but we're going to continue
to use the old one because we just think it
sounds better.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
Okay, you wrote a book, Chairman of the Board, Recording
the Soundtrack of a Generation. You go in that book
about using different mics for different situations, some ribbon something.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Wow, I didn't know you were going to be so
tech today. Fun. Well, yeah, there's you know, within the
basic let's say put it down to three basic types
of microphones condenser, dynamic, and ribbon and not. You know,
it's a matter I think as you learn, as an

(08:34):
engineer learns what the palette can do, the different colors
that different microphones can do, you try things out, maybe
what you've seen someone or maybe you try it yourself.
I did a lot of experimenting my early years myself.
And nothing's worse than trying something and you can't and
you're in the middle of a session now and you
can't change it. But oh that's not as good as

(08:57):
what I used last week at all. But you don't
make that mistake again anyway. Within each of the those types,
you know, there's obviously a lot of different models of
each of those types, and you just you know, have
to have to figure what works. There's you know, dynamics
will take level you can put them in, you know,
in high level situations and they won't crumble. Condensers, some

(09:20):
of them, a lot of them, almost most of them
can't take the same kind of level, but they have
a more extended frequency response, you hear a wider sound
from a frequency standpoint. Ribbons are great usually most of
them are good with level also, and they have a
unique kind of sound that's tough to describe between those

(09:41):
other two. You just have to experience, I mean, hear
it to know it.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
So, before you started selling microphones, how many did you own?

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Oh? I don't even know. I couldn't tell you. I mean,
if there's any tech people listening, I had nine two,
fifty one, five and forty nine six and fifties eight, eight,
fifty four's, ten fifty six's, seven fifty threes in that

(10:14):
Noman old Noyman range, the fifty range. I am a
huge fan of them, so it was a pretty big collection.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Now, another thing you mentioned in your book is you know,
I read Mike Campbell's book and he's talking about working
with Jimmy Ivan and Shelley Yakis taking a week to
get drum sounds. You said that a you worked faster,
you got drum sounds faster. What was your style different

(10:45):
in how did you make different from the people who
were spending so much time or was it just a
matter of they were on their own journey.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Well, I came up. The first studio I got a
job in was a very not a very good studio.
It had egg cartons on the wall for sound absorption.
It had one wall between the studio and the control room,
one piece of glass, one door, and it was just stereo.

(11:14):
It was only you only had two condenser i'll call
them professional microphones. And the great news about that was
you I got to learn mixing immediately. It wasn't a
matter of starting out like most guys you know in
the last sixty years have with fifty five years anyway,

(11:34):
I have with the multi channel you know, tape recorder,
and then taking as much time as you want to mix.
So when everything was two track, they're playing, you're mixing,
and the mix is done. And so what was the question,
I'm off it. The question is Viking drums? Oh so

(11:58):
one when I started on my own with the experimentation,
I had met Glenn Johns who has a very unique
micing for drums with basically three mics, one on the kick,
one overhead directly overhead, and one off to the side
equal distant from the overhead to the snare, so that

(12:20):
when you put them left and right the snare is
in the center, and I loved the size that he
would get, but I didn't like the sound of the
snare without a snare mic. So I started somewhere in there,
and I was people that trained me were all the
old school people that you know it starts, you know,

(12:41):
because when everything was stereo, there wasn't all the equipment
and all the equalizers. You know, it was basically a
professional console had just tone controls, a top end boost
or cut, and a blow end ten thousand cycle, one
hundred cycle. So the idea was you picked the microphone
for the sound. You learned about mike placement because that

(13:02):
can change the sound dramatically. You put, if you don't
like the sound, you change the position of the mic,
or you change the mic or both. And that, you know,
that's what you had to you had to rely on
to get the sound that you wanted. So then came
Elton John and I loved him as an artist, and

(13:24):
there was no question when I heard the early drum
sounds that were done in a studio called Trident by
some very good engineers that they were using a lot
of EQ a lot of microphones. There was a mic
on every drum and a lot of equalization. You could
hear it. My joke at the time was the snare
sound on some of those records was it wasn't the

(13:46):
sound of a stick hitting a snare, it was the
sound of a stick hitting an equalizer. Because that's what
I heard. That's what I heard first, was that equalization.
But there was something about all that I really liked,
and so to incorporate that into what I was doing
and came up with my own version of it. As

(14:06):
to the speed that you're talking about some people, yeah,
because I came up in an era where you know,
everything was live or even went to four track mostly live.
You know, you had to move fast. Now obviously things
changed and you had a lot more multi track, and

(14:27):
you had bigger budget, big budgets than you could take
more time. But I can't do it. I get bored
very easily. I like my creativity works when I'm moving fast.
I move fast and everything, and so I wanted to
to I couldn't. Let's put it this way, I couldn't
do what some of these people do, spending you know,

(14:48):
all kinds of time on it. I mean I trained
a guy initially named Jack Puig who's gone on to
have a big career of his own, and he got
some of the best drums in my studio that anyone did.
But it was we're talking a day making a high hat,
getting a high hat sound. I couldn't do that to myself,

(15:09):
let alone to the drummer, and it was it was
a band, a real band, and so you know, they
didn't mind so much. But you know, I grew up
working with studio musicians, and you know they got You've
got minutes to get the drum sound and let's get going.

Speaker 1 (15:33):
Okay, it's your career and all these things about Mike Polaceman,
has it been trial and error? Or to what degree
have you had people who've instructed you mentor types?

Speaker 2 (15:50):
Basically, well, the initial I'll give you a brief history
of me. So I my parents moved to southern California
senior year of high school, and I was a very
shy person, so I didn't make many friends, but I
did make it with a couple of guys that were
starting a band, and I played different instruments, but I said,

(16:11):
how about an organ? The English Movement was out and
several bands had used an organ, and so we started
our band, and funny enough, we thought we wrote some
pretty good songs and we made some demos and one
of the kid's mothers knew someone who knew someone that
was in the business. That guy was Gary Usher. He

(16:33):
was friends with the Wilson family, the Beach Boy family,
and actually wanted to be in the Beach Boys, but
didn't make it, but he did write two of the
Beach Boys big hits in My Room in four oh nine.
He wrote with Brian and he had a deal now
with Decca Records, and so we got a meeting with him,
went in and he heard I mean, we sent him

(16:54):
the tape and he liked it. So he said, come
in for a meeting and he said he really liked it,
and he thought one of the songs was a hit,
and he signed us. Uh. We recorded the initials recordings
at Capitol Studio B, and he brought in a guitarist
to augment the band. Our guitar player wasn't that good, uh,
and that his name was Richie Podler, and he was

(17:17):
an outstanding musician. He just he just passed away recently.
He was an outstanding musician and as it turns out,
a phenomenal producer. And engineer as well, and I we
got dropped. You know, in those days, it was called
a singles deal. They signed us for four singles we've made.

(17:38):
We did four songs and they put him out and
if anything hit, you ran in and cut six more
and then you had an album. So there was no
La Teens album. And I always chuckle at that that
Decker Records, who passed on the Beatles, signed the l
A Teams. And it's not so much that, not so
much that they signed the l A Teams, but what

(18:00):
kind of longevity were they were they hoping for? You know,
I was six seventeen years old. What did I know
about longevity? But anyway, so when we got dropped, I
went over to Richie Podler's studio and told him the
sad news, and he said, oh, you guys were really good. Here.
I've got a good connection. I can get you a

(18:20):
record deal. On my word, go see this guy Mike Curb.
He's going to go places. And indeed, Mike Curb has
gone to incredible places. But he signed us to our
second recording contract and we went in to work with Richie. Now,
when we worked with Gary Usher at Capitol and actually

(18:42):
Western and two of the best studios in LA still
to this day, if Capitol will reopen. You know, they
were fancy at the time, albeit three track, but that's
all there was nineteen sixty five. And now we went

(19:02):
into Richie's studio, which was much funkier, a little homemade
console and whatnot, and you know, not the cleanest place.
But I came in for the first playback. We went
out and did a made a track, came in for
the first playback, and I remember like it was yesterday,
looking up at the speakers while while a two track

(19:24):
basic track was playing, and I heard, and maybe more importantly,
felt something in what I was hearing out of the
band that I had never heard or felt at those
other great studios, and I knew it had to be
what Richie was doing. And when the song was over,
I literally pointed at all the equipment and said, can
you teach me how to do this? And he said, no,

(19:46):
I'm teaching this guy, Bill Cooper, go out and do
another take. We got to get a better take. But
that was the moment that sealed in my mind what
I would do, as it turns out, once I got
away from my father. But you can relate to this.
My father was a Jewish doctor, so you know what
that means. And I told him, no, Dad, I'm not

(20:07):
going to be a doctor. Well, then a lawyer, I
don't know. In fact, In fact, I did start law
school at Loyola on the part time program when I
was working for Richie. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
But I couldn't. I got the grades and the second
semester started and they were all season of B. I'd

(20:28):
been faking it because I didn't have time to do
the reading, go to class and do sessions. Anyway, after
that first aha moment where I want, I want to
know how to do that, because that was like magic
to make the band sound and feel something so different
than what I'd heard in those other great studios. So
I went off to that studio I described earlier with
the egg cartons on the wall and got my start

(20:50):
learning there and where my left brain and right brain
met in the middle. Engineering came very very quickly. I
was very fortunate to meet someone who was an engineer
that was very patient and heard what I was recording
in that studio and thought that I had some real talent.

(21:11):
And he was working in another studio, and I was
I was back in college at this point, and I
went over every night after school and would ask him,
just nail him with question after question after question until
he couldn't take it anymore, and he would say, all right, enough,
go ahead, go home, I'll see you tomorrow. But engineering

(21:33):
came very quickly, and so had we had upgraded that
Mickey Mouse studio a bit. Still wasn't what I would
call really professional, but it was closer, and I started
doing some work that there was an engineer that worked

(21:53):
for Richie Podler that was quitting the business. He was
going to move back to Florida. And we're tug boats.
I don't know what that has to do with engineering,
but anyway, I said, do you think Richie and This
would hire me? And he said, well he should because
he'd heard all of what I was doing. And I said, well,
let's bug him. And so for two months. I don't

(22:14):
know how many times Tommy, the other engineer ever bugged him,
but I bugged him like crazy for two solid months,
and finally he wouldn't answer my calls a lot of
the time because he knew why I was calling. I
went over to corner him one day, and I said,
you know, just give me a shot. That's all I'm
asking for. See, I'm telling you now, I don't blame

(22:35):
him because it only been like two and a half
years since I had that aha moment where I didn't
I barely knew what an equalizer from a limiter was.
So here I am by now that studio American Recording
was the hottest rock studio in Los Angeles. His biggest
client was a guy named Gabriel Meckler who produced Three
dog Nights first album and Steppenwolf's first album. And so

(23:01):
Richie was really kicking it. But I begged him to
give me a shot, and finally he said, all right,
there's a demo session tomorrow morning. Come in and do that.
Tell me what you know, let's see what you can do.
So I went in. The demo sessions were like for publishers,
where songwriter would come in, record four tracks, four new songs,
put vocals on him, quick mixes, and go out the door.

(23:22):
And then they would go make acetate little one off
records that they would send to different artists or record
companies to try to get their songs placed. So they
were just demos, and he felt comfortable, comfortable leaving me
with that. So I did that for screen Gems Lester
Sills Company and I and I called him that you

(23:46):
know that afternoon. I said, well, they said, well, they
said you were great. I said, okay, what now? He said, well,
tomorrow morning there's a different company, come in and do
their same thing. Okay. So I went and did that,
called him the afternoon, same thing. Okay. Now he said,
all right, come tomorrow night and record three dog night. Okay,
what now? What sense that makes? I have no idea.

(24:08):
This was his biggest client and he throws this kid in.
I don't get it. Scared to death. I went in
the next night. Both the producer and the band were
really nice, sweet to me, and I cut a track
with him and called Richie the next day and I said,
what did Gabriel say? He said, you were great? Okay,
what now? He said, come tonight, do it again. Okay.

(24:31):
I went in and cut a second track next morning,
same thing, all right. Third night, I'm in with the
band and the guitar player, Mike alsoon the guitar player
wanted a guitar effect, and I'm sure that from the
first album that Richie engineered that he knew that Richie
could do anything with the guitar and so, and I'm

(24:51):
being a keyboard player. I didn't know how to get
any of those effects. So I had to call Richie
and he came down and finished the session. That was
the end of me tracking on that album. But I
did do overdubs, and most importantly, I got in that
room every chance I could to watch Richie because he
really was an unbelievably brilliant engineer, and that's what pushed

(25:12):
me off.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Let's go back a chapter. You get involved with Bike Kurb.
Anybody who's ever involved with Bike Kerb could never get
out of his tentacles. Whereas you say, hey, a couple
of sides and that was it. There are people might go,
you know, you still owe me two more albums this
and that. What was your experience with bike CERB. Was

(25:34):
it as clean as it what you said just now
and in the book?

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Yeah, basically it was. It was because you know what
happened was Richie started. We cut one track, one track
that day that I had my AHA moment, and then Richie,
you know, I said, Okay, when do we come back?
He said, it'll be a few days. I kept calling.
Finally he said, Mike and I are on the outside.

(25:59):
Don't think I'm going to be able to work with you.
And so I went to Mike Curb to his office,
which at that time was down on Sunset. It was
Sidewalk Productions Curb Sidewalk. Yeah, and the office consisted of
his sister Carol. That was it. And I said, well
what do we do now? And we're sitting there in

(26:20):
the office and I remember and what a cheeky little
kid I was, because you know, he started making a
suggestion of some kind. I said, maybe I could produce us,
and he said we could try that. He had his
own studio, so he said, yeah, go ahead and try it. Meanwhile,
when we got dropped from Decca, our drummer, our drummer's

(26:41):
father made him quit the band and get a real job,
and so I said, we don't have a drummer, and
he said, well, the engineer in my studio is a
really good drummer. And I said, and he can play
the drums. And engineer, oh, yeah, it's possible. It'll be fine.
And so we went in did that. Cute stories about
that in the book, But the bottom line is everything

(27:07):
fell apart with the band, and and because he had
next to nothing literally invested in us, there were no
there were no tentacles to get wrapped around. So it
was it was basically a short and sweet relationship.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Although you did interact with Mike. Did he know anything
about music? Did you have the sense he was going
to go somewhere? What? How did he come across back then?

Speaker 2 (27:36):
No, I had no idea he knew anything about music.
He didn't talk in musical terms. Uh, now I'm going
by what my meant. My mentor, Richie Podler said the
reason they broke up was Richie was doing all the
work and Mike was getting all the credit slash money,
and Richie demanded that he get credit and or you know,

(28:00):
points for the work he was doing, and Mike refused.
That's Richie's story. I'm sure Mike has a different one.
I will say, however, that in those early years when
I was able to talk Richie, when he allowed me
to start working there, a couple of the producers quote
unquote that I worked with were very much like that.

(28:20):
They found out that I was very musical and I
basically was doing more producing than they were, and they
got all the credit. So there was a bit more
of that back then. As you know, the business was
kind of transforming, because you know, in the fifties and sixties,
the producer most often worked at the record company, and

(28:44):
it was about you know, finding maybe finding songs, and
then getting the arranger and the studio and putting it
all together and there was your record. There were exceptions,
but that was the bulk of what went on back then.
And so as we're transitioning into i'll call it rock
air for lack of anything else, as multi track, and
ultimately engineering would become a lot more part of the

(29:07):
production process than just capturing what was going on live
in the studio. This had this transformation brought in different
kinds of producers, and unfortunately a lot of them were,
as I said, kind of that's what they did. So
I have no first hand experience about Mike in that regard.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
Your father, who wanted you to be a professional, did
he ever ultimately respect what you did.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Put it to you this way. Two years before he died,
I had I had two Grammy nominations and maybe eight
or ten No, No, six or eight gold records, and
he literally sat me down and said, Bill, when are
you going to get a real job. And I looked
him and I looked at him and I said, Dad,

(30:06):
I think I found my job. It's something I love doing.
I think I'm good at it, and I've already had
some success. I really want to do this. No, you
can't trust it as a profession. You know a lot
about that. So he was old school, you know, old
school guy from Austria, and what can I say? He

(30:26):
was self made guy and very bright and from what
I hear, a very good surgeon. He went to NYU
undergrad and then went to France actually because it was
cheaper for med school, came back and opened up his
practice on Long Island. World War two came and government

(30:50):
said we need you, and so they put him at
Ford or to California, where he put something like twenty
six hundred servicemen back to other And when the war
was over, he was he'd had it with medicine. So
he took a couple of classes in business and got
into administrative medicine, managing a clinic or hospital or something.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
And how about your mother? Was she supportive?

Speaker 2 (31:18):
Yeah? She was. Everything Billy does is great, So yeah,
she was very supportive. But you know, The funny thing
about that is only since the book, since the book,
and the people that write me having read the book,
it may sound silly, I don't know of it. I mean,

(31:40):
I figured it out halfway through writing the book. I
just lived my life, you know, and I went from
this project to that project. And I knew I'd worked
with a lot of big people. I knew I had
a lot of awards and all that stuff, but it
didn't coalesce into something that I could actually be proud of.
And about halfway through writing the book, and since writing

(32:01):
the book, the people that write me, some of the
stories I'm told just are amazing to me that the
music pop music, R and B music and whatnot meant
so so, so so much to so many people. And
I'm especially tickled by the professionals. I've got two aerospace
engineers in Florida that I communicate with, the head of

(32:23):
legal for Coca Cola. I communicate with him and he
actually went to Atlanta and had lunch with him once.
But yeah, I always used to joke that when I
tell that about my dad, and I say, if I
ever go to a psychiatrist, I'm sure that's where it

(32:44):
will start. Well, funny enough, I've never thought about it
that way, but I kind of did it in reverse
when all these people started telling me how much what
I did meant to them, because I didn't get that
from my father. So that was cool.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
Okay. Also peeped picture of the music scene in LA
when the La teens are forming. You know, at that
point in Los Angeles there were a lot of independent labels.
There was a lot happening. Was that palpable to everybody
living in the Los Angeles area? Were people music crazy

(33:19):
or it was just something you were into? What was
the scene like?

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Well, you know, as I've learned after becoming professional and
going back and you know, listening to the records back
then with a new light and so on. You know,
we were just we were in a suburb of LA
doing our own little thing, and you know, we had
really we did a Battle of the bands and were
shocked to death. We didn't win, but in Hollywood, amazing

(33:47):
the things you remember, the hurts. But I have to say,
we weren't aware of anything really of what was going on.
We were just were doing our own little thing and
it happened to work out kind of good.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
Okay, you're working for Richie put Alore and you're doing
some sessions. What's the next step after that?

Speaker 2 (34:14):
The next step is Richie took over producing. After that
second Three Dog Night album, he took over producing Three
Dog Night and he actually produced the lion's share of
the hits for them through the seventies into the eighties,
and he took over Steppenwolf and now he was, you know,
a year and a half, two years into it, he's

(34:35):
really popular, and so he's getting all kinds of offers.
And I went to him and I said, Richie, I
got a great idea. Let's close the studio to outside clients.
You know, groups are going to be hitting you up.
They already are you funnel them to me and get
my production career going, and you know, they signed to
your production company. And he loved that idea. He said

(34:55):
that that's great, we'll do it. And so he signed
a band and gave him to me, and I went
in and cut one track with them. They were called
The Realm, and they and then Richie started a See
in those days, I should back up. In those days,

(35:16):
in the studios they were a lot of them were
basically divided to a day client and a night client,
so quite often that's what it would be. You'd have
to reset up every night if you were the night client,
if you had a long booking. So he was starting
a three dog I mean a Steppenwolf album, and he
didn't want to have to tear down, so he said,

(35:38):
you know, you're going to have to take a break
till I get all my tracks done. Well, you know
that one week turned into two weeks, turned into I
don't know how many, and funny enough, his production company
was only paying me when I was in the studio,
so I said, I'm going to have to go independent, Richie,
and he said, fine, go go. So that's when I

(36:00):
went off on my own, and which was frightening for me,
because he his studio, he knew what he was doing,
and I did. I just copied everything he did in
terms of micing and so on. And I tried doing
that when I went into the first studio I went
to and the second, and even though they had brand new,

(36:20):
beautiful consoles and you know, newer speakers and newer this
and newer that, I couldn't get anything close to the
sound that I got at his studio. And that's when
my experimentation started full bore. So I'm I'm humping along.
And so that's by the way. Right before I left

(36:41):
Richie's was when I had started law school to shut
my dad up, and so I'm independent. When when the
second semester starts and I said, you know, I quit
my band. I quit college for two and a half
years to chase my band. What I'm going to do
is quit law school for a year and a half

(37:02):
and see if engineering, producing whatever can support me. So
that's what I was doing the best best I could.
And I did get one one record company. It was
one of my clients that I did all the work
for had managed to get a job at a record
company and he I found a gospel a black gospel group,

(37:26):
and he let me do four sides with him. We
put them out. There was no hits, but we so
here I am and was a little over a year.
It's about time to register for the fall, and I'm thinking,
I'm pretty much thinking I've got to go back and
get the degree. Shut him up. Maybe he's right, Look,

(37:48):
this isn't working. I mean, I'm making a living, but
I don't know. And so I'm mixing one day and
the girl in front buzzes in and by myself, and
she buzzes in on the phone and says, Clive Davis
on one for you, and I'm going b blah blah
blah blah blah whah. I picked up the phone very nervously. Hello,
Hi Bill, Clive Davis, I said Hi. He said, Joel

(38:11):
still tells me that you are a very good musician
and engineer. Oh thank you. He said, what do you
want to do with your life? And I said, well,
I would love to do music, but and I was
starting to say but my dad wants me to and
he said, wait, wait, stop, I went to law school.
You don't need to go to law school if you
want to do music, you know. And I said yeah,

(38:33):
but and basically he took the butt away. He said,
what if I let you? What if I sign you
and let you give you a chance to produce? And
I said, well that works. I'll try that for sure.
And so the first thing, the first thing I did
was actually with Joel again, with me basically doing the

(38:57):
lion's share of the work. And it was a group
called Sweat Hoog and we funny enough, we got lucky,
and the first single was a hit, not big one,
so I think in the high twenties or something, low thirties,
I don't know. And but that that led led the way,
that's what and that's what got the ball rolling higher

(39:20):
and faster.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Okay, you worked with Clive, he did you a solid,
he gave you the gig. But what was your experience
working for Clive to the degree even interacted with.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
Him very very good, And not just because he gave
me that shot, Because I mean all of my dealings
with him throughout the years have all been have all
been good. Did I agree with everything he said or
wanted to do. No, we all have our opinions, but

(39:52):
we're not all, you know, the chairman of the board,
of the head of the company and whatever whatever. And
I so but everything that all of my in those
early years, I learned a lot from him. You know,
he leaned you know, he was seeing what the kid
could do, and it was really great. One funny one
funny story is I think the very first thing he

(40:12):
gave me to do was Boz Skaggs, who I would
later go on to produce Boz Skags. It was his
first album for CBS, and again Glenn Johns had produced it,
and there was a single and you know, in those days,
especially AM radio, We're talking nineteen seventy AM radio was

(40:35):
the playlist had to be. You know, they varied, but
it was like, you know, three minutes and thirty seconds
and blah blah blah. So he said, I need a
radio edit on this song. See what you can come
up with. So I made the edit. He loved it.
And then the next year was when Glenn came to
America to master Who's Next Who album And that's when

(40:58):
I met him at the mastering lab where I'm mastered
and where Glenn mastered, and I was very nervous meeting
him for the first time, and I said, you know,
I'm the guy that did the radio edit on we
were always sweethearts. And he looked at me in his
typical dry voice and said, oh, you're the idiot that
mucked it all up. And then he broke right away
and said, I'm just kidding. It was a good edit.

(41:21):
And of course, now to him, I would have said,
your darn right, it was a good edit. But right
then I went, thank you.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
So how long did you work for CBS and what
did you do there other than boz guys.

Speaker 2 (41:34):
Okay. So from there one Sweat, Hog Hit. So went
to New York to do Blood, Sweat and Tears, the
new Blood album after which is new Blood because David
Clayton Thomas, the great singer in those first couple of albums,
had left the band and they wanted to record near

(41:57):
their houses. So we recorded a studio and at New
York and we cut like five tracks, and then the
plan was we went into the city to record vocals
with the new singer, who I hadn't met, and so
we showed up one night and waited and waited, and
of course no cell phones and everyone's trying to find him,

(42:19):
and he didn't show And the next day they called
me in the hotel and said, well, we got a problem.
We just found out he's an alcoholic and he's on
a binge. So we got to find a new singer.
So okay, So, knowing that that was going to take
a long time, called Clive and said, I don't know

(42:43):
what to do. He said, well, come back, I'll find
something funny enough Steve Tyrell. After they found a new singer,
Steve Tyrell, who many years later I would do it
mix all of his records was took over and finished

(43:03):
that new Blood album. One of the many tie ins
with people from the beginning to the end. That's kind
of neat. So I came back to LA and he said, okay,
White Trash. I said, oh great, you know that'll be great.
I said, who, do I talk to Edgar? And he
said no, actually Edgar has left White Trash, but the singer,

(43:24):
the great singer, Jerry Lacroix, is still there. So okay.
So I met with Jerry. We started talking production ideas.
He played me the songs he had written, and he
was not a big writer on Edgar's album, and I
didn't care for his songs. So I got some songs
and he didn't care for the songs I did. So

(43:47):
I got started and it was just an uphill battle.
It wasn't working, and one of the guys in his
band really wanted to produce the band, and I called
Clive and said, you know, I don't think I can
work on that. You know, you're going to have to
figure out it's kind of a scene here and he said, okay,
all right. So that was that and before now you

(44:11):
can imagine here I thought I was. I thought, oh boy,
my big break well. Sweat Hog broke up after the
first album, Sweat Hog breaks up, Blood, Sweat and Tears,
we can't finish the album, and now White Trash isn't working.
Every time. It was maybe my dad's right, that's all
I'm thinking, Maybe my dad's right. And CBS had a

(44:31):
very strange policy studios at the time. It was very, very,
very very that's three varies, I'll give it four varies.
Strange policy from their union, and the union rules were
that nobody but a union engineer could touch the console
and okay, and so in the meantime. The other strange

(44:58):
thing they did. They had a big section I don't remember,
but about nine ten engineers, but only one assistant engineer.
And so what they did was if you weren't working
either mixing or recording, book to record or mix, they
put you as a second on a session, which was

(45:18):
kind of weird because one day you could be recording
some huge artist and the next week you're engineering an
assistant engineer on a demo. Very strange, but whatever. Anyway,
I was sitting around with nobody calling me to mix,
and so they were trying to be respectful, you know,
I'm sure Clive had told them about me and the

(45:39):
plans that he had for me, so they didn't let
me work. But some of the young guys were really
upset about the fact that I was sitting around not
doing anything. See, I had been I had been an
independent engineer, as I mentioned earlier, one of the first
in LA and I didn't think it was a tremendous
amount of money, but it was more more than you

(46:00):
could make working for the CBS. So Clive I told
him about that problem, and they hired me at top scale.
And so the young guys were very perturbed about that,
needless to say, and in fact, I'll never forget when
I'm the night manager took me around. They put me
on the night shift. First, took me around to meet

(46:21):
whoever was there working. And I went into the break
room and here are the three young guys and one
of them, you know, he introduces me. That guy introduces me,
and the one guy looks at him says, are you
a cop? And I said, no, I'm not a cop.
And I had been told that they were trying to
get them fired because they knew they were doing drugs,
well pot anyway. And so later when I became friends

(46:44):
with that guy. I said, do you think if there
was a cop being hired that they would hire him
at top scale? They'd hire some guy that, you know,
mealy mouth guy that sat in the back of the
room and did nothing. You know, you must have been high.
I don't get it. So they put me in to
shut those young guys up. They put me in as
a second on a Barbara Streisand session with Richard Perry producing,

(47:07):
And I'm just there running the tape machine and you know,
doing whatever the engineer wants. And after about five days
in the studio, and I never asked him why, I know,
I had a You may know, I had a very
long and prosperous relationship for both of us with Richard Perry,
a lot of very very big albums. But for some reason,

(47:29):
after five days of recording, he turned to the engineer
and said, I want to build an engineer tomorrow. And
the engineer wasn't too happy about that. He hadn't done
anything wrong as far as I knew. But that's when
I started, you know, with basically with Richard, and also
when I started realizing what engineering could be. Because here

(47:55):
I was sitting with a holding a fader, hold a
knob that fifty feet away is a microphone that this
unbelievable singer is emoting into. And one of my first
titles for the book was going to be best seat
in the House, because boy, when you're doing that, you
have the best seat in the house, a seat that

(48:16):
might include swearing even sometimes. But no, Barbara didn't swear.
I don't remember Barbera swearing. But she and I hit
it off really really well, and had hadn't have a
great relationship. I worked with her over the years, and
I may not be the only one, but I'm the
only engineer that I know of that's worked with Barbara

(48:37):
any excuse me, any amount of time that I have
to say, I never had a problem with her. You know,
she's very demanding, she's extremely intelligent. She is demanding. But
i've other than other than on a live orchestra session,
she didn't like her headphone mix. I had to work

(48:59):
work that out a little bit. You know, there's a
lot of pressure. You know, I realized that she's sitting
there with eighty pieces out there, and she has to
give a performance and so on, so I understand a little.
But I got her headphones together and everything was fine. Anyway,
what happened is people like Richard Perry that wanted to

(49:21):
touch the controls. He wanted to ride the faders, and
some of the engineers would report him to the union
and so they would come in and you know, bark
at Richard. And he wasn't the only one, but Clive
was getting other people that wanted to be able to,
you know, touch I don't know that any of them
wanted to engineer necessarily, but just to be able to,

(49:42):
you know, touch the faders if they wanted to play
with the balances. And so he went to the union
and said, you need to change that rule and they,
I'm sure, with all the pride they had, they went, well,
we're not going to And he said, you don't understand.
I can't let you in your rule affect my creative

(50:04):
creativity in my record company. I have to be able
to hire people that I want and if they won't
work because of your union rule, that that's not going
to work. And they said, we're sorry, and he said,
one more time, I'm closing the studios if you don't
change your rule. He closed the studios, but I don't
know how many people out of work, just a snap

(50:27):
and who can blame him? I have to say, you know,
like I said, the business was definitely changing. And uh,
you know obviously right after that the engineer producer became
a thing in England and here, uh and you know
it wasn't going to work and they didn't, you know,

(50:48):
they didn't change with the times.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Okay, Richard's he says, he wants you to engineer. There
must have been something that Tree inspired, something that you
did that he wanted you.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
If I knew, Bob, i'd tell you. I promise I have,
you know, I think of it my time. Back then
we were in Studio A, and the tape machine was
in like this secondary room, no walls, been a secondary
room off to the left of the control room where
you know, he can see me and I can see him.
You know, you could you know, throw a tennis ball

(51:32):
and hit him in the head. But you know, and
I was, I was so shy, and you know, I
wasn't scared to run the tape machine or anything. But
I don't know that, I said. Maybe he asked me
a couple of questions and I answered them the way
he liked. I don't know, I have no idea, like
I said, considering how many hours, days, weeks, months, years

(51:55):
I spent in a control room with him. I'm really
sorry I never asked him what was it that made
you want to give me a shot at the first chair?
But I never did it.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Okay, So now you're behind the board with Richard.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
Ay.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
How sophisticated is the board at that point? And what
does he tell you to do or not to do? Well?

Speaker 2 (52:19):
He he was trying to figure every he you know,
he was pretty young in his career, he was, yeah,
he and he was still learning things about about recording.
So he didn't know what a compressor did or a
limitter did, but he knew equalizers made things brighter or

(52:39):
duller or basier or whatever. But I remember, I don't
remember him even turning those. The main thing he wanted
to do was, well, the thing was playing. He wanted to,
you know, pull the piano. Rather than tell the engineer
what to do, he wanted to just do it, you know,
so he started That's what he would do, is just
start playing with the balance on a play back. And

(53:01):
and not all the time either, but uh, you know,
basically though, he would trance, you know, he would give
me his whatever thoughts he had on what to do,
and I would do them. He was he was very eloquent.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
What was his special sauce? You work with a number
of producers, what was special about him vis a vis
somebody else?

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Uh, let's see where do I start? I guess I
start with a great song, since, especially if he's if
he's finding songs for an artist, like he did obviously
for Barbara or the Pointer sisters. He found, you know,
all the songs for their illustrious career. He gave them.

(53:44):
He worked best that way. He didn't work as well
with single artists. I remember I'm independent now and he's
in England doing the No Secrets album, your Sylvaine album
with Carl Simon, and he still thought of me. He
knew that I was this guy that came from Richie
Podler's rock studio. So and I had done rock, produced

(54:06):
rock stuff, or tried to when when I was at CBS.
So that's how he thought of me. So he recorded
the album and mixed all but two songs in England
with Robin Cable, and he called me and said, there's
I'm coming back and next week I want you to
get a studio. There's two rock songs. That I want
you to mix and I said okay, and so he

(54:31):
that's what I did. And he was late for this session,
as he always was, but Carly was on time the
first mixing session and she we got She we hit
it off right away, with her telling me what a
it was a nightmare. I've never I've never screamed at

(54:52):
anyone before I had to. I was I had to
go and get sedatives in England. I said, really said, yeah,
he was you. He's so stubborn. She's just going through
all this, you know. Wow. In fact, I remember when
we mastered that record, she was dating James Taylor and
James went outside, I think, for a cigarette and I

(55:14):
went out to talk to him while Doug Sax was
mastering the album and he was sitting there and he said,
I told him. I said, you know, she said it
was really rough on her. And he said, oh my gosh,
I'll never let her work with him again. And of
course you know how that works with success. And now

(55:35):
maybe we can make another exception or two or three.
But yeah, so yeah. But then so Richard, I mixed
the two rock songs, and Richard, always looking for something better,
said why don't we try and mix on this song.
Oh okay, and that came out great, and yeah, I
mixed the whole album over.

Speaker 1 (55:56):
Yes, But ultimately he went with Keybles mix of your
Sylvain correct.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
Yes, And I promised myself I would I would forgive
Doug for doing this, for he was because of Doug
Sachs and what it was. I thought my mix was
better in every way, and Doug did until one time.

(56:24):
I see about the fourth time he's listening to it.
Initially he said, oh, yeah, this is really good, and
then he noticed that before every chorus when Jim Gordon,
the drummer starts off with Clouds in my Coffee, that
there's starts with the bass drum going to the toms.
That the bass trum that was the only the bass

(56:44):
drum on my mix was a little bit softer than
it was on Robin's. And it's the kind of thing
I promise you that the compression on both AM and
FM radio would more than have taken up and stated
for But as soon as he showed that to Richard,
that's all it took. So he went with the mix

(57:07):
and it is what it is, and it am there.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
So let's say I listened you know you're close to it.
But if the average person, not completely unsophisticated but not
a pro, listen to your mix or the single mix
that went out, how different were they?

Speaker 2 (57:29):
Well? How do I put that in words? Mine? Certainly,
not Night and Day. Certainly not night and day. There's
some guitars in there that mine were a little louder
that when I hear it that because they're down they weren't.
You know, I know the compression would have done that

(57:50):
because the only thing playing before every chorus is that
drum and her voice. And even though even though she's
louder in every mix than the drum, it would have
caught it. It would have pulled her to that and
the drum would have come up. But like the guitars,
the things that I like about my mix better very
to this day when I hear it on the radio. Yeah,

(58:12):
that's one of the things I know was better about mine.
I don't know that I'd have to hear it again
to remember to hear them back to back.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
You remember, okay, you track the Barber Streiss in the album.
Then when it comes to mixing some of it, some
of it, okay, Then what happens when it comes to mixing.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
Again. The album was halfway done when I got involved,
and some of it was already mixed by the other
engineer and whatnot. But the songs that we finished, I mixed,
I think just about half of them. And that I

(58:56):
had heard people had told me about working with Richard
what it was like on the previous album, which is
the album that that put Barbara in the modern era,
out of you know, out of her Broadway stuff. They said,
they said that, you know, they talked about the maniacal
ways of Richard, and they said, for instance, that he kept,

(59:20):
whether it was he or Barbara or both, they kept
an orchestra till one in the morning, which they went
into overtime. It was at seven o'clock start. They went
into overtime at ten oh one. And I don't know
when Golden Times started back then, but you know, those
musicians made a lot of money. You know, they're also

(59:41):
not the kind of musicians that are used to playing
that long, that hard, but my orchestra, but they kept
them there. So the mixing, another thing I had heard
is that he'll do lots and lots of mixes, and
indeed he did lots and lots of mixes. The only
thing in the mix he he insistent on riding the
vocal and that would stay till till whenever. The last

(01:00:06):
thing I did with him was he always rode the vocal,
which drove me a little crazy because I like to
ride the vocal. You know, I'm really big on the vocalist.
I really try to protect them and put them in
the best light always because that's that's what they live by.
And not that he didn't do a good job, but
it was just frustrating for me with the track because

(01:00:28):
I'm kind of usually the vocalist following the track, leading
the track, albeit but following the track. So here I
am with the track following him. But we did okay.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
So other than riding the vocal, you do a mix
and what kind of complaints would he have? What would
he want redone? What would you want change?

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Oh? He was famous for finding anything and everything. You
know up you know, it starts with you know, maybe
the congas are too loud, Okay, turn the congress down. Maybe.
And by the way, when we started with like with
Barbara and uh and no Secrets for sure, uh. And

(01:01:11):
I think the next album with her, I think there
was no automation. It was definitely every time you're mixing,
you mist and that was I love doing that. I
loved it. In fact, when we finally got moving fader automation,
where you would move the faders and it went into
a computer and then the computer would play back your

(01:01:32):
moves which you could override. But I had to get
used to letting the computer help me. I didn't want
any help. I wanted to do it all myself. And
so anyway he would find, he would find some excuse
always and kept doing it. And you never you never

(01:01:53):
were satisfied. You never bore that sounds great, you know,
you never got that. It was like he'll he'll go
listen to it and mastering, and quite often we'll come
back and mix it again. In fact, the funny story
about that if I can jump ahead, although not that
far ahead, is on the Ringo album. Well before that,

(01:02:15):
speaking of that maniacal Ways, Jeff Percaro, the great drummer,
told me a story about his maniacal ways. This is
like in nineteen eight, seventy eighty one or something. He said,
we were doing a tracking session and you know, Richard
in his usual wake, you know, we did two or
three takes, and then they came in and listened, and

(01:02:36):
he found something to do, and they went out and
did another take or two came in and listened and
just one more guys, So they went back out and
did one more. Jeff said, they came in, they listened
to it and everyone's that's the one. And Jeff said,
I turned here and I said, Richard, that's the one,
and he went, yeah, it's really good. But I think

(01:02:58):
if we just do no, Richard, you don't understan that
is the one we're going with. He said, But just
what Richard, next song or we leave? And that was it.
He threw down the gauntlet. But on the Ringo album
eight years earlier, something we knew that the song Photograph

(01:03:19):
was going to be the first single, and so Richard
and here, you know, this was arguably his biggest shot
at that time. It was working with all the Beatles,
and so I knew we were going to mix it
several times. So we mixed it and again each time
we mix it, it's like, you know, five mixes printed. You know,

(01:03:43):
who knows how many we did that weren't printed. He
goes in the mastering lab and listens to to it.
And he goes, you know, I think if we do
this and do that, we went back in. He said, okay,
So we did another group of mixes, went back to
the mastering lab, same thing. Okay, we got it. Now,
we got it. But can I just hear that first

(01:04:03):
mixed first day? Yeah? See that was better there. Okay
again there's I have to do this by hand. You know,
it's not like going back like we do today and
the computer has everything exactly where it was. It's you know,
it's a new mix every time. So back we go,
and I thought we had it. We go into the

(01:04:25):
mastering lab, play it and he plays them. Doug says, boy,
I think you got it, Richard, And he said, yeah, Doug,
it's really good. And he turns to me. But I
know that if we just and I interrupted him. I said, Richard, no,
He said no. What I said, you me and that
sixteen track tape will never be in the same room
at the same time again. If you want it mixed,

(01:04:47):
get someone else, or I go in alone. Oh funny, Bill,
I've got Richard. I'm not kidding. And I went in
alone and mixed it by myself, as if I didn't
know what he wanted out of it after all those.

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
Times, okay, all those times. Did it make a difference.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
To the studios in my bank account? Of course not,
you know, a difference to who. That's the way you
have to answer that question, because that's what we do
as creatives. You know, does it make a difference. It
matters to me. I go through all these gyrations that
we spoke about earlier with trying to make digital as
good as I can possibly make it. And I have

(01:05:33):
a friend, an engineer friend who's constantly telling me, is
does it really make a difference? And that's what I say.
It makes a difference to me. Is it different? Yeah,
it's that much better. But when I built my studio,
I knew, I mean, that's just how I've always operated.
I knew that when I built a studio, how do

(01:05:54):
I make an incredible studio? Well, this one, this studio,
they all have the same stuff. They ad mites got headphones,
they got you know, they got what they got. But
this studio has incredible mics. This studio doesn't have such
a good headphone system. Bail blah blah. You just got
to have everything nailed. So that's that's what you tried.
To do and by by you know, by ten percent

(01:06:16):
here and ten percent there, and ten percent here and
five percent there, and eventually you get up to forty
five fifty percent. That makes a difference. So today with
the digital, especially with the way things are recorded, so
many you know, I get so few sessions that are
done by all professional people. You know, so many people

(01:06:36):
are recording. You know, they send it to the bass
player who puts on the bass, and they send it
to the drummer who puts on the drums in his house.
And some of those are very very good, don't get
me wrong. Some of them are not very good and whatnot.
But you know, I mean I remember when it started,
you know, decades ago, with with people and doing home recording,

(01:06:57):
and uh, it's just and it doesn't hold it. It's
not like it used to be that one engineer primarily
for most parts, sat through the recording process, the tracking process,
and the overdubbing process. Now maybe they didn't mix. They
would send it to somebody that who was known for mixing,
like myself, and they like that because they get a

(01:07:18):
fresh look on it as opposed to the guy that's
been in the trenches for months doing it. But uh,
you know, I think it's a it's a worthwhile way
of looking at it. So that's you know, did it
make a difference to Richard? It did?

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
Okay, let me use it because I'm sure Richard was concerned.
Do you think it made a difference in the commercial success.

Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
For the most part, And if we're talking about from
the first time we mixed a song, I won't. I won't. Well,
from from the first time he mixed a song to
the whatever time didn't make a difference. No, probably not.
Those were all close enough on Richard with me mixing
now what I did sometimes and I remember I had

(01:08:15):
a friend from the east visiting me, East coast visiting
me once and I think it was David Sanborn album
and had I had the mix before Richard. You know,
I would get the mix where I liked it, and
Richard would come in and my friend heard it and

(01:08:35):
watched it, watched him destroy it, and uh, and it
wasn't that album, but on another meaning, meaning what we
ended up with wasn't as good as where it started.
And it was one time I can't remember what album,
but there was definitely one time where where I made
him go back and listen to the first mix, Richard.

(01:08:56):
I want you to hear where I had it when
you showed up three four hours go. And I played
him that first mix, and he goes, you're right, it
does feel better kind And I said, you know, here's
the thing, Richard could never think. He the way I've
said is that I want a mix. It's it's not

(01:09:17):
a great analogy, but it's the best one I got.
I want a mix to be a beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:09:21):
Lush forest.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
This forest has all kinds of different trees, and I
want it when you look at it, just to go, wow,
that is beautiful. Richard wants to investigate every tree. Is
that pine tree in the back high enough? Okay, let's
try it higher? You know what? You know? What about
this palm tree over here? You know, okay, let's try it.

(01:09:43):
You'd start playing with all those things, and you got
all the trees trimmed the way he wants them. And
it doesn't. But it doesn't feel the same. And you can't.
You don't know why it isn't you know, because how
something feels, it's definitely it's a mix. You know. I
was talking to someone yesterday. Cooking is exactly like mixing.
To me. Unfortunately, I don't have that skill I wish
I did. I love eating, but I can't put the

(01:10:06):
ingredients together. But really good chefs know how to put
ingredients together so that when you taste it, you're not analyzing.
It's just, oh my gosh, that's great. And that's what
I always wanted from Richard, but he couldn't do it.
He just he had to look at every single tree.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
So some albums you tracked but didn't mix, how'd you
feel about that?

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):
Well, there weren't many, but there were some because of
scheduling primarily, or like I know on a couple of
Carly's albums where I did some of the recording and
then he went to New York to work with New
York musicians, or in the third album, her second album,

(01:10:52):
she was pregnant because she didn't want to be away
from home so long, and whatever different reasons. He worked
in New York and there when he had some things going,
mixed some of the stuff there, and some of them
I remixed when he came back to LA Some of
them stood. But I mean the answer to your question
is I'm insecure enough that I would want to mix

(01:11:14):
the things I recorded just because I don't want to
hear someone critique me and say, oh, wow, that's the
best Shna could do. I don't know if that ever
happened or not.

Speaker 1 (01:11:23):
Okay, how about let's say you're mixing and you get
an album that has different engineers, different studios. Can you
make it all sound of a piece or inherently are
they different?

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
Well, that's what I was alluding to earlier. No, I mean,
you do the best you can with what you've got,
you know, and if you if you're handed something like
like the No Secrets album that Robin Cable did an
outstanding job of recording, you know, I just balanced the
thing up and go with it. And you know, some

(01:12:01):
of the other ones. I know, there was one year
when I was double nominated for Best Engineered Album, and
I didn't think either one deserved to be there. But
that's okay. There's a couple of several albums, three or
four albums that I always thought should have been nominated
that weren't. But whatever. But I was double nominated, and
I remember one of them. It cracked me up because

(01:12:23):
it was recorded by the kind of thing you're talking about.
It was several engineers. They were all professional, but it
definitely there was not a cohesive kind of thing. You know.
I think a lot of engineers. I've always thought of
myself as a musician that happens to who learned how
to engineer, not an engineer that learned how to engineer,

(01:12:46):
and that's what they want to do. I just it's
like music. For me. First, it's all about music, and
so when you get something that someone else is recorded
and you're adding to it, you want to think about
what's there now as you start to add other things,
things to make it fit in. Richie Podler taught me
in the beginning that the mix starts with the tracking session.

(01:13:07):
You start right away with the first thing you put down,
and then you know, he said, and I've tried to
do it. Every overdub you make, you're putting it where
you want it in the mix. You're trying to do that.
The joke with another guy that was like that, Al Schmidt.
The joke with al Schmidt was if he recorded it,
you could put all the faders in a straight line

(01:13:27):
and with a ruler put them all up at a
certain level and just push the vocal up a couple
over that and there's your mix, and whereas that's not
one hundred percent accurate, it's not that far from the
truth either. The idea of again of trying to make
the mix as you go. But a lot of times
some engineers they know the kind of sound they like
to get on any instrument and it doesn't fit with

(01:13:50):
what's going on, but they're going to do what they
want to do. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
Okay, someone sends you a tape for at this point,
it won't be a tape in a file. You put
it up. Then how do you build your mix?

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
Okay? For the most I always ask for a rough mix.
I always want to hear what I'm what I'm doing.
I may if I if I if my initial reaction
is oh, that's neat, I may want to listen back
to that while I'm mixing. If it's like I don't
get it, then that may be the last time I
listened to it. But it depends on the kind of

(01:14:28):
song and a lot of different aspects. But for the
most part, if I can generalize after I've listened to
the to the rough, I usually start with a drum
sound that I think is going to make sense, And
that depends on you know, how the drums are recorded
and what I can do to them for what I think.

(01:14:49):
If it's a powerful song and the drums aren't that powerful,
I'll do whatever I can to make them more powerful, uh,
that kind of thing. And and I'll usually build the track,
you know, with the bass bass then and then if
it's a guitar song, the guitars, if it's a keyboard song,
the keyboards, and flush out all that stuff to get

(01:15:10):
a track that feels good to me, and then put
in the vocal and background vocals and then start adjusting
things to surround the vocal and background vocals.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
Okay, my experience in the studio, which is certainly very limited,
but traditionally the engineer only says yes or if they
have a different opinion, it's very mild. They don't stand up.
What's your experience being an engineer vis a v being
a producer, which you've also done.

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
Well before. When I had extremely limited experience going back
to CBS and Babs, is that I remember, not on
that first album, but I remember on a subsequent album
standing up to her and saying, no, you shouldn't do that.

(01:16:07):
And I said, I wrote that in the book. You know,
I don't know if that's whatever I said. We had
hit it off pretty well from the beginning, and I
really enjoyed and I've always enjoyed working with her. But
I'm not afraid to tell an artist no if they've
got if they've gotten us up on a branch and
they're wanting me to saw it off, so you know,

(01:16:28):
tell them no, But you say and here's why. And
most of the time they'll respect that. You know, they
they've hired you to do a job, and I'm telling
you that. You know, if I'm doing my job, I've
got to tell you that I don't think you should
do this, and here's why. So that doesn't have to
happen that often, but it does happen now. In mixing,

(01:16:51):
that's a different thing. I've always said I'm not I
have no ego with regard I don't think there's a
proof I don't have any or with regard to mixing.
I get a mix, I think feels good, you got changes,
I'll start making changes. We're not going to lose that
mix anymore these days, especially, I can always go back
and pick it up where I left off. But but

(01:17:15):
I don't I don't mind you asking you know, I
don't think there's anything as one perfect mix and nothing
else works. We talked about that already, and I want
I want the artist to be happy. As I always said,
their name is in big letters on the front of
the album. My name is on little teeny letters on
the back of the album, if not inside. So I

(01:17:38):
want them to be happy. And as far as I know,
I have very good relationship with everyone I worked with.

Speaker 1 (01:17:44):
So for you personally, what was the difference between producing
and engineering.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
Control? I mean, in a word, you know, obviously much
added responsibility producers the person responsible for there once was
nothing and now there's an album. It was literally produced
from nothing, so you've got a lot more You've got

(01:18:12):
a lot more control, but a lot more pressure on
all the different pieces. And that's I mean, that's what
I love the most. But it just you know, it
doesn't always work. You know, it's a matter of you know,
both of them, I've always said, both of them are
servants roles. You're there to serve the artist and their music.

(01:18:33):
That's the most important thing. So it's not about my way,
like I have no problem arguing with somebody. But again,
their names on the front, so Okay, if you want
to do it, we'll do it. But I don't agree.

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
As a producer, how much did you put your tentacles
into the creative end of it? Whereas an engineer is
kneeling the sound, a producer, certainly talking about Richard, be
selecting the material, but also could say, hey, you need
a bridge here, let's flip it out, let's start with
a chorus, or you know, to what degree would you

(01:19:08):
put your hands in there.

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
I've always equated that aspect as as a contractor. A
guy that comes into paint or fix whatever's on. He
goes into one room and it's perfect, doesn't need anything,
if paint's good and everything. He walks into the next room.
Oh this this needs a paint job for sure. He
goes in the next room. Oh my gosh, look at it.
We're gonna have to bust open that wall and put

(01:19:34):
new drywall in, then mud it, and then we'll paint it.
You do what's what's required, and that that that varies
within the same album, sometimes not just from artists to artists,
but for a group that some people hate Pablo Cruz
wink wink, that that I produced, for instance, I was

(01:19:56):
the I was much more involved in on the second
album I did with them, which was their fourth album.
I was much more involved in the trenches than I
was on the previous album because the previous album, which
was the one that had what You're Going to Do,
that had the first big hit. They now it was

(01:20:17):
like the fourth record was like most artists sophomore record
if the first record hits, Now they're out on the road,
they're doing interviews, on and on and on. They don't
have time to write. So we did a lot of
that writing in the studio, and so there it was.
I was a lot more involved.

Speaker 1 (01:20:35):
For instance, Okay, they were in the seventies and certainly
the sixties, there were people like Richard who were producers.
They came from the musical creative inn and then as
the years went by, you had more engineers that became producers,
and you were sort of different that you straddled both camps.

(01:20:57):
But I thought that when the engineers became a producers,
a lot of them weren't really that creative. They could
nael the sound, but sometimes you know, when a being
needed more. Did you any observations.

Speaker 2 (01:21:10):
There, Well, you know, I don't I'm not going to
bad mouth any particular people. But yeah, I mean some
people are are better at whatever skills. You know, just
because someone's a great engineer doesn't mean that he has
the horsepower on the creative side to help an artist.

(01:21:31):
So you definitely could see that. And the other The
other thing is that a lot of times, you know,
I got to tell you when Clive, when I had
that first conversation with Clive, my nervous conversation on the phone,
you know, he didn't even believe that engineers should produce.
He said, look here, you know what you should do

(01:21:52):
has come to work for me. As an engineer. You
work with an artist like Roy Holly did with Simon
and Garfunkel, and then when they fire or their producer,
as they always will, you're in the driver's seat. You
step into the driver's seat. And I literally said to him, no,
I don't want to do that. That's not what I
want to do. You know, if I can't make it
on my own, then I don't make it, period. And

(01:22:15):
what can I say? It's funny, I haven't thought of
that until just now in a long long time that
I stood up to him kind of in a way,
and he went with me anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:22:26):
So you work with Richard on Barbara Streisian. What do
you do after that?

Speaker 2 (01:22:32):
Well, we talked about no secrets, I.

Speaker 1 (01:22:37):
Well, no secrets for Electra. So at what point do
you stop working for CBS.

Speaker 2 (01:22:45):
When Clive closed the studio, plain and simple, I think,
which was yeah, which was actually very good timing because
you know, Richard had done the first Harry Nielsen album,
Nielsen Schmielsen in England, and Harry was good friends with
Ringo and he introduced the two of them and they

(01:23:09):
talked then about doing an album someday. And so when
you know, Clive has closed the studio and I'm working
independently and whatnot, and then Richard calls me one day
and says, I'm going to do an album with Ringo
and I want you to do it with me the
whole way. And I said, wow, well that sounds like fun,

(01:23:32):
and indeed it certainly was.

Speaker 1 (01:23:35):
Okay. Everybody has their heyday where you don't have enough
time to do all the work that you would like
to do. But at what point do you start you know,
you just wait for the phone to ring or do
you start working in in order to get jobs?

Speaker 2 (01:23:54):
No back and Clive one of the things after he
hired me. One of the things he said a lot
of I've got a lot of different pieces of wisdom
from him, and it's something I'd never thought about. But
he said, Bill, this is a business of what have
you done lately? The credits mean everything. And that went
with what Richie Peddler had told me, you know, a

(01:24:17):
year and a half or something before that, when he
said basically the same thing. He said, the credits are
more important than the money you make on a project,
the money you're going to spend and it'll be gone,
the credit you're going to live with. And Clive modified
it to say what have you done lately? And so
that was it. It was just, you know, the record

(01:24:41):
companies have the golden goose philosophy, and if this guy
laid golden eggs with this artist, bring him over. Let's
get him here and have him lay some eggs for us.
And that goes. It goes for producers, of course, and
to a less lesser degree, maybe not from the record company,
more from the other producers that making the same observation

(01:25:04):
and hiring of an engineer, well.

Speaker 1 (01:25:14):
You've been doing it for sixty years, so is it
the type of thing where the work has always come
to you, or if you had to flush that it
has you haven't had to say, well, you know, I
better network, or I better you know, make relationships, or
I may call people. What do you got going? It's
always come to you.

Speaker 2 (01:25:32):
No, it's always come to me. And I made a
big mistake. Well I don't know how big it was,
but it was when the era of managers for producers
and engineers started. I remember having a meeting with Michael Austin,

(01:25:53):
Mo Austin's son at Warner Ruthers, who was the head
of A and R at that point, about an artist
something for me to produce, and he said, you know what,
I don't have anything right now. But you know, Bill,
I don't even I don't even pick producers anymore. I call,
you know, there were five or four or five at

(01:26:14):
that point managers of producers. I call one of them
and I say, I've got this artist, who do you
think would be good for it? They do my job
for me. And I met with a couple of them,
and I always thought, you know, if I want someone
to quote represent me, I wanted them to, you know,

(01:26:36):
to represent me. And I didn't like the people. You know,
I just didn't hit the right ones, I guess or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:26:44):
Well, do you feel you missed out on any work
as a result?

Speaker 2 (01:26:46):
Thereof absolutely, without question. Like I said at the point
that you know Michael Austin, I'm sure it wasn't the
only one and I made out of I don't remember
if I had met with any of them. That may
have been. That meeting with Michael may have been the
exact reason I went out and met with a couple,
but I'm pretty sure that they could. They could have

(01:27:08):
done it, They could have got me work.

Speaker 1 (01:27:11):
But it sounds like you had enough work anyway, or
is that untrue?

Speaker 2 (01:27:17):
Well, you know, I think I think the the heyday
shall we call it, could have lasted longer, that's all.
But I'm not complaining in any way, shape or form.
I've had a very rich career, that's for darn shore
and still do. I mean, you know, I'm fortunate that

(01:27:39):
I'm seventy eight years old, healthy as I can possibly be.
That's what the doctors just told me two weeks ago,
and had The main thing is which a lot of
my guys, peers my age don't have. I have all
the energy and passion for music that I had in
nineteen sixty four when we got signed to Decker Records.
I still there's nothing I'd rather do then, you know,

(01:28:01):
I noticed something early on in the business about all
the musicians getting divorces and going on a second marriage.
And I have I wondered if you know, musicians are
a weird lot and creatives in general, I guess, but
they you know, it's they're very passionate, you know. We

(01:28:21):
I'll put myself in there, We are very passionate about
what we do. And that to a woman that, for instance,
grew up with a dad that wore a suit and tie,
was home at five o'clock every day eating dinner, that
doesn't always flush well with the guy that will stay
after work for two hours hanging with his buddy's jamming

(01:28:42):
or whatever. And I know I saw that in the
divorces of a couple of people, for sure. And it's
funny and funny enough. My wife of forty years now,
my first wife who divorced me, was a musician, so
I had nothing to do with that. But my current

(01:29:03):
wife has had a father that was an oil executive
who was home every day at five o'clock at mowing
the lawn on the weekends, but she sawned up. I
insisted we had a long engagement. She was in law
school in Waco. She was at Baylor Law when I
met her, and I insisted she do her last year
in la so that she could for a year she

(01:29:25):
could see the crazy people, the crazy schedule, everything that
was there. And funny enough, she did her last year
at Loyola where I did my one semester, and I
went back and sat in the same classrooms a couple
of times to watch a session.

Speaker 1 (01:29:43):
So when you would say, hey, I got to work
for the weekend, what would your wife say?

Speaker 2 (01:29:51):
Well, first of all, I did my best to make
the family a priority, so I would do my best.
You know, the the initial the knee jerk is no.
But if it was something that I really thought that
I had to she was very understanding and accommodating, and

(01:30:12):
so if the relationship worked beautifully.

Speaker 1 (01:30:15):
So the first wife who was a musician, was it
the music business and the music business lifestyle they caused
the divorce or just like everything, it doesn't necessarily work out.

Speaker 2 (01:30:28):
The latter, for sure had nothing to do with the business.
She loved the business. In fact, The odd thing was
she said she was divorcing me because she was tired
of being missus Bill Schnee. And then as soon as
we were divorced, she went out and tried to get
work as a producer with the last name Schnee. So

(01:30:48):
go figure. I don't know what to say. No, it
had nothing to do with the business.

Speaker 1 (01:30:52):
Okay, so you work with Richard Barber Skreis in Ringo
no secrets. How did things other than Richard projects come about?

Speaker 2 (01:31:05):
Just what you were talking about earlier? You know, someone
calls me to mix a record. In fact, here's a
funny story. Early on. I'm gonna say, I have to
look up Touch Me in the Morning, whatever you that was.
I'm mixing in a studio seventy something, and the girl

(01:31:26):
buzzes in and says, there's a phone call for you
online one. I pick it up and goes, hi, Bill,
this is Michael Master. You may know me if my
Touch Me in the Morning by Diana Ross that I
wrote and produced, And I hung up the phone and
that I was a little wild in my early days,
and I just thought, if that's the way the guy

(01:31:46):
introduced it, if that's for real, I don't know that
I want to have anything to do with him. But whatever.
So the girl buzzes in and says, evidently you got
cut off, and I said, just take a message, and
I never called him back. Now, my wife, Sally is
doing law school at Loyola, finishing her last year at Loyola,

(01:32:07):
and I'm in my studio and I get a call
from Michael Master to mix some songs that he's recorded
on Peeble Bryson. And he didn't give me the same introduction,
which was a good thing, and so I'm mixing, as
it turns out, the big hit if ever, you're in
my arms again, and Michael was. He's no longer with us,

(01:32:29):
but he was, by the way. I don't know if
you know that name, but he was a Chicago lawyer
that sat up in his high rise dreaming of making
music and he realized that dream and did quite well
and as a songwriter and producer. So anyway, we're mixing
the song and Sally would between classes. There was like

(01:32:49):
a three hour break. Loyola wasn't that far downtown LA
from my studio, so she would come to the studio
and read or take an apple whatever. So she was
going back to class and they had met. I had
introduced them, and she's walking through the studio and Michael says,
bring her in, bring her in. So I hit the
talk back and said, can you come in a second.

(01:33:11):
Sally came in. He said, let her sit in your chair.
So she sits in my chair and he said, I
want to play her the single, you know, average person
kind of thing. So he sits. She sits in the
chair and he's right next to her, and he looks
at her and I say this by she had to
meet some of the interesting people that we find in

(01:33:32):
the record business. And he turns to her and says,
let's actualize our peak experiences. Shall we wait a minute.
I'm engaged to this woman, you leave your peak experiences.
So I pushed play and then he's sitting there and
she's looking straight ahead and he's right in, you know,

(01:33:53):
a foot from her, a foot from her left ear,
looking at her eyes and mimicking the words. And when
it got to the chorus, you know, the high point,
he's pointing his finger and raising his shoulders and you know,
just going, you know, all the emotion you could ever
ask for. And I'm sure he was very disappointed when
she was done. She was scared spitless. She'd never seen

(01:34:15):
anything like that, and quite frankly, I don't think I
had either.

Speaker 1 (01:34:20):
But whatever, So, how'd you end up working with Steely Dan?

Speaker 2 (01:34:26):
Very good question, and the answer is something that funny
enough I just found out. So Gary Katz, the producer
of Steely Dan, calls me one day and says, would
you like to record the next Steely Dan album? And
I said, let me think about it. Yes, actually I
think that sounds like fun. And I got off the

(01:34:46):
phone and I went wait a minute, because a couple
of my friends, Michael Omarty and Steve Jeff Paccaro, had
played on the previous albums, and it told me about
their maniacal ways in the studio, and as I said earlier,
that's not my jam to go quick and move fast
and keep things going. And so I was a little
nervous about it. But what was interesting at the time,

(01:35:08):
they never asked me. They just said tell us where
to go. So I picked a studio that was originally
Mike Kurbs that I went in for my one time
trying to produce the La Teens, which had been now
bought by another group, and was a very good studio,

(01:35:29):
excellent studio called Producers Workshop, and I just said, Okay,
there's a studio in Hollywood Boulevard that I really like
working in. And as far as I know, they never
went to visit it or anything. So they just showed it.
They showed up, and we did it. We did what
we did, and as it turns out, that album was

(01:35:52):
different than every album before or after in that they
did it with entirely studio musicians. I'd used studio musicians
obviously on the previous album or two in with them,
but this was all studio musicians, like Union sessions one o'clock,

(01:36:13):
one to four and six to nine and all Union players.
Larry Carlton, the great guitar player, had done takedown sheets.
The guys had always done a piano bassed demo and
they would send that to Larry, who would do a
takedown sheet so of the chords and where things went.

(01:36:34):
So the band would hear their demo and go from there,
and they were just there was a no drug zone.
I think that might have been unique, and at least
for the tracking, which is all I did, and it
couldn't have gone smoother or better or easier. So I
was completely wrong about all that, but I always wondered

(01:36:56):
why they hired me. And so that was for the
album Asia. So a year and a half ago, I
guess been almost two years ago now. A company called
Acoustic Sounds that basically licenses albums puts them on LPs.
Redid that for Asia at forty five rpm, which takes

(01:37:18):
two discs instead of one y for forty five rpm. A,
it sounds better and B when you're on a on
an LP, when you the closer you get to the label,
there's a kind of distortion that comes in. It's almost
completely unavoidable. So this way stays out farther. So they
do did it at forty five rpm. And and in

(01:37:40):
anticipation of that, the owner of the company Acoustic Sounds,
called and said, I want to do a zoom interview
with you and Donald and Bernie Grunman who mastered the
original in the seventies and mastered this forty five version.
And I said great. So I did the zoom and
when there was a lull, I said, Donald, there's something

(01:38:02):
I've always wanted to ask you. Why did you guys
hire me to do that record? And he said something like, well,
we'd heard that you were this guy that got some
incredible hi fi albums that just sounded incredible, and that's
what we wanted to do. And I knew right away
what it was a little history there, the direct to disc.

(01:38:25):
I don't know how many people are familiar with that,
are you by any chance? Yes? Familiar with director is? Yeah?
So directed disc is where you recorded one side of
an album. As the title says, direct to disc, the
disc that is that they make on the lays that
they make the LPs eventually out of. So what you

(01:38:46):
don't do is you don't go to analog tape twice,
first time in the multi track, second time on the
two track. You only go through the electronics of a
console once and by saving all of that, the sound
quality is superb. It's very you know, almost identical to
what's quote coming through the glass. It's a lot of

(01:39:07):
pressure obviously because you're you're recording everything from start to finish,
and when you when you were mixing from tape or
these days from a computer, when you pull up the piano,
it's the exact same piano part, the exact same dynamics.
You know, everything is identical. It's locked in for life.
When you're doing this. You know, you do one side

(01:39:29):
of an album, takes fifteen minutes. Something from one side
of the album, you take a twenty minute break, you
do it again. You think they play identically to what
they did before. No, you're mixing every time from get go,
and sometimes it you know it. The opening cuts are
the most dangerous in that regard, But you're the point
being is that you're constantly mixing and there's no relaxing

(01:39:51):
for a second, and if somebody makes a mistake, you
know you're in You're in trouble. At the last song,
you're in trouble because there's no editing of any kind.
It's a lathe that cuts into a lacquer master a
laquer disc, and so there's no stopping. So I had
engineered Doug Sachs and his partner Lincoln my orga of
it had the mastering lab that was directly in front

(01:40:13):
of this studio. Had done a couple of records of
Lincoln's music directed disc specifically for that reason because they
sound so much better. And after the I engineered one,
and after I engineered it, that was the most fun
I'd ever had because theretofore you spent you know, two

(01:40:34):
three whatever months six and the Ringo album six solid
months of working on an album and then mixing and
then mastering. Here in three days we had an album recorded, mixed,
and mastered. And so when I went back to normal recording,
it was like slow slow motion. So I went to
Doug and asked, I really want to produce an album,

(01:40:55):
and I wanted to I want to use a vocalist
and main thing also I wanted to do contemporary, more
contemporary music than what Lincoln did. And so it took
me about a week or so to convince Doug to
let me do it. It took him two months to convince Lincoln.
Lincoln wasn't going for it. This is not our record label,
and if we were going to hire someone, why would

(01:41:15):
it be a kid? And are you sure he can
do it? And on and on. I jumped through so
many hoops, but we got it done. Funny part of
that is that at that point in time, I'd only
worked with two artists that I knew could step up
to the mic on the last song and give a
real performance. The first one was Barbara Streisan, who at
that point I had done her three previous albums and

(01:41:36):
I called her manager and got very close to this
go away kid, you're bothering me. He had no time
for it, and the only other person that I had
just worked with. I recorded a couple of songs and
mixed a new artist on Motown named Thelma Houston, who
had a gorgeous sounding voice and sang like a bird,

(01:41:58):
and so I talked to her about it. She loved
the idea, and I went to Motown and got a
loan out agreement, and that's what we did, and we did.
I got the best band. When I look at the
credits today, it's just it's astounding. That was. You couldn't
get a better band if you tried in nineteen seventy
five and did that record and it, yes, it was

(01:42:21):
nominated for Best Engineered Album, and yes it was. You know,
within a year, it was an every high fi store
in the country. Because the weak link in an audio
chain is the source. So if you give them a
better sounding source, their amplifiers sound better, their speakers sound better,
they just go better. So it was an every high
fi store and it did incredibly well. Well. That's undoubtedly

(01:42:47):
what Donald was making reference to when he said we'd
heard about these records that you had done. I had
engineered the previous one that Doug did, and now I
produced and engineered that one. And what's what's really cool
is that a I found out about why they hired
me on that. And then this year in April, the

(01:43:12):
film of Houston and Pressure Cooker album was entered into
the National Recording Registry Library by the Library of Congress.
Only six six hundred and thirty five records that are
in there, and I have a couple of records I
engineered that are in there, but including Asia. But I
couldn't be more proud of this one. And and what

(01:43:34):
what's come from it?

Speaker 1 (01:43:43):
Okay? Why did you not mix Asia? How'd you feel
about that?

Speaker 2 (01:43:49):
Okay? When when we were done with the tracks, they came,
the boys came to me the last day and they said, okay,
we're going to go off and do overdubs. It's going
to be you know, months of you know, experimenting with
the tracks and seeing what we want to do and
so on, but we want you to mix it when
we're done. And I said, guys, don't I don't think

(01:44:10):
it would work. And they looked at me and said,
what do you mean. I said, I have a kind
of a different mixing style, and I just, you know,
I knew that they were microscope people. When you talk
about trees, I mean, you know they should write the
book because they and they said, well you'll try, won't you,

(01:44:31):
you know, kind of sarcastically, and I said, yes, of course,
I'll be glad to. So I think it was about
five months later they called with the first song that
was done, even though it turns out it wasn't done,
but which was Josie When Josie comes home and we
went into the studio and I got to mix up

(01:44:52):
that I felt was really good, and I don't think
Walter came in, only Gary Cats and Donald came in,
and you know, Donald listened to it and he said,
it feels really good. Oh thank you. He said, okay,
well let's try this there. Okay, now again there's no computer.

(01:45:15):
I'm sitting down. The thing starts. The way I would
do it back then is I would mark the faders
on a good starting point and then so I know
that at least every time I start the mix, it's
going to have the exact same starting point. Where it
goes from there is up to my right brain. So
I tried as he wanted this there and he liked it,

(01:45:37):
said maybe we should try that here with that there? Yeah,
with that there, And so it goes and for an hour,
two hours, three hours, and finally I think it'd been
like four hours. I'm worn out. I haven't got it.
The right brain is asleep. It's on remote control. I can't.

(01:45:58):
I don't feel anything anymore. And they knew it, and uh,
and I pushed back from the chair and I said, guys,
you've got an unbelievable record here, And you know I couldn't.
I couldn't be happier. I wish I could be a
part of it, but I it just it's not It's
not going to work for me. And so there I was,
and my good good friend Elliott Shiner, who had mixed

(01:46:21):
the previous record, did a mixed most of that. Al
Schmidt I think mixed one and and Uh did a
you know, a wonderful job. I wish I believe me,
I wish I could have.

Speaker 1 (01:46:34):
Okay, you were in the studio with them. Walter and
Donald are really opinionated guys. You know what they want?
What did Geary Katz ad?

Speaker 2 (01:46:48):
Oh? Boy, not much, not much at all it was
he he kept the peace and he kept order, and
nothing creatively, you know, nothing. It was as you say,

(01:47:10):
it was primarily Donald and some walter on with regard
to talking to the musicians and moving things the way
they wanted them to go.

Speaker 1 (01:47:19):
Okay, we live in a as you mentioned earlier, inherently
vinyl is compromised. Yeah, we're in an era of vinyl fetishism.
What is your take on vinyl visa the digital.

Speaker 2 (01:47:35):
I don't know if I misheard you or if you
misunderstood me. I don't look at vinyl as a compromise
at all.

Speaker 1 (01:47:40):
Well, let me state what I'm stating as supposed putting
words in your mouth. When one is cutting a vinyl record,
you have to worry about amplitude, You have to worry
about roll off. The more attracts you put on one
side affects on. You have a different sound on the
beginning of the groove, different sound on the end of
the groove. Lot of those issues that you have in

(01:48:02):
vinyl it's still music, do not apply to digital. Now
there's a couple of other things I'll put.

Speaker 2 (01:48:09):
In the mix.

Speaker 1 (01:48:10):
Yes, all this stuff in the seventies, certainly before that
was all cut on tape, So it's analog to begin with,
whereas almost everything today is cut digital. So what kind
of sense does it make to go from digital to vinyl,
especially now where you can there you know, there are

(01:48:33):
streaming services that are streaming way above CD quality. So
what's your take there on the vinyl explosion?

Speaker 2 (01:48:43):
Okay, so, yes, you point out accurately that vinyl has drawbacks. Well, again,
analog tape has, in my opinion, more analog tape has
a sound. It was never a mirror. And the directed
disc which goes from the console right to the disc

(01:49:06):
and you listen to the clarity and reality of that
compared to two generations of analog tape and then putting
it on there, it shows that even with its problems,
disc the disc is more of a mirror than analog
tape ever was, let alone two generations of it and
two passes through the console that said today, you know,

(01:49:31):
digital is a thing. And it started obviously with artists
wanting something to sell, primarily I think, you know, I mean,
I remember when it was gaining traction. I haven't heard recently,
but you know, it was like in the beginning they
were saying that, you know, seventy five percent. I'm sure
it's gone down some seventy five percent of the albums
sold at least, especially at gigs. It's just for the

(01:49:56):
memory thing. And you know they're never put on a
turntable and listen to I know that turntables are on
the rise. I know that more people are doing it now.
To your question about does it make sense, well, no,
the way you're asking it, absolutely not. When you can

(01:50:17):
hear okay, when you can hear something full range. As
I said in the beginning of the interview, sixteen forty
four to one, which is CD equality never sounded good
to me in nineteen eighty two and still doesn't in
twenty twenty five, and it never is going to. So
the deal is, though today now we can record much

(01:50:39):
higher as in ninety six or even one ninety two,
And when you get up and with those and thirty
two bits floating as opposed to sixteen bits, when you
get up there, you're talking about a really with great converter,
outstanding mirror of what's coming through this class. So you know,

(01:51:03):
there's there's very little reason to put it on disc.
To me, if you can hear it in those now
hear it in those operatues. But unfortunately most people, you know,
I can't tell you most people still don't even record
it ninety six. They still record it forty eight, which
is only a NAT's better than forty four to one.

(01:51:26):
I don't understand it. Discs are cheap, you know. It
was one thing in nineteen eighty five, when you know
it costs a fortune to put the the bits on
a computer, you know, on a hard drive. But today
you buy a solid state drive with a lifetime supply
for a few hundred dollars, and what the heck? You know,

(01:51:47):
it's just like, why not record higher? I don't get it,
but so and yes, if you can get it that
way and then stream it, yeah, you get on title
you know or co buzz. It sounds quite good. Nothing
like a CD plus plus one last thing plus plus.

(01:52:11):
The other thing is with the CD. The other thing
that hurt the CD was the fact that we got
into level wars. Now we've always had level wars. We
had Level Wars in the fifties with forty fives, in
the sixties with forty fives. My take on it was
everyone wanted a hot record. Why so, you know, when

(01:52:34):
it played on the radio. You know, it would try
to get through all the compression and jump a little bit.
And I used to always say, you know, the guys,
the promotion guys would go into a local, smaller radio
station where they're trying to get you know, they were
going around the country doing this in smaller markets, not
the big ones, and like Nashville for instance, And you

(01:52:55):
know the DJ. They going to see the DJ. He's
on the air and he's got two turntables and he
puts on the next single and here's the new one
from so and so and plays it out to go.
Then he turns the speakers in the control room off
and says, what do you got, Oh, this is a
new single from this listen to it. And he puts
it on and he's just heard the other single and
it's not loud. This isn't as loud, it doesn't jump
out of the speakers. Promotion guy goes back to the

(01:53:17):
record company and says, you've got to get it hotter.
It's got to be hotter. It's not hot enough. So
we've always had level wars, but when we got into
the you can only go so far without insane distortion. Well, unfortunately,
in digital land, you can you can go crazy without
the same kind of distortion, a different kind of distortion.

(01:53:38):
So CDs, because you know, we finally got a medium
that had one hundred and ten dB level of dynamic
level and we use the top all but the top
five to eight percent. It absolutely is stupid, but that's
how it was, So that's what you were comparing to.
So yeah, if you get on those streamings, those two

(01:53:59):
streamings services, I'm not familiar with Apple what their's was light,
but where they're actually doing ninety six k's In addition
to them being higher quality because of being that high,
they're also not compressed to living death the way the
CDs were.

Speaker 1 (01:54:16):
Okay, in terms of yourself monitoring, one thing we know
is every speaker sounds different. How important were the speakers
to you and what do you listen to on playback?

Speaker 2 (01:54:34):
Well speakers are I'd like to say they're very important.
You know, when I started through the seventies, before I
built my studio, I worked in lots of different studios
and Doug Sachs, my mastering engineer, said you must mix
by the meters because I don't know how you can

(01:54:54):
relate to these different studios, especially back then when some
of them just had horrific monitoring, terrible monitoring. But speakers
are definitely very important, and it's how you relate to
a speaker. It's one of the most important things. Because
I've heard good engineers that work with speakers that I

(01:55:14):
could never mix on or wouldn't want to. Maybe I
could would have to. I don't know, and I don't understand,
and they come out with good mixes everywhere. And that's
the key, is that you want you want to mix.
In my early days with Doug, I literally would go
to hi fi stores where you could go in and

(01:55:34):
play something and they had push buttons you may remember that,
where you could go in and go from this speaker
to that speaker to this speaker. And it was always
great to see if all of them were in phase,
because sometimes one of them here they are trying to
sell their equipment and the speakers are out of phase.
It's just a wonderful thing. But I digress anyway, and
that was very helpful in the beginning to see you

(01:55:58):
can't go crazy with that because it'll literally drive you crazy.
The fact that some speakers could be so incredibly different,
let alone what room they're in and all of that.
For me personally, I used Richie Podler monitored on one
six inch speaker, even in this when we went to stereo,

(01:56:20):
and I remember him asking him about that, and he said,
I mix on one speaker because I want to know
what it's going to sound like on the radio. And
he said, if it didn't sound good on the radio,
no one's going to buy it, so it doesn't matter
how it sounds anywhere else. And I can't say that
he was wrong back then. So I started off on
small speakers before small speakers were a thing. And then

(01:56:43):
when most people went to small speakers, there were these
little teeny cubes. What is that three inch or something
to it? To that, and you know, I never could
begin to relate to those because I couldn't hear enough,
you know, And it's what's real. I don't know. In fact,
I remember the greatest thing happened when we when we

(01:57:04):
found an AM transmitter where you could put it in
the studio, park your cars parked in the parking lot.
The transmitter wouldn't go very far, but it would go
to the parking lot and you could go out on
an unused frequency and hear what it sounded like in
your car, because cars were always important, because that's by
and large where people heard still is and today it's

(01:57:26):
clearly most people don't have a good stereo system. They
have their cars and that's what goes on. But for
me personally, I ended up with a Tannoy speaker that
was given to me by Tannoy. When I listened to it,
I liked it better than their previous model, which I
never liked. But I thought the crossover wasn't good, and

(01:57:46):
I gave it to Doug Sachs's acoustical I mean not
electrical engineer to work on a crossover, and he and
Doug came up with what they called the Mastering Lab
crossover and had a little made, a little cartage industry
out of it. And so I've been on those ever
since twenty something years. It's a ten inch coax.

Speaker 1 (01:58:08):
In your book, you stress that it's about the music
as opposed to the sound. Can you give us some
practical applications where you have to make that decision?

Speaker 2 (01:58:22):
Yes, I remember having a tough decision early on when
I was you know, oftentimes, if you have a really
good band, and I'm talking studio musicians or people that
haven't lived with the music. Obviously, bands will rehearse when
they come in and put down how they've been rehearsing it.
But when you've got guys that are hearing the music

(01:58:44):
basically for the first time and whatnot, quite often, quite
often you may get an incredible take on the very
first take. Not a lot, I shouldn't say quite often,
but it can't happen. And I remember a tracking date

(01:59:04):
where the first take felt great and I didn't have
it quite together because, for instance, you know, when you
talk about getting drum sounds, you can get it, you
can work. That's another thing about why it's so weird
to me to spend you know, two days a week
whatever on a drum sound, because all that matters is

(01:59:27):
what the sound when the guy's playing the song. And
you know, I'm I'm okay on the drums. I mean,
it's not my main instrument, but I can I'm doing
I do okay. And I remember helping someone. Someone said,
do you help me get a drum sound before the
guy's the drum drummer gets here, And I went out
and played for him. He got it. And then when
the real heat and it sounded really good. The drum
sound was great. When the guy got there, he said,

(01:59:48):
you wouldn't believe it. It sounded totally different. I said, oh yeah,
I'd believe it. And I've had it where I had
a one professional drummer, Oh my gosh. Jeff Pacara was
on a session Boss session I was producing, and Steve
Jordan was in town, the great drummer, Steve Jordan's, and
he came in and Jeff, who was always looking to
give anyone and everyone a break, he said, he said,

(02:00:10):
let Steve try a take, really, And I thought we
were so close to getting the take really yeah, okay,
And I knew why. Main reason was because Steve l
liked that real pinky sound. So he goes out and
destroys the tuning of Jeff's drum to get it up
high pink, and and he tried a couple of takes,
and the drum sound was not just the snare, but everything,

(02:00:32):
the kick, even the symbols. You know, it's all about
the dynamics of the four appendages of a drummer. And
you know how they're their ears are, you know, are
telling the I guess we'll consider the ears as left
brain how the ears and the left brain are telling
the appendages and the and the right. No, the appendages

(02:00:52):
will be left too, I don't know. Anyway, they're going
to tell them how to play what that they think
feels good, and another drummer comes in and it's totally different.
What can you do.

Speaker 1 (02:01:02):
Well, Bill? This has been great. I have a million
more questions, a lot of them technical questions about boards, eques, whatever,
but we're going to leave it here for now. I
want to thank you so much for taking this time
with my audience. Oh it's my my pleasure. Until next time.
This is Bob left Sex