Bill Schnee

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 they've sent me the rough mixes and it's really good.

You know, before the digital revolution, there was all the 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 kind of like getting up at six thirty and mixing in my underwear.

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.

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 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. 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.

it's a warmer, richer sound. So that works great on anything acoustic, anything you know, from a piano to voices and even electric bass, which tubes do a nice thing on base. So that's the basic reason.

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 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 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

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.

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 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 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 other two. You just have to experience, I mean, hear it to know it.

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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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, 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.

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 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

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 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. 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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

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. 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 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. 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.

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 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 me off.

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 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 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 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.

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. 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 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 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.

about that. So he was old school, you know, old school guy from Austria, and what can I say? He 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 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.

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 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 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

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.

We were just were doing our own little thing and it happened to work out kind of good.

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 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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, 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,

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 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, 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 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 and faster.

could do, and it was really great. One funny one funny story is I think the very first thing he 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 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 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. 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.

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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, they didn't change with the times.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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

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 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 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 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.

That the bass trum that was the only the bass 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 and it is what it is, and it am there.

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, 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.

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, 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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, 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.

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 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 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

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,

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 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?

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 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. 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 a great analogy, but it's the best one I got. I want a mix to be a beautiful.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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, 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. 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 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 what's going on, but they're going to do what they want to do. I don't know.

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. 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 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.

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, 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, 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 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 want them to be happy. And as far as I know, I have very good relationship with everyone I worked with.

servants roles. You're there to serve the artist and their music. 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.

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 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 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.

needed more. Did you any observations.

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 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 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.

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, and indeed it certainly was.

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 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 and hiring of an engineer, well.

I don't even I don't even pick producers anymore. I call, you know, there were five or four or five at 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, to represent me. And I didn't like the people. You know, I just didn't hit the right ones, I guess or whatever.

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, 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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, 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,

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 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. 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 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, 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 anything like that, and quite frankly, I don't think I had either.

think that sounds like fun. And I got off the 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, 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, 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 what's come from it?

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, 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 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.

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, 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. 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

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.

a sound. It was never a mirror. And the directed disc which goes from the console right to the disc 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,

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

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 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 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, 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. 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, 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. 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 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

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 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.

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 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.

a speaker. It's one of the most important things. Because I've heard good engineers that work with speakers that I 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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.

but it can't happen. And I remember a tracking date 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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.