Welcome, Welcome back to the bob Lefsets Podcast. My guest today is engineer and producer Elliott Shiner. Elliott, you and your compatriots are having these gigs in New York. Can you tell me about that?
Yeah, Well, you know, you've been in the business so long and after fifty years of recording music, there are some amazing stories that go with it. Stories said nobody's heard. Maybe a few engineers' friends have heard the stories, but you know, some of them are so bizarre. And we go on stage and we talk about the various experiences that we've had, like George. You spoke to George well ago and he had like amazing experiences with earth, wind and fire, and now we're hearing for the first time.
I hadn't heard any of that stuff that George talked about.
So how did this come together?
Well, do you know anything about med Alliance?
I do, but my audience give them an explanation.
Med Alliance is a group of engineers producers. There's seven of us and originally it was Al Schmidt at Journey, Philomone, Frank, Philip Petty, George, Me and I'm forgetting one and somebody else and we got together. It was a thing we wanted to get together to help improve audio, help determine what was actually good for engineers. You know, you could buy this piece of gear and it'll help you.
So we were.
Testing out pieces of gear and trying to determine whether it was okay for engineers on professional level. And we did and that's all we did for twenty years. And I had come up with the idea, probably ten years ago, why don't we do this. We tell stories to each other, why don't we tell it to an audience. And the policy of META is everyone has to agree. If you
don't agree, it's off table. So at that point I was getting pretty old, and I mean he was still working and doing great work, but he said, going out on the road and doing this for people, not going to do that, And so we put it in the can. Unfortunately Al died and Trinity died, Phil Ramone died, and it came up about two years ago and I suggested it to the new group. It was me, George, Frank Chuck,
and Frank Check and that was it. We brought on Sylvia Massey, Jimmy Douglas, and Nicole Bowls and everybody agreed. We wanted to do it, and we did our first performance in Ridgefield, Connecticut at the Ridgefield Playhouse and it was huge.
It was great.
The place was filled, they were all laughing, having a great time. And it was our first performance. There really wasn't much of a rehearsal and there was screw up, but it all came off great. It was natural. So we decided to warn that up again. And here we are.
Okay, you're playing for a couple of weeks at the she and Theater. Yes, what are the logistics? How did you end up there? How did you decide how long you were going to play?
Well? I had been in the theater once before and I saw a van there and was amazed with the way it looked, the way it sounded. It had for it only seats two eighty three, but it has a full personum stage. I mean, it's an amazing stage. So we have everything we needed, we need, video, drop down screens. Everything was in place, and we thought, let's do it, and we booked a theater. We did. We weren't hired as an act come in and we delayed a couple of weeks and we start on Thursday, and so that
Thursday and Friday Valentine's is almost Soliah. We're having a great time.
Okay. Is it going to be the same show every night?
No? I mean I've got fifty stories to tell, so no, not at all.
Okay, So theoretically someone could go every night and get a different experience.
Correct.
Okay, how did you decide? Okay, is anybody going to tell a story on stage that the rest of the group has never heard? Oh?
Yeah, we've only heard two stories from each person, so yeah, there's forty eight more from me. Ha ha.
Okay, how many stories are you going to tell?
With the length of each story, it's about two tonight.
So how did you decide what to you wanted to tell?
I usually pick what's funny, what got me into trouble? You know? I had a date one time with Chuck Berry. It was for a commercial, but it was also a documentary and we didn't finish at A and R, and I got a call from the advertising agency asking if I would go down to Saint Louis and work with the finish up couple of overdubs who checked down there, and I did, so I go down there. And this was in the days when somebody could meet you at
the gate. And Chuck met me at the gate and he's standing opposite the gate that came in on and he was up against the side of an escalator and he had his hand around a young girl, young blonde. She was probably half his size, and she was really beautiful. And I go over and we say hi, and he said, you're sleeping at my place tonight and then in the morning we'll go to my studio in Saint Louis. I said, okay, fine, so we go off to his place. He's now he's got a car. We used to call him when they
came out Pimpmo Hills. They had like plastic a plastic bubble over the driver's seat and passenger seat and it just looked it was a Cadillac. It'll look hideous, but he had one of these gut in. We drive up to Chuck's house and there's it's huge, I mean it's really huge, and there's a gate. It opens up. You go into a small area where there's another gate, so the front gate closes, the next gate opens up and you drive up this path. Where where did you grow up up?
I grew up in Connecticut.
Did you ever go to the Catskills, of course. Okay, driving up this path was like going to a hotel in Ellenville. And we're driving up and there's a tennis court on the left hand side, but the weeds are eight feet high. On the right hand side is a swimming pool and the weeds are the same. So we get up there and I'm looking at this house and it looks like a hotel. We get up to the front door and a girl comes out. She doesn't lift her head, she just faces the down, looks at the floor.
She opens everybody's door, everybody gets out. We go into the house and it was like walking into a lobby of a Catskill hotel. There was purple shag carpeting about three inches high on the floors, but he built in the kitchen as you walk in there. We sat down, we talked for a bit and he said, I don't remember the girl's name, the one who looked down at the ground, but he said, she's going to take you to your room. And we go in another part of the house and there are a whole bunch of rooms.
So I go into this one room and it's the same carpeting on the floor, but the bed themselves had bedspreads that were purple shag carpeting, and I walk in there and there are two double beds in there, and she still hasn't lifted her head. I have no idea who this person is. And she says to me, you'll be all right. I'll come back a little later and give you some information, okay. So she leaves and I'm in the room and I'm thinking something feels wrong here.
I don't know what it is. I looked round the room, either cameras or I couldn't find anything, you know, so hell with it. I got undressed, went to bed. About twenty minutes later, there's a knock on my door. I get up, I opened the door. It's this girl again. She's still looking at the floor and she says to me, I'm letting out the dogs. Don't open your window, okay, and made sure the window was closing through. I got back at the bed, thinking I think this girl's gonna
come and chop my head off during the night. So but all worked out well, and got up in the morning and Chuck and I went in Saint Louis. We get to studio. His studio was a fur warehouse and he sectioned I built a room in there control room studio, and it looked like was built in fifty five. It was so old. It was like a three track console, but you can get into there were patches to get into sixteen tracks. It was a sixteen track tape. So it was all going to be fine. I found one
working fader and we did the overdubs. Everything was great, didn't take much time. At about two o'clock in the afternoon, the advertising agency gave me a check to give Chuck. It was the back half of his payment and was five grand. So I handed him in the check and he looked at it. Can I curse on there? Bob? Yeah?
Absolutely, Okay.
So he looks at and he says, what the fuck is this? And I said, I'm pretty sure it's a remainder of the money they owed you. And he said, this ain't money, and he rips it up. He says, I want money now. You ain't leaving until I get cash. I said, I didn't they You know, I was young. I didn't think that anything weird could happen to me. So I called the agency and I spoke to the producer and he said, I said, look, Chuck doesn't like
to check. So he wants cash. Now, well, I don't know how we can do that, but maybe I can get it tomorrow. I said, no, he's stopped letting me leave here until he gets money. And he said, okay, let me get to Western Union. We'll figure out how to get the money to them. And he called me back in a bit and he said, okay, it's coming down Western Union. It should be there by three this afternoon. Okay. So I tell Chuck this. He's fine, everything seems fine.
We're talking talking about politics, and it was the end of Nixon administration and it finally gets close to three. Now, this was their warehouse. There was a very large safe in the room, and it looked like a big bank safe with that kind of door. And he puts his arm around my shoulder and he walks me over there and he said, look, while I'm gone, I want you to stay here. I said, in the safe and he said, yeah, you know, I didn't know what. I said, okay, And
I got in the safe. I didn't expect him to close the door, but he did, and no lights. And I'm sitting in there thinking maybe i'd rush to a little too soon to think I wouldn't get hurt here. And I sat in the safe for maybe about twenty five minutes, thinking, oh my god, you know I could be dead. How much your is in here. He finally shows up, and he's a happy guy. He got his money. He lets me out, Hey, I want to take you
to dinner before you leave. I said, okay, So we go to a soul food place in East Saint Louis and we have a dinner. I said, Chuck, you know, it's none of my business, but what was that all about? And he said, Look, you know, in the fifties, I would do a gig in Texas and they would write me a check and then that night I would leave for Arkansas, and by the time I got there the next day, the check was still good. So at some point I stopped taking checks. And you know, once he
said that, I totally understood. I thought it was, you know, times of change, and these were the seventies, the fifties, and you know that's why people get paid. But it all worked out. Okay. Took me to the airport and we were good after that and never saw him again. I'm gonna tell you one thing I don't like talking about this it's not a good thing. About a month later, Chuck was arrested in Missouri. They had a statue called white slavery, and he was blamed that these two girls
were white slaves. I'm pretty sure he got out of it and everything was cool, but that that was the kind of thing they would do down there, you know, and it's like so evil, but it was weird.
Ask you this, this is a sleazy business. What problems have you had getting paid? And how much money all these years later are you owed?
You know. There was only one gig that I didn't get paid for and I was asked to engineer something. I'm not going to mention the name, and I I was doing a Manhattan transfer rick in LA and this gig was in New York and they were okay about me leaving. I got to New York and I get a call from the producer. He said, we're going to have to delay a few days. Not quite ready, okay. All my equipment was shipped back to New York. And then night before we're going to start, I get another call,
We're not going to be ready till next week. And you know, I'm thinking, why did I come back for this? I could have been finishing off the transfer and then he calls me next week. You know. It was a woman and she fell in love with an engineer that she had worked with and he was not doing the gig. And all I said was, okay, I want you to pay for the shipment of my gear here and going back,
and he said, no problem. I never got paid. It was maybe a couple of grand But in ninety and two thousand and five I got a call from the same person saying, will you mix a cut for a movie for me? I said sure, and she said how much she get? Knowing this was a couple of grand I said, I get something to five hundred to mix and no problem. So I got her back. But that was the only money that was ever owed to me.
Well did you ever have trouble getting paid? Were you ultimately got the buddy?
Yeah? You know, record companies were being incredibly slow to pay, and from the time I started to the early two thousands, it was still being paid by record companies, you know, except like when I worked with the Eagles, they were their own record company. They paid you and you always got paid on time. But while record companies were paying you never knew when you were going to get paid, and you never knew if you gain any royalties.
Do you still own your royalties or did you sell them?
No?
I am and to what degree do you think you're being paid fairly?
I'm being paid fairly for streaming. I'm amazed at how much money there is in streaming.
Are there any records that you worked on that were not you know, in the old days, a physical store had to stop the physical album in order of you to buy it. We're essentially everything is available on streaming. Are there any royalty streams that were very low because the records weren't available whatever. But now, because of the Internet, you're getting paid on these records in sums that you didn't get previously.
That's true. And I have to say a lot of the record labels they would figure out when the album would be coop, you know, and right as it's a battery coop, they'd stopped production, so you wouldn't make anything, you know, unless it was a huge band, you know, they would have to do it. But for spoiler acts they'd usually stop it. You wouldn't get anything, but now you do.
Okay, let me ask a different question. Whenever you're in the studio, assuming there is a separate engineer and the producer. I have never heard the engineer say anything negative, even if they want to say something I'm not talking about. If you're asked, you know, should we do it this way or that way? But the engineer is not rendering an opinion. He is number one. Other than working the board, the number one thing seems to be to get along
and stay calm. Hey, what's your experience and how did you learn to behave behind the board.
Well, my teacher was film own, so he always told me, you know, you have to be friends with the producer and the band or the artist, and you never want them as your enemies. Always keep them on your side. And one of the earlier albums I did was a Peter, Paul and Mary thing. I sat in Fulfill one day and I knew how they would set up and how they would sing all three at once on three different mics, and produce came in. You know, I always question whether
he was really a producer. You know, he would sit there reading the times, and I don't think he ever really paid attention to what they were doing unless they thought they thought it was good. And there was one take on one song where they said they asked him, how did you like that? And he had the paper down load and he sort of turned towards me and said, how was that? So, yeah, you had to learn that.
That's how it worked in the seventies. And at some point they were realizing both the artists and the labels, because the labels were paying these guys aren't on a weekly basis whether they worked or not. And they thought, you know, it's time we started to change things. And they decided that they would try to make the engineers producers and you know, with the artist's approval, and that seemed to be the way it turned. And it was a good thing. I mean, we didn't make much more.
They didn't really pay us. They said, well, you have the credit, you get a production credit, and you can go on from there. Like first thing I co produced was Van Marson Moondance, and having your name on that was like, that was a good thing.
Okay. There are some producers who are big characters, Richard Perry no longer with us, who would come in there divas unto themselves, and they have a vision recording and producing are slightly different, you know, they merge at some point. But to what degree if you're hired as a producer, will you say, well, you know, this song needs a bridge or we need to change it. To what degree will you dig down on a vision.
Level if I'm a producer, yes, oh, right from the beginning. I mean it's I won't go into a study of somebody until I heard the songs. You know, It's always been my policy. I want to hit the songs first, so I get involved right there. But interesting you talk about Richard Perry. He was a good guy from the old school in the fifties. And I got called to
do Today with Art Garfroncle and Richard was producer. And the first day we go in there, Richard hadn't flown in yet from La So I'm doing vocals with Art, and finally Richard walks in and he's sort of not happy with this. I said, well, Art won this thing, so I couldn't say no. He said, okay, Well, Art says hi.
He comes in.
Art's very angry, you know, he didn't like Richard being so late. And Art comes in skintrow room and he said something, you know, you're late. Why are you late? You know? And they argued for bid, well, let me hear what you've done on this. He said, how many tracks do you have? We have like eight or nine tracks, you know, and he said where are they? And I
gave them the faders. He looked at the faders. I don't even know if he knew the song, but he was like he'd get the first two syllables from one take, go to another take, not having heard any of these vocals once in another take, and then it just kept going around from tack to take, and all of a sudden, Art said I'm getting out of here and he left,
and Richard was hired, and he eventually left too. The next morning, I get a call from Arts manager and he says, look, it's not working out between Richard and Art. Could you do me a big favor? I said, sure, what's that? Could you fire Richard? Oh? Boy, fire Richard. I don't do that kind of stuff. You don't want to fire him, You fire him, you know. So he never got in. I just left. There was nothing to do, and that was that. I finished the record with Art. You know, he was the producer.
I'm going to jump for a second. A few years back, there was a lot of publicity about you getting into car audio with accurate Hey, how did that come to be? And B tell us about the process. Well, it was right.
About five years after five point one started to come to light, and at some point it was right after two thousand and one, after nine to eleven. I said, how are people going to hear this? I don't know of anybody who's going to buy four more speakers and seed you up in the middle of their living room with cables going all over the place. And so I thought back to every format, and every format always happened in the car. When we went to from tape to a cassette and E track cassette, it was only in
the car. Nobody bought those things and it happened for a while, and then after that it went to CD and it didn't happen until it was in the car. I thought, well, there should be no difference. Why don't we put in a car. And there was a DVD entertainment group in New York and they were having all these manufacturers come and talk about what they're doing with five point one, but nobody had put it in a car.
Nobody had plans to put it in the car. So I don't even know who I was speaking to, but they had been to come and talk about five one, and I got in my head that I'm going to go to every manufacturer and say, hey, it's never been done, why don't we put it in one of your cars. Why don't you try and sell this to a manufacturer?
And every single person from every company said nah, but you know, we think it's going to be too difficult to add all that information into a car, and they all said no. I got a call about six months later from Panasonic. They said, we like your idea. We did a mock up system. Would you come out and see if it's what you would like? And we have
a company that's interested. And I got out there. I helped tune system got it to a point where I got my stuff sounded good, and we played it for Accura and they were totally blown away by it, and they asked us to they want to do this in the two thousand and four Accurate TL and we did it. They it was standard gear. You didn't pay extra for this, and we actually made up a demo disc of all the five wins that people had done at that point, and they gave it away if you bought the car,
and it was a then deal after that. I mean I eventually was in every accurate model, and it was only till about two years ago. They wanted the system was named after me, and they wanted to have a bigger name, so they decided to go to Harmon Harmon Cardon and they did that. But I'm still in two of the cars because I don't know whether they couldn't
get one that was fitting. And in the Rocker report that came out last Friday, they had ten SUVs and they called them best the shirt and class and you know BMW for a power and a Cadillac for comfort, all these things, and finally came down to audio. The best audio you'll ever hear in a car is the ELS system in the RDX Accura. And I'm thinking I haven't worked on it, and that car is still using the same program I used six years ago.
Okay, when Panasonic called you in it and you subsequently worked with Accura, did they say this is the equipment's in there you tune in or did you have input as to what speakers and amplifiers they put in the cars?
Sign I would have to go by what the car company wanted. They had specific standards. You couldn't put a speaker head. You couldn't put a speaker there. The amp's too big. You know, there's a whole lot of I get to approve it though. You know. In their first car they put in the tweeter and it was really a good place on the top of the dash, and they actually put in insulated, an insulated front windshield so
nothing would bounce off it. And you know, they really took consideration that they wanted to have a great system. The year before I came in, they had another company in there and it was raided by Car Current Track or one of those magazines as the worst Ordeo system you can ever have. So they were looking to make this the best started system and it was. It was. It was rated the number one system in all of car audio.
Okay, in my car, I have an aftermarket system. I have top of the line FO call speakers. I have a sub warfare from AVII, which I don't think is in the business anymore. I have a JLA amplifier at the top of the line Alpine head unit forgetting tuning, which I'm gonna get to in a minute. Is there any manufacturer who is selling sound of that quality, not that enough. No, so let's just assume I drove my car over you. That's what I got, And I said, Elliott, tune in. How would you do it?
I'd have to know the program that they use to install it. There's there's usually a ton of VQ available for every channel. So for every speaker, is is there a two channel system?
Yes?
Okay, so but you have multiple speakers.
Yeah, I mean I have a uh two in the front doors, one in the rear door, and then the sub warfare in the back.
Okay, yeah, all those speakers have a ton of VQ probably, so I need access to that system and I could tune it from there.
Okay, let's jump back. How did you decide to get into this business?
Well, it was right after nine to eleven.
No, no, no, not the car business. I decided to get into the music business. To begin with.
I was a player and I knew that I wasn't going to go anywhere, you know. I had a record deal on London Records with the band that we were. Okay, we didn't write the song. They want to release a single on us, and we didn't write it. We didn't do anything. They hired a bunch of great New York studio guys to record the track. We could be there, but I knew it wasn't going to happen. But being in the studio. The engineer was an old timer named
Bob Lifton. He was a really good guy, had a great recording studio, and I thought, Wow, this would really be something to maybe go in this fashion. The other thing is when I heard Sergeant Pepper for the first time, I listened. My uncle had a pair of Costs headphones and I listened to it and read the album jacket and I looked at Jeff Emeric I said, I want
to be this guy, and you know I eventually. My uncle was a New York studio musician, a trombone player, and he was great friends with Phil, and I told him what I want to do, and he said, meet me tomorrow morning at an R and gave me the address. And I walked in there and Phil was doing the date and they had just finished, and my uncle told him about me, and he said, let's talk and went to his office. We talked. It was a ten minute interview.
I was totally different than what the engineers and seconds were like back then. I came in in hippie clothes and most of the guys who were in jackets, ties, white shirts, they were business guys. And Phil was staring at me. I had an appleseed necklace around my neck and he said, what's that you're wearing. I said, it's an apple seed necklace. He says, where do you get that? Oh, there's a place down in a village. Hey, can you
get me one? So I started that way. You know, I had to get a sports jacket and ties and shirts. And as a second, you were in the hole. You were doing stuff you never thought you do. And I ripped my jacket on the second day and I said, Phil, you know I don't have enough money to do this, and he said, well, can you be more pleasant than what you wore to meet me? And I said, yeah, I could do that. I don't have to be a hippie, you know, but.
You know, yeah I could.
I could dress differently if I don't have to wear a jacket. He said, okay, I'll make that a room. Now, nobody none of the seconds have to wear jackets. And that's the way it was. But if for about a year everybody was a hippie, they were all the engineers were wearing different clothes, so it was it was great.
And let's go back before this. Where do you grow up, Brooklyn? And what do your parents do for a living?
My father was a mechanical engineer and a World War Two hero, and my mother was a nurse.
And how many kids in the family? Two are you the older the younger?
I'm the oldest. And they got divorced at some point and my father had two more kids. My mother had another kid, so I have a few step brothers.
Okay, your band, What did you do in the band? What did you play?
How's your drummer?
Okay, drummer's always a business guy. What inspired you to pick up the drums?
I don't, honestly can't remember, but seeing Jeane Kruper and Buddy Rich playing a man's and what they would do, I felt like I would love to do that. So I talked to my uncle and he said, well, I have a teacher for you in down in Manhattan Beach, and you know he's a great guy. You love the guy. So I started taking lessons and I was playing on a pad for it seemed like a year, and I said, when can I actually play in drums? He said, you could play in drums anytime. And so I told to
my uncle, I said, you know, I don't. I wouldn't know what to do, and I don't even know if I have the money to buy them. And he said, I'll pick it out for you. I'll take care of everything. Buddy Rich which was his best friend, and he and Buddy went to Manny's on forty eighth, of course, and picked out a drum set for me, a Slingerland drum set, and that was it. You know. I brought him to my house and I played drum set constantly, annoying everybody.
Right, that's gonna be my next question. Okay, did you play in bands before the Beatles?
I did, but they they were bands, Like one summer I worked in the Catskills and I was in a band there. But what you played was fakebook stuff, you know, old songs, and they were dance and that's what it was. At some point I got into a surf band from a surf been from Long Island. Played that for a while and then when I right after high school, I actually got a call to play in a band that was going on the road with Little Anthony and the Imperials, the ron Ats, Ruby and the Romantics. So it was
all three of them playing home. You know, they would do plan the same night, and I did that and I was the only white guy in the band, and it was sort of a fun gig for me. Okay, was college ever in the picture. I went to Brooklyn College for about six months where each class was like five hundred people, and I said, no, this is not working and I took off to play in a band.
Okay, you're on the road. You're the only white guy there was, you know, the Civil Rights Act whatever, but that didn't really come until Johnson. What was it like being on the road. What insights did you gain it being a black person on the road.
Well, the last the next last gig was in Miami and we were in We were driving everywhere they would They were on a bus, we were driving and we got in the car and that night from Miami, I was driving and we asked what was the safest way we were leaving at night to get through Georgia, and they told us how to go and we didn't know
what we were driving into. And there was four black eyes and me and we go through this one town and all of a sudden, there's a red light flashing behind us, and that there were no blue lights for cops. It was all red lights.
And it was a.
Pickup truck with a gun mount behind driver. And he came out and I was driving. He said to me, going mighty fast, boy, And then he looked in the car and saw the rest of the guys were black, and he said, you know what, I'm gonna turn around. You follow me. I didn't even see it down and
we go back to what this town was. It was two stores, both uninhabited, but the judge lives above one of them, and he woke him up, called him down, and they sentenced us to five days in jail, and should have been because what it was we were doing thirty five. That was the last sign we saw. And he said, no, it's thirty here, and the judge said it's seventy five dollars a point, so you need three seventy five if you're going to stay out of jail.
Three seventy five. We didn't all make that, you know, so, but they sentenced us to five days in jail. And I wasn't thinking about much of anything, but they had to come too. They were locked up. There were two cells in the basement. One was for me. The other guys stayed in another cell. And you know, I didn't think about it. I felt like we were, Okay, we're gonna have to pay time, but it's what it was. The good thing is that Jerdge's wife was a cook
and she burnt uspiels that were incredible. So we got along, we talked, we had fun. It wasn't until I saw an easy Rider and I said, oh my god, man, you know, we could have died in that place and nobody would have ever known. But we got to have got back up north.
How long were we actually in jail?
Five days?
Wow? There wasn't a gig that you were supposed to be at.
Yeah, we missed it. Nobody asked about us either.
Okay, so what happens when you hear the Beatles?
My life changed? I mean it. I couldn't listen to anything else but the Beatles, you know, every moment of time and listening it was all Beatles and listening and headsets through those times. Was remarkable. Hearing how these guys engineered and what they did. When by the time I heard Sogan Pepper, it was like amazing. How did he do this? You know? I just there was no other way. I wanted to be a beatle. I want to work with them.
So how did you get in this band that signed to London Records?
I got a call. I knew the bass player and he told me about what was going on. We started playing gigs in the Bronx at this one club that loved us, and we were there like every Thursday and Friday, Saturday, Sunday for months a time, and we got pretty good. We didn't look like a band, but we got good and they signed us.
Okay, going back to Phil, I knew Phil, but I knew him outside the studio. In the studio, what was Phil's magic? What did he bring.
Well? Like when he said to me about an artist and a producer, he bront that kind of magic. How to treat people? Don't ever don't ever condemn if you're an engineer, don't ever argue with her. Second, don't put him in place where he's going to be embarrassed. And so I think I did it once in my whole life, where the second did something. I said, what are you doing? What are you adope? You know? And I never ever did it again because for Phil tell me and later
on I only knew him as an engineer. I spent my second career just working for Phil, and when he started to produce, I wasn't there. I think he called me twice when he said, we engineer for me on these two projects. And you know, it wasn't enough to really get a feeling for what he was doing. But you know, have you seen that Billy Joel h Doc I mean, seeing what he was doing. I missed all that, you know, I didn't see all that from Phil. You know, he was an engineer, a great engineer.
Let's go back to when you're a second. If you're in a busy studio a second, you could be working almost around the clock, getting no sleep. What was your experience.
Yeah, Well, in my first year, Phil was doing a movie with Peter Yarrow and it was a movie about woodstock. It was before a woodstock and it was just the town was like the people who lived there and it was very sany you know, it was mind bucklering. But we worked on the end of the movie. We were close to the deadline and we spent I think almost seventy hours in the studio just working. I don't know how. I know how I did it, but you know it wasn't great.
Okay. As a second, how did the clients treat you on record dates?
Great? Really great? But you know within r you would work from eight in the morning till five in the evening on jingles, and those people treated you like shit. They just didn't like you. They thought you were low, you had you had no credibility in their eyes, or like the arranger who was doing the music, they you were just a boy died them. I actually did a commercial with the arrangers said, hey boy, they didn't bother to learn.
Your name at that point. So how did you ultimately get behind the board?
Phil was funny about that. He would pick us by anything he ever did to make somebody an engineer. I was doing a project with Phil. I was the second. It was Jimmy Smith and I think there were five guys in the bed at that point, and it was book Monday through Friday, and we started seven in the evening after the jingles had to be set up, and we worked till about midnight. On the third day, I'm set up. I set the whole day to Phil and he says, or rather, it's about ten minutes before, and
no Phil. Phil always shut up a half an hour before. And I started looking for Phil and can't find him, not in his office, nobody. He finally calls with about five minutes despair, and he says, look, I got some problems I can't do to say, you're gonna have to do it, and I'm on the phone. I said, I can't do this. He said, yeah, you can do it. I said I can't do this. I said, you can do it. Just do it. You saw how it's been working, Just do it. And I did it and it was good.
It was okay. He came back to the next side to finish and it was all good. And that was the first experience for me.
Okay, let's talk about that experience. Were the MIC's already set up or did you have to deal with Mike Blazman.
Yeah? I did that because I was second, So I set up on exactly what we did the previous tune now, so Phil would just come in and get levels. In those days, there was no EQ, no limiting. You had to mic things, you had to place mikes. But you know, Phil would say to me, you know the guitars, run, go out and move the amp where's it now? And he had a change the mic on the app. And I saw all this and learned all this, so I knew what was going to happen, what I needed to do to get sound like Phil.
At the time. How sophisticated was the board.
It was a three track radio broadcast console and we had I mean at the time there were four track tape machines and Phil put in an Altech mixer, a six channel mixer below the desk, so if you wanted to use the fourth channel, you could use that. But generally, you know, on a big date where there was strings, horns, vocals, all the rhythm section, you had to listen it was combined.
Like Phil would put all rhythm, drums, bass, guitars, piano, anything, percussion, anything on one track on track three, but he had to blend it in. He hadn't decide right then and there no going back. You could decided that the balance is right. And he taught me how to listen for that.
Okay, they're all these technological breakthroughs in the late sixties early seventies in A and R. Did they buy that stuff? Were they early on that stuff or were they leap.
No, they were early, yeah, at forty eighth Street. It was right next to Manny's and there was a bar there called Jim and Andy's, and all the musicians would go into the bar. And at some point we were being kicked out of that studio because they're going to build a big high rise. But Phil bought Columbia Studios, the original studios on Seventh Avenue, and turned into I mean, it was one of the greatest rooms ever. Frank did all his early recordings in that room, and he did
his very last recording in that room as well. And so when he moved, when we moved off for the seventh Avenue, all of a sudden a track was out. He bought an a track machine. He did one funny thing when I came there with the mic selection was pretty incredible. He had all great two mikes and real fancy. At that point, Neuman came out with the U eighty seven, which he felt that was the new standard. He sold all these great mics and put in maybe fifty U
eighty seven's, you know, and we started using him. But there was something it didn't have. It was clean, it was a good microphone, but there was no character to it. Which all the tuoe mics had and this didn't, but he did. He so that that was a change that needed to be made, and a lot of people were doing that. Most people got rid of there. They're great two bikes in New York.
So we went, you know, scully out of twelve. But basically it went from you know, four to eight to sixteen to twenty four. Tell us about but what tell us about the evolution of the boards.
Well, the boards didn't change once we got to seventh Avenue. There were new consoles and they were all capable. The one that wasn't was a telefunking console which only had any track output, but we only had an a track machine and it usually worked out. But all the other consoles were now at sixteen and he had two consoles made for an R by a guy named Neil Munsey, a Canadian, and he built everything to do anything beyond that.
So he knew about twenty four possibly coming in, and sid come in pretty fast within a couple of years, and so there were twenty four buses on those consoles.
Okay, you have this Jimmy Smith date, how long had you been a second before that date? And after that date? How long does it take you to get more tied behind the board.
I was a second for about eight months and fill gaving the opportunity. But I had had plenty of time behind the console because Phil's policy was when the studio's not working, you can come in. You can bring a rehearsal, bland or a band you like and work with them. So we had access by ourselves to the alarm system, the elevators. You can go in and get there and just work, and he was totally cool with that. So I had a pretty good amount of time but doing
demos and screwing up all the time. And it wasn't until Jimmy that I had a little more conscious about what I was doing and what could be bad and what to look for and trying to blend everything in the mix that they would come in and listen to it and you know, it be okay. So after that time, I think they got me started doing jingles and that's all I did. But then I had a friend from high school who was a trombone player in what was that big horn band, Blood, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Yeah,
and they were doing a day. The whole band was doing a day for another artist, and my friend Jerry called me and said, you want to do this? Yeah, you know. So it was the whole band and now I was doing a record day for the first time. This is in sixty eight and it worked out well. Brick came out. It was at a hit. There was nothing about it that appealed to anyone, but it was fun, it was good. It sounded okay to me at the time.
I never listened to it again, but from that point on I started to get dates and the office who booked everybody said, what you've done record date, you can do others. And they were the ones that gave me Van.
To what degree did you have to bring in your own business and hustle or did studio manager give you work?
Well, they gave you work for a while and they say you're only as good as your last hip. And I didn't have any hits at that point, but they gave me Van and they said, you know, they actually had a bunch of guys. Van was going from one engineer to another, but I was the last engineer that worked with Van tracking and I stayed to mix the record. So that worked out great. And when that came out, that was wasn't a big hit where it sold a lot of units. I think it took like three years
to go gold. But it got a tremendous amount of airplay on FM, and you know, and now I was known for having done that and having mixed that, and now calls were coming in for me and they didn't have to place be anymore. People were actually asking can I work with Elliott? And that was a thing, and now I could say, well, I think I deserved more money. And you had to go through it, you know, failed to take care of that. You know, his partner did all the negotiating with engineers, and it was hard. It
was difficult to get them to pay. I think the last, the last time I worked on staff, they paid me one thousand dollars a week. No profit sharing, no nothing, no anything, you know, but a thousand seemed pretty good. But then I realized that I was bringing them at least a million dollars a year in the dates I was doing, And I said, I went back to him, I said, you know, I think what we should do is I don't want to be paid anymore by you.
I want to get a commission on the hours the tape and rentals and they hempted hard and didn't want to do it. And I had an Ashford and Simpson record coming up, and they said we're not going to do it. So I called Valerie. I said you could do me a big favor. I told her what was going on, and Nick heard about it too. I said, canceled the time, and she called up and canceled the time, and they said what happened? And I said, look, you don't want to pay me. I don't want to work here.
I could work anywhere and get a commission. I think I didn't know, but I was wanting to take a chance to say why should I be here? So they finally agreed to everything I said, and it was fifteen percent commission. So the first week with that for Simpson, I went from one thousand to six thousand. They went nuts. They hated it. They wanted to change it. Okay, we'll give you fifteen percent on time and we'll give you I think it was ten percent on rentals and five
percent on tape, so it came down. But I was making so much more money. You know. I stayed A and R. I did everything at an R until people started calling me and saying, hey, can you come out to LA, can you do this? Can you work as a power station? You know, so things start to happen.
What year was that when you started to spread out work in other studios?
It was seventy three, okay, is.
You know people want to work with people who were successful, and you had some success. But what else were you bringing to the studio? What was the magic that you had that others didn't have?
God, I wish I could say I don't really know. I mean I knew from Phil like it was something to set up a room. You know, you're working with an artist for maybe two weeks at a time. They had a room totally blocked out, and I was working with a band called Jackie. The artist was a guy named Jackie Lomax. He's still live anymore, yeah, And they wanted to record everything live and he wanted to sing. And the room we were working in had one vocal with so he was set up in there, but the drums,
the bass and two guitars. Now two guitars, would you know? It wasn't the right room to be doing this then. And I ended up and was I got scaffolds in the room. They were about eight feet high and I had the amps put on the scaffolds, thinking well, be less stuff going through the floor, and we did that way. But when they walked in and saw this, they were like, holy shit, this looked great. You know, so I accomplished something doing that. To me, it sounded awful. You know,
it really didn't work. But they loved it, and Jackie loved it, and he love everything about it. So that's the only thing I could think of it, you know. I had people thought I had magic with drums, and it maybe did because they started work with Steely and they wanted something that was different, and I did what they wanted and I started to get place. So well,
that's the guy only does is Steely Dan. And if you want your record to sound like that, you know, and most guys didn't, so it was problem getting bagged like that.
Okay, in the early days, you talk about mixing, you know, recording three tracks, you're talking about phill blending the sound. But it's not very long till we had sixty channels. Yeah, you got to mix down to twenty four, et cetera, et cetera. How did you learn how to mix? Trial and error?
It was for me it was using speakers that were not very good and listening to a mix at a very low level. You could barely hear anything that was going on. You had a demand such quiet in a room when you mixed, and you know, I insisted I would never let anybody put their hands on a console and say can I do the guitar or can I do the bass or I never did that, And Steely was the first one that said that. Where Walter wanted
to work guitar, Gary one who worked the vocal. You know, it was just like and finally, after about two passes at Black Cow, I said, this is not working.
You know, you.
Guys are making mistakes and you're lasting up what I'm doing. I can do this all, just let me do it. And they backed off and that's where it went from there on. I did everything by myself.
Okay, there were very particular cats you mixed, and you sent them to mix. What did they say? How many times did you have to remix a tweak till they were satisfied?
On Asia, that was the first record I mixed for him, and it only happened on one cut on Asia, And what happened we did the cut? It was twenty four track, and it was loaded with different you know, on one track there would be a guitar, a vocal, you know, different things on the track, and you constantly you'd get as far as the verse and have to repatch certain things, or had setups for where you knew you were going to have to bring that fader down to and we
did that. And there was one spot in the mix right after Steve's solo where the bass had to cut out, and I had to cut it out before and after the solo we went back into the next part. I never put the bass on because you could hear a little bit of the bass through the drums, and I thought it seemed okay. They got back to California and I get called from Gary and he says, there's this Asia has no base in the end. I said, no, that can't be. You know, we're coming back. We want
to do that, do that again. And I started thinking about it and realize, you know, maybe I didn't put the base on, and sure enough I didn't. So but I had notes for Asia, I had photographs where the EQ was where you know, it was all manual. There was no computers, no nothing. So that morning I got to mix up close, really close to where it was, and I said, they walked in the city and I said, you guys are fucking crazy. There's plenty of base on there.
I kicked it up point and I said, listen to this, and I played the take and they said, no, that's that does sound like what we have And I started laughing. You know what you do? Try to remix it? Yeah, you know, I got it up. I said, okay, let's start again. And when we started a whole song from the beginning the first time it took I think it took three days to mix that.
Generally speaking, do you mix fast or slow?
Well, from doing jingles, they used to mix fast. By the time I got to the Eagles and Steely Steely first, Yeah, I was mixing pretty son.
Okay, let's use the Eagles as an example. By time you work with Eagles, they've had experience with a lot of other people. So what's it like working with a client that you know you're new, but they're not new to their own music? How demanding and how accepting of you are they?
Well, I had been working with Glenn a lot before they got back together, so I did a bunch of things with him and I had quite a few hits. So when they got back together, Glenn said, Glenn called me up. He said, because there was nothing going on, he said, I feel like doing an Needles record. I said, no, come on really, and he said, yeah, we're getting back to here. Do we want you to do it? I was beside myself, and Irving called me up. He said, I'm going to fly you out. I want you to
have the band rehearsing because it's for MTV. And I came out. They were all on acoustic guitars. Acousta pays, no dryme stuff going on. Just hearing these guys sing, and it was mind boggling that these guys sounded as good as they were and they accept me. I knew Timmy from before because he was in Jimmy Buffett's ban for a while. And meeting Joe and Don and Felder, you know, it was a great experience for me. I felt very comfortable. The hours were incredibly long, but it was well worth it.
So once you start to have a success today producers have managers, et cetera. But we're going back. You know, you're there more in the beginning when it blows up Are you hustling for work yourself or are you sitting there waiting for the phone to ring?
What's it like in what party, what time period?
Let's start with the seventies. You leave you know, you're talking about seventy three, you leave A and R, And let's talk about that period. There was a lot of money before the business crashed in seventy nine. Could you just wait for the phone to ring? Or were you out working it saying hey, yeah, you know you need to work with me. I'm good, you know, you know.
Blah blah blah. I had a manager and they were pretty big, very good, and I never heard at all. I mean, I was working all the time in those years in the nineties, the beginning, like ninety one ninety two, it was harder work with us.
So how'd you cope with it?
I didn't work And that was at that point. That was when it was like ninety three. Glenn called me up and said, do you want to do an Eagles record? And that changed my life right then doing the Eagles. I had so much stuff after that.
So doing the Eagles, did people call you just because you did the Eagles?
Yeah? And because it was MTV. It was what they call that show unplugged, right. So right after that, I got a call from Fleetwood Mac. They were doing Unplugged. They wanted me to do that, but they wanted me to produce it as well with Lindsay, so I did that. After that, I got a call from John Sometimes the mind goes Cretin's clear Water. He was doing the same thing and he said, well, you do mine, and I did his. So it was We're constantly coming in and after that, people just I would do a lot of
unplug seth just mixing. They weren't me to mix it more than anything.
Well in those days, you know, like sometime in the seventies, FM would broadcast live stuff in stereo. But mixing. You know, when you're mixing Asia, you want it to sound good on small speakers, but you also want high fidelity. You're mixing for television. Most people are listening to a tiny little speaker. How do you do that?
Well, by the nineties it was stere and you know, I'd been using the end it's tens for a while and I knew what level to listen to and what would give me in return. So you know, if they were there was always a set of General X or something nearby, so if the band came in, they could hear it a louder on those.
Okay, are you still a fan of the NS Tens?
Yeah? I am.
Okay, So I call you to work to what degree are you particular about equipment?
I'm particular. You know. I've done all my best work on a Neive console, so I try and to always work on an EVE. I'll direct some to a studio that has an EVE.
So what's your take on SSL? When that became in and they had their automation, et cetera. What did you not hear or there? What did you not like about it?
I didn't like the EQ very much, but I did an album. He was a songwriter, an Irish songwriter, Gary Katz produced it, and he asked me to come over to Paul Brady.
Yeah.
Paul Brady, Yeah, And I was mixing on the SSL, and all of a sudden I went to recall a mix and erased it, and every time I went back, it would erase a mix. So after that, I said, I'm done with this.
Although I happened to love the sound of the record. That's a great record. Yeah, thanks, really, I listened to that record, can't stop wanting you and then trick or treat with Bonnie Braid. So what point do you get a percentage? I'm talking about a royalty.
It really started with me with Hornsby, the very first Hornsby record. That was you know, I had earned royalties, but you know ten bucks a quarter orangsby having a record like that, it was very big. I mean it bought me in my house.
Do you remember how many points was at one point? Or what was it?
Uh? It was it was two.
Okay, we're all getting older by the minute new people come up. Does it get to a point people say I don't want you, I want the younger guy. He worked on the younger thing. Do you find that ageism involved irrelevant of talent?
Well? I know that's the reason nobody else says it to you. You know, and I think about some of the artists and making records stay They don't want to work with me, but I don't really want to work with them either, you know. So you know we're taking it on the road and telling your stories. Now.
Okay, it switches to digital this century in terms of recording on computers. You know, pro tools, logic, et cetera. That's a huge evolution when that starts to happen. Are you all in and learning? Are you like one of the people say no, no, no, I'm holding on that stuff will never work.
No. No. I went along with it, but it never ever said don't use analog. I was still in favor of doing analog before approach tools and sitting here, I haven't told you this. Josh knew it, but sitting here in the corners George best merk and he hasn't heard anything because I'm in buds. But we used to get in arguments all the time about Didge and analog, and he would say, you don't know what you're talking about. Dig is better, and I would just be off on analog.
And finally one day we got a call from Berkeley in Boston to both take part in doing working with Kathy Mattea. She was there doing a writing clinic and they had written a song and they wanted to record it, and George and I came up there to do it, and uh, he wanted to do it? Did I want to do analog? And we did it both ways, and after we were done, George looked at me, George, remember what you said, no, he said.
The analog does sound betater. Okay. At this late date, you know, there's hard to get tape. There was that class system for a while.
They was supposed to imitate analog, but the sampling rates have gotten higher and higher and higher. Yeah, today, how do you feel about digital compunity analog the same?
You know? I I always when I did antalog, I always work with Dolbie. You know, I recorded a fifteen with Doby's, so the noise level was pretty good, you know, and to day I like that.
Okay, let's talk vinyl. So in the old days, the records were cut out aalog and they're on a vinyl record, which inherently has compromises. Does it make any sense to have a digital recording on vinyl.
Well, they're doing it, that's not my question. Yeah, I think so, whether it's good or not, it could be. I don't know. If I couldn't stay one way or the other. Oh no, don't do that. You know, people love vinyl, and you know, there's a fair amount of vinyl being sold now, especially in New York. And I've done digital records that came out on vinyl and they sound great, and you know, with new formats and Vinyl one hundred and eighty.
They're pretty great. Wait, let's hold on a second. You're cutting digital, there's no compromises. When it goes to vinyl. There are a million compromises. You know, roll off this and that. Doesn't that affect the sound?
Well. A lot of them are doing one side double records, so you know you get two songs on the side. It's pretty good. Yeah, I can't complain about that. I've done. I did some. George did a record with Jennifer that was what record was famous, famous Blue Rine Code, and I did the one right after and they were both done. You did digital, right, Yeah, I did too, But I did Yeah, it was tape at that point. It was ditch tape, uh and it went the final and it
sounded great. I couldn't complain about anything.
Okay, when you were talking earlier about this person who stiffed you shipping your gear, do you still travel with gear?
No, not anymore. I just make sure that they have what I need at the studio, and its usually speakers, and most places have in us sense, and that in itself is if they haven't even n s tense in goodbye, some set.
Okay, do you ever get starstruck?
Yeah, when the Eagles the MTV thing came out. We're up for a couple of awards and I had co produced set, and I got the the Grammys Radio City. And in all the times that I'd done interviews for magazines, they would always say, well, who if you work with, who do you want to work that you haven't worked with? And I would always say Peter Gabriel. And so we went to the awards and my wife and I were in the third borough at Radio City, and on my side was Peter Gabriel. On her side was an Evedder
and I turned around. He introduced himself to me and I told him who I was, and I must have said it fifty times Peter Gabriel, you know. And he said, oh, wait, are you the guy that wanted to work with me? And I said, yeah, I'm that guy.
He said, what for.
What? I thought it would be good for me?
So was that it?
Yeah?
That was it? So he never called you, you know, after all that, But I.
Did get a call from Phil Collins. I did the Tarzan movie with him.
Okay, so to what degree are you still working today?
I'm still working, but not as much, and I don't want to make records when nobody's playing with each other. So I'm doing more jazz than they used to. And I like what happens. And a lot of people talk about what happens with jazz band and what feeds it. Like George, did he tell you about his encounter with A one He was I think he's on Claude and he sent them a message saying AI. And he sent them a mess it's saying, why does AI music sound so fucking awful? And they wrote back to him and
they said, well, they're probably not playing in the same room. Uh, they're not together, you know? Was there a lot more than that? The six points come here.
But the idea of it being impossible for AI to have intentionality? You remember this, I said you.
Of course, George, we started off with it, and I totally agree with you. He h.
Do you remember when we used to share buds with our girlfriends but one guy yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, and the other would take right right. And AI has these uh, these limitations, right, I've got to put it in the right ear.
Okay.
AI has basic limitations that are pretty hard to overcome. But one is that it can't have intentionality. It can't intend. It can't intend to write a song.
Well, I find it interesting that all the talk from the record companies is about AI. When you talk about the intentionality and the creative process, no one is focusing on that.
No, but that's that's what gives music. It's humanity.
I agree, and that's one of the problems with the business today.
Absolutely, but it can't. It can't. AI can't say, ah, wait, I'm lacking humanity. Maybe I can fill it in with this element of humanity. AI can't do that. It can't self evaluate.
Well, I think that we've lived through thirty plus years of technological innovation and the new new thing, and they keep focusing on this. It's like, oh, it's going to be another step. When I agree with you, you can get listen. I think we talked about this. AI can't create something new. It can only be an amalgamation of what came from the past. And this is a business that's all focused on the new got I who can they come up with that? That's what we're looking for.
It's also AI is invariably a mix of other other forms and other approaches, other ideas, to the point where the result of a cycle of AI where it's cycles where it goes through organizing a result an average result, you inevitably end up with a beige sludge of mixed ideas. And that that's not new, that's that's just pablem that's that's uh. That's not something that establishes a new type of music. Good vibrations. I can't invent good vibrations. It's
not an average of anything. It's new, and it's came from somebody's recesses of somebody's brain. In this case, Brian was his brain. Who knows where that came from?
Well articulated In any event, you're both there and I know you're having a rehearsal tomorrow before you go live. I want to wish both of you good luck. It sounds like you're doing well. It's sold out to begin with, and Elliott, I want to thank you so much for telling your stories today. You're not on screen even though we're audio only. Can you hear me there?
Yes?
I can, Okay, there is. I could tell. It's funny because in a lot of businesses, you know, competitors don't get along, but you guys are big buddies, so that's great to see so Elliott, thanks so much for taking this time with my audience.
Thank you so much for having me. You know, we've you've always said things about me in your interviews before, and there were such nice things. You know, it was could have finally got a chance to be with you.
Well, you know, I always admire excellence and some of those records. I mean that that Hornsby record. I forgot you did that, but that Paul Brady, you know that. You know, Irving sent me some of the stuff before it came out. The Eagles, did you tell you just hear those voices together go wow? Yeah, yeah, really something Okay, until next time. This is Bob Left six