To start with, Phil would always have pretty much the same musicians playing on his sessions—the so-called “Wrecking Crew.” He’d begin by having just the guitarists play their parts over and over again; there would be anywhere from three to six guitars, all basically playing the same part. He’d tweak their parts and change things until he felt he had something worthwhile, and then he’d add in two pianos, also doubling the same part.

If that didn’t work all together, he’d go back to the guitars. I always felt they should be paid double scale, because they worked longer and harder than anyone. [laughs] The irony was that Hal Blaine, the drummer, was actually the only one getting double scale, even though he didn’t come in until the end.

Once Phil was happy with the parts being played by the guitars and the pianos, the basses would come in next—two or three of them, with at least one acoustic and one electric—followed by the horns and then the percussion.

As I said, the drums were always the last thing Phil would add in, and because the studio was so small, their sound would leak into the other microphones, so that’s when the real work began, particularly in terms of trying to get some presence on them without losing the sound of the guitars; that’s where most of the drum leakage was coming in.

Another big part of the Wall of Sound was the actual air pressure in the room—it was a very small room with a lot of musicians playing all at once, quite loudly, too, so there were all these
sound waves bouncing off the walls.

Does that mean that you couldn’t create a Wall of Sound in a large room?
I don’t know, but I always felt that the sound in any studio was always better when the room was filled with people rather than being half-empty, regardless of whether you could get isolation or not. Also, bear in mind that the echo chambers at Gold Star played a role, although in retrospect it seems to me a little too much credit was given to them as being an integral part of the Wall of Sound.

The biggest part of the equation was the room size, and the fact that the musicians were hearing each other play, live, not on headphones—we didn’t use them. So it was a true ensemble in every sense of the word. It was just a matter of creating the right blend so that you heard this overall sound and couldn’t isolate or identify any one instrument in it.

You know, the one thing we could never get at Gold Star was the Motown drum sound, which Phil loved and listened to all the time. Try as we might, we just couldn’t achieve that, even though Hal [Blaine] was one of the best at playing in a controlled way so that the drum sound didn’t blare all over the room, yet it was a very strong sound.

Hal was one of those guys who own their instruments. It’s as if they’re not even playing their instruments—they’re actually part of their instruments. With musicians of that calibre, all you have to do is put a microphone up anywhere in their vicinity, and they give you everything you need. With some other musicians, you’d have to work hard to try to pull out the sound, and you’d never quite get there.

I only ever used two microphones on Hal: one overhead and one on the kick drum. The kick mic was usually an RCA 77 ribbon, and the overhead mic could be almost anything—it really didn’t matter what you used, although I would sometimes put up a Neumann if it wasn’t already in use on the percussion instruments.

Were Hal’s drums screened off from the rest of the room?
Well, we didn’t have any high screens, so he wasn’t ever completely screened off. We did eventually build some screens that were waist-high. Again, when you fill a room, you get the damping from all the bodies in there.

Were the piano lids down?
Usually. One of the pianos was an upright, anyway, and Mike Curb would sometimes bring in his electric piano so he could pick up a rental fee. [laughs]

Musically, was each part being doubled or tripled exactly?
Generally that’s the way the arrangement was written. The guitars and basses were usually doubling each other exactly—but the pianos often didn’t play exactly the same notes, though they would play the same rhythms. I once asked Phil why Leon [Russell] was playing lead piano, because I thought that Al DeLory was so creative. He said, “It’s because of how big Leon’s hands are; he can reach octaves, and that’s really important for playing lead piano.”

Brian Wilson was a huge fan of Phil Spector’s productions, and you worked with Brian as well. Do you think he was successful in emulating the Wall of Sound?
Brian did idolize Phil, and he often used the same musicians Phil did, but I don’t think he was exactly trying to recreate the Wall of Sound in his own sessions. I remember him telling me that he had written “Don’t Worry Baby” for Phil to produce, but Phil was too busy at the time, so Brian did it himself. Certainly it would have been a natural for Phil and for the Wall of Sound approach.

How would you contrast your experience working with Brian versus working with Phil?
Well, basically Brian was a nicer person. He didn’t have any swagger about him at all; he just wanted to make music. He was actually one of the nicest kids you’d ever want to work with. Brian was also right up near the top in terms of knowing what he wanted, plus he knew how to communicate, he was willing to listen, and he was willing to adapt if something sounded better than what he had envisioned.

Phil was similar in some regards. He would listen, although he wasn’t necessarily waiting for people to present him with alternate ideas. But if something didn’t happen one way, he’d try to get it going another way, and if it worked better the other way, he’d go with that.

You were one of the many engineers in LA who worked on Brian Wilson’s masterpiece “Good Vibrations,” weren’t you?
Yes, I recorded some of it, but I don’t remember precisely which part I did. I do remember that he didn’t have a clear idea of what the whole thing was going to sound like; I guess he was waiting to piece it all together.

Both you and Phil had high hopes for River Deep, Mountain High, which didn’t do nearly as well as either of you had wanted or expected.
That’s right. I think I was actually a little more disappointed than Phil, because I felt as if I had let him down, or perhaps it was the technology that let him down. With that record, he was trying to go a bit further up that ladder towards perfection.

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