In this second installment, engineering legend Shelly Yakus reveals specific techniques he employed while recording Tom Petty’s breakthrough album, Damn the Torpedoes. He also waxes philosophical on various topics familiar to recording pros, including drug use, dealing with drummers and the always contentious Pro Tools issue. (Note that, for sake of continuity, the first paragraph overlaps with Part I.)

So, you started working with Jimmy Iovine when you were on staff at Record Plant in New York?

Yes, he was my assistant. But he was sharp. It didn’t take him long to figure out there was no money in engineering, so he wanted to be a producer. So we started out doing Patti Smith’s “Because the Night” together. I mixed that with him. It turned out to be a big hit, so we figured we could have some success together. “Why don’t we do more stuff?” he said, and he was seven years younger than me, just a kid 23 years old. He’s talking to me about going out and doing stuff, but I was thinking, “Hey, I get a paycheck here every week.” So, I’m supposed to leave here and take a chance with this kid? So I did! (Laughs.) So we got this opportunity to do Tom Petty, and many opportunities followed after that.

Jumping ahead of our story, just out of curiosity, how did the two of you hook up with Bob Seger?

Shelly Yakus at API board, Tongue and Groove Studios, Philadelphia

When you start having hits, you become a magnet for opportunities. And we were working as a team. It’s interesting, as a sidelight, a few of the people we attracted , I think it was in part because we were not into the heavy drug scene at that time. A couple of key acts, giant acts…their managers did not want them around people who were doing drugs.

They didn’t want them to be in that environment, and once in a while we were chosen, over others also with successful track records, because we didn’t do the drugs. We were chosen mainly because we had the talent, but that was a factor as well..

It’s like this, when you start having hit records, people are attracted to you. Jimmy once said something to me, something that is an amazing truism. He said, as a producer, if you do the Rolling Stones or the Beatles, you are expected to have a hit. I that situation, you only get noticed if you DON’T have hit. But if you early records by Patti Smith or Tom Petty, who have not had success to that point, and you have hits with them, then people stand in line taking deli tickets to work with you. And that’s exactly what happened. They view it as, wow, if these guys can do it with these artists, then they can do it with my artist, no matter where my artist is in his or her career. So we attracted a lot talent to us because of that.

So with Jimmy you did Petty, Bob Seger, U2…

Yes, and Stevie Nicks, three or four albums with her, her first solo albums. We also did a Dire Straits projects, and the Petty albums.

You worked under Roy Cicala for many years. Was he a significant mentor in your early career?

Absolutely. Roy Cicala taught me that the only rule is that there are no rules. But you need to learn to listen. Put those two together, then you can do all kinds of things. I have people who come in here who have worked with other people, and they say “You do it so differently.” For example, we try not even to use headsets here. We set it up like a rehearsal room whenever we can get away with it.

When I used to run a studio, I’d have the techs say to me and say, “You can’t do that.” And I said, “Throw your books out and use your ears!” Eventually they’d come around. They’d find out that if I don’t look at what you’re doing, and I don’t look at the meters, but just listen to the speakers, and hey, it sounds pretty good.

You’ve worked extensively on both the East and West Coasts. Are the recording styles significantly different?

Yes, I think they developed along very different lines, and I have a theory as to why. When I heard the stuff on the radio that was done in California, when I was in Boston, like the Beach Boys, the sounds were not aggressive. They were very polite. Don’t get me wrong, I think they were sensational records. This is about the presentation of those sounds. It was more of a hi-fi, FM sound. But when I heard something done on the East Coast, it was much more aggressive, less hi-fi, but something that was equally as strong.

Like Mitch Ryder?

Yes, good example. That was one of the sessions I worked on, Bob Crewe produced them and I assisted Roy Cicala on some of that stuff. And here’s why I think that happened. You never hear people talk about it, but I know this has to be the reason. On the East Coast, the radio stations used so much limiting in their stations, to get the sound across, that when a DJ would talk, this was in the days of AM, his breath was as loud as his words. They made it pump, it was exciting. That same limiting was the records. But when I would go out and buy the record, it wouldn’t sound that way. But still, when I went into the studio, I’d try to make the record sound the way I heard records sound on the radio.

But I understand that out on the West Coast, radio didn’t do that. The stations weren’t limited so heavily. So the guys growing up out there, who became engineers, didn’t hear records the way I heard them in Boston. So they would emulate that when they went into the studio.

So anyway, I knew that if I could make my records have that kind of impact no matter what station they were played on, no matter how they were limited, then I could make a difference, I could get something going. It would be fun for me, and for the band.