Getting from the big picture down to specifics, I’m an ex-drummer myself, and your drum sounds—at least since Damn the Torpedoes—have always sounded huge and real, almost bigger than life. The Shelly Yakus drum sound is what you always wanted your drums to sound like live, but never did. How do you make that come out on tape?

Well, with Stan Lynch, when he came to the sessions the first day, I tried to record his drums and finally looked at him and said, “Stan, these sound like pink drums. I’m not going to be able to get what you expect from me with this set.” So we went out to Valley Music and they gave us whatever we wanted to use. So we put together a new set, some of it his and some borrowed, and used heads that complemented the shells, so if the shells were live we had deader heads to tone them down. The tuning and the miking was the key to how we got that sound, and Stan’s patience. We kept fooling with different snares until we got one we liked, and worked on the tuning of that. There’s no real formula here. It’s just experimenting.

Did you use close mics, or distant?

We did both. I remember exactly what I did. Okay, I’ll spill the beans here. Now some of this is what I do on just about every kit I record, but one thing is unique with Stan. On his kick I use a Sennheiser 441. For most drums it doesn’t sound right, but for that shell and that head it was the only mic that recorded in a way that we were looking for. It was so live, so hot sounding, that everything else sounded small. The 441 is a dry, dead sounding mic, but still has quality. I also had a SM57 that I mixed in if I needed it, though you always have to make sure the phase is right. Sometimes I would mix in the 57, sometimes I wouldn’t.

How were they positioned relative to each other?

The 441 was off to the side, pointing toward the back head, about halfway inside the shell, at an angle toward the beater. The 57 was just outside the edge of the drum, but set slightly further away. You know, the sound of the instrument really doesn’t take on all its characteristics until about three feet away, that goes for drums and horns and all sorts of instruments. But normally it’s not possible to pull three feet away, or you’ll pick up everything else in the room. That’s why sometimes you have to use multiple mics, with different personalities. For example, on bass drum, sometimes I’ve used three different mics, and when you put them together they translate as bottom, middle and top. It’s just the nature of what they pick up and you build your bass drum sound from that.

What about other drums?

Anyway, on Stan’s stuff we used a 57 on the snare, I used a 57 on the hi-hit, I used U87’s on the tom-toms with a pad, and I used KM-86’s for overheads. Those are awesome overhead mics. They are the greatest for cymbals. They always come out sounding smooth, never jagged. And then there was the ‘bleed’ mic. When we were doing a rough vocal we noticed that Tom’s vocal mic was picking up some drums and giving it amazing sound overall. He was singing into the mic so we couldn’t use it, it would ruin it, so we put up another mic right near it. It was a SM58 or a 57, and put that on a separate track so we could mix that in. Sometimes we didn’t use it, but at other times it made a wonderful difference. Also, sometimes we would use an overhead shotgun mic straight down on the drums, sometimes we wouldn’t. It depended on how he hit the drums, which changes from track to track, and of course the tuning changes on the drums, too.

So I take it you’ve leaned the diplomacy of working with drummers on tuning!

Yes, it’s a fine art. With the Petty sessions, at the end of some takes, the snare drum head would start coming down in pitch, and once that happens, the sound of the snare—because it is leaking into every mic in the drum kit, even if you use a sample it’s still in there—it’s not the same as having the drum live in the room. The problem is, if you go just a hair too far, the snare drum loses it’s sound. Everything is maxed out. The sounds are just right, and if you go any further, it ain’t gonna sound like what you want. The drum can’t handle it. Tighten the toms more and they sound boingy, tighten the snare more suddenly it gets thin. We’ve gotten everything maxed by having the right shells and the right heads and the right mics all set the right distance away, and a little luck and the planets lining up and all the electrons in a row.

You have all that going on and at the end of a take its dangerous to say to a drummer, “Hey just bring up the snare a little bit.” We have to work well together so that he understands what a little bit means. It’s the tiniest turn on they key. Then all of a sudden that snare drum pops back into perspective and focus again. Remember, I’m doing it like I learned, listening in mono, or a very narrow stereo, and everything is already in balance the way a finished record would be. If the snare drums changes sound, just a little bit, it drops back into the track because other instruments start to mask it. And it it’s changed from what we found works with the other instruments, then it’s not a good sound anymore. Today people use samples, but that hadn’t come into vogue by that time. So its’ still the same theory as back when we were doing four track or eight track. You had to get it right. I still think that’s the only way of bringing a band to the finish line in way…I mean, how many years has it been since some of these records? Twenty, thirty years?

Yeah, Big Pink was more than thirty years ago, thirty three to be exact.

Right, and we’re talking about it today because it made an impression on people, and it’s doing it because of the things we’re talking about today.

Back to the Petty album, how did you develop the guitar sound?

Well, first of all my approach is to get the amp to sound right. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the amp will be up off the floor, either up on wheels or on a bench or chair. Immediately it sounds better. Then, no matter what the player wants, the sound might not work, the amp or the guitar or the strings might not be right. You have to get into…is what is coming out of this amp doing justice to the player? If I have one chance in a million to capture this…a lot of times you have to fool with the amp or some other things.

I can’t record a guitar with one mic, usually. Normally I will use two or three at different distances, usually on different speakers. It’s usually a combination of microphones that gave us a sound that he has fun playing with and one that I can translate onto tape. So I my standard procedure was to use a Beyer 160 ribbon sometimes, real close, like an inch from the grille cloth, and that seems to give me the low end. And then I’ll use a 57 and a 441, or a 57 and a 451. If none of the other speakers sound good, I’ll put them all on one speaker, but out near the edge of the speakers, and at different distances. The 441 might be six inches away, and the 57 a little closer, and the 160 right on it. Then I’ll go into the control room and listen to the sound I’m getting from all three mics, and I try to make sense of which sounds most like that guitar and I use that as the lead mic. And then I’ll use the other two as support mic. But if I find that using all of them sound hollow, because sometimes the phase isn’t right, I’ll eliminate one or use a lot less. So I’ll get the balance right on the mics before I start to EQ. Sometimes if I use two or three, I’ll split into a stereo configuration, go to tape as stereo, even if on the same speaker, because each mic will have its own sound, its own personality. It works, you get the width, you get the size. So I’ll do that if I have the tracks available.