What were some of the pop acts you did in those years, as an assistant?

I did Peter, Paul and Mary, the Hair original cast album, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, but also a number of unknown things.

How did they do the tracking back then? Was it eight track, or still four?

They had an eight track when I got there, and then they had some Ampex four tracks, two tracks and monos. And you would have one of each in the studio, though not always the eight track, at least not when I started. If you were the assistant, you were responsible for all those machines. And if you worked with a guy like Phil Ramone, he’s trying to mix this live, and it’s going crazy in control room. They had this thing called the jukebox, which was about the size of a jukebox without the glass top, and it would split the signal up. It would go the eight track if they had it, and pass through to the jukebox, and there you would decide which of the eight tracks you would mix to send to the four track by throwing switches. That’s why if they listened in mono, the balance was always right, because if the bass and drums were on the same track, sometimes bass, drums, acoustic guitar and electric guitar and percussion all went to the same track. So the only way you could get the balance was to listen in mono, so you knew that as they were going on to the four track you had that balance right. Then it was also split to go to mono, and sometimes they would try to do a stereo mix at the same time. Then they also had a four track in there for echo and delay.

So Phil would be there mixing it live, and they would go in and use the eight track for a remix only if they missed something in the live mix. In that day, it was viewed more as a safety, and everything else was viewed as a master.

In the mix room, as I recall, they had an Altec board, a 3M 8-track and the rest were Ampex 440s. I remember when Eddie Kramer first came in there, and he said, “Mate, if you could please just show me how to use the room. You don’t have to hang around.” I showed him around, then he puts on a tape and pulls up the faders and “A Whole Lotta Love” comes out of the speakers, straight from the eight track. It was amazing. In that day, the stuff that went to tape was huge sounding. For one thing, the boards all had transformers, which the modern boards don’t have. People equate the modern boards with clarity and top end, but really many of them only have that at the expense of no real low end, or should I say a lacking in low end. Transformers, in my opinion, are the only way that you can capture what’s going on out in the studio. You notice that a lot of people with modern boards are brining in racks with Neve or API modules with transformers in them.

Now that we’re waxing philosophical, I wonder if you could back up and talk some more about how you learned to listen at your dad’s studio. Learning to listen for what? How?

Everyone hears, but not everyone listens. By that I mean, one day I’m doing some tape copies for a client of my dad’s, some 7 _ copies that are going to a radio station. They wanted fifty of them. I bring out the fifty, and my dad spot checked them. He had this little Wollensak machine, and I was sitting there--this was when I was about sixteen--and he takes tapes out to spot check them, plays a few, then on one he says, “Did you hear that?” I said, no. He rewinds it, plays it again. Still didn’t hear it. This went on for about ten minutes, but then finally he points his finger when it happens. Still didn’t hear it. All of a sudden I hear this dropout, very subtle and minute, but it was there. It didn’t go away, but just for a moment it dropped in volume. At that moment, it all changed for me. After that, I listened to everything. In that ten minutes, I went from a person who couldn’t hear a dropout to one who did. It was the foundation of everything to come. Before that, I was hearing but I was not listening.

So, when you started listening, what did you hear?

Everything. It was amazing. For example, when we were doing four and eight track, I could listen to records done in New York and tell you which studio it was done at. When we went to sixteen track, it was tougher, and when we went to twenty-four I couldn’t tell anymore. The studios in New York all had distinctive sounds, a combination of the rooms and the equipment, the main engineers who were doing them. I learned the sound of Bell, of A&R, of Media Sound, or Mirror Sound. You could hear it on the radio. But it all went out the window with 24-track. Sixteen tracks on two-inch tape was as far as you could go and still maintain the personality of a room. The twenty-four track machines started to eat up the clarity of the instruments.

Let’s talk some about one of the landmark albums of the late sixties, the Band’s Music from Big Pink.

That was recorded between A&R, four track, and a studio in LA, where they did it eight track. When it was mixed, they had a lot of difficulty getting the eight track to come together the same way as the four track. For example, on the four track songs, if Levon sang while playing the drums, then the vocal and drums went on the same track, with some echo. Whatever he sang as lead vocal, that was on the drum track. Also, the bass and piano were on a track, but the organ was separate. So you have to get that combination right, and the only way to do it is to listen in mono. You need the masking of the instruments to get the EQ right. Remember, if you put them together on a track, you had to get a great bass drum sound right off, you had to work on that until it would stick out enough to work with the bass, but still the snare and the hi-hat had to be there. When it went to 24-track, that’s one reason it didn’t’ sound as good. When you had to EQ something live off the floor…EQ’ing something twice, a little twice, is better than EQ’ing it a lot once, and much better than EQ’ing it a lot twice. Those equalizers, if you touch them just a little, get a gentle slope, it works. But if you crank it up, it gets harsh sounding. With 24-track, those decisions were left to later, so they didn’t get THE bass drum sound or THE snare sound. Then they’d EQ to try to fix it.

One of the things they stopped doing with 16 and 24 was they stopped adding echo to the snare. But back then you had to put it on the track, because you were combining it with acoustic guitar and bass. So you had to get it right, a complete and finished drum sound. Well, when we went to 16-track, I continued to do that, to put echo on the snare, be it chamber or EMT. Nothing excessive, just a halo around the snare, something that would make the snaresound special. So when you got to the mix, you would have the snare separate but it would have a little chamber on it. So when you put another effect on that snare, you were putting it on an entire, complete sound. So when you add your EQ and effects to that sound, it’s totally different than taking it off a tape that is dry as a bone, maybe a little EQ. You won’t get the same sound, and it’s not as good a record.