From Tape Op: No. 12

Phill Brown has had a 30 year long career as an engineer, something most of us are barely even capable of imagining. And not only has he been working for a long while, he’s worked with some of the greatest artists in the world. The Rolling Stones, The Small Faces, Traffic, Bob Marley, Brian Eno, John Martyn, Joan Armatrading, Throwing Muses, Talk Talk... Talk Talk, really.

If you’re thinking Talk Talk was a silly electro-pop band in the early 80s, think again. They turned into real artists, and their last two records, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock are among some of the most amazing sounding records you will ever hear. And Phill was there. We caught up with Phill in Seattle while he was recording the next Walkabouts album, of which Chris Eckman is a member, and we got together for breakfast [thanks to Carla] and a nice little chat on recording.

Phill: Those Talk Talk records we were making, we were doing everything in real time. So we were using five slaves for every song. Every song had five, twenty four track, slaves which you could use depending on what you wanted to record. So that, some of the simplest things that became incredibly hard with that because of how much information you need. To change one of the lengths of one of our songs... .

Larry: Splice all the tape?

Phill: And redo the coding, I mean the whole thing becomes a nightmare.

Larry: They had that with Elliott Smith’s record. They started splicing the master, and then all of a sudden the slaves were jumping. It can be a real nightmare...but you know, you can work it out, it just takes time.

Phill: Yeah, there are ways. On one of the Talk Talk records we had to make one of the songs longer, which is even harder. I think it did take a couple of days to put in these extra 5 bars. We had to start with a new master...
We mixed to the Mitsubishi [digital deck] as a final master and we had all these analog slaves of what we recorded. So we copied and made new masters to the point where we had to elongate it and then offset things in. At the time Mark [Hollis, Talk Talk leader, vocalist, etc.] went, “I need this five bars longer.” Nobody thinks about the reality of it.

Larry: So you copied parts of it?

Phill: Some of it was copied and others were flown in to recreate a bass part from the bars we had, put the drums in, and build it up. Once you get those extra five bars you basically lock up everything that you have and copy the rest of the song. It is a lot of fiddling about work. This was 4 months into working on the album.

Larry: Those records, Laughing Stock and Spirit of Eden took a while to record didn’t they?

Phill: A year to make each. In the dark.

Larry: What was Tim Friese-Greene’s role in making those records?

Phill: Tim was co-writer and producer and one of the keyboard players. He’s a very important part of it.

Larry: Was he an original member of Talk Talk?

Phill: The first two albums were done with other producers and other writers but I think it was their second album that they were trying to finish and Tim was brought in for a remix situation and he mixed the album and got on well with Mark. Tim’s been there from Colour of Spring on. I came in just after that.

Larry: What was your official part in making those records?

Phill: On Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock it’s purely an engineering credit. There’s been a bit of discussion on this new solo album I did with Mark because another person originally produced it and Mark got rid of him and rid of the album and we started afresh. I got what he wanted and I kind of imagined that I would be credited as co-producer. We’d talked about that and that was the agreement. Then, he thought about it a lot, and although he’s given me a producer’s percentage of the royalty, it’s down as engineer because that’s how he wants it to look.

Larry: Hopefully you still get on with him okay...

Phill: Oh yeah. We may work on a project together later this year. He’s slightly tricky. I can deal with that kind of tricky because that’s artistic. When it comes to doing business and all of that, the music business really pisses me off...
I wanted to ask you about that. You started as a tape operator in Olympic Studios in London and you’ve had to work your way up. For some sessions you get to produce stuff and for others you engineer. What do you see as the difference between those terms?

Larry: I wanted to ask you about that. You started as a tape operator in Olympic Studios in London and you’ve had to work your way up. For some sessions you get to produce stuff and for others you engineer. What do you see as the difference between those terms?

Phill: I guess I see my trade as an engineer. Even though I produce things and co-produce things I see what I do as an engineer. I tend to work the same whether you give me credit as an engineer or a producer. It’s hard to say. The kind of producers I worked with originally were people like Jimmy Miller or Steve Smith (who did a lot of the early Robert Palmer stuff -we did an Elephant’s Memory album together) who were producers who set up a situation and controlled things but they were vibe merchants. Jimmy Miller was this incredible kind of energy and drive and force. He made the session feel like you wanted to be there and make music. But he wasn’t a hands on producer... Growing up in the `80’s the kind of Chris Hughes [Tears for Fears] or Trevor Horn sort of production. I always think that they’re making their albums. They’re making what they want to do for themselves. I’m not saying they’re not good producers, but I think that’s the biggest change in production. There was more of an overall control, a bit of a vibe. They’re not so much into deciding which
hi-hat and which beat and all that. That was left up to the musicians and the engineer.
I worked with Shel Talmy and those kind of guys. They didn’t touch the desk [mixer]. It wasn’t part of what they needed to do. They’d tell you what they wanted. When I worked at Island [records] in the early `70’s the vocabulary was very much into “brightness”, “harsh”, and “trashy”. No one talked in frequencies. That all came later. I still don’t talk in frequencies now.

Larry: It’s all relative anyway.

Phill: Exactly. What works one day may not work another. I was working with Little Feat years ago, in the `70’s, doing a Robert Palmer record, and they were the band. We were having trouble getting guitar sounds and Lowell George came in and said something like, “Three at one point eight.” He left the control room and we fiddled around and he came back later and said, “So, did it work?” And I said, “No, actually it’s three at two point one.” He looked so puzzled. A week before he’d done a session and gotten a great guitar sound and said, “How’d you do that?” and the engineer got into the one point eight or whatever.
I don’t really think in those kind of frequencies. It’s much easier to talk in terms of things needing to be brighter.

Larry: The term I use a lot lately is “throaty” which isn’t describing a frequency...

Phill: You can run aground if you start thinking of everything in frequencies.

Chris: A lot of engineers seem to treat tracking as everything having to be pure sound and then at the end you mix. I’ve noticed with you that even at playback you’re triggering delays and dropping the drums out where don’t think they should be. It’s a more playful kind of approach.

Phill: On these tracks [the Walkabouts] I’m trying to think of what... When we come to mixing it will obviously be kind of fast so to have some time to try some things out is good.

Larry: I remember when Pell Mell were working with Tchad Blake [Star City]one of the comments they had was that he set up like a mix during every tracking session

Chris: I think it makes it a little more playful. Everybody feels more comfortable because you’re getting closer to it.

Phill: I do stuff in England with this guy Rollo, a producer, doing a band Faithless. We work with the SSL in mix mode and you also record. You’re still overdubbing but as each thing’s done it’s put in to its place, reverb might be added. We’ve done tracks where we started in the morning with nothing but a drum loop and at 11 PM put down a pretty good rough mix. All you need to do a few days later is to recall and tweak a few things you really don’t like and you’ve got it. At first it was a mindfuck, I tell you. It’s so confusing. And even now there are days where you’ve got 56 channels of SSL in this configuration and you go, “I hope we don’t have to track anything down” because it sounds good but what’s doing what? You have to be very careful about how things are routed.