Mario Caldato | TapeOp

A couple of things inspired me to pursue this interview. First, I was looking for something to compare my own mixes against in the studio. I started popping CDs in the player. When I got around to the Beastie Boys, I thought I had found the sound I was looking for, but it was a little too deep, rich and loose to apply to my recordings. But it made me wonder — hey, how did they do that?! It must be Mario Caldato, Jr., the guy who's mentioned and raved about on just about every 5th song on any Beastie Boys' album. It's not often that a band will bring the identity of their engineers/producers to the attention of the listeners by including them in their lyrics. I wanted to know who this guy was. Also, I was thinking about how great it is when a band returns to record a second record with me — I get a chance to improve upon our earlier efforts, to correct some mistakes or out-do the previous record. The band and I know more of what we want to accomplish, and it's easier to start the process. We don't have to start cold. Mario Caldato, Jr. knows this well. As engineer/producer for four of the five Beastie Boys commercial albums, as well as numerous side project/independent releases with the Beasties, he has virtually been a member of the band, both in the studio and on the road. After contacting the Beasties Boys' label, Grand Royal, I finally got a call from Mario himself. I flew to LA and spent a day in his studio. Mario (40 years old, though he looks 30) is a great guy who had some great stories to tell about recording the Beasties and becoming a sound engineer. He and "his girl" were expecting a child at any moment, so he stayed near the phone.

When I listen to the Beastie Boys records, I notice there's a lot of emphasis on the deep, low-end sounds — bass, drums and rhythm — and not the trimmed- down ultra clean detail and sparkly high stuff which is popular with radio and in today's pop music. In a sense, it's going against the grain of what the popular music business wants to hear. How intentional is that on your part?

It just happened because we didn't listen to a lot of pop and stuff that was on the radio. We just always went for what we were into. We did the same thing you do — listened to other records that inspired us. "Hey, let's check out The Meters and listen to how it's recorded — like, man, listen to those hi-hats." There's no tricks or sparkle there. It's just raw rhythm and playing, which is the meat of the music, ya know, the rawness of it cuts through. For me it's just the simple way to record something — put more focus on a good groove as opposed to the technical.

I've tried to figure out how The Meters did all that stuff. I think they probably didn't use many microphones.

Yeah 4-track, it's crazy. It's a good plan. Just one or two mics on the drums. It's always in mono bass, guitar and keyboards — boom, boom, boom. Sometimes they panned something, full to one side or the other, but basically it's just mono, I still think that's the best way to learn, to work with a 4-track, and just work on the music. Then you can develop from there.

I heard you got started with music when you were a kid. When did first get "hit" by music?

I got interested in music at a young age. I took piano and organ lessons. When my Dad bought me a Silvertone organ, that was a big turning point. The electronic aspects of pushing buttons and getting weird sounds was interesting to me. When I got a little older, I had friends who had a band. They asked if I wanted to jam with them, and the only thing I had was the organ. I actually hauled it over to my friend's house and started jamming. My organ wasn't that loud so we hot-rodded the output of the speakers and ran it into an amplifier. It sounded like Deep Purple, like fuzz organ. I was kinda like rhythm — we had a guitar player who'd do solos, and I'd just rock the chords underneath it. I just had to do a couple notes and it sounded heavy. I played in a band in junior high and high school for a few years, doing covers and a couple originals. We just had a blast. After graduating school, I eventually bought a synthesizer and an Univox electric piano to give me more variations on my sound. When I saw synths at the music store, with all those sound effects I was like, this is what I want!

Yeah all the knobs. I went a little crazy when I saw that too.

The sound was cool. Filters, sirens, sound effects, white noise, pink noise — it was a neat item. And nobody had 'em at the time. It was like 1976-77, so I was the first one in my neighborhood to have a synth. But I sucked as a player. I was more into the sounds. Eventually my friend from Gardena High School, Money Mark, bought a 4-track, a Teac 1/4" 3340, and decided he was just gonna make music on his own. He was a one-man band kind of thing, and just started recording stuff at home. All of us, all our friends, were impressed by him. We used to think, "Wow, he makes songs... it's got the bass, drums, guitar... how do you do that?" He figured it out. His dad's an electronics guy and Mark is very talented. He bought a couple pieces of gear, some SM57s, had some drums and other stuff, and started mic'ing things-up. He turned me on to recording and technique. He was living with his family, with his two brothers in a little house, so he needed to move his studio out of there. So I let him set up his studio at my house. I had a back-house I rented from two hippie brothers. I was seventeen when I moved out. We started building up equipment. He got a tape echo one day, I'd bring in a flanger, I got some mics, and then I'd walk in with a condenser mic, an AKG 414. Whoa! It just grew from there. Soon I bought my own 4-track and then we had two 4-tracks. We could bounce between the two machines and add tracks.

What was your next move? Did you start recording bands?

We did that for a few years. He wrote all the songs and played almost all of the instruments. Occasionally he had other friends, good players, come over to play drums or bass. The ska movement was blowing up in the early '80s — The Specials and Madness and all that stuff was happening. We got inspired by that whole thing. Shit we could do that! We really got into ska and reggae. I started playing bass with his brother, who played drums, and we got another friend to play guitar. Mark wrote songs and sang, and we were his band, The Junglebugs. We played for a few years, we did a bunch of gigs, and we pressed some acetates that we sent to local and college radio. Eventually we got into a 16-track studio through my friend Brian Foxworthy who was a student at Harbor Community College. They had a 2" 16- track. We recorded our best songs there. I put up the money to produce it and we made a single.

Did it sound better than the stuff you did in your home studio?

It came out different because of 16 tracks and more mics and better quality gear. Actually, some of our own stuff was captured in a different way [at home]. It was just a great experience. We were all psyched to have all that stuff in this studio — headphones! drum kit! direct boxes and everything! To me it just opened the door even wider to recording. I signed up for a class at the college so I could have access to the gear. If you become a First Engineer you can use the studio. That was my goal. I started taking courses there in the recording arts, the teacher, John Payne, was very knowledgeable. He went with more of a technical aspect. We didn't do a lot of recording — he left us to record on our own. He explained what microphones did, transducers, traveling sound, compression, reverbs and delays. It was a good class. I got access to the studio and worked with Brian. We produced this almost-all-girl band, Alice I Wonder. I got into recording and producing. After a couple of years, The Junglebugs were starting to phase-out. I was collecting equipment and got into the PA business and doing live sound. I was into live mixing. I really enjoyed going to the shows. I started watching people mix — I could do this — I had some mics and some equipment, some amps. Next thing ya know I'm getting a little PA setup, a DJ rental, and I'm doin' some gigs, then I'm going to Hollywood to the clubs. Then on to a whole new phase. The PA stuff started generating money, and it was interesting and exciting too. I used to go to a club called Power Tools. It was the best club in L.A. — like a New York-type club, an underground club. They had big halls and set up big art installations. Andy Warhol used to go there, and all kinds of people would show-up, actors and all these freaky people. It was a scene. I was there one night and the Beastie Boys were coming to play. They didn't have an album out, they just had a single, I think it was "Slow And Low". Me and my friends were like, wow, cause every once in a while the club would have a performance and they would stop the DJ. So these guys were up on the stage ready to perform. They had three mics and a DJ setup and were testin' the mics — one-two, one-two. DJ Hurricane was testin' out the turntables and cueing up the first record — chukka- chukka-chukka-bowm. When he hit the first note, the 808 bass sound, the whole sound system shut- off! So [the Beastie Boys] said fuck this and threw their mics down and walked off the stage. Aw man what a bummer! It really sucked cause like fifteen hundred people were there. I was like damn, this PA is bullshit. It was like four speakers and a 200 watt stereo power amp, you know, like a home stereo amp. It just collapsed. The setup sucked, the speakers were on the ground [instead of raised-up]. I was so mad. I had to find out who runs this place, who owns this club. I found the owner and said, "This is embarrassing. Ya know your sound system just doesn't work." He said if I had the equipment I could come back next week with it. So I got some wires and some amps, I raised the speakers up. The owner was so impressed, and I got the gig. I started taking care of their sound system. I bought him a 500- watt amp and four subwoofers. The go-go dancers could be on top of them — they made a perfect platform. We got more amps — a $1500 investment — it made such a difference. All of a sudden they had SOUND, and people were psyched.

Did you meet the Beastie Boys that night?

No not yet, that happened later. I got to be friends with the DJ there, Matt Dyke. He was into all kinds of music. He played everything — early good rap to hard rock — Zeppelin, old Aerosmith, AC/DC, Stevie Wonder, Kraftwerk, Brazilian, Sergio Mendes. He was very tasteful. He'd play some Latin Jazz and go into some Missing Persons or Sex Pistols — he would just play it at the right time. He knew how to rock the crowd so they would never stop dancing. It was just amazing. Matt was trying to get into producing. At his house he had a 4-track cassette, so I told him to upgrade a little. He got a Tascam 388, the kind of 8-track with 1/4" tape and the mixing board built right in.

I love those!

Yeah, they're great, I made a lot of records on those. We used the closet in Matt's living room as a vocal booth with a Sennheiser 421 mic. He also bought a EMU SP12 drum machine. He had thousands of records that he started sampling, and I did the recording. The first guy we recorded was Tone Loc — that was the beginning of Matt's label, Delicious Vinyl.

Did you make money off that record?

It sold 2.5 million records. I had half a point on that record. That was the full length, Loc'ed After Dark. I still had my day job of 10 years as a machinist, making aircraft parts, which I did from age 17 to 27. There was a point at which recording and doing the PA rental business generated more money on the weekend than my day job. So I went in to work one day and just quit — no two weeks notice, no nuthin' — I said "Man, I never want to do this job again." That was around 1988. When I quit my job, I got $9,000 in severance pay. I didn't know I was getting that money! I got out the old Recycler [the want ads]. I'm buyin' a 16-track! I bought a Tascam 1" [MS16] with an Allen and Heath CMC-24 board with MIDI-mute automation. The board had selectable EQs and stuff. That's all I needed, I was used to using two-band EQ — bass and treble. [laughs] Three bands is great! So I bought it and started using that. We did a single, called "Cheeba Cheeba," pressed it to vinyl then played it in a couple clubs. People were getting into it so we did another single, "I Got It Goin On," and sent it to a rap radio station in L.A. It got up to #4 and sold 10,000 units. We were like, this is good, were on the right track. Then we were working with all these groups at the same time — Young MC, Def Jeff, Body and Soul, Mellow Man Ace. In the 2 years I worked there, we were doing a lot of 18-hour days. People started calling us up sending us stuff. One day we got these 4-track demos from two guys from Pomona, EZ Mike and John King. They had a rap [radio] show at Claremont College. They would play rap stuff and they would make their own music a little bit. They had been playing "Cheeba Cheeba" on their station. These guys were genius. They were kinda ahead of us. They had loops layered down, they listened to a lot of Public Enemy and were into all the multi-samples and cuts. Matt heard it and said "This shit is cool man. Let's hook up with them." We brought them to our studio and re- recorded their stuff on 16-track. That was the beginning of the Dust Brothers. We heard that the Beastie Boys were getting off their label and were looking for a new record deal. We sent them two songs — "Car Thief" (Stevie J. was rappin' on that one) and an instrumental, "Shake your Rump", that we remade on 16-track from the Dust Brothers 4- track version. The Beastie Boys flipped out and said we gotta come out there right now. For the official meeting, only two came out — Mike D. and Adrock, MCA wasn't there. "These tracks are pretty cool... how'd you do it?... is this your studio?... that's pretty cool man, we want to try to rap on these." Sowesetitup-itallcamefullcircle.Ihad become a recording engineer and was making cool music. That's when we started Paul's Boutique [1989]. Delicious Vinyl had sold 2.5 million of the Loc'ed After Dark album, the single, "Wild Thing" sold 2.5 million as well, and Young MC had sold almost 2 million records. I had points on all of them, but I got gypped, with every deduction they could take out. I got a check for $20,000, which is amazing when you are used to getting $300 a week. I got about 4 or 5 checks like that and I was stoked. Delicious Vinyl kinda peaked out, too much success too fast. I quit working there and the Beasties hired me and we worked for nine months on their second album, Paul's Boutique (Mostly as the engineer — sometimes producing, with Dust Brothers usually producing and putting the music together then the Beasties would write words and do vocals on top).

Where did you do Paul's Boutique?

We did some of it D-Vinyl, still in my friend Matt Dyke's living room where I had all my gear. The Beasties sometimes called that place "Mario G's". Then we booked time at The Record Plant in Hollywood. That was my first time going into the big studio and doing a real project. The Neve board, the Studer tape decks, full access to all the mics. But we didn't really use it. We did everything in the control room. That record was all samples except for one or two songs. We did one song at Ocean Way where we recorded live bass and guitar for "Lookin' Down the Barrel". I did a rough mix of "Egg Man" there and we used it on the record instead of the real mix. It just sounded better. The intro to "To All The Girls" was done at D-Vinyl. When the record came out, it didn't do so good. The president of Capitol Records was fired two weeks before along with the whole staff, so there was no promotion. The band decided they didn't want to go on tour — they had girlfriends and they wanted to stay home and chill. They made a lot of money on the first record [License To Ill, 1986] and had caused a little havoc, so they were just gonna hang around and jam.

Where?

In L.A., they had moved out here. It was good for them to come out here — good weed, sunshine, California girls, all that shit. After we did Paul's Boutique we realized we had spent a lot of money in the studio. We had spent about a $1/4 million in rights and licensing for samples. $1/4 million in studio costs! Just a ridiculous amount. So they busted out the guitars, bass and drums and started messin' around. We got some equipment and started jamming in the guys' houses. They rented this big house that had a big gate with a "G" on it at the top of the driveway so they called it the "G- Spot". That's where the whole "G" thing started. It was some big film director's house. You used to have to hit a button to open up the gate. One day we were playing ping-pong in the living room, and we could see a car coming towards us down the driveway way too fast, then we saw it was Mike D's car, and he crashed through gate. He came flying down the driveway and didn't hit the brakes in time and smashed into the wall. We were right on the other side. It coulda been really bad, we were all in shock. Then we just started busting out laughing! I told Mike my friend Mark was a carpenter and could fix the gate. So that's how Money Mark got to meet the Beasties. Next thing you know he's got a keyboard, he's hanging out at the house and jamming with the Beasties. The neighbors started complaining so we had to rent a rehearsal space. We brought the Tascam 388 over to the space and I recorded a little bit. The next thing you know, we've got a couple of ideas, we got the rhythm parts for "Something's Got to Give".

I read in the liner notes of Beastie Boys Anthology: The Sounds Of Science [1999] that you did a vocal part on that song.

Yeah, the "da da da" part. So we decided to get some money and build a little studio to do a record. I had sold my other 16-track stuff to Delicious Vinyl, I had outgrown it. I wanted a 24-track machine and a board. We spent $30,000 for the board, a Neotek Elan, $30,000 for the tape machine and $10,000 in cabling. I had all the outboard, all the compressors, all the mics — this is all we needed. We found an old ballroom with parquet floors and a stage at one end. Mark started tearing down walls and we built a little isolation booth, put in a window and made the studio. We called it G-son, the son of Mario G's. In 2-1/2 or 3 years we made Check Your Head [1992]. We took our time. We had a basketball court and a lot of times we'd just go in and fuck around. When we wanted to record, it was all set up, a beautiful environment. So we'd just jam, record, sometimes I'd roll DAT, sometimes I'd roll the 24-track if it was sounding good. When they'd play, I'd just be mixing and adding effects to what they were doing. Then we cut and pasted and we had a whole record. Some songs we had a on DAT tape, just 2 tracks, and we added stuff to that. Some songs were on 24-track and some stuff was cassette because we had a "B" studio with a 4- track. That's where I did the vocals for "Something's Got To Give". We went on tour and I mixed them live. I got to experience that, it was amazing. We went everywhere — got a taste of America, Europe, Asia. The tour was a success and when Check Your Head came out it did good. We made a lot of mistakes on the record, but it was cool, it all kind of worked and I had a good time making it. We did the next record [Ill Communication, 1993] in 6 months cause we were pumped. We knocked it out then went back out and toured again. We went to New York for one month — we recorded some rhythm tracks, we did "Sabotage", and a couple other things. "Rickey's Theme" was recorded at this funky old studio called Tin Pan Alley, then we went home and finished everything. After it came out and we did another year of touring. It was four years before we did Hello Nasty [1998]. During that time I started working on other projects. I worked with Beck, including one song on Odelay ["Minus"]. I produced this band called Mother Tongue, worked with Los Lobos, John Lee Hooker, John Spencer, and a Brazilian band. One day the Beasties finally called and said they wanted to do the next record [Hello Nasty]. They had moved back to New York, so I went there.

How long did that record take?

I stayed there for 9 months. All together it took a year of solid work. We went to L.A. for a month, then New York for a month. They ended up taking a couple weeks to do a hardcore record [Aglio e Olio EP] in the middle of Hello Nasty. After that, we worked at Sean Lennon's studio doing more basic tracks for a couple weeks. Then a couple more weeks here and there. I had the whole record in my Pro Tools rig.

What's the real story behind "Country Mike's Theme"? [There's a funny note in the Sounds Of Science booklet about this song].

At our studio, G-Son, there were two other studios in the building. There was this guy who rented out one room. His name was Mike and he wrote country songs. This guy was crazy. He used to come to his studio late at night for a couple hours and had a little programming drum machine that did everything at once. It played guitars, bass lines, and everything. Then he would make a cassette and send it to somebody national, and they would cover the song. One day, his car broke down and he decided to start walking. He walked from Santa Monica to the studio, like a 3-hour walk. And we were like, this guy's nuts. He said, "It's good for me, I walk a little, get some ideas, by the time I get to the studio I'm all ready to go." Then after he worked for a while he'd walk back home. We nicknamed him "Country Mike". Once in a while he would poke his head in to see what we were doing and he'd be like hmmmm, and we'd go and poke in and see what he was doing. His studio smelled like cigarettes and booze. If he was having trouble with a chorus or something, he'd go out and get some booze. He had a whole country/blues thing goin' on — it was real. We used to shoot the shit with him and smoke a little weed, he was very trippy. We used to kid Mike D. and call him Country Mike. While we were working on Hello Nasty they were screwing around and got into this mode and started making country songs. They made enough to fill a whole record. They recorded 10 songs and did a version of "Rapper's Delight" and called it "Country Delight". The whole thing was just a joke, but they ended up pressing some up. I have a copy on vinyl.

Has the writing process evolved for the Beasties? Do they have a more refined idea as to how the song should sound or do you guys still chip-away at it, adding stuff here and there until it comes together?

The process is always changing. On the last record Adam Horovitz did most of the ground work. He makes music a lot, he lives for it. He puts all of his energy into it. He came up with 80 or 85 percent of the music for the record, then we did the vocals and the arranging.

You are known for getting a soupy thick analog sound, but I look around your studio now and see your analog 24-tracks covered with plastic. You've switched to digital as your final medium and you still seem to get your sound. What's your take on the digital format?

People definitely doubt digital all the time and, you know, it is different than analog. But I ultimately say, it's the music that speaks. Obviously, if the Beatles had digital, they probably would have done it digital. Digital recording is a mirror image and you hear back what you put in, most of the time. Sometimes you don't want it to be so literal. In that case, you just start runnin' it through stuff. If you really like tape, run it through tape. There is nothing like tape sound, I love that sound. If I had my choice I would use it. Nowadays people can't make up their mind, they wanna cut this, they wanna change that. You can't give them those options as quickly on analog tape without having to spend a lifetime cutting tape, chopping and chopping.

How do you get stuff to sound the way you want? What do you use to fuck up the sound and fuzz-it-out on the way to digital?

Every trick that we can come up with. I have all that outboard gear, I use inserts and run the drums through a SansAmp, run it through some plug-ins. We use "lo-fi" a lot, it just dirties-it-up. A little this, a little "Amp Farm", there are always ways to make something more dirty. Just run it through a preamp. If it sounds too clean give it some more gain, adjust it to where you like it and bounce it in.

What preamps do you use to get that fuzzy characteristic?

I have Neve, Telefunken, API. Each one of them sounds different. The Neves don't distort quite as nice. They have a lot of headroom — they're pretty clean. When they start breaking up sometimes they don't sound like you want them to. They're hard to fuck up. It's a smooth kind of distortion. With an API you can get more of a crunch. The Telefunken has this warm crunch. It's really nice. It's like the Beatles shit. Or you can compress it, run it through an 1176.

Do you have cheap mics that you like to use?

That's my favorite piece that you are asking me about. [He disappears to the other room and returns with a mic called the "Sony Variety Mic", singing "So What'cha Want".] It doesn't get used as much as it used to, but this is it. We used it with our 4-track to do demos in our B-studio at G-Son — a little room with a 4-track and a drum machine. We just plugged it into the 4-track. The mic has built in effects and it distorts perfectly. I found this little mic at a karaoke shop in Little Tokyo. It had all these effects and was $29. I bought it and used it on our demos, then we decided to use it on the good versions of a bunch of songs on Check Your Head. It has a distorted sound built in, it does it automatically. It has a high voice "yeah boy yeah", a low voice, computer voice, and tremolo and bizzaro echo. [As he goes through the variety of settings on the mic he mimics the way the mic would alter his voice] This mic is one of my classics. This is the one we used on "So What'cha Want".

The song "Futterman's Rule" on Ill Communication is awesome, the bass is great. The congas have a cool space around them and they sorta' jump out of the speakers. Did you use a phase/polarity flipping trick to get that sound?

We recorded the drums in a little room, the hallway, with one mic. The bass was on the stage through an amp mic'ed, fuzzed-out, distorted. I think we used two SM57s on the congas, so maybe some bizarre phase-thing happened. They were overdubbed. I use 57s a lot on percussion.

Were you happy to be able to work with Beastie Boys over an extended period and be able to expand on every new record with the experience gained on the one before it?

I worked with them for over ten years — there's been a lot of good times. It was definitely a good run. I wish we had made more records. MCA is really into studying Buddhism a lot nowadays. He's in India right now. Mike is running the label, Grand Royal. Adrock is doing BS2000, the new record. He's always making music, he stays focused on that. It's him and Amery, the hardcore drummer, they recorded it themselves. It's like beats with Farfisa organ and voice. It's good, you should check it out.

What kind of equipment do you use for your cool reverb and delay sounds?

I like analog delays so you can manually adjust them while playing. Spring reverbs are great like the Furman, Roland, and AKG. We used the Roland tape echo on a lot of Beasties stuff.

Do you have any tips for getting good sounds from inexpensive gear that anybody who's into recording can try?

Just go for it. Experiment, that's all I did. Sometimes mistakes can sound really good. Instead of putting the mics where everyone else puts it, put it somewhere else and face it in the wrong direction, run it through something and see what it does. Start hitting buttons, you might surprise yourself. Shit, run it through Tapco EQs, run it through some garbage. Run it through some Radio Shack stuff, just be open. There's no rules, nobody says you have to do this or that. You know what? You got a Yamaha compressor? You got an Alesis? They all sound good, they're all different. Don't be afraid. Try dumb stuff, put the mic in the refrigerator, put it in the closet — try weird spots. If you're gonna do drums, set up your usual mics, kick, snare, overheads. Then tack one on the wall or facing the other way, go as far as you can in the room, try to get some depth on it. Open up the door and put it in the next room. Put it outside, get some ambience. We set up a mic and I did vocals in a tree on a still night, and it sounded great. We were pullin' in some helicopters — they came in at just the right time in the song. The little bugs and birds and bees added so much life and texture to the song. It was really amazing.

What are you working on now?

I just finished the new Day One record, an English band. I really like it. I did their first one also. I did a live Brazilian record, and a remix of Deltron. I'm working on some Sparklehorse stuff now that I really like too. I just did another record with Money Mark [Change is Coming], we just finished it. It's all instrumental. Really nice. Good recording techniques. As usual, Mark taught me a few tricks, he always has something up his sleeve.