Brian Virtue a.k.a. Gummo: Bob Ezrin, Janes Addiction, Deftones, more!

Back in the summer of 2002, when I was visiting Los Angeles and visited Henson Recording to interview Bob Ezrin [ Tape Op #31 ] for Tape Op, I met a youngish, peculiar looking fellow right upon entering the control room. The engineer at the helm of the studio's giant SSL console was a chap everyone referred to as 'Gummo'. Gummo, for those who don't know, is a cult film by director/writer Harmony Korine that portrays life in a seemingly toxin-ridden town-that- America-forgot: Xenia, Ohio. This Gummo, Brian Virtue, was the recording engineer of this project that I stumbled upon (which happened to be the massively overlooked [IMHO] Jane's Addiction's Strays album) resembled the aforementioned film's main character, but he's no mutant. Instead, he's an amazing engineer who can handle the complex requirements of a major label recording, which can sport no budget or any other constraints. He is still a mentor under the legendary Bob Ezrin and is currently his co-producer du jour on many projects, including the upcoming Incubus record, which will be released in 2005. The following comes from a conversation we had by phone quite a while after we met.

Can you give us a little background on yourself? It's not every day that someone our age happens to be working on a Jane's Addiction record, and working with Bob Ezrin!

I'm from Southern California. I played in high school and all that stuff and when I graduated I knew I wasn't a good enough piano player to really pursue being a professional musician and I ended up going to recording school up here in Los Angeles. I grew up about an hour and a half outside of Los Angeles. I moved to Hollywood about two weeks after graduating high school. My first job was at a studio called Track Record, which I worked at for about four years, and then I lived in London for a year. I didn't do a lot of studio work over there, just because I didn't really have any connections. Then I came back to L.A. and have been independent ever since.

What have you been working on?

The last few are always the ones that seem the most important. Over the last three years it's primarily been 30 Seconds To Mars and Jane's Addiction just because they were such long records. I did another band over the summer called pre)Thing for V2. And this year I've mixed a mellowdrone record, which is supposed to be on ArtistDIRECT but I don't know what's happening with that anymore.

What's your background?

I came from more of an engineering background, obviously. I used to play music but as far as getting work and getting to where I am now, it's more through engineering and having a few successful mixes here and there that led out to me getting more production work. The first real production work was for Deadsy — I produced a few songs for them, which will be out on Dreamworks. Then they asked me to co-produce the 30 Seconds To Mars record with Bob [Ezrin].

How exactly did that happen?

I had done some work with the artist earlier on. Bob got involved and they wanted someone to co-produce the project. So I believe they went through quite a few names before they came back and asked me to do it.

So why were they still looking for a co- producer then?

I think Bob's availability was somewhat limited — he still had a lot of commitments to different ventures and they just needed someone else who could be hands- on all the time. And from that point Bob asked me to come in and do the same type of situation on the Jane's Addiction record. For that record Bob was pretty much there all the time, but not as much as me. We would share ideas and stuff.

So he brought you in for that. How did the band feel about that? Or I gather they were totally completely open to it?

I don't think we really talked about it until we were already in the studio. It wasn't going to financially be a different burden on them and they could see I was doing the work, so all is fair.

And they hadn't made a complete record for over a decade...

It wasn't a type of record where they came in and said, "Here's our songs," and someone could go, "This is the problem with your songs." Because since they were writing in the studio, nothing happened all at once, as far as pinpointing issues that needed to be dealt with. They were always slowly getting dealt with. I engineered the record. I'd say the production values are also things that stemmed over from that side of things — sonic levels and such.

It was quite the setup you had going there — a mix of formats and such.

Yeah, it was Pro Tools and tape. It was much easier to do all the overdubs in the Pro Tools environment. Especially with all the development that happened with the songs, it's much easier to hold onto a track and open up a new one and try a new idea and keep taking different approaches to a song. You know, I'm not a big kind of go-in-and-tune-the-vocals kind of guy. I try to use Pro Tools as more of a recording and archiving type function — editing. It's really great on a creative level but I don't use it as a fix-everything type thing. There's a lot of Pro Tools stuff going on, but it's more on the creative type of song arrangement and just being able to explore different options for the songs.

So how long were you guys at it from beginning to end?

I would say twelve or thirteen months on and off. There'd be a couple months here and there — which is when I made the record for V2. But it was a year-long project.

So was there any burnout at any point?

Up until the last stretch of it, it never really went more than two or three months at a time. Near the end you've really narrowed down exactly what songs you're working on and [laughs] you've been working on a lot of them for a long time but earlier on in the record they were going through new material and it was pretty fresh. And even up until the end, the [first] single, "Just Because", got written when we had already started mixing some of the material. And it got tracked — you know we had already done some mixes when we actually got around to tracking the first single. It wasn't stale from that point. There was always new material coming and you could always go back to recording drums and stuff like that.

I guess the big ordeal in such a major production would be keeping everything logged correctly.

Hard drives are so cheap. I wouldn't back up to tape. I would just save hard drives. I would keep a backup hard drive of the most current one I was working on. But other than that I would just keep moving from a new hard drive to a new one. We'd just start a new one from scratch and move all the songs over with only the elements that were being used at that time so I could always go back to an old hard drive and import a track in Pro Tools from an old hard drive...

Nothing gets scrapped.

There was definitely no way I could scrap anything because there were points where people would remember certain points where guitars would get played far earlier and you'd go and grab it and they'd be convinced you had the wrong one until you put on the old rough mixes and played it for them. So if you didn't have it, people would never get past the fact that they had lost something that was really important. Once they actually heard it, the memory of something better than it actually was kind of a syndrome.

And there is the backup issue, like will it be possible to open up a Pro Tools file, let's say, in 50 years.

Yeah, Capitol [the record label] asked me to back up everything, like all the stems and stuff, to all kinds of tape.

And that album was a very guitar- oriented album. Some are saying it's not really a good Jane's Addiction album, but I think it's excellent. I mean, one always has to consider the fact that time is a major factor, new influences and whatnot.

I think Dave [Navarro] and Stephen [Perkins] were teenagers on the first Warner Bros. Record [Nothing's Shocking] and barely in their early twenties for the second one [Ritual De Lo Habitual] and now they've been around for well over a decade in the business and I think even more than the production values, their writing and the sense of what makes a song has obviously grown tremendously. A lot of their earlier stuff was basically jams that were turned into songs with lots of effort and work and there was no real structured direction for them, which they definitely have gotten over. I still think it's a Jane's Addiction record when I listen to it. I was a huge fan growing up.

I think it's the production that can sway people off for a second.

It becomes Jane's Addiction when you get them all together in the same room. Bob and I had done a song with the Porno For Pyros lineup [singer Perry Farrell's other band] right before we did the Jane's record. A week and a half later we started on the Jane's record and it was amazing to me how just switching out the guitar player affected Stephen and Perry [Farrell] so much and I was sitting there going, "Wow! It's Jane's Addiction." They're just people that feed off each other so much. They're always going to sound like that when they play together.

So were there any difficulties besides the regular little things that happen in any project?

Yeah, getting them back to speed of being a band was the hardest thing. Finding what was going to work for them as Jane's Addiction in 2003 instead of 1988 or whatever. The first song we pulled up was an old song that they used to play in their early days, but after that we went through just loads of different songs and directions and avenues but as it went further and especially after they got their new bass player Chris Chaney in the band. They would write in rehearsal and in sound checks and songs would come together much more in a live environment and there'd be less trying to figure out directions of a song. Because there was lots of trial and error in doing so in the studio, and probably some of that big production sound that came out in the record ended up on there [because] we could not have a written song and tried out a few guitar ideas over a drum beat. But later it became much easier to record them because they were more arranged. So I'd say the main obstacle in the earlier stages was figuring out what the band was going to be at this later stage, then just getting them back up to being a band and how they'd work together.

Then that would also equate to the final product having a sort of consistency of that creative energy. So did you have to go back a lot of times and something ended up being simpler than, say, the last couple of songs you worked on?

Yeah, there was a definite conscious effort near the end — especially on Dave's part — of simplifying some stuff. He'd learn when he had to go play songs live that we'd been working on in the studio, if we'd develop the guitar parts out of lots of layering and such and he'd have to find a way to create it live and he'd find new ways to play it — sometimes more interesting [ways]. He'd want to go back and do the parts in a simpler one or two guitar parts, which affects other parts of the production.

So when it was all done did everyone feel it was definitive?

Well, the problem, when you make these kind of records for long periods of time, is [that] your ability to stand back and hear at face value becomes really weakened, and you tend to more just hear the elements of things you're not happy with. You know, if you go and knock out a record in just a month you just go, "Wow this came out better than I expected." After a year you're just hearing the little things like getting a guitar the sound exactly the way you wanted and that could just wreck the record for you — things that normally wouldn't make a difference. In general I think everyone was really happy. First of all we'd try to keep the songs sounding the way they're supposed to sound when they're mixed.

Like printing with effects.

Sure, to a certain extent — have effects up. It's the one thing Bob has always been big on, say, "Make it sound like a record." So from that point you kind of always know what you're going to have as opposed to saying, "Well it's not going to sound like that when it's mixed. Don't worry, it's going to be better when it's mixed." So that part helps. Also we mixed the album in stages of mixing and going back and making adjustments and recalling and inputting whatever changes into the new mix, which is really a big pain in the ass with Pro Tools, having to change sessions and import tracks back and forth, so that's where lots of note keeping happened. If any change happened to a particular track and we went back and I'd make notes of it and remember to import that track into the mix session of Pro Tools. But from that point, because of that we could really hear and, say, if one part was lacking and not making the grade and it's addressed before we go back and do the recalls. So from that point we were extremely content by the time the album was done.

I notice with that album that it comes across much better when played back loudly.

No, I generally try and keep it fairly soft. It's probably that we just didn't have the mixes quite as limited. In our initial round of mastering...

... the current plague — the digital brick wall?

Yeah. We were going for that brick wall kind of mastering and it was sucking a lot of the life out of the songs and there's so many songs that have so many dynamic sections from intros to verses to big spacey bridges and there was so much attention to how those transitions happened and they just disappeared. So we really took a whole new look at the mastering and went much more true to the way the album was mixed. That's probably part of that. So you don't have that feeling like it's the loudest record in the world.

What else did you pick up from working with Bob?

One thing I'd say from working with the projects that we did is just his general feeling of how he doesn't hold back, how he tells people what he feels is lacking in their material. His feeling seems to be, more or less, that he's not getting hired to be nice to them and he's not doing them a "favor" by not telling it straight. I think that's [lacking] in a lot of people these days.

And since artists are generally insecure people...

Yeah, you just gotta make the artist very aware that if you're there to work on their stuff, you must like it to begin with and that should be the compliment from the point of working. You're going to be trying to fix the shortcomings most of the time. That is what needs to be addressed at first. And that's one of the greatest things I've learned from them. Just don't be too easy on people and don't hold back. You're not doing your job then and you're definitely not going to help the record. That and just a general scheme for not settling when a song isn't working right. If you're working on an idea and you did it and it still doesn't seem 110 percent perfection, then don't give up and keep at it. It's those two things and his ability for great diplomacy when situations get kind of sticky. If nerves are getting short, he has a great way of smoothing things over and keeping it together. It's a very big part of being a producer, managing the whole environment and mood.. There's a lot to learn from Bob.

Absolutely. He's not someone who comes in and makes an 'imprint' on a record, like a "Mutt" Lange.

That's probably one of the places where we get along very well. First of all, people say, "What kind of guitars and amps do you like? Drums?" I really don't care as long as they sound good. I think we both come from that background.

Does Bob still partake in the engineering side of things at all?

It depends. Occasionally he'll want to get in there and twist on an EQ or we'll have a good sound, he'll hear it, and maybe we'll have a ton of compression on it, and he'll ask which compressor it was and crank down the threshold. For the most part it's just the odd thing here and there.

But he's certainly extremely knowledgeable about all that stuff.

I think growing up from the earlier days you had to be. Such a big part of making the record is getting it recorded right. In the earlier days it was a much more technical process than it is now. Compression started as a way to get optimum level on tape because there was such a limited area you could record on a tape. So, I think from that and being in the studio scene for such a huge part of rock history, he's obviously had to know all the stuff. That and he's just such a hands-on guy.

And what was the scenario like for the 30 Seconds To Mars record?

We did that in L.A. It was primarily a lot of work on vocals and small guitar parts — the kind of pre- production to the songs, getting into the studio would last quite a while. We'd go into a studio for a week or two and work on drums and really loud basic guitars and knock out the obvious stuff. The back of the artist's garage was already kind of soundproofed by the person that had lived there before, so I just brought in my Pro Tools and various compressors and mic pres that I owned and set up back there — it went on for a very long time like that as well. And it was a similar thing, like it wasn't necessarily a full band when we started the record, it wasn't recording songs that were ready to go, it was a lot of experimenting. It was pretty much me and Jared [Leto] working in the garage for very long hours for very long time and Bob would come by and hear progress and make his comments and there were no isolation booths, so when it came time to do vocals we would just put on headphones and sit there in the same room and turn off all the fans.

So that was their first album. It was more about finding their identity and coming out sounding more like a band with the end result.

I know since then I've been by and listened to some of their new writing for their new material and that's been going at lightning speed and it's much more like a regular band now that they've figured out what works for them and gotten more comfortable. Jared was capable of using his voice in a lot of different ways and he was kind of a blank canvas when he did the first album.

So for the earlier days, you did a lot of quick records and then long term ones. Where's a good balance?

It really depends on project to project. A lot of bands I'm looking at now, I could probably knock out a complete record in three weeks, and it's just because there'd be nothing to do after going through and making sure that the songs are at their strongest point other than to just capture the band just sounding really good. And if that's going to make the best record for the band then I think that's what you do as a producer. Your biggest role is going to be in the pre-production and making sure their songs are 110 percent, and once you get in the studio you make sure they sound as good as they're going to be and that they're playing up to par. But those records are fairly simple in the studio, and the mixing process is obviously much more simple, because you're dealing with the band sounding the same from song to song other than the odd overdub. But there's definitely a lot of projects I go after that are going to be more elaborate and every song is going to be its own beast.

You like the 'arty' approach to things.

Yeah, and those albums just take a long time. I always tell people it's not recording the guitar parts that makes albums take three or four months. It's all the parts you're experimenting on.

And what other kinds of toys do you bring that you haven't mentioned yet?

When I get to mixing, I've got an Ursa Major Space Station that I love, which a lot of studios don't have. I've got a rack of API mic pres that I bring if the studio doesn't have a good selection of mic pres, a rack of compressors, like Distressors and a Pye compressor I like to use a lot. I don't bother having things like 1176s and LA-2As, they're just so expensive and everywhere you go it's gonna have some in the racks. So I don't have a ton of gear that I carry around. I know I have a ton of more stuff sitting in my garage.

But you're good to go if someone wanted to bang out a record in your house.

Yeah, actually there's another band called theSTART that I do a lot of work with, and around when we took time off of the Jane's record we did an EP together and the band was still kind of between labels and touring so we ended up recording the stuff in a rehearsal studio. We'd plug straight into the API mic pres and maybe run the kick and snare through Distressors and go right back into the [Digidesign] 888 [interface] from there and do things in my apartment.

So how is business in L. A. in terms of finding stuff to do — the business is doing shit, in terms of companies losing money and such. Is it harder to get shit going there?

Yeah, and there's definitely more people up for every job and everybody's a lot more willing to bend over backwards for every project. The main thing is when you go see a decent band play that there's shows where the band's label or manager has called in a handful of producers. There's definitely a much more hungry feeling in the audience amongst the producers there. I think part of the problem also is the quality of acts out there for making records is going along with the slowness of the business. There's not a lot of stuff I really want to work on. And I'm trying to keep it from this point in my career only working on records that I really believe in. I don't want to do any more projects just for the money.

So where do you see things going now?

I think the industry has really closed itself down into wanting to, like you say, be genre-based, like certain bands that all sound the same. I just hope it tends to have some form of renaissance to all this happening. Even when I started in music people used to complain about the 1980s being a horrible time for music, but when you look back at it there were so many bands that experimented on records and tried new things, whether it be Depeche Mode or Blue Nile or some band messing around with really distorted vocals such as Skinny Puppy. There was just so much experimentation going on with how you could approach your album and I think it'd be nice to see a time when people were more willing to try different avenues instead and not always try to sound like the last one. That's my hope.