Dave Mattacks is arguably one of the world's best drummers. His recording credits include: Joan Armatrading, Mary Chapin-Carpenter, Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, Brian Eno, George Harrison, Jethro Tull, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Jimmy Page, Fairport Convention, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, Richard & Linda Thompson, The Chills and XTC, to name just a few. Dave was a member of Fairport Convention for many years and he has worked with legendary producers and engineers including Glyn Johns [Tape Op #109], Joe Boyd [#60], Geoff Emerick [#57], and John Wood. Dave and his wife now live in the US, where he continues to record and tour.
I do remember.
Yes, nearly always.
I noticed that you brought a snare mic.
Yes, it's a cheap Sennheiser vocal mic, but I can't remember the model number. I use that on snare, over the top of the snare. And the reason I bought it was because George Massenberg used one on the snare drum and it's his favorite mic. And he said, "It's my secret weapon." I think it's Sennheiser's version of a 57, and they discontinued it within a year because nobody liked it. It's a little more transparent than a 57. They're really cheap; I got it for like $200.
It's timeless.
There's no huge drum sound, there's no kind of flanged guitars, there's no gated reverbs. It's basically somebody singing a song accompanied by a band. And the more I listen to things like that I realize that's the way to go. I remember talking to John Wood about this a few years ago and he said, "You listen to records on the radio and it's almost like someone date stamped them. Oh, there's the chorus guitar, that means it must be 19-whatever." I think any future recording I do I'm going to try and stay away from things like that. Anything that date stamps a record, like loops. Five years from now everyone's going to be listening to records and going, "Oh, yeah, that's the early 2000s."
I have to say I'm guilty of that. We used a lot of loops on our recent record. But we'd use loops and live drum parts, or we'd use different kits and we might loop something on one kit and have a totally different kind of kit come in over top of it on the choruses or something. Not that we achieved it, but we were going for a kind of Jon Brion thing.
Yeah, that's a classic case of using all the technology that's available to you and hopefully not date stamping. I mean, it's date stamped in that he's a contemporary record producer, but it all sounds good. It's musical and it all sounds good. That's a classic case of him proving the exception to what I've just said about not date stamping records. But you listen to his records and they're great records.
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