I know that you took production credits very early on in your career. How did you know that that was so important?
I wasn't conscious of that when I started making records. I guess the first sessions I ever attended were ones where they were recording my songs. At the very first one, they were trying to cut three songs in three hours. I could see that these guys were an incredible team. At one point I was trying to tell the drummer to adjust something that he was playing. Don Randi, the piano player, said, "Come over here, kid. Come sit down next to me." There was a way that people in the studios did these arrangements. I realized that any one guy could make the thing really come alive. The next session I went to, Jim Keltner was the drummer. I got to meet and know some of these people, and I realized that they all have their singular gifts. It was like being in a candy store. "Who should we get to play on this? Ooh, let's get this guy." Those early records were made that way. I had the good fortune of getting to make my first record with Russ Kunkel and Leland Sklar. I later got them to be my band for Running on Empty. I'd been calling them for sessions for individual songs. There were a bunch of players around, and I wanted to try them all.
These are the people you would want to play with; not just because they're great players, but because you'd also want to be around them.
Yeah, I know. It's true! When I was young, when Keltner was playing on one of my songs that Johnny Rivers was recording, he was like, "You wrote this song? No kidding? It's cool!" He was very friendly. Jim's always been that way. Not just to me. I've seen him do it with lots of other people. He's a special player. He's like Yoda in the studio. You can't get him to do anything twice. You could try, but it wouldn't work. It wouldn't happen. I felt really lucky to play with him. I began to feel extremely fortunate when I started putting together a "best of" a few years back and looked at the credits. It's like a pantheon of the best players.
From your first record [Jackson Browne] you were essentially saying, "Let's do it again," or "I didn't like that," to these amazing players. You're essentially telling Jim Keltner, "This is what I want." Was that intimidating?
No, because he's such a great presence. The first session I did with Jim Keltner was for the song "These Days." He had taught drums in the same music store that David Lindley taught banjo at in Pasadena. They were old friends. David Lindley had not only played on that second album [For Everyman], but we'd already been on the road for a year together. I decided not to bring a band out on that tour, because everybody I tried was not really up to the level of David. We went out, the two of us. When it came time to make a record, we knew we had to add something complementary to what we were already doing. That's my way into songs and producing, knowing that, under certain conditions, things can happen when you get the right people together. David played lap steel on "These Days." The original track sounds like an organ. He's playing these pads on lap steel. For the solo, we first mic'd the neck of the lap steel and put him in an iso booth away from the amp. I thought I'd be getting more of the acoustic sound. It was a National lap steel, so there wasn't much going on, but you ended up hearing a lot of extra sound. He only did one pass, but it was incredibly solid, and at the end it was a very triumphant moment. Then I knew what I wanted, but very often you don't know what you want. But really, my becoming a producer had more to do with me not wanting to produce. I wanted to find it myself, because I'd been around sessions where there was somebody trying to influence things. I kept telling my manager that I was afraid of guys coming in to supplant my ideas and emotional truths with ones of their own. I didn't want to be a passenger! So that's how that happened.
It seems very insightful for a young guy to know that he needs that control. Are you a control freak?
A little bit. But I also like things to just happen. I have definite preferences. I'll rule out certain things. I have a keyboardist [Jeff Young] who's a really great pianist, but I might not want that on the record. I sometimes prefer the simplicity of the way I play something, even though the guy is the most soaring and beautiful organ player. Sometimes I don't know until I hear it. I may sound like a control freak, but I want a certain emotional truth to be brought to bear. I'm not so much of a control freak that I need to dictate what other people do, but I need something from them that is a genuine performance. Only certain players will be able to bring this about. Danny Kortchmar and I have become really good friends. At the very beginning, I had him playing on a song and he was playing a bunch of licks and whatnot. I wasn't ready to hear that kind of playing. I like that on all kinds of songs, but I didn't hear it there. I knew I didn't want somebody else to make those choices for me. I knew that the key to getting to do this was a manager and record company that let me take my time. I listened to my second record [For Everyman] when one guy mixed it and it didn't sound quite right, so I had to go back. "If you don't know, nobody knows." That was the basic axiom. David Geffen [Asylum Records] was great. He'd let me turn down some of the most famous producers that he wanted me to work with and simply allow me to go after it myself. It took me a long time to learn certain things, but at least I learned it in my time.
A lot of producers can get the best arrangements and the best hooks; but you knew, in your songwriter brain, where you wanted to take them and what you wanted it to sound like when it was done.
Yeah, I think you're right. I think that's a part of it. The songwriter was ascendant in those days. Maybe it's been that way for a long time, but at the time it was a new deal. A lot of people were singing; but if they'd written the song, they had the mandate to sing the song. That carried over to how I wanted to treat it, and how I wanted it done.
Your fifth album, Running on Empty, was tracked live, as well as on buses, hotel rooms, and such. What was the impetus for this?
Some of the songs were about being on the road. There were so many great takes I'd hear on the road and think, "Holy cow, why didn't they put that on the record?" I thought that I could do it because I could record everything on cassettes. I thought I'd make the whole thing and master the cassette. I'm not the only one who'd ever thought of doing it that way. Bruce [Springsteen] and Little Steven Van Zandt did it around that same time for the Gary Bonds record [Dedication]. They figured out that they had the sound they wanted on the record, right there. The cassettes had a compression on them. My idea was to simply try to capture the road experience. Just record everything. I'd even record conversations and hilarious things that people said to each other. I'd have people walking around with cassette machines. Various players would put a stop to it and tell us to stop chasing them around. They wanted whatever happened on the road to stay on the road. I was going to do a bunch of songs that had already been recorded that I thought needed to be redeemed and played a bit better. I thought we could update the songs. Right away, we listened back to some of them and realized that we should just do the new songs. They were fantastic. To do a bunch of new songs on a live album hadn't been done before, really. Most live albums were a celebration of an artist's popularity, like a "best of" collection.
Now you've got your studio, Groove Masters. I interviewed Graham Nash and David Crosby recently, and they talked about it like it was this secret clubhouse. When, and why, did you start Groove Masters, and why do you keep private?
We didn't want to put out ads, mainly because no one wants to work that hard. [laughter] It's like a project room. You can get in there if you only have one day's work, but it helps if you know what needs to get done. It's not a mill, where people are in for three hours and then out. There's not an hourly rate, and not even really a daily rate. So it's private. Some people really need a private place to work, where they're not going to run into a random assortment of other bands or people. Although, I hear about people running into each other at Ocean Way [Recording], and I think, "Shit, that's not happening enough." For me, I get to see people coming in and out. But I don't hang around in sessions. I make myself scarce, unless I'm invited.
