Even among recording, mixing, and mastering engineers, Richard Dodd's career has been a unique one, covering many styles of music. His work began in the early '70s and continues today. In that time he's recorded hits like (Carl Douglas') "Kung Fu Fighting," and artists such as Boz Scaggs, Stephane Grappelli, George Harrison, Clannad, Roy Orbison, Wilco, Green Day, Steve Earle, Delbert McClinton, Robert Plant, the Travelling Wilburys, Freddie Mercury, Placido Domingo, and the Dixie Chicks. On this occasion I had the opportunity to join a group of attendees at a Welcome to 1979 Recording Summit, where we had a listening party (off a DSD, Direct-Stream Digital, master) of Tom Petty's Wildflowers and then a live interview with Richard to discuss his mixing of this Grammy winning album.
How did the job come to you? You told me earlier that Jim Scott [Tape Op #75] wanted to mix it.
Yeah, and he would have done a fantastic job. I know, because I copied most of his rough mixes. I came to it cold, having not heard a thing. The smartest thing to do was listen to any roughs that existed [in order] to know what was on the multitrack. "Crawling Back to You" was the first song that we mixed.
Did they pass it around to anyone else to mix before you?
Not to my knowledge. I think it was a simple thing where Tom said, "Richard's mixing it."
Did you have a relationship with Tom Petty before that?
I did both the Traveling Wilburys records and then [Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers'] Into the Great Wide Open, through Jeff Lynne [Tape Op #92], though I didn't have anything to do with Full Moon Fever. We got on well, and consequently Tom made the assumption that I'd be mixing it.
What monitors were you using?
Depends on who was in the room with me. If it was Rick Rubin, the producer, then it would be [Yamaha] NS-10s extremely loud. The studio we were in, Andora, was a very dead, smallish control room. To get them to work, they ended up using two Studer 600-watt amps, each mono — one amp on each side.
Nothing caught fire?
Nope. The other set [of monitors] were Tannoy PBM 8s. If you put the two [monitors] together, you end up with an approximation of what we just heard, without any low-end.
How did the record arrive to you?
On 24-track reels. On some of the songs there ended up being two reels. The ones with strings we had slaves for, and those are also the ones that we used automation for on the mix. Everything else was mixed manual.
Did anyone here notice the tape hiss occasionally?
Yeah. I'll take responsibility for everything, except for the fades. I didn't do the fades that you heard there. That's part of the system of going to DSD. It was kind of a bit iffy. Everything had to be done remotely on a 16-bit version, and they'd apply it. Sometimes it would work out all right.
The DSD version is off 1/2-inch tape masters?
Yeah, the 1/2-inch masters.
So when you put this together, you obviously had to sequence it to put it in the right order.
Yeah, Sony did that. They had a setup at Airshow Mastering in Boulder, Colorado. It was very comfortable. The monitors weren't known to me, so I did the obvious thing, which was nothing, with the exception of one track with a kick drum. They'd really extra-compressed it in mastering for the CD, and I made the call that if the public heard this, they'd get used to that; and it had become part of the vibe of the song, so I mimicked the mastering compression.
Stephen Marcussen mastered the original CD for that.
He did.
There are not a lot of effects or room ambience on the lead vocal, but sometimes you get a bit of a sharp consonant or an edge to that. Is it also like that on the CD or the vinyl version?
It's even worse, I think.
Was any work done to attenuate that?
No doubt they did some in mastering.
But this is a straight cut, except for the compression and fades?
Yeah. It was early days for this DSD thing. The idea was that it was going to be as good as analog. I didn't have any instructions or requests, other than, "Let's have it on DSD!" Twenty years ago my ego was even worse, and I assumed that what I'd done was good enough for everybody else. I wasn't comfortable enough in the environment to make any judgment calls, so I just did transfers.
When you were mixing it, did you have any compression on the mix bus?
Generally a pair of black face [URIE] 1176s.
Linked?
No. I would have linked them, but they didn't have the link box. I just put some program [music] through each one to see if they locked up similarly; if they did, then great. I don't do very much half-left, half-right panning. It's usually left, center, right, and incidental stereo. If it's going to pull [the stereo image left or right], it's because something's happening.
I did notice the guitars would be completely panned left or right.
Yeah. Because of that, you can hear it. If it were muddied by the middle, you might miss it. It's a nice way to mix for me. It helps with mono comparability, to some degree. It's ironic because the half-left, half-right is the best way to make it mono compatible, but I don't know. I think it becomes compatible because it's out there and exciting, so it's probably mixed a bit too loud, which makes it compatible.
What console were you using for this?
That was a Neve 8078. We were mixing to [Ampex] ATR-102s, a 1/4-inch and a 1/2-inch. We mixed to both from [Studer] A800 MKIII multitracks.
Who picked the studio?
I did.
Did you move to another studio at some point?
I did for one song; I think one of the ones from side two, at what I know most recently as Cello.
EastWest.
Thank you. In Studio Three I did a mix of one of the songs. I think it was because we couldn't get anyone to like the mix I had, so they had me try it somewhere else.
How attended were the mixes? How often was Rick there?
He was there when everybody else had signed off. When Tom was happy, Rick would come in and then Tom wouldn't be happy.
In what way?
Well, he would be happy, but he would be less happy. He had it the way he liked it, and Rick would come in and just want everything louder, basically. That's the truth. You'd start with drums louder, then, of course, the vocal has to be louder, and we can't lose the guitars.
What happens with that fight?
Well, the keyboards and percussion lose out quite heavily.
When Rick left, did you pull it all back down a little bit? How would that work?
I'd go in and get it to a point either when I'd call and let Tom and Rick know it was ready to listen to, or they'd give me a time, until three o' clock or something.
Would they leave you alone to get set up?
Absolutely. If I ever requested to be left alone, it was never denied; but I was being paid a daily rate, so they wanted it done in a day.
You had a day per song to mix?
Yeah, really. It was only ever one day, unless we failed on a mix, which I think was only the one song.
So you had a couple of weeks?
I was originally booked for two weeks. It took four weeks, because we mixed 23 songs. It was meant to be 22, but on one I set up Tom at his house [to record] and he ended up putting it on the record. That was Tom recording on an ADAT, and Mike [Campbell] coming over to put on some extra acoustic guitar. Tom came in with his ADAT, and I remember him saying that he needed to edit out a bit. That was a learning experience. Do you remember ADATs?
I avoided them like the plague.
There were two ADAT machines, and there were two remotes. The [Alesis] LRC — Little Remote Controller — and the BRC — Big Remote Controller. The BRC you could use for editing. You could program it to do all these edits. They weren't working out. I discovered that Alesis had very cleverly covered their tracks. Based on the timecode, you'd give it an enter point and an exit point for the edit, and the edit would go wrong. When you'd go back to investigate everything; the numbers all correlated on both machines, and you couldn't figure it out. Eventually I wrote down my edit numbers, and, lo and behold, after it went wrong, it updated the request with new numbers. What it did was apparently what you told it to do, but in fact it was lying! I solved that problem by mixing the track first, then dumping it on to 1/4-inch, and editing it in ten seconds. That was a struggle.
The only ambience I hear on this album are a couple of drum tracks and the strings.
The strings were dry too. Just the room.
You mentioned the rough mixes Jim had done, but was there an overall mandate from Tom and Rick to keep things dry and present like that?
They'd been influenced by Jeff Lynne, either directly or indirectly. Jeff had shown them that if it's good, it doesn't need anything. I think that Jeff gave him some confidence to do that. When you've got somebody as good as Tom Petty, they do the effects into the mic, you know? They sing the effects. Not too many people know how to do that.
Were there any overdubs you had to do during the mix sessions, like they'd hear something and want to fix a part?
No. Pretty much working with Tom, he'd change vocals because he changed the lyrics. That's the reason.
Not because of pitch or a take?
Well, there have been occasions when he hasn't been on his game, but generally you change it because it needs to be changed, not to perfect it in any way. Nowadays, out would come the pitch correction.
You didn't have that?
No, it was the next one [Echo] that we had the pitch correction available. We didn't use it, but we had it. It was a standard analog in, analog out Antares Auto-Tuner. It was handy.
These arrangements, in a lot of cases, are very sparse. Did you find they came together easily, or were there things you had to do to massage them into the right perspectives?
I think, if there was any input from me... the challenge I was given wasn't to sort out the content. It was to satisfy two masters, Tom and Rick. That was the challenge. Occasionally, but very rarely, you might subdue a track to make one other part louder, but, as you know, there's only so much room for it. If there are two guitars in the same place, you might need to get rid of one.
The vocals sound like they used a condenser mic. Were you adding any top end to it?
I didn't like the console that much. The EQ sucks on the Neve 8078. But the general mix bus was good, so I'd patch in past the EQs, in most cases. I would definitely put some more limiter on the vocal.
Do you remember what it was?
There is more than one limiter?
So how many 1176s were there?
Four. I'd typically have two for the mix, one for Tom, and then another in case I needed it.
The bass guitar holds up in the picture really well, and the notes feel even.
That was a real bass player [Howie Epstein].
Do you remember having to do anything to the tracks to get them to sit in the mix?
I remember wanting to, but the best thing to do was just to leave it alone. It had its place. Sometimes you put too much effort into something and create a problem trying to make it better than it is. You can always make it different. At some stage, everyone was happy with the way it was. I felt that my job was to find that place. Before I was given the job of mixing, someone had said [the album] was ready to mix. So, under those circumstances, you can believe that they do want to use everything that they recorded. They were happy with it, which is where Jim's roughs came in really handy. It was an example of where Rick was happy with it, at least to a degree, where he'd gotten to the point that he said, "Yeah, the song's there." That was a challenge to find that place. It's great when you do.
You know when you've got it.
I ran into David Bianco [Tape Op #104], the initial engineer on these sessions, at the AES show last month. I told him we were going to be doing this interview. He said, "Oh, tell him his job was easy, because I did such a good job."
I agree with him.
The album sounds timeless as well.
That's probably because of one thing that you brought up earlier, the lack of effects. That helps a lot. That record sometimes gets quoted as having a great drum sound, and they name the track and ask how I do it. I've been in a situation where I've told them everything I could remember Jim did, and certainly everything that I did, and Jim's confirmed all that. My wife was like, "You're giving away all your secrets!" But it doesn't work that way. Those tricks aren't even going to work for me on another day. And guess what? They wanted all their tracks to sound that good. It's the same players, in the same environment. It just doesn't work sometimes. Things like tempo, and everything that's going on around it, affect the sound of a given instrument.
Absolutely. That's one thing this record excels at. There's not a lot of clutter. There are quite a few songs where Steve Ferrone, the drummer, has a lightness but also an accuracy to where he's putting the beat.
Sure, but he'll still keep it edgy. He has a great sound.
Also, this isn't a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers record. This is the second Tom Petty solo record. You weren't dealing with a band dynamic.
Howie didn't have any input on the mix. Benmont [Tench] would have loved to have some input on the mix, but he wasn't invited. Nor was Steve. Mike [Campbell] was always a great asset to me. If I needed to get through to Tom in a different way, I could get through via Mike. Mike's fantastic. He's a very impressive player, and a lovely person.
With the vocals being so up front and present, did you have to apply any de-essing on the lead vocal?
I should have done that, shouldn't I?
I didn't think it was too bad.
The funny thing is... isn't it great how the sequence we have is considered the sequence it was always going to be? There were 22 songs, but there are only 15 on the record. It was never going to be that sequence.
Exactly the order you mixed in.
The last one could have been either very early or very late in the recording or mixing. It's just the way it is. Bad day, good day; it's the style of the song.
There's a looseness too; like some of the talking before songs, or the endings of others, or the little ragged keyboard things. Was that intentional?
Oh yeah, definitely. The fact that it's there was intentional.
The recording process has become a game of control over the years. You saw this trend appear through the '80s as things got more gated, quantized, cleaned up, or replaced by machines. I always wonder if we have to remind ourselves that music is being played by humans.
It's amazing how it's changed, isn't it? Some of the things that we have, and still use today, are great. Others are those that we use just because we have them, but that sort of thing's always been the case. Some are just dreadfully overused. The worst are the ones that we rely on. When you rely on a piece of gear to make the music, that's a bit iffy for me. It's not like an instrument. I don't think it's an instrument. It's surgery, and it should be a last resort. It's all cosmetic surgery nowadays. Tighten it up. It doesn't matter what it looks like. We can fix it. Of course, we don't really fix it. We just make it less ugly.
I think critical listening is a difficult thing.
Yeah. There are two words we use a lot, "listening" and "hearing." We don't often use the right one of those two, in any given circumstance.
Sort of like phase and polarity.
Yeah. We're listening to this, but I'm hearing all the things I did wrong or could have done better. It's completely different.
Going back to my obsession with the ambience and the tracks that do have the drums... Those are obviously room mics you brought up in the mix?
Yeah. I do recall that the processing that was initially done, and that I may have, in some cases, overdone, is most of the ambience. Obviously it's real ambience, but it's not sourced so much from a room mic. I think the overheads were pretty much turned off. It's all snare. Fortunately the people recording the snare knew how to record a snare. There's more than a half-inch between the skin and the capsule, which gives you a little more opportunity to work with it.
Did you add any ambience with plates?
Nope.
Nothing?
Nope.
You'd probably done records in that era with lots of reverb.
I love reverb; but only when I choose to use it. I don't like it as a process of going, "Oh, and let's add reverb." I can definitely recall back in the '70s when some of my clients would say, "Hey, any chance of some echo on this?" Reverb, echo; it's all the same.
Punch-Ins
I was the guy that did the impossible drop-ins and drop-outs. Somebody would say, "Isn't it a pity we can't drop in that word?" I'd always answer, "Why not?" Just doing a punch-in was an event on the machines themselves, starting out on Scullys. You'd need a pencil. You've got to flip input one switch, switch it from sync to record on the other, but you'd have to have the master record and play button in as well. You'd have to have a pencil under your belt holding one of those buttons in so that you could pull it off. I had a serious medical procedure a few years back. Apparently I was awake during the procedure, and some of the drugs they give you would induce amnesia. I was thinking after that, "Where were those drugs when I was tracking vocals in the '70s?" Just so I could forget I went through all that. You had to stay with it until they got it.
I think Americans tend to describe reverb as diffuse echoes and echo as discrete repeats.
You're right, and I agree with it. But in England, everybody said to stick some "echo" on it. It was really a euphemism for "cover it up."
Did you work with Tom Petty after these sessions?
After Wildflowers? Yeah. Well, there was lots of residual stuff from Wildflowers, like Saturday Night Live, Europe, and television. He did a movie soundtrack [Songs and Music from "She's the One"], and some of these mixes made it. We did [the album] Echo after that. I mixed that. I recorded two songs on The Last DJ, and I mixed and mastered that record.
Audience: On "You Wreck Me," did you do any master fader automation for bumping up the choruses?
Not automation. That's manual. I was laughing at the fact that I can remember every bit of that. Well spotted. It's hard not to, but you're right.
Did you have a mixing assistant?
Yeah, Rick and Tom. They're pretty good. I'd give them a little line or mark [on the console, by the fader], and I'd under-do it because I'd know they'd go above it.
I've worked with people like that.
As a mastering engineer, I get versions with a vocal up .3 dB. We couldn't draw a line on the console at that point! The difference between one line and another is 2 dB. They'd always overshoot that. So would I!
Make it rock.
It's the fun of it. We used automation on the tracks that have got strings. Otherwise all 24 tracks were full, because there's no room for code anyway.
You had to have SMPTE time code to lock the reels.
Anything that was 24 tracks was a manual mix.
Audience: I was wondering if you could comment on the drum sound on "You Don't Know How It Feels."
You know, I think Jim Scott's responsible for that. Are you a drummer?
Audience: Yeah, so I liked it loud like that.
Well, I don't need to tell you that it starts with the player, what he has to play, the environment he's playing in, and the state and tune of his gear. After that, it's down to us to capture that. In this instance, we're talking about a great drummer, with a reason to be there, in a pretty good environment, with a great engineer. That would have been a Neve 8028 at Sound City, along with Jim Scott and David Bianco. Really, that is the sound. It's dry. Both of those guys have a method of recording a little squash track, which would kind of be the snare overcooked as a track on its own, kind of how they want it to be in the mix. Given that it's 24-track, that's quite an expensive thing to do, just to use one track. So they know that's the one that will be burned. You can recreate it, almost. I say "almost" because it's derived from a [live] send of the mics available. It would be a specific blend to a Fairchild, or whatever they felt was necessary. I've done it too. Of course on the mix, you don't have a discrete set of mics. You have a blended set. That would be the one, if you've really got some balls, you'd get rid of. You try to recreate it before you do.
How many tracks were the drums, usually?
About six.
Audience: You said Rick or Tom would come in and want changes. What was it like listening through their ears? Were you ever challenged to get the performance better in a manual mix?
You're bringing back so many memories. Yes, there was a challenge to get it better. I'd give them the mix, and they'd discuss what they liked and what could be different. Then we'd do one big average. I'd do one like that, hopefully. Of course, that's imposing changes upon what I'd learnt. I know I had to re-compute and make some judgment calls. If I've got to do X, I can't do Y. I'd have to give the impression that they heard the changes, because they're going to come in and know what they're listening for. Some of the moves I made didn't get made, and I then learnt that they weren't that necessary. What helped was always agreeing with them. Not being a yes-man, but it wouldn't serve any purpose if I'd immediately said to them, "You can't do that." I wouldn't ever say that. It was always a case of, "Oh shit, I've got to find a way of doing that." Often I'd say, "Could we do this to achieve what you want?" That's my chance to influence what went down on the mix. If I didn't say anything like that, my job was to give them everything they wanted. On the other side of it, when they came in to listen to what I did, I was rewarded with the fact that they came in with absolute confidence that I'd done everything they'd asked me to do. If they came in and liked what they heard, it was because I'd managed to achieve their requests. If I didn't, then maybe they weren't so necessary. As long as they came in with a smile on their faces, or a, "That's great, and now we need to..." (which was always the case), then we'd do that. To inspire enough confidence in them to make them believe that they were going to hear what they'd requested, and then like what they hear, job done. Sometimes it is deceit, yeah.
Audience: Do you still use a lot of 1176 limiting on your 2-bus?
If I could, I would. I'm not employed to mix properly anymore. It's in the box.
"Properly." I like that.
Well, that's the way I feel about it. If I were to mix this again, I wouldn't attempt for a second to do it in the box. Nowadays any mixing I do is in the box. I would try to emulate the effect of 1176s on the 2-mix if I could; but, as you very well know, mixing in the box is nothing like mixing it... let's be fair... the old way. It's a different judgment call. This could easily be taken the wrong way by Jim and Dave, but the easiest things to mix are the things you've recorded. I like to think that I'd have recorded it well, so consequently mixing it wouldn't have been any more difficult. Or it would have been as easy as mixing this was. I don't know everything that's recorded in the whole world, but everything that I come across now is crap. It's really unprofessionally presented, and it's a nightmare. I spent 30 minutes getting [Wildflowers tracks] ready to mix on some of the difficult ones where there were 48 tracks. Otherwise it was five minutes. Now it's five days to put something in a position where you can consider it mixable. That's a lot to do with incompetence, a terrible lack of decision-making, an unnecessary djembe, and so on... How many mics do you need to record a djembe?
At least seven. It seems to be a case of, "Let's decide later how many mics to use in the mix."
You're right. On this particular recent project there were seven mics on the djembe. For anyone who can't work out how you'd even do that, there's one underneath, two really close to the hands, two above the drummer's head, and two in the room somewhere. All for a log with a bit of skin on it! It's a joke! For an electric guitar apparently you've got to use more than one mic and, in many cases, more than one amp. The amps need at least two mics on them, as well as their requisite room mics. You can have one guitar pass with 12 tracks. My favorite was a ballad where the drums were on 23 tracks. Track 23 was a sample! Apparently 22 wasn't enough to get it right — they still needed to use a sample. That doesn't mean to say there's not talent out there, it's just suppressed talent. There is money in the business, but it's not being focused in the right place. I use samples to try to cover up distorted recordings. There's one track on there that came across where you could hear the rebound where the high-pass filter hadn't been put in on the mix. In the environment I was in, that didn't happen. In a situation like this, you can attempt to reproduce the error that the mastering engineer caught — and I didn't. I just transferred it. But I get tracks sent to me to mix that are on tape like that. There's no reason for that, except incompetence. It's not like they're in the red. Some twerp either mic'd it up wrong or used the wrong mic pre, and the signal path is completely wrong.
You also mixed and mastered The Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way album.
Thanks to an opinion about the President, I got loads of Grammys for it. It was nice working on that project. It sold millions of records worldwide, and two comments from the public came to me. A college professor in California was disgusted at what the waveforms looked like. The other one was a listener who complained because he could tell that we didn't use the most expensive wire available, and did I and Blackbird Studios know that "you can buy this cable" that we obviously didn't use, because he could hear that. I'm glad I don't have his ears.
He also heard that you were using the wrong masking tape to label the faders. Indeed. However, I was put in my place again on the same project. There was an issue with mechanically making that CD. They were having some pressing issues. I went to the pressing plant in Terre Haute, Indiana, and had a really good learning experience there. I didn't know that stampers had different sounds. Digital stampers. To oversimplify the situation: the more errors, the worse the sound, and the worse the stamper, the more the errors. They pointed out to me that they were pretty pleased, because they tested me on different ones, and I got it right. I was feeling pretty cocky about getting it right, and they pointed out to me that one of their clients can only have material produced on one of their machines, because he doesn't like the sound of any of the others. They wouldn't tell me who it was.
You do a lot of mastering now too.
Mostly, now.
What's the quality of mixes that you get... what kind of issues do you hear on the deficient side?
"We can't find the masters. We have MP3s, though. Will that work?" I had that two weeks ago.
Really? You had to restore tracks from MP3s?
Well, you can't restore it; but, yeah. That's not just indies. This was an indie, but major labels will send you a compilation that spans over ten or twelve years; but they can't find any masters because it was on a format that doesn't exist anymore. Or it was turned in, but nobody checked to see if there was anything on the drive. Really! They send you commercial CDs to rip from and re-sell. There've always been issues with record labels and management of masters.
Well, every time they do a remaster, they're trying to find the original tapes.
Indeed. It's so funny that the only way you're going to rely on getting the version that the public's used to is by using the commercial version of the CD. Even if you get the masters, you might not get the notes from the mastering engineer about which versions he cut between to get what he did. They're gone with the wind.
Audience member: How was it to work with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones?
Bela is a genius. He's a lovely man. He's picky, particular, but unquestionably talented. Was your question what it's like? Well, I haven't really worked with the Flecktones. Mr. Wooten just a little bit, I did a mastering project for him. Working with Bela is great. He has an incredible tuned ear. He can tell, when he wants to, the difference between things... I think I'm pretty good, but when he gets to that banjo, he's light years ahead of me in terms of being able to pick out tonal changes. What's it like working with him? It's a wake-up call working with him. You've got to be on your game. I feel like I'm doing a proper job when I work with him, because I know if I slip up, he and, of course, his fans (who are probably equally as picky) will know.
Tony San Filippo: I am a huge fan of Francis Dunnery's Tall Blonde Helicopter. I know he played most of the instruments. I'd like to know how you approached that. Did he have demos with click tracks? I love it from front to back. Thank you.
That was one of the highlights of my career, working with Francis. The first thing that I did was turn it down. I was invited to New York to see him play in a club. I'm sitting with the head of the record label, Atlantic. We're at this club in New York, and he's on stage. His language is disgusting, and he's tearing everyone in the record company a new one about how bad they are, and I thought, "I can't work with somebody like that!" Anyway, I was encouraged to go to this dirty little cubbyhole backstage. He's this big guy, and he's sitting on this low sofa like a little baby. He's like, "You're going to make my record, right?" I was like, "No." I can't work with somebody like that. I didn't realize that he was just being honest. He just said it like it is. He was a recovering alcoholic. Well, I guess you're always a recovering alcoholic. He was entering his third year. I think that part of his management thing was just to say it. Don't keep it in; just say it. Anyway, he said he was going to send me some songs and that there were a couple of good ones. He sent them to me, but I still figured that I couldn't work with this "asshole." I got the tape though, and it was just brilliant. He's so passionate and honest. I agreed. I said, "Look, give us a little budget, we'll go to Treasure Isle [Recording Studio], and I'll get Greg Morrow and Jim Bennett and we'll see if we can do anything, cut a couple of tracks." By the second day, 13 songs later, we were really just having a ball. I was educated by the musicians. They were just like, "Shit, this guy's good." I called the record company and told them to send me more money to employ these guys. We were on a roll. So I got some more money from them, and we carried on and recorded a load of songs. Then my real education started with Francis. He was really nice, and he was going along with all of my ideas. He was being very, very generous. I thought I knew what I was doing. We got to a stage where we moved from main Treasure Isle to a little room I was renting with my own board. He came in and asked if we could re-do the drums on some of them. I thought, "Why? We have Greg Morrow, probably the best drummer available." He said, "The drums are great, but they're just not me." I asked him what he wanted to do, and he said that he wanted to just play on one of the songs to show me what he meant. I called Greg and asked if he could organize a kit for Francis in this little room next to mine. I was on DA-88s for convenience, to try things out, and I thought this way I don't have to burn anything. He says okay. These aren't cut to click. Well, they're cut to Greg Morrow, but not officially cut to click. He starts playing, and it's like, "Holy shit. This is so busy. So wrong! Except it's fun." I'd kind of forgotten that element. I was getting it right and forgetting that it should be more than right. It was a failing of mine. I thought, "Now I'm really confused." I asked Greg to come in after we'd done the one track. "Immaculate" I think it was. He had a listen to it. I told him it was more the style that he'd like on the record. I asked him what he thought, and he said, "You should have him play it." He said, "You know, I can play everything he plays, but I can't play it like that. It's special. It's what he wants." Okay, lesson number two. We ended up replacing the drums on most of the record, and it went on from there, because now I'd unleashed a terrible thing. He'd come in, "Hey Richard, I've written a new song. You've got to hear it." It's great. He's like, "Let me do the drums first." I said,"Well, let me set it up." He's like, "No, I'll just do it." Again I'm on the DA-88s, nothing to lose, we put down five tracks of drums, and then like a quarter of the way through, he stopped and said, "Punch me in at the chorus." Honestly! So I said, "Francis, I haven't even heard the song. It's a drum part." He said, "Well, back it up, play it, and I'll tell you when I know where I am. Punch it in any time after that." That's what we did. It was so infectious. He came in afterward and was like, "Isn't that fucking great?" He's got the drum track down and nothing else. He's over the moon about it. He's like, "Let's put the bass on." Eventually, I was like, "Can we put a vocal on?" He said, "I haven't written the words yet." "What's it about?" He didn't know. He said that he couldn't play it yet because he didn't own it. I figured. "Oh no, we've wasted all this time on a cover of somebody else's song." I asked him who owned it, and he said, "No, I wrote it. I just don't own it yet." "What's he talking about?" He taught me that, in his world, you don't own something until you've got it back. He had to go and find a venue. He went to the Bluebird on open mic day and played it. Then he "got it back," and it was his. I can understand that. It comes from nowhere, and so for him to accept it, he's got to see someone giving it to him. He plays it to somebody and gets a response, and it's like, "Yeah, okay. That's me. I can have that." Very clever. It was just great doing everything. We started some of the songs on the album in that little room and finished them on DA-88. Some of them are from the 24-track with overdubs and stuff. Another thing that blew my mind. We came to the mix, and he said, "We're done with everything?" I said, "Yeah, we just have the mixing to do." He told me he was going to New York. I asked about the mixes, and he said to send them to him when I was done. He told me to do them all, put them in a sequence, and send them to him on a CD. The first time he heard the record was in the room with all the directors and all the people who were deciding on his career. He heard it the same time the record company heard it. I called him up and asked if he wanted me to send him something. He said, "Nope. That's what you do!" He gives and takes and all the while he's an absolute nutcase. Tall Blonde Helicopter. Even the album cover. The ladies loved him. He's a good looking guy, curly, wavy blonde hair, confident, talented. The record company decided they were going to control him, so they set him up for the album cover shoot in Central Park. They had this great photographer, but he didn't like what they were having him do, posing and all that sort of stuff, so he was complaining to me about how fucked up the cover was. It was terrible. It was like a clothing magazine sort of thing, like he's a model. I asked him what he was going to do about it, and he said they'd just have to do it again. They wouldn't do it again, but he said he was going to make sure that they wouldn't use the photos. They did the album cover before we did the mix. He came in the next day bald, shaved all his hair off. Of course, he's got to do all these personal appearances, and now they're going to have the album cover with this guy with long hair. Control! He's not going to disagree with them. It won lots of radio awards. It was the programmers top record of that year, but unfortunately he upset the vice president lady, and she was the deciding factor of whether it would be Francis Dunnery or Hootie and the Blowfish, and you know who won.
Unfortunately.
Audience Member: The moral of that story is that it doesn't matter how good the record is. Don't tick off the record label.
You're absolutely right.
Richard is at www.richarddodd.com;
Thanks to Welcome to 1979 for having me out for this event again!
