Craig Leon: Repeated Listening

Craig Leon produced a host of who’s who New York band debuts in the mid-1970s, including Blondie, Richard Hell the Voidoids, and Suicide. He went onto work with many stalwart artists such as Guy Clark, The Roches, Dwight Twilley, and Rodney Cowell, before segueing into classical music, including recording with masters such as Luciano Pavarotti and George Martin. He will most likely always be associated with the original NYC punk scene, producing The Ramones’ first (self-titled) album and “discovering” the Talking Heads while working A&R for Sire Records. More recently, his own history as a composer has led to a growing interest in exploring the developments with immersive recording technology.

What is the same, or different, about producing classical music versus pop music?

Classical singers often don’t have any awareness of mic technique. They can be plenty loud, though. Extremely loud. Even overmodulating. But a lot of punk is overmodulated as well. The reality is that I used the same basic mics and limiters for recording Pavarotti as The Ramones. Though, for Pavarotti, I did also have additional “classical” mics, like Schoeps MK 21s. Classical recording has more to do with capturing an optimal performance – a live recording of an interpretation of another writer’s work. In classical, we are editing together the best possible bits. This can come down to bars, or even single notes. We can have hundreds of thousands of edits on one recording, but from only two or three takes total. I am not exaggerating; it is not uncommon. With pop, on the other hand, what we are getting is music that is intuitive. Classical has a manual for instruction. Pop usually isn’t done that way. Pop is done from the germ of an idea that a writer has. They have something they want to hear – that is, whoever is in charge of the ethos of the project – and the producer and engineer’s job is to try to develop that and get it down on tape as the artist imagines it. That leads to a lot of experimentation and trying different ideas in the studio. The producer’s role is largely of making suggestions. In classical, it is more pointing out mistakes that need to be improved or corrected. The person who straddled those two worlds the best is George Martin. I was lucky enough to work with him, and know him. In his recordings, we can hear both classical and pop techniques applied on the same record – especially with The Beatles. In pop, as a producer your job is not to impose the “right” thing, but rather to suggest several ideas that might help the artist get their viewpoint across. Their verbal communication is often, “I want it to sound like a feather floating down a river,” or, “I want something Vivaldi-esque.” Okay, well, Vivaldi sounded a lot of different ways – even in a single piece – so helping to find a way to translate that information sonically is key.

I am assuming that with the old classical recordings – since they were done on tape – there was less editing. Maybe only big chunks, like for an entire movement?

No, you’d be surprised. On some of the analog sessions, there was tape all over the room. The thing with editing is people can get hooked on it, because they can always make it “better.” In addition to overhead stereo mics, on some classical recordings now you’ll have a mic on almost every instrument, which is what they almost always do with film scores. Generally, in a mix, we’ll end up with only five to twenty mics which represent 80 percent of what we are hearing. Sometimes an inferior take is suddenly magical for five bars, so we’ll paste that into the stronger overall track. Beethoven was very specific about timing, but if you listen to ten different recordings of the same piece, not one of them respects his timing. [ laughs ] They all are quite different from each other , in terms of pace.

There must have been many early cases where they sped up songs to make it fit on the lacquers.

Yes, some of my favorite blues records are the 78s where they started at 110 BPM and by the end, they are topping 190 BPM. I can tell there is an engineer frantically motioning to the singer to finish the song before they run out of space! Henry Thomas was one of those that happened with a lot. With classical we might just lengthen a rest [pause] to empathize it more, and that’s all we’ll change on the whole piece. Recording is so fascinating – we are grabbing sounds out of the air and then sending them back out so that people can have reactions to them, often emotional reactions! With immersive recording, the whole room is opened up. It is as big a step as from mono to stereo to quadrophonic to 5.1. It is 3D audio. It will be in the forefront very soon, which is interesting since some of my favorite music still is mono. [ laughs ] “There’s no one rule” is the best rule to follow. With immersive, we can actually take an “object“ and move it around anywhere in the listener’s sphere.The listener can be placed onstage or in the middle of a band. They can have sounds swirling around the room or dropping down through their head and body.

How many tracks are you usually using with your immersive compositions?

It is not a question of tracks, but rather the number of “objects” that are used. We are looking at pinpoints in a three-dimensional room, listening to sounds up, down, to the left, to the right, to the front, to the rear, or any combination of the above. We’ll assign different instruments, and different sets of instruments, to objects. Track counts are strange. I’ve had classical projects with 200 tracks, but we are only using 20. All of the rest are muted for all but three or four very specific moments – the entrance of an oboe that we want to announce, or a section with a bunch of strings that are out of tune, but if we empathize the one that is in tune, suddenly they all sound okay. It is very difficult to use [Antares] Auto-Tune on an orchestra… fortunately! [ laughter ] When we are dealing with immersive, everything is in there all of the time. [Merging Technologies’] Pyramix is my favorite digital format [software] for this. You are looking at a box with a bunch of flashing lights and pathways inside it. You can even move objects in slow time – at a tenth of the speed – geometric movements that otherwise would not be physically possible.

<div class="captxt" style="background-color: #fff !important; color: #000 !important; text-align: center !important;">Craig Leon &amp; Adam Lynk @ GM Berlin Recording Session (2017)</div>

You’ve produced so many debut records. What do you attribute that to?

Whenever I produce an artist, I am consciously seeking out something that is pushing boundaries and going against the grain of what’s currently “popular.” I find this type of artist exciting to work with. It follows that such a project is not necessarily to be found working with an “established” artist. Having said that, there are occasionally albums that established artists have made long into their careers which do not fit this premise. I would have gladly worked on some of them, but no one asked. Probably because I’m stereotyped as someone who mostly does debut albums. [ laughs ]

What was it like working with The Pogues in their heyday?

I worked on a soundtrack song [‘Haunted” from Sid and Nancy ] with them, not a full album. We were in London, and England still had set pub hours during that era, so we made sure to only record during the hours when the pubs were closed. It was impossible otherwise. [ laughs ] But the band were serious and efficient once they were in the studio. People still cherished being in the studio at that point, since the opportunity to record remained a relative rarity. Usually, if I’m heartfelt in trying to help an artist, then they are not going to give me a hard time. They know I am on their side.

With the singer/songwriter artists, did you usually record the voice and acoustic guitar together or separate?

Together, as there is a unique interplay between the voice and instrument that would be too stiff if recorded separately. There’s a chance we won’t capture that interplay. To me, a recording performance by an unadorned folk singer or folk singing group is like recording a classical performance.

How important are the physically felt and subliminal elements in music?

Those subtleties psychologically affect the listener, even if they are not aware of it. Like on The Ramones’ debut, there is a lot more going on than people realize. I am trying to create an environment. That helps a recording stand up to repeated listening.

Do you always use multiple vocal mics at the same time?

Yes. Some close, some farther, and some even further. That way I can zero in on different nuances. I always have one that is close, but that one I generally don’t end up using in the mix because it would be ultra -up close. A nearfield mic, instead, often gets the best sound. I’m trying to represent the music in the room as accurately as possible. The close mic is often just there to get the person to focus and stay in one place, so they don’t wander around physically within the stereo image. I usually use a couple of different sets of stereo. I use the Decca tree [configuration] – left/right/center. One above and also rear mics. Then distant and far distance. Some are at ground level, too.

You end up with mics opposing each other?

Yes.

The Ramones’ debut was recorded and mixed in seven days for $6, 400?

Yes; the vocals were done very quickly. But a lot is double tracked.

The guitar and bass can be heard separately on the stereo channels – electric bass on the left channel, rhythm guitar on the right – and drums and vocals sit in the middle of the stereo mix. How extreme left and right are these?

Pretty softly panned. About 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock. But we originally wanted to do the whole album mono, since that was the sound of the old Beatles records. As far as sonics though, the really big influence on The Ramones was The Who’s Live at Leeds . I spent weeks talking with Tom [Tommy “Ramone” Erdelyi, Tape Op #46 ] in advance. He was the most knowledgeable at that point since he had worked in studios.

He’d started working when he was still a teenager, as an assistant engineer at The Record Plant, right? He even worked on some [Jimi] Hendrix sessions.

Right. But they all had very strong views. Joey [Ramone] loved Herman’s Hermits. With the corporatization of pop music, things had gotten very bloated and homogenized very quickly – in just ten years. The band were nostalgic for records that weren’t really that old, in terms of time.

What factors led to the vocals being double-tracked?

Joey didn’t have particularly precise pronunciation, so we started doubling him. We doubled him, or used automatic double tracking [ADT], which is something that John Lennon used. My friend, Tony Visconti [ Tape Op #29 ], used a technique with David Bowie [on “Heroes”], where they placed different mics throughout the room and combined them using gates. The singer, being a variety of distances from the mics, created a natural delay [as he sang louder]. Up until 1976, doubling was about the only effect we could do on vocals other than reverb. Consequently, it was all over those British Invasion records.

So, what were some of the hidden elements on The Ramones’ record?

I happen to have an old track sheet around here for some reason. Let me look for it. For instance, on the song “Havana Affair,” we had eight tracks of “oohs” bounced down to two tracks. And seven tracks of guitar were bounced down to one. Plus, we added handclaps, tambourine, and “other” percussion.

What made the drum sound on that record so unique?

The drum booth was weird at Plaza Sound Studio. It was a closed, tight room. The Ramones were very orchestrated – down to which cymbal accented which word. It was like a score, played much in the style of Ringo Starr or Keith Moon. Tom used open hi-hat a lot as a secondary sound, which actually makes the guitar seem louder. He was very heavy on the cymbals. He would use them to create more chaotic noise and to accent certain words in the lyrics, but a lot of his crashes are very musical. It was close mic’d, since the room was small. On the other hand, the guitars and bass were in a very cavernous room. But I didn’t want a whole lot of reverb on the drums, since he was playing so fast. There are some drum overdubs on the record too – a ride cymbal here or there.

You take very copious notes. How many pages per song, usually?

We didn’t have screen snapshots back then. So, there would be an entire notebook for every album – EQ settings, etc.

Why do you think some of the groups that you worked with took off and others, which were critically acclaimed and had a buzz, did not?

A lot of times it was the attitude of the group, or what was going on with a label at the time. But a lot of it was just luck. Some of my favorite records didn’t ever gain any commercial success. The Ramones didn’t sell for years and years, and now they do. But I never thought about commercial considerations going in. What was important was getting it done!

From 1976 to 1977 was such a peculiar period in that many bands were in the right place at the right time and rode the “punk” wave, even though they really weren’t punk bands at all.

They were all trying to get music back to basics, but they never would have thought they were at all doing anything the same as each other.

<div class="captxt" style="background-color: #fff !important; color: #000 !important; text-align: center !important;">Craig Leon &amp; Martin Rev @ Northside Fest (2017)</div>

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