Looking at what happened to Lone Justice, it seemed that your producer, Jimmy Iovine, was pretty exhausting in the studio.
Well, here's the thing. When I work with artists, I tell them, “Anything that goes wrong with your career is your fault. Don't blame your producer, your manager, your A&R guy, your agent, the lead singer's girlfriend or boyfriend, or whatever.” I saw the writing on the wall in ’83, but I didn't leave. [laughter] I was reading this article in American Songwriter Magazine with John Fogerty. He said something that was exactly my experience. He said when he was in Creedence Clearwater Revival, he talked about all the problems that were going on with [Fantasy Records’ head, Saul] Zaentz and how the business stuff was really fucked up. He said, “I thought at the time, if I just put all my energy into the music everything will work itself out.” And that was exactly my own philosophy at the time. "If I just put myself into the music, we're going to be so good, and everything will work itself out." Even Fogerty said, “Boy, was that dumb.” [laughter] That's a false formula.
It's not going to work.
The first thing that Jimmy did was take [Lone Justice vocalist] Maria [McKee] into the studio and cut a song with the Heartbreakers. If that's the producer you're working with, there's no future here. It never really got better from that. The same thing with our manager. The writing was on the wall early on. And Jimmy hated country music. This isn't just hearsay – this is what he told me. He looked me in the eye. One day in the studio, I took a big piece of paper that said, “I hate country music. -Jimmy Iovine,” and I put it on the door of the studio as everyone walked in. This is what was going on. When we were mixing the record, Jimmy would call, “Hey, Marvin. Go into the studio, The Village. Shelly [Yakus, Tape Op #31] is there. He's working on some of those country songs. Why don't you make sure it sounds okay.” He didn't give a shit. When we were working on “Soap, Soup and Salvation” on the [self-titled debut] record, Jimmy was in the studio and the whole band was set up at Sunset Sound or wherever. Jimmy looked at me in front of the whole band and goes, “Marvin, you produce this one. I'm going to go work on a single or something.” What we were about, he wasn't into. He was off working on Maria’s solo record from day one. That's not his fault that I didn't leave. It's all of those problems that you hear bands had in the ‘80s.
Yeah.
I'll give you one example: The first time Lone Justice went into the studio, I was producing. We went in with the original band, before I was in it. We went to a nice studio, Record Plant maybe. It’s 1983, right? You know where music was at this point. I said to the engineer, “You know that snare drum sound that's really popular on MTV?” He said, “Oh, yeah,” and starts plugging wires in. Then he said, “We're ready to get that sound,” and I said, “Unplug everything. I don't want that sound. I just want it to sound like a stick hitting a drum.”
Not the cannon shot sound?
Yeah. He looked at me like he’d never experienced anybody not wanting that sound. But we unplugged everything, and that's what we got.
How did you leave the band?
Everyone thought I was nuts. We’d just got off tours with U2 and Tom Petty. We were on Geffen Records, the biggest label at the time. I said, “It's not going to fly without me, and they don't want me.” Jimmy asked me, “What do you want?” I said, “I wrote a third of the first album.” I was writing; I had two co-writes in ‘84 with Richard Thompson. I said, “I've got songs I've co-written with people. I'm happy to co-write with Maria and Ryan [Hedgecock, guitarist, co-founder] or deliver songs, but I want to be creatively involved. I don't want to just be a scarecrow with an instrument. He goes, “You're not going to be Lindsey Buckingham [Tape Op #146]. This isn't a band.” I said, “Well, all right.” That was it. What can you say? By that point, I had no leverage. I was talking to Bill Bentley. Bill was a publicist for Warner Bros., Slash [Records], and a lot of labels. I never knew this then, but he told me later, “I don't know if you know, but in ’83 Slash Records wanted to sign Lone Justice.” I said, “I wish you would have told me.” Slash had X and Los Lobos – it would have been a good fit. But our band’s manager told them no.
If you can have a career slowly building and more in your control, you could do this longer.
Yeah. That was my personal dream for Lone Justice.
Make the record, hand it to the label, and tell them, “This is what it is.”
After Lone Justice, the next band I produced was Toad the Wet Sprocket. They were unsigned and no one knew who they were. They had released a cassette, and [engineer] David Vaught had worked on the first cassette. They said, “You do the next record, but we don't have a label.” I got a boombox cassette in the mail. This was ’87 or ’88, and I thought, “I can see guitar-driven music with a really great vocal and a song sensibility like this.” I was sensing there was a valley open for that. I said, “I'll make the record if you agree to complete it, mix it, and master it.” They said, “Okay.” I didn't want to go halfway – we had to go for it. We finished the album, and one of the managers called, “What three singles do we have? We want to start shopping the album to labels.” I said, “We don't have three singles. We have one album. This is an album that people will buy if you tell them about the whole album.” They said, “What do you want us to do?” I said, “Manufacture fifty vinyl copies with a white cover. Have it say, 'Toad the Wet Sprocket,' the album is called Pale. Hand it to a label. If they like it, talk to them. If they don't, tell them to piss off and walk away.” Then they’d know what they're getting. There's no guesswork. If you hand them three songs, they're going to go in and recut it from scratch. It worked! Every label in town wanted it. They ended up going with Columbia Records.
And the record stayed the same?
They didn't touch a note, because I said, “If you hand in the record to the label, that has to be part of the deal that you cannot touch the record when you release it.” They followed that, and I share the story because it puts the artist in the driver's seat.
The Peter Case album you did in the early ‘90s, Sings Like Hell, is about as stripped down as you can get for a record.
It was an interesting time for Peter because he was technically on Geffen Records. We were hanging out, and he said, “I called up Geffen Records and they didn't know who I was.” [laughter] That's not a good sign. He was searching for what to do, and I said, “What's your dream record right now? What is it that you really want to do?” He said, “I want to do faux country blues, with my guitar and my voice.” I said, “A lot of those records have no overdubs. It's just direct-to-tape. We've got a 1/4-inch machine, a ReVox, and a Flickinger board. Why don't we do that?” He called me back and said, “Let's do it.” We bought a stack of 1/4-inch tape. I said, “If you want to invite people over, they can stand in the corner but they're not going to overdub.” So, that's what we did. They called it Sings Like Hell. A month later, he got signed to Vanguard [Records]. That changed his trajectory. All of a sudden, he became Peter Case on Vanguard, and it opened that door for him.
There’s always something special about live takes.
I'm such a believer in capturing live vocals; that's the center of the rhythm. On the Toad album, every lead vocal on the record is live. It's two guitars, bass, drums, and lead vocal live. We just overdubbed background vocals and some leads. And we mixed as we went.
Wow.
Right? The lead singer, Glen [Phillips], came up to me and said, “We're doing all the vocals live?” The engineer asks, “We're doing all the vocals live?” This is 1988. Everything is layered up like a cake. I said, “Yeah, we're going to cut all the vocals live.” And he said, “Can I redo a vocal?” I said, “Knock yourself out. You're isolated. No problem.” He was doing the vocals in the control room, looking through the glass at the band on the other side. He tried redoing a vocal three or four times. I asked, “What do you think?” He said, “It's not sounding better than my live vocal.” I said, “Then go with your live vocal,” and that's what we did. It was the same thing with the Counting Crows’ track, “Miller's Angels,” that I did. Adam [Duritz] was set up and it was a live vocal. This took days of take after take. At one point, he started to sing at the end, “Leave me, leave me, leave me alone.” I said, “We have the second half of the song.” It was the first time that he took it to this unexpected place, adding a new lyric. I felt it elevated where he was going. So, we just needed part one. The band's playing part one of the song, the first half. Finally, they got it. It was at David Vought’s on two 16-track machines, locked. I walked out of the room like it was surgery. I was so nervous because he had to edit two 16-track tape machines and stay in sync. He said, “Okay, come on in,” and it was a perfect edit. This was beyond my comprehension that he could do that.
That’s the eye that a good producer can keep on a session, looking for something special.
Yeah. There was a Toad the Wet Sprocket track, "Brother," that we did for a Mike Myers' movie, So I Married an Axe Murderer. It was tracked to 2-inch, 16-track, and we made choices. "All the background vocals on one track. Do a sub mix on all of the horns on one track." We cut the band. We got one guitar solo; cut it in the toilet. The label wanted Michael Brauer [Tape Op #131] to mix. I don't know what I was thinking, but I sent the 2-inch master tape without making a copy. Michael Brauer called me a week later. He said, "I got the tape. I've got to say thank you. All I've got to do is put up the faders. It sounds like a record." I asked, "Well, isn't that what I was supposed to send you?" He said, "Oh, Marvin, you have no idea what I get. People send me 20 guitar solos and 30 vocal takes, like I'm supposed to know. What am I supposed to choose here?" I said, "If you want to use the backgrounds, use them. If you want the horns, use them. If you don't, it's one fader and they're out."
Then he can do his best work because he's not just sitting there doing traffic control.
I think part of it is letting go. From the artist, the producer, musicians, and for everybody involved. There has to be a sense of letting go and trusting this moment in time. What modern technology has afforded people – to its detriment – is giving people more control over the process. If you look back at the records from the ‘50s and ‘40s, there weren't those options. They went in to record. Even the word "record" means document. But to technology's positiveness, it's allowed for a lot of great record-making. There are times where someone walks in and goes, "Wait a minute. I know how to make you great: Everything I love about you, I'm going to change. I know you're an acoustic band, but I’ve got a great drum machine that I use." But what does that have to do with me? That's really the question. What does it have to do with the artist? A producer has an opportunity to expand the artist’s horizon, but not to alter the situation to the point where you don't even recognize the artist anymore. There are some record producers that are record “reducers.” They’re degrading the artist and trying to make them feel that they have to submit to the whims of a record producer, or a record company president. I just don't buy into that. I never have. Because it's only about the songs and it's only about the record. That's all we’ve got. That's all that people are going to remember. 
