Billy Anderson

Billy Anderson recorded one of hard rock's most intriguing and fucking coolest albums in history — Jerusalem, by the now-defunct legendary stoner-rock band Sleep. It was a lengthy one-track sonic low-end frequency voyage into unknown that was almost too volatile to be put on shelves. And when you came out of it, you felt stoned — literally, as if the heavy boulder — rolling rhythms and sounds he captured had hit you repeatedly over the head like the way they did it in Biblical times. In fact, Anderson has recorded some of the best curios within the rock genre, from stoner rock and beyond — all pieces of musical and sonic art by the likes of Fantomas, Mr. Bungle, Neurosis, the Melvins, L7, Unsane and even the Red House Painters. Anderson is also a mysterious character — his name appearing everywhere but his likeness and such remaining relatively in the unknown. I managed to track him down at his abode in the San Francisco Bay Area, to have a chat with this "big brother in sound", a man who knows his way around every environment, and sports the necessary mental traits of being professional and warmly informal, both at the same time.

It seems as of the past handful of years you've been dealing more with the straight-up rock band situations.

I used to do a lot more technical stuff like Brutal Truth, Kiss It Goodbye and Sangre Amado, and it's really hard to pull that off live. Lately I have been trying to pull off stuff live. I hate asking a band to wear headphones. A drummer will play a lot differently with a big apparatus on their head than if they are pretending to be in their rehearsal space. So I always try to avoid headphones. I have been getting back into technical stuff lately and have grown to like tracking to analog, then transferring to Pro Tools for plug-ins and mixing/editing. It's a cool thing — hit the tape nice and stern, then play with the tracks in a computer — best of both worlds. I still prefer the feel of a band over the technical perfection that our friend Mac can provide. To me it's the difference between using a "tool" and "a crutch". Walking the line is very precarious and impossible to define.

So you must spend a lot of time with setting them in the room.

Yup. I basically try to start as if we're in the rehearsal space. I try to hang out in their space and look at how their set-up and start from there in the tracking room. From there I look at the bleed situations. Personally, I am from the thought that a little bleed is gonna help with the thickness of it, if it's controllable. I don't mind a little guitar in the overheads as long as I can control it later.

It's a more authentic transfer of energy, as well as consistent.

To me, vibe and energy are way more important than every sound being pristine and isolated. A guitar player hearing his two stacks through a fuckin' one inch headphone speaker. [laughs] I can hear the feeling going away. I've done shit like get a PA system, run drums through it, and back out in to the room — I'll use that for reverb sometimes. I did that for the first Fantomas record as well as for a Neurosis record and a few others. I ran the drums off of tape back into the room and set up room mics instead of using digital reverb. I'd ask the assistant to move the mics closer or farther. I love doing that kind of shit. A lot of studios these days aren't equipped with live chambers anymore. On this new High On Fire album, there was a live chamber. So we spent a day reamping drums into the live chamber and we got a lot of cool organic reverb sounds. We did a whole day doing that — it was like an engineer's wet dream.

You work with a lot of young bands, correct? Like bands who are doing their first album and such. You're like the "big brother" to them...

I have played that role before, especially now that I am older. I've also been a little brother a lot of times too. I remember when I first started out I was like younger than anybody in the band and that freaked people out sometimes. Basically though, I always like to pretend I am in the band. If I can't picture myself in the band, I am going to have a hard time telling them how to play or to convey a feeling.... I am lucky to have that luxury now. I am not going to tell somebody what to play if I couldn't at least sit down and attempt to play it. I've seen engineers and producers in situations telling somebody what to play and they couldn't possibly hope to even pull it off. It's very hypocritical to me. Not that I can play everything but I try to at least demonstrate the idea... yeah, like I'm gonna sit down behind Lombardo or Crover's kit and be like "do this".

Well it has gone a step further though with you hasn't it? You recorded a Blessing The Hogs album and now you are in them!

Yeah! That's kind of a strange story in that I recorded the album then I went away to England to record Cathedral's Endtyme album and while I was gone they asked me if I was interested in being in the band and I thought about it and decided to go for it. So we jammed a few times and it was a definite thing for me to do, since the previous band I was in broken up recently. So, the album was already recorded, mixed and mastered and ready to be pressed, and they said they wanted me to be on the record! I was like well, that would be going in, recording my parts, remixing, and so on. And then John, the guitar player, got the bright idea of, "Hey, why don't we just put the mastered CD on two tracks of my digital 8- track, go in the rehearsal space and overdub your parts on the mastered CD!" And, I am like, "You know what? You're fucking psycho. Let's do it.", and we did it and that's what you hear.

That's insane.

That's the strangest thing I've ever done as far as recording. And, you can't even tell, well, I can because I was there.

Well that sort of thing occurred quite a bit in the old school days, no?

Yeah, but except that we did it on a fuckin' Roland digital 8-track! It actually didn't sound bad. It was all subject to review. If it sounded stupid we wouldn't use it. It's not something that would occur to me to do in a professional situation, but fuck, whatever works is my theory. Best sound wins — whether the janitor at the studio thinks of it — I've done tests where somebody prefers a certain kind of mic — some tech-head might get pissed off because it's some kind of low-rent-bottom-drawer of the mic-locker-kinda mic — but, best sound wins. Don't care what it is.

So you have been doing a lot of indie bands, but when you first started off you were working with artists on major labels — like The Melvins, 7 Year Bitch and Mr. Bungle.

There was a period when, well, I hate to bring up the word — "grunge", was getting a lot of bands signed that normally wouldn't have been signed to a major label. It was a horrible period, although cool for a lot of friends who normally would be over looked by higher levels of the business. I like doing major label records though — they're a lot of fun.

A broad question, but — what's the difference?

Well... more money. Not for me necessarily, but it ends up the case sometimes. My honest feelings really are that I couldn't give a shit about money. I'm not in this to make a bunch of money, I'd rather make good records, and a lot of big budget records are shit records. Although, more budget means more time, better studios. Like the Sleep [Jerusalem] record we did for London records — that was on a major label, but had that been say, on Earache or Relapse, we would have had a lot less time to make it. The fact it was on London it gave us a month in the studio that was out in the woods — that could be a luxury, being on a major label.

Let's talk about Jerusalem shall we? Not only is it legendary as a heavy rock album, but also in terms of the making of it... it has a pretty crazy history behind it.

Oh yeah! Actually it started out as a song called "Dopesmoker". It was going to be about 45 minutes in length — a complete concept record — just kind of outer space meets marijuana. Somewhere along the way Al [the bass player] found religion and decided to call it Jerusalem. They got put through the major label grinder, man. Which is very unfortunate. The particulars are not really worth getting into, but all I can say is Earache (their record label at the time) dicked them over so badly, that they had to get out of their contract with them. So there was a lot of pressure when we got into the studio, a lot of drama because of the pressure — it was a mess for everybody. The thing is, is that we pulled it off and it will be a legendary album forever I think. There was a lot of fuckin' blood, sweat and tears over that album — no joke man — a lot of people suffered — mostly the band and me. When you're under a lot of pressure, being young, and sign a dumb contract, especially with a shyster label like Earache, which you can quote me on that, that guy Digby Pearson from the label is a total fucking SHYSTER. I never really heard of a band that signed to Earache that never got ripped off. Sleep were 17 or 18 when they signed, not knowing what was on it really, and Earache had them by the balls. So they were under a lot of pressure for Jerusalem, and its amazing it even got pulled off.

Another thing is that it is one of the ultimate examples of a record that is atypical in the major label world — one fifty-plus minute track!

I don't understand how some major label A&R guy would be sitting around going, "Hey! I smell radio!!"

[laughter] Well maybe he was thinking that a five minute disco edit version could be extracted from it.

You laugh — but there is one! I swear to god dude. We did a radio edit of Jerusalem for radio. It was my idea to do it as a joke, but the label thought it was a good idea, so as a smart-ass thing we did one. I just took one section of the song that contained the most variety — a vocal part, a quiet part, a solo and so on and edited it down. It actually is pretty cool. It would be a cool metal radio song. But that would never happen, because the second London got their hands on it they shelved it.

I thought I heard that they had you remix it because it was too heavy.

Yeah. Story with that is they got the mix that me and the band did. Well first they heard it unmastered and we already talked about the low-end thing — it's called a frequency compressor, mister A&R geek! Anyway, Sleep was a band that required a lot of low end, but they got the CD of the mix and they thought it was too much so they were going to remix it. They ended up choosing Dave Sardy to remix it and the band were against it. I had to go just because we had been working on the fucking thing for eight months...

Steady?

Pretty much, yeah. We took some time off to go home and recuperate. So anyway the label chose Sardy for some reason, I don't know why, but I had to go because he would have no idea — he would look at the track sheets and be completely confused. It might as well have been in Sanskrit. So I had to decipher the track sheets for him and tell him which guitars were which, etc. It was pretty mathematical to be quite honest and no one would be able to figure it out except for me. So I had to watch someone else mix. I am not totally pleased with the way he mixed it but there was nothing I could do because if the record was going to come out at all it was going to, under those conditions. It was a lot heavier before. One day maybe the original version will come out.

So since it was 54 minutes long, it was obviously pieced together from small sections.

Yeah, well they'd play for a while then I'd do a razor edit — about a hundred of them — it all sounds pretty natural, but wasn't easy to assemble. There was 2" tape flying around and me with a razor blade wondering whether to slice the Quantegy or my jugular... driving myself insane. It was not easy to make for anybody. Man, they tune so low — there was a tuning thing like when we're stacking four or five guitars on top of each other. If one is slightly out of tune — cool, but try to stack another one then it gets exponentially out of tune.

Yeah, like bizarre combination tones and the like...

Yeah, weird overtones and everyone growing big ears, getting all paranoid, going, "Is that out of tune? Is that out of tune?" That was the hardest record I ever made. Just mentally. I got into some deep things numerically and technically with Mr. Bungle, but mentally, Sleep...

But doing something like Mr. Bungle, given their extreme knack for blowing up formalities as we know it — that must have been another massive challenge in its own right.

Yeah, we're talking about syncing up three 24-track machines with 2 ADATs and keeping track sheets all in line. You got percussion tracks sharing with backup vocal tracks and you still don't have enough. Then you got tape returns coming back on aux returns. Man, that took a lot out of my brain. I'd be like, "Okay, we gotta put a three second percussion part on that part of the song, we have to find a place to put it. Oh, you're not singing there, yeah let's put it there!"

Fuck!

So this went on... well the last one, California, went on for like five months. The first one I did, their second album, Disco Volante, took nine months to make.

So I can't even imagine the scope of the mixing situation — automation central!

We did a majority of mixing of both those records on an SSL, just because of the ability to recall. We actually had to go to Los Angeles on the last record because we couldn't find an SSL in the Bay area with enough inputs. We found a 108 input SSL and it still wasn't enough! We were using small faders for tape returns, the little tiny faders that weren't even automatable. It was funny. We had reels dedicated solely to vocals and vocal harmonies, and an ADAT or 2, and they'd take home a reference mix on 2 tracks of an ADAT and do overdubs in their home space and bring it to the studio and say, "Here's my homework!" Then I'd have to fly it onto another reel. Yep.

When is enough enough?

For them? NEVER. Just when you think, "God, this is the fullest it could possibly be." The shopping cart is completely full, then it's like, "No, no! I have four more keyboard harmonies, and right now I am transcribing horn parts for the horn section." ...and whoever it is ends up being completely right.

Ha! Maybe in ten years they can re- release their albums in a special edition format, like they do with DVDs or whatever...

They very well could. They are an amazing band. You got Trevor the bass player writing out horn parts, and you got Trey writing out violin parts because the string section is coming in, bar transcribing entire songs from cassette demos with headphones.... They all read and write music. I don't get that a lot. Mr. Bungle are completely different. They're incredible. I learned a lot about recording and playing music when I worked with them.

And yet Mr. Bungle are still doing stuff to tape...

Yeah, they have barely ventured into Pro Tools land. There is no cheating going on with them at all. Itallgoestotape.Ididahellofalotof punches. My nickname became "Punchy", because... well, my punching skills were worked over and became pretty finely tuned... That and the Fantomas record — punching every two seconds in and out in and out. [laughter]

I gather it becomes a sporting event of its own. You have to have the right amount of coffee within you to be sharp, but not too much to be shaky, because with a band like that, the half millimeter, half second error could totally throw off the precise complexity of their feel.

Absolutely right man, you are so correct. I was expected to do some really inhuman punches and actually pulled off most of them. I got really good at it. I learned a lot about which machines punch responsively — I even had to request another machine, like a [Studer] 827 instead of an 800 once because it wasn't punching the way I needed it to, like not punching out correctly.

You travel quite a bit, correct?

Yup, I do travel a lot. I just got back from Argentina — I was down there making a record for a band called Natas. It's really dark, rock. That was a pretty incredible trip because I got out just before there was that outbreak of riots and civil disobedience.

So what would the studio have been like down there considering the financial situation of the country?

Well, the studio was actually pretty amazing. They had one of the best API desks I have ever worked on — one of those older black-faced ones, in amazing condition. They had an Ampex MM1100 machine, which made punching next to impossible. They had a bunch of killer U-87s in four-packs, straight from Germany.

You used to travel and do live sound as well.

Yeah, I did the Melvins' live sound for four or five years. But I don't really do it much anymore, since I have my own band and I do a lot of recording. Once in a while I will, like if it's a week long or for a friend's band or a big show in town. That was the problem when I was with the Melvins was because I didn't get to have my own band. And if I am not playing music, I get to be very unhappy.

You are a bass player?

Actually, I play guitar. But I have played bass — in the Melvins briefly as their #6 bass player. They're on #8 now I believe.

So having been around and working constantly — what would be your ideal studio situation?

You know what? What really pisses me off is 12 hour lock-outs. Ever run into that?

Yeah, well usually a real lock-out is when an entire weekend or week or month or whatever, straight through.

Yeah, well for one, the first thing is that none of that kind of crap. And from there, it'd have my favorite desk of all time, a Trident TSM. I prefer them over Neves. I love the preamps — they definitely sound better, less pristine. I do a lot of stuff at a studio called Sharkbite — they have one there. I like using gain devices, anything with an input knob and preferably a tube.... to distort vocals, drums, reamp bass, etc... NO GAIN, NO PAIN. I have been in every kind of studio that you can possibly imagine. Studios that cost $4000 a day to ones that cost $50 a day and it's all relative to the project in my eyes. I've managed a studio — people have asked me if I was ever going to have my own and I was like, "HELL NO."

It's best to be a rogue — be in new environments, so as to not burn out.

Yeah, that's the part I enjoy — but there's downsides to that too — like walking into a studio that you've seen the spec sheet that looks good and nothing works or half the shit's like, "Oh yeah, we put that on the sheet even though it belongs to somebody else who loans it to us." I find it most rewarding to not be tied down to one place. If I ever owned my own studio it'd be for personal home recording. The thing is you have to keep up with the Joneses, you have to have the newest of the new gear and advertise it and spend every dime that you make on new gear or the hippest old gear. When I managed a studio I had to worry about getting shit fixed in addition to recording bands, and it's hard to concentrate to on the sound and feel of a record. I never want to own a commercial studio.

You have some pretty unconventional sounds happening it seems as well... like the sounds of mics getting ravaged or boxes being given hot doses of juice...

Yeah! I like finding obscure gear and breaking it out, or just breaking it. Using it 'cause no one else has.

Stuff that is kind of like half-broken.

That's the best. Every studio I go to there is always the box of weird mics and pedals. I always go for that one first.

So you prefer to get sounds down to tape rather than doing something with it in the mix.

Yeah, I listen to rough mix CDs and final mix CDs and sometimes they're very close to each other.

So what are your favorite albums that you've done, as in based on variables like freak occurrences?

Have you heard the Bottom record that I did? [Feels so Good When You're Gone]

The female stoner rock group — whose album was released on Man's Ruin before the label folded?

Yeah. That's one of my favorite records because it came out sounding really good and it was a big, big struggle to make. Sina, the guitar player/singer, got really ill. They're a three piece, and once the drummer and bass player are done, it next goes to the guitar player. Sina got really sick yet we pressed on, and she was able to pull off her vocals — which are amazing — and her guitar playing which is pretty darn good. Even though she had the flu and was leaving the room every five minutes to puke — for reasons like that, like a struggle going on, it's my favorite. When I put that on I feel and hear what was going on at that time. It's a proud thing to me when you can actually convey that.

Yeah — it translates across — the human element. Even if a listener does not know the background to the situation at that time, they still sense/feel something.

Exactly. I've actually gotten feedback from people who said they could feel the anger and emotion from it. It is the highest compliment — not just to me, but to the band too. Their feelings got put across on tape, and it's not really an easy thing to do. That is why I do this — because every once in a while, being able to pull that off — all the emotion going through all the cables and mics going through to tape — that's fulfillment to me. I've been blessed with the privilege of working with some of the world's most excellent bands. That's pretty impressive! Ever check out the Red House Painters? I've recorded almost everything they released — I've been working with them since about 1988. I love working with Mark because he is one of the most honest humans I know — he just exudes emotion. He knows what he wants and does not stop until he gets it. I love being challenged that way. He knows what sound he wants, and he is not necessarily technically oriented so he can't always describe how to get there, he just knows what he wants. It may be frustrating at the time but when you pull it off and it actually goes to tape and you get a thumbs up from the guy, then that is an accomplishment in itself. There's Melvins' Houdini, because I got to play on it and that was a hard record to make because there was a lot of drama going on at that time. The proudest records are the ones that are the hardest to make.