At some point, I realized there was a brotherly link between drummer/engineer Dennis Dragon of The Surf Punks, one of silliest yet competent new wave/punk bands ever, and keyboardist Daryl Dragon, the Captain of Captain and Tennille, soft-rock superstars. At the time, I wasn't surprised they went in such different directions because there's usually rivalry with brothers. But I noticed that Dennis had credits on some Captain & Tennille records. I found some fun instrumentals on the same records with nutty synths and odd rhythm breaks. I started to notice the synth bits that appeared on the Surf Punks' records as well. I found out that Dennis, Daryl and another brother, Doug, played in the psych/pop band The Dragons (a CD, BFI, recently came out) and later with the Beach Boys. And then... I decided I needed to talk to these guys.
Dennis: My remembrances go back to the early 1950s. My dad, Carmen Dragon [film and radio composer and arranger], was sponsored by Ampex and JBL. One day, when I was very young, Dad got a big, fat delivery — I think Daryl remembers this also — of Ampex tape machines!
Daryl: Yeah.
Dennis: To be exact: an [Ampex] 300, mono, full-track; a 350, half-track, mono; and a 600, half-track, mono. And that introduced me to the wonderful world of audio recording.
Were you doing this stuff at home?
Dennis: Well, we were pretty young at that point. Our dad was an audio recordist. He enjoyed recording all sorts of crazy stuff like sound effects. I think I inherited the recording bug from my dad.
I didn't know he did any recording. The only information I found on your parents was that your dad was a conductor and your mom sang.
Dennis: He dabbled in recording. That was his hobby. He had a studio set up at the house where he could record to the [Ampex] 300. Cam McCulloch, who was the recordist for the I Love Lucy show, set him up with it. He'd come over and do a bunch of tech stuff — he even set Dad up with a way to cut records. This would have been in the early 1950s. I was actually too young to be involved in it.
Daryl: Well Doug — our older brother — was fascinated and was actually getting involved in helping our father. Remember Dad and that whole "Santa Fe Suite" thing? Doug was out there recording trains and dynamite blasts on the Santa Fe Trail in New Mexico.
Dennis: I know when they performed the "Santa Fe Suite"; they had JBL Paragons — one on each side of the hall — along with a live orchestra. And the Paragons delivered these sound effects that were incorporated into the suite.
Daryl: I didn't have an interest in recording at all because Doug and Dennis were so into it. I'd just play the piano and say to them, "Hey, put this on tape." I hated technology. I hated meters. To this day I hate meters.
Why do you hate meters?
Dennis: I love meters.
Daryl: There's something about a meter that drives me nuts.
That it's monitoring your performance?
Daryl: Is my life dependent on this meter? What if it's off? What if it's not calibrated correctly? Everything could be distorted and I wouldn't know it.
Uh-huh. [laughs]
Dennis: Okay, so it's the late 1950s and we were living in Malibu, California. I'm getting more interested in recording, but Doug is getting more into ham radio. Eventually we lost Doug as a recordist, so I borrowed Dad's microphones. He had a couple of Telefunken U47s — originals. I also "borrowed" his Ampex 351-2 and put it upstairs in my bedroom. So Daryl and I are dabbling in music, with me playing the drums and Daryl playing the keyboards. I had some large Altec 604E speakers in the room, the 351-2 and an Ampex mixer, as well as some pretty cool tube stuff. I had drums set up in the corner of the bedroom. Daryl had his [Hohner] Clavinet and some other stuff. What were you using at that time, Daryl?
Daryl: Not much. Doug bought a lot of the stuff. There was a Wurlitzer electric piano, a Clavinet - just that basic "real" stuff they had back then. No synths.
Dennis: There was a Farfisa organ around.
Daryl: Yeah. I had vibes, a Vox Continental organ and a Fender bass.
Dennis: We were recording early soundtracks for surf films.
The Dragons. What was that music like?
Daryl: Well, normally the surf music of that period consisted mainly of guitars and drums, you know, like Dick Dale and his spring reverb. We put a kind of tropical feel in it by adding vibes to the mix. I played bass and Doug would play electric piano. We used to play in local bars and clubs, and all these hot surfers would show up. That was back in the early 1960s, before The Beatles came out. We were an instrumental group — we wouldn't sing hardly at all. We actually created a tremendous following for one particular club, and word got out.
Dennis: In the Malibu area.
Daryl: Yeah. And South Bay, too — they would come from all over the place to hear us. Then The Beatles came out, and we were instantly out of a job.
Just because of the vocalization?
Daryl: Yeah. Everybody expected us to sing and cover Beatle tunes. We almost had a record deal back then. We had a few records out.
Dennis: Well, we had some stuff out on Capitol — kind of exploratory stuff. At that point, we were doing a lot of surf soundtracks for people like [movie producer] Dale Davis. And we did a whole bunch of stuff for the late [surf photographer/filmmaker] Grant Rohloff, which was kind of fun, as well as for the late [filmmaker] Hal Jepsen. We did a lot of soundtracks for him. But the staple of Daryl's sound in the mid- 1960s was the Clavinet. It sounded kind of like a guitar, but it was a keyboard instrument.
Yeah, it's got kind of a bite to it?
Dennis: Right. So that's pretty much what was going on — between that and the vibes. Daryl would occasionally pick up a guitar or a bass. When did we hook up with the Beach Boys, Daryl?
Daryl: I was hired as a Beach Boys back-up musician in 1967. They originally called Doug, but he didn't have the ear — and he admitted it — to learn all those complex parts that Brian Wilson wrote. So I learned some of the stuff and auditioned for Carl Wilson. I got the gig and eventually became the music director for them, which gave me the authority to hire other people. Dennis went out with us, Doug too, and I switched over to synthesizers and other stuff. We had a good six-year run.
Dennis: Up until that time, I was bouncing between 2- track [machines]. I didn't have a multitrack available. I just had a couple of 2-tracks and would go back and forth, piling more and more and more on. I was always watching the hiss level go up. When The Beach Boys came into our lives, we were able to borrow their 4-track. It was a Scully 280, and we used that a lot on our soundtrack work. It had a pretty limited frequency response in sync [mode]. Our dad had a custom 12-channel tube mixer that he had made for his studio, and we were using that, too. All this time our dad had his own studio going down below us in the converted three- car garage. He'd be set up down below doing his classical thing, and we'd be upstairs doing our rock thing. I know he heard stuff through the walls — that probably drove him nuts.
Daryl: We may have subliminally given him some bass- line ideas.
Dennis: [laughs] Yeah. He never mentioned it because he respected our creativity. I thought it was really nice of him not to interfere with our deal. Then when Daryl met Toni [Tennille], that started a whole other deal. I was basically left out on my own and I had to call in other musicians to do these soundtracks. On some of them I used up to thirty musicians to equal Daryl's musical horsepower. I got a portable Sony machine — a TC-770-2 — and took it with me as a drummer/engineer to record these soundtracks. I'd show up with a drum set plus the portable recording system, which was a couple of Sony mixers at the time, and some great condenser mics. I'd put on headphones, set up the band and play drums at the same time I was recording. I don't know anybody who would attempt to do that or even want to!
So, were the drums heavy in the mix?
Dennis: Of course! I was doing that for a while. Meanwhile... when did you meet Toni, Daryl?
Daryl: I met Toni — and just about everyone but The Beach Boys — indirectly through the Musicians Contact Service in Los Angeles. I'm a believer in the idea that there's talent anywhere. You never know where it's going to be. I met a guy through the Musicians Contact Service who knew another guy who sang real high, David Dews. I was fascinated with this guy. I worked with him and we recorded at a little studio. The guy who owned the studio said, "Hey, there's this woman who wrote a musical called Mother Earth. It's playing now in San Francisco and they need a keyboard player." When I heard the music I asked, "First of all, who wrote this music?" Her name was Toni Shearer back then — she was married. I said, "I'd be interested in working with this woman because she's talented." I went up to San Francisco, auditioned, she hired me. Later I hired her to play with The Beach Boys and I taught her the parts. It slowly evolved. She was in the process of finalizing a divorce from her first marriage. She went on the road with The Beach Boys. We started working in clubs and I had to make a decision. The Beach Boys asked me to "officially" join their group, as a full-fledged member, and I said, "It's either that or work for $25 a night at The Smoke House in the San Fernando Valley with Toni." I decided it was either The Beach Boys or believe in what I was doing. We decided to stay in Los Angeles. We worked in clubs and pressed up our own "Captain & Tennille" record. The short version is that we got airplay on local radio, which is unheard of. And we got to number six in sales in Los Angeles, on our own label. Because of that, we got a record deal.
Dennis: That was the "The Way I Want to Touch You" single. I was involved in some of that stuff, as a drummer. You know, whenever he [Daryl] needed me — until he discovered his great studio drummers.
Daryl: Dennis was the engineer for "Love Will Keep Us Together."
On the first three Captain & Tennille records he's got musician and engineering credits.
Daryl: Yeah, he did a lot of work.
Dennis: That's what brings us into the real world of recording — or the Hollywood world [A&M Records Studio]. I basically went from using a Scully 4-track in the bedroom to 24-track nightmares, having to audition microphones to find out what sounded good and not knowing anything about a patchbay at all. I walked in there and pulled that off. But I did say one thing, "Just give me a second. Who knows what a 'patchbay' is? 'Cause I don't." All the rest is ears. At that time, there was the Howard Holzer [HAECO] board, which happened to sound really good. They had a tape op person operating the tape machine and switching the Dolby. Daryl did a lot of the music, all the parts, and Toni was amazing as a vocalist. I mean, she could double parts perfectly in two takes. That was amazing to me. With the money I made, I went and bought a 16-track Ampex MM1200. I bought a board from my good friend, Allen Sides — the little brother to Ocean Way's world-famous "Studio B" [modified API] console. I've got that 24 x 16 console today, which has great-sounding mic pres.
Daryl: Don't tell anybody where it is.
Dennis: No, nobody knows where it is. Next, while Daryl's doing his thing, The Surf Punks are born. The year is 1976. I'm still at the beach and had my own studio in Malibu. I meet another guy at the beach, Drew Steele. He, like me, had curly, crazy hair. He turns me on to The Ramones and The Tubes and a little bit of David Bowie. I said, "Okay, wait a minute. It's now time to do something." [Laughs] So, collectively, Drew and I formed The Surf Punks. The "hard core" punkers didn't like it. It was parody-punk, so they weren't into it. But anybody who was there to have fun at the concerts had a great time. The shows were insane.
Daryl: More like a circus.
Dennis: Yeah. It was the beach circus. So I did that. That was a good ten-year run. At that point, digital recording was coming into play. When I first heard digital it gave me a gigantic headache. I said, "What the hell is this? Is this a joke?" I still have that headache. I said, "This is a complete step backwards." I mean, here we are trying to hone our art, and all of a sudden, this gigantic sonic step backwards. Now, for some people, it didn't matter — it was a huge step forward. The sampling thing was, technologically, pretty exciting. Things were done that could not be done before. But sonically it just totally depressed me. So, I just kept plodding along with analog.
Daryl: I watched the digital thing happen. I bought [Digital] Performer by Mark of the Unicorn, way back — probably the first version that ever came out. Back then it was just a sequencer. That was before Pro Tools. I kept up with the technology. I got a Fairlight [Computer Musical Instrument]. Hey, I'd love to sell it to you for anything you can afford. Today, the scrap metal is worth more than the instrument — it's ancient technology.
I was just gonna say, "You paid a lot for that, didn't you?"
Daryl: Yeah. But way back then, it was real exciting. It weighed a lot — you know, it was very impressive. And it was, like, four MB. Wow!
Dennis: A lot.
Daryl: I needed a giant hard drive to handle that back then. The screens were like the old PCs, before they went to Windows. Everything was a programming command, so I had to learn a lot of that stuff. I learned how to edit, too. Then I did some soundtracks using the Fairlight and I said, "There's no question. This is going to end up in the home computer some day." So I got way ahead of the curve for a while. I remember I was helping with the E-MU Emulator. I used to call them all the time. I was suggesting stuff: instead of having to sample something at a soft volume, I said, "Well, the next best thing would be to give me a low-pass or high- pass filter on a trumpet sample, so I can adjust it from there." They did a lot of the things I suggested. I was supposed to get the very first Emulator but they gave it to Stevie Wonder instead.
[laughs]
Daryl: 'Cause Stevie had a bigger name. But they admit it on their site. Meanwhile, we had our studio, Rumbo Recorders, and I was always nervous because we had these big, fancy — what do they call the German machines?
Dennis: The Studer A800. You had a couple of those big machines.
Daryl: And we had a really good Trident board. I often said back then. "All this stuff is going to be on a little screen someday if the technology continues and the sampling rates get better." They did. To this day I'm still using the Mark of the Unicorn stuff — Digital Performer. And when we have to go into the studio to mix, I just transfer it and use Pro Tools. It's really clean and simple. It allows me to edit, which is great. Back in the old days we would always make a mix without vocals so Toni could sing live on television shows. Today I can make the song two minutes and 14 seconds long — you know, knock out a minute. I can do that at home. I don't need to go in there with tape splicing.
[laughs]
Dennis: While Daryl was on the cutting edge of digital technology, I was not giving into it because I didn't like the way it sounded. I had my analog Ampex MM1200s operating at 30 ips. I even had an Ampex ATR-124 — the best-sounding audio machine I ever heard, but I couldn't keep up with the maintenance. In the early 1990s I said, "Okay, I guess it's over," and I learned the Atari software because, at that time, it was the best-sounding operating system. From there I got into Nuendo and PCs — never got into Macs. I still have all my great microphones and mic pres. And that's how I do business.
Daryl: The only problem I have right now is that I have a lot of our master tapes. I have a whole warehouse full. I'm not sure what to do with those, except eBay 'em!
Dennis: I know what to do with them. Transfer them to digital and put them away.
Daryl: Then how long does digital last? I'm hearing varying reports on that. Years ago, they said they'll last for 10,000 years — not right. So there's no safe thing. I guess it's all part of God's plan to just get rid of this rock 'n' roll era! r
www.dennisdragon.com www.captainandtennille.net www.myspace.com/thedragonsbfi
