DAY ONE
You started at The Power Station?
No, I started at a place called Media Sound Studios in New York (which closed years ago) from '72 through '77. I went to Power Station when it first opened and I helped put it together.
Was that a nurturing place where you were encouraged to move on?
Well, it was more the other way around, where I was encouraging the other guys. [laughs] It was more like a team. Because I helped build the studio, I was kind of chief engineer, if there is such a thing. We really didn't have a title, but I was the main guy there when it started — production-wise maybe, because the owner Tony Bongiovi got me into producing — I co-produced three or four punk bands with him. Except it turned out that I finally decided that I didn't like producing, so years later I gave that up. Mixing became my main thing. My manager just felt the same way — I never really thought in those terms, but he was being a manager and was like, "Look, you can do better financially by just mixing than you can producing." Producing — you've got to get pretty lucky to do well.
The Dead Boys' Young Loud and Snotty — what happened around that album? Did you really play bass on that?
Yeah. [The producer was] this friend of mine, Genya Ravan — one of my best friends' girlfriend at the time. They came from Cleveland, they didn't have a bass player and she knew that I played bass, because her boyfriend Harvey [Goldberg] and I had one of those studio workshop bands — going in on the weekends and cutting stuff and me playing guitar. She goes, "You play bass?" and I said, "Yeah, sure." So I played bass on it and then I mixed it. When we finished mixing we went back and listened to the mixes, and the best mix on the album was the one she wanted to remix. I mean, it was perfect and I really learned from that experience. I went, "Are you fuckin' crazy?" and she fired me and remixed it with her boyfriend Harvey. They released my mixes eventually.
In '89 or something? [as Younger, Louder and Snottier]
Yeah, I don't know which are better though... I never compared. Harvey is a great mixer, so his mixes are good too.
