Spinal Tap
What was it like working with Spinal Tap? Were they funny in the studio?
Yes they were.
Oh wow!
Yeah, they'd go into character.
Do they really?
Yeah, they would do that. All three of them are really smart guys. And they could play. Christopher is a good guitar player.
On Listening to His Own Work
You know I don't listen to the albums that I've done because when I was working on them I heard them a thousand times. When I got done mixing them it was like, "It's done." I'm not somebody that sits around and listens to my records. There are a lot of reasons for that. You know, you spend five hundred to a thousand hours on an album and after that you're done with it.
It's like when you're done writing a book you don't go back and read it.
Yeah. It's exactly the same thing. Once I get done mixing [and] it's turned over to the record company, the artist or whomever, it's theirs — and [when] it becomes the public's, it's the public's.
Overall Philosophy
We always like to try something new, something fun, or fall back on something that really worked years ago. But I never try to copy myself. Because on records where I have to have a lot of input it becomes a Dave Jerden record... and that's not the point. I'm not the artist. What I'm trying to do is enhance the artist or bring out of the artist what they've got and not touch a thing. It's not about me, it's not about Bryan, it's not about Annette. We are here to facilitate the artist to bring out the best that they've got. What we need are good artists. What I'm looking for are artists that are doing something different instead of just copying and sounding like somebody else. Yeah, I can make those records, but what I would become is called a "hack." I make enough money that I don't have to work, so it's not about the money. I don't care. I got all my investments. I even have an oil well. I get good royalties and everything. I'm not super rich or anything like that, but I don't have to work. If I work it's going to be because I find someone fun to work with.
How do you find an artist?
That's the problem now! See, artists used to be vetted through the record company. And now the producer has to find artists and either out of his own pocket pay for the demos, or find artists that have money. There's an inverse thing that I find happening now. The really talented people don't have money and the people that have money suck.
Ground Issues
What do you do in the studio when ground issues come up?
Well, grounding in a studio is everything. I learned all about grounding. Doug Parry and I at our studio, Smoketree, we had a grounding problem. I had a friend who designed the phased array radar for Hughes Aircraft that they use on like F-15 jets. He brought in some guys from Hughes Aircraft on a Sunday [and we] bought them some beer. They actually took the ground lines from the console, tape machine and the main power ground and they brought copper and a burner (blowtorch) and they made [a] dirt [pile] out in the back. They put the wires into the dirt and poured copper on it.
Whoa!
That grounded it and the buzz went away.
I bet. I might have to do that at home with the hum I'm getting with my stereo system right now!
I loved working at Power Station Studios because the grounds are under the console. All the grounds come to this big copper plate. Grounding is everything. One thing that you can do if you're having grounding problems, is you can call the power company if you think that it's their problem. If you think it's coming in from the electricity, from other buildings, or whatever. They'll have a guy sit down for eight hours a day. He comes in every day with his lunch and he just sits there and looks at the meter. He does that for a week. If he determines [a problem] they will put in for free a new transformer for you. A separate transformer. There was a studio on Cahuenga Blvd. called Britannia in the '70s and they had a huge grounding problem. They couldn't figure out where it was coming from. They found out that the city had put in cables underground and they ran 60 cycle current to keep the sheath of the cables from corroding. So 60 cycles was going through everything all down the street. So the city had to come out and change that.
So sometimes you have to look beyond the studio for the problem.
