An unsung studio hero? That's how some people see Tim Palmer. With a career beginning in London in the late '70s, he worked on records with Kajagoogoo, Cutting Crew, and Dead or Alive. Later work with The Mission UK and The House of Love led to working with Robert Plant, David Bowie's Tin Machine, Pearl Jam's debut, and even U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind. Yeah, maybe he does deserve a bit more attention! I met Tim at his home-based studio in the hills outside of Austin, Texas, where he keeps busy producing and mixing.
What was the first music that captivated you?
When I first got into music, it was all about T. Rex, The Sweet, Gary Glitter, Mud, and all those poppy, glam bands.
I know you loved punk rock, but when you finally started working in a studio it was all about the LinnDrum.
Right, the '80s. Growing up on The Clash was definitely an invaluable lesson on what is important — and that is the performance and the song, rather than the sonic quality. That's obviously not an excuse to shirk on the recording, but punk made me realize what is key to it all. The song is king; everything else goes into second place very quickly. The '80s was a whole different time. What I liked about it was that there was a simple, definite, supply and demand curve for young people to get jobs in the studio. It was an apprenticeship, as opposed to, "Give us $60,000 and we'll educate you. You're probably not even right for the job anyway, but we'll take your money." You now have thousands of kids who end up doing nothing but being a runner, and then they get disheartened, run out of money, and give up. When I started there was some fairness in the sense of, "Hey, we need a new guy to clean up and make the tea." And you could get a studio job. I got that call.
Had you gone around to studios looking for work?
I'd written to a lot, and I'd actually visited Utopia Studios, which was run by a record producer called Phil Wainman. Phil had produced The Sweet and the Bay City Rollers. Not only did he have gold discs on his wall, but he also made shitloads of money, which was a bonus. It was the perfect example of those different times, and I was in love with it. I was happy to stay on sessions until two in the morning. Many didn't have the bug and left, but I thought being an assistant was fantastic.
You started pretty young?
I was 18 or 19. I often think about that when I look back now, about how I basically gave up on all the fun stuff you can get up to as a kid. It wasn't until I came to America and had a little bit of success that I thought, "Hang on a minute. I can have a good time now!" I tried to make up for lost ground. I did, unfortunately; maybe too much, in some ways. The '80s were a wonderful time to get a job in the studio. Training was totally hands on. Someone would show you how things worked, and then you'd have to just get on with it. The thing that recording schools teach, that I never really learnt, is the knowledge of the electronics, of the signal path, and the technical side of things. I'm always a little bit at a loss for words when people start getting too technical with me. I was definitely from a school where people say, "That's a UREI 1176; they are great for vocals." I'd plug it in, watch people use it, listen to how it sounded, and then I'd figure it out. That was how we learned. You weren't sat down and taught about nanowebers per square meter. There was a great group of producers coming in to record, like Richard James Burgess who was recording Spandau Ballet, or John Leckie mixing Simple Minds. I got to watch them and see how a session worked. It was great.
What was your job initially?
Make the tea and clean up. The first day I came to the studio dressed totally inappropriately. As it was an important studio, and this was a big job, I thought I had to look smart so I had a nice shirt and jacket on. I walked in and everybody's hanging out in jeans and T-shirts. They said, "Go into the studio. There's a lot of mess. Tidy it all up, and ask them if they want drinks." So I walked into Studio A at Utopia, and the first artist I saw and asked if he'd like something to drink was Stevie Wonder. Now that's a pretty fucking amazing way to begin a job as a tea boy! What a great guy he was too. Being a tape op was something that I really enjoyed. You don't have all the worry of the world on your shoulders like you do if you're the engineer. As a tape op, you're making sure that everything runs smoothly. You've got to try and think ahead. In those days there was a strong studio etiquette of silence from the assistants. They don't need the assistant piping up with his own ideas. It took me a while to get that right! I tended to speak up too often; I noticed very quickly that if I wanted to keep my job, I should keep my mouth shut. I had a very funny experience during one of the first sessions I was on. Do you remember spot erasing on a multitrack?
Oh, yeah.
I had made the tea and crept into the back of the control room. It was a fast-moving session, as it was a jingle session; it was four hours and very union-controlled. The toms recorded on tape were very noisy, and the engineer wanted to clean them up. So he went through, found the front of the tom hit, white china marked it, went to the end of the fill and cymbal crash, white china lined it, next one... and then spot erased using the marker cues. When we went to listen back, he'd erased between the wrong white lines. What we ended up with was perfectly edited spill, and no toms at all! The drummer had already packed his stuff away. The engineer turned to me and said, "Get him back!" But he was gone. I tried to offer help. I said, "Oh, it's all right. You can just add the toms later; hit them separately." I really should have said nothing. He ran straight up to Phil Wainman, my boss, and said, "This kid's gotta go. He can't keep his mouth shut." Phil was cool and said, "Oh, come on. It's his first or second day. Give him a break."
That's how you learn.
It was hairy. Running the tape machine and trying to be one step ahead was great fun. You had to be fast with your drop-ins. I used to run the tape machine for Rod Temperton when he was in producing. Now that's a stressful job, dropping in vocals for the man that had just written "Thriller" for Michael Jackson.
When did you move up to a production role?
I was pretty lucky. I made that jump from assisting to producing really fast. In our studio they had four staff engineers; if one of them couldn't make a session, and they thought you were ready for the gig, they'd ask if you could handle it. "There's a band coming into Studio B. Are you okay? Will you manage it?" So you had to go for it. Pete Smith worked at our studio. He was engineering in the demo room with Sting, doing the demos for the Synchronicity album. Pete rang up one day and said, "My kitchen is flooded, and I'm waiting for the guys to come. Can somebody stand in for me?" There was a very competitive element between us all at that time as well. I said, "I'll do it." They said, "Are you sure you can manage?" I said, "Yeah, I can do it." So I did a demo with Sting. That was an amazing experience.
Sting knew what he wanted to do.
Absolutely, which always makes your job that much simpler. Many times I was also an assistant engineer for Colin Thurston. He had been the engineer on David Bowie's "Heroes," and he also produced early Howard Jones, Classix Nouveaux [La Vérité], and Duran Duran's Rio. At the time he was producing Kajagoogoo with Duran's keyboard player, Nick Rhodes. They had recorded "Too Shy," and I was the assistant on that album [White Feathers]. Colin and Nick were at that point in their lives and careers where they didn't want to be stuck in the studio all night — they had fancy dinners and fun things to do. When they realized I was capable, and it got to about 8 p.m. each evening, they'd say, "Carry on." So I would step into the engineering gig.
You'd do overdubs?
I'd do loads of guitars and overdubs; then Colin would listen and check everything in the morning. When it came to the band's B-sides, Colin and Nick didn't want to record those at all. Why would they want to do the B-sides? They said, "Just get Tim to do it." I asked if I could get a copy of the songs. I'll always remember getting the demos of these B-sides, listening to them at home and writing notes of some ideas that I thought we could try out. We did the B-sides, and they liked some of my ideas. At the end of the session I plucked up the courage and said, "Do you think it would be fair to give me co-production? Because I feel like I've contributed quite a lot to the songs." They said, "Sure. That seems absolutely fair." So I got a co-production on the B-sides. The label really liked them, and they put the tracks on the album. So I went from being the assistant on the album, to co-producing two songs; and I got my first gold record. That was my first big break.
Did you get any points on it?
No. There were ironclad forms to sign saying that I wouldn't come after royalties. But that wasn't important. Sometimes to get involved in the right gig, you have to compromise other things. You have to be forward thinking.
I've been there.
Sadly that's happened more than once.
Did you start taking on sessions as a producer?
Yes. I started to produce; being a mixing engineer was never an option. At that time, as you know, the role of a separate mixer didn't actually exist.
Not in the way that we saw it later.
As a producer you basically did the whole thing: arrange, rehearse, record, and mix. It was your vision, and there wouldn't even be any dream of bringing someone else in to finish up your vision. That is unless there was a screw-up, or you didn't do a very good job. I stayed as a house engineer at Utopia for a while. Here's something that never happens these days: "Oh, can you do the session that's coming into the remix room? It's a new band that Terry Brown's produced, and they're called Cutting Crew. They want you to mix a few songs." So I just went in and mixed "(I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight." It became a number one song, and I was still employed as the house studio engineer. I got a great credit, but it's also an example of how studios were held in such high esteem. In those days you could actually book your artists straight into a studio like Utopia, and be confident to just use the house engineers. I started to build up a clientele of people who enjoyed working with me. After the Kajagoogoo bit of luck, their singer, Limahl [Christopher Hamill], left the band. He said, "I want you to do my solo album." That was one of my first full album productions. I co-produced it with Dave Harris, who was in a band called Fashion (an '80s electronic rock band). Originally we were sort of a team, and we'd work together on projects. I also used to engineer for a German producer called Zeus B. Held, and at one point we did an album with Dead or Alive. That was a blast. The guitarist in Dead Or Alive was Wayne Hussey. I became friends with him, and when he formed his new band, The Mission, he asked me to produce his record. Then I got into that whole indie guitar thing doing The Mission UK, The Mighty Lemon Drops, The House of Love, James, Gene Loves Jezebel, and Catherine Wheel.
The House of Love sounded great.
I did "Shine On," their big hit single, and about two or three other singles. They were a great band. I started to do a lot of work for Phonogram Records around that time; Big Country, Texas, Tears for Fears, and many of the other bands that were signed to that label. I think of my career as being in two halves. The first part was very much in the old school of decent budgets and big studios with fancy gear. I never owned a piece of gear for the first 20 years of my career.
You didn't have to.
No. If something went wrong, I wouldn't know how to fix it either. "Get a tech in here, please! Downtime. Mark it in the book that we've stopped working." This morning I was trying to work on something, and I couldn't get the Pro Tools session to open properly. I wanted to shout, "Where's the tech?" But there's nobody here now. It's just me.
We have to build up these different skill sets.
Totally. It wasn't your responsibility to do that sort of thing in those days,. My job was to be able to work an SSL, or a Neve, as well as the surrounding gear. That was only possible for a certain group of people: the engineers and producers, at that time. You couldn't buy an SSL, have it at home, and learn on it like you can with gear now. Being part of a select few that could run a session definitely kept up your chances of getting work.
I always thought of gear as something that you buy out of necessity. You wouldn't have bought your equipment, unless you needed it to set up the place like you have now.
No. During the '80s the concept of an outside engineer came into play. It was pretty rare, as people would generally book in to work with the studio engineers. At Utopia, we had people like Andy Jackson, who'd worked on [Pink Floyd's] The Wall, Peter Walsh, who'd done all the Simple Minds' albums, and we had John Mackswith — our chief engineer. He'd started in the '60s and had recorded the Dave Clark Five hits. You didn't need to bring in your own engineer. Learning from someone who's made records since the '60s was amazing, because the technology had grown around him. You definitely had to be a better engineer in the "good old days." Mistakes were almost impossible to correct; you had to record a snare properly, no adding samples later. I try not to look back and romanticize too much though; you've got to move on.
You had a lucky early break producing and engineering Robert Plant's Now and Zen album.
Planty lives in Austin now. Out of all the people I've worked with, he's one that still takes the time to call and keep in touch, even though I haven't worked with him in 20 years. He's such a great bloke that he'll call me up and say, "Hey, I'm playing a show. Do you want to come down?" When first he came to Austin, he picked up some cakes, came over to the house, and we sat here having afternoon tea and chatting. Most people at that level don't do that. They forget about the people they've worked with quite quickly. When I worked with Robert I was about 22 years old. He said, "I want to work with some kid who has worked with sequencers and stuff like that." That was me. I ended up getting the phone call, but I really wasn't up to speed with recording a full band yet. Most of my hours in the studio had revolved around a band coming in; and the first thing that they'd record was the LinnDrum or a [Roland TR-]808. I had recorded real drums, but not often. After my phone call with Robert, who seemed super-nice, the next thing I knew I was faced with this drummer who I'd never heard of named Richie Hayward. I was into Adam & the Ants, The Damned, the Sex Pistols, and The Clash. I didn't know about legends like this. I was living in England, and Little Feat wasn't the sort of band you'd hear too often.
You wouldn't hear them on the radio here much either!
So I was feeling overwhelmed on our first day. I think the studio had a Harrison console, which I also didn't really have a clue how to use.
Where were those sessions?
It was at Marcus Recording Studios, which was a great studio near Notting Hill.
You don't see that many Harrison consoles in the UK.
No. Anyway, I was having problems with the headphones because they all wanted different headphone balances. As you can imagine, I was absolutely freaking out. Robert started complaining that the studio wasn't working well. The owners came straight back and said, "No, the studio's fine. It's him! That young kid doesn't really know what he's doing." Luckily Robert liked me enough to say, "We'll work it out," and he didn't fire me. When we were setting up the drum sounds, he'd be picking off reference points from Led Zeppelin albums to help me get the sound where he wanted it: whether it would be "When the Levee Breaks," or whatever. I was like, "Oh yeah, I think I've heard that one." He actually said to me in the end, "What Led Zeppelin albums do you actually own, Tim?" I said, "I haven't got any, to be honest." He thought that was great because here's somebody who is coming into the project fresh, with no preconceived ideas. So he said, "What bands do you like?" I mentioned The Damned, and he said he loved the drum sound on "New Rose." He came into the studio the next day with a big pile of albums under his arm and said, "Check my old band out. See if you like them." That was my introduction to Led Zeppelin. Now I feel totally foolish, of course, but that's just the way it turned out. You discover things at different points, and I was fortunate enough to discover Led Zeppelin after working with Robert Plant.
You might be one of the few people who could say that!
When I was producing Now and Zen, the A&R guy at the US label decided he wanted a Tom Lord-Alge remix for the single. The manager, Bill [Curbishley], came to me and said, "What's this about a remix for a single? Have you not mixed this song already?" I said, "Yeah, but they want to use Tom Lord-Alge. He's an amazing American mixer." He said, "Why can't you just do it?" I said, "Well, I can. The mix I have done was for the album. I haven't really tried to mix it as a single." He said, "Just do it." So I mixed it the next Sunday. Bill sent it to the US label saying, "Here is Tom Lord-Alge's remix." And they loved it, of course.
Oh my god.
They used it. I'm actually credited as Tim Lord-Palmer. I've always wanted to thank Tom for that one time, but I've never met him. These days I have to understand the competitive element of our business. I'll do a mix and try to beat the competition. I'm up for the challenge every time. What have you got to lose?
How did mixing the Mother Love Bone debut, Apple, come about?
I used to go to L.A. with my manager and meet the labels. We got to know Michael Goldstone, who was their A&R guy. He thought I'd be great to do it. The guys in Mother Love Bone really liked the records that I'd made — The Mighty Lemon Drops, The Mission, and all those sorts of things — so it came from that.
And since Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament started a new band after singer Andrew Wood's passing, that led to you mixing Pearl Jam's debut, Ten?
Yeah, Ten was mixed at Ridge Farm Studios. It was a beautiful farmhouse with a little control room and a Neve. There was a recording area, and the whole band could stay in the house. It was like the old '70s "get your head together in the country" vibe. But I think it started to get to the band after a while. It was pretty remote.
How long did it take to mix that record?
About 11 days. It was one of those classic examples of a no pressure situation, because no one expected too much from that album at the time. We all wanted to make the best record we could, but we didn't have people looking over our shoulders. I imagine that was not the case for the second and third albums. It was a very instinctive, easy process. Brendan [O'Brien] remixed Ten about five years ago. On reflection the band has said, "Oh, the album was not the way we wanted it to be. It was too reverb-y." If you look at the timeline, here I am living in England, just back from L.A. where the "glam metal" scene was about to die. I
was not aware of the underground Seattle scene. Radio was all about big sounding records. I'd mixed the Mother Love Bone album before, so the band was clear about how I worked. I wasn't really thinking of a dry, dead sound, like Nirvana, for the album — Nevermind hadn't come out yet. So I mixed the way I always did at the time. You can hear it on the record. One minute everything's dry, and then there's big reverbs on the drums, delays, and backwards reverbs — all trying to make things as exciting as possible, and make the song build from top to bottom. I wasn't looking over my own shoulder, thinking that I shouldn't be doing this. The band came in every morning, and of course they had every opportunity to say, "Can we back off the reverbs here and there? That's not what our band's sound is about." I certainly wouldn't have said, "No, this is the way it's going to be." I would have probably said, "Okay, let's try it." Truth is, at the time, they were a new, young, alternative band out of Seattle; and their record was going to sound pretty great on the radio. They were happy with that.
It fits right into radio.
Yes, it didn't harm them. It gave them the opportunity to continue their path. Even in the band's sound there were elements of new and old. I always felt that Mike [McCready]'s guitar style was pretty traditional rock. So you've got a pretty big sounding record, and you've also got an element of classic rock; but yet they're an alternative, new band. I think this all helped the US market to embrace the band. It's all very well, looking back and saying, "Oh, I wish that we'd done this." But you can't go back to your high school photograph and Photoshop your haircut. By the time that they went to do the remixed version with Brendan O'Brien — which is a lot more raw and dry (and that's cool) — music styles had changed again. Everything goes around in circles. I remember after Nirvana suddenly every album you mixed was about, "No silly delays. No ambient stuff. No big reverb on the drums." It was all about the dry. Well, we went through that, and we have come out of it again. Now bands will come to me and say, "Can you turn the delays up a bit? Can we have a bit more reverb on the snares?" We are now back to where we were in the late '80s. Pearl Jam left it too long to do that remix. But they're good guys; I have a lot of respect for their long career.
It's great to hear that.
When you look back at career decisions that you've made, some may not have been the best course, but hindsight is always 20/20. After the first Pearl jam album, I think we all felt that we had got on well. We talked about the second album, and soon after that an opportunity came up for me to produce the band. The Singles movie was being made, and they asked me to fly to Seattle and record three songs. I verbally agreed to do that. I guess that would have been some sort of test as to whether I'd be good to work with the band in a production role, in a way. At the same moment Dave Bates, who was head of Phonogram, called me up and said, "I want you to produce the new Tears for Fears album." At that time Pearl Jam were still essentially an unknown band from Seattle. I was in a dilemma. Do I go and do three songs for Singles in Seattle? Or do I work with a band that I also think is amazing, who are at the top of their game and selling records all around the world? I thought about it, and I thought that I really had to do the Tears for Fears record. So I called up Pearl Jam's A&R guy and said, "I can't come now." It didn't go down well. Obviously Brendan O'Brien stepped in and did it, and the rest is history. Who knows whether we would have been the right combination, but I sadly ruled myself out of that equation.
And Brendan's kept working with them.
He did a great job. He's a phenomenal producer who really understands how to make great records, especially with guitar bands.
What prompted your move from London to L.A.?
I was getting a lot more offers of work in US after Pearl Jam. My manager moved across to America and I'd just gotten divorced, so I thought, "I'm going to have a fresh start." I really enjoyed being in L.A. — it was good fun.
How many years did you spend there?
Fourteen years.
And you built a studio in L.A. as well?
Yeah, I had a studio in North Hollywood. Paramount and Encore have a few rooms that they rent out. I was one of the first people to take one of those.
You mixed a lot of U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind.
It was interesting how that came about. I mixed a couple of songs on the album [self-titled] that Michael Hutchence had recorded just before he died. One of them, "Slide Away," had Bono guesting on it. My manager, Sandy [Roberton], who has managed me since I was about 20, said, "This is a great opportunity! You will do this mix. Bono's going to hear what you did to the song, and you're going to be mixing the U2 record." I was like, "Yeah, right." Anyway, I mixed the song. Bono called me up and said, "We heard the mix. Thanks so much for saving me. It sounds great." I was stunned; Sandy had actually been right! Bono said, "I'd love for you to come and do some mixing on the new U2 album, if you're interested." I said, "Of course, I'd love to." The next time I was in London I mixed a song called "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" for the soundtrack to the The Million Dollar Hotel movie. It's one of my favorite U2 tracks I've mixed. Daniel Lanois [Tape Op #37] plays pedal steel on it, and it's fucking amazing. When Daniel sent the original session to me it contained a lot of programmed drum tracks. Bono called me up on my mobile, as I was stuck in traffic on the way to the studio, and simply said, "We don't like the drums on this song." So I thought, "What am I going to do?" I figured that there was maybe too much drum programming for the band's taste, so I rented a snare drum and played a "Walk on the Wild Side" drum groove with some brushes. Then, in the mix, I brought in the brushes and kept switching back and forth to the electronic drums in the arrangement. I also added cymbals. Here was a great opportunity to do a mix for U2 and I'm thinking, "They are not happy with the drums! What am I going to do?" It was a perfect example of when you're asked to mix something, how you're walking a dangerous line. They could have been really mad that I added new performances, but luckily for me they are a very open-minded band. They just want it to be right.
So how many songs did you work on later?
I did that song and then I mixed "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of." That was really interesting too; it was one of the first ones that they sent me from the album. I'm pushing up the faders thinking, "Well, they've only sent me one track of drums on a mono mic." I searched around for more files, but they'd just liked the vibe and printed a mono mic. I liked it, but needed more front- end from the sound, as well as more close mic energy. From that track I triggered some extra snare and kick. Then I played shakers in stereo. You can't hear them very clearly, but they gave me some stereo imaging. Then, in the chorus, I switched to tambourines. At the end of the chorus, I thought, "Okay, I'll take all the drums out completely and put in the sound of people talking." I also took the bass out in the first verse and messed with the arrangement. Once again, they were really cool about the changes. For U2, mixing is like a way to see what you've got so far; it's not necessarily the last part of the chain. Often, after hearing a mix, they will find something cool in it and then go back and re-record the whole song as a result.
For a rock band, they saw the remix culture happening and thought, "We could use a bit of that, in a different way."
They really did. Absolutely. They pull from many genres. It's inspiring to them, because they're hearing a new perspective of their song. Of course this is a luxury most bands couldn't afford. I remember I spent ages mixing "Walk On." We were all sitting around at dinner, and this was a mind-blowing scene for audio fans: I am with Danny Lanois, Brian Eno [Tape Op #85], Jimmy Iovine, Mike Hedges, Steve Lillywhite [#93], and the band — I'm sitting in the middle of all this thinking, "Whoa." Anyway, the band was late for dinner and I could hear "Walk On" being tracked again downstairs. I said, "What's going on?" I'd spent about a week and a half mixing that song. They said, "Oh, they're going to re-record it now. They think they've got a better groove for it." When you've basically got no [parameters on a] budget, you can keep going and just see what happens. They're famous for that. It was a wonderful experience, and they were super nice people to work with. On the song "Beautiful Day," I had spent almost two weeks mixing before Steve Lillywhite came into the picture. Of course the band wanted Steve to get involved. He's somebody who's earned their respect over many years. They trust his opinion, and that's worth its weight in gold. They wanted us to work together on the mix. They said, "Work with Steve." I thought, "Well, he's a mixer and I'm a mixer. How is that going to work?" We tried for a while, and failed. It was frustrating. So I said, "You know what? I should mix another song. You should let Steve do this one." I did quite a lot of work on "Beautiful Day," but Steve finished the song. That was his mix. But it was fun to work on a song with him, and it was nice to meet Lillywhite.
Oh, I'll bet.
Later I did "Elevation" and "New York." They were both important tracks. When the band came to L.A., I did all the TV shows with them. I got to sit in the sound booth with the TV sound staff. I even did the Oscars. They're the hardest working band I've ever known, quite frankly.
Porcupine Tree's In Absentia must have been a treat. Bandleader Steven Wilson's [Tape Op #73] gone on to do a lot of his own mixing now.
It was one of those albums that was very, very well- recorded. I'm not going to sit here and pretend I had a tough job at the mix; it just wasn't like that. Steven knows what he wants to do. He knows exactly what's going on, and he had actually pre- recorded a lot of delays and things like that. Tracks sounded good, so I could spend my time trying to improve things and make them sound just a little bit better! It was a great project to be associated with. I didn't really know that much about the band before I worked with them. That's a great record.
It seems like that's led to a bit of other work, too; Including the HIM stuff.
The HIM connection was more because they had enjoyed, and were influenced by, some of the English goth music, like The Mission, that I had produced. It's weird when sometimes you get to work on a project and the reference point seems completely off. Like when Roland [Orzabal] asked me to work on the Tears for Fears album he said, "I love the Tin Machine records you made." I thought it was bizarre. You can't get much further away from Tears for Fears than the grungiest Bowie album ever.
Isn't that funny?
Yeah. The whole Tin Machine experience was amazing; David Bowie is one of my heroes. Getting to work with, and observe, him was great. We recorded at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland and then later at Compass Point [Nassau, Bahamas]. I was brought in as a co-producer. It wasn't always necessarily the way that I wanted the album to be, but Bowie really wanted it to be raw and it was ultimately a fun experience. After all those sterile '80s albums, he wanted to let go again and have a performance-based album; let it be fucked up and grunge- y. He was influenced, at that time, by Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, and Glen Branca. He wanted it to be crazy. I was hanging on for dear life! Sometimes during tracking set- up I would be EQing the drums, and they'd say, "That was the take." On the album you can hear the snare changing EQ during the song. It was all really exciting.
That was with the Sales brothers?
Yeah, Hunt and Tony were great. We were recording in the middle of a huge casino in Montreux. We placed microphones really high up in the roof to capture the drum sound. There was no need for reverb on that record — it was all the natural room. I met Reeves [Gabrels] through that album, obviously, and I'm still good friends with him to this day. I was 26 then. I hadn't mixed an album in New York, and suddenly I was in New York City at Right Track Studios, just an English bloke mixing a David Bowie album, and in walks Iggy Pop! I'd been thinking of Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe Express" lyric, "Meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie." Yoko [Ono] would come down and hang out for a while, and Brian Eno would pop in. So surreal. It was incredible experience.
Did you work on the Tin Machine II album?
I didn't record it, but I mixed it at Pete Townshend's Eel Pie Studios, which was fabulous. Working with David Bowie I learned that you don't mess around with performances too much, you leave things be. Because we are engineers, and we have a strong work ethic and pride, we can tend to think that everything has to be just so. You learn along the way that sometimes for something to be cool, it can be sonically bad. It can to be distorted or small. If you listen in solo mode you may think, "That guitar sounds really thin." But in the track it's perfect. You have to learn to let things go. I think that as you get older, you're better at that stuff. Sometimes when you leave things alone, like an unplanned strange note or timing, they actually end up being your favorite part of the performance. On one song I was mixing, David said, "I like the rough mix you did on that song." I said to him, "Oh, but I can get it better." He said, "Okay, but you have just one hour." He would cut me off after the hour, and use what I'd gotten at that point. I'd never been down that path before.
What prompted the move to Austin for you?
I was in L.A. for over 14 years. Although I wanted something new, I also wanted to try and cut down my overhead so I could survive in the "new" music industry. I needed my new home to have certain parameters. My wife didn't want to be somewhere where there were natural disasters; she was always worried about earthquakes in L.A. Austin's pretty safe; it just gets too hot. Obviously I wanted it to be a music town. New York's not going to work for me; it's too expensive. Nashville was another option that I thought about for a minute, but I'd been to Austin a few times and I knew that I liked it here. I wanted somewhere with good schools for the kids. I sold my home in L.A. and was able to buy a bigger one here in Austin for cheaper, and it is a lot nicer too. I had room to build my studio here, so I cut my overhead down. I needed to position myself so that I can continue to do what I love to do. It'd be nice if recording budgets were the way that they used to be; but they're not, and I don't see them coming back! I cannot deny those huge budgets were fun.
I never got to experience that.
It was fun, but to be honest I feel we used to waste so much time and money.
I imagine that somebody, somewhere, is pulling a Chinese Democracy stunt, but most of the time nobody's got a ton of money to waste anymore.
I think I win the award for being the producer who worked on that album for the shortest amount of time. I lasted one night, I think.
You worked on Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy?
After I'd done the U2 album an A&R guy said I should get involved and try to finish the [Guns N' Roses] album. His brief to me was to get in and finish the vocals with Axl [Rose] and mix it. I thought, "Okay." So I met Axl for lunch, and he was very nice. He said, "Meet you at the studio tomorrow then, and we'll see what happens." He said we'd meet about 10 p.m., and of course he arrived at 1 a.m. He didn't have any words or lyrics ready, but he said he had some syllables! We stayed up until 5 a.m. recording hundreds of tracks; we'd try syllables here and there. I had to make a decision about what to do at that point. "Will I enjoy this? Working these hours with the vibe that was there?" My wife was pregnant with our first baby, and I thought, "Is this really going to make you happy?" We were all given Blackberries, as we weren't allowed to call, so I texted Axl. I said, "Look, the tracks sound great and I wish you all the best. But I really think, with my wife having a baby, that this is not the right thing for me to do at this point." He wasn't happy about it at all. I am glad I walked away; you've got to be true to yourself at some point.
It seems like it would have been a pretty miserable experience. Do you think you would have been able to work remote at a home studio, and still do mixing jobs ten years ago?
No. I don't think so, for a lot of reasons. One: Obviously the technology and the speed of sending files and all that. Two: Because there was more money in the industry, the artists wanted to be there at the mix. I don't blame them. I like it when they're here, but now they can't afford to do that. Of course we can book a fancy studio and meet in L.A., but they often haven't got the money to do that anymore. So this is what we do. It's fine. When I mix something, I send it as a 16- bit wave file, and they listen on their home systems and headphones. You know that they're not fooling themselves with unfamiliar studio monitors when they come back with any comments.
Have you ever had mixing situations where you get someone who wants to send you back full-circle to their rough mix?
Not too much, but I know what you mean. As we keep saying, there are pluses and minuses. What is a danger is that the artists know now that, with a couple of clicks, the mix can be back in front of me. If they hear a small change, they want to do it. There's never an endpoint. Whereas there was a very solid end in the old days. If you wanted to make a recall, you'd have to book the studio for a couple hours, get the guy who mixed it back in again, and then get the tapes. If that hi-hat really bothers you, are you prepared to spend $1,500 to fix it?
Maybe tweak it in mastering instead!
Yeah. Budgets were always useful as a full stop, because when the money ran out, that's when the record was done. I worked with Tears for Fears and it went on for six months. I recently produced the band Courrier in Austin in two weeks. I always feel that if you're any good, you make a record in the time that's given. But when you've got Pro Tools, it's a danger. Bands know that it's not costing you any more money to get their mix back up, so they take advantage of that.
With your mixing setup here do you do any outboard summing, or is it all in- the-box?
It's a hybrid of analogue and digital. I have 24 channels of Tonelux in a VRack. I absolutely love it — it sounds phenomenal. I have kick, snare, backing vocals, percussion, and whatever outputs set up on the Tonelux rig. Everything leaves digital and goes though the analogue chain. On my snare path I have a Tonelux EQ and a Tonelux TXC compressor. I love the Tonelux EQs — they remind me very much of the GML [George Massenburg Labs]. The compressors have the mix blend control, which I really love.
Oh, the blend. Right.
So you smash it and mix it together. If you want a bit more front on the snare, you can tweak your attack time. That's really cool. Then everything is summed to stereo, as well as through my GML EQ and my SSL compressor. From the SSL, I record the mix back into Pro Tools. The signal path is great.
Do you have to notate the outboard settings on some of the EQs?
Yeah, I'll notate those by hand if I change them a lot. Some things you don't change too much. I never change levels on the Tonelux faders. I do all rides in the box, controlled by 24 Avid Artist mix faders. It's so great to still have faders! I've finally gotten used to working with a mouse now. Many years ago I was recording Tears for Fears at Westlake Recording Studios. This guy rings up and says, "We've got this new thing. It's called Pro Tools." I went for a demo and he explained it all to me. Like a fool I thought, "I don't want to look at audio. I don't want to know this stuff. This is really not for me." It wasn't until later, when I started to see all the Pro Tools systems in studios, that I realized if I didn't start working with it I probably wouldn't have a career. So I switched it all up and did a Goldfinger album [Stomping Ground] as my first album on Pro Tools. Then I did Ozzy Osbourne's Down to Earth with Pro Tools. I never looked back. The amount of control you get is now a necessity to me, because in today's world I have to often salvage some pretty poor sessions. It's also a phenomenal creative tool! When you use Pro Tools, you have the ability to say, "Actually, that guitar could sound pretty cool under that verse if I turn it backwards." You can give it a go with ease, something that was not possible 20 years ago. Then when you play that new idea to someone, it doesn't matter what speakers they're listening to. They say, "Something cool is happening in that verse. What is that?" It's undeniable on any speaker, because it's musical. That's what I love about it, the control in that respect. The whole digital/analog thing; I don't look back and romanticize the way things used to be. I make this point all the time: we often get fussy about small EQ changes, but that small change is less than the change you get when changing between speakers. When you play the song to your mum later, she's never going to notice the difference.
You're getting a lot of different mixing work.
Yeah. It's the weirdest thing. Last year I did this album [Evolve] for Indus Creed, and it won the Best Album in Rolling Stone India. There's some really great music in far off places. People sometimes think that if you work with projects from all over the world that it makes you less relevant, but I don't think so. If I like the music, I'll go wherever it takes me. I got an email yesterday from a guy in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, and also one from a band in Slovenia!
I think one of the jobs we've had to work on is educating people that folks like you are available to work with. Just because someone sees your name on a record doesn't mean that you're not interested in working on their record.
Absolutely, and that's how it's all changed. The Internet has made contact with professionals so much more accessible. Big changes have been happening in the industry for a while now. The first signal that something was a little bit off to me was the "fund." In the past labels would just say, "Tim, could you mix a song?" If I liked the song I would agree and choose a studio. I never had anything to do with the budget. I'd do the best bloody job I could and take the time it needed. When the industry changed it became, "Tim, can you mix this song? We've got a fund." Now my job was to negotiate with a studio and say, "Do us a favor on a day rate, will you?" We'd have to start bartering. I'd maybe get the studio for $900, then I needed to buy tape, and I'd get to keep what was left. If during mixing I thought, "Oh, it's still not quite right. I could do with another day," that would not work. If I did another day I wouldn't make any money! It was a conflict of interest right there. The great thing about having built my studio room is that I am in charge of when I want to work, and for how long. If you send me a song to mix, and I need another day, I can just do it. All that matters is that it sounds good.
It levels the playing field to a degree.
It really does. Owning my own place has been the most freeing and creative thing that I've done in a long time. It's great for family life too. If my daughter comes home and says, "Dad, do you want to come to soccer practice with us tonight and help out?" I can say yes and take a break for a couple of hours with no hassle. That would not have gone down well in the old model,.
Any closing thoughts?
Everything is about the song. As soon as you lose sight of that and start thinking that it's what you did, I think you're losing the plot. The best cure for a bad mix is a great song. There's no doubt about it. As far as the technology is concerned it's like the expression, "You can own a Ferrari and still drive it at 30 miles per hour." You're the boss, and you have to be the master of your equipment. No one's forcing you to Beat Detective the drums. No one's forcing you to over-tune the vocals. You can't turn around and blame the technology afterwards. I think people tend to forget that. Auto- Tune and beat correction were solutions to problems that the music buying public never had.
I think having the knowledge and background to make those decisions, as well as committing to things and really producing a record is not as easy as it might appear.
If you use Pro Tools wisely there's no excuse not to commit. You can always make decisions and hide original performances. There is no reason not to make a great sounding record nowadays. It's easier now than ever. We respond to a performance, a lyric, and a piece of music. We use our tools to enhance that. But it's certainly not a replacement.
(I was doing a project in the '80s. There was a young A&R guy who came down to the studio to have a listen, so I had to set up a good balance. I said, "Wait on the couch for a second, and I'll get a quick balance up." So, I get started. I push up the drums and put a reverb on the snare (it was the '80s). While I was doing that I could hear him trying to get my attention. He said, "What was that thing you put on the snare drum?" I said, "That's reverb." He said, "That's fantastic." So I carry on. He stops me a second time when I'm just getting to the vocals, and he said, "Look, this might sound completely crazy, but what would it sound like if you put reverb on a vocal?" I said, "Let's try it out!" The poor guy probably thought he'd changed the history of recording.)
(One of the things about being a studio engineer was that clients would often book sessions on antisocial days. I'd think, "Oh no. Surely they don't want to work on Christmas Eve?" I remember being put on a session during one of those days, so I crawled underneath the Neve and pulled out a couple of fuses. I then called the maintenance guy and tipped him off as to what I had done, and luckily he didn't want to work either. When the producer of the session came in, I apologized, "Sorry, we've got problems, but I have the tech coming in now." The tech came in, had a look, and said, "I dunno if I can get this fixed today." The producer said, "Let's cancel.")
