– Do you ever wake up in the morning and just say to yourself, "I recorded Keith Moon and John Bonham." – Middle of the night sometimes. – [Ryan] Oh my God. – Welcome back to Deadwax. – We have with us today one of the great legends of rock and roll, Ron Nevison himself. We're gonna dive right in and listen to some songs he's worked on. We're gonna listen to The Who, "The Real Me." We're gonna listen to "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin. Bad Company and "Alone" by Heart. Here we go. Let's dive right in. – This is "The Real Me." ♪ Can you see ♪ ♪ Can you see ♪ ♪ Can you see the real me ♪ ♪ Can you see ♪ – Oh! – Yeah! Oh my Gosh.
– Yes! – You know, the end of that took longer than the whole recording. – I can imagine. – [Jack] That's Ron Nevison. He's a producer and audio engineer. He's been recognized as Billboard Magazine's top five producers of the year four separate times. He's been nominated for countless Grammy awards and has worked with artists like The Who, Led Zeppelin, Bad Company, Heart, and so many more. – The delay thing. Me, me, me, me, me. – What is that? What'd you use for the delay? – Tape delays. ♪ Me ♪ – What tape? – One feeding into. Revox, Echoplex.
I don't remember. It might have been an Echoplex. Or Revox's feeding into each other. – I just wanna nerd out on those sounds this whole time. – Yes. – I wanna get deep into gear here because like, you don't hear that anymore. – What year was this? – '73. – Okay. – So, okay, so many questions. I don't even know where to start. I think maybe the first thing that like jumps out to me is- – Drums. – The drums! – Yeah, that's where you start. – They are fierce, but soft. Like there's not a lot of high end. It's almost as if they're rolled off. – They're not mono. They're very stereo. – What's going? – Well, let me tell you. – Yeah, what's happening? The whole idea of "Quadrophenia," which is this, so the first track of "Quadrophenia," was that it would be in quadraphonic sound.
There was no such studio in London for quad sound. So Townshend decided to build one. And that's how I got the job, actually, because there was not a studio. So when he built it, the console, the console needs to have quad panners for quad. – So when you say quad, that's right left, – Four speakers. – Back left. – Yeah. – And back right. – Yeah, four. Front, back. And do you remember, you remember how early Beatles, when it came to stereo, they didn't know what to do with it? – Yeah. – They put the drums on the one side and the bass on the other side? – I actually love that still. – We think of stereo as a performance, it's spread out and panned. There wasn't much panning. Most of it was hard left and hard right.
When you heard Simon & Garfunkel, you had Garfunkel on one side, you had Simon on the other side. This was quad, what do I do with quad? I almost just, it was like my first record, you know? – Did they have to build a console for this? – They built a console that had all of the outputs, four outputs for quad, the monitoring, and all of that. It was a normal console, but it had quad features. – And how did they want people to listen it? – But wait.
I started recording the "Quadrophenia" album on eight tracks. It had an eight track studio tape recorder in this mobile control room that I built for Ronnie Lane, 'cause the studio was not ready. And I had to use four tracks without, just trying to figure out how to pan the drums. I had to use four tracks just simulating it in my head, where everything would be. I was wondering, you know, should I present this like, 'cause I had a big history of live sound recording, well live sound mixing. Should I put this? Should you be in the middle of the drum kit? Where should you be here? – And you're making all these decisions? – I'm asking myself these questions. And then I look over at Keith and his drum kit and there's not any room for any microphones.
– Why? – Too many drums. He had two hi-hats. He had eight tom-toms. – It sounds like there's eight tom-toms. – He had this gigantic kit and I had to kind of gingerly. So ended up, I mean, it still sounds pretty good. So. – This drum sound is insane. – It's so good. – Where did you put the mics? – Wherever I could. – How many mics did you use? You remember? – I, you know, even though I had only eight tracks, so I had to pre-mix it. You know, when you had eight tracks, usually, in those days, you would pre-mix to two tracks, stereo, and you'd add the reverb. If you wanted the reverb on the stereo, you'd print it, and you were, – Wow. – You were dialed into it. – Wow. – So does that mean- – You couldn't do anything else, you know? So you had to make sure it was, you know, and Glyn Johns was great at that and he had done "Who's Next." I followed his lead on stuff like that. – But he wasn't working on this record. – Well, he did actually, because they used "Love, Reign o'er Me" from a previous.
– I see, okay. – And I put the ending on. – Yeah. – "Love, Reign o'er Me." Which was the end of "Quadrophenia," he just played the beginning of it. – Yeah. – And so yeah, he did do one song. There might have been part of another song that they had used from previous, "Lifehouse," previous. – So how did you end up answering the question you asked yourself about where's the listeners? Is the listener in the middle of the room? – Yeah, in the middle. – On stage? – I had to think of the people being surrounded by the drums.
– Did anyone ask- – But really, with the drummer sitting there and then the guitars and stuff around. – But then half your channels, half your channels are gonna be taken up by drums. – Well, here's what we did. We recorded the first two or three songs. And then over a weekend, I got everybody to come in and changed it from eight track to 16 track. – Did you link two machines together? – No. No. No, no. – How'd you do it? – Well, I had Studer come in and put in an additional eight, rewire the console, the whole thing, like from Friday night to Monday morning. – Wow. – Was done. And there was issues because it was in this Airstream caravan. And so the Studer, we couldn't go like eight, couldn't go another eight up 'cause of the curvature of the. – Wow. – So we put eight down underneath the transport, but that created problems with a hum being, in fact, the electronics were so close to the motor- – And this literally.
– So they had to shield this. – This is a control room in an Airstream? – Yeah. – And where's the tracking room? – In the studio. Let me break it down. – But the Airstream was outside of the studio? – Let me break it down to you. The studio was ready to go, but the control room with the console wasn't ready. – Okay. – So I had built this with the same kind of smaller console, and not quad, built this studio for a control room kind of for Ronnie Lane of The Faces, in this Airstream for him. Pete and Ronnie were like best buddies. So, Pete goes, "Hey, you know, get the Airstream down here.
I gotta start working on these tracks and the console's not ready." So that's actually how I got the job. – Gotcha, because you had already built this. – I'm the guy that built it. I knew how to work it. "Hey, yeah. Have Ron do it," you know. – How do the drums sound like this now? We're listening in stereo, obviously, not in quad, but like the drum- – It never got to quad. – How did they expect people to listen to it? – I'm gonna tell you. MCA had this system called the QS or SQ system, which was going to be their new thing. And it required the user to buy a decoder and two extra speakers. And it would take the vinyl stereo and somehow put the two rear speakers in with the front speakers and go through the decoder and spell out the quad. The problem with that was the front to back separation was like 3DB. It was like a big mono. And when we finally got our hands on this decoder, Pete said, "I am not doing a quad mix that sounds worse than the stereo." – Gotcha.
– And he called up, he had his manager call up MCA and they were floored. This was one of their big rock releases in quad, but he says, "I'm not doing it." – So a lot of albums. – So we never did, we never mixed it in quad. – But this was a fad at the time. – It was a fad in 1973 that died quickly. – So you didn't even mix in quad, you ended up mixing in stereo, but still on 16 tracks. – Well, it was all 16 track, but I did some, I mean for sound effects, I took the Airstream down to Cornwall and set up four U87 microphones in this inlet and recorded quad sea noises.
– Really? – Because there was no quad sea noises. I could go to the BBC and get stereo sea noise. – Yeah, I've been complaining for years about the lack of quad sea noises. – You know, it did bother me then, too. – Yeah. – You know, quad like birds and rain, you know, – I hate to keep asking the same question, but. – The drums. – Why do the drums sound like that? ♪ Family ♪ ♪ Can you see the real me ♪ – Again, it's like a softer kind of drum tone. There's not a lot of resonance in those toms, but they popped so hard, they smacked so hard. – Why do the "Kashmir" drums sound so good? – Well, are you- – The drummer! – Are you using condensers? – Yes. – Or are these ribbons? Because when we think of drum sounds from the '60s, it's ribbons, right? – I like the liver thing. I liked. – But was there a graduation when people started using more condensers on- – I don't know, I was on my own little bubble, doing my thing.
I wasn't party to what everybody else was doing. – Do you remember your approximate, you said you did a premix of the drums. Do you remember what you used for the premix? Like, do you remember how you were summing those channels? – There was probably 10 mics into four channels, and no, I don't. – 10 mics. – I took all the toms and put them into the middle, all four, and you know, I didn't have quad panning. I didn't think that you should have kick drums at all corners or anything like that. He needed to have the bass and the kicks, and he used two kicks.
I mean, he had two of everything. – Yeah, yeah. – Right. – So Glyn Johns was famous for the mic technique where you have a mic here. It was like a three mic thing, where you have your mic, the kick drum. You mic a couple feet above the snare and then the same distance above the floor top, right? That was sort of his iconic. – Right. People used to measure. – Yeah. Were you precise about it? – No, I was the listener kind of guy. I would walk around the room. – So you threw up mics. – I would put the drums in places that people, I would try the drummer in different parts of a room and just get away from it, back off, and see what the drum sounded like in that place.
– How much experimentation would you do? – As much as necessary. – Was it days of getting drum sound? – This was also, you know, this was not, this was a brand new studio. This was the first gig. The studio was so new, the console wasn't even ready yet. – Which studio was this? – This was called Ramport. – And so how long did you have to get sounds before you actually started recording? – Well, I mean, I put the drums where I thought they'd sound good and didn't move them. – Okay. – Because there was too many to move. – Yeah. Yeah. – That's for Keith Moon. A lot of times, you know, future projects, I'd move stuff quite a bit. And I did a lot of projects in houses that I rented with mobile trucks where I'd try different rooms, not just different parts of rooms, but I'd try stuff in the hallway. I'd try stuff in the dining room. We would see. – What sounded good.
– Yeah. – And how many people were tracking live here? Were doing like the core tracks back (indistinct). – All four. – All four. Okay. And then the horns came later. – The horns on this particular song, I believe John did at his house. At the end of "Quadrophenia," we went out to, Pete had another studio out in Goring on Thames, out in the country. And that's where Pete and I did the mixing. – Did John arrange horns? – Yeah. – Okay. – Yeah, he was brilliant. – Can I tell you what's one thing that I think I had noticed that's very cool about this horn arrangement? On the E, I'm assuming it's an E, no thirds, 'cause it's just rock. It's just power cords. So that progression when it goes one, minor three, four, the minor three and the four have thirds, but I'm pretty sure whenever it gets to the E chord, it's neither major nor minor.
– Interesting. – It's just power chords and the horns. – What I did notice about the horns is their intonation is seemingly perfect. – Mm. – I don't know who played horns on that record, but they are incredible horn players. It's just beautiful, perfect fifths. – John did all the horns. – Oh, he actually played 'em. – He played every horn. – Oh really? – Oh. – We did not have a horn section.
– Holy moly. – Oh, I thought this was common knowledge, I'm sorry. – No, I didn't know this. – Yeah. He multi-tracked his own horn section. – That's so cool. – Wow. – So not being a horn player, I guess maybe he did things a little bit differently. – Can I ask what the vibe of the, do you remember this session? – Oh yeah. – Like what was the vibe. – For this particular song- – Was it a party? Were people nerding out about details? Was it? – It was just myself and my assistant engineer, – Who was that? – The group and a couple of roadies. A guy named Ron Faukus. – And what was the dynamic of the group like? Did they get along? Was it a party? Were they concerned about details? – In the back of the room, there was a little table, in the back of the control room, and there was a bottle of Cognac on the table.
And when the session was over, it was when the Cognac was finished. – That's nice that they waited until after the session was over. – It took that long. – Question for you. Did you feel like there was a leader of The Who at this time? – Oh, Pete Townshend was the leader. – He was the leader. – He was the writer. He was the head guy. And he was the producer. – It was his band. – This is his band, pretty much. But I don't think, I mean, I've read things previous that, you know, Roger was more into R&B growing up. And in fact, I have to tell you a story here. – Okay. – Early, because I, somewhere around 2010, I was part of an A&E documentary about Pete Townshend. And Pete was talking about going to Decca and sitting down with the A&R guy and the guy saying, "Where's your material?" And they go, like, "We need material for the thing?" – They thought they were just gonna get a deal.
– "We're popular in Twickenham, you know?" And so they're going down in the lift, which sounds weird, on the way out. And like, "Who's gonna write?" And Pete goes, "I'm gonna write." And then I interview this guy, Barney, who was Pete's flatmate when they were in art school. And Barney says, "Well, you know, Ron, what happened after that is we went to see The Kinks, and we're right up at the front, and they're going (vocalizes). And Pete said to me, 'I can do that.'" And that's, he went home and wrote (vocalizes) "Can't explain," right? – Wow. – And so that took the band in a totally different direction, right? The rock and roll thing, away from Roger. Roger kind of went along with it, I think. And I think there was always a little bit of friction because it became Pete's thing, and "Hey, I'm the lead singer," you know, that's usually the guy, right? – How long would these guys record before they got to a take like that? Were they recording two days, three days? Did they get it in the first one? – Let me go to a little bit different thing, since we're talking about the "Quadrophenia" record.
It was the age of big synthesizers. And Pete was a big fan of the ARP 2600 synthesizer. – Nice. – Which was a modular synth, which you had to plug in everything. You had to tune it up. You didn't push a button to tune it up. You had to tune up all the oscillators, and you had, there was a book that you could get a string sound by doing all this, but you couldn't keep it. You couldn't use a monster like this on stage. You'd have to take a 15 minute break just to get the sound. There was no, you couldn't keep a program. – Right. – Right.
– There's nothing, not a programmable. Pete had a little, tiny little room in his house, and he had another 16 track in there and he would do, with a click, he would do rudimentary drums and bass. He didn't wanna, you know, he wanted to keep it simple for. – He made demos. – Yeah, he made demos with a click track and keeping the synth and then we would overdo the drums and bass and guitar. – Gotcha. – And now we didn't do that in all the tracks, but some of the more synthesized, it wasn't "Real Me," we didn't do it on that. Keith, we would, he was such a wild drummer. We would tape his headphones on with gaffer's tape, like right around his head, so they wouldn't fly off.
– We know a drummer from a band about 10 years ago called Mutemath, Darren King, he's been on the show. – Yeah. – [Jack] Who would tape his headphones around his head. – Had to. – [Jack] I wonder if that's where he got it. – Had to, I mean, you know. – Amazing. – How many football players do you see with, like, their shoes all taped on and. – Can we, we're gonna get to Bad Company, but you said you had one story about the "Kashmir" drum sound, which I have to ask about. – Yeah, well, you know, "Kashmir" was part of, when I worked with Led Zeppelin on the "Physical Graffiti" album. – Which is insane, by the way. I can't believe you worked on "Physical Graffiti." – I know, I was just thinking, let's appreciate that sentence for a second. – Well, when I got the call, it was probably because of "Quadrophenia" and it was because I had built this studio for Ronnie Lane, the aforementioned Lane's mobile sound in the Airstream.
And they wanted to go down to Headley Grange, which they had recorded "Houses of the Holy" and other projects there. Now, whether or not they heard I was the hot new guy or whether or not The Rolling Stones mobile wasn't available, I'm not sure, but I got the call to come and do it. And which ties into- – 'Cause they wanted to go record in a house. – Yeah. It was a house. – They didn't wanna go to a studio. – It was a house in Headley, called Headley Grange. – Got it. – And it was an old Gothic house, beat up, but it probably had been really beautiful. It was like a rental, right? You walked into it and there was the big hallway with a stairway that went up like three flights and then the rooms are off to the side.
And they had, Bonham had put his drums right where he had before from previous recordings. And when I started putting mics around the drum kit, he went, "No." – Put 'em up there. – No, he showed me where they had put it before, Andy Johns or whoever it was. – Yeah. – And so I can't really take credit too much for that. – So where'd you put the mics? – On the landing. – How far from the drums? – About, I would say, about as far as the camera is. – That's how far away the mics were? – 15 feet away. – Maybe even 20. – No close mics? – No, not one. And just stereo. That very day that we cut that track, I got an Eventide Phaser to try out. – Nice. – And I had heard it was good on symbols. So now realized, – Oh my God. – Realized that this was a stereo track. I had it on tracks two and three. You didn't wanna put something like that on an edge track.
So I put the drums on tracks two and three. I fed one side of the drums into the Eventide Phaser and put that on track four. And that was the setting and it- – Ron that's insane! – I know, it's pretty crazy. – That is one of the most iconic drum sounds ever recorded, is this freaking Phaser. – I mean, with the Phaser, yeah. – What was the unit? It wasn't an age 3000. This is pre age 3000. – It was, in 1973, 19, you know, whatever, Eventide Phaser. – I can't believe you placed the drums for "Kashmir" and you also chose to use a phaser on this recording, which again, is an insane choice. – That was an accident. It was one of those happy accidents. – But that's the beauty of recording, right? – It is.
– Let's listen to it. – Here we go, here we go. This "Kashmir," Led Zeppelin. – Do you ever wake up in the morning and just say to yourself, "I recorded Keith Moon and John Bonham." – Middle of the night sometimes. – Oh my God. I can't believe. I mean, how crazy is that? – Yeah, it's [ __ ] crazy. – I've been lucky to work with great singers and great bands and great drummers, Simon Kirke, amazing, simple drummer of Bad Company. He was a great drummer, too. – Speaking of which, let's listen to Bad Company. – Yeah. ♪ Bad, bad company ♪ ♪ Till the day I die ♪ – Hear, at the end of that, he goes, "And the cold wind blows." ♪ The cold wind blows ♪ – I had him outside against this brick wall at Headley Grange and it was freezing. So that was part of his ad lib, "And the cold wind blows." – Wow. – At the end of that. – That's awesome. – When you're recording records like that, how many choices are you making and printing to tape when you're recording? Like, are you printing EQ and compression and verbs? Like how much are you? – Not much.
– [Jack] Not much. So you're printing dry for the most part. – That whole album, "Bad Co," took 10 days to record. – Can I ask- – We would do a track. He would run out there and throw a solo on it. And then we would, you know, cut all the tracks and then he would do the vocals, and then we'd do backgrounds and. – One song a day. – Oh no, three songs a day, maybe.
Two songs. – And then overdubs. – And then overdubs. – And then overdubs. And then we went to Olympic Studios to do some horns and background singers and mixing. But the whole recording part took 10 days. And then probably another 10 days mixing. – Was this in the same house as "Kashmir" was recorded? – This was, yeah. – Crazy. – But I didn't use the, what happened with the Zeppelin thing is that, I went out to do what we talked about. And John Paul Jones didn't turn up for the sessions. They never talked about it. I never really asked why he wasn't there. He had some personal issues or family issues or something. So we were out there for like four or five days just doing Elvis songs and things like that, getting sounds.
And then I got the word that we weren't gonna, we were gonna take a break. "Hey, I've got this band," Peter Grant told me, "It's the guy from Free and it's the guy from Mott the Hoople, and the drummer from Free, and this other bass player, called the Paul Rogers Group." It wasn't Bad Company yet. You know, "Can you work with them?" – And this is the manager of – Zeppelin.
– Led Zeppelin that you're talking about. – Who had just started a label called Swan Song. And he had just signed a management thing with Paul Rogers and group. – Which was like a supergroup, Bad Company. – Kind of, yeah. – Yeah. – So I did that album in 10 days. – What a great name. – And "Bad Company," was, that track that you just played, it was taken from that song because they needed a name. In other words. – So the song came first. – The song came first. But I already knew what the drums sounded like in the hallway at Headley Grange 'cause I had done those Elvis songs.
– Are those drums in the same place as Bonhams? – No. – You moved them. – So I put these in the dining room. – Yes. – I didn't want that too, that much of a bombastic thing. I wanted a live sound. I used condenser mics. And it turned out great. Crispy. Nice. – Yeah they sound brighter and just more high, yeah. – And that's what a steady drummer Simon Kirke is. Amazing drummer. I ended up doing three Bad Company albums all with remote trucks. – I just wanna point out, your attitude, this is the early '70s, when there's, you know, the height of state of the art studios and you're putting recording gear in trailers and going to mansions and putting drums in dining rooms and stairways, you're going and getting a new phaser unit and just running.
You have this attitude- – A day in the life. – Of experimentation that I think, nowadays, so much of music is backwards looking, and people listening to these records that you worked on and saying, "No, no, no, we gotta use the same mics and the same gear that they used." But really, you guys weren't looking backwards. You were just messing around and you went to the store and got a new piece of gear and put something through it. And you were, you had a freedom about you that I think is admirable and awesome. – Thanks. I think that part of it is, when you're walking into a, I rented a house for, two different houses for two different Babys albums in LA. And when you walk into a house and you're trying to figure out where to put everything, hiding a base amp in a closet, and doing all that stuff, it's not like walking through the doors of a recording studio that everybody had walked through.
There's less kind of pressure on you. And it makes you find unique sounds that nobody else has had before. – Yes. – And, I don't know. – That attitude too, of like, even just- – You have to, you have to do that. – It's awesome. – And you have to put up with traffic noises and stuff like that, that you don't have to. – You get more creative, too. You have more constraints you have to work around. – Also, the band is right there living with, which mostly, it's good. – Should we listen to the last track? – Yes. – Yeah. – This is "Alone." – Ah. – By Heart. – Heart. ♪ Till now I always got by on my own ♪ ♪ I never really cared until I met you ♪ – Oh my God.
– Wow! – Come on. – Oh ho! – Let's go do karaoke right now. (Ron laughs) – That vocal performance is stunning. – Yeah, you crushed that one. – I mean, what a voice, oh my God. – How did you get involved with this? – They wanted me to do a couple of ballads. That's what my manager told me. "Hey, you interested in working with Heart?" I went, "Yeah!" I even might have put an expletive in there, too. ♪ How do I get you alone ♪ ♪ Alone ♪ – And "Well," – Heck yeah. – "Then I'll arrange it. Go up to Seattle and meet the girls." – Okay. – So I went up to Seattle. We had a, they even picked me up at the airport, and we had an evening and everything went great. And the next day I got a call from my manager, said, "They liked you so much, they want you to do the whole record." I said, "Great." And then I had a meeting with Don Grierson, who was the head of A&R for Capitol. And he said to me that this was a band that had a gigantic first record, "Dreamboat Annie," with "Crazy on You" and "Magic Man" and, I think, all those kind of songs in late '70s and then they started deteriorating 'cause the guys that were in the band with the girls kind of, they broke up the relationships, and as great of a guitar player as Howard Leese was, he wasn't writing the riffy stuff.
– Mm hmm. So what was the leap from engineering to producer, to back up for a second? Do you remember, what was the first thing that you produced? – No, I mean, I had been producing since I got to LA. – I mean even the story about- – Flo & Eddie and Dave Mason, I had a couple of big albums with Dave Mason that I produced. – Even the story about the phaser is producorial. – I was experimenting. – You were experimenting. – You know, I wouldn't make it a as bigger thing, but it's a great story now that that happened. I was experimenting. I wasn't even gonna play it to them. I was just, I wanted to hear what it sounded like on symbols. – Did you- – And it happened to be the song that I didn't have any kind of grandiose idea about.
– Was it a conscious thing? Like, you know what, engineering is not enough. I need to start producing. Was that a conscious thing or just natural? – Yeah, it was, because producers were making the big bucks and they were royalty artists. So I decided that if I wanted to be rich and famous, I should start producing. – So you wanted to be rich and famous? – I did. Yeah. And so I kind of pushed for that.
– I love that. – Now this song "Alone," the song "Alone," was not on the first album that I did with them. It had "These Dreams" and "What About Love." And this is on the "Bad Animals" album, which is the second. So I'd already been through the whole scenario with them. We had sold 10 million records on the first album. And so we were now on this second album, a couple of years later, and it was easier to. – 10 million records. – So this guy that, the guy that wrote that song, "Alone," well, two people, Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, Tom was a background singer that I used. – I know Tom Kelly. – Yeah.
– I used to play music with his son, Tyson. – There you go. Yeah, there you go. – Yeah. – Well Tom was a background singer that I used to use and he sent me these songs. And so when it came to do the vocals, I'll cut to the end of this story, when it came to do the vocals, neither one of the girls could hit the high harm, "How do I get you alone?" ♪ How do I get you alone ♪ – And so I called up Tom, I said, "Who did that on your demo?" He said, "I did." I said, "Get over here." – He sang higher than the girls.
– Yeah, so he came on. – So that's him on there. – You can't tell, you can't tell. – Who found the song? – It could be a mouse singing in there. – Was that you or the label? – Oh, I found it. – You found it. – Yeah. – Do you remember the instruments that you used? 'Cause that first synth sounds like a FM. – Yeah, I think it was, I'll tell you what it was. It was a Chroma, a Fender Chroma. – A Fender Chroma. – A Chroma. – Yep, a Chroma. – Okay, well I'm fascinated by just this process of, okay, so you've done, you've sold 10 million records with Heart. It's time for the next record. You need songs. – I decide, after the songs are played to me, if there's hits there. – So who played you the song? – There's different things.
– The band plays me the songs. – Okay, the band found this. – Yeah, then I go and have a meeting with the manager and with the record company. And I said, "Well, I liked a lot of these rock songs, but there's not really, in those days, especially mid eighties, there was a couple of different formats. It was AOR radio, as you know about. Rock radio. And there was CHR, contemporary hit radio. And if you had a big rock hit, you could sell 500,000 records. And if you have a big CHR hit, you have in the millions.
Right? – Yeah. – So they didn't have anything to fit in the CHR kind of mold in my opinion. And Don Grierson had said that, "I'll sign you if you agree on the songs and the producer." And they picked me to be the producer. So I found songs and I found "These Dreams" for them. And I liked their songs. They just didn't have hits for me. – And how did you songs? – So I don't want this to be misconstrued, that he didn't like our songs.
– Right. Sure. – 'Cause I did like those songs, yeah. – Where did you get the songs? – Well, as a producer, you're like the conduit for every songwriter in the world. – So you have people sending you songs all the time. – Thousands of songs. – So did you just spend your days listening to demos? – No, no. – Who listened to the demos? Who's your taste maker? – Well people would say like, well, people would send me a song and I would say, "I'm not listening right now." And they'd go, "What? What do you mean you're not listening?" And I'd say, "I only listen with an artist in mind." When I need a song for an artist, I start listening, 'cause I can picture them in my mind.
I can picture Ann Wilson, singing, "If looks could kill, you'd be lying on the floor. You'd be begging me please, please don't hurt me no more." – Yeah. – You know? And so I need to, a good song's a good song, but I'll forget about it in two years. I'm not gonna go through all these hundreds of songs. – So you go through the catalog when you're like, "Here's a band, they got a couple of good songs. I want to add some more good songs to the mix." And so you go through your own. – You know, I don't think I went like that, because I only went through the songs if I needed a hit song. I wanted this band to have as many of their songs on as possible. It's not like, "Let's get five of these and five of these." Like one song, two songs a record to, you know. – And can you walk us through the process of demo to completed recording? How, like, what was the flow of? – Well, a song they didn't write, there was already a demo.
– Right. – For instance, and I remember this, there's a song, "What About Love," it's on the first album. "What about love?" – Yep. – And it was a really wimpy demo. When I played it to them, they flipped out, they hated it. And I said, "Okay, look, we'll work it up. If you don't like it, we won't do it." Very simple.
If you can't make it your own, think of it as notes on a paper, words on a sheet, and just start playing it and see if, and they worked it into something for themselves. So with power and with Denny's drumming. – So they play it all together as a band before you started recording. – Well we would, of course, we'd rehearse. – You'd rehearse it. You wouldn't start building the arrangements. – No. – Like, okay. Keys and then drums and bass and demo, vocal. – You know, primarily a guitar band, I like to do live recordings, and then exchange the pieces. I once did, I did a UFO record called "Lights Out," if you remember that. – Mm hmm. – And the keyboard player, I told him that he was [ __ ] up and he was making a lot of mistakes and I probably would have to redo his part. And he goes, "Well, why do I have to do it now?" And I said, "Because if it's not in the headphones, somebody else will creep into your part." – Take that space. Right.
– Take that space. "And when I go to put it back on, it won't be there." – Right. – And so you need to have that kind of, – I see. – You need to formulate the whole thing, – The sketch is there. – And then get each part better. Get the vocal better, get the guitars sounding better and more powerful or whatever. – Do you end up replacing a lot of things when you're? – Mostly, well it's hard to say. – One thing that we've talked about a couple times and I think about is, I mean, this was not recorded with a click. Right? – No. – Okay, because you came up working with these bands that had such unique senses of time together. The way that they all felt time. The way that Bonham feels time is different from, you know, Keith Moon and whatnot. And I would listen, it becomes apparent, the fills going into the choruses. ♪ How do I get you alone ♪ – You feel the time pull back.
It's just, that is lost in so much of music today. – Yeah. – Where things speed up like halfway through the solo, they go to the eighth notes and the hat, which ramps, and then the there's so much drama that's lost in the ebb and flow. – I used to cut a lot of takes together because of that. And sometimes the times didn't match, sometimes they.
– Right. – I wanna say one thing about "Alone," the song that we just played, because the second chorus comes along and the vocals don't start there. – Yeah. – And the record company flipped out when I played it to 'em, they said,"What are you doing?" I said, "Well, just listen." And then she comes in with this great ad lib, right? But it was so untraditional that they were worried that it wouldn't fit into a, that people would go like this big rock thing and no vocals. – [Ryan] Can we listen to that really quick? – Yeah. Let's listen. ♪ Till now I only got by ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ – That vocal moment is soaring. – That snuck by me. Wait, how did that come about, that there's no vocal? Was that a conscious decision? – Yeah.
Oh yeah. – Like no, no. Don't sing here. Come in with a crazy- – No, yeah, we worked that out like that. – Okay. We're nearing the end of our session here. What's a record that you didn't produce, but that inspired you? – Was there a song you heard as a kid that lit you up and made you want to do music? – We didn't get to this part of my career, but I was a background singer in a doo-wop band. – Were you really? – In the '50s.
– Wow. – Or in the early '60s. A song that I remember, aside from Elvis, was "Dream Lover" by Bobby Darin. – [Ryan] Oh yeah. ♪ Dream lover, where are you ♪ ♪ With a love, oh, so true ♪ – And maybe the reason I liked it so much is because I had, I bought a 45 and saved up for that. And then I took it to school and it fell out of my locker. And in those days, vinyl broke into a lot of pieces. And I went, "And there goes my 'Dream Lover.'" – Oh my God. Wait, I actually am curious, instead of a song recommendation, can you answer the same question that Ron answered? What is a song, do you remember as a kid, that just lit you up? The first time you were lit up by music that made you wanna play.
– I'm embarrassed to say this, but it's so good. The real answer is Weird Al Yankovic. ♪ You won't get no dessert ♪ ♪ Til you clean off your plate ♪ ♪ So eat it ♪ ♪ Don't you tell me you're full ♪ ♪ Just eat it ♪ ♪ Eat it ♪ – I have to say the entire "Sgt. Pepper" record. – Oh. – Yeah. – Blew my mind. ♪ Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends ♪ ♪ Ooh, I get high with a little help from my friends ♪ – What do you got for us, Ryan? Song that inspired you as a kid. Stevie Ray Vaughan? – Many of Stevie Ray Vaughan. The one that I was gonna say is the album, "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs." ♪ She took my hand ♪ ♪ And tried to make me understand ♪ – Yeah.
– Yeah. – Would you want to do the honors here? We have a diamond. (upbeat music) – Ron, thank you so much for joining us. This was awesome to have you. – Thank you. – Thank you so much, man. What a treat. – Thank you. – Thank you guys for watching. This has been Deadwax. Jack Conte, Ryan Lerman. If you like what you've seen here, comment and subscribe. Tune in next week for more episodes. – See you later. (upbeat music).