Classic Tracks: Heroes

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Published in SOS October 2004

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CLASSIC TRACKS: Heroes

Artist: David Bowie; Producers: David Bowie, Tony Visconti; Studio: Hansa Ton,Berlin

Technique : Classic Tracks

With 'Heroes', David Bowie pulled off the rare feat of

having a major hit with a highly experimental piece of

art-rock, which featured among other highlights live

synth treatments from Brian Eno, pitched feedback from

Robert Fripp and a lead vocal with level-triggered

ambience.

Richard Buskin

It was after working with producer Denny Cordell on a Georgie Fame session that

engineer, producer and guitarist Tony Visconti relocated to London in 1968. Soon

after arriving, he produced Tyrannosaurus Rex's My People Were Fair... and

Prophets, Seers And Sages albums, followed by David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' in

1969. The work with Marc Bolan continued through classic records such as ElectricWarriorand The Slider, while that with Bowie took in the likes ofThe Man Who Sold

The World, Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, and the 'Berlin trilogy' ofLow, Heroes

and Lodger(although Lowwas actually recorded in France).

For a short time early on, Bowie and Visconti had shared a flat in Beckenham, Kent, with girlfriends and band members, yet by

he late '70s their friendship had become, to quote the producer, "more pragmatic than idealistic", while their working

relationship continued to flourish. "David's way of thinking is extremely different from most human beings, while mine is very

practical," Visconti remarks. "So, we got on really great in the studio."

Nevertheless, after 1980's Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), Bowie and Visconti didn't collaborate on another major new

album project for more than two decades. They ended their hiatus with Heathen in 2002, and joined forces again for Bowie's

most recent album Reality, as described in SOS October 2003 (read the article on-line at www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct03

/articles/reality.htm).

A New Life In A New Town

1977 was a busy year for David Bowie. He produced Iggy Pop's records The Idiotand Lust For Life, toured anonymously as

Iggy's keyboard player, made a film appearance alongside Marlene Dietrich and Kim Novak in Just A Gigolo, and narrated

Eugene Ormandy's version ofPeter And The Wolf. After relocating to Berlin following the release of his avant-pop opus

Station To Station the previous year, he began straightening out from a coke addiction, studying art and immersing himself in

Euro-expressionist, synth-based music. Accordingly, early 1977 saw the release ofLow, Bowie's experimental and highlyinfluential electronic album which, courtesy of his collaboration with Brian Eno an acquaintance from Bowie's Ziggy

Stardust days, when Roxy Music were his opening act fused mainstream pop with the avant garde, and he quickly followed

his up with the equally groundbreaking Heroes. Again utilising the talents of Eno, this record echoed Low's semi-vocal/semi-

instrumental structure while boasting a more heavily layered, harder-edged sound, thanks in part to the guitar contributions of

Robert Fripp. In turn, the hauntingly atmospheric title track became an international hit.

A Social Event

"Working with Bowie is much more than going to a studio," asserts Tony Visconti. "It's a social event, too. We would eat

ogether, go to shows together, go to clubs together, and really soak in the local culture. That was always his way of working,

and Berlin was perfect for him in terms of what he wanted at that time. It was a stark, scary place, yet it had a very exciting

nightlife, with exotic locales such as the Turkish quarter, and it was swarming with artists like Tangerine Dream, who were

friends of ours. David was writing with Brian Eno back then, and the three of us got on really great.

"Since Station To Station, David had been working with a rhythm section consisting of Carlos

Alomar on guitar, George Murray on bass and Dennis Davis on drums. All three were amazing

musicians. You'd just throw a few chord changes at them and they'd run with it. Carlos,

especially, could whip up these little instant licks that would gel the whole thing together

he's a rhythm guitarist extraordinaire, and his lead playing ain't so bad either. Bowie and he

would bounce off each other brilliantly Carlos might come up with the germ of a part, and

hen Bowie would help him elaborate, but once the two of them began exchanging ideas backand forth, you'd get amazing stuff.

"For instance, the underlying riff on 'Heroes' was Carlos's idea, as was the pre-chorus part,

which is like a viola and cello section, whereas Fripp overdubbed the high, wailing parts. The

point is, David's modus operandiwould be to throw a bunch of chord changes and a bunch of

ideas in a very loose structure at the band, and he knew he could rely on those guys to immediately do something. They were

am experts, and so within half an hour they would jam the few chords that David threw at them into a wonderful structure. The

lyrics would often come about a month or two later. We would work on the musical content, David would have some idea as to

what the song was about, and we would use that idea like if it was going to be a happy song or a depressing song to

make the instruments come out with an emphatic arrangement or sound in order to invoke the desired emotion. Then the

stage would be set and David would just throw his lyrics on at the very last minute. He would write his lyrics in a morning, it

would take him an hour or two, but beforehand he'd also need a month or two to let the ideas really germinate."

Such was the case with 'Heroes'. Before recording commenced on the album, Bowie and Eno spent a couple of weeks

working out some basic song structures, but again there were no lyrics and no melodies. One of the stronger structures was

hat which would evolve into 'Heroes', yet whereas the finished version clocks in at just over six minutes, the track was actually

about eight minutes long when it was recorded.

"We just kept going round and round with these very long cycles of verse, two verses and then pre-chorus and chorus,"

Visconti recalls. "Then, about four minutes down the line, a bridge kicks in. When you record in this fashion it's inevitable that

you bring out the razor blade, and if you looked at a lot of the Heroes multitrack tapes you'd see loads of edits. Most of theracks on that album had to be cut down as we would just over-record, but sometimes it would be useful to do that because

we'd find, for instance, that there was a better chorus at the end. I would make a 24-track to 24-track copy and edit that chorus

In this article:

A New Life In A New

Town

A Social Event

Making Do

Cracking The

Combination

No Going Back

Searching For

Inspiration

The Fabric Of Time

Remains Intact

Kick And Drag

Accidental Muses

CLASSICTRACKS: The

Cure 'A Forest'

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Photos courtesy of Tony Visconti

Tony Visconti "in a house painter's hat

decorated with Sharpies by my11-year-old daughter, Lara. It was taken

in studio B of Looking Glass during themaking of the Bowie album Reality. David

refused to wear the hat."

Bowie, Visconti and assistant engineer,

Edu Meyer, taken in the control room ofHansa Studios. Photo by Edu Meyer's

wife, Barbara.

The layout of Hansa Studios for theHeroes sessions. In Visconti's own

words: "The studio was large,symphony size. The choir riser was

about a metre and a half higher thanthe studio floor, so George Murray

could hear and feel the kick drum inhis face, without headphones. The

bass and guitar amps were coveredwith gobos, as was the grand piano.

earlier because it was played better or whatever. This was before Pro Tools! And it

was dangerous living, because you couldn't do too many edits on the same point

without the tape starting to curl up or the backing coming off. You had a maximum of,

say, two edits that you could do and undo in the same area, but we firmly believed

hat if you didn't do it, it wouldn't be worth keeping the track anyway. So, living

dangerously wasn't that dangerous really."

Making Do

Having completed his contribution after about two and a half weeks into recording of the Heroes album (representing the first third

of the project), Brian Eno departed, and at that point it was a case of 'What shall we do next?' for the co-producers. Among the

answers was a sound resembling a Stax horn part that surfaces at the start of the title track's second verse. As it happens, this was

a brass patch out of a Chamberlin, successor to the fabled Mellotron, which Bowie had first employed on the Diamond Dogs album

and which now provided a cheap and instant if less desirable alternative to real-life sax and trumpet players.

"It was definitely written as a trumpet part, but it sounds more like a weedy little violin patch," Visconti admits. "Still, we liked it in the

end. We just said 'Oh, that'll do,' because it sounded weird."

In line with this way of thinking, when the two men wanted to add a cowbell and didn't have one immediately to hand, they sufficed

with an empty tape reel of the German variety; a metal plate on which the tape basically sits. The echoey result of David Bowie and

Tony Visconti alternately bending it out of shape with a drumstick was achieved not using artificial reverb, but by miking it in the

large room at Hansa.

"It was really painful to hold it, because it's not ergonomic like a cowbell," Visconti recalls. "When I have a big room, I use that

room's sound, and we had an 87 in there that picked up all the ambience the 87 is my Swiss Army Knife microphone, I use it for

everything. Sometimes, I'd try to use two mics, but again it was a sheer luxury to have two tracks for ambience. If I mixed that

record in 5.1 today I would certainly have that ambient mic in the back speakers, conveying a sense of the room's size which

stereo can't reveal. Anyway, we played the drum reel, as well as a tambourine that was the other percussion instrument, about 15

feet from the mic to ensure we got all that room sound. It's like a gift to be in a room like that, and I would not only use the

ambience for percussion but also throw a guitar out there and have a close mic on the amp. I suspect I may have used that sound

during the mix, too, because the room served as a real echo chamber. You just throw the sound out there via the board you take

an auxiliary send and send it through a speaker in the room, and then have a microphone at the other end of the room picking up

the sound which is brought back into the board as an effect."

Cracking The Combination

One of Bowie's most hypnotic recordings, 'Heroes' draws in the listener by way of a multi-layered rhythm, while the vocalist

builds from a low croon to near-hysteria. The aforementioned live trio of Alomar, Murray and Davis was augmented by Bowie

on piano, the band remaining in Berlin for about 10 days as per the norm for his projects.

"David likes to do these backing tracks, he gets very enthusiastic about them," Visconti explains, "but we send the band away

very quickly and maybe keep a person like Carlos for an extra day or two so that we can double-track some of his parts. With

'Heroes', on the other hand, we built the t rack over the course of an entire week of careful overdubbing. For instance, Brian

brought his EMS Synthi with him, which is a synthesizer built in a briefcase, and it has no real keyboard it's got a kind of

flat, plastic keyboard which Brian very rarely used. He used the joystick a lot, and the oscillator banks, and he would do live

dialling they look like combination-safe rotary knobs on the three oscillator banks. Brian goes down on record as saying that

he's a non-musician he even tried unsuccessfully to have that listed as his occupation on his British passport and, like

David, he thinks very radically and from a completely different space.

"So, after recording the live rhythm section, everyone went home and a week later we

came back to this t rack that was tentatively called 'Heroes', and Brian took out the

EMS Synthi and got this shuddering, chattering effect by using oscillator 1 at a very,

very low frequency rate probably five cycles per second and working the noise

filter. He would slowly change the speed or change the intensity with other knobs,

and he did that in a couple of passes of the tape, which by now had been edited

down to just over six minutes. If you listen to the track now, this shuddering,

chattering effect slowly builds up and gets more and more obvious towards the end,

and that kind of set the mood.

"Then I'd say the next thing that really moved the track along was Fripp's contribution.

We already had Carlos's beautiful lines, like the bass line that was doubled on the

guitar as well as the melodic part on the pre-chorus, and when Fripp came along

about a week later he added a whole other dimension. He and Eno had already

enjoyed a long partnership where Fripp would plug his guitar into the EMS Synthi and Brian would just play around with it, so

Fripp did exactly that and he came up with that beautiful line which everyone thinks is an E-bow sound, but which is actually

ust Fripp standing in the right place with his volume up at the right level and getting feedback.

"Everyone who's played the song with Bowie since then has had to use an E-bow to duplicate it, but Fripp had a technique in

hose days where he measured the distance between the guitar and the speaker where each note would feed back. For

instance, an 'A' would feed back maybe at about four feet from the speaker, whereas a 'G' would feed back maybe three and a

half feet from it. He had a strip that they would place on the floor, and when he was playing the note 'F' sharp he would stand

on the strip's 'F' sharp point and 'F' sharp would feed back better. He really worked this out to a fine science, and we were

playing this at a terrific level in the studio, too. It was very, very loud, and all the while he was playing these notes that

beautiful overhead line Eno was turning the dials and creating a new envelope and just playing with the filter bank. We did

hree takes of that, and although one take would sound very patchy, three takes had all of these filter changes and feedback

blending into that very smooth, haunting, overlaying melody which you hear."

No Going Back

Positioned behind the Neve console in Hansa's Studio Two, Tony Visconti was taking

care of the recording while also throwing in his two cents' worth of production advice

regarding the evolving arrangement and whether or not things were in tune. With the

levels fluctuating wildly, he had to employ heavy compression as part of his chain of

effects, while the 24-track medium necessitated a considerable amount of bouncing

down.

"When you're doing filter sweeps on an oscillator, especially in the mid-range, you'll

suddenly have a bump of maybe 15dB," he explains. "Then, when you're boosting the

lower frequencies, depending on what your EQ is, the sound might go away, so all t he

while I was putting everything through my processing gear just to get it on tape. At the

same time, given what was on that track, I had to do some bouncing. For instance, even

hough there were three Fripp tracks, I had to bounce them to two because in those days

you always knew that down the line you were going to need more tracks. The same went

for drums. Back then I'd record them over eight or nine tracks, but then I would do a

submix down to six, putting all of the toms to two tracks. So, that's what I was doing the

whole time, knowing that this song was going to get bigger and bigger, and trying to

figure out how I'd record this stuff while imagining how it would sound in the mix a couple

of weeks later. I'd be sitting there and thinking 'I hope I've got these levels right, and I

hope this guitar is balanced correctly to this guitar,' because once I'd bounced them down

hey were locked."

In line with these concerns, it was natural for Visconti to basically mix as he went along,

CLASSIC

TRACKS: Stevie

Wonder

'Pastime

Paradise'

Classic Tracks:

Billy Swan 'I

Can Help'Producers: Chip

Young, Billy Swan;

Engineer: Chip YoungIn 1974 Billy Swan

walked into Chip

Young's Young'un

Sound studio and, in

two takes, recorded a

million-selling single that

had taken him 20

minutes to write. This is

how it was done...

CLASSIC

TRACKS: Ian

Dury & The

BlockheadsTrack: 'Hit Me With

Your Rhythm Stick'

The story of how a

characteristically chaotic

and unorthodox 1978

recording session took

Ian Dury & TheBlockheads to the top of

the UK charts.

CLASSIC

TRACKS:

Madonna 'Like A

Virgin'Producers: Nile

Rodgers, Madonna,

Stephen Bray

Engineer: Jason

Corsaro

In mid-1984 Madonna

arrived at New York

City's Power Station

studios with Nile

Rodgers to record the

album that would make

her an international

superstar - using

cutting-edge 12-bit

technology.

CLASSIC

TRACKS:

Fleetwood Mac

'Go Your Own

Way'Producers: Richard

Dashut, Ken Caillat,

Fleetwood Mac

In 1976, in the face of

deteriorating personal

relationships and

massive record

company pressure,

Fleetwood Mac

managed to create a

record that would go on

to sell 30 million copies.

CLASSIC

TRACKS: TheOnly Ones:

'Another Girl,

Producers: Robert

Smith, Mike Hedges

Mike Hedges made his

1980 debut as a

producer with one of

The Cure's most

enduring singles. 'A

Forest' and the

accompanying

Seventeen Seconds

album used his and the

band's creativity in the

studio to the full.

CLASSICTRACKS: Sade's

'The Sweetest

Taboo'Producers: Robin

Millar, Sade Adu, Mike

Pela, Ben Rogan

Sade's ice-cool vocals

and sophisticated,

jazz-tinged

instrumentation defined

a new kind of soul music

for the '80s. Engineer

and producer Mike Pela

describes the organic

recording process that

produced one of the

singer's most

memorable hits from

1985.

CLASSICTRACKS: HeroesArtist: David Bowie;

Producers: David

Bowie, Tony Visconti;

Studio: Hansa Ton,

Berlin

With 'Heroes', David

Bowie pulled off the rare

feat of having a major

hit with a highly

experimental piece of

art-rock, which featured

among other highlights

live synth treatments

from Brian Eno, pitched

feedback from guitarist

Robert Fripp, and a lead

vocal with level-

triggered ambience.

CLASSIC

TRACKS:'Anarchy In The

UK'Artist: The Sex

Pistols; Producer:

Chris Thomas;

Engineer: Bill Price

When punk rock broke

in 1976, the Sex Pistols

caused panic in

establishment Britain

and more than a few

raised eyebrows in

Wessex Studios, where

Chris Thomas and Bill

Price recorded the

band's milestone EMI

debut album.

MICHAEL

JACKSON 'Black

Or White' |Classic TracksProducers: Michael

Jackson, Bill Bottrell

Engineer: Bill Bottrell

The 18-month gestation

period behind Michael

Jackson's Dangerous

album and its lead

single 'Black Or White'

saw '80s studio

perfectionism taken to

extremes and despite

their success, the

experience helped to

convince co-writer,

engineer and

co-producer Bill Bottrell

that there had to be

another way to make

records!

CLASSIC

TRACKS: 'The

Reflex'


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No gobos were used for the drumsand an ambience mic was placed at

the far end of the studio, opposite thedrums."

Visconti and Bowie during the making of

the Heathen album at Allaire Studios inShokan, NY. Photo taken by assistant

engineer, Brandon Mason.

Photo: Ian Dickson/Redferns

David Bowie on tour in 1977, playingkeyboards in Iggy Pop's backing band.

making decisions on the spot with regard to level changes that would theareafter be

irrevocable. "It was fun, and Bowie loved to work that way," he remarks. "He'd say 'Once

I've made up my mind, I don't want to change it.'"

Searching For Inspiration

Between Bowie, Visconti, Eno and Fripp, everything was done by committee, with each person throwing in suggestions that

might contribute to the final product. It was the producer/engineer's idea, for example, to triple-track the guitars in order to

smooth out a sound that was patchy on the first pass. "When the song was first recorded, we had no idea what a verse and

chorus were," says Visconti. "If you listened to it, the verse could have easily been a chorus, because it had a hook to it, but

hat was slowly evolving as we were overdubbing these instruments. Those guys are real artists. They're truly imaginative

hroughout the whole process, and nothing is done for the sake of it. You know, with Bowie you don't double-track a guitar

because you have to. It has to have a meaning for him in order to do that, and quite often he likes things to remain single-

racked. I mean, the Beatles didn't double-track everything sometimes they had one guitar, but it would be at the forefront of

he mix, providing a very important, very solid sound, and double-tracking or triple-tracking could have weakened that.

However, in the case of Fripp, we wanted this dreamy, floaty effect, so triple-tracking had a purpose. And of course it was

inconvenient, because I only had 24 tracks to play with.

"Sometimes in those days, if we had something ridiculous like 16 voices and we only

had two tracks left, we would do a slave mix on another piece of tape, mix the 16

voices to a two-track tape, and then fly that in by chance to the spot where it

belonged. I'd achieve this by having my assistant in this case an invaluable

German engineer by the name of Edu Meyer start the multitrack while I'd make

little marks on the two-track tape and just hit the Play button, hoping this might be it.

And if this was not it, then I'd move my mark on the tape and try again. No one had

yet devised the system of sync'ing up two multitrack machines.

"Tape was often rolling all the time. We would have a two-track tape running at

7.5ips, and it came in handy many times when searching for that moment of

inspiration. You'd go back an hour and there it was! Beforehand, we'd be talking

about it, saying 'Gosh, I'm sure you were onto something earlier,' because we'd get

lost. We'd start with an idea and then we might go in the wrong direction, and after an

hour we'd say 'How did this start out again? It sounded good an hour ago. Why are

we not getting that?' So, we'd often have that tape running, and if we went back and heard something we really liked, it couldbe duplicated. Of course, we couldn't lift it off the 7.5ips tape it was in the mix, but at least the musician could replay it."

The Fabric Of Time Remains Intact

For all the sonic experimentation on display, very few effects were employed during the recording, not even the Eventide

Harmonizer which Visconti had applied to live drums on Lowafter memorably informing Bowie and Eno that "it fucks with the

fabric of time". Visconti only used it when mixing some of the Heroes album, and not the title track itself.

"It was enough to hear the sound of that large room on the drum kit," he explains. "The studio, which had been used to record

symphonies during World War II, could accommodate about 150 musicians, and there was a stage which was probably a riser

for the choir. It was at one end of the room, and we used that for Dennis Davis's drum kit. In those days, we'd usually put a

drummer in a booth, but Dennis took advantage of all the space, and besides his tom-toms he sometimes had an extra snare,

a set of conga drums and a single timpani. When that was the case, he'd often go around his kit, and as he was doing a tom

fill he'd also play a few beats on the conga drum and a few beats on the timpani. So, although those fills may sound like

overdubs, that's actually Dennis Davis playing live. He's a wacko guy, one of the best drummers I've ever worked with.

'Heroes' wasn't played to a click track, but its tempo is virtually the same throughout the entire six minutes, and that's thanks to

Dennis. He's not only an innovative drummer but a human metronome, and he's also a jazz guy who never plays the same

hing twice. Some of his fills were priceless on the song 'Blackout', you'll hear a lot of those fills going right around the kit,

from the toms to the conga drums, whereas on 'Heroes' he was a little more sedate."

Kick And Drag

One of the unusual features of the final mix on 'Heroes' is that the kick drum is almost inaudible. This, as Tony Visconti explains,

was entirely deliberate: "You see, the track seemed to plod, and at the mix, I realised that when we played it with the kick drum

lower it had more of an energetic feel to it. Usually, the kick drum is to the fore in the mix and equally loud as the snare, but we

discovered that, by pulling back the kick drum and emphasising the bass guitar, the song had more of a flow and a better forward

energy, while the shuddering effect [created by Eno's synth playing]was another tempo element that helped it move along. So, this

was one of the very tracks that I've ever mixed with almost no kick drum in there, and that was entirely intentional because it made

all the difference in the world."

Accidental Muses

Less than sedate, when it came t ime to write the lyrics, was Bowie. "He gets very, very tense," Visconti confirms, "because

he's now got to commit. So, I could feel it in the air."

And the producer/engineer soon got a breath of fresh air when the main man asked him to take a break in the middle of the

day. Happy to oblige, Visconti went for a walk by the adjacent Berlin Wall with backing singer Antonia Maass, and this couple

hen unwittingly aided the songwriting process by indulging in what they thought was a spot of covert smooching. "David could

see us, and we quickly got written into the lyrics as the lovers who kissed by the wall," Visconti admits. "He wrote the entire

lyrics looking out through the windows of Hansa Studios, and when I returned after a couple of hours and asked him how it

was going, he said 'Oh, I've finished.' His assistant, Coco Schwab, then took me aside and said 'I think you and Antonia are in

he song.' I was married at the time, so this story was never allowed to be made public, but I don't mind now.

"Anyway, David then told me he was ready to record his vocal, and after we did a

couple of run-throughs during which he wasn't sure where to place the octave, we

eventually came to the conclusion to sing the first two verses down an octave and the

rest of the song up an octave. That was another good way of building up the track,

and it prompted the break in his voice which he himself calls 'Bowie histrionics',

where he has to put everything into it in order to hit those high notes. It's right at the

end of his range.

"My input at this point was to suggest using the room on his voice and drop the

conventional method of just singing into one microphone. He agreed, and so I set up

hree microphones. We only had two or three tracks left, and I needed one of these

for backing vocals. I couldn't even bounce down, and so we'd snookered ourselves.

Therefore, even though I would have ideally loved to put each mic on a separate

rack enabling us to capture the whole room when he sang loud, and just that one

mic right in front of his face when he sang quietly I put gates on mics two and three. Mic number one was in front of him

with fairly heavy compression, because I knew beforehand that he was really going to shout, and it all went down to one track.

This was recording by the seat of your pants, and Bowie was thrilled with the idea that I wanted to do something unique. He

hrives on anything that's different and someone else hasn't thought of yet, and I just thought 'Let's do this live,' because he's a

great singer and he could always sing it again if I made a mistake. That's the luxury of working with him: he's consistently

good when he sings. He's in tune, he's passionate, and he delivers an arena-type performance every time.

"Mic number one was a valve U47, and with the other two on gates I made sure that number two, an 87 placed about 15 feet

away from him, would go on at a certain level, while the third mic, another 87 that was all the way at the other end of the room,

Another Planet'Producer: Alan Mair

Engineers: John

Burns, Robert Ash

Although never a

commercial success,

the Only One's 'Another

Girl, Another Planet' has

proved to be massively

influential; and nearly 30

years after its original

release, it's finally

getting the recognition it

deserves.

CLASSIC

TRACKS: Tricky

'Black Steel'Producers: Tricky

Mark Saunders

Tricky's

highly

unorthodox

approach to

recording and making

music led to the creation

of one of the most

unique and critically

lauded records of the

'90s.

CLASSIC

TRACKS: Charlie

Rich 'The Most

Beautiful Girl In

The World'Producer: Billy Sherrill

Engineer: Lou

Bradley

1973's 'The Most

Beautiful Girl In The

World' was one of the

defining moments of the

Nashville sound, and

was the product of a

finely-honed studio

recording process.

CLASSIC

TRACKS: The

Ronettes 'Be My

Baby'Producer: Phil Spector

Engineer: Larry

Levine

Phil Spector was one of

the first producers to

realise that a recording

studio could be an

instrument in itself - and

the sound he created

over 40 years ago has

influenced popular

music ever since.

CLASSIC

TRACKS: The

Jam 'The Eton

Rifles'Producers: The Jam,

Vic Coppersmith-

Heaven Engineers:

Alan Douglas, Vic

Coppersmith-Heaven

'The Eton Rifles'

captured both Paul

Weller's growing talent

as a songwriter and theraw power of his band

the Jam, and gave the

group their first top 10

hit.

CLASSIC

TRACKS:

Depeche Mode's

'People Are

People'Producers: Depeche

Mode, Daniel Miller,

Gareth Jones

Engineer: Gareth

Jones

Released in 1984,

'People Are People'

perfectly combined

Depeche Mode's love of

pop music and

experimentalism, andgave them their first US

hit single.

Producers: Duran

Duran, Alex Sadkin,

Ian Little; Engineers:

Phil Thornalley, Pete

Schwier

When Duran Duran

began work on their

third album in 1983,

they were already one

of the biggest bands in

the world and with

eight months of studio

time and half a million

pounds spent, huge

expectations

surrounded Seven And

The Ragged Tiger...

CLASSIC

TRACKS:

'Wuthering

Heights'Artist: Kate Bush;

Producer: Andrew

Powell; Engineer: Jon

Kelly

Kate Bush's 1978

smash hit debut single

was also the first major

project Jon Kelly had

recorded. It proved to be

a dream start for both

artist and engineer, and

a perfect illustration of

the benefits of working

with talented sessionmusicians.

CLASSIC

TRACKS:

'What's Love

Got To Do With

It?'Artist: Tina Turner;

Producer: Terry

Britten; Engineer:

John Hudson

In 1984, a dose of

British soul resurrected

Tina Turner's flagging

career in spectacular

style. For engineer John

Hudson, the recording

of 'What's Love Got To

Do With It?' also

provided a memorable

example of the 'less is

more' principle in

action...

CLASSIC

TRACKS: 'Start

Me Up'Artist: The Rolling

Stones; Engineer:

Chris Kimsey

In 1981, 'Start Me Up'

became one of the

Rolling Stones' biggest

hit singles. Yet it was

actually a reject from a

previous session, and

only saw the light of day

because its infamous

co-writers had fallen

out...

Classic Tracks:

The Police's'Every Breath

You Take'Producers: The Police,

Hugh Padgham

Engineer: Hugh

Padgham.

The Police's final studio

album was both a

technical and artistic

tour de force, and

yielded one of their most

memorable hit singles.

Yet the three members

were unable to play in

the same room without

a fight breaking out, so

the recording sessions

proved tough going for

engineer and

co-producer Hugh

Padgham...

CLASSIC

TRACKS:


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didn't open up until he really sang loud. That reverb on his voice is therefore the room itself, none of it is artificial, and it's his

voice triggering the gates. What is really great is that the sound of the opening two verses is really intimate. It doesn't sound

like a big room yet, it sounds like somebody just singing about a foot away from your ear. The whole idea worked, and what

you hear on the record is probably take three. We wouldn't go beyond that. He was really worked up by then and I can tell you

he was feeling it. It was quite an emotional song for him to sing, he deliberated long and hard over these lyrics, and he was

ready to go, there was no holding him back. We probably punched in a few things, but it's pretty much a complete take save

for a couple of notes that he redid.

"This was immediately after he'd written the lyrics, and immediately after this he said 'Come on in, let's do backing vocals.' You

see, I'm his utility person if there's a guitar part that needs to be played and there's no guitarist in the studio, I'll play it, and

he same goes for bass guitar, keyboards and singing. So, Bowie and I performed the two tracks of backing vocals on that

song, meaning that writing the lyrics, singing the lead vocal and then the backing vocals was all done within the space of

about five hours. That doesn't always happen, and since then I've regretted telling this story to other groups I've worked with

who think they can do the same thing. Very few people can write the lyrics on the spot in the studio and then perform a great

vocal in just a few takes. Bowie's one of the few people on this planet who can actually pull that off."

Published in SOS October 2004

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CLASSIC

TRACKS: Les

Paul & Mary

Ford 'How High

The Moon'Producer & Engineer:

Les Paul

Les Paul made some of

the most innovative

records of the 20th

Century, but he had to

invent multitrack tape

recording first...

'Unforgettable'Artists: Natalie Cole &

Nat 'King' Cole;

Producer: David

Foster; Engineer: Al

Schmitt

Half a century in the

business has seen

recording engineer Al

Schmitt reach the very

top of his profession, but

even a man of his

experience can find

himself faced with newchallenges. So it was in

1991, when he was

called upon to turn a

classic Nat 'King' Cole

recording into a duet

with Cole's daughter

Natalie...

DAW Tips from SOS

100s of great articles!

Cubase

Digital Performer

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4 de 4 17/10/13 17:48

Classic Tracks: Heroes

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