Michael Beinhorn: Producing Korn’s Untouchables, His Grammy with Herbie Hancock, The “No Plan B” Mentality

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by tele Funken Electroacoustic Tele Funken. Electroacoustic has been following the tradition of excellence and innovation set forth by the original tele Funken GM BH of Germany that began over 100 years ago with one foot rooted in the rich history of the brand and the other in new microphone innovations for both stage and studio applications. Telefon Electro Acoustic is recognized as one of the industry leaders in top quality microphones. For more info, go to tunk.com. This episode is also brought to you by Fascination Street. Mastering Studios have your songs mastered by Jens Boian and Tony Linn. The engineers that mastered bands like Ope, dmu Borg, gear Arch Enemy creator, Sura Amman Marth, and many more. By using the coupon code UR M1 eight in the online Mastering configurator, you'll receive a 15% discount on your order. The code is valid for the rest of the year. Visit www.fascinationstreet.se to learn more and book your mastering session today. And now your host, Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:01:14):

Welcome to the URM Podcast. I am Eyal Levi, and I just want to tell you that this show is brought to you by URM Academy, the world's best education for rock and metal producers. Every month on Nail the Mix, we bring you one of the world's best producers to mix a song from scratch, from artists like Lama God, Ms. Suga, periphery The Day To Remember, bring me the Horizon, opec many, many more, and we give you the raw multi-track so you can mix along. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, our collection of bite-sized mixing tutorials and Portfolio Builder, which are pro quality multi-tracks that are cleared for use in your portfolio. You can find out [email protected]. Also, I want to take a second to tell you about something I'm very, very excited about and it's the URM Summit. Once a year, we hold an event where hundreds of producers from all over the world come together for four days of networking, workshops, seminars, and of course hanging out.

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This industry is all about relationships and think about it, what could you gain from getting to personally know your peers from all over the world who have the same goals as you, the same struggles as you, and who can not only help you with inspiration and motivation, but also with potential professional collaborations? I've seen a lot of professional collaborations come from the summit in the past, and speaking of networking and relationships, there's no other event where you'll get to learn from and hang out with some of the very best in the production business. You could go to something like Nam, but good luck getting more than five minutes with your hero at this. You actually will get to hang out, like hang out, hang out. Just a few of this year's instructors are Andrew Wade Kipa, Lou Blasco, Taylor Larson, Billy Decker, Canan, Kevin Charco, Jesse Cannon, and more seriously, this is one of the best and most productive events you will ever go to.

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So if that sounds like something that's up your alley, go to URM summit.com to find out more. I'm excited about this episode of the URM podcast because I got to speak to the man behind some of my favorite and I guess most important records of all time. Some of the records that to this day have stuck with me, Mr. Michael Beinhorn, and he's a musician and a record producer, and his roster of artists is just insane. Korn to Ozzy Osborne Hole to Herbie Hancock, black Label Society to Sound Garden. He's worked with some of the top top names in alternative and heavy rock. He's also an author. He wrote a book called Unlocking Creativity, which is a must read for producers that are trying to create better art. This is a great episode. We talk about his history, how he broke in and how he's worked with some of the great artists he's worked with, but also how he's navigated the dark sides because let's face it, most great artists do have demons, and one of the things you have to do as a producer is navigate those waters and help them do their best work.

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And so anyone who's had demons of their own or who has worked with artists who have demons, this episode will hit close to home. Enjoy Michael Beinhorn. Thank you very much for being here. I appreciate you taking the time to be with us.

Speaker 3 (00:04:23):

Thank you.

Speaker 2 (00:04:24):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, and real quick, for those who have lived under a rock, and I really mean under a rock their whole lives, can you talk a little bit about who you are and how you got into playing and recording music?

Speaker 3 (00:04:39):

I am a record producer. I started working in music around the time, I guess I was 14 when I purchased a very small synthesizer with money that I earned from a summer job, and the rest is pretty much history. I guess almost nine years later, I co-wrote a song called Rocket with an artist named Herbie Hancock. We won a best r and b instrumental Grammy for that, sold 3,000,012 inch copies of that song, which was the record for Sony at that point for 12 inch sales, and went on over the years to do a whole bunch of other recordings.

Speaker 2 (00:05:18):

That's quite a long stretch though between buying a synthesizer with the summer job and winning a Grammy in nine years, that's very, very fast. How did it get from point A to point B to point C? I guess

Speaker 3 (00:05:32):

There's really one simple answer to that question and that's kismet. There's no other way to put it. I'm not sure how I got swept up into the kind of flow that I got into, but that's exactly what happened, and you can't make that kind of stuff up. It just all fell into place. It was a gradual process. It's not as if it was even kind of plotted out. It's not as if I had a strategy or anything like that. It just happened. And I feel that to a certain extent, all the best things I've been involved with have had that same kind of process of flow,

Speaker 2 (00:06:10):

But there had to be something you did to set it up to where you could even be in the place of accepting the flow or experiencing that flow.

Speaker 3 (00:06:17):

Well, I guess I wasn't too bad at what I did, whatever that was, and just kind of allowing things to happen. And also once I found myself in a situation that felt right, I just became absolutely determined to make the very best out of it that I could. If you find yourself in the middle of situations that feel good and you leave yourself open to possibilities and you just allow them to take place and kind of let yourself be a cog in this great big machine, whatever that is, unbelievable stuff happens.

Speaker 2 (00:06:49):

How long did it take for you to get into a situation that you felt good about that would allow you to go all in? Like you said, was it a pretty quick thing or did you go through some false starts or weird studio situations until you found what you consider to be the right place?

Speaker 3 (00:07:05):

I started playing in a band. I played in a couple really sort of local little things, and I just kind of fell in with a friend of mine. We answered an ad that someone had put up all over the East Village, which had flyer to a lot of our favorite rock bands, which who no one else knew about or was listening to, and we were like, oh, this looks really cool. So we went and we met this guy whose name is Bill Laswell, who was a bass player, and we eventually formed a group that came to be called Material, and that whole thing came together when I was about 18. So from there it was five years into it. So over the course of five years, we turned that situation into something. And also you have to remember that New York at the time that was happening, it was kind of a fertile breeding ground for this kind of thing.

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It was just an extraordinary period in time that will probably never be repeated again. And it was like this Petri dish where literally anything was possible. It was an amazing scary kind of amusement park type scenario, and you could be as creative and as crazy and as wacky as you wanted, and people did just that. And we just fell into this wonderful situation where first we were allowed to make our own records. We got signed to a larger label and made a couple there, and somehow we got introduced to Herbie who was sort of down in his luck at that point and it all came together.

Speaker 2 (00:08:28):

How did you end up working with him?

Speaker 3 (00:08:30):

Well, he had originally approached Bill and Fred Ma, who were the rhythm section for material to do something. He wanted to do a track with them for a record, and that never materialized, pardon the pun. And I guess they dropped out of touch for about a year and a half and between then Fred left the band and it was just me and Bill. And then all of a sudden Herbie came back and he's like, look, I got a whole record that I want to work on that I want to do, and I want you guys to do two tracks for it. So he approached us, he commissioned us with two tracks, and we were like, oh, this is exciting.

Speaker 2 (00:09:08):

Well, was it about you guys that made him remember a year later that duck in his mind? I mean, he could have hit anybody up. You guys are a bunch of kids. What was it about you guys?

Speaker 3 (00:09:20):

Well, first, the truth is that he really couldn't hit anyone up because I think he'd kind of gone through all the kind of LA people at that point. He'd done a record called, I think it was called Monster, which is supposed to be his RB pop record, and he'd gotten guys like Rod Temperton, who at that point in time was probably the biggest songwriter in the world to contribute some tracks for this. But unfortunately Herbie is, Herbie was Herbie, he wasn't Michael Jackson who Rod Tempered and was doing all his big records with. So Herbie got some toss offs and stuff like that, and the record, which had a humongous budget just bombed. So people were kind of starting to look at him as like, ah, who is this guy? And he really wasn't at that point in his career where he could just go and be like, Hey, I need some tracks.

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So the other thing that was in our favor was the fact that one of the people who worked for him who was very, very ambitious, was very friendly with a person who was a liaison with us, and the two of them were sort of clotting to kind of push Herbie and Bill and I together. So it was a very interesting little behind the scenes type thing that was going. Forces weren't work exactly, it was that type of thing. But again, it was like kismet. It was amazing. It just worked out beautifully. And we got this commission of two tracks dropped in our lap and we kind of strategized about it a little bit and were like, okay, because hip hop wasn't mainstream at that point, but people were starting to listen to it. There would be a hip hop track here in the hip hop track there that would show up on the r and b radio stations in New York.

(00:11:03):

And I think the year before we started talking about doing this, there were three tracks I think that were particularly, or four, I can't remember The Clash, magnificent Seven, which was a total crossover Planet Rock by Soulsonic force. I think the message was in that time period as well. This is all like 80, 81, 82. And then what's the Malcolm McLaren track? I'm drawing a blank now. I should remember this. Sorry, I to look it up. Yeah, it was this Malcolm McLaren track that was more of like a novelty thing, but all of a sudden people are starting to talk about hip hop a little bit, and we were actually getting really interested in it at the time because to me it was like an extension of a lot of electronic music that I'd been listening to. It definitely had elements of a lot of German music from this electronic music from the seventies.

(00:12:03):

Obviously there were elements of r and d in it, but they were also using turntables as a rhythm instrument and as a textural instrument. So the possibilities, because this was such a new music form, which is endless at that point, and we kind of thought to ourselves, now, what do you suppose a person like Kirby who had this amazing musical pedigree and had done all these groundbreaking records with Miles and then gone off on his own and did stuff like Chameleon and Watermelon Man, what would he have done if he'd stayed on that track, hadn't gone off the rails and done pop records and had been this Experimentative continued to be this kind of maverick experimenter and he came face-to-face with hip hop. What would that sound like? And that was really the inception of the songs that we did for that record.

Speaker 2 (00:12:53):

And was he open to that new direction?

Speaker 3 (00:12:56):

Buffalo Gals? That's what it was. Buffalo Gals, I had to look it up. That was the Malcolm McLaren song. Sorry about that. When he first heard what we were working on, the first track that he heard, by the way, was Rocket. That was the very first thing that we laid on him. And another song called Auto Drive. Oh no, it wasn't Auto Drive, excuse me. It was Earth Beat when he heard that, when he heard the first two tracks we gave him. I have to admit, he was a bit confused. He didn't really know what to make of it. He was a little kind of, oh, what is going on here? Kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (00:13:33):

What do you think he was expecting?

Speaker 3 (00:13:35):

I have no idea. But he made his bed with us and he didn't have a whole lot of money to work with, so he had to lie in it, and he had to kind of trust that this thing was going to turn out. So he went along with it. We built most of the track by the time we went out to visit with him so he could do his stuff. So all the bass, all the drum machine, all the turntable, all the percussion, a lot of the little electronic touches and punctuation stuff was already in the track when he heard it for the first time.

Speaker 2 (00:14:11):

Got it. And what you're 21 at this point? 2021.

Speaker 3 (00:14:14):

I think I was about to turn 23.

Speaker 2 (00:14:16):

All right. So he begrudgingly goes along with it, well,

Speaker 3 (00:14:18):

Not quite begrudgingly, a little just confused and not sure, but not begrudging.

Speaker 2 (00:14:23):

Was there a point during the process where he opened up to it or did it take the critical reception?

Speaker 3 (00:14:29):

I think as the recording went along and the pieces started falling into place also, I think he got some pretty positive feedback from people along the way, except for his manager at the time who was not happy about it at all, particularly because I don't think he had been included or consulted at any point during the process. So he wasn't very supportive, but a lot of other people were, and by the end of it, I think he was pretty excited about it. But then when the video was done and people started to go nuts, obviously the floodgates had opened and he was like, oh, oh my. Oh, this is good. Sure, I'll take that. So

Speaker 2 (00:15:06):

I guess this rock and roll fantasy, or I guess music fantasy, a lot of people think that they'll get their first big hit and then it they've arrived, whereas we know that a lot of people will get their very first hit, but then it's still a struggle for years and years and years before you've actually made it. So for you being 23, you get this massive hit basically helped resuscitate Herby Hancock's career From that point on, did it get easier for you or did it get harder? What was it like right after in terms of getting work?

Speaker 3 (00:15:36):

Oh, it got much harder and it got much harder because Bill and I split immediately after we had a big falling out and that whole situation fell apart. I was pretty much out on my own. No, at which point I realized that I wasn't really perceived as having had much to do with the creation of that song, that record. So it was almost as if I was starting from ground zero again. It's kind of like, yeah, sure, sure kid, but what do you do for an encore? You know what I mean? Seriously, yeah, okay, what did you do on this? You did nothing. So from that point on, I was pounding the pavement trying to get work, which was also funny because I was very, very shy and secure, which taking meetings with people very difficult. It wasn't a situation that I felt really comfortable with, but I had to force myself to do it otherwise I wasn't going to eat.

Speaker 2 (00:16:32):

We have a lot of people here, the audience of this podcast who are people who would like to be producers for a living and work in the industry like that. And as you're stating, and as I've stated many, many times, lots of us are introverted people. I mean, we're comfortable staying in a dark room 12 hours a day and not getting much of the spotlight. A lot of us are very introverted people, yet some of us have made that effort to fuck it, just do it anyways and take those meetings and put ourselves out there to make life happen. Not going to come find you in your bedroom or locked away in the studio. You actually have to go to the opportunity. So what would you tell yourselves when taking these meetings that you're obviously uncomfortable about going to?

Speaker 3 (00:17:18):

I didn't really understand how to deal with myself in that way. So I would go to meetings in a state of total panic and I'd be sweating and I'd be nervous and anxious, and I think it was probably pretty obvious. I know I would stutter a great deal when I was in the office, but I kept doing it. I mean, I had decent BMI royalty checks coming in for Rocket, so that was great. Of course, I was very young, so I spent all the money really fast and I wasn't able to live off stuff and I had to work. It was pretty much that simple.

Speaker 2 (00:17:51):

So the necessity drove you to keep taking meetings?

Speaker 3 (00:17:54):

Necessity drove me, and there was also something else. This was something I really wanted to do. I didn't even really think about the fact that I wasn't going to eat if I didn't get work. It was more like, I just want to do this. I have to also point out that I actually turned down work at this period in time. And honestly, there were certain points in my life where I was behind on my rent by two or three months and I was facing eviction, and I remember someone offered me a job, one song for 5,000 bucks, and you're talking 1984, that's like a lot of money. And I needed bad, and I told these people, no way, your music sucks to this day. I'm like, that's a psycho crazy thing. Didn't, if it was me talking to me back then, I would be like, yeah, that's the way to handle it, pal. You did it right, you got some balls.

Speaker 2 (00:18:42):

That is incredibly ballsy, but that whole idea that the type of work you put out into the world is the type of work you're going to attract to you if you put bad work or work that isn't truly representative of what you want to do, it might not be the best move because that's the kind of stuff that will come to you more. So I do think that at some point you need to be very, I guess very take a lot of intent and ownership over who it is that you're going to do work for. And it's scary though, when you're at the point of being near eviction, however, definitely takes a lot of balls. You're

Speaker 3 (00:19:21):

Right on all counts. You do have to take ownership, and it's important to have a sense of recognizing what your name means on another person's work, like the value of that. What are you bringing to a situation that no one else is going to be able to bring? I must add to that of course, that there are a lot of people who are involved at the executive level of record making who couldn't give a flying fuck about any of that. They only care if you're going to do a record that you do it fast and that you get it done on time, on budget. And if you can do it like that, you'll probably get more work that way. However, that reduces you to being a cog, a vocational cog in a machine that ultimately leads absolutely nowhere. It's a get your rent paid on time machine. It's not a, I'm artistically satisfied in getting my rent paid on time machine.

Speaker 2 (00:20:10):

So that brings up question based on what you said, which is so in your mind, what does your name mean? What does your name bring?

Speaker 3 (00:20:18):

In terms of a project that I'm working on, I hope that there's a certain identification with quality with a certain degree of expression on the part of the artist that a record I'm working on will have a certain emotional resonance for a listener, that it'll have meaning for them and that it'll have longevity for them as well, that it's something that'll have value, something that they'll come back to repeatedly instead of something that'll kind of roll with the times and then they won't want to bother with it after maybe a year or two or three, something that's had an impact on people.

Speaker 2 (00:20:54):

And so even if, I guess the suits didn't necessarily or don't necessarily care about that stuff the way you do the artists that you're going for, they certainly would care about those things. They have to.

Speaker 3 (00:21:07):

I'd like to think so. Those things don't matter to everyone, at least not the same way that they did 20, 30 years ago. But from my perspective and what I've seen, that's what sells records. A song not like a catchy song that goes on the radio and it's often six months or something. Things that have real intrinsic lasting value that have meaning for people because they involve communication and they invoke emotion.

Speaker 2 (00:21:35):

So what was your criteria with the full understanding that you could lose your place of resonance if you don't say yes to a project at some point in the near future? What was your criteria for saying yes to a project? I mean, I'm not necessarily interested in all of the nos, but what were some of the nos? What were things that you would see that would be like, Nope, fuck this not doing this, and what is it that you were looking for? What criteria were you trying to fulfill? That would just be like a fuck yes, no question. I have to do this.

Speaker 3 (00:22:10):

In saying that I turned a project down, it also shouldn't apply to you that I was getting accepted or asked to do very many at that point. At that point in time, I was basically another want to be working stuff, attempting to get work, and that was actually one project that I've been offered in a tremendous period of time that I hadn't worked that I did say no to when I was pretty down on my luck. I was looking for projects that I guess had, and I've always felt the same way. I suppose something that had anything that kind of stood out to me. It's not like a human kind of element, something that resonated with me on a human level. If it's not a great song and there's something about the personality of the singer someplace, or if I meet the people, what do they feel like? To me, it was always things like that. Or maybe I could envision something that I could do that would help this artist sound better and bring out more of what I'd like to hear. I mean, I did very few. I think I worked on all of three projects between the Hancock one and when I got introduced to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1987, so that was a long stretch of time.

Speaker 2 (00:23:20):

So three projects in three years, that's kind of scary.

Speaker 3 (00:23:24):

Damn right. It is. And one of them was a single.

Speaker 2 (00:23:28):

So did you have some sort of belief that it was all going to work out? What the hell was going on in your head to keep you from quitting? That sounds like dark times.

Speaker 3 (00:23:40):

Oh, it was terrible. Not to mention the fact that I was embroiled in a lawsuit with my former musical partner in the record company that had been subsidizing us, who wound up stealing all my publishing and I think his as well for the record that we did with Herbie. So I was kind of dealing with a whole bunch of stuff at that point. I honestly don't know what I was thinking. I didn't really feel that there was any way, any other direction to head in. There was really nothing else. This was pretty much it. This was all I was going to do, and no matter how dire it seemed, there wasn't anything that was going to change it.

Speaker 2 (00:24:13):

So just like going to college and going for a regular job was just not even in the cards. I

Speaker 3 (00:24:19):

Don't think my brain works like that. I don't recognize that kind of thing. It would've made my father unbelievably happy to see me go to Pace Business School or something like that. But I think my Bohemian lifestyle seemed to connect with me personally much more readily and with more facility, and that's how it was going to go. I guess if I'd gone down, it would've been swinging.

Speaker 2 (00:24:46):

All right. So you went through that dark night of the soul basically for three and a half years. I do think that this is really a common thing though, that lots of people who make this work for them, and by this I mean dream profession type things, not necessarily production, but photography or a musician or an athlete or whatever it is, they just don't give themselves a plan B. It's either this is going to work or nothing is going to work. I know a lot of people who feel that way and it forces you to stick it out.

Speaker 3 (00:25:18):

Honestly, I think if you have a plan B, then you've already given up.

Speaker 2 (00:25:22):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (00:25:22):

I think if you're not prepared to be that extreme with it, then you've already kind of said, well, this isn't going to work anyhow. It just never even entered my mind that there could be a plan B.

Speaker 2 (00:25:33):

I completely agree with you. So through the darkness, how did the clouds part and present your red hot chili peppers?

Speaker 3 (00:25:39):

Well, it was a case of me pounding the pavement. I went to numerous record companies, experienced numerous like, get out of here kid. You bother me or I got nothing for you. I'll check. I'll check in if something shows up. And then I went to EMI records and I met with a guy, I think his name is Michael Barrickman actually, and he said, I think I've got something that might fit you. And he had this band that no one else wanted to deal with that the record company hated. They were the miscreants. They didn't fit into any of the genre or formats, musical slots that the record company had, so no one could really understand them musically. They were pretty much down and out, and they had a record coming up. They'd already done two, and they were on their third, and it was the Chili Peppers, and I got some demos. I listened to them. They weren't really good, but I heard something in them and I was like, this could be a lot of fun. This could really be fun. And I lobbied hard for it. I actually, I went to meet with them on tour, and I rode with them in their van from New Orleans to Dallas, Texas. I guess in that time. I managed somehow to win them over. The love story began from there.

Speaker 2 (00:26:55):

Do you know what it was that won them over? I

Speaker 3 (00:26:57):

Think it could have been the fact that I actually cared enough to go visit with them, that I cared enough to visit with them, to travel with them for whatever reason. I didn't give off any sense of desperation, like, oh, I need this kick so bad. We got on really well. They were very silly, goofy people, and I got that gene as well, and they did things that were strange, but it didn't freak me out. I guess I'm part of that tribe too, to a certain extent. And we liked each other very much, and I think that they felt that they could trust me.

Speaker 2 (00:27:28):

So it seems like you have a history of going after artists that are very successful, but unquote black sheep in a way. I remember Red Hot Chili Peppers kind of being a black sheep artist, hugely successful. But Marilyn Manson whole corn, these are all very successful artists, but also at the time, were definitely the black sheep. Is there something about that that you're attracted to that speaks to you?

Speaker 3 (00:27:57):

There is probably a part of me that's kind of, I think certain people find a little bit fatherly. I don't want to say an authority figure, although that has come into play from time to time. I'm not particularly fond of it, but I think that a lot of those people have tended to be able to trust me. Unfortunately, for a time it kind of became a thing where people saw that I guess perceived that as kind of a primary distinguishing characteristic, and I guess I kind of bought into a little bit too, and it kind of turns you into this person who starts to think, oh, I can work with anyone and if the crazier the better, and I'll save them and rescue them from their own demons long enough to do that. Because I mean, I've honestly been through a lot of really traumatic stuff with people on records, and I've had to see some really crazy shit go down. I mean, the record that I did with the chili peppers, that was really extreme. I mean, it was not an easy record to make by any stretch. I mean, it involved drugs, firing band members. It was crazy. We somehow made it through, and the best part of it was is that that record sold much, much better than any of its predecessors, and all of a sudden the record company's going like, wait, what's this band? So all of a sudden their next record, they're going like, these guys actually might do something

Speaker 2 (00:29:15):

Interesting. Do you feel like because of the success of that record and with all the, I guess the negative stuff that you had to work with, but with the success in spite of that, maybe some people on the outside got the wrong idea and started to promote that myth that rock stars need to be on heroin. They need to be crazy in order to make the art happen and almost encourage that?

Speaker 3 (00:29:40):

I think that that's been a misconception that's been in play for decades. Rock stars don't need that stuff. There are rock stars that do it. That doesn't mean that they all need it. It doesn't mean that it should be a prerequisite. All the people I've ever worked with who had any kind of substance abuse issues, when they brought it into a recording situation, it immediately brought everything to a screeching halt. It's a terrible waste of everyone's time. It's a total diversion away from the reality, which is actually much harder for people who are substance abusers to have to address, which is going deep into their psyches and pulling out the greatness, the things that make them great communicators, because that's what this is really all about. So when you're able to peel the diversionary tactics away and get to the source, then you're confronted with this glittering brilliant gem. And my job at that point is to just transport that out of the abstract world into the concrete and help the artists present it to the world.

Speaker 2 (00:30:45):

So even back then, were you aware that many of these artists with those terrible drug habits were doing it in order to, I guess to dull whatever the demon was and that demon is what was creating the great art? Were you aware of that going in, or is this something that you figured out over the years?

Speaker 3 (00:31:05):

I wasn't. It was just something that became pretty apparent over time. These people, a lot of them just feel more, some of them, they're like an open wound essentially, and they don't have coping strategies and opiates make an incredibly good coping strategy for the moment. The problem is, is that it's not a long lasting one. It's not something that's going to help you cope beyond one fix. I think that's kind of like a great, I'm glad I did that thing type experience, but it doesn't take away the fact that this shit is still here. What am I going to do about it? And also, that shit is a part of me. I do need it to some extent. I don't want to have to be ruled by it. How do I manage it? See, that's the clue. How do I manage it instead of how do I dull it?

Speaker 2 (00:31:50):

How would you approach that? Or is it all different types of strategies to trying to get people to put the needle down or the bottle down or whatever it is? Did you have any strategies or did you just approach each as a case by case basis in order to try to get them to put that down and face that demon?

Speaker 3 (00:32:08):

Every person is different. I mean, some people are hopeless. Some people are hopeful. Some people, like when I was working with the chili Peppers, for example, there were two people who were taking heroin. One wound up becoming a millionaire. The other wound up killing himself. Anthony was, he had a terrible, terrible heroin addiction. The thing is though, is that he also recognized that the chili peppers, being in the chili peppers was his lifeline to any kind of a decent life stability, and also his ability to be able to express himself and communicate, which is something that I think he needs even more than drugs, and it's ultimately been his savior, and he's very, very expressive as an artist. Not everyone who takes drugs has that. A lot of people are so far along that they have lapsed into this state where there's no getting to them. And a lot of drug addicts, they like the subterfuge of being able to pretend that you can rescue, that maybe there's a chance. A lot of people do play off that. They do like taking other people down into their abyss with them. You have to know when to put your hands up and say, I can't do this. I'm not getting into this hole with you. You got this on your own. I'm out of here.

Speaker 2 (00:33:22):

Have there been situations where you've had to do that?

Speaker 3 (00:33:24):

Yeah, there have, and I don't regret any of them because the artist was, they're much more committed to maintaining their addictive personality and their own relationship with their demons, as they would call 'em, as opposed to managing their demons and having a stronger, better, reinforced relationship with their creative expression and their incredible, extraordinary ability to communicate with other people.

Speaker 2 (00:33:51):

I hope it's okay that I'm asking you about this. This reason I'm asking is this has a personal, it just kind of hits home for me. I'm 39 right now, and so I was a teenager in the nineties where a lot of these bands were at their heyday, and I remember back then in magazines and in the media, the whole drug thing, especially the heroin addiction, was really glorified. It was really made to look cool to where a lot of kids that I would hang out with and stuff that will think that it was cool, whereas I don't think that the rock bands now perpetuate that at all. As a matter of fact, I think that bands who have those types of problems quickly become ostracized. No one wants to work with them. But back then, it seemed almost like intentionally or unintentionally, it was being put out to the world that this was a prerequisite for being a great rockstar or just that it's cool or whatever, which it's not. So it kind of hits close to home because now in recent days, you're really starting to see the results of how bad that lifestyle was, but it just kind of hits close to home. So there have been times back then when you'd just be like, I can't do this.

Speaker 3 (00:35:05):

I've been lucky because it's only happened in the last 10 years. I think everyone I've worked with who has a substance abuse problem has been able to put a lot of that stuff out, take all that stuff and leave it outside the door before they walk into the creative space. I've been lucky to work with a lot of people who enjoy self-medicating and taking drugs, but who'll also know that there's a time and a place for it. Once in a while, they would bring it into a studio and it would be bad, but they would also acknowledge it and they'd be like, okay, I guess I can't do that again. Some people would let it get out of hand a little too much, but if it was there and it didn't interfere with their creative process, and I sensed that if I said anything about it, it would put me in a very, very bad place with them, then I would have to ignore it as long as it wasn't interfering with the process. In some cases, I'd have to ignore it. In other cases, when it did interfere and it was actually immensely detrimental to everyone's process, then I would have to speak up.

Speaker 2 (00:36:05):

That makes sense. Do you know if back then people were about getting help or you said in the past 10 years was more of a recent thing that people started to realize that maybe they didn't need that?

Speaker 3 (00:36:18):

I think a lot of people who I work with in the nineties and more recently, you had substance abuse problems that dealt with their problems previously, or they were in a place with it where they would manage it on their own, and that means, obviously that they were still using whatever it was that they were taking, but they felt confident in their ability to handle it themselves without having to see other people. That doesn't always work. I've seen people who, a lot of those people who are in that position fall off wagons and stuff like that fall off their own wagons. It's a difficult balance to maintain. It's very, very hard, especially if that's your lifestyle.

Speaker 2 (00:37:03):

Yeah, absolutely. And I think one thing that doesn't get said much is you take people with these demons and then you put them in a situation where there's a ton of pressure on them. The pressure of being in a band the size that bands got back then, that's like a pressure cooker almost.

Speaker 3 (00:37:21):

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And if you have multiple individuals in the same creative situation that enjoy the same types of drugs or the same approach to lifestyle that is potentially detrimental to a reporting project, you have a potential problem. I've had to maintain that as well, and that's really not easy, but if you want to work with people and you can see and you have a vision for it, you basically take the hand you dealt and you play it, and if you don't want it, you fold.

Speaker 2 (00:37:52):

All right. Let's get back to the topic of working with people. What do you think it is about bands like Marilyn Manson or Korn or Ho that were attracted to working with you? They

Speaker 3 (00:38:02):

Like my previous work, they felt that I could bring something to their recordings.

Speaker 2 (00:38:08):

Did you have any sort of personal rapport with them before working? Did you go and meet them and travel with them, like Red Hot Chili Peppers?

Speaker 3 (00:38:17):

No. We met, I'd meet the artists that I was going to work with when I worked with Corn. Actually, it was funny because they met with me while I was working with Whole, and this was prior to them doing Follow the Leader, and we had one of the most unpleasant meetings I think I've ever had with any artist. It was hysterical. I was like, after that I was like, well, I'll never see those guys again. It was funny because three years later, they wind up reaching out to me one more time, and then we wound up working together.

Speaker 2 (00:38:44):

What was so bad about it?

Speaker 3 (00:38:45):

I think I was really cranky from the night before, because I'd probably been up until four in the morning or something working, and I just came downstairs in the hotel. Hotel, and they were all cranky too, and they all had attitudes and stuff like that, and one of them thought that I was making fun of them and got all huffy, and I think it started turning into a bit of a verbal brawl. We met up again, and at that point we were all laughing about it. That was so silly, wasn't it? Yep.

Speaker 2 (00:39:15):

Somehow it couldn't have been that bad if you ended up doing untouchables.

Speaker 3 (00:39:19):

You know what? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if people come together and they see, oh, no, this actually might be the right time to do it, as opposed to before the previous time that we met, it probably wasn't the right time, obviously it wasn't, we didn't work together, but the second time that we met, yeah, it felt like the right time and it was good, and we actually enjoyed being in the same room with one another, and we're like, yeah, I think we can do this. This is going to be great. Can

Speaker 2 (00:39:44):

We talk about Untouchables for a second? Oh,

Speaker 3 (00:39:45):

If you really want to,

Speaker 2 (00:39:48):

If you're sick of talking about it, I won't talk.

Speaker 3 (00:39:50):

No, no, no, please. I just said that because I'm kind of goofy.

Speaker 2 (00:39:55):

Well, I'm just curious if that budget that was advertised,

Speaker 3 (00:39:58):

You can't talk about that. Oh my God, they

Speaker 2 (00:40:02):

Already did. In all the magazines Too Late Rolling Stone or something. I just remember reading all over the place, $4 million budget?

Speaker 3 (00:40:09):

No, 3.2. It wasn't far off, only 3.2, but it wasn't four, only 3.2. It was $3.2 million. It took about 15 months. When I signed onto the record, they had already spent over a million dollars on paying their staff for a year, so that was part of my production budget. So I get on the record and all of a sudden the meter's been running to the tune of a million bucks. So that bumped things up a lot. I mean, honestly, my end of the production budget, the actual studio cost engineer rentals, et cetera, was probably 1.5 I think million, which is, I mean, that's an insane amount of money for sure, but you know what? I'm not going to make any apologies or excuses for it, the record,

Speaker 2 (00:40:52):

Nor should you.

Speaker 3 (00:40:53):

No, I'm very proud of that record. It was worth every penny, and it was another very hard record to make. I think everyone involved is extremely proud of it.

Speaker 2 (00:41:02):

It sounds incredible. Whenever I hear it, I'm like, okay, it sounds like that budget, but what goes into a record like that kind of budget that's different than your other odd huge band record? What sets that apart? And by the way, I know I already said it, but that record sounds tremendous.

Speaker 3 (00:41:23):

Thank you. Well, a lot of high concept goes into it. A lot of advanced work to try and get the best possible material work in really, really great high-end studios with a lot of really wonderful creative individuals. One of my favorite engineers in the entire world, Frank, Philip Petty, great mix engineer, Andy Wallace and a lot of bleeding edge technology. I mean, we were basically the first rock record at that level to record at 98 96 K. No one had done that before. That was before Protos had a 96 K format. Their high frequency sampling rate was 48 K at that point, and we had to use a Onic R one recorder, which is and Lian Digital Technology now, but it was enormous. It was a big dedicated reporter with very limited editing facilities. When we wanted to edit, we had to go into a program called nendo, which was the only program at that point that was DAW based, that was 96 K, and it was a lot of work, and even the manufacturers of some of these items didn't know a lot of the ins and the outs. So it was a real interesting process making that record.

Speaker 2 (00:42:34):

I think what stands out to me about it is corn have a very nasty sound to them. They just sound nasty in a good way. But that record is so, like you said, high concept, high dollar. I'm wondering how, if you had any concerns going in as far as capturing that nasty essence with that much good stuff around, and I mean you did. You totally did. But I'm wondering if that was a concern that maybe with that level of level of production might get lost,

Speaker 3 (00:43:06):

Not even for a split second, because it's that level of production that actually made the record. I mean, my concept all along was to take what I considered to be the best aspects of them, some of which happened to be the distorted aspects of the guitars. They create a wall of noise when they play. My goal, or one of my goals with that project, at least from a sonic standpoint, was to parse out the individual sounds like what creates that wall? Make them as unique as possible, imbue them with a certain kind of feeling that would really distinguish them from other sounds of their genre, like other bass sounds, other guitar sounds or their drum sounds, and really typify them to this record. Help them be expressive relative to the individual playing the instrument and create this completely different type of sonic landscape with it that wouldn't resemble any of their other records and wouldn't necessarily even resemble them live, but speak from a different place, be more of an emotional statement and really capture something that I don't think anyone else ever did.

Speaker 2 (00:44:11):

So did you do any prep work or homework about corn before going in? I mean it not like you had time to do pre-pro. They were already a million dollars in. So these elements that you're talking about that make up the corn sound, did you study them up in advance? If so, how?

Speaker 3 (00:44:28):

The record took 15 months. That's from when I got on. So we had seven months of pre-production.

Speaker 2 (00:44:33):

So you did do pre-production.

Speaker 3 (00:44:34):

The million bucks was spent paying staff like bodyguards tax? Yeah, no, it was just to keep them on staff for a year.

Speaker 2 (00:44:41):

So it wasn't a million bucks in the studio at all. It was seriously just that.

Speaker 3 (00:44:44):

No, it was staff. It had nothing that was money spent, that had nothing to do with me at all. That money had already been spent the time before I was even involved. I mean, it's fine. That was their money. I wish it hadn't got tacked onto my production budget, but what are you going to do?

Speaker 2 (00:44:59):

Okay, so you did do pre-pro

Speaker 3 (00:45:01):

Lots and lots of it. Yeah, no, the whole, I think, and this is one of the most important things about a successful record, unless you're talking about artists who improvise music or can actually knock songs out in the studio, like the Ohio players or something like that, who come up with parts on the way to the studio. If you don't make a record without and you don't use, if you make a record and you don't use pre-production, you are screwing yourself royally. Mightily. We had seven months on that record, they gave me a CD before we got started that had 40 ideas. On. Of those 40 ideas, there were maybe two complete song ideas that were verse chorus, verse chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The rest of it was just a part here, part there. I listened to the whole thing out of the entire cd.

(00:45:50):

We maybe used one bar, a couple of bars of one thing. I said to those guys, you don't have the beginning of a record here. We've got so much work to do. We were in, they had a studio in Long Beach. We rehearsed for probably about three months At that point. I was like, this is incredible. It's insane. We can't get any work done here because they were constantly being visited by their family, friends, whatever. And we had to bail. We had to go to Arizona to work, and we spent three and a half months in Arizona, and that's where all the songs were written, and it was a lot of hard work. It really was.

Speaker 2 (00:46:28):

Did any of the pre-pro tracks make it onto the record?

Speaker 3 (00:46:31):

You mean what we actually recorded in pre-production?

Speaker 2 (00:46:34):

No, just curious. Sometimes they do. I mean, this a perfect segue. I know that one thing that you've started doing, a new service you're offering is a pre-production service. I want to talk some about that because I know that I've always told people that they should do as much pre-pro as possible, and newer bands will either take you seriously about that or not take you seriously about that. But the ones who do do so much better, there's no two ways about it.

Speaker 3 (00:47:02):

Yes, it's absolutely true. It's essential. I have noticed more and more over the past 15 years that artists either are presenting me with demos that are completely unfinished, have songs that have great big holes in them, or they don't even have demos and are expecting to go into a studio with whatever they've got. And when I talk to them about pre-production, they get this blank look in their, I was like, what's that? I had one experience about two years ago with an artist where I realized that they were fully prepared to start recording and had been without any kind of preparation whatsoever, and this was terrifying because they were on their third record, they were on their fourth record. They were extremely successful in Europe. No one knew who they were over here. Still don't really, but the record that they were going to make would've been an absolute cataclysmic disaster, I think if they hadn't done some preparatory work, and I really talked them through at least adding a couple more songs and taking a step back before they began recording, otherwise, it probably would've detonated their career.

(00:48:08):

From that point, I realized that people aren't giving new artists the kinds of skills that they need to be able to navigate through the process of making records and having a career in recording. If you don't have the kind of foundation, the kind of background to make really good decisions and to make great music, you're not going to be able to develop as an artist. You simply won't, and people eventually are going to get sick and tired of hearing your revamp of the same song that you made like two or three times before, and they're going to stop listening gradually. Familiarity is not, I think it's only valuable for a time with certain artists, but after a while it gets really boring and people want to hear something new from you, and also they want to see you develop. You have to develop. It's a natural part of being an artist, and I realized that no one else is going to do this because no one else is doing it, so I should take it on myself.

(00:49:03):

The way it works is I tend to work with a lot of people who are not in Los Angeles, which is where I'm located, and we do everything remotely. People send me music to listen to, and I'm going to assess it. I'm going to go through it, break it down, analyze it, and it's easy enough to find parts of a song that are working. What's difficult is to find parts of songs that aren't working. You can sense it if you hear it, but you don't always know what it is, and that's certainly true for most artists who are songwriters. So what I do is I identify all those parts, whether it's arrangement, whether it's dynamics, whether it's just in the actual composition itself, where the song just isn't really that strong because there's so many different levels to a song and also to an artist that make them palatable to listeners to make their music actually have any kind of resonance or meaning with a listener.

(00:49:54):

And it's my job to really sit down and sort through that kind of stuff. So if I'm analyzing a person's music, that's where it starts. If I'm in pre-production with them, what happens is I'll go back and forth with them probably about three, four times through various iterations of a song. They'll take my initial notes, work them into their music, come back to me with what they've done. We'll do another round, they'll go back, do some fixes, and so on and so on. And this is normally the way it works when I'm working with an artist I'm producing, but I'm offering this service to people whose records I'm not producing because I feel at this point, my contribution to what they can do from a pre-production standpoint is far more valuable in a lot of ways than what I can offer as a producer. I see.

Speaker 2 (00:50:35):

Do you ever have producers who are going to work with an artist possibly be like, here, deal with these guys before I have to deal with 'em?

Speaker 3 (00:50:42):

No, but it's something that I'm very open to and I would like to

Speaker 2 (00:50:45):

Because I could see myself having done that

Speaker 3 (00:50:47):

Well. I have to approach it gingerly because I know a lot of people, and I've been reminded that people are sort of intimidated to kind of deal with me on that level. And I think that there also might be a fear of me trying to uses a project and take it away from a producer, which I mean, for one thing, I feel that there's a certain honor in this type of work, and if I'm hired to do a job, that's the job I'm doing. I'm not really interested in taking away someone else's work, but I understand that there's an intimidation factor and I don't really want to make it more difficult for anyone else. But yeah, I think it would be incredibly valuable to other producers because frankly, most producers, what they're getting paid on records these days, they don't have the time to be able to spend doing pre-production. And imagine having someone who's actually spent months and months with an artist before you have to go into a recording studio and do something with them. Having someone already ironed out all the bumps.

Speaker 2 (00:51:41):

Yeah, I think it's a fantastic service. Switching gears, I want to ask you something about your book Unlocking Creativity. You talk about the intent behind creative decisions in it. Can you talk a little bit about that

Speaker 3 (00:51:53):

In that context? I'm really referring to the intrinsic deep down nature of a person where their judgment comes from, where their impulse to respond to a creative problem comes from, where their impulse to write a particular song comes from. All these things can be derived from one place inside of a person, and it really comes down to that intent, like the intent being, who are you? Why are you doing this? I think for artists to have some kind of knowledge of themselves from that perspective is very, very important. It gives an artist an opportunity to become introspective, to check in with themselves, to really reference themselves as an objective, a standpoint as they possibly can, because then they can even critique themselves to a certain extent, look at themselves and go like, this expression is genuine. That expression doesn't feel quite as genuine to me. Do I feel comfortable letting other people hear it? Does it really represent who I am? Do I want to show who I'm, I mean, these things are very, very important and I feel that a lot of artists aren't really as in touch with that part of themselves as they may have been in times gone by, which is one reason I think why people don't make music as much today that really resonates emotionally to the extent where it used to.

Speaker 2 (00:53:13):

This kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier, about facing demons and the real reason behind why people use the drugs they use, because they don't always want to see what's behind what lurks underneath. And I think there's a little bit of the same top a theme here going, which seems to me like you're talking about figuring out an artist, figuring out exactly what it is that lurks beneath that drives everything they do. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:53:40):

Well, this, yeah, is under the hood type stuff. I mean, it's really tough, but if you think about records that meant something to you in the past, there was always something that put an emotional hook in you. It doesn't matter if the songs weren't like the best songs, there was always something compelling about it, and that just comes down to the artist's ability to be able to communicate with a person in many cases that really pertains to how in touch with himself the artist is. And we live in a society now in an age where people are much less acclimated to doing this. There are so many diversions that people have to get themselves away from themselves to really kind of escape from core issues that they have to deal with that they really need to see but don't want to. And there's so many excuses because everyone else is doing the same thing.

(00:54:34):

It's like I can hang out on my phone all day long and play with it instead of maybe meditating and confronting aspects of myself that that could potentially be unpleasant. And it's not to say that you need to make everything that you do this incredibly meaningful sort of vision quest or something like that, but as an artist, if you have something to say, there's a reason that you got into this and it wasn't just to get laid and it wasn't just to make money unless that's absolutely why you're in it and tell you the truth. There are plenty of people I've encountered where those two reasons are the primary motivators behind everything that they do, and you know what? That's okay. It really is, especially if you know that and you're honest with it. There are a lot of other people though, who don't feel like that, who have been compelled to do this for other reasons that are much deeper because it speaks to them because they feel that it's an outlet for them, that it's a way to communicate with other people. Those are people who benefit greatly from doing introspective work, from checking in with themselves and from working at a very deep level at certain points, just so that they've got that connection to themselves so that they can speak accurately what's accurately to what's going on inside of themselves and make not just great statements of entertainment but great art.

Speaker 2 (00:55:49):

What do you think of, and I think this is a myth in a cliche, have you ever heard of that idea that when an artist finally stops the drugs or figures it out and becomes at peace with themselves, that at that point the art dies?

Speaker 3 (00:56:06):

That's a bunch of crap.

Speaker 2 (00:56:07):

I agree.

Speaker 3 (00:56:09):

That's a bunch of crap. I mean, that's not to say that it hasn't happened, but I think when you see people where it seems like they've mellowed where the crazy has basically gotten replaced by a sense of peace, I think some people kind of project on them that kind of like, I like the crazy version better. It's like, okay, so you enjoy the fact that this guy was suffering. Maybe he did make better music, maybe he didn't, but this is your projection. This is not reality.

Speaker 2 (00:56:38):

It's very selfish if you think about it. Very selfish.

Speaker 3 (00:56:41):

Well, yeah, I mean, I like to think of artists who basically took radical left turns that their audiences just didn't like. I mean, think of Bowie for example, how many different masks this guy wore over the course of the 1970s. He started out as this folky guy became like a torchy type r and b singer. Then he became like a glam rock guy, then he became a disco guy, then he became this art rock guy. I mean all within what eight year span and he was alienating his audience constantly. Did he care? No, he didn't care because those changes were part of who he was. In fact, I think that was probably the biggest part of who he was.

Speaker 2 (00:57:25):

I would agree with you. So since we're getting up there on time, I have a few questions from the audience

Speaker 3 (00:57:32):

Please.

Speaker 2 (00:57:32):

All right, cool. So here's one from Stacy Meyer, which is, Hey Michael. Do you find it difficult to work with bigger clients at all because of ego and reputation, or is that something that usually does not come into play at that level?

Speaker 3 (00:57:46):

I think if you let it come into play, then it comes into play. I've worked with people who had tremendous egos who are very successful. I've worked with people who were very successful, who had very small egos. I've worked with people who were tremendously successful, who absolutely, who were virtually unmanageable, but knew how to behave when it was time to get work done. It's all a matter of the individual. I think people with big egos in a recording situation, I mean, I think I've got a pretty short kind of, I wouldn't say fuse, but I'm not really interested in working with people like that, especially if they think that they know everything because then they can do my job and why am I there? Then they're perfectly welcome to do the record themselves and let me go home or something like that, or don't involve me kind of thing.

(00:58:42):

I remember working with Aerosmith and Steven Tyler would come out and I remember we had a family friend, this young girl who was actually a nanny for one of my kids who'd come to the studio just to drop my daughter off, and Tyler comes out and her jaw drops, drops to the floor and he's like, Hey, how you doing? Can I get you some tea? Or something like that as if they'd known each other forever and he was just some guy. I think people who have big egos in a recording studio are like, whatever. Are you ready to get down to work or are you serious about this or is this really just about your ego?

Speaker 2 (00:59:22):

All right. Lawrence McCrery says you have a reputation of firing musicians from their own recordings. How far does it have to go before you do that? When do you say enough is enough?

Speaker 3 (00:59:33):

I think it's really got to get to a point of no return where it seems pretty obvious that this is not going to work out on all the records where that has been the case. It's been a situation. I think someone made this comment to me a long time ago and I really appreciated it. He said, it's always best to give people enough rope to hang themselves with. That's

Speaker 2 (00:59:56):

A great one.

Speaker 3 (00:59:57):

And nowhere could it be more true than in a recording studio when you're dealing with people who for whatever reason, are unable to do their work. Generally speaking, I find that when people are on a downward spiral in that way, there's really no bringing them back. I have experienced two recordings, however, one of which is when I worked with Ozzy Osborne, when the drummer was, I laugh only because that seems to be where I always, I have had my initial firing scenario happen. The drummer who was actually an amazing musician, an unbelievable technician, was absolutely freaked out and he just couldn't do it. His playing was so wooden and this was not the type of record that you play like that. He was overplaying. And I remember at one point I took him aside and I wouldn't normally do something like this with someone, but I think I was so frustrated at this point and we were at this very expensive studio overseas and it was just costing thousands of dollars by the hour almost.

(01:00:59):

And I said to him, look, you've got a day to be able to sort your shit out. If you can't do it, I've got one phone call to make and I'm going to have your replacement on a plane over here tomorrow, so figure out what you want to do. We'll come in tomorrow and let's play the songs and I hope you nail it. And it was amazing because something happened to him. He came back in the next day and I just sensed a whole new, I think it started out with a sense of anger toward me, which I'm very happy with because at least it motivated him to a place where he could do his job. But then the anger turned into determination that he was too good to get bumped off something like this, which I completely agreed with him on. And he turned the whole situation around and I started realizing also that I could do things to help him. I realized that having the other musicians around was really distracting him, and it got to the point where I even asked Ozzy to leave because I think that Ozzy was making him nervous.

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):

I could see how that could happen.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):

He was by himself in the studio and I said, you've got it, man. This is yours to win now I think I believe a hundred percent that you can nail this. He started playing these songs I'd never heard him play before, and he nailed every last one of them. And I love this guy. I mean, I went in there and I kissed him. I was like, you've won my heart. Can you divorce your wife? I'll divorce my weekend elope. I mean, that's the feeling that you get when a person actually triumphs over that kind of adversity because you want to be there for them. You truly do. And it's such a heartache to see someone fall apart like that on a recording. But in my position, I'm honor and duty bound as the record producer to do the best job that I can for the artists that I've been hired to produce.

(01:02:39):

So I have to put that role above all other roles in order to make it happen. But yeah, it has to take an awful lot once you can't play the songs and you've proven for whatever reason that you're unable to do it. And in the case of one very noteworthy example, the drummer not only was unable to play the songs, the drummer was actually forgetting parts that we'd worked on months prior that we'd really spent a lot of time writing and honing. And that was a disaster because it couldn't happen like that on that project at all. And the artist in the end was the one who had to make the decision to fire the drummer. I mean, I was the one who had to bring the bad news to the drummer, but in the end, the artists signed off on it and they were like, do what you have to do, but you got to handle it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):

Yeah. It's always a bummer when that has to happen.

Speaker 3 (01:03:25):

It's heartbreaking. It feels bad. It makes me feel bad too because, and to tell you the truth, I actually get a little resentful. I do because as the musician, they've put me in a position that I did not want to be put in where I'm focusing so hard on trying to make a great record. Now I have to tell you that you're not going to play in your own record. This is a terrible position to be in. I don't want to do this. It hurts, and I'm also going to have to live with this. My decision, the next things that I'm going to have to say, it's very unpleasant to have to deal with, but you have to do it because you're not in this position to win friends. You're in this position to make an amazing record.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):

Thank you for saying that because it's something that used to when I would have to do that at times it was painted by other peoples in like a, you're happy to do this just authoritarian. You just want to be an authoritarian. It's like, no, I actually hate doing this. This is going to give me nightmares and fuck with me for a long time, but I really care about your record. That's why it's happened.

Speaker 3 (01:04:28):

That's someone else's projection. At the end of the day, you can't apologize for who you are and what you do, especially if you know that you're coming from a good place and that you're basically working from a place of high ethics and and you have a mission that you have to follow. If your mission is someone's tasked you to make their record, this isn't my record. It's someone else's record to me, I consider that to be the greatest responsibility of all. If I fuck up, I fucked up someone else's work, I fucked up their career. That's unconscionable. I can't allow myself to be put in that position because the responsibility of that is so horribly great. I'm going to do everything on heaven and earth to be able to make their record as great as I possibly can. I'll do whatever I have to do. That's the mission.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):

Absolutely. So this question from Donald Spac, if you don't remember, because it was quite a long time ago. All good, but I'll ask it anyways in case you do. So Donald SPACs wondering how did you achieve that crazy sounding delay phase? Throw in the song Mechanical Animals on the Scream that follows the line. I'm just a boy playing suicide King. It sounds completely nuts, and I've been tripping out on it since it was released forever ago.

Speaker 3 (01:05:46):

I'm very sorry, Donald. I've been getting, it's really funny because I've been getting so many requests recently. How did you make this sound on mechanical animals? How did you make that sound on mechanical animals? And to tell you the truth, some of them were actually created before I came on the project by the band themselves and a lot of the ones that I was involved with, I simply don't recall. All I can say is that there was a lot of distortion, many varieties of distortion on that record. I brought a bunch of synthesizers into the studio. I like to use those for distortion, and it was definitely a free for all with that kind of stuff. I apologize for not knowing the answer to your question. It's

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):

Okay. I'll give you another Donald Spac question so he can feel like he had his question answered. And this will be the last question. So Donald is wondering, I have read your essay about editing rhythm sections and how it is to be avoided because it destroys the actual nature of what tends to make music good. However, I wonder where you draw the line with editing in more detail. I guess I'd like to hear you expand on when you have found editing audio to be a good solution or a better solution than not. Editing

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):

This is a wonderful question and I am happy and pretty well able to answer it when you're editing drums. My thing about editing drums since I don't do it myself because I'm absolutely incapable with a do is I will always ask people to do it by hand. I will never have people dump it into any kind of beat detective, because a beat detective is obviously going to grid all the performances. Anything that grids performances to me is verboten. Even if there's a sequence involved, if you edit well and you spend time on what it is that you're actually going for, you can get drums to fit beautifully with a sequence and still maintain feel. I mean, going back to mechanical animals, we did that plenty of times. The editing in that case is all about dealing with little tiny chunks of time rather than just kind of doing a great big kind of running it through your processor and getting everything to grid properly.

(01:08:02):

A lot of it's done by ear. Occasionally there's some stuff done by site. If a drummer goes out of time, you have to consider, is this something that people are going to notice? Is this going to matter? I mean, obviously if the drums have been cut to a click, that's a whole different story. The drums probably aren't going out of time that much, and if it is, it's probably pushing and pulling here and there. You're probably going to be able to get away with it. It's all about what you can hear. I also find that I'll tend to edit drums more over time, like do an initial passive of editing to tighten the drums up. Then when the bass goes on, listen to all the places where the bass of the drums rubber or where there's perceptual spots, where there's a timing issue or a groove issue and fix that, and so on and so on until things sit.

(01:08:49):

But at the same time, until things sound like they're in time, you're not paying attention to any obvious pushes in either direction. I mean, in terms of going out of time, even if there is one, but you get a sense that there's a real groove happening. To me, it's all about the groove. Some drummers don't need that though. Some drummers, some drummers can play with a click. They have their groove and everything's fine. Some drummers, you'd just rather hear them play without a click. I mean, in a lot of records, I've done, honestly, I have worked with a click. I don't mind it. The drummers I've worked with were extremely good at playing with clicks. I've done records, actually, the Aussie record I was talking about. Once the drummer was in his groove, he actually showed me how he would do the song, because I noticed that he would listen to a click and then right when he was about to start, he'd shut the click off.

(01:09:40):

It was really funny to me. He'd basically get the count off the top before he would play the song. He'd lock in time-wise, and then he'd come into the studio. Once the track was approved, he'd sit down with the doctor beat whatever we were using for a clicking and say, watch this. And anywhere in the song, he would hit the click. It would never waver. And this was a performance that had not been done to a click. He played with Groove, he played with Feel, and there wouldn't even be a flam. It was like spot on with the whole way through. And he'd just sit there with this smug look on his face and I'd be like, this is why I love you. This is why I can rely on you because you're that good and you're a badass.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):

Which drummer was this? A

Speaker 3 (01:10:21):

Guy named Dean Cast Novo, who joined Journey and I think his fellow foul of the law a few years ago. But I've worked with him on a bunch of projects where he is actually had to replace drummers, and he was always just remarkable. Just a great hitter, very aggressive, put a lot of emotion into his performances, and he was reliable, solid, and his feel was just untouchable. Absolutely wonderful.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):

Drummers like that are a gem as far as I'm concerned. Well, Michael, be horn, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the URM Podcast. Thank you for being so open with us and sharing of yourself.

Speaker 3 (01:10:56):

It's my pleasure. Thanks so much for the great questions. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):

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