MARK DODSON: Producing Judas Priest, old-school production tricks, and why he hates click tracks

Eyal Levi (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. And now your host, AAL Levy. Welcome to the URM Podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It's crazy to think that we're now on our fifth year, but it's true, and it's only because of you, the listeners. And if you'd like to see us stick around for another five years, there are a few simple things that you can do that would really, really help us out, and I would be endlessly appreciative. Number one, share our episodes with your friends. If you get something out of these episodes, I'm sure they will too. So please share us with your friends. Number two, post our episodes on your Facebook and Instagram and tag me and our guests too. My Instagram is at al Levy urm audio. And let me just let you know that we love seeing ourselves tagged in these posts.

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Who knows, we might even respond. And number three, leave us reviews and five stars please anywhere you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, I want to thank you all for the years and years of loyalty. I just want you to know that we will never, ever charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way possible. All I ask in return is a share post and a tag. Now, let's get on with it. Hello everybody. Welcome to the URM podcast. I have a great episode for you today. His name is Mark Dodson, and he's a producer and engineer out of the uk. His career has spanned decades. He's worked with massive artists including Judas Priest, Joe Cocker, Joan Jett, suicidal Tendencies, anthrax, and tons of others. I introduce you, Mark Dodson. Mark Dodson. Welcome to the URM Podcast.

Mark Dodson (00:01:53):

Thank you.

Eyal Levi (00:01:53):

How's lockdown treating you? I have to ask. I'm sorry.

Mark Dodson (00:01:58):

Very interesting. Yeah, of course. No, interesting. Really, I quite enjoyed it to start with, to be honest, I was like, I treated it as a holiday, really just took time off. But actually in a way, it was very beneficial too because I was mixing a new album by Ugly Kidjo, which I recorded in November in El Paso. We were going to mix it there, but I

Eyal Levi (00:02:19):

Sonic Ranch.

Mark Dodson (00:02:20):

Yes. What a great place that is.

Eyal Levi (00:02:23):

Oh, yes.

Mark Dodson (00:02:24):

Oh, that's a trip. I loved it. I loved it. I thought it was amazing. And Tony, the guy that owns, it's a lovely guy too.

Eyal Levi (00:02:31):

Absolutely.

Mark Dodson (00:02:32):

And the equipment there is ridiculous. And being old school, it made me feel quite at home. So we recorded it there, and the plan was to mix it in the same period of time, but it was just time-wise, it was impossible. So I bought it home and I was quite grateful to have brought it home because it gave me a lot more time to mix it. And I mixed it using logic, which isn't really, that's not my history. So I had to learn logic basically, which I swore a lot at Logic during that time. There's a lot of swearing going on and asking it why I thought it should be doing that, et cetera. But eventually it worked out great and I was happy with that lockdown suited that for me, that was a real bonus. I'm great friends with a mastering engineer called Greg Kby, who to me is the greatest mastering engineer in the world.

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And it enabled me to send, because I wasn't sure of the sound of the room and the blah blah, blah, which is all important when you're mixing, obviously I got to send my mixes to Greg and he'd say, oh, this bit of it's a bit screwed, or that bit's a bit screwed. And so I then finally tuned what I was listening to and I got a fix on what I was doing, and eventually all the mixes were, I'd send him a mix and he'd go, you've got it now. You've got the frequencies. That's all great. So in answer to your question, yeah, I utilized that time quite well. I was quite happy that it happened. Really. I'm not happy that it happened to everybody else. Yeah, of course.

Eyal Levi (00:04:04):

That's what I've been saying too. When people ask me how it's going, I feel kind of guilty if I say that it's going well because I know that there's so much suffering in the world.

Mark Dodson (00:04:15):

Absolutely.

Eyal Levi (00:04:16):

But that said, I feel like it's one of those things where if you're unfortunate enough to get it or have your work destroyed, it really, really sucks. But there's a group of people who aren't going to get it and whose jobs aren't going to go away. And those people have a choice whether or not they want to utilize the time or not. And I think that there's no excuse. If you've got your health and you've still got work then and you're not using this time to do something good with it, then I don't know,

Mark Dodson (00:04:52):

It's a mistake, isn't it?

Eyal Levi (00:04:53):

Maybe I'm a judgmental prick, but what are you doing?

Mark Dodson (00:04:56):

Everybody gets situations thrown at them throughout life in so many, many different ways. And if you don't take them and used into your advantage, then you live in fear. And living in fear is no good. You've got to, it's hard because when you're a kid, you're 20 years old, you don't have fear. As you get older, you start to learn what fear might be. You worry about paying for this or paying for that, or how am I going to do this? So when you're young and you have no fear, you do everything you want to do and you go gung gung-ho for it. And that's a great thing. And I always encourage my kids to think like that. I try to convince myself that that's the way to carry on thinking forever. There's no point in not thinking that you've got to keep pushing for whatever it is your dream may be, dreams come and go, but I still have dreams about what I want to do with my life and what I want to achieve musically. As far as making records, like you say, you've got to use it to your advantage. That's not always easier said than done, obviously.

Eyal Levi (00:06:03):

Well, yeah, definitely not always easier said than done, but I do think some people are pre-wired to be more fearless, but I don't think that if you're born as a fearful person that it's necessarily a prison sentence, you can choose to ignore it. I'm just out of curiosity, is that when you were say 20 you brought up was going for things totally second nature for you, just dream it and do it?

Mark Dodson (00:06:34):

Absolutely, totally. I left school when I was 16. One day I went to school and it's so different now, but one day I went to school and I always remember this, there were a bunch of kids at one end of the hall and another bunch of the other end of the hall, and I walked in and I said, what's going on? It's happening today. And somebody said That bunch of kids are staying and that bunch of kids are leaving. And I was like, what? Leaving school? They were like, yeah, okay. So I looked at the kids who were leaving and

Eyal Levi (00:07:02):

Just leaving.

Mark Dodson (00:07:02):

Yeah, just leaving like that. I looked at a bunch of kids and I liked the kids that were leaving, so I said, fuck it, I'll leave. And that was it. And I went home, said to my parents, left school today. And they said, well, you better get a job then.

Eyal Levi (00:07:14):

Where did they go?

Mark Dodson (00:07:15):

We just all left school and went back and went to work. You just stopped school and got a job.

Eyal Levi (00:07:21):

Was that a normal thing or looked down on at all? Or? I'll say something that I've noticed, this is maybe 285 episodes in, and the amount of people that I've talked to who left high school, it's just amazing how many people have made music careers that dropped going to school. But at least here, there's a stigma associated with it. If you were to do it for a music career and then the music career didn't work out, it'd be rough business. Is it the same way in England?

Mark Dodson (00:07:56):

Yeah. Nobody seemed to care one way or the other. What I did, and I didn't consciously do it to start a music career, I just did it. I, I thought, well, they're leaving. I leaving and I went off and did a couple of different jobs before, but I was doing these jobs and I had the dream of working in a studio that was a dream to start working. And fortunately I went to a studio one day and they said to me, I was just looking around and they said, oh, there's a studio opening up the road. And I went to the studio and it was a studio called Ram, and it wasn't finished. It was half built. And I walked in there, I mean, this is crazy really. I walked in there and there was a guy called Serrano, his name was Serrano, and another guy called John Wolf, and I walked in there, I was just a kid, probably 20 years old, and they were like, I said, is there any jobs going?

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And they said, what can you do? And I said, I dunno, I can probably put tapes on a machine. And they chat to me for about 10 minutes. They said, okay, well when do you want to start? And I was like, well, I've got to quit my other job when I was getting 26 quid a week at the other job. And they said, well, we'll give you eight pound a week. And I was like, oh, okay. Eight pound a week. I said, fuck it. Yeah, I'm coming. That was it. And I left there and I went to work there and it transpired obviously to be the best thing I ever did. It was the who's recording studio.

Eyal Levi (00:09:16):

Did you know that at the time?

Mark Dodson (00:09:18):

No, I had no idea.

Eyal Levi (00:09:19):

Fortunate move to pick that one.

Mark Dodson (00:09:22):

Oh, totally. And when I went to work there, I was at the same time, I was helping them build it while they were still in the middle of building it. So I was kind of helping build. And then finally I became an assistant engineer overnight. There was no protocol, there was no being a runner. I just became, I was both really, I was a T boy and assistant engineer, general doctor body. And the first session that ever happened that I worked on there was, I remember it was Princess Anne's Wedding Day and the pub stayed open late till midnight, and Joe Cocker was meant to be coming in to record, and he was meant to be there at nine o'clock. So we're all sitting waiting for Joe Cocker. And at 12 o'clock midnight, just after, and this is gospel truth, a band came on the door and we opened the door and Joe Cocker just went flat on his face, on the floor, like pissed as a far, completely drunk

Eyal Levi (00:10:17):

Through the door.

Mark Dodson (00:10:18):

Yeah, literally, we opened the door and he just fell on the floor and the guys picked him up and carried him into the control room and laid him down, and they sat up with the instruments and started making music. And about four in the morning they had a backing track and they woke him up and they said, Joe, we've got a backing track. And he's like, got himself together, went out and sung and I was just completely gobsmacked. I mean, he was incredible. He had all the arms moving and all that shit that he used to do, and he sang incredible. And I was like, oh my God, this is the life. This is what it's all about.

Eyal Levi (00:10:50):

So it's like the switch just got flipped on the moment you put him in the situation.

Mark Dodson (00:10:57):

Absolutely. That was the beginning of it for me because so many amazing bands and artists, people came through that studio. They did the film, they did all the music for Tommy there. They did Quadraphenia there. And then Thin, Lizzie did all their records there, Motorhead. And I was working with Joan Jet doing Bad Reputation album, Kendall Laguna producing it, and Richie Cordell, and I was doing Joan Jet and Judas Priest, whilst my buddy Will, who started at the same time as me, he was doing Thinly a Motorhead. So this studio had just this huge high quality caliber of artists coming. I mean, everybody was there at one time or another, literally, except for Mick Jagger, I think he's the only one that never came through there. But I saw everybody in there. Everybody.

Eyal Levi (00:11:49):

Did you appreciate at the time what a crazy way to start that was? Or did it take till later for it to dawn on you that holy shit, that's not a normal start?

Mark Dodson (00:12:02):

Absolutely. It wasn't till later that I was sitting there and after working at other studios like a and m in Los Angeles where they had runners where you have to be a runner for a year before you earn the wings to become an assistant engineer thing. And I'm sitting there thinking, oh my God. I just walked into the studio and there I was rubbing shoulders with the likes of Pete Townsend, Keith Moon, Eric Clapton. I mean, everybody came through that place, but it didn't phase me. That was the beauty of it, or I didn't get phased by it because I was a cheeky little fucker anyway.

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And they treated me as such. I mean, there was a time when I went out into the studio and Pete Towson was out there and he was just jamming on his acoustic with Guy from the Rock Park, Dave Evans from Rock Pile. They were both jamming and they used to have a bar at the end of the studio where you could get a drink. And I was the tape operator literally. And I went down and I got a drink. And as I was walking back, Pete and Dave Edmonds are jamming around on their acoustic guitars. And the guitars were cases were open on the floor, and I took two P out my pocket and threw it in, picked Townsend's guitar. And he looks at me and he said, you cheeky little cunt. He didn't fire me.

Eyal Levi (00:13:15):

Ballsy.

Mark Dodson (00:13:16):

Yeah, he didn't fire me. So I think they kind of appreciated people that had a little bit of spunk about him.

Eyal Levi (00:13:21):

I was about to ask, what, since you didn't have any experience and basically just walked into this pretty high level situation kind of off the street, how or why do you think they let you stay?

Mark Dodson (00:13:35):

I got on with them all. They were cruel to me. The people that worked at the studio, they didn't let you in easily. They were kind of cliquey. I kept pushing to do what I wanted to do, and they didn't hate me. They didn't dislike me. They took the piss out of me. And they,

Eyal Levi (00:13:51):

It's a start not to hate you.

Mark Dodson (00:13:52):

Yeah, exactly. And I remember them at one point, they'd all befriended me and they were all talking to me and I thought, damn. They finally, finally liked me. And they said, come and sit over here and whatever, chat about this. And I was sitting there and then of course a fucking big bucket of water fell on my head. They'd just been conning me and sitting there and thinking I was their friend. It was like initiation process. But I got through it and they accepted it. And if I was out of line, they put me straight about certain things. So John Wolf, who's the whose road manager, was quite a fearsome looking character. And if you did step out of line, he would tell you, you stepped out of line. But he didn't mind me. He quite liked me and we got on All right. So I was lucky like that.

Eyal Levi (00:14:34):

I feel like that's probably the most important thing a young kid can possibly do is learn how to get along because the skills part, I mean, you've got to learn them both, but you can learn a skill that's way, way easier. I've spoken to so many producers who say that when they're hiring an engineer or an intern, they'd rather take somebody who knows zero but can hang out and is totally cool than someone who knows everything but is awkward to be around.

Mark Dodson (00:15:08):

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think it's your job to try and make people feel comfortable and at ease with, and sometimes you've got to be invisible, and that's fine too. You've got to learn to be invisible as well and just get on with what you've got to get on with and do it to the best of your ability. And the beauty of it was that a lot of different artists came through that studio. So I got to work with, obviously I worked with Glenn Jones and I worked with Ron Neon and a guy called John Punt who did all Roxy music stuff and all these producers that came through one after the other of different bands. And I had to learn to be able to deal with them all on all their different personalities and all the band's, different personalities. So it wasn't difficult to do. It was quite easy to slot in with everybody, and yet you had to be careful.

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I mean, Glenn John's caught me one time and I was kind of saying he caught me behind his back saying what a fussy fucker he was. And I didn't know he was hearing me. And he just said to me, alright, let's go outside. And I said, oh shit, he's a big geezer. He's going to kick the fuck out of me. I was like, oh, really? And then this guy, Serrano stood, stepped in. He said, no, no, no, no, no. He says, don't be like that, la la la. And we smoothed it out. It was cool because Gil John used to drop me off on the way home because he lived, he had a great big Cadillac with a number plate, LP one. He was a flashback and he used to drop me off at the end of my road on the way home. He lived on where I lived. And we used to chat about music and stuff like that. So I learned my lesson, keep your mouth shut, and if you're going to, like my mom said, if you haven't got something good to say about somebody, don't say anything at all. And that's when I realized she was right.

Eyal Levi (00:16:55):

How long did it take before they were trusting you with actual audio stuff?

Mark Dodson (00:17:01):

Well, I was immediately an assistant engineer, right? So that meant that I was obviously as a tape operator, whatever you want to call it. That was all the microphone set up, all the tapes and looking after all that, lining up the tape machines, keeping the machines clean, et cetera, et cetera, and doing all that side of it.

Eyal Levi (00:17:18):

Man, you had to learn that pretty fast though.

Mark Dodson (00:17:20):

Well, yeah. I mean I learned it in a matter of days pretty much because I was so keen. There were engineers coming in. There was one engineer called John Jansen, who's American Chap, great engineer. And I used to ask him so many questions. I mean, I wouldn't stop asking questions of all the engineers, well, how did you do that? Why'd you do that, blah? So I got my head around it, and so I learned how everything worked. I wanted to know, and when you want to know something, it's easy to learn it if you want to learn it because you're possessed by it. And I was possessed with knowing how everything worked. It was all very well known how a desk worked, but actually making it sound good. That's a completely new story that's completely different because you just don't know. But they were called the boys at the studio.

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They let you go in there when no one else was in there and just mess around with sound. We recorded ourselves, we made up songs. We messed around in the studio when it was empty. They let me bring in the guys from the pub, I got them to come down and do some. And I learned by working on that stuff. And then eventually I became an engineer, which was, again, it probably took me about a year before I was actually entrusted to, clients would come in and I would make records for them. And we were lucky because

Eyal Levi (00:18:36):

That's fast.

Mark Dodson (00:18:37):

It is fast. And I was lucky though there was, as I say, a lot of different people coming in and out, in and out. So the two engineers that we had used to get a bit tired, so we'd get a breaks for me and Will to try our skills out. A couple of Icelandic guys came to the studio to do some recording and I was allotted the session and I got on great with these guys and I made the records for 'em. And eventually they flew me to Iceland to work on records as well. And we ended up doing a children's album. These guys are still making music in Iceland. And we finished off this children's album. And to this day, the children's album is still the biggest selling album ever in Iceland. So it was kind of cool. And we're still in touch as well. We still talk, which was amazing. So that helped me learn my trade. I think I was pretty shit. I don't think I was very good.

Eyal Levi (00:19:21):

I mean, you might think you were shit, but did other people think so

Mark Dodson (00:19:25):

I don't think they did fortunately because I

Eyal Levi (00:19:27):

That's what matters.

Mark Dodson (00:19:28):

Yeah, I mean, I know I'm a lot better than I was now, but then I still listen to that sort of thing now. And again, it wasn't that terrible. It worked, it sold records, so kind of been that bad.

Eyal Levi (00:19:40):

How long did it take from where you would consider yourself a working engineer to where heavy music started to become, I at least got on your radar or become the focus?

Mark Dodson (00:19:58):

I guess that was really when I did, when To Priest came in and we did Sin After Sin, that album. And I was the engineer and one guy came in to be a producer and they weren't sure who the producer was going to be. Then he got fired. Roger Diver came in, but I kept the job as an engineer.

Eyal Levi (00:20:17):

Were they big yet?

Mark Dodson (00:20:18):

People were saying that they were about to break. Everybody said this album's going to break this band. So they were well known. They were well known, and they were just starting to bubble up quite big. And Simon Phillips came and played drums on that album, which even to this day, people go on about how amazing his drums were. That was the first heavy album I did. And of course, the art of getting heavy guitar sounds is an art in itself, and I don't think we really got the heaviest sounds in the world on the guitars at that time, but we captured what they were all about and the album did all right. And still people still talk about the album to this day. And that really began a friendship to myself and Glen Tipton that has lasted 40 years, something like that. I don't know. We've been friends for like 45 years, something like that.

Eyal Levi (00:21:08):

Just out of curiosity, I've always wondered about this. I know that heavy guitars especially sound very different now than they did then, but since I wasn't around for that, what I'm wondering is, was the feeling similar even back then, even if relative to now, it's not the heaviest thing in the world back then, did it feel that way? Did it feel like you were making the heaviest guitar tone, the heaviest sounds

Mark Dodson (00:21:41):

Had a uniqueness about it. There's no doubt that it was very different from the way other people constructed their songs and the way that the guitars were played because they were so almost percussive. So as opposed to maybe like a Joan Jet record where the guitars were more jangly and open and breathed more, it definitely had a different feel. And lyrically it was more intense. So it was darker, lyrically the whole thing was a different genre from anything else that came through there. And regarding the guitar tones, obviously over the years, guitar tones evolved and got better and better, but the guitar players got better and better, and they also became more aware of what the fact that guitar sound was not just my responsibility, but initially and probably ultimately the guitar sound is the guitar player's responsibility.

Eyal Levi (00:22:35):

Yes, it sure is.

Mark Dodson (00:22:36):

Well, it should be really. But we've still always striving for Glen particularly was always striving for the heaviest sound, and we would always work on it and work on it. Even when we did Defenders of the Faith and I did Glen's solo album, he was still striving for this sound that I think was a little bit like a holy grail for him. I dunno if he ever really got it. Do

Eyal Levi (00:23:01):

You ever get it?

Mark Dodson (00:23:03):

It was weird because like anthrax, when I did Anthrax, they just had a big fire in their warehouse and they'd lost a lot of equipment and they were concerned about the sound. But there was one cabinet, one amp that worked with that was Scott's Rhythm sound, that amp and that cabinet when you put them in and plugged them in and you put the microphones on it and you blended it a little bit, there was the sound it there. We were fortunate that that cabinet didn't get destroyed in the fire basically. And that amp pattern, and obviously the way he plays, you could get five guitar players playing the same part and it would sound different with every single one of them just because of the way they play.

Eyal Levi (00:23:48):

Yeah, I've known that for a long time. But one of the times that I remember, it's one of those things that you know, but you forget, I think, because you can go on tone quests and new gear is always sexy, but it always comes back to the guitar player. I remember 10 or more years ago, my band was playing some shows with Slayer, and I remember Carrie King did the soundcheck. He's the only guy that showed up from his entire band for the soundcheck. So he just soundcheck for two hours straight and he just played two of their albums back to back start to finish. And again, it was just his guitar and it sounded identical to the records, identical everything about it from the minor little fuckups to the little carrieisms, it sounded just like him. And it was one of those moments where it was like, yeah, that's right. That's what it is. It's who the player is at the end of the day. So I'm sure that you could have plugged a bunch of people into Scott's rig and it wouldn't sound like Scott.

Mark Dodson (00:25:05):

No, it certainly wouldn't. It just wouldn't because of the way he played the physical action of the way he played. And yet, oddly enough, Charlie wrote the riffs. It wasn't like Scott wrote the riffs. Charlie wrote the riffs,

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And then Scott interpreted them in the way that he played them. So between the two of them, and this is true of all music and bands, it's a catalytic magic that happens between the members of a band that create their sound. It's not where you put the microphone could be a million different things, but it's the magic of a band that makes them sound the way they sound. So that priest without Rob Halford is just a no-no. It doesn't matter the guy if they got Tim Ripper or anybody else, it's just a no-no, because it's that magic combination.

Eyal Levi (00:25:53):

Have you ever been producing a session where you helped a band figure out that magic combination of better if that person just writes it and that person plays it, or have you noticed that most of the really incredible artists you've worked with had that figured out coming in?

Mark Dodson (00:26:17):

I don't think anybody had it consciously figured out. I don't think anybody consciously knew. They just knew what they did, each one of them within the band.

Speaker 3 (00:26:27):

And

Mark Dodson (00:26:28):

Oddly enough, it's happened to me on a lot of occasions where that magic, you set it all up and you're listening to the band and they're working on a song, and you might mess with the arrangement on certain songs, which I did on different bands. Some bands you do, some bands you don't. Some bands you have to leave it till later to fuck with the arrangement, et cetera, et cetera. But the point I'm making is they could all be playing, and this goes from, I heard it with Who? With Keith Moon drumming to suicidal tendencies, to bow wow, to ugly kidjo, to whoever you'd like to mention. They'd be playing and it didn't sound right, and I'm struggling trying to fix the sound, trying this, try that, try. And then all of a sudden they played as a band and the magic happened and the sound physically changed when they hit that pocket, which is the pocket that a band has that makes them special.

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And you can't touch it, you can't contrive it. It's impossible to, it's just a magic with suicidal. There was an occasion when we were getting nowhere one day, absolutely nowhere. And I said to the boys, come on, let's just go for a drive. We got out of the studio and we went somewhere and had a bit of fun for a few hours, and when we came back, we got five tracks just because their brains and I freed their minds up from their constrictions to the studio, and they came back and boom, five backing tracks in as long as it took to play the five backing tracks. And it was magical. So it's impossible to describe it. It's just like, but that's why I don't like working with a click, because the click inhibits that and stops that. And I'm like, no click, no click at all. And it's just the way, and it's been like that forever.

Eyal Levi (00:28:23):

I actually think No Click is making a comeback.

Mark Dodson (00:28:26):

I think it has to comeback. It has to. The Aja I done has got no click. There was one song that they Forman wrote on it, which she wrote at home, which we overdubbed onto, which was done to a click, but the rest of it's no click at all. And they go, let's try a click. I go, no, we're not fucking trying a click, right? No click. You're a drummer, you're a guitar player, you've got a pocket. Let's make you what you are. You sing, you do this, you do that. When you're all together, you score a goal. Simple as that. And then they did. And they did.

Eyal Levi (00:29:00):

I think that when people who came up with DWS and the digital era realized that you can add a click after the fact, I think that when that knowledge started to spread, I think that that's when the no Click thing started to actually come back. I don't think anyone can make the argument against, I think the fact, I know music subjective, but I still think it's a fact that records felt better before clicks became the norm.

Mark Dodson (00:29:37):

Yeah, absolutely.

Eyal Levi (00:29:38):

Yeah. They just had a better ebb and flow.

Mark Dodson (00:29:40):

Yeah, absolutely. And if you need to fix something within that ebb and flow, you can always, it's almost part of the fun finding a way to make that work to say, okay, well, how are we going to make that bit fit in there if that went like that? I don't know. It's just something that I learned a lot from Tom Allen when we did Jewish Priest together as well and Little Ideas, and we used to fly stuff in on tapes, and I worked with a bank called The Wild Hearts here in England, and we had, I can't remember the guitar player's name, he's dead now, but he played a solo on one of their demos, and they were like, oh, we want it on the final thing. And I was like, well just start the song at the same tempo and we'll fix it. And we did it, and I got the solo from the demo and I went watch, and I put it on a tape machine and I marked the tape and I counted it in 1, 2, 3, hit the button, it popped it straight in, and it fell straight into the pocket and they went, whoa, man, that's fucking amazing.

Eyal Levi (00:30:33):

It is kind of amazing. Yeah,

Mark Dodson (00:30:34):

It was magic though. And I was like, well, it's meant to be, then it's happened. God's had something to do with that. That's the way I see it.

Eyal Levi (00:30:42):

So I think that the big asterisk or requirement is that you need to be able to play and have a pocket to begin with.

Speaker 3 (00:30:51):

So

Eyal Levi (00:30:52):

If you don't have that pocket that you're talking about, then there's nothing to save you. There's no parachute. So I think that a lot of artists who don't have that haven't worked to that point, have skipped lots of steps. And I'm not trying to talk shit about modern methods. I think everything's got its place

Mark Dodson (00:31:16):

Absolutely.

Eyal Levi (00:31:17):

But everything also has a price, like we were talking about earlier about medication. I think the price of the modern methods is that sometimes you can skip, you can skip steps and ditch some of the fundamentals like playing with Pocket, for instance.

Mark Dodson (00:31:35):

And I agree, there's certain musics that obviously are all recorded to at click, and that's good for them. And if they're happy, then so be it. And I think that in those cases, the vocal is pretty much the one thing that gives it the character that helps it to become special in its own. But you're a hundred percent, and I think that's in life, you meet lots of different people that do different jobs, and there's not enough people that are conscientious about what they do. And a lot of 'em, because they do jobs that they hate. And the one thing that I noticed with 99% of musicians is that they're so proud and so happy to have that ability. And they're so keen to prove that they're the best, and they work so hard that they create that themselves. It's like drummers want to be great, the bass player wants to be great. They really want to be as good as they possibly can. And so when you're in the studio working with them, they do their best work the majority of the time. Not all the time, obviously, but it's just nice that you know, are working with people that they're giving every bit of their heart and soul to what they're doing. So that in itself makes it valid. And if you can make that work, then it's going to be good.

Eyal Levi (00:32:59):

Is that kind of a common trait that you've noticed with all these, I'd call them mega artists you've worked with that they all had that drive to be? I mean, I kind of compare it to Olympic athletes almost. It's like an insane kind of drive that is unreasonable, but they have no choice about it. It's baked in.

Mark Dodson (00:33:23):

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true. But drummers are such a good example of that because they're such weird personalities. Invariably they're quite, they

Eyal Levi (00:33:33):

Kind of have to be,

Mark Dodson (00:33:33):

Yeah, they're almost like standup comics. They're kind of two different people a lot of the time. I think it's so interesting to watch people play off of great drummers really good. If you've got a good drummer, it ups everybody's game. It's like bringing on the star quarterback. It's like, it just makes everybody play better, and that breeds through the rest of the band to create that little bit of magic. But yeah, it's a delight when it's like that. And invariably, Charlie Banana's, killer drummer, fantastic drummer, and I've been lucky to work with lots of great drummers. Obviously Simon Phillips was great, but Jus Priest and there was ugly kid. Joe's drummer was a good drummer. And then they got Shannon Larkin in who was a fucking great drummer as well. So I was lucky to work with lots of really good drummers, and that really helped the drummer from Bow Unique Style. The first time he played Snare Drum was on, I Want Candy. Never played a snare drum before. And Ken Laguna, the producer, says, I want you to play a snare drum. And they're like, I don't play snare drums,

Eyal Levi (00:34:39):

Snare drum. We don't do that.

Mark Dodson (00:34:41):

Yeah, he only did Tom Tom. So he even had a snare drum up until that moment when we did, I Want Candy, which was a magic moment. Again, a great band, fantastic Pocket. So yeah, it's a very interesting conundrum because it's so untouchable. You can't tie it down. You can't go, well, that's wrong because nothing's wrong. It can't be wrong. Almost like mistakes are good. I've always felt that. I always say to a band, if you're going to play, don't play like you're frightened play. You don't care if you fuck up because if you do fuck up, we'll do it again. Go for it. And it might be an amazing mistake. It one of them, like Rocky would Suicidal played the guitar. I said, you fuck that up there, you fucked that bit up there. And he went, yeah, but I never fuck it up like that again, so let's keep it. And I'm like, cool, let's keep it. I'm happy with that.

Eyal Levi (00:35:30):

I like that attitude. Speaking of I want Candy and I guess songs that ended up making, I would say a massive impact. Did you know at the time that you were working was something special? Was there an air about it or was it a surprise?

Mark Dodson (00:35:47):

I didn't know. I knew the bands were really good.

Eyal Levi (00:35:49):

I guess you can't ever foresee that happening.

Mark Dodson (00:35:51):

No, I don't think you can. I've ever made a record gone, right? That's going to be a hit because I just never, ever, I don't think of music like that. I might go like it, but I wouldn't, didn't know Kazen Mac Cradle was going to be a huge hit. I just didn't know. And I knew that Lights Camera Revolution was a great record. I loved it, but I didn't know whether everybody else would love it. So I went in the pub in London just like three days ago because the pubs are open here, which we're glad to see. There's a couple of blokes in there playing some heavy music, and they don't know who I'm, they don't know what I've done in my life at tour or anything about me. And I just got chatting to 'em about this, that and the other. Never been a little bit obtuse, if you like.

(00:36:36):

And I just said, oh, I love suicide tendencies, actually. And I went to sat outside in the bar outside to have a beer and they came running out and they grabbed me and they brought me back in and they were playing, you Can't Bring me down in the pub. And I was like, wow, that rules dude. And they were like, yeah, they didn't know that I had anything to do with it. And I said, now how fucking great is that? And they were like, yeah, it's pretty damn good. So I was happy. That sort of made me happy.

Eyal Levi (00:37:00):

Do you get lots of moments like that?

Mark Dodson (00:37:03):

Not as many as I'd like.

Eyal Levi (00:37:06):

I think it's less common for producers than musicians.

Speaker 3 (00:37:10):

Yeah.

Eyal Levi (00:37:10):

You're reminding me of something that I remember Sean Connery saying about when they were doing Dr. No, that they thought it was going to fail and he thought it was going to fail. Wow, really. But he did it anyways, but then after it became the biggest thing on earth, everybody except for him started saying, oh, we knew it was going to be huge. And he just kept on saying in interviews, nobody knew it was going to be huge. Anyone that's saying that was lying, everybody was totally scared and was taking a massive, massive risk, but thought it was cool. So they did it anyways. And

Mark Dodson (00:37:43):

I think that's the best way to do saying it. If you like it and you love it and just do it, you have no expectations of it, then everybody fears they, everybody has fear of one thing or another. The reason I worked with Suicidal was because the first time I ever heard them, I thought, these guys are fucking amazing. I just loved it. I wasn't like analyzing the music, I just listened to the vibe of it all. And

Eyal Levi (00:38:06):

You just dug it?

Mark Dodson (00:38:06):

Yeah, it was just like, whoa, this is incredible war. Inside my head I was like, whoa, that's fucking incredible. And I was fortunate enough to work with them, to be honest, because they were one of the best bands I've ever worked with. Mike Muir is an inspirational guy, Robert Trujillo, who, me and Robert are still best mates from Still Chat. And we've got a little project that we are working on on the side called Mass Mental, which is very interesting as well.

Eyal Levi (00:38:32):

He's done okay.

Mark Dodson (00:38:34):

He's done great. He's a great

Eyal Levi (00:38:36):

Guy. Just okay.

Mark Dodson (00:38:37):

Yeah. Yeah. He's a lovely guy, Robert. He really is a great guy.

Eyal Levi (00:38:41):

That's what everyone I know who knows him has said is I haven't heard anybody say anything even half a percent negative about him.

Mark Dodson (00:38:50):

He's amazing. He's an absolutely lovely guy. And oh, me and him we're just like best buddies every so often we'd catch up and we have a little chat. He's stuck in his quarantine in America, which I know is worse over there than it is over here at the moment.

Eyal Levi (00:39:06):

It's pretty bad.

Mark Dodson (00:39:07):

Yeah, I know. I've been reading about it. I'm like, oh my God wouldn't want to be in that situation. It's scary. But yeah, me and Robert, we get on great. He's introduced me to Amman. I dunno if you know Amman, Sabaco Do Not a ridiculous jazz bass player. Well, him and Robert Jam together all the time. And of course, Robert's son, Ty, who's a ridiculous bass player as well. I mean, he's ridiculous. He looks like Robert just a miniature Robert. He's a ridiculous bass player. Ridiculous. So Robert's introduced me to all those people. In fact, it was Robert that said to me when we started the Mass Mantle project, he said, we've got to find a singer. And Whit was kind of penciled in from ugly kids to do a bit. And he did a bit, and he still does do a bit with those guys, but there was a guy called Benji Webb who's in a band called, they were called Double War then, and now they're, he's got a band called Skin Now, Benji comes from Wales. It's a black guy from Wales, and he's in a fucking amazing singer. I dunno if you've ever heard Skin Dread, but they are.

Eyal Levi (00:40:11):

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Mark Dodson (00:40:12):

Okay, so that's Benji. So he introduced me to Benji. So we just get him to come and sing on stuff. So funnily enough, Benji just sent me a text today and asked me if I'd do a couple of mixes for him because he's been doing some dub war stuff and would I do a couple of mixes for him? And I'm like, yeah, absolutely. Benji. So Robert's one of these guys that hears stuff from people and connections. So you get drummers like Brooks Wacker. He introduced me to Brooks Whacker and Josh Free. He's kind of a musician's musician and he kind of a musical director as well. And I think that's why he works so well within Metallica. He's such a peacemaker. I think

Eyal Levi (00:40:51):

It sounded like they needed a grounding influence.

Mark Dodson (00:40:54):

Yeah, I think so. And he's definitely that. And I think he raises their level. I think he makes them better because he's so good.

Eyal Levi (00:41:02):

That's another one of those stories where I don't think anyone could have predicted it.

Mark Dodson (00:41:07):

Can you imagine from carrying bricks around a building site to where he is now?

Eyal Levi (00:41:12):

Oh, I can only imagine.

Mark Dodson (00:41:14):

Yeah.

Eyal Levi (00:41:14):

That must have been surprising to hear about. Yeah,

Mark Dodson (00:41:18):

Yeah. Well, he was, after Suicidal, obviously went, joined Aussie, then he got that opportunity and because when he walked in to play with Metallica, Rob's the kind of guy he said, I knew every fucking song they had. Didn't matter what song they were going to ask me to play, I knew it. He said, and I knew it like that. So obviously they couldn't, not only does he look great, not only can he run around and got all the vibe and the sauna and everything, but he plays like the crazy motherfucker as well. So he had every slap down, every little note down. He doesn't make mistakes. And if he does, they're good ones.

Eyal Levi (00:41:53):

So it's interesting because he seems like such a humble dude, but no matter how humble or nice he is, he still went it into it like a total killer.

Mark Dodson (00:42:01):

Oh yeah, totally. He was going to win that fight. There's no two ways about that. Robert's like that. Robert wants to, Robert always wants to win. Robert's a hundred percent music, 110% music. His whole soul is music. And on top of that, he's the lovely dude as well.

Eyal Levi (00:42:16):

Do you think that that winning kind of spirit is crucial for sticking around a long time?

Mark Dodson (00:42:24):

I think the desire to want to give musically is essential to sticking around a long time. I don't know if you have to say, it's not like you're trying to beat anybody by winning. It's just that you want to be successful and always want to be coming up with something. It's like I think Bowie was one of those guys that always said they've got a time where Bowie wasn't happy with where he was anymore, and he wanted to be more than where he was and always wanted to be more where he was. Whether that was a winning mentality or just an attitude about being a great musician. I think these guys are so wrapped up in what they do and it becomes such an obsession with them. Someone like Mike Muir is a great example of somebody that's totally obsessed by his music and what he's saying and what he's doing. I mean a hundred percent pure and honest all the way through. Not necessarily always right, but 100% pure and honest. And that stands him in good stead. I dunno if he wants to win all the time, but I think he's the kind of guy that just wants people to stop and think about what he may be saying. So I'm not a hundred percent sure about the have to win, but have to succeed maybe is the way of putting it.

Eyal Levi (00:43:42):

That's a good distinction. I think.

Mark Dodson (00:43:43):

Yeah,

Eyal Levi (00:43:44):

Maybe it's different too, if you're trying to join somebody's band in an addition process versus being the David Bowie type where it is, you are the main dude.

Mark Dodson (00:43:57):

Yeah, I think with Robert as well, it's like to me bands are like football teams, soccer teams, whatever. If you get the right player in it changes the whole team and getting Robert into that team, given that team longevity and the reason to keep going as well and taking them on from where they were. And also, I mean, Robert and Kirk do this little thing where they come out the front of the station, I dunno if you've seen them recently, where they play songs from the area that are pertinent to the town or the city or the country that they're in. And they do a little 15 minute skip with these songs. Now, Robert, he researches all that and goes away and find, so if he might be playing in Prague or somewhere, somewhere in Europe, Eastern Europe, and he'll go and find out what the local song is, the local thing that everybody loves, and he'll get a copy of it and he'll work it out.

(00:44:48):

And then him and Kirk will work out how to play it together. And they give it a Metallica twist and they'll come to the front of the stage and they do that on purpose to get the audience into them and make them feel like they're part of it. Now, that was Robert's idea initially, and Metallica love, it gives them 15 minute break to sit around and do whatever they do for 15 minutes, wipe the sweat off because they're working hard. But it also gives the audience a much better feeling of participation. And I think that's quite inspirational on his part to come up with that. He says it's quite difficult because they've got so many places that they're playing on a tour that always have to be a step ahead. And him and Kirk are always in hotel rooms learning it the night before. It's a bit by the seat of your pants, but all good stuff.

Eyal Levi (00:45:31):

It's amazing to hear that still at that level, they're not coasting.

Mark Dodson (00:45:36):

Oh no, definitely not. I think you can feel that though, can't you? When you see them, you can feel that

Eyal Levi (00:45:41):

James

Mark Dodson (00:45:42):

Coasting. You can tell they're not they want to do. Last time I saw the Rolling Stones, I think it was last year at Twickingham, and I swear to God, man, I just smiled for three hours. Mick Jagger is just beyond,

Eyal Levi (00:45:57):

Oh, he doesn't coast at all. Holy shit. That guy is, that guy is a force of nature,

Mark Dodson (00:46:02):

Isn't he? He's so good. I mean, he's got better, he's like a wine better. He's just got better and better.

Eyal Levi (00:46:10):

It's kind of ridiculous actually.

Mark Dodson (00:46:12):

It is. It's beyond. It's beyond.

Eyal Levi (00:46:15):

It's like he's going in reverse aging in reverse or something.

Mark Dodson (00:46:19):

Yeah, yeah. He's a lucky fucker. He is. Had a great life as well, hasn't he?

Eyal Levi (00:46:24):

Yeah, quite the run for sure.

Mark Dodson (00:46:27):

You're not kidding. You're not kidding. That's another thing. There's a guy called Alexis Corner, an old blue singer. He found Rod Stewart and a few other people back in the day, and he was doing an album, an old blues album down at Ram Ramport back in the day. And he called Keith Richards up to come down and see if he'd play on it. And Keith Richards turned up and I'm like, oh my god, Keith Richards, this is fucking, this is the shit. So Keith plugs his guitar in, and then Stevie Marriott turns up, I go, okay, so Stevie Marriott's there as well, and they're playing away and they're both played and Stevie Marriott, Stevie Marriott, he said, I won't tell you what sort of mischief they were up to at the same time, but whilst in the middle of the mischief, Stevie Marriott was trying to persuade Keith Richards to leave the Rolling Stones and join Humble Pie.

(00:47:14):

And Keith Richards was like, yeah, yeah. Not bad ideas, Steve. It's like, no, I ain't doing that, I ain't doing that. And then I swear to God, about two weeks later, I think Stevie Marriot got rest. His soul was obviously up on a bender and it was like four in the morning, we were about to leave the studio and he calls up, he says, I'm coming down, I'm coming down. He says, get the fucking stuff set up. I'm coming down. And we were like, we're just about to go. Don't give me that shit. I'm coming down. I said, one of the guys said to him, I said, what? He says, call Pete Townsend. And if Peak Townsend calls us back in 10 minutes and says It's alright, we'll wait for you. Naturally, we never heard another word, so I don't think Stevie Marriott's going to be waking up Pete Townsend at four in the morning.

Eyal Levi (00:47:58):

So that's a good way to get out of it.

Mark Dodson (00:48:01):

Yeah, it was well done.

Eyal Levi (00:48:03):

We

Mark Dodson (00:48:03):

Were all out there. Well done.

Eyal Levi (00:48:05):

That was a crafty move.

Mark Dodson (00:48:06):

Yeah, well you didn't want to be sitting there till seven in the morning. Yeah,

Eyal Levi (00:48:09):

I mean you probably would've been if,

Mark Dodson (00:48:11):

Oh, it'd probably been till midday.

Eyal Levi (00:48:13):

So speaking of the schedule, that's kind of an interesting thing. I was actually thinking about this yesterday, how I don't do crazy hours like that anymore. I used to. Do you still do that or have you gone to a reasonable schedule?

Mark Dodson (00:48:29):

Yeah, I've never really done that anyway. Very, very rarely because the reason that people do that is high. You know what I mean? That's why they do

Eyal Levi (00:48:39):

It. That is kind of what it was.

Mark Dodson (00:48:41):

And then everything is great, everything's fucking great. And it's like, well actually it's not great. I've always been one to be like, wrap it. If something's amazing's happening, I'll keep going. If it's a band situation where we're trying to get tracks down that there comes a time where you're not going to get any more back in tracks, no matter how hard you try. And you know that if you come back at 11 tomorrow morning, you'll get that back in track, first take. And invariably that's what happens. So I would not work crazy. I like to start about midday and work through, maybe have a bit of dinner, come back from dinner and do a little bit more, get a little bit of inspiration going, have beer or two not get bladdered obviously, because you can't do anything when you're bad. And just have maybe a beer just to relax and see if you come up with a new idea here or there. And then midnight, call it a day.

Eyal Levi (00:49:27):

I feel like when you're younger it's a lot easier to get carried away with that kind of stuff. Is it something where you naturally kind of knew how to put on the brakes or is this something you had to learn as you got on?

Mark Dodson (00:49:42):

I had to learn because there was a lot of that around back in the day. A lot of it. And I'm sure there is still to this day, but

Eyal Levi (00:49:49):

Not as much I don't think.

Mark Dodson (00:49:50):

Yeah, I think you're probably right about that. There was a lot about with different bands, most of the bands and invariably, well, I don't really remember much great coming out of it. Occasionally someone could smoke a joint and come out with something great, but if someone's putting half a pound of blow up there, there's a chance it's going to be a nightmare. And everybody thinks it's great and you're going, I wish I wasn't here. I don't want to be here. So I learned that early on at Ram Paul, because there was one of the guys there, he learned how to make speed. He worked at the studio, he got banged up, put in prison for it in the end, did eight years. But we called him Boffin. He was very, very clever. Bloke entrepreneur. Yeah. Well, yeah. He was the guy that was in charge of all the lights and everything and the electrics.

(00:50:41):

And there was one little button on the desk and it just said silly button. And people used to say, what's that? And we'd say, don't push that button, just don't push that button. And of course everybody fucking pushed it. And when they pushed it, no matter what was planned or what was going on, the lights just went. All the lights went psychedelic and all like 16, big fuck off. JBLs all around the room went into like a war mode. It was like, wow, this noise just go crazy. And we would all sit there. Sometimes we'd do it when someone was taking their first line of Charlie, they go, what does Charlie do? Say take a line. They'd do a line and someone would push the silly button and when the lights all stopped and it came back to normal, we'd all be sitting there as if nothing had happened. And the guy go, fuck yeah, no, what?

Eyal Levi (00:51:28):

It was a silly button, a high idea.

Mark Dodson (00:51:31):

No, he didn't do it. I don't think he did drugs, that guy. It was the weirdest thing.

Eyal Levi (00:51:35):

So he just made

Mark Dodson (00:51:37):

The speed that was so strong, it was ridiculous. He eventually got caught. He was making it in Scotland and the cops got him and they banged him up for eight years. I dunno what happened to him. I think he became a computer genius after that. It was a funny time.

Eyal Levi (00:51:51):

So actually an entrepreneur or something like that?

Mark Dodson (00:51:53):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Strange.

Eyal Levi (00:51:55):

So he just figured out how to make drugs but didn't take them, I guess that makes sense.

Mark Dodson (00:52:01):

Yeah, I guess so. I guess that's how he worked out.

Eyal Levi (00:52:03):

It says for the love of science, right?

Mark Dodson (00:52:05):

Yeah, he was definitely a buffin and he used to wear a dog collar all the time as well, so he was very trippy, dude.

Eyal Levi (00:52:13):

Sounds like it. My theory as to why it was more prevalent then is just because budgets are different now, and people, especially on the label side or management side, or even musician to musician producers feel this way too. They just are assuming a lot more risk. They're basically not getting paid to deal with this kind of stuff anymore, so they don't put up with it. And I think back then they probably put up with it more because there was more money to put up with it. That's my theory though. I don't know if I'm right.

Mark Dodson (00:52:49):

No, you may well be right. I obviously when a band got signed and they got loads of money going in their pockets all suddenly thought they'd arrived. And I was always of the mind that getting a record deal just meant the door just opened

Eyal Levi (00:53:03):

Time to start working.

Mark Dodson (00:53:04):

Exactly. Exactly. Not time to start thinking you're a rock star. So anybody that had that kind of rockstar mentality. And then there were a couple of bands that I worked with where that was the mentality, and it never ended well. It never ended well.

Eyal Levi (00:53:22):

Did you ever have a moment where you were like, whoa, I've made it, or you still feel like you're trying to make it?

Mark Dodson (00:53:31):

I think that some of the stuff I've done is good and people get it and it's helped people and it's made a difference to some people's lives, which I'm eternally grateful for. But I don't think I'm finished yet. I still think there's something that I haven't done yet. And I'm working hard to try and work out what that is in today's world of music because it is different now. And as you say, rightly say, the budgets aren't there. This isn't there. Whether I haven't seen a young band and I'm sure they're out there that are as good as the Suicidals or the overall package isn't as good as the Anthrax or this or a band that I just look at and go, oh my God, these guys are fucking amazing. These guys have definitely got it and wanted to work with them. Because I would work with any band if I believed that and I wouldn't be like, right, you've got to pay me. I'd be like, well work some deal out. If this happens, then it happens, but let's make records for making records sake. And I still feel that I haven't, maybe I have reached my pinnacle, but I'm hoping that I haven't, hoping I've been on a plateau that I need to get to the pinnacle still, I haven't given up on that dream.

Eyal Levi (00:54:46):

Well, I mean the first thing you talked about was learning how to use logic. I think the fact that you're still willing to learn new things says it all. In my opinion, that's kind of the difference between people who just stagnate and people who keep on getting better is it's kind of in opposition to itself to feel like you've arrived and then also keep trying to get better. It's like you can't ever feel satisfied if you want to keep on getting better.

Mark Dodson (00:55:14):

No, you can't.

Eyal Levi (00:55:15):

It doesn't work together.

Mark Dodson (00:55:17):

No, it doesn't. I mean, there's times I hear bits of music that I've done. Like I said, when I heard You can't bring me down in the pub. And I was like, wow. And I remember funnily enough, my brother lives in California and I don't know that he hundred percent knows what I do, or I mean, he knows I make records and stuff, but I just put, one day I was there and we were having a barbecue or whatever, and I put it on, I put, you can't bring me down on. And I saw him stop and start listening to it and he went, did you do this? And I was like, yeah. And he was like, oh, fucking hell. And I was like, you get it?

Eyal Levi (00:55:51):

Oh, you do this for real?

Mark Dodson (00:55:52):

Yeah, yeah. He's like, oh, you're actually not just my little brother. You're all right.

Eyal Levi (00:55:58):

Oh, they took this long to figure it out.

Mark Dodson (00:56:00):

Yeah, I know. Isn't that mad? So I'm still looking for the holy grail, just like Mike near is.

Eyal Levi (00:56:06):

Have you always felt that way?

Mark Dodson (00:56:07):

Yes.

Eyal Levi (00:56:08):

So it never goes away.

Mark Dodson (00:56:10):

No, no. I'm always yearning to do. I think you have to be like that.

Eyal Levi (00:56:15):

I agree.

Mark Dodson (00:56:15):

Otherwise, you're not going to get any better are you? You've got to learn from people all the time. And I'm more than pleased to listen to what other people come up with. I'm not so arrogant to say, well, you'll do it my way or no way, because that's stupid. But all along I've learned from different people from, I did a record with a band called The Electric Love Hogs, an LA band, and Tommy Lee came in and co-produced a couple of songs with me, good loud Tommy, good drummer, good bloke all around. But I learned stuff off of him from sound point of view, techniques of miking and stuff like that that I'd never known before. I learned off of Tom Allen some great stuff as well. And obviously when I first started Blin Johns was the leading record producer in the world working with Zeppelin, the Who, the Stones, whatever. And he used to put three microphones on the drums. That was it, three microphones, that was it. And I was like, I hadn't seen that before. And so he had one on the bass drum and two overheads, which were the positioning of, which was critical. So that was his sound. So people go, oh, I want my drums to sound like John Bonum. And I'm like, well, we're going to put three microphones on them. You play like John Bonum and you'll fucking sound like John Bonham. That's the bottom line.

Eyal Levi (00:57:33):

Yeah, that's kind of the tough part.

Mark Dodson (00:57:35):

Yeah, yeah, just a bit.

Eyal Levi (00:57:37):

Yeah.

Mark Dodson (00:57:39):

And I remember at one point where Keith Moon had, I swear to God, he must have had 15 TomToms up on this big stand. And T had said to Glen, he said, can we just put a microphone on the snare drum? And Glen says, no, I don't do that. He goes, please, can we just put a microphone? Eventually he got his own way, and that's the only time I ever saw Glenn John put a microphone on a snare drum.

Eyal Levi (00:57:59):

So speaking of the Glenn John's technique, like you said, it's super simple and kind of comes down to the drummer, is that basically the point of it capture this great musician and if the great musician, if it isn't a great musician, then it's not going to work.

Mark Dodson (00:58:18):

Exactly. It's not going to sound good.

Eyal Levi (00:58:20):

It's designed to basically capture greatness.

Mark Dodson (00:58:24):

Absolutely. So the way that Mooney would hit the drums or Ginger Baker would hit the drums, or any of those guys, you could listen to those guys. I walked into a club in Los Angeles and there was some drums being played way in the back. I could just hear it. I thought that sounds like Ginger baker, and it was Ginger Baker and I just knew it because of my love of cream.

Eyal Levi (00:58:42):

Like that Kerry King story I told you about.

Mark Dodson (00:58:45):

Yeah, and precisely. Exactly. So yeah, it's the way they hit the drums that makes 'em sound the way they sound. It's just as simple as that. And that's so unique and so special to each, and that's true of each musician within the band. It's unique how the singer phrases his vocal where his pocket is within the vocals. And I worked with the band in, damn, I can't remember their name. It didn't really matter. I was just the engineer on it and it was a band in Toronto and the was a record company guy, and he kept to want to play behind the beat, I want you to play behind the beat. And I was doing lots of different kinds of stuff at that time musically. And I sat there as an engineered, and I'm like, why are you trying to make them play behind the beat?

(00:59:32):

I said, I wouldn't sound like Led Zeppelin. And I'm like, this band is this band. They can't be Led Zeppelin. He would stop them in mid take and make them slow down or try and drop a bit in and drop a bit in and drop a bit in. And I'm like, oh my God. And I think he must have, I got fired off the project because he knew my dislike for the whole process really, and disinterested because he made no sense to me. I'm like, this is shit. I can't do this. This is not right. This is not how you make a record if you don't let the band breathe and be themselves. Where are they ever going to go? They don't know who they're

Eyal Levi (01:00:05):

There is nowhere to go.

Mark Dodson (01:00:06):

Exactly.

Eyal Levi (01:00:07):

Hey, everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast, and you should know that it's brought to you by URM Academy, URM Academy's missions to create the next generation of audio professionals by giving them the inspiration and information to hone their craft and build a career doing what they love. You've probably heard me talk about Nail the Mix before, and if you're a member, you already know how amazing it is. The beginning of the month, nail the mix members, get the raw multitracks to a new song by artists like Lama God Angels and Airwaves. Knock loose OPEC Shuga, bring me the Horizon. Gaira asking Alexandria Machine Head and Papa Roach among many, many others over 60 at this point. Then at the end of the month, the producer who mixed it comes on and does a live streaming walkthrough of exactly how they mix the song on the album and takes your questions live on air.

(01:00:59):

And these are guys like TLA Will Putney, Jenz Boren, Dan Lancaster to I Matson, Andrew Wade, and many, many more. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, which is our collection of dozens of bite-sized mixing tutorials that cover all the basics as well as Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multi-tracks cleared for use in your portfolio. So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. And for those of you who really want to step up their game, we have another membership tier called URM Enhance, which includes everything I already told you about, and access to our massive library of fast tracks, which are deep, super detailed courses on intermediate and advanced topics like gain, staging, mastering low end and so forth. It's over 500 hours of content. And man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed and enhanced. Members also get access to one-on-ones, which are basically office hour sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes and fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills in your audio career, head over to M Academy to find out more. You made me think of Glenn Jones in a way that I haven't thought of it before, but can we talk about it for a second?

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):

Of course.

Eyal Levi (01:02:24):

Because what I think is really interesting is a lot of people think about miking techniques as a technical thing, like distances and angles and all that. And that's obviously a part of it, of course, but the way you're talking about it is it's an artistic choice. And so if I think about other miking techniques like space pairs or something, or the way that metal producers will basically do a series of close mics and no real overhead overheads, I guess it's designed more to hide the picture of the kit so that you can get a very specific precise sound where it sounds like the artistic approach for Glen Jones is the opposite of that. It takes something great and then showcase it.

Mark Dodson (01:03:15):

Yeah. And if the drummer didn't play good, it wasn't going to be good. That's the end of the story.

Eyal Levi (01:03:19):

No angles or measurements would fix that.

Mark Dodson (01:03:21):

No, I mean the only thing that the positioning of the two microphones, which would've been Noman 80 sevens over the kit, was critical in as much as they were eent from the snare drum. And of course that could affect things in a drastic way. It could end up picking up one symbol so much that it was obnoxious and it shouldn't be like that, but he managed to get away with it. And sometimes on some records you can hear that occasionally you'd get to hear that, but I don't mind that either. I kind of like that because it's not quite right. I like things that aren't quite right sometimes. Most people that listen to records would never hear it because they don't listen to a record. I listen to a record, I try not to listen to records like that, but it's obviously a bit weird, like a symbol is obviously ridiculously loud, but can't find my way Home by Blind Faith.

(01:04:18):

There's a symbol on there, ginger Wake symbol. It's so loud, but I love it. It's just ridiculous. But I love it. I dunno. iFLY Johns, did that record? Mind you, I think that there's a lot of people make a lot out of mic. Position the mic, you can overdo it. It's really difficult to say because sometimes you just get lucky just to, with the guitar, you press bet. It's probably in my mind is a Sennheiser and an 87 and you find the best speaker in the cone within all the speakers. And you might that one speaker and you move the microphones a little bit to get a bit more topper, a bit more bottom, and that's it. Then it's down at the guitar player to make it sound good to my mind.

Eyal Levi (01:05:00):

Yeah, I completely agree. But I guess the part that's not luck is knowing when you got lucky and not changing it.

Mark Dodson (01:05:10):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. 100%. Sometimes you just get a lucky sound and you think, oh my God, that's a fucking great sound. And you keep it forever. You don't know it's going to happen. It just happens. And Tom Allens produced priest stuff was a great advocate of that and a great act doing that very off the wall kind of dude, very English, but would always come up with great sounding things as did Visconti with Bowie. Little Techniques for Microphone. I read one thing about that he did with Bowie that I was like, fuck it, that's a good idea. And so he's got Bowie there singing into this one microphone and he's got another microphone down the hall, maybe 20 yards away or something like that in the studio. But that microphone, the far away one was set, so it only opened up when Bowie hit a certain amount of volume. So it was done with what's called a CapEx, which is an noise escape. And it was set so in certain ways so that it triggered that microphone to open so that when he ed a note, the microphone created the different sounds. You didn't have to put an effect on it, that actual setup.

Eyal Levi (01:06:16):

Clever,

Mark Dodson (01:06:17):

Fantastic idea.

Eyal Levi (01:06:18):

Yeah, I love that kind of innovative thinking. I'm just wondering, is there ever a time or many times where you did get to that sound and you thought to yourself, I can get it even better, and you tried to make it even better and ruined it and could never get it back

Mark Dodson (01:06:41):

During the recording process? Probably not. Maybe during the mixing process I'd be like,

Eyal Levi (01:06:46):

You're laughing though, so you You know what I'm talking about.

Mark Dodson (01:06:50):

Yeah, yeah. No, I'm laughing because yeah, I totally know what you're talking about. I think that there may be some mixes where I've got a mix and it's just like, oh, it's fantastic. And then try to recreate it and never ever get near it again. Albeit there may be things that aren't quite right about it within the actual recording of something, probably not. I probably would get something sounding as well as it could sound. And then once it worked within the track, I would be accepting of it and keep it. And then if there was any improvement to be made during the mix, I could maybe find something that would make it a bit better within the mix later. Or, it's weird because with Logic, during this ugly Kidjo record, I kind of fucked around with some repeat echoes and I was trying to learn something how I did this, and then this repeat echo happened and I went, oh, fuck me. I was like, whoa, that's very good. And I kept it and I was like, wow. And I enhanced it and enhanced it, and I made sure it SATs right in the mix and it stayed there forever. Now how I did that, I'll never know, to be honest. I mean, I could go back and analyze it within Logic, but I don't want to because I haven't got the brain power do I? Got it. And I thought, that's in the record. Boom, done. It was a bit like Rocky's guitar error just happened,

Eyal Levi (01:08:03):

Man, that's good instincts. And I wonder, is that something that you had to be taught when to back off or is that something that just came naturally to you?

Mark Dodson (01:08:17):

I think that's pretty much instinctive

Eyal Levi (01:08:19):

Because that's where a lot of people fuck themselves up.

Mark Dodson (01:08:22):

Yeah, I can imagine. I was lucky because working with people like Laguna, I dunno if you know who Kenny Laguna is, but Kenny manages Joan Jet

Eyal Levi (01:08:30):

Guitars for Joan Jet. Yeah.

Mark Dodson (01:08:31):

He's the manager and the producer and everything.

(01:08:34):

And Kenny found, well, I didn't find Joan Jack, she was in the Runaways obviously, but he took her from the Runaways and turned her into what she is today. And he had another guy called Richie Cordell who worked with him. And Richie Cordell wrote Monie Monie, and I think we're alone now back in the days of bubblegum. And Kenny was in Tommy James in the Sean Des Kenny played keyboards. And Kenny came to London and worked at Ramp Shoot and lots of punk records. And me and Kenny became great buddies and we worked together on lots of different things. And he was coming over there. He was on a bit of a wing and a prayer just trying to get work and do as well as he could. And they finally found Jonie and the Who and Bill Khi helped him with the studio. And Kenny was like one thing.

(01:09:22):

And Kenny, Kenny was just a great personality and character and him and Jonie, a legends really. But I remember him being in a studio one time and the studio manager came in, came running in, what do you think? What do think's a fucking great studio? And Kenny just looked at me and said, well, I haven't seen God today, meaning that nothing special happened. You know what I mean? God's not here today. Kenny was like that. He was like, special moments would happen and Kenny would jump on him go, that's a fucking great idea. That's a brilliant idea.

Eyal Levi (01:09:56):

But he wouldn't be impressed by superficial things.

Mark Dodson (01:10:00):

Oh, absolutely.

Eyal Levi (01:10:01):

Like it's a cool studio.

Mark Dodson (01:10:02):

No, no, no. He didn't care about that. He knew when the music was right again, another person. The integrity was all important.

Eyal Levi (01:10:10):

I feel like you can't fake that.

Mark Dodson (01:10:13):

No,

Eyal Levi (01:10:13):

No. And you were talking about in the pre-interview about how Kenny was instrumental in you getting out on your own as a producer. Can you talk a little bit about your work with him and how that led you down your own path?

Mark Dodson (01:10:30):

Well, yeah, because Kenny had a friend called Steve Leeds who was something to do with MTV and worked for MCA records as well. And Steve was looking for a producer for a band called the IC House rockers. And Kenny put my name forward on that project, which was very kind of him to do so. And he actually came and played piano on it as well. And I got the job and I went off and I made the records with singers, a guy called Joe K, another great guy, good friends with Bruce Springsteen. Funnily enough, he actually introduced me to Bruce Springsteen, which I'm eternally grateful for, just to Sayen. That was funny. We were in a big studio in New York and we talking to Bruce Springsteen and these guys running around with microphones and all these different amps and all that. And Bruce just turned said, I wish he'd just fucking plugged me in and lemme play.

(01:11:21):

And that made total sense to me. Kenny was great for me in that respect, and he bought me on, he let me engineer all these records with him. It's a guy called Steve Gibbons in this country who had a few hits. And of course, Joan Jet Bad Reputation album was very special for me as well to be able to do that record. So I'm eternally grateful to Kenny, and he's a great producer. He's got great ear, he can sing harmonies all day long. He can come at all these different harmony background, vocal parts because he loved the Beach Boys and all that stuff. So he's great at all, that sort of thing. He's a great songwriter. Songsmith, just an all round good music person, very, very good at what he did. So I learned a lot from Kenny a lot.

Eyal Levi (01:12:03):

Why do you think he gravitated towards you? What was it about your relationship that

Mark Dodson (01:12:10):

I don't know. Again, we just hit it off when I was just, you

Eyal Levi (01:12:13):

Just hit it off.

Mark Dodson (01:12:14):

Yeah, we got on well, and I hopefully made his life easier and better. And because I worked at the WHO studio, which was also helping him to be able to afford to record Joan Jett. At that time, I didn't have a deal. I was lucky enough to be there and to be the engineer, and we became friends just straight off became friends. And I even flew to New York at one point with my wife, and they put us up and looked after us and treated just like lords. And I became friends with his wife as well. We all became friends, and we still are to this day, which is lovely too. I really appreciate what he did for me. You need a leg up. Sometimes you need someone to give you a break. And he did give me a break. That helped me a lot because that gave me the confidence to believe that I could produce a record.

(01:13:07):

And albeit that I used techniques that I'd learned from all these other producers that I worked with on that particular album, it gave me a chance. And then obviously that led on to things like being in America, which I was totally starstruck by being in America. I was like a kid in a cookie shop. I was like, everything was so incredible. And it still is pretty much to me. I mean, I love the place, but then it gave me the confidence to be able to go, when I got the opportunity to produce Metal church, I had the confidence to do it all beer that when I was, I remember being in New York talking to Michael Largo, the a and r guy, and I think I had my cab fare to the airport to get home. I was looking for work. Literally, I had enough money to get to the airport to get home, and I had $70 to take him out to lunch. That's all I had in the, and I'm praying that lunch wasn't going to be more than 70,

Eyal Levi (01:14:04):

Not 71 50.

Mark Dodson (01:14:06):

Yeah, exactly. Otherwise I'd to walk to the airport and I got just scraped in there, just scraped in. But that was good. And then me and Kenny went and worked, of course, with all the Bersley artists as well. I dunno, Greg King, the news, which was Matthew Kaufman had a label called Berser Records down in Berkeley, California. And Matthew Kaufman was around at Jonathan. Richard had a few hits in England, and Matthew would come to England and do some recording, and then we would go over there and record. And Kenny took me along with him, so I got the opportunity to work with all these other bands, and there was some great bands as well. So he really opened a lot of doors for me and gave me a lot of opportunities.

Eyal Levi (01:14:48):

Man, it really comes down to your relationships, doesn't it?

Mark Dodson (01:14:51):

I think so, because people either don't like you or they do like you, don't they?

Eyal Levi (01:14:54):

Yeah. And I feel like if they don't like you, they'll only work with you until a suitable replacement that they do like materializes. I know there's some mixers who people don't like as people, but they make so much money for so many people. They do such a great job that people will tolerate them. But the moment somebody comes around that's just as good, who's actually cool to hang out with, they will abandon ship. I've seen it happen many times.

Mark Dodson (01:15:28):

I could imagine that that would be the case. And the thing about good friendships is as well, that they last forever. Glen Tipton from Priest, as I say, we still talk all the time. And he gave me obviously, sin After Sin. I was still learning my craft at that time as I am now, to be honest. But then he came and said, come and do Defenders of the Faith with us. And I was like, I'd love to, but he'd remembered me and he wanted me to come back because he liked me and I liked him. And as I say, we've been great friends ever since. And people do, I'm sure people, they forget you if they don't like you, that's what really happens. I think people just wipe you out of their minds and they move on, which is fine.

Eyal Levi (01:16:11):

I mean, you can't win them all, can you?

Mark Dodson (01:16:13):

No, no. I don't think you can win 'em all. And rightly so. You shouldn't. And if you fuck up, you need to learn why you fucked up as well and understand what might not be your fault. But if it is your fault, you've got to take it on the chin and fix it.

Eyal Levi (01:16:26):

Absolutely. I was also thinking about this the other day, that when I first got into the industry, the advice from people that were more experienced than me was always make friends with anybody, burn zero bridges. And I understand what they're saying, and I do agree with that to some degree, but I also think that that's kind of unrealistic because you're not going to get along with everybody and you are going to burn some bridges at some point no matter who you are.

Speaker 3 (01:16:55):

I

Eyal Levi (01:16:56):

Don't know a single person who has stuck around, who hasn't had at least one problem with one person. And I think that

Mark Dodson (01:17:05):

Absolutely

Eyal Levi (01:17:06):

The real trick is to be able to navigate it when that happens and not let that affect everything else. Or if something bad happens to figure out exactly how to bounce back from it, but not to expect that nothing bad will ever happen or that you just magically won't piss people off. Because sometimes this industry is navigating a minefield. There are some situations I've noticed that are almost designed to blow up in your face, and not because there's any mal-intent, but just because there's so many competing interests, so many egos, there's no way for someone not to get pissed off. It's just impossible. You can't always please people.

Mark Dodson (01:17:52):

No, you can't. And I think sometimes there's been times where I think, I don't understand why I don't get on with that guy or that guy. I don't speak to that guy or that person anymore. And I think that sometimes it's a case of Chinese whispers and misunderstandings as well. And there are cases where I've worked with people that I would never want to work with again.

Eyal Levi (01:18:13):

Of course.

Mark Dodson (01:18:14):

Well, unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that their music reflects their personality in my mind. And therefore, I don't like either of them. And I don't mean that naly with any, I don't wish them any ill whatsoever, but I just wouldn't be able to work. I wouldn't physically be able to work with a couple of people who spring to mind immediately, ever again. And I wouldn't want to. I'd rather be destitute.

Eyal Levi (01:18:37):

I mean, there's some situations that are just not compatible, but I think it's good to recognize that though. I think that's,

Mark Dodson (01:18:46):

Oh, God, yeah.

Eyal Levi (01:18:46):

Yeah.

Mark Dodson (01:18:47):

And if they're lucky or if they're successful and off they go and be successful, I'm like, great. Good, good for you, mate. I'm glad you're successful. Not that I've ever noticed it last very long with those people.

Eyal Levi (01:18:57):

Well, you never know though. I'll just say that that's something that I had to grow up a little to start understanding that sometimes scenarios where I don't like somebody or don't want to work with somebody isn't because they're a bad person or anything. Sometimes you're just incompatible with certain people.

Mark Dodson (01:19:18):

Yeah, absolutely.

Eyal Levi (01:19:20):

Yeah. You can't be compatible with everybody.

Mark Dodson (01:19:22):

No, definitely not. Definitely not. And I've been lucky like that because when I got started, I needed management and I flew to America and tried to get management to forward my career. And it was a godsend that I met Doreen and Nando Kwright, who were both in the music industry at that time. I think Doreen's now into real estate, and they became my big brother and sister. They were just absolutely adorable people. Doreen particularly just, we just got on great. And she had Tony Visconti, max Norman, Eddie Kramer, and all these guys. And then I went in there and just talked to her and she said, yeah, we'll work with you. And I was like, really? She was like, yeah, I was so made up. I think I'd done Metal Church at that time. So there, and it was her that got me anthrax. I went to Germany to work with, accept a band called Accept German Band,

(01:20:21):

And then I mixed an album for them. And then I went on to do a couple of albums with Udo the Singer, which was a bit of a trip, funny times, but all good being in Germany somehow or other, Johnny C liked those records. And it was him. He knew Doreen and I got to work with Anthrax and Doreen helped pursue a lot of deals, suicidal thing, stuff like that. So Do And Ugly Joe, of course, which was probably the biggest selling record I've ever done. Again, it was her connections and her friends and the people that she knew. And we just had this great rapport that went on, and it was so great because when I flew to do the first Ugly Kidjo record, I got there two a and r guys, a guy called Bob sro, and another guy called Bobby Carlton. Bobby Carlton, bless his socks. He's a beautiful guy. And I got there and I went to this hotel before I met the boys. I'd already met them once when I was mixing an album in LA and we'd had a chat, and apparently I passed the trick question. There was a trick question,

Eyal Levi (01:21:30):

Do you know what it is now?

Mark Dodson (01:21:31):

I think it was something to do with Sin After Sin. I'm not quite sure. I kind of said, they said, oh, and I said, it's, yeah, it was a pretty shitty sounding record. And I think that was the trick question, but I'm not sure you got to love with Crane for all that stuff because he comes out with that stuff all the time. Crazy bugger. And I got to the hotel and there was a big bag, a big refuse sack behind the counter, and the guy said, oh, someone's left us here for you. And it's from the a and r Department Mercury Records. And it said on it, this is all the outboard gear you'll need for this record. And I opened it, and it was like pairs of flip flop shorts, beach balls, just stuffy on the beach. And I was like, oh, these guys are cool. We're going to have a good time. And when we did, we had the greatest time ever working with the ugly kids. So they're a delight to work with.

Eyal Levi (01:22:20):

It sounds like there's been a few key characters in your career that have served as keys, basically, that unlocked tons of stuff that came afterwards.

Mark Dodson (01:22:32):

Yeah, yeah. It's strange. You don't realize that. I did a couple of albums with a band called Prong, New York Bank Prong and Tommy the singer, he's a fantastic guy again, and I love working with those guys. They were great. And then one day I bumped into Rob Halford, a music conventional or something somewhere, and he came up to me and he said, mark, you said, I love that record. You dog with Prong. He says, those are fucking glad they, and I was like, wow, I didn't realize you'd even listen to it. But he had, and he really loved it, so that he appreciated what I'd done with

Eyal Levi (01:23:07):

Prom. Where did Mut Lang come into the picture?

Mark Dodson (01:23:09):

Only reason I got to know Mutt Lang was because he came to Ram Paul, the WHO studio, and I don't know who he was working with even now, but he was producing this band. And what I learned from Mutt Lang was you record everything and then figure it out in the mix. That's what he did. He used to record everything and figure it out in the mix. I think this was in the early days of his career, and so he just recorded everything. He was probably only at that studio.

Eyal Levi (01:23:35):

What do you mean by everything? Well,

Mark Dodson (01:23:37):

Any idea that anybody had, he would record it and say, okay. And even if he didn't think it was a great idea, he'd say, all right, it's not bad. Let's move on with this. So everybody was happy. They got their ideas put on recorded, but then he would move them around later and make it all work. He's predominantly a great songwriter and a great producer in his own, without a shadow of a doubt, a bit mechanical for my liking, but nonetheless, still very innovative and has done some fantastic work.

Eyal Levi (01:24:09):

I have heard him referred to as Pro Tools before, pro Tools.

Mark Dodson (01:24:13):

Yeah, that's a great way of describing. Is

Eyal Levi (01:24:15):

That accurate?

Mark Dodson (01:24:16):

Yeah, I would say, well, knowing what I know about the way that he recorded Def Leppard and how that worked, et cetera, and you think that totally would describe Mutt L in my mind because of the way that he would record guitars. Sometimes people said he record notes at a time and put them together. So that's a great way of describing him. And I think that to be able to have done it with tape makes it even more profound.

Eyal Levi (01:24:41):

It's insane to think about.

Mark Dodson (01:24:43):

It really is, because the thing that, and that was at that time was when I went off to do Defenders of the Faith, and they were all listening to Death Leard because he had that big fat snare drum.

(01:24:54):

And I was like, I know now that obviously he sampled it in an A MS, and that's how it worked. And I didn't really know about AMS at that time, and this is a fucking great story. So we went to Florida, we recorded everything, and we were over dub and in Florida, and in this studio there was a guy called Seth, and he had this thing, this is gospel truth. He had this strobe light that you could send a signal to, and it would make the strobe light flash, and the strobe light in turn would trigger this metal arm, and the arm would go like that. And me and Tom looked at each other and we went, wonder what would happen if we put a drumstick in that hand and put a snare drum underneath it and tuned it what it would be like.

Eyal Levi (01:25:47):

Well, making history right there.

Mark Dodson (01:25:50):

And then we put a glove on the metal hand as well. We had to have a glove heavy metal glove, and it would trigger and it would hit the snare, and we mic the snare up so that we could take this extra snare sound and mix it in with the original drums. And that's exactly what we did, but it was incredibly laborious because if the snare drum, what

Eyal Levi (01:26:11):

Year was this?

Mark Dodson (01:26:12):

Oh god, whatever year Defense of the faith was,

Eyal Levi (01:26:15):

I'm looking it up.

Mark Dodson (01:26:16):

I don't know what year that was.

Eyal Levi (01:26:18):

I need to need to know what year.

Mark Dodson (01:26:20):

Yeah, I can probably tell you. I say about 83, 84.

Eyal Levi (01:26:25):

Because that sounds like, I mean, that is sampling before sampling.

Mark Dodson (01:26:31):

Well, I think sampling may have existed, to be honest. I I wasn't very aware of it. That was probably my mistake for not knowing that you could actually do that with an A MS

Eyal Levi (01:26:40):

January 4th, 1984.

Mark Dodson (01:26:42):

Yeah, there you go.

Eyal Levi (01:26:43):

Okay, so you put a glove on it and you blended it in with the mix.

Mark Dodson (01:26:47):

Yeah, but of course when if there was a snare field, the metal alarm couldn't keep up with it, it would just stop and we'd have to go backwards and forwards. And I had to send a triggered signal to the light so that it didn't pick up more than it was meant to pick up from the original snare drum. So the initial signal that, so I had to keep trimming it and fiddling with it to get it to key. Exactly right. And we worked it all the way through the album. We did that, and we mixed it, then we mixed it in with the other drums, and it gave it a nice fat sound, which everybody loved. That was fun.

Eyal Levi (01:27:19):

Did it sound different, I guess, from the velocity of the machine?

Mark Dodson (01:27:24):

Yes, it could do. That's why it was imperative that we mixed it in with the original snare drum. So the original snare drum kept that velocity. So it was a delicate balance. Some songs, it was louder than other songs because it worked well, maybe something like Love Bites, which was on that album. It was a much actual song, defenders of the Faith. It was much more prevalent because you could get away with it there, but if the song was fast, but a lot of feel on it, you had to mix it down and just tuck it. So it didn't affect the vibe of the drummer, which I learned that that was a mistake to do because on a Metal church album on the Dark album, I did sample the snare drum and used that. And in retrospect, that was a mistake because it took away some of the feel of that the record did All right. Boys loved it. And I'm still great friends with the boys, and I went on to do another album with them. But I regret having done that. I think that wasn't what was right for that kind of band at all at that time. But again, I was learning.

Eyal Levi (01:28:28):

Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where you won't know till it's done sometimes or ever.

Mark Dodson (01:28:35):

Very true.

Eyal Levi (01:28:36):

Was there any latency between when the light went off and the arm came down?

Mark Dodson (01:28:40):

No. If it was, it was the speed of light, I guess it was. So it tripped us all out. It was fast, and we used to sit there watching it, and we would just sit and we would laugh. We would laugh so much watching this fucking metal arm with the glove on it now. We would've filmed that now, and it would've been part of everything. We would've been able to show that off to everybody. But Tom was great that there's one of the sounds on that album that it goes between it's Love Bites and someone, they've got this effect that goes and was like, well, what was that? What was that basically was there was a high hack count going on in that break, and Tom and I, we got a big ax and then we strapped a microphone on the ax and we dragged it around the car part and it made this sound, and I keyed it with the high hat it would, and that was how we created that sound. People go, wow, how did you do that? It was just one of them things.

Eyal Levi (01:29:39):

Is that something where you guys would say, I want to experiment with something, or it would be more like a light bulb, I just got this crazy idea, let's try this thing spur of the moment.

Mark Dodson (01:29:51):

Yeah, it would start as a Let's try something, and then it would manifest itself. Sometimes it didn't work, and then sometimes it would work, and then you'd go, wow, that's fucking great. Or sometimes you'd go, it doesn't work, forget it, move on. Let's try something else. But just because you knew that part of the song might need something to give it a little spark,

Eyal Levi (01:30:10):

So you're already open to seeing what the possibilities are.

Mark Dodson (01:30:14):

Absolutely. 100% always.

Eyal Levi (01:30:17):

Do you think that there's any point in a production or just making music in general where maybe it's wasting time to experiment? Where do you draw the line between this experimentation is the right thing versus we're just fucking around right now?

Mark Dodson (01:30:38):

I think again,

Eyal Levi (01:30:40):

Because I'm sure you've had experiences where it goes nowhere, right?

Mark Dodson (01:30:43):

Oh, absolutely. But you know where it's not working pretty much straight away, and sometimes it's not until you get to the mix where you've put an idea down that it actually go minute, let's just see what that did do. And then you go, wow, what about if I just did that to it? That might take it somewhere else. And then you find things that can work. I mean, that's one of the things that I like about logic is that you've got so many, and I don't use a lot of, there's so many extra plugins that I probably should try that I haven't got round to trying yet, but they're all at the tip your fingertips to get, you can just try anything. And it takes seconds to try a different guitar sound here or a different guitar sound there. And they've got so many variables of those guitar sounds within it within it that I find that can really help.

(01:31:30):

Well, I've never quite understood why some people buy all accounts they will, and I dunno how they do it particularly. I was talking to somebody that was mixing a heavy metal album, a guy here in England, and I dunno who the band was or anything, and he was telling me how he amped everything. And I was like, so you are telling me that the guy played this guitar, right? This guitar part heavy as all dinking? And he went, yeah. He said, this is the original. I said, how did it get any vibe? We're going ding, dinking dinking. He said, well, they just played it like that and I make it sound better later. Then he amps it, puts it through all this different, blah, blah, blah, rerecord it back and it sounds heavy as hell. And I go, oh, well, it's more than one way. Its skin cap. I guess

Eyal Levi (01:32:17):

The amping thing is I've always had mixed feelings about it because I've definitely been in scenarios where it saves the day. The original guitar tone wasn't that good. Like say you're mixing something that you didn't record and the guitar tone they gave you is not wonderful, but you got a di amping can make the difference right there. It can

(01:32:47):

Totally save your ass. But I've also been in scenarios where, say I've been the artist and working with a producer have experienced this where the producer is really into guitar tones and we're going on a hunt together and 10 days later we've got a tone and it's phenomenal, a hunt trying out a combination of 15 guitars with 15 amps with five calves for 10 days and that sort of thing. And you arrive at a tone and the whole time they know in their head they're going to reamp it later. So it makes me wonder, why did we sit there? Why did we do this? It never computed to me what the point was of going through all that trouble if you're just going to change it later. And then I've always felt like amping, it takes away a few percentage of awesomeness from the signal.

Mark Dodson (01:33:51):

Absolutely. Yep.

Eyal Levi (01:33:52):

However, it's a great fail safe. It's like a good parachute for when there's a bad job done.

Mark Dodson (01:33:59):

Yeah. And sadly, I appreciate what you're saying and I think that makes total sense. And I expect there are occasions and that people spend 10 days and they realize that the sound they had at the beginning was better than all of them.

Eyal Levi (01:34:14):

Yeah, you're right about that. The scenario I'm thinking of right now, we actually, we got the sound within the first day and then he wasn't cool with it. So we went and then the sound that we got 10 days later still wasn't as cool as the sound that happened on the first day, but no one knew how to get that sound back.

Mark Dodson (01:34:36):

See, I find that, I mean, I knew of a band in this country, they were called Little Angels and they had a guitar sound on something. They wanted to get it back. It became a story. They rented a car, a particular car to put the amplifi in, and they spent days putting this amplifier in a car outside the studio with all the leads, micing it all up, and they got this sound bite. And I'm like, do you really think that anybody gives a fuck? If you played it good, it would make a lot more difference. So a lot of times we have, you have scratch guitars and you might go, let's just use a scratch guitar here, and we might keep it, we may not keep it quite often, the scratch guitar, the vibe on it, and the fear of it was so superior to when you might have gone back and tried to get a nice fat heavy sound that you'd still keep that rough guitar sound and mix it in with it as well to give it that extra se. So again, there's no hard and fast rules to any of this, I don't think. But I do wonder how if you are meant to be paid you go, it's like really, it's not going to have the same vibe, is it really?

Eyal Levi (01:35:52):

I mean, you can use a software simulator, but it doesn't, one thing that I think people forget is that guitar players play to the tone.

Mark Dodson (01:36:01):

Yes.

Eyal Levi (01:36:02):

At least good guitar players do.

Mark Dodson (01:36:04):

Precisely.

Eyal Levi (01:36:05):

So even if you're using a great amp sim for getting the jug tone, it's still not going to react the same way as a different amp would. So you're going to play it differently. I've thought, again, no hard and fast rules, but I really think that amping is best for saving a bad situation. It's a good backup, but I've never heard a reamp be better than a great micing job that's done right then and there. I have heard it be better than a bad micing job though.

Mark Dodson (01:36:44):

Yeah. Oh yeah. I can imagine that would work. Yeah. Again, it's when you get to the mix, then everything can change at the mix moment. But invariably, if you've got good rhythm guitar sounds, that's a great start. You know that they're good rhythm sounds. You don't even have to EQ them. You just put 'em up and there they are. You go. That's great. That's a good place to be. It's like I listened to your podcast with Bobby.

Eyal Levi (01:37:11):

That's a good one.

Mark Dodson (01:37:12):

He sounds like a fantastic guy. He knows his shit for a start, and he's about the same age as me, and he started about the same time as me. And he knows his shit. And everything he says is pretty much spot on. Everything he says is pretty much spot on. But you know that if I was to send him something to mix, I know he would just balance it. He brings out what has happened within the band, that's his job. He brings out what's already there. It's just the way that he balances it that makes it sound great. It's just enhancing them by being great at balancing and he great at balancing. I modest and seems calm, very happy being quite content. I should imagine. You would be.

Eyal Levi (01:37:58):

I was going to say, one thing that I think you guys share in common, and I've noticed this also from a lot of people who have stuck around, is that they have an enthusiasm for it that never dies, where you see it sometimes with people as early as 10 years in, they'll start to burn out. And it doesn't mean that they're going to quit, but they might stagnate and just, for instance, stay at the local level forever or stay at a baby band level forever or do okay in one niche, but never, ever, ever expand from there. And what I've noticed is people who have an exciting long career tend to always be enthusiastic about it somehow.

Mark Dodson (01:38:51):

And even when there's times when it's not going as well as you'd like it to go, you still go back to the things that made you feel great, to keep you confident and happy about it, and you have to work with good people. The bottom line is a friend of mine once said, and it's a great sound, and I still used to stay, so you can't soar with the eagles if you work with turkeys. And it's so true. That's a good way

Eyal Levi (01:39:16):

To put it.

Mark Dodson (01:39:18):

But it's so true, and I've been very, very lucky to work with some fantastic people. It's made my life easier and made my job easier, but that just makes you have to be good at what you do as well because there's always someone's waiting to take your place like you so rightly said earlier.

Eyal Levi (01:39:37):

So that brings up a question. How have you dealt with harder times? How have you kept your, because obviously this is an up and down sort of business. I mean, I guess any business would be up and down, but especially this one.

Mark Dodson (01:39:56):

Yeah, well totally this one. I mean, it's definitely a case of feast or famine. And there have been times where no one's banging on my door to ask me to do this or to ask me to do that. And when you're a man that's got a wife and got kids, you've got to put bread on the table and it becomes part of your life to have to do that. And what I created a business that sustained us and kept us alive. And it wasn't a business that I enjoyed in any way, shape, or form. The only thing I enjoyed about it was being successful at it. And basically it was an online business that sold office supplies. And I thought, this is the shittiest thing I could ever do in my whole life. I hated it, but I thought, if I'm going to do this, I better be fucking good at it. So I built a website, which was one challenge, which I did.

Eyal Levi (01:40:48):

When was this?

Mark Dodson (01:40:50):

Oh god. I started it about 20 years ago,

Eyal Levi (01:40:55):

Just

Mark Dodson (01:40:55):

Started. So it's been on and off. So I started it and I thought, if I'm going to do this, I better be fucking good at it. And then as I started it, I mean, it was harsh because I was literally walking in the streets, banging on people's doors to get work. It was horrible business as well. It's like really? It's not that exciting. It's not sexy at all

Eyal Levi (01:41:14):

Compared to working with Judas Priest.

Mark Dodson (01:41:16):

Well, yeah, exactly. And funnily enough, I remember Glenn ringing me one day when I was putting shit in boxes. I was loading boxes up, and Glenn rang me and from priests and we were chatting and he said to me, and I always remember people that make statements that make you go, and he said, how are you doing anyway? I said, I'd be alright if I wasn't putting shit in boxes. And he said, it puts food on the table, doesn't it? And I was like, yeah. He said, there you go, mark. Get on with it. And funnily enough, I remember Ken Laguna saying to me, Ken Laguna said to me before he was producing records. He's like, I used to load boxes. That's what I had to do. I had to load boxes to put food on the table. Now I'm a producer, now I'm going, fuck me.

(01:41:57):

I was the producer, now I'm loading boxes. I've gone around the wrong way. Done it all wrong here. But doing it, I thought, well, if I'm going to do it, I better be good at it. So I went at it and I got customers like Google and Facebook and Expedia, and I got big customers. So that vindicated or made me feel not quite as bad about it. And I turned it into a million pound business. So it put food on the table. I was employing people. And then a few years ago, I amalgamated it with another company. And then literally, I don't know, three weeks ago, I terminated the whole thing and said, right, I've had enough of this. I, because I'm doing other music stuff now as well, and always have done bits here and bits there, albeit that it doesn't pay. It used to, it doesn't matter.

(01:42:43):

It just makes me feel so much more alive and so much more of a person. And it makes me feel like my children will respect me more. I think if I'm doing something like that rather than a stupid, I'm not saying it's stupid. It did put food on the table and I have to be grateful for that. But it wasn't the best time of my life. I didn't have a great time doing it. It was difficult. And everybody has hard times in their lives. And so I think that's a measure of how you come through it.

(01:43:17):

My wife had an accident three years ago where she got hit by a car and suffered brain damage, but thank God she's alive today and she's getting better and doing really well. But again, that's a huge strain on a family when you've got a 14-year-old boy. He's 17 now. When he was 14 when it happened, and Tommy was like, oh my God, I don't know how I'm supposed to deal with this. And Molly, my daughter and my old daughter, all these people all came into the equation and all these other people, friends from this area, that area, all came together and helped us all through that period. And now we're coming out the other side of it. And life's like that though, isn't it? And it's like, you've got to keep punching. Keep punching. I went to, about 20 years ago, I went to Czechoslovakia or wherever it was, where there was the war, just out in Macedonia.

(01:44:07):

There was a war. And I went there to deliver goods in a convoy. And I met a guy called George on this trip, and George, now George works in charity and he's built a big center in Chernobyl or just outside Chernobyl in cher gov for kids that have all been affected by what happened to them in Chernobyl. I mean, there's the fallout from that. It's ridiculous. And I went with George to there and saw all these poor kids and one thing or another, and George is hero to me. And whenever I speak to George, he just says to me, keep punching, mark. Keep punching. And I always think that keep punching, you got to keep punching. You can never stop.

Eyal Levi (01:44:43):

Is that the mentality that you kept while the shit was going down?

Mark Dodson (01:44:47):

Yeah, I had to keep punching. Always, always keep punching and be there for you kids and be there for everybody around them. And it's hard because a lot of things make you, it's hard not to let anybody see all that. I always remember my man, he always seemed to keep everything together and haven't seemed to phase him.

Speaker 3 (01:45:04):

And

Mark Dodson (01:45:04):

I always thought that was fucking good that he managed to do that because he had hard times too. So I tried, but I want my kids to see me being, because like you so rightly said, when I'm talking about music and all the things that I've done in music, when I went down the pub the other day, I was chatting some people about some of the stuff that I've done, and I could feel myself become this different person, this elated, joyful, happy, grateful person that's just like so got so much more to give to people. So it's imperative that I surround myself with that music. And I've got a few little acts now that I've found. I've got a little girl singer that Robert from Robert Trujillo really loves as well. I've got this kid, she's a fantastic little singer, and I'm now starting to say, right, how can I make that work? How can I make that work and how can I, so I've got a lot of different things going on in my head like that. And as I said to you, I've got the thing with Benji that I'm talking about doing as well from skin, which would be great. And the other thing is I'm now going to start being much more active about working with bands and saying, no click.

Eyal Levi (01:46:14):

Like I said before, I really do think that bands are much more receptive to that now than they were even 10 years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:46:22):

Yeah,

Eyal Levi (01:46:23):

The no click thing is spreading, by the way, on the topic of Chernobyl. Interesting that you bring that up. That's kind of a near and dear topic to my heart because my family was Poland when that happened. My dad was doing some concerts and we just happened to be there. Family trip to Poland. Yeah, so the Chernobyl exploded. And even though it didn't happen in Poland. I mean, it's basically right next door. So the whole country got shut down. Airports were shut down. The food supply got interrupted, so we couldn't order food, we couldn't eat anything. Suddenly there was military everywhere. We got shipped on a train, which is kind of weird for a Jewish family in Poland,

(01:47:18):

Basically getting put on a train, like a World War II era, train by armed guards. But it was, I mean, I'm talking about something that happened when I was really young, so I don't remember it super clearly. I just remember we couldn't eat any food. There was a lot of military. It was super scary. We got shuttled around and then for, I remember the last time when we were finally leaving that the airplane had a military convoy leading to it and then armed guards on it. I guess it was a fucked up time period. But yeah, I got radiation testing for the next

Mark Dodson (01:47:58):

Several

Eyal Levi (01:47:59):

Years after that.

Mark Dodson (01:48:00):

Did you?

Eyal Levi (01:48:01):

Yeah, I don't glow yet, so I think I'm all right.

Mark Dodson (01:48:06):

I think you'll be all right by now. Yeah, I was totally astounded by the impact it had on Chernikoff, which was a town probably 20 miles from Chernobyl and what George and his wife did for those people and the children, there is nothing short of phenomenal. I call him St. George because he's such an incredible bloke. He's like 85 and he's still going there looking after these people. But when I saw some of the effects on the people that they're the children and the way that it just leaves you,

Eyal Levi (01:48:38):

It's crazy.

Mark Dodson (01:48:39):

It just humbles you beyond.

Eyal Levi (01:48:41):

Yeah, we weren't even there. We were hundreds of miles away, and it was still serious. I can only imagine what it was like for people who were closer. I know that, for instance, my parents didn't let me get x-rays at the doctor for

Mark Dodson (01:48:57):

Forever.

Eyal Levi (01:48:58):

It wasn't until I was an adult that I finally was like, I'll take the risk. Let's take an x-ray, kind of want to know if there's anything wrong with me.

Mark Dodson (01:49:08):

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Might as well find out. But it's funny, isn't it? How life does all those things too, and they all impact you. I think you have to have that kind of rounded experiences of life where some people have it early in their days, some people middle, some people have at the end of their lives. I speak to Glen Tipton now, and I don't know, everybody seems, knows that Glen's got Parkinson's disease and he suffers from it, and then he fell over and broke his foot, and then he done something to his back. Then he got run over. I mean, this bloke been I, if you didn't have bad luck, you wouldn't have no luck at all. And he's like, yeah, I know. He says, but I'm lucky. I, and I was like, you're lucky. And he goes, yeah. He says, I've got my grandchildren. He says, got my friends and my wife, and I've got this and that. And he says, I'm a lucky guy. I'm a lucky Jim. He says, and I say, man, you fucking blow me away. You're a man and a half. I love you.

Eyal Levi (01:50:07):

Did he always have that kind of attitude?

Mark Dodson (01:50:09):

Yeah, he's always been an exceptional person in so many ways.

Eyal Levi (01:50:14):

I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised at all. Is that pretty common among those historical bands that they're kind of filled with historical people, or do you find that sometimes it doesn't matter, sometimes the people, well, you said earlier that you feel like the personality sometimes matches the music.

Mark Dodson (01:50:37):

Yeah, well, it does. I think I've probably been really fortunate in as much as I've rubbed shoulders with so many people that are of that ilk, that are that special, like the whit cranes of this world, wit's a terminal. He's a terminal. I was going to say Tramp. Tramp, but he's a vagabond. He looks like a tramp. But what a unique person that he's so unique and so special that I've been privileged for him to be one of my best friends for so long, from so long ago. And I introduced him to Rob Halford and Rob came and sang on their record and Glenn Tipton, and everybody knows everybody and Rob Trujillo, and we are great friends as well. And all of those people are all great. We could all be in a room together and we would all have probably the best time ever all get on so well, I just happened to get on with all these people. Great. Because I like them. There's a lot of people, like we said earlier, that I probably wouldn't get on with quite so well. But yeah, I think that's true. They're so unique. These people, Tommy Lee, a unique dude, but a great character. Someone you'd like to go out to dinner with and hang out with another go and play golf with or whatever, that people like that just Mike Mu is a great example of a person like that, that I've forever hold in highest thing. So yeah, I'm a lucky boy from that point of view.

Eyal Levi (01:52:10):

Yeah, man, I've noticed the same thing from the people I grew up around or people I've worked with that the more interesting their output is, the more interesting they are as people. And it's actually pretty rare in my experience, to meet somebody who's an incredible artist or something or an incredible entrepreneur, something like that, that requires super high level creativity and uniqueness. It's rare for them to do something great and then be kind of boring, unmemorable people.

Mark Dodson (01:52:49):

Yeah, it would be disappointing, wouldn't it? I think.

Eyal Levi (01:52:52):

Yeah. It's rarely ever happened. It's the exception. Well, anyways, mark, I think this is a good place to stop it. It's been a pleasure meeting you and talking to you.

Mark Dodson (01:53:04):

You, it's been a pleasure talking to you too. I don't really know your history very much, but I would like to know it.

Eyal Levi (01:53:10):

I'll give you the shortened version. Come from a musical family. Dad's a conductor, was in a band that got signed a roadrunner for three albums, wrote on and Century Media. We did a death metal band. We toured the world a bunch. Did that whole thing.

Mark Dodson (01:53:29):

What was the band name?

Eyal Levi (01:53:30):

It was called Doth, probably never heard of it. So did that. Then also have produced a bunch and engineered and decently known metal bands. And then about five years ago started URM, which the online school, and here we are. The podcast has been going in parallel to it,

Mark Dodson (01:53:53):

And you're enjoying every minute of it, I should imagine.

Eyal Levi (01:53:56):

Interestingly enough, I never thought I would, but I kind of like doing this better than I enjoyed doing the band or production, which I never would've thought back when I was doing guitar as my main thing. If you had told me that this is what would happen, I wouldn't have believed it.

Mark Dodson (01:54:19):

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's great that it has, isn't it? I bet.

Eyal Levi (01:54:22):

Absolutely.

Mark Dodson (01:54:23):

You must be so happy that it has worked out like this.

Eyal Levi (01:54:27):

It suits me way better. There were lots of issues I had with doing a band professionally, or there's reasons for why production or mixing, not that I dislike it or have any problem with it, but there's intricacies of doing that for a living that aren't right for me, of my personality type, I think. And however, my expertise is in music. So it was kind of weird to work so long at something and then realize I didn't really want to do the thing I had worked for. And then when I figured this out, it kind of satisfied it all because I've been able to use all the expertise I built up over the years, all the connections I built up over the years, everything kind of came together. It was like a perfect storm. So yeah, I am very happy this worked out.

Mark Dodson (01:55:25):

And also what you're doing hopefully, hopefully helps everybody that aspires to be doing what the likes of Bobby Clear Mountain and yourself and I do. It gives them some kind of insight to it and maybe confirm some of their thoughts and their beliefs, beliefs that help them move forward and be better at what they do.

Eyal Levi (01:55:46):

Absolutely. Well, so since I came up in the classical world, my experience is that art is something that's formally taught and passed on. And it doesn't mean that artists can be formally created, but at least the disciplines are passed on in a way that's recorded into history. But this genre of music that we're in, I wasn't there at the beginning of it, but I mean, I got in the nineties and what I noticed was that nobody was really passing it on to anybody except for in very, very limited capacity, like an intern learning from somebody. Great. Which is cool. But I felt like in some ways it was going to me, if I played it out over decades in my head, that was going to hurt the genre overall.

Mark Dodson (01:56:45):

Absolutely.

Eyal Levi (01:56:45):

Whereas every other genre on Earth you can study formally, there's a way for them to pass that knowledge down. There is zero for rock and metal. So my hope was that we could do our part to create that, which is kind of weird because rocket metal is supposed to be non-formal and rebellious and all that stuff

Speaker 3 (01:57:10):

At

Eyal Levi (01:57:10):

Its core. But at the end of the day, technique is technique, right?

Mark Dodson (01:57:15):

Absolutely. Absolutely. And being able to capture that technique is exactly that as well. And equally, the kids of today, and again, no disrespect that, they go and I say to 'em, what do you study? They go, I'm studying record production. And I go, well, how do you study record production? How do you do that they're doing at university? And they said, I've going to go and record. One of the kids said to me, I've got to go and record a snare drum for part of my lesson. He said, but I dunno how to do it. And I was like,

Eyal Levi (01:57:45):

I'm not surprised

Mark Dodson (01:57:46):

You're in trouble right at the beginning, but there you go. But

Eyal Levi (01:57:49):

We just so you know, we, one comment that we get all the time at URM is, wow, I learned more in two months with you guys than four years at this huge audio university. And the thing that we do that's super important, I think key, my experience is that the only way that I got better was when someone who did it in real life who was really good showed me that's how people get better. And I also went to a school, I went to Berkeley, and so I know what it's like to be mentored by somebody. Great. And I know what it's like to be mentored by somebody that's not great. I know that difference. And so what we try to do is get people who have done it for real to pass it on. It's not just anybody. And that's been very successful for us, and I think it's why our students do well as opposed to your regular audio university. That's not great.

Mark Dodson (01:58:47):

Yeah. Do you have practical workshops for 'em as well then?

Eyal Levi (01:58:51):

Yes. Obviously not right now, but it started that way. It started as me doing these things in person.

Speaker 3 (01:59:02):

Wow.

Eyal Levi (01:59:02):

So I'd go to a city, I'd find an artist who was well-known enough, and we'd take over a studio for 50 hours and sell 10 seats. And basically it's like a paid pseudo internship where we walk through every single step, but with a real artist as opposed to just some local bandit. It started like that, and those results are kind of what informed it. And so even if a lot of it can't be done in person, we do everything possible to get people doing things in real life. And then we also do in-person events when possible.

Mark Dodson (01:59:48):

Brilliant. Well, I think it's probably going to be very successful for a long time. Hope

Eyal Levi (01:59:52):

So.

Mark Dodson (01:59:53):

Yeah, I hope so too. And

Eyal Levi (01:59:54):

It's been the delight.

Mark Dodson (01:59:55):

Delightful chatting to you.

Eyal Levi (01:59:57):

Likewise.

Mark Dodson (01:59:57):

Hopefully we'll meet in person one day.

Eyal Levi (02:00:00):

Yeah, man. Before 2027.

Mark Dodson (02:00:02):

Yeah. Why before then?

Eyal Levi (02:00:03):

Because quarantine.

Mark Dodson (02:00:05):

Oh, you think it's going to last that long?

Eyal Levi (02:00:06):

No, I'm kidding. I do think it's going to last till middle of 2021.

Mark Dodson (02:00:12):

Yeah. I think it probably will. Particularly in America at the moment.

Eyal Levi (02:00:16):

Yeah. Americans going to other countries. I don't foresee it happening till next year.

Mark Dodson (02:00:23):

I don't either. Scary times.

Eyal Levi (02:00:25):

Yeah. But there have been scarier times.

Mark Dodson (02:00:28):

Yeah, there have. Have indeed. Alright, thank you very much for everything. It's lovely meeting you.

Eyal Levi (02:00:33):

Likewise, man. Have a good one. Okay. Then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends, as well as post them to your Facebook, Instagram, or any social media you use. Please tag me at ai levy URM audio, and of course, please tag my guests as well. Till next time, happy mixing. You've been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.