MIKE EXETER: Producing Black Sabbath, the psychology of production, turning down Cradle of Filth

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, and now your host, Eyal Levi. 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.

(00:00:55):

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. My guest today is Grammy winning producer engineer Mike Exeter, who you know for his work with Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and many, many more. I welcome Mike Exeter. Mike Exeter. Welcome to the URM Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:01:43):

Thank you very much for having me. Lovely to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:01:45):

Nice to talk to you again, man. I had a really good time getting to meet you in England, what was it, almost a year and a half ago now.

Speaker 2 (00:01:54):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:01:54):

Time fucking flies,

Speaker 2 (00:01:56):

Doesn't it? It's not like anything's happened this year, so no. Where's the time gone?

Speaker 1 (00:02:01):

It's been the most uneventful year of my life.

Speaker 2 (00:02:03):

I know

Speaker 1 (00:02:05):

It's weird. We're saying that as a joke, but in some ways that is kind of true.

Speaker 2 (00:02:10):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:02:11):

In terms of going places,

Speaker 2 (00:02:13):

Yeah, it's been strange this year, but I would say so far, and I'm going to touch wood, it's kind of been business as usual. We learn to adapt we as we go along our industry. So although the live industry is definitely feeling it, I've noticed for now, yeah, a change in people in the recorded industry, but it's made people focus when they can and when they don't feel it, then that's fine too. But I've been busy. It's been good.

Speaker 1 (00:02:43):

I'm not surprised to hear that most every single good mixer producer I know has reported that. I haven't talked to a single one of the people who come on this podcast or do nail the mixer, whatever. None of them have reported not doing okay during this. The only people I've heard not doing okay from are professional guitar techs tour managers, though a lot of them are figuring it out. They're figuring out what they can do, and I feel bad for them, but I'd like to know your opinion, but I firmly believe that once the world feels a little bit more secure, that live events will not only return but kind of explode.

Speaker 2 (00:03:31):

Yeah, I agree. I think mean even in the last few weeks, we're getting some real positive looks at potential vaccines, potential treatments, and I think when the nerves go away a little bit more and people can rationalize things, and there's been certain political events going on on both sides of the pond as well, which have taken our mind off things. I think once people get out of global panic, then people will feel definitely more comfortable to go, Hey, let's not get back to normal. I'm not sure the normal was great, but let's improve it. Let's really go with what we miss, the things that we really, really love. So

Speaker 1 (00:04:11):

Here's the thing about normal that I find interesting is I'm sure you've noticed at the end of every year there's a bunch of people who make posts saying how terrible the year was. I can't wait for 2019 to be over. I can't wait for 2018 to be over. Hopefully next year is better than this year. This year was fucking brutal, terrible. I always see that stuff. And so when people, not necessarily you because you're an aware human, but when people talk about going back to normal, I just think back, your experience is relative, right? When you think you're suffering, it's all with the exception of getting tortured or something like that. It's all relative to what. So if you don't know what lockdown and the pandemic and all that is, then that's not going to factor into your experience of what a bad year is and what you perceive as a bad year. And so people have thought that every year is the worst year so far every year that I can remember. So what exactly do they want to go back to?

Speaker 2 (00:05:12):

Exactly. I mean, I always look at things I have to quote Homer Simpson when Bart's tied up naked against the post and he says, this is the worst day ever. And he goes so far it's like so far you have to look at it like that. So I know you and I have both been through some horrendous stuff in the past, but yeah, you kind of go, well, we're still here. We're still doing stuff we love every day, brings fresh challenges every day isn't awesome, but I have a hell of a lot more awesome days than shit days

Speaker 1 (00:05:43):

And every day has never been awesome. No, I think there's this interesting human tendency to romanticize or idealize the past. I think it's because we don't have infinite memories, so there's only going to be very specific things that stick out either really, really good or really, really bad. And I think for the most part, most of us have more good things in our lives than bad, at least in the western world. And so we're going to remember more and more of those things over time. They're going to outweigh the bad, and so we'll look back at an idealized past and think that it was perfect or think that it was much better and not remember that we were suffering then too.

Speaker 2 (00:06:24):

Well, interestingly, you say a lot of people will look back and go, where's the time gone? Where's the year gone? Well, it's because as you say, and there's been no real highs and lows, ridiculous highs and lows, so therefore the year has just gone as normal. Time moves on as we get older, we go, the days are moving quicker. No, they're not. We're just busy. We experience stuff differently. But if everything was memorable, then we'd be having a real roller coaster. We're going along on a kind of an average year, the new average.

Speaker 1 (00:06:54):

I don't want everything to be crazy. That's actually one of the reasons that I wanted to start my own company and not necessarily be at the whim of the music industry, and it's because of my tolerance for dramas and fires that don't matter is very low. I'm thinking that if every single thing was memorable, it would be kind of like that. But life wide, you know what I'm talking about. When there's some minor issue that goes wrong and it would be easy to solve in five minutes, but people's management and label get involved and suddenly there's a CC chain with 20 people about this one little issue that could have just been taken care of, but suddenly it's like this person talked to that person and this is going to cause this problem and it's this huge rollercoaster explosion. I'm not a fan of that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:07:50):

I mean, that goes out to all of the people that shouldn't be involved in an email chain while we're trying to make a record. You have a band in another room and there's 20 people trying to organize the start time for tomorrow's session. It's like you open the door and you ask them and then you inform the management.

Speaker 1 (00:08:07):

Yeah, so what's interesting about that to me is dealing with artists and on my end now dealing with producers also who have that kind of relationship with their management where when we're working on whatever we're working on, they're obviously awesome in charge individuals, but then I'll say something like, so want to start tomorrow at noon or whenever and they have to get the team involved, and it's like, no, you don't. What's your take on that?

Speaker 2 (00:08:38):

It is quite interesting. I had a short period of time with a guy managing me. He's a really good friend of mine, and things that happened this year with him changing his day job and stuff meant that we just terminated that. It was always a friendly arrangement and he's a great guy and he was very, very helpful, but in the end, he was more of a confidant and someone that I could actually lean on to maybe run interference a bit, but I'm still capable of writing my own invoices, making my own calls and communicating with people. And it's not that thing of, well, I can do all this stuff, so why am I giving away 15%? It was just like it didn't seem any point in continuing going along this route when it naturally came to an end because it's a very, very much a people business. I love having conversations with people because generally you try to get to the artist or the main creative as soon as possible. Therefore, why would you have someone involved in any decision-making except maybe to argue with someone about a contract, at which point you may as well have a lawyer involved.

Speaker 1 (00:09:48):

Yes, exactly. Because they sure are going to have a lawyer

Speaker 2 (00:09:52):

Involved. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:09:53):

The way I saw it too was why have somebody else talk to the teams if those teams are going to be the same people that you deal with next year and the year after and the year after on various projects. I mean, most reputable teams or team members in the label world or management worlds or whatever are people that I bump into over and over and over and over. So why would I want to outsource that relationship when beyond the project I'm working on right now, this is someone who is probably going to be important to me. I mean, I can't tell you how many people have made a difference in URM now that were a part of my life between 2006 and 2009 for instance, or 2010 when my band was touring and then I didn't talk to them for nine years, and then suddenly they manage one of the artists we need to license for now, the mix and boom, the relationship's there. And if I hadn't taken an active role and just let my manager handle everything, I wouldn't have those relationships. And it's not that we couldn't have built it now, but it's so much easier when you already know people.

Speaker 2 (00:11:07):

Yeah, it takes a long time to develop any kind of relationship, and it's really important to do so. I mean, especially once in the creative side, you're going to be dealing with these people. We don't tend to do the 16 hour days anymore, thank God, but if you're going to spend that amount of time in the room with someone for a few days, you better sure as hell know, you're going to be able to get on with them. So the dialogue starts early and then those relationships have this natural thing that stand the test of being put in that pressure cooker later. So it goes on every level. I think most of the advice I give to people that I come across is developing vocabulary and communication skills ahead of anything technical because it's the most important thing to be able to describe stuff and hold a conversation.

Speaker 1 (00:11:56):

Have you noticed that oftentimes there will be a criticism, you'll hear about a member of a band or an engineer who isn't as good as you think they should be, but somehow they're successful And people will be wondering how, and what I've noticed is that member of that band is always the one who got them the Slayer tour or is friends with the guys in Metallica or something like that. That guy isn't in there by charity. I mean, if he's not that good, someone else will plays parts in the studio, but there's a reason he's in the band. And I feel like with the engineers who aren't quote that great, usually there's something about them that makes it work. People love being around them for extended periods of time. Maybe they're great at picking songs and the audience doesn't care if the mix isn't the most amazing thing on earth, but because it's the right song, there's always some reason even if we don't understand what it is.

Speaker 2 (00:12:56):

Well, Trevor Horne, I mean he's fairly successful. He ran studios in well all over, but in his UK studios, he used to put anybody that wanted to be an intern or an assistant, he put 'em on reception for weeks so that they got to meet the client. He didn't let them anywhere near the actual control room until he found out whether or not these people could communicate with

Speaker 1 (00:13:19):

People

Speaker 2 (00:13:19):

Coming in and out of the studio. And it's important. And then he probably promptly told them to shut up for the next year of their career. And quite rightly too,

Speaker 1 (00:13:29):

I mean you have to know,

Speaker 2 (00:13:30):

We hate assistances that talk up.

Speaker 1 (00:13:32):

No, I know. Well, I know you're saying that as a joke, but I feel like one of the most surefire ways to ruin the vibe in a session is to have somebody who doesn't have rapport with the artist giving their 2 cents basically not asked for unsolicited advice.

Speaker 2 (00:13:52):

Well, I've had it where I've had lots and lots of phone calls with people and we've met up and we've gone over stuff, and then I've noticed a weird vibe between two members. And it's because the bass player going out with a guitar or ex girlfriend and the dynamic isn't very happy in the band. So you kind of try and maneuver them to not be having to make decisions together that might turn into an argument. And then so you might have to say, well, we won't do that now because I'm going to use that piece of gear on this later. Let's carry on with this. And then a really well-meaning assistant might go, oh, it's okay. I've already called it here. I can set it up for you. And you're like,

Speaker 1 (00:14:33):

Ah,

Speaker 2 (00:14:33):

That wasn't the reason we weren't doing it. I don't want this guy to punch the other guy out, and just simple stuff like that. So yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:14:43):

It's simple, but it takes understanding. I think the process of developing that understanding isn't simple. It's simple when you explain it like this. So that brings me to something that I've wondered about a lot. I feel like when people are working for you, you probably should be pretty transparent with them. Transparency is great. At the same time though, that situation you just said where you have a reason for this and maybe that reason is private, maybe it's none of that assistance business why those two band members don't get along. Maybe you're privy to that info because they've known you for 10 years,

Speaker 2 (00:15:23):

But

Speaker 1 (00:15:24):

This 19-year-old kids not their personal friend or hasn't worked on three of their records or whatever, and maybe they don't want him to know, or maybe it's none of his business. Same thing when making decisions. Sometimes maybe there's a bigger picture to the decision I'm making. I have a plan for this, but I don't want to tell people the plan because it's going to distract them and they're not going to totally understand it, and I might need to waste a bunch of time. So it's not really about keeping it from them, but it's also there's a certain point where people don't need to know.

Speaker 2 (00:15:58):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:15:59):

How do you define that?

Speaker 2 (00:16:00):

I don't know. I mean, it's different in every situation, isn't it? I'm sure everybody who you talk to talks about the psychology that's involved in production, and it's probably the biggest part of my job because the technical side is riding a bike. You do it long enough, you learn not to fall off, hopefully. Hopefully. So the psychology part of it is really important, and these become unwritten things that you just do and have a sixth sense for, and it's like being in the zone for anything. When you're in a psychological treatment of a particular dynamic in a room, you haven't really got time to explain it to someone, but you also would break yourself out of that by having to put it into words to someone. So it's indefinable really. It's like it's just something that you do the more experienced, you pick up on body language and things that are being said and you learn to navigate it, and I guess you do it by mistakes. I don't think that really answered your question of how do you define it, but I don't know.

Speaker 1 (00:17:12):

Well, saying that it's more of a feel thing is answering the question. I think it is. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:17:18):

How

Speaker 1 (00:17:18):

Long did it take you to the point where you started to feel like you were understanding what's going on in the room or even knowing that you had to understand what's going on in the room?

Speaker 2 (00:17:30):

I think I understood it earlier than I was able to actually practice what I should be doing. I call them withering looks. Some of my earliest engineers that I worked for perfected that thing. I hope I don't do it to people like the death stares from the engineer. I'm really easygoing. But yeah, I used to get just that look across the room of you've crossed a line and it wasn't for anything major. Well, I guess it was for something major, but to me it was just what I suggested was this not a musical suggestion, just like you could try this piece of gear and there was a reason not, but it took a while. I guess it was when I first started doing longer album projects. I think the difference between doing the odd demo and a couple of singles or just doing the piecemeal day work that we used to do as resident engineers, we'd be going from one thing to another.

(00:18:28):

So we didn't really develop relationships. It was once, and it didn't matter so much to us if we'd upset a client, I know that sounds awful, but it didn't because they were kind of only in for a day and then they'd go and that was it, and we'd learn from it. But it was when you're stuck in that process for maybe a month with the same people, you pretty much realize that something you've done has made the atmosphere go bad for a couple of days, and that's so unconducive to the work getting done. So I guess I was probably good 10 years in easily and on specific projects with some of the higher profile people. It was a lot earlier, but then I wasn't producing, so I was very much fly on the wall and a little bit nervous of the whole room to start with.

Speaker 1 (00:19:14):

Was it a big mental transition to go from the daily basically for higher style recording into actual projects? I mean, I guess they're all actual projects, but

Speaker 2 (00:19:27):

But it was a fun one because it felt like you are actually doing what the big boys did. Even though I was working at really nice commercial studio, this one was owned by UB 40. That was my first real big gig, and I became head engineer there and I was kind of like, oh, this is great. But I had all these pressures of being responsible for the studio. I had a tech and I had a studio manager, but it was my baby. Whereas when I was able to actually go, Hey, I'm actually now on this project for the next four weeks, six weeks, I'll still be able to kind of do the odd meeting and come in early and do stuff, but I'm on this. That transitioned into actually doing it for real for me. It was kind of everything I always wanted. I wanted to be the guy in the Aerosmith video, Mike Frazier or whoever making Pump. It was like, that was my thing. Or Bob Rock and Randy Staub. So I was living that.

Speaker 1 (00:20:27):

Yeah, you didn't want to just be the studio owner who is around these projects. You want to be making these projects.

Speaker 2 (00:20:33):

Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:20:35):

How did that happen? Because a lot of people don't make that transition.

Speaker 2 (00:20:40):

Funnily enough, I was doing a lot of local bands to, this is in Birmingham, which is about 20 miles away.

Speaker 1 (00:20:48):

Where are you by the way?

Speaker 2 (00:20:49):

I'm in Warwick, which is between Oxford and Birmingham.

(00:20:53):

So I was doing a lot of the higher quality stuff at the studio, and then we opened it up to, we changed the rooms around, put an SSL in, and it became a two room facility with SSL 48 track analog mixing. What was it before? It was a DDA. It was still 48 analog, and the downstairs studio was a 24 analog with a little amac, Angela that all got swapped around. It became sort of a good feeder facility. People would come through and track downstairs and then mix upstairs. And I did a few projects there, local ones. And then as it became more commercial, and because it was quite close, it was the best studio in Birmingham and it was close to the NEC, which is the big arena. We'd get people coming through on tour and they would start to need to either do writing or in some cases we'd mix their live album that they just tracked and get it done so that they could then carry on their tour. We'd do lots of that kind of stuff. And then during one summer, I had a call, I was only in there, maybe been there a couple of years, and I had a call from Craig Fils manager saying that they wanted to record in Birmingham. They had an affinity for the place and would I be interested as the head engineer in spearheading the project and I'd get a production credit. And I was like, so I listened to it and I went, Nope, no thank you. Because I was really into Prague.

Speaker 1 (00:22:26):

That's quite a departure from Prague.

Speaker 2 (00:22:29):

It really was. And what's funny is it's about the only thing I've actually ever turned down because I was like, I just don't know if this is my sort of thing. And what happened with it was a turning point in my career because although I turned down producing it, I got heavily involved in it because it turned out that the keyboard player was less than stellar on the keyboards. And so

Speaker 1 (00:22:57):

They came to the studio anyways.

Speaker 2 (00:22:59):

Yeah, because was, I think, I'm trying to think what happened with the band, but they'd split and Danny was now with a new bunch of people, this is back in 1994 or five something around then. And he went in with the multitracks and they needed to kind of do all new instrumentation on the stuff that had been tracked so that the previous members couldn't the old story of Let's erase the parts that were done by people who might have a claim on this. So they came to the studio and initially we ran through creating them all rough mixes so they could actually get a feel for where the album was at. I think it had been a while since they tracked it originally. And then Band's manager is married to and was then a guy called Kit Waln, who is a great producer who'd been responsible for, he worked with Tony Visconti for a long time, so he'd done Bowie and Sin Lizzie, and he moved into some heavier stuff.

(00:23:57):

He did Magnum's first album or the big one that he did, it's kind of Softish Rock, but getting to classic rock, he came in and produced the album. And within that timeframe, within probably about three weeks, I was in Studio two playing keyboards and doing orchestrations. And then I became the engineer, his assistant on the mix. And it was at that point, it was a good three months, three or four months period at that point, he suddenly announced that a friend of his was songwriting with some mates over nearby, and he'd go and get them, and it turned out his mate was Tony omi. So he brought Tony into the studio to do some mixing, some tracks they were working on, and then Kit had to go off and do some other stuff. And that was my first thing where I then started working with Tony doing some demo stuff.

Speaker 1 (00:24:49):

So that's interesting. I wonder if you had said yes to producing it

Speaker 2 (00:24:54):

If

Speaker 1 (00:24:55):

You would've had that experience.

Speaker 2 (00:24:57):

Absolutely not. And I always look back at that. That's one of the turning points that you just don't even think about. You go, well, that was meant to be, wasn't it?

Speaker 1 (00:25:05):

Yeah. Because it seems weird to think back on turning down cradle of filth, right?

Speaker 2 (00:25:10):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:25:10):

I think people now might not understand how much they mattered at that point in time. They were very big. I mean, they're still well known, but they were a force of nature in the mid late nineties

Speaker 2 (00:25:24):

They were. And as a result of that first album, that was Dusk and Her Embrace, that was the album we did, or Kip produced, and I did that stuff on, and then within a couple of years they were back and I was co-producing with a guy called Yam Peter gle, the follow-up, which was Cruelty and Cruelty and the Beast, and then I produced some more stuff for them. So by that point I'd got over the fact I didn't like Danny's vocals.

Speaker 1 (00:25:51):

So dealing with that kind of music, like music, that's not your thing. How do you mentally put yourself there? This is an interesting one to me because we have all kinds of different artists and producers on Nail the mix, and I always tell people to mix and learn it anyways, even if you don't like it, who the fuck cares? First of all, you should be happy you're getting to work on a band like this because most bands you work on are local bands. So what if you're not a Shuga fan?

Speaker 2 (00:26:22):

When

Speaker 1 (00:26:22):

Are you ever going to get the chance to work on Shuga tracks besides this? So that's number one. And number two, I think that part of being a professional engineer, mixer producer is understanding how to make anything work. I mean, within reason. If you just go by your personal tastes and only pick projects like that, that's awesome, but you have to be at a certain level to be able to do that.

Speaker 2 (00:26:48):

Yeah. Well, I think there's a couple of things there. I think one of them is that when you are young, everything, and therefore you are not very open to anybody's suggestions, therefore you get much more of the attitude of That sucks or This is Ace and there's a lot to be learned from doing everything. Opening yourself up to suggestion, opening yourself up to just experiencing different things is amazing. There's also a sense of fear that will stop you from doing stuff.

Speaker 1 (00:27:21):

I mean over my head.

Speaker 2 (00:27:22):

Yeah, absolutely. And the imposter syndrome of why am I still here? Surely someone's going to come with their big hand and grab me. I mean, even Garth Richardson was saying that he was in the middle of recording Rage against the Machines first album, and he was still waiting for that big hand to come from on high end, rip him out of there. But there's a reason you're there and it goes back to your face fitting. And I certainly know that we had a great laugh. I mean, it is horrible to tell people that most of these heavy bands are actually really funny people and they've got a great sense of humor and they enjoy life. It's a facade they're putting on. I mean, that may have just totally shattered some illusions, but

Speaker 1 (00:28:05):

Yeah, it totally is.

Speaker 2 (00:28:06):

So the thing for me, I guess was I found the element that was irritating was the vocals, and it was irritating because it was so different to, I didn't get it. I basically didn't understand what he was trying to do, and it was incredibly technically difficult keeping track of all that stuff on analog tape. Nowadays you go, oh, that's easy. We've got a whisper track, we've got this, we've got that, we got this. I mean, even if you break apart the Bohemian Rhapsody multi-track, you go, holy shit, this is like a 96 track mix. If it was all put together, how the hell did they keep track? And I had stuff like that. I look back at old track sheets just for some sort of sense of, I dunno what, and I look and I go, how did I organize that stuff on that tape?

Speaker 1 (00:28:54):

You had to?

Speaker 2 (00:28:55):

Yeah, and we got really good at automating cuts and splitting stuff off. So I looked at the stuff that I didn't like, which was Danny's vocal was just something that didn't really entice me into listening to it. But the music was incredible. It was so huge. The guitars and drums were massive. The orchestrations were just huge. I learned an awful lot about counterpoint and stuff. I was classically trained until I left school at the age of 18. So I suddenly found this thing that I was able to contribute to it. I found something I really got and then that made it a pleasure to work on. And then I just had to get over the workload part of dealing with his vocals. But that also helped because I was able to communicate with him how he could better organize his tracking sessions for me with the vocal approach.

(00:29:51):

He was very scatty with what he would try and do. And I'll be, hang on a minute, can we just rethink this because you're saying you're going to do this, that and the other. How many parts have you actually got? Give me some lyrics to follow. Let's note down how we are actually going to go through this. And then that was a very, very early example of how I needed to work heavily with the vocalists to make their sessions incredibly efficient because everybody gets as limited a game time during an overdub session, but the vocalists are probably the worst because they've got that muscle they use all the time. They've got maybe an hour or two hours of really high quality vocal performance

Speaker 1 (00:30:36):

Three hours tops.

Speaker 2 (00:30:38):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:30:39):

Tops.

Speaker 2 (00:30:40):

Yeah. So you need to prepare to be ready for them to get going and be recording at all times and just be so organized that anything you can think of that you want to throw at them or anything they want to throw at you, it's possible to do whilst they're on fire.

Speaker 1 (00:30:58):

So it sounds to me like you found a way to connect with it. So even if it wasn't artistically emotionally your thing, you connected with it via just getting it done aspect, because that in and of itself was a challenge,

Speaker 2 (00:31:12):

But also the majesty of it, it was huge.

Speaker 1 (00:31:16):

Well, I mean the vocals,

Speaker 2 (00:31:18):

Oh yeah. Well, I even got to enjoy that after a while because he's a funny guy and he's very easy, or he was at the time, he was very easy to have a laugh with. It's like a lot of front people in bands, they love performing, but I guess it takes a certain kind of preparation to get them to the point where they feel that they're doing their best. Danny's nerves came out very much. He wasn't confident in what he was singing. That's why I think he found it was easy to express himself with the different voices, the low growling, the screaming, the whispers, but he definitely went through a warming up phase. So we would just try to put him as much at ease, make it special for him, and just do stuff that would irritate him for a bit to just, I mean, it sounds awful, but I've done it with a few people.

(00:32:18):

The more people start doing the, oh, come on. Can we just get on with it? Come on, come on. They're not in the frame of mind. You've got to go. No, look, I'm just going to go slower. Now you have to do this when you know them well enough. But it's like we would actually call him three po because even though he is the height of R 2D two, he sounds like three po because it would be like, when am I going to do my vocals? And it's like, I don't know. Do you know 15 different binary conversion languages? Danny, it was that kind of stuff that you would pull and then you'd go, oh, why don't you just funk off? He's like, now we've got you. We've resorted to telling and stuff. Fuck off now. And I had a great engineer with me, a friend of mine, Dan, who as a team, we bonded really, really well.

(00:33:01):

So eventually you get to the point where he actually does a great job, Danny Filth, and he became fun to be around, and I think that that's everything. You talk to the artist about what the story is, they love telling you. He's a very creative guy. The stuff that he was writing that he used to do columns for Terrorizer Magazine, and he'd be doing all the little drawings and everything was hand script, and he's a very articulate, arty person. So getting to know him better, then reinforced where I needed to up my game in terms of being able to deal with maybe difficult people. And he's not difficult at all, but he wasn't then. He was just wanting to do what any creative person wants to do. They've got this thing inside that they've just got to get out.

Speaker 1 (00:34:01):

So it seems to me like he's one of those creative types that at least at that point in time, his brain moved faster than his ability to get it down. And so someone actually helping him organize it into something that became tangible is huge.

Speaker 2 (00:34:19):

And once anybody realizes that you are not there to fight against them, that you've got your shit together so much that they can try anything they want, it may just take a little bit of swapping round or we may have to even do something like we've run out of track, so let's just make a slave reel on a DA, just to try some ideas out. This is all analog stuff. Tools was involved on a very, very early basis. We had an eight track system, but it was flying on 48 track analog by this point. And so you find a way to just make the artists realize that they can do anything they need to within reason and we'll try it. And that's another one where unfortunately there was some real, I think it was the end of a classic lineup by the time we'd done the second or third project with them. So there's a lot of arguments going on, and you've got to prevent that from skewing what should be reasonable criticisms of the creative process. You've got to divert the infighting to actually allow each person their time to do it. You can't allow sniping to go on just because someone's pissed off at someone else.

Speaker 1 (00:35:35):

Interesting that the way you phrase it, the end of a classic lineup. So I'm guessing that you've seen that multiple times based on the way you said it.

Speaker 2 (00:35:44):

Yeah. Well, because it was like, I mean, again, it's a difficult one, isn't it? I'm not that familiar with the whole cradle filth history since, however, when I worked with them, there was a rebirth for dusk, I think, and they did two or three, maybe five years of great stuff, and then things started falling apart. And it just feels like there's been a bit of a revolving doors going on and a lot more of a hired gun kind of thing rather than a core band.

Speaker 1 (00:36:15):

Do you think that that's kind of the normal lifecycle of a successful band? That there's x amount of time that an original lineup can usually stay together? Just any human relationship and

Speaker 2 (00:36:30):

Yeah, that's

Speaker 1 (00:36:31):

That basically once it's over, it's over.

Speaker 2 (00:36:34):

I would think so. I mean, my favorite band growing up was Pink Floyd, and that was through the years of, I mean, the first time I heard them was Dark Side of the Moon because I was six when that came out. And then my golden era of Pink Floyd was, I went back a couple of albums and I carried on with it, really enjoying it just about through the wall. But that's not a long period of time. I mean, that's like 1973 to 1980, or 1970 to 1980. So there's a 10 year period of time where that band just went through all this stuff and by the end of the wall, that band was no more. And same with a lot of bands. They have this very, very short period. I mean, rush of course, were the ones that defy all of that.

Speaker 1 (00:37:24):

They're like that couple that's been married for 45 years.

Speaker 2 (00:37:27):

Exactly. Yeah.

(00:37:29):

I mean the new guy was with them for God knows how long until, sadly, he died earlier in the year. But yeah, so it is a very, very unusual one. But yeah, it's got to have some toll on it. I mean, it's difficult enough having a relationship with a person when you're in each other's pockets, living a normal life, going on the road and being in creative pressures on albums. I mean, I dunno how many successful couples there are that are in the band together. You'll probably get loads of people now citing every band couple that have managed to live together, but

Speaker 1 (00:38:04):

All five of them.

Speaker 2 (00:38:05):

Yeah, exactly. I mean, you look at Buckingham and Nicks from Fleetwood Mac, arguably incredibly creative. And the reason that album, the big one, rumors were so amazing was because the subject matter was incredible because they were all falling apart and screwing each other's wives. It was like perfect for a great record about relationships.

Speaker 1 (00:38:29):

So how do you keep that from destroying the working process? How do you keep your eye on the ball musically, but also make sure that they don't derail everything.

Speaker 2 (00:38:43):

You have to become that person that they feel they can talk to. You become the confidant. Even years ago before I realized that any of this relationship and people stuff, I would wonder why I'd have the drummer coming and wanting a quiet word in a nice way and dragging me outside to his car to play me rough mixes of stuff that he loved. And then the guitarist would come up to me and say, have you got a padded room? I can go and break things in, but never towards me, mostly aimed at the others. And I started to realize that really, I've just got to be this person that is the man of the match, the happy guy in the middle that keeps it all together because the technical and musical side or the creating sounds and keeping the ideas going comes easy at that point.

Speaker 1 (00:39:39):

It's almost like that part's assumed you wouldn't be in the room. Precisely. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:39:44):

You do develop amazing interpersonal skills that my ex-wife would definitely say I didn't develop, but you can't take everything home.

Speaker 1 (00:39:56):

It takes things falling apart sometimes to develop them

Speaker 2 (00:40:00):

Completely, and it's kind of part of what we do, isn't it? We have to dismantle stuff and build it back up together in a new way. That's songwriting, that's arranging. You've got to be open to everything. And sadly, it's something that unless you're incredibly talented, it's something that takes a while. It takes a lot of experience and working with great people as well.

Speaker 1 (00:40:21):

Yeah, I completely agree. Did you find that this confidant position you found yourself in was something you didn't ask for? Just people naturally put you in that spot for some reason, they just trusted you like that and it just happened naturally?

Speaker 2 (00:40:39):

It did. Yeah. And I think it's because you are at the center of the helm. I think there's the thing with going into a studio of old where having the big desk and tape machines and all the outboard gear turned it into a real event, and therefore, the person that had his shit down that was in control of all this and yet was wafting from room to room like he was floating on air, controlling every aspect of it. The genius magician wizard, who is me in that case, is seen as this guy that must be brilliant at what he does, therefore he must know everything. And that's where the imposter syndrome comes and goes. You're like, shit, this is, they don't know I'm human. Exactly, but you can't let it go to your head. And I certainly didn't. I used to really, really get nervous about every single day just like, am I going to screw up? I used to triple check stuff. Am I on the right track and record all this destructive stuff that we used to do? You couldn't take your eye off the ball. Your track sheets had to be immaculate. Your note taking had to be immaculate. Your punching had to be immaculate. So you got to juxtapose that with having to deal with personalities as well. So it did hone the skills.

Speaker 1 (00:42:07):

Granted, imposter syndrome sucks, but every successful person I know pretty much, except for the psychopaths, has it to some degree. Do you think it might be a helpful thing because it keeps you sharp?

Speaker 2 (00:42:23):

Yeah, definitely. I think if you get blase about anything, you start to make mistakes. You start not to care as much. You can't afford to be lazy in any aspect of doing something to the best of your ability. You can't presume that something's always going to be there for you. It's not about being fearful of losing gigs, it's about giving them away. It's about just not caring anymore. And if you don't care anymore, you need to recalibrate. It might just be that you're going through a period of your life where you are not in that frame of mind, at which point you go, maybe I shouldn't be doing this particular project. And that's a tough one.

Speaker 1 (00:43:04):

It's a tough one, but at the same time, I think it's always the best way to go because the last thing you want is for people to have a bad experience with you or to think that you're,

Speaker 2 (00:43:15):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:43:16):

It's almost like an extension of what you were saying about turning down the production role

Speaker 2 (00:43:22):

For

Speaker 1 (00:43:22):

Cradle actually served you very, very well.

Speaker 2 (00:43:26):

I mean, I'm a quick learner, so I was able to immerse myself in amongst those people in that band very quickly. But had I been in charge from day one, I don't think that would've lasted. I just didn't, didn't know the genre that well. I didn't know how to deal with the personalities. But as soon as I got to know them and started really taking notice of the references, and that's where they were very involving, they kind of helped teach me every day as a school day, isn't it?

Speaker 1 (00:43:59):

Hopefully, if you approach it that way. That's actually one of the ways that I got myself through projects I hated, or bands that really sucked, was telling myself, this is the opportunity to get better at a certain skill. There's something here I have to fix, and I wish these people had their shit together. They should have their shit together, but they don't. The best thing I can hope for in this situation is to take this opportunity to get really, really good at making this type of thing sound good. Which is actually really valuable, I think it is. Yeah. Hey, everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast, then you should know that it's brought to you by URM Academy, URM Academy's mission is 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.

(00:44:50):

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 eth shuga, bring me the Horizon. Go Jira, 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. And these are guys like TLA Will Putney, Jenz Boren, Dan Lancaster to Mattson, 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.

(00:45:50):

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. 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. So you said that through that gig, Tony OMI came into the picture, which obviously is a whole other development career wise.

Speaker 2 (00:46:54):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:46:54):

Have you found that most of your awesome gigs came through meetings like that? Just like you meet one person through another person and then it leads to something cool and then that evolves into something else?

Speaker 2 (00:47:08):

Yeah, it's definitely been, I mean, a lot of them came through just Tony because he's generally walked in at some point and said, oh, we're going to be getting together to do a couple of songs with Ronnie. And you're like, Ronnie, who? Oh, him. That guy. Yeah, that guy that sings, right. So a lot of stuff's happened with that and related things, but yeah, it's a self-confidence thing of being able to walk into networking. It's an overused word, but it's a word that we can use. So networking is really important. So putting yourself in the position of meeting people, not being worried about being in a room with them. We have up until March, we have regular get togethers in London with a whole host of producers, engineers, studio owners, and there are people there that I now consider really good friends who I've seen their names on album covers for decades, and now I call them friends, and they introduced me as very nice things about the work I've done. And I'm like, Hey, yeah, but you mix color and the Shape by Foo Fighters. And he's like, yeah, I just mix what they recorded. And I'm like, well, I just do the same. And so putting yourself in amongst these get togethers and networking is so important. I mean, I loved it when I met you at the URM networking event after

Speaker 1 (00:48:39):

That was fun. Rus

Speaker 2 (00:48:39):

Russell's thing, that was great because it's such an opportunity for your subscribers, I guess is the word, to come and hang out and realize that we all just do what we do. We have fun. And it's meant to be like that the whole time. Nobody's on a higher level than anybody else. I always say that I happen to get on with a lot of people. I think you said it earlier, definitely that personality comes into it. They like working with me, so therefore I get the gigs and there are thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who can do what I do, but I just, for some reason, people get on with me.

Speaker 1 (00:49:21):

Is that something that flourished in the studio, or have you always been good socially?

Speaker 2 (00:49:27):

I wasn't always the greatest at being outgoing, but once people got to know me, because I don't take many things too seriously. I take my work seriously, but the actual, the physical doing the job I take really seriously because you are playing with other people's dreams, but there's always a chance for a laugh. And as I said, I mean when I started working with the Sabbath guys, I found out just how incredibly funny they are. I mean, they're ludicrously funny, and there's so much arsing around that goes on that you actually are so tired from laughing that it is brilliant and it's such a conducive environment to do good stuff. So I plead the Aussie Osborne defense of like, you just got to have as much fun as you possibly can, but you've got to be good at your job too. So my sense of humor has always been slightly, I guess it is actually quite normal considering the people I know. But

Speaker 1 (00:50:36):

Yeah, your English dudes are hilarious.

Speaker 2 (00:50:39):

Well, we kind of enjoy sarcasm and we enjoy a laugh, and it does hurt. People can take it the wrong way. I love it. It's just what we do, Christ. It's that mentality of if you were in a factory and someone was being a dickhead, you'd probably find a way of playing practical jokes on them to either bring them into the fold or to just stop 'em from being dickhead. So this is sort of the mentality, I think, certain genres that probably wouldn't be quite so applicable. I'm not sure Mariah Carey may have the same idea of toilet humor that I do, but

Speaker 1 (00:51:28):

It doesn't seem like it.

Speaker 2 (00:51:30):

No. But I think a lot of the musicians that we hang out with and make great music with are just kind of working class fun people, and you gravitate towards those people.

Speaker 1 (00:51:42):

Did your imposter syndrome start to, I don't want to say go away completely, but was there any point where it started to normalize after working with Sabbath and

Speaker 2 (00:51:56):

Priest?

Speaker 1 (00:51:57):

It's like, maybe I do belong here. Maybe I have enough evidence now to suggest that I do belong.

Speaker 2 (00:52:05):

Yeah, it is quite funny. I do sometimes look at myself and go, oh yeah, I have actually lived this now for 30 years. I suppose this is my job.

Speaker 1 (00:52:16):

I think you can safely say it by now.

Speaker 2 (00:52:18):

Yeah. But yeah, it happens at certain times. I mean, when we did the initial get togethers on 13, the Sabbath album, when Rick Rubin came down to Aussie studio, there was definitely an air of nerves in amongst everybody really, because he's a very strange guy to communicate with.

Speaker 1 (00:52:40):

He seems like he's on Planet Rick.

Speaker 2 (00:52:43):

Yeah, definitely. And so there were times there when I'm like, oh God, am I going to last the project? And then you go, well, you know what? I've kind of been doing this now with Tony for 2018 years. I guess at that point, there's a fairly good chance that I'm okay here. And I think one of probably the turning point was doing the Heaven and hell record with Ronnie and the guys because that was very much self-produced with me, and we kicked ass on it. We went through massive writing processes. We did so much backwards and forwards across that year between LA and here. And we knew this was a massively anticipated record. So I think that was probably a turning point. I remember going to la, it was the first time I'd been out to la, I'd lived in Florida, and I went to school there back in 19 90, 91. I remember thinking, God, this is the mother load going to make an album in la. And ultimately it was. But when I got there, it was just a continuation of what we'd been doing in England with Ronnie, and it was great fun. And so the whole perception of what I thought this pressure I would've been putting on myself that actually disappeared. We were just doing what we do

Speaker 1 (00:54:11):

Once you got to work.

Speaker 2 (00:54:13):

And of course I was like I out there. So I'm driving around looking at everything and going and taking pictures and going and seeing mates down in San Diego and just having the time of my life just enjoying the experience of it for the first time.

Speaker 1 (00:54:27):

Is there a different mode you go into mentally where when you are basically the dominant boss on a record versus when someone like Rick Rubin comes in and he's the boss? Do you have to think about it differently?

Speaker 2 (00:54:45):

Yeah. You have to find your position in society, the society of that group. In my case, what I'll do is if I'm in charge of the project, I make sure that I am setting up all the comms lines for the management record label, whoever and the interpersonal stuff. And I make sure as much work has been done ahead of time to ensure that once we get into the studio, everybody kind of knows what's going to happen. There shouldn't be many unanswered questions ahead of time. When you are dropping back into an engineering role, making friends with the assistance is always good. It's the same as making friends with a studio owner. You are going to have a much better time if you become everybody's friend on the technical side, and then you start to glean the way people work. So finding out from the guys who've done multiple projects with Rick kind of stuff that he's looking for, and I was more of a liaison between the Brits and the Americans, to be honest, in terms of having spent, by the time we started recording 13, we'd been actively doing stuff for 18 months due to many circumstances, including Tony getting cancer.

(00:56:05):

So I knew the guys really, really well. Rick had probably only spent a maximum of 20 hours with them over that period of time. So there was a lot of me helping translate how they were feeling. And he would often come over and say, I'm not quite sure how to voice this to Tony, because I think he was nervous of having this incredible legacy and not shit on it really, even he's

Speaker 1 (00:56:32):

Human.

Speaker 2 (00:56:32):

Yeah, it was great fun seeing it. And I remember for a very short period of time, I was writing a daily journal about my experience there. It was like I really wanted to just clean, remember everything that was going on in this environment because not many people would be in that position of doing that record with those people. I think that that was a definite, the imposter syndrome went because it was like, well, I'm here and there's nothing they can do about it.

Speaker 1 (00:57:06):

I mean, if Black Sabbath and Rick Rubin doesn't give you imposter syndrome, I mean, if even Rick Rubin's getting it, you got to be a psychopath not to get it.

Speaker 2 (00:57:15):

And what I found really interesting about him as well was he just told this story. We were sitting outside in the sun having a chat, Tony and I, and Rick came over and he was just talking about a couple of things that he wanted to try. And Tony said to him, how did you find, when did you first come across Brad Wilke? And he goes, oh, I made a couple of records with him. It was Rick's idea to try Brad out amongst a few others. And this conversation took on this surreal thing where I was in the presence of someone that had much like me saying I didn't want to work with Cradle. Filth got me the Tony gig. Rick had changed the course of two massive parts of music by just saying to Tony, yeah, he goes, I was working with them on something.

(00:58:07):

And he goes, and I realized that Zach didn't want to do anymore rage stuff, and the band were looking for a vocalist, and I knew Chris Cornell was looking for a new band. So I thought, oh, why not just put them together? And you're like, well, I've listened to Audio Slave religiously as a Bible trying to work out how they did that. And this is the guy that just suddenly thought, oh, that might be cool if they got together. And in the same conversation. He talked about putting run DMC together with Aerosmith because he thought those two things might work.

Speaker 1 (00:58:40):

Fuck it.

Speaker 2 (00:58:41):

Yeah. That's someone who anybody can say they don't like Rick's production aesthetics or he's not a real producer, or he just stands at the back of the lays at the back of the room on his couch, which he does sometimes saying, do it again. He does a bit more than that, but you cannot deny the impact. If I was known for doing those two things, I'd die happy.

Speaker 1 (00:59:02):

Yeah. I think that a lot of people don't understand what it means to have that role. So I think that you get a lot of artists who might've been pushed to the limit and who talk shit about 'em, even though they're talking shit on their most successful record.

(00:59:20):

That was the thing that I noticed too. Even in my early twenties, I noticed some rockstar talking shit about Rick Rubin. At the same time, they've had the highest record sales of their career due to the record they made with Rick Rubin, and then they went back to him. So it couldn't have been that bad, first of all. And second of all, I think that a lot of people take what the artist says as gospel truth because that's what they relate to the most. That's their point of reference is the artist. They don't really think about the producer too much. So if the artist complains about something in the press, this idea of the producer or the label starts to pervade, and then so when you hear he just lays at the back or whatever, doesn't really engineer. Some people start to think that he's not really doing anything when in reality, in my opinion, he's one of the best team builders ever of all time. He knows how to pick the right people for everything, which is really incredibly difficult, especially when you realize how many bullshit people there are in the world, or how many potential bad matches there are to pick the right people for the right thing. And then also to be able to say, no, that's not good enough. That's huge. Because without those two elements, you wouldn't have these projects, or at least you wouldn't have them be what we know them as, which is legendary over and over and over again.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):

And he's someone that you go back to the idea of how do you work on music that you may not have a connection to. I mean, look at the stuff he's done, the different genres. It's because he has a love of music and he feels he can pull something out of the artist that maybe other people haven't, and it may only work for that one project, but as you say, sometimes the best project they've ever done,

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):

He's tapped in somehow.

Speaker 2 (01:01:15):

And what's interesting is I spoke to, because I sometimes do interviews for another website, I interviewed various producers and I was talking to Adrian Bushby, who's done quite a few muse albums, and one of the questions I asked him was, how do you feel when a band decides to go on and work with someone else? And so he did. I think the final album that he produced with Muse was the Second Law, which was ironically being recorded in Malibu just before we were meant to go in there. And so I had a lot of chats with a studio manager, and we were talking about various things about that album because Muse are a band. I love to, I certainly love watching them live. I'm not always listening to them on record. They

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):

Are pretty spectacular though.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):

Yeah, they're incredible and they're amazing musicians and they do good song. They're great songwriters, but I think they for me, have a golden period that I love,

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):

And

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):

Then they move away from that sacrilege to say, I don't like everything Queen did, but they're one of my favorite bands. So he said, because the guy they chose to work on the next album with was Mutt Lang Muse. So

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):

How can you argue with that?

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):

Exactly. And he's like, do you know? He goes, I would rather they went and did that because there's only so much we can do together without repeating ourselves or words to that effect. We are not going to all evolve, and there's a certain amount of, you go back to the comfortable pair of shoes every time, and it's really difficult. I always used to remember enjoying going to different studios and having to take a multi-track with me and not having the same desk, so it would force me to do something different. Otherwise you're just like, okay, let's throw the faders up yet These are going to pan left and right. Yeah, patch that in. You don't listen as well when you are just going through the motions. That's why the whole total regal thing's wonderful, but sometimes it's like, actually, you know what? If this isn't working, why don't we just start from scratch? I used to freak people out when they'd say something about a mix, and I'd go, oh, okay, lemme just pull all the faders down. And they'd be like, ah. And I'm like, it's all right. I've done it once. I can get better or I can get back to it, but I can definitely improve it. You didn't like it, so we could be chasing our tails for an hour here, or we can just start again.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):

I think pretty much every good mixer I know does that. There's some point in time where they trash almost everything. Do you think that getting to the point where you can say, I'm glad they moved on in the way that they did, you had to feel pretty secure in your spot in the world?

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):

Yeah. I mean, I still am getting used to the idea of projects not happening that I thought were definitely going to be mine. And it does make you think, what did I do? Maybe that wasn't right. But in a few occasions, it's literally just been down to circumstances. It's either budget or a perceived budget, or there's been a miscommunication or maybe diaries don't align and you get used to it. Now. I think I am definitely of the opinion that if you keep pushing and pushing to get something, you're going to end up strangling it. And it's very much the whole law of attraction thing that goes on, which I'm a huge believer. And then things happening for reasons, and if you spend so much time focusing on one goal, you're going to miss every opportunity that comes along the way. And the cradle filth thing, if I'd been desperate to do that, that would've changed my life in a completely different way. Would it have been worse or better? I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):

No telling.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):

Exactly. So now I'm just like, okay, don't strangle this. Let it breathe. It's almost that thing of if you love someone, set them free, but it's kind of that thing. It's like you can't force someone to work with you, so why put yourself through that anguish? There is so much music out there to be made. You have no idea what's around the corner.

Speaker 1 (01:05:35):

Yeah. I wish that younger producers understood that. I see a lot of younger producers freaking out because a local band they worked with fired them or didn't pay them, and so they couldn't finish it. That normal bullshit. That's

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):

A youth thing, isn't it? Because I go through it with my son, he's 22, he's a lighting designer, and he's at the beginning of a couple of years into a very, very good career, but he just wants to, well, he initially wanted to make sure there was every single credit. I said, how many times do you want to be in the program? This is produced by mix, by written, by catering, by all of this shit. It'll happen. You don't have to force this down people's throats. And it's a youth thing because it's so important when you are younger to get up that ladder. And when anybody asks me in any q and a or interview and they say, what advice would you give to the 18-year-old Mike? It would be, well, A, it would be don't do anything different. I love where I am, but if I really wanted to know, it would be don't be in such a hurry.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):

Yeah, that's some of the advice I'd give myself and also be nicer.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):

Yeah. Well,

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):

Yeah, you seem like you've always been pretty nice. I think I was a bit of more of a monster when I was younger.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):

Well, that's okay. I mean, I think a lot of people go through that because again, I think it comes down to desperately wanting to do something. And I don't think Dave Grohl comes over particularly well in the documentary back and forth in terms of the way, certainly the way it's edited to show that he was this guy that just kept firing people and, oh, I got rid of this guy. I got rid of this guy. And then he had to go. And you look at the history of bands and it's the main creative in the band is just going, I've got to find a way of making this work because it's not how I hear it. It's not how I see it. It's not right. Something's got to change. And that's why the bands have such longevity. Tony gets so much criticism over the years for the revolving doors of Black Sabbath. He was a guy that was trying to keep his band going.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):

Yeah, it's hard to understand that from the outside. I think a lot of those situations where I look back and I think I should have been nicer at the same time, those types of situations I'm thinking about only occurred because I felt like someone was getting in the way. Somebody's performance or behavior or whatever it was, is going to prevent this from moving forward and I need to do something about it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:18):

Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):

I remember, obviously this is a very different level than Tony, but I mean, I think the human experience is universal. I remember in 2004, I had a lineup in my band before we were signed, and I didn't like the lineup at all. I just thought they weren't good enough and I fired them all. They were all local guys that were like 10 years older than me and had all these friends and people in town fucking hated me for it. And I remember getting told, you're going to regret this when you realize how hard it is to find people and you just used them and threw them away and all that kind of stuff. And no, not really. I actually thought that they were riding my coattails and they sucked, and there was no way to move forward the way I wanted to move forward without upgrading. There's no way I was going to attract the attention of Roadrunner without upgrading, and it's more important for me to move forward than to make these guys happy because what did I spend the last 15 years working on? Spent the last 15 years working on being able to do this, so am I going to just stop because these people don't have their shit together? Makes no sense.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):

No, and there's also time, I mean, you said in there, I have it with people who could easily have done anything that I've done, friends of mine, and they just haven't applied themselves. They've found excuses as to why they feel that things didn't go well. There's always a blame. There's no taking account for their own actions. Whereas with me, I have complete confidence in my ability that's brought on by people giving me their projects to work on, and I do a good job. Therefore, it's kind of a given that I would have confidence. I gave them the result they needed. But I definitely have strength in my own conviction. So I don't let people with the sheep mentality bring me down if I like a certain way of doing something or I like a certain piece of equipment or a technique or I like a certain band.

(01:10:33):

I mean, I was howling earlier in the year with laughter because I inadvertently said to some very, very cool people that I thought Nickelbacks album sounded fantastic. They do well. Exactly. So I had an immediate people taking the piss out of me, and I went, okay, so do we need to have this conversation? Because they do sound good, because like Randy Stout, Mike Frazier, mutt Lang, these people are pretty successful. And I always go back and everybody's bored of hearing it now, but I always go back to 1992 when a couple of things happened that year. Actually, I just thought of that. Yeah, so Bob Rock produced the black album that wasn't where I was getting to, but the black album that destroyed in inverted comma metallica's credibility, but put them on the map for billions and Brian Adams sticking in the UK charts for 16 weeks with the love theme from Robin Hood produced by Mark Lang.

(01:11:35):

And I always look back at that and when people go, oh, it's ridiculous. It was awful. It was a pile of shit. And it's like, well, if it was at number one for 16 weeks, there's a fair amount of people that bought that. The same way that there's a massive amount of people buy Nickelback records. They're just not your cup of tea. And I remember Mike Shipley before he died, was hosting a gear sluts or moderating a gear sluts forum. And so he died, I think it was in 2013 at that point. He said, Mark Lang has sold 800 million records. Jesus, he must be doing something right. So if you don't like it, blow me. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 (01:12:18):

Have you always been that way about your convictions? Is this something that got stronger over time or has that always kind of been pre-wired?

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):

I've always been stubborn. People put it down to me being people that believe in this stuff call me. Well, you are a Taurus, therefore you are stubborn like a bull. But I have always been stubborn about stuff. I've generally been accepting of other people's opinions, but I know what I like. But the confidence of doing it has come with not having to defend work that I've done. Because for example, when a record gets slated by certain people and the keyboard warriors will tell you, well, how you could have done it differently? The answer is, well, everybody involved in that production wouldn't have let it out if they hadn't liked it. Therefore, it's exactly what the creatives, the band, the label, whoever and me, that's exactly what we wanted. So there's no argument. It's terrible for fans to realize that the bands don't make records for them, but they make them for themselves and hope that people like them.

Speaker 1 (01:13:26):

Well, you can't make them for other people because you start trying to please one person, then you're going to piss somebody else off. Then

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):

You

Speaker 1 (01:13:34):

Start trying to please them, you're going to piss somebody else off. It's an exercise in futility basically. Well,

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):

You can't second guess can you? You're a fan of something because you had an emotional connection with it. Maybe they do something that you don't like and you go, oh, that's not for me. You don't slate them.

Speaker 1 (01:13:53):

So how do you balance this stubborn nature to where you're going to fight for what you believe in versus knowing when to take the backseat when somebody else is in charge? How do you reconcile the two?

Speaker 2 (01:14:09):

I think there comes a point when you get to this area in your career where people are asking for you to work with them, that you go, I don't have as much to prove now. Therefore, maybe I should ride along and see what happens a bit more. So my stubborn nature doesn't show itself very often. I have a favorite phrase that I used with my son, which was be inwardly smug.

(01:14:38):

So don't show it when you know are right. You've been right all along and you eventually, they come round to what you said in the first place, but it's a process that you've got to go through. So I think in easily the last 15 years, I've just been like, look, it may be a longer process. I'm not going to argue. It's pointless arguing. I'm just going to let it take the road that it takes. As long as we get the job done, as long as we get to try everything, I'm very open to suggestions and I won't just out of hand shut something down. So I have to practice what I preach. I have to say, okay, we're going to just go through everything everybody wants to try within reason. I'm going to guide you. But I'm always honest when I think that, well, I always say, oh no, I was wrong there, but that actually is better that way. So I always give a caveat. If I really believe in something, look, please, let's try that. I may be wrong, but I think it may actually improve it. Let's at least give it a go. Because if I do that and I can get an artist to at least try something, then they open themselves up to being a little bit more like how I want to be, then I'll let them try whatever they want to. So it's got to be that negotiation. So I'm not that stubborn anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):

So you believe in what you believe, but you're open to the possibility of being wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:16:07):

Yeah, totally. But I think if it's subjective, see, I'm definitely going to go into murky waters here because there is, well,

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):

It's all murky waters. So

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):

When it comes down to using certain equipment and getting criticized for using something that somebody else doesn't agree with, and I'm particularly talking about the amount of shit that people take for using certain equipment like converters or plugins. I mean it precisely. And I unfortunately, again, it's the quest of youth that they think that they're going to have to keep up with the Joneses and buy this stuff because having this will make them so much better at what they do, therefore, that will get them up the ladder a bit quicker. And it's very, very hard to explain that. One of my moments where I had to recalibrate was when I went through all my personal shit about six years ago, I was at home, I was on my own and it was three in the morning and I was just looking around for something to do, and I noticed my rage against the machine 20th anniversary that Brad had given me on the last day of tracking of the Sabbath album.

(01:17:36):

And I opened it up and I put the needle on and I was like, what? Have you been fucking around that for the last few years? Listened to how simple that is, listen to the fucking, that's what you should be doing again. And I started going back to my old DAP tapes and hearing stuff that I'd done back in the early nineties on a 24 track tape, 36 input console, couple of reverbs and maybe four compressors thinking that's got so much more energy than the stuff that's been going on more recently. And I'd been caring about all the wrong stuff, and Sabbath had already kind of recalibrated me a bit, but this was the big wake up call. It was like, what are you mental? Get back to what actually makes this shit work for you? What comes out, the speakers that actually puts the hairs up on the back of your arms.

(01:18:35):

And when everybody knows that that first rage album was tracked in the studio live with a PA going, and it was mixed by Andy Wallace, so it's not a bad starting point, great band, great performance, great mix engineer and a great producer in mcg, Garth, that's kind of where I went. None of this shit matters. I need faders in front of me. I don't care what Mike's the studio has got as long as they work. I don't care what converters they've got. The only thing that's important to me is if it's not an inline console, I've got something with a fader controller for pro tools so that I can keep hands on with the faders on return. Nothing else matters. I want to trust the monitoring that I'm hearing, which is why I take along my headphones that I trust, and that's about it. I want to get into the essence of the performance and work with those artists to get the sounds that they want on tape, not tape disc still sounds wrong all these years later. It is

Speaker 1 (01:19:37):

Kind of weird to say, isn't it? Yeah, it must be incredibly freeing to realize what actually matters to you and what allows you to do your best work. Yeah, it's so easy to get distracted by so many things. It's not just in audio music too. Guitar players can distract themselves with trying to learn too many things, for instance, because you're told you need to learn how to sight read, you need to learn how to do chord charts. You should learn jazz, you should learn improvisation, you should learn blues, you should learn this, you should learn that. I mean, sure, maybe, but really you should learn what you're going to actually excel at, in my opinion, and what you can actually make an impact with and what works best for you. When you discovered that or rediscovered, it was basically like a giant weight had been lifted off your shoulders.

Speaker 2 (01:20:27):

Yeah, it was like, this is just, I remembered the feelings of the fun of being in the studio and being not so worried about what everything did technically. It was like it was just going to have fun. We're going to rock up and turn on amps and just make a noise, and as long as we capture it without punching in badly back in those days or erasing something, which you had to find ways of getting out of that one when you erase something, all these little things nowadays, the pressure is just not there in the recording side at all. It's all about making the bands feel comfortable and enjoying the process and knowing that you are in the place you want to be is just brilliant. None of the stuff matters that actually goes into capturing it. As I say, as long as it works and as long as it doesn't do any harm, all is good.

(01:21:39):

So let's just get back to the idea of having a reason for why you would want to change something. In its most basic sense, if something sounds harsh, you find a way of making it sound less harsh. You move a microphone, you EQ it, you just find a way, turn it down at the source, take those frequencies out, work with a player to explain why you feel this particular way. Make the artist feel special, spend some time with them on their lyrics, spend time with the drummer, helping him tune the drums, choosing the right kind of heads, all of those things, working with the guitar player to get the amp singing and getting the sound through the studio monitors, that gives him as much of a rise as when he's in the room with the trousers flapping because we can't make a four by 12 sound like that through studio monitors. So we've got to find some way of translating what he feels from playing that amp and guitar combination. How do we get that going in the control room? Let's find some way of involving him in the process to make him know that you're invested in him. So all of these things take precedence over anything else. And then when it comes down to mix, the energy is just bouncing off out of the speakers at you.

Speaker 1 (01:23:02):

Yeah, it's like if you do all the heavy lifting during tracking, it's not necessarily that it mixes itself, but way closer to that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):

And then you don't need to upgrade to the latest Mac Pro because you can't run more than one instance of an acoustic plugin because everybody says you've got to use acoustic plugins. It's like, just stop it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:22):

I do think that's just one of the plagues of modern life that definitely people have the opportunity to focus on too many things that don't matter, and too many people who focus on things that don't matter write about these things and talk about these things. So people who are coming in get basically sidetracked into thinking that this stuff matters. And then one day they wake up and realize, well, hopefully they wake up and realize that that's not what matters. But at the same time, there's got to be some point for you at which there's a good marriage between technology and the old way of doing things. It's got to have helped your life in some way.

Speaker 2 (01:24:05):

Massively. I love the fact that we can pretty much capture any idea we need to. We can try stuff without having to find a spare track or telling the guitarist he's either got to erase that last solo or whatever. I used to have ways I used to run a half inch machine alongside the track was bused to as well, so that every take of the solo would be captured. So if we were running out of tracks, I could go back and I could kind of fly them in. It wasn't much fun, but it was possible. But then you also, you need to understand the limitations and realize when you are being put in that position that it's your job to kind of stop the player from going down blind alleys or realize when they've peaked. There are certain, if you work with an artist long enough or you've done your research or you've communicated well when they're going off the boil. So you've got to find something that just stops that happening. So you get back to the psychological stuff, particularly things like even if you haven't got a clue what to say next you go, let's just have a listen to that one that you did two takes ago. It breaks their concentration and then it makes them go back a little bit and then they'll maybe go off down a slightly different path because they need to hear what they've done

Speaker 1 (01:25:45):

Rather than psyching them out.

Speaker 2 (01:25:46):

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you can say as many words as you want to try and explain what they need to do, but I think internally most people know what they need to do, therefore you've just got to guide them by letting them listen. I remember on one occasion, it was a long, long time ago with Tony, he played the solo and I went, what did you think? He said, I dunno, I just played it. And I was like, of course. It just came from somewhere. You didn't know what you were doing, you just felt it. So he needed to hear it to establish it. And it's quite important that you realize when people are really in the moment, they have no clue what they're actually performing.

Speaker 1 (01:26:26):

That's why they need you.

Speaker 2 (01:26:28):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:26:29):

So you were saying that you have your own podcast and I noticed you posting about it across the board. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:26:37):

We are just about to do our 12th show next week and then we're going to take a break. It just came from a load of conversations between this friend of mine and I, we only met back in April on a remote project and we were doing a lot of talking about the industry and the way it can chew you up and spit you out. And as I alluded, I went through my own mental hell a few years ago and we thought, well, rather than just keep bitching and moaning about stuff, why don't we just bring some of these things out into a wider audience in a safe place? And between us, we know a fair few people who've navigated the industry as musicians, producers, managers, and people not even related to the industry, hence across the board. Well, we're both producers, we're both keyboard players.

(01:27:37):

So that was a kind of nice play on words. And then it's like everything's open for discussion. So we started this as just an idea of helping people understand that it doesn't always have to be following prescribed paths. The industry's tough life is going to give you some real shit, but when you align yourself with good people and you actually open up discussion and understand that a lot of people are in the same boat, it makes it a little bit easier to deal with. And I've noticed since coming through my hell, I'm more empathic to people who are going through shit. There's always a time in a session or situation where someone will say, oh, you kind of do mental health. It's a thing that I do. And that's probably the beginning of a two hour conversation and at the end of it that that person feels somewhat better, has understood that it's okay to bring stuff up and is either going to seek some help for whatever they're going through, or they become more tolerant of a situation. And it just goes hand in hand with my approach to the way I do everything now. I wouldn't recommend anybody go through the kind of shit that I went through, but it certainly made me a much, much better person. So we just thought we'd bring this to the fore and do a fun podcast and never to miss a PR opportunity.

Speaker 1 (01:29:29):

Do you think that it's possible to go through the music industry without getting the shit kicked out of you a few times along the way?

Speaker 2 (01:29:38):

I doubt it. I think you just have to look at your favorite artists and all the things we've talked about up until now when you see the turmoil that bands go through, it's relationships, any relationships going to go through ups and downs. I learned quite way before I went through my breakdown, I learned much more about the psychology and the concept of yin and yang and the fact that we have to have comparison to be able to react and learn that whole thing. When we start to attempt walking, we get up, we wobble, we fall over, it hurts, we get up. So we try not to make it hurt so much and then we fall over and so we learn everything is a reaction to what we do. So all through our lives, we need to be put in situations that test us and they don't have to be catastrophic all the time, but there are going to be those occasions where you put yourself into a position or circumstances push you into a position where there's no way out until it's too late and then the big crash happens. So any kind of creative industry is going to present issues for someone. And we are all, I guess because it means so much to us, we open ourselves up for hurt and criticism.

Speaker 1 (01:31:09):

I think also being creative, what we do is we create things. We amplify things, and so it's in our nature to, I don't want to say to make things worse, we feel things harder than a lot of other people. I think in our in nature to go deeper into things because that's part of the job. I mean, that's part of why people in this industry are professional creatives is they're naturally wired to go deeper or to take a feeling and bring it to the forefront. Nasty feelings too.

Speaker 2 (01:31:46):

We bear our souls and we have to learn how to say words like beautiful and love in front of grown men. But it's true. Being able to describe stuff and actually show some empathy to an artist that has just put this performance out is absolutely incredible. You take on part of that and that's the other thing. You do become a sponge when you are in that position for everybody else's issues.

Speaker 1 (01:32:19):

Do you feel that people are appreciative of the topics you're covering on the podcast?

Speaker 2 (01:32:25):

Yeah, very much so. We've got a small but loyal following now. The conversation is always going on. We do it live. So the conversations, the questions, the comments that come in, people are freeing themselves up to say about stuff that's happened to them. It's an overused word, but it is like a catharsis for some people when they realize that, wow, there's someone here that is supposedly high up in his career and he's gone through all this. I did a talk at Nam two years ago, I think maybe three coming up three years ago, where I think I was the first person to talk on mental health in the music industry, and I was shitting it before I did it. In fact, it spoiled my entire trip because I had to wait until the Sunday before I did it. So I was worried about what is there going to be anybody there watching me? But the change I made in people's lives and the audience, the reception I got, I had people afterwards coming up to me on the verge of breaking down saying how much they'd felt, what I'd gone through, and they were going through it and how brave I was to have spoken about it. And I went, I just thought it was important for people to understand that the reason it happened to me doesn't have to define me, but what I can bring out of it is far more important.

Speaker 1 (01:33:41):

Do you think there's an unchecked amount of mental illness in the music industry?

Speaker 2 (01:33:46):

Definitely. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:33:47):

Same here. I think it's pretty rampant.

Speaker 2 (01:33:50):

Yeah, it is. Because people don't open up enough to really show their feelings, and there's a hell of, a lot of people can be a little bit scathing and judgmental about just a little, the mood of someone on a particular day, for example. So you might get a particular instrument tech saying that his guy is having one of his days and being scathing about it and feeling very hard done by, because obviously life on the road is hard. So putting yourself in the other person's position, the guy who's out front every night having to carry that band, having to perform, yes, they're getting all the adulation, but they're going to get the criticism as well said. Tech isn't going to get any of that, but he's going to get a hell of a lot of dirty looks thrown at him if a guitar's out of tune or something.

(01:34:47):

So the symbiotic relationship ends up being one of animosity and conflict, and that just gets worse. It perpetrates through because you're putting yourself in this precious situation, way worse than being in a studio. The studio is a controlled environment, and that's full of lunatic behavior. So yeah, there's a lot that goes on. And it's only when we find out that some poor bastard has committed suicide that it's like, oh yeah, all the signs were there. Yeah, they were when you look back, but you didn't notice at the time because you just thought he was being a bit of an idiot. And it is a bit of a flippant way of pudding it, and it is a very, very serious subject, but it's been going on for so long. I mean, when I did the research for that talk, just to back myself up with some facts I'd forgotten about Kurt Cobain, he was almost a poster boy, wasn't he? Back in 19

(01:35:53):

Whenever. And you're like, oh, that was really sad. And then you go, well, yeah. Wasn't it Mike Shipley? I mentioned earlier he committed suicide, and I remember when it wasn't known initially that that's what he'd done until his funeral. And I remember I was doing an interview for a recording site, record production, and Mike, my friend, said, did you hear Mike Shipley died? And I went, what happened? And I remember at the time, and this is only two years before my breakdown, I remember thinking, my God, what would make someone that's done what he's done, go through that and think that life's not worth living. I mean, some might say very flippantly that working for Mark Lang all those years might have had something to do with it. The pressure pushed him a little. I mean, that's awful. I gather that Marty's incredible and not like that at all. But it's that whole thing of nobody gets the pressure that people are under and you internalize the pressure that you're under, and it's seen as a weakness to actually express that you might be struggling.

Speaker 1 (01:36:57):

Also, it's seen as ungrateful.

Speaker 2 (01:36:59):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:37:01):

I think both the weakness aspect, and then also people are afraid to talk about it because they're going to get criticized by everybody for bringing this up because how can they complain when they have this amazing position in life? Their problems must not be real. That's a tough one too, I think. Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:37:19):

I'm thrilled as well because a few, probably a month or so ago, I reached out to Rob Halford and just thought, I'm going to chance it, because he and I, we've done a couple of albums together. I consider him a friend. I said, would you appear on the podcast? You've been through some shit in your life. I hadn't read his book at that point. My God, I'm so pleased he's going to do it. He's on next week's our final guest. That's great.

Speaker 1 (01:37:42):

Awesome. That's a good guest.

Speaker 2 (01:37:43):

There's a guy who, when you listen to, I listen to the audio books, when you listen to him telling his story, it's like, oh my God, that is someone that has gone through and been chewed up and spat out and chewed up and spat out and had so much to deal with. I mean, you look at one aspect of even being held in court, being accused with the other guys in priest of inciting teenagers to kill themselves because of backward masking on a record. That would've been enough to finish a sane person off being in front of that judicial system. But with everything else that he's gone through in his life and come out of it still as this guy who is the most positive and energetic music loving, figurehead and ambassador for metal that you could want, and he's still doing it. The energy, the guy's incredible. And that's why you think, well, that's someone to aspire to.

Speaker 1 (01:38:47):

I always try to think about the fact that no matter how hard I feel like it gets for me, there's people who have had it and are having it way, way worse. And there's a bunch of people I look up to who have had it worse, who came out fine.

Speaker 2 (01:39:02):

Yeah, funnily enough, there's two people I was really lucky to work with. One very, very short period with Duff McKagan. He went through some shit, didn't he? And Glen Hughes, who I've done a few things with, and when I was coming out of my hell, I thought, look at those guys. Look at where they are now compared to where they went. They were. Were in the mud at the bottom of the riverbed and look where they got to. So I can pull myself through this and with the right people around me and being aware of it, I can get to a way better place. And I mean, as I say, I wouldn't recommend anything that I went through to anybody, but I'm in so much of a better place, and it gets better all the time because the confidence grows, the ability to express oneself and actually embrace life. It's like we're here to be around humanity and actually enjoy what we do. And we are lucky. Got to sound like Spinal Tap at the end of tour party. We're the lucky ones. We are.

Speaker 1 (01:40:14):

Well, I think we are. But Mike, I think this is a good place to end it. I want to thank you for coming on. It's been awesome catching up. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:40:23):

It's been real pleasure. Really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:40:26):

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 AAL 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.