50 l December 2012
www.psneurope.com industrytalk
“Digital technology… takes the musician away from the intensity of the moment, and changes the whole attitude towards making a record”
Joe Boyd
sonic quality had given way to convenience. Digital technology takes the
musician away from the intensity of the moment, and changes the whole attitude towards making a record. Even though we used to do a lot of overdubbing, the core of the recording was still the energy of a live performance. Four-track was good enough for Strawberry Fields Forever, with no click and a band performance at the heart of it. Sound Techniques in Chelsea
Having proposed the President’s Toast at last month’s APRS Sound Fellowship Lunch, Joe Boyd talks toPhil Ward about mics multitracks and memories
to one man’s bow... incredible strings The
STAGE MANAGING Dylan going electric at Newport, promoting Pink Floyd at London’s UFO club, producing Nick Drake… Joe Boyd is woven into the fabric of ’60s legend. But he’s also produced film soundtracks, written books and made records with the Who’s Who of folk-rock.
What were your thoughts when addressing the APRS? I’m currently revisiting and re- filing my 6,000 vinyl LPs, and as well as being such a pleasure it
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also reminds you how certain records stand out as having an excellent sound. In the ’60s, people were obsessed with sound quality, and a lot of that can be traced back to the Beatles records. They created a fascination with the idea of sound, not just a couple of mics in front of a folk singer. There was something so restrained and elegant about the way those records were produced – working class music produced by a middle class intellectual. Sir George made the process as important as the performance.
In what ways have technical working practices shaped the quality of recorded music? My first years in studios saw amazing changes. In 1962 it was mono on quarter-inch tape; by the time I moved to California in 1971 we’d gone to 2-inch 16-track. You could argue that it peaked then, creatively. Once you go 2-inch 24-track you’re trying to cram 50% more tracks into the same width of tape, because it gives you more flexibility. That was a watershed moment:
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was 4-track when I first went there. There was a period when only Olympic and Morgan had eight tracks, and we’d track at Sound Techniques and overdub at one of those two studios. It went to 16-track when I left London, and I soon went to 24 – I did Richard & Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out The Lights there on 24-track when I cam back there 10 years later. So I understand how the changes happened; I just think somewhere in all that development something was lost.
Are we also losing the art of open mic’ing and doing too much recording ‘in the box’? Some people can work that way, but I couldn’t. And it’s not just about old fogeys like me banging on about the old days! Two of the records in the 1990s that came out of nowhere to sell 10 million copies were Ry Cooder’s Buena Vista Social Club and the debut album by Nora Jones. They were both made in a very old-fashioned way and they sound it. In my opinion the fact that they sound like that is key to their success – even though the people buying them could never tell you that’s what it was. It was the sense of space. Arif Mardin, for example, took Nora Jones to an old-time jazz studio and put a lot of German microphones open in the same room. Artists can have too much
control, and they are by nature very attracted by the idea of perfection. They have an image of how they want the song to sound, and they’re given a huge palette and told how
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they can change this, move that… it’s not surprising that they’ll take advantage.
What are your memories of that fateful day when Dylan shocked his folk audience by using an electric band? I was working for promoter George Wein in Europe, and he made me production manager for the Newport Jazz Festival, and then the Folk Festival, in June ’65. Yes, we knew that Dylan was going to use an electric guitar and there was a tense atmosphere. I’d been at the ’63 Folk Festival and I really wanted to improve the sound. I hired Paul Rothchild to engineer, who’d produced the Paul Butterfield Blues Band records and really understood dynamics, and we decided to soundcheck every act. The old guard – Peter Seeger, Alan Lomax – were suspicious of this procedure! But part of the impact of the whole thing was Paul’s understanding of the tough, R&B Butterfield sound. From the first note of Maggie’s Farm, it was loud! It changed everything… The legend is that Seeger tried to cut the cables with an axe, but that could never have happened. In fact I tried, the previous night, to save a mic cable from one of the axes used by a prisoner chain-gang ensemble as they re-enacted a chain-gang chopping ritual on stage! I think the combination of that incident and Seeger’s ongoing objection is where the myth sprang from.
Archive releases: is there a morality to repackaging the past? There should be! The Nick Drake box set Fruit Tree was pioneering: it reinvented an artist largely misunderstood in his own time. But it was before the internet,
and I was careful not to delve into out-takes that he would have been mortified to see released. We did re-issue it with some genuine discoveries, but overall each legacy has to be respected – not plundered. However, I think it’s too late. Digital audio has opened the floodgates – good or bad, everything is available.” n
www.joeboyd.co.uk
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