Early on at Abbey Road you worked with Roy Harper on Stormcock?
I did the first ever session on the 16-track desk with Roy Harper in the number three studio. That was a good one. I was the first to actually get my hands on that board, the 16-track.
Was it working okay?
Yeah, it worked fine!
I guess they had a lot of technical staff there to ensure that.
Yeah, in white coats. It was really the first opportunity I had to do some engineering experimentation.
Who was producing on that?
I think it was just him. I don't remember anyone. Perhaps Peter Jenner or Andrew King — they would wander in and out...
Were they managing him at the time?
Probably. Those guys seem to have been involved with every Harvest [Records] act in one way or another.
I wasn't aware you worked on Pink Floyd's Meddle also.
I didn't! They gave me a gold album by mistake. [laughs]
Okay! So instead of sending you [a gold award for] Atom Heart Mother — they sent you Meddle?
That's right.
I do know that you mixed Atom Heart Mother. One thing I've heard some people complain about was that they felt like the orchestra kind of lagged behind the band since they had the tapes done and played the orchestra over it.
It was a very difficult part — the brass. I mean you can hear how difficult... it was a stunning arrangement. It was, you know, I mean given today's technology of course you can tighten up every note and get everything lined up exactly, but yeah, it's not perfect.
Yeah.
But what records were in those days?
Being that it was such a long piece, did you mix it in sections and splice together?
Yes! Almost certainly that way. Anything that had a complicated mix like that — you would mix until you made a mistake, and then stop and then run back and, "That was good except this and so-so..." I did quite a lot of records like that.
On that song there's the weird talkback voices, like the "silence in the studio" thing. Where did those come from?
I remember it was Nick Mason's voice, "Silence in the studio." It was just a snippet that somebody picked up on and said, "Let's take that and put it in there." I don't think it has any conceptual significance.
Yeah. I was wondering if it was like, accidents and then you keep them...
Yeah, it probably was. Trouble is it's 33 years ago. My memory fails me on that one, I think! [laughs]
During the mixing, was Ron Geesin [arranger/co-writer with Pink Floyd] there or was it just you and the band?
I don't think Ron was around particularly for mixing. You know, I think his job was done. But I remember we had two completely separate gos at recording the brass. The first go was determined not good enough and we got the whole section back in again.
No small expense.
I sensed that Ron wasn't a particularly experienced conductor. I'm not saying he wasn't a very talented guy, but I think possibly if an experienced conductor would have come in it might have been a good idea.
There are ways to conduct an orchestra in a such a way that you can pull them forward. It's one of the skills of conducting, actually. It's one of the things that makes you realize how difficult it is, really.
You've worked with Andrew Powell on orchestral dates. Have you used him recently?
Just the last album, which was The Time Machine.
You must be happy with his work.
Oh yeah. The album I'm doing now is much more electronic. It's a new direction
You heard one track that has got guitar all over it... that's an exception to the rule — most of it is synths and computer generated.
You're working within Nuendo — are you mixing within Nuendo?
Yes. It's great. I actually feel that the formal process of mixing has gone away, it's just really mixing as you go. Pretty much all the level changes that need to be done, you do it along the way.
The working mix kind of becomes...
Becomes the record, which I like. I mean the whole idea of doing a recall and setting up all the outboard and just doing all that just to tweak one little vocal thing you'd probably say, "Oh! The mix is fine!" It really is realistic to do that now. Just call it up, get it changed and save it again and "done."
Are you using any analog processing? Are you putting things out and bringing them back in?
Not so far. It's just possible that I may choose to, at least on some of the tracks, just choose to break it out and go to a commercial studio and just make use of the outboard. Although I think the mix will still basically be the same.
Right. Earlier you were saying, "P.J. knows computers better than me"?
Well, you know, computing is a youth culture, I think, and he's a good deal younger than me. It's a part of the brain that doesn't work for me or something. He's just very fast.
Do you like having someone to help you engineer?
Yeah, this whole album has been a series of collaborations, really. Computer guys have taken the traditional role over. Although it's my studio and I set up the gear and get the project happening and stuff, you can only have one hand on the mouse at any given time so why not give it to somebody who can do the job twice as fast?
We're talking about freeing the mind up to be creative, too. It probably allows you to step away more.
Yes. It's nice to walk in and out while he's busy doing less creative things... I'd rather not be in the room when he does that. Go make a few phone calls...
It's been said that artists shouldn't engineer their own work and vice- versa. [laughs]
If they engineer then they shouldn't be artists.
You violated every one then...
Well, that must be a dig at me, as there aren't many engineers or engineer/producers that did take the plunge to artist. Daniel Lanois is one of them. I mean, how many others are there? Not so very many people who grew up as engineers and seriously went into music making, as musicians.
Eric Woolfson was your manager, initially. You were still working at Abbey Road as an engineer mostly at that point, right?
Yes.
You'd be probably the first engineer to have a manager.
It could well be.
Which is interesting. What brought that on?
Well, it was very short-lived because a matter of weeks after hooking up with Eric, I actually had a number one hit as a producer, in the UK with Pilot, a project I was an engineer on. I really didn't do so very much work just as an engineer, and by the time I had established myself I was already producing, doing both jobs, not just the engineering. But yes, it was unusual for those times to have a manager around.
Was it because you were getting calls and to field stuff or why did you do that?
Just to get paid! [laughsl] You know, some had a habit of saying, "Oh, we'd like you to do this," and then I'd do it and find that my bank balance hadn't improved as a result of doing it so I needed someone to go in and get some label debts.
That's a good practical reason there. It seemed that Eric's plan with the Alan Parsons Project was initially to sort of get you some attention as a producer...
...and engineer. Did it almost go too far in one way? Since the mid-seventies, you really haven't engineered or produced that many other people's records, it's become more focused on the Alan Parsons Project and the Alan Parsons records. Are you happy with that path or in a way would you like to have done a little more outside production work?
I would like to have done a little more. There are two artists that lived through the Project years — Al Stewart and Ambrosia. It would have been good to do a few other things, but there's only so many hours in the day and I was busy enough and didn't need to be any busier.
How busy did The Alan Parsons Project keep you?
There was usually something going on. In the early years of The Project, I continued to be a staff member at Abbey Road so I was doing a lot of just engineering staff work. I could always keep busy. There was more to simply making the records — there was the promotion. We'd go off and do tours of radio stations, endless interviews and so on. Also Eric would be writing. We kept busy... Eric's vision was to promote me as the first producer/engineer/artist — I think as time went on he grew more frustrated that he'd pushed himself into the background. And he actually tried in the latter years to become more in the forefront. He started singing songs for one thing.
Was that ever a power play between you two or was it just his personal frustration and you guys were still doing okay as a team?
It's a good question and I think there were conflicts. We both had a chance to have our say about the way the Project was going and if we both felt strongly about something and there were opposing views then it was difficult to deal with.
Is he still working with theatre stuff?
He's just finished a theatrical musical based on more Edgar Allen Poe stories.
Are you still in touch?
Yeah! I saw him three weeks ago.
I'm going to ask you some gear questions. I've heard you preferred Nuendo over Pro Tools, but we don't know if you've actually ever said that.
Oh, I have said that. Just because they have a large slice of the market people say that their product is the best. Steinberg has done some remarkable things. Every one of these hard drive recording programs has something that's great that the other can't do and you just have to decide which one's right for you. I've just had a lot of good luck with Nuendo so I'm standing by it.
Have you done sonic comparisons with different platforms?
No, no. That's really quite difficult to do.
I would imagine.
The Time Machine album, the last album I did, had a big, expensive Pro Tools system running. As soon as the album was over I sold it. I just didn't need it. Anyway, the next version was on the way and it was, "Bye- bye!" I think hard disk recording should be software. Try to keep the hardware independent — that's something Digidesign doesn't do...
Right.
At least they didn't in the past, you know.
You started doing some of your recording in the digital realm fairly early on... in the eighties maybe?
As soon as the 1610 was available for mixing to.
What influenced you to try out digital in the first place? What were you looking for and what did you find?
My first experience with it was CD. I thought, "If that's the future of home audio, then I'm in." Possibly if I'd heard it now I'd think differently. It was quite a breakthrough at the time.
And now we've trained our ears to listen to different things, but then it was just like, "Whoa! There's no noise! There's no sound of crackling and we don't think there's any distortion... there's something a little bit strange but we don't know what it is."
[laughs] Now we know!
Yeah. The words dither and jitter didn't exist then.
What did you like and dislike about the early digital multitracks?
Um, being able to do electronic edits was a big one without having to go through a the degredation associated with a generation of copying...
And, interestingly, when the machines first came out Sony maintained that you could cut the tape... and you really couldn't without risk.
Yeah, I wondered about that!
So I really got to enjoy the concept of going back and forth between the two machines and getting cut down or extended versions of stuff. The same thinking that hard disk recording is now but in a more primitive way.
JB: It was all in the digital domain though?
How can you do that with two machines?
You could connect just through a master multi pin connecter — digital to digital.
You've gone on record saying you hate compression.
Okay, no. I don't hate compression — I hate compression on a mix.
