(TV) Andy Johns talks about MM

[Maurice Rickard <maurice@mac.com>]

Philip Stevenson interviews him in the new issue of Tape-Op.  He 
talks at greater length about LZ and the Stones, but here's the MM 
passage, plus a little bit on the mixing:

Q: One of my all-time favorite records is _Marquee Moon_.  It feels 
great and it doesn't sound like any other band or record in the word. 
(sic) Did you enjoy that one?

AJ: We'', it's funny, because when you said that for second (sic) I 
went, "Oh yeah," but when I was doing that record I didn't have a 
very good time and I hated it and I hated them and I hated 
everything!  But looking back on it I have some fond memories.  They 
were this serious punk band.  I got the phone call to go to New York 
and it was for Elektra, whom I liked.  I hadn't heard any of the 
music, and in those days you didn't really, there wasn't all this 
getting together to see how you'd get on and all that crap.  I showed 
up and they just sort of turned around and said, "Oh you're here," 
and then turned around and went back to work!  It wasn't the sort of 
"Oh Andy's here hooray!" meeting I'd expected.

Q: So not the collaborative effort you were hoping for?

AJ: Tom Verlaine was very serious, and in the tracking sessions it 
was really tough to get the grooves happening.  They were like the 
Rolling Stones.  The Rolling Stones could play very poorly and then 
all of a sudden it would click and it would sound great, and they 
were a bit like that.  I must admit Tom Verlaine made me work a bit 
harder than I might if he hadn't been there. I did this playback 
session toward the end where it all came together, sounded fucking 
great.  I made them play perhaps a little tighter than they would 
have and double tracking things and vocal performances and stuff, but 
quite honestly it's such a long time ago.  I don't want to take more 
credit than I'm due.

Q:  Where did you track it in New York?

AJ: A&R Studios, which was fairly primitive.  I think we did all the 
music there and went to Atlantic to mix--they had this very strange 
mixer there, one of Tom Dowd's "brilliant ideas" to have the faders 
upside down!  So the theory being you _pull the sound towards you_ 
and you _push the sound away from you_ and in those day (sic) before 
computers, you'd just be going along and go, "Oh, I hate this," and 
in one fell swoop, *bang*!  You'd pull it all down.... So I blew up 
the speakers in the control room!  The theory did *not* catch on!

Tape Op #39, Jan/Feb '04.
--
Maurice Rickard
http://mauricerickard.com/   |   http://onezeromusic.com/
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