Sound Man: A Life Recording Hits with The Rolling Stones, The Who, LedZeppelin, The Eagles, Eric Clapton, The Faces . . .

by Glyn Johns

  The demos that Paul had made in his basement at home were really inspiring, so playing them to everyone at the beginning of each session made my job so much easier. The sessions were a joy, everyone rose to the occasion. It would have been a rare experience for all this lot to come together and play, as it certainly was for me to produce. There can be a remarkable camaraderie that exists between those working on a project, and this was a classic case of that, everyone contributing with equal energy and intent to create something special and with each bringing out the best in the others.

  Derek Green and Jerry Moss both believed in the project as much as we all did and were an integral part of the process of making the record. This made it all the harder for us all when it did not achieve the success we believed it deserved. It was unusual for me to have the label so involved while making a record, as I normally preferred to be left to my own devices, but on this occasion it proved to be a huge benefit and a good lesson learned.

  The conventional process of promoting an album did not apply. Unfortunately, there was no obvious single to get radio play, and Jerry had a problem getting permission from Waylon’s label to use anything featuring him for promotional purposes.

  So we brought in Ethan Russell to shoot the album cover, and along with Mike Ross, the art director at A&M in London, created a book that went with the record. He took quite wonderful pictures that re-created the period and illustrated the characters and the drama of the story. So impressive was his work that A&M decided to promote the record by taking an audiovisual show on the road to major cities in the UK and America.

  Everyone who took part was proud of the end result. It is sad that more people did not get to enjoy it. I think it is an outstanding piece of work by Paul Kennerley, and the performances from the artists did him credit, and it would seem that the few people who did get to hear it certainly agree.

  RECORDING WHITE MANSIONS AT OLYMPIC. FROM LEFT: JOHN DILLON, STEVE CASH, WAYLON JENNINGS, ME.

  WHITE MANSIONS SESSION AT OLYMPIC. L TO R: JOHN DILLON, ERIC CLAPTON, PAUL KENNERLEY, BERNIE LEADON (LOITERING IN THE BACKGROUND), AND DAVE MARKEE.

  • • •

  There had been some delay between Paul’s coming to me with White Mansions and our making the record. This was entirely my fault, as I was extremely busy at the time, and it was only as a result of Paul’s patience that I eventually got to make the record. He had put this time to good use by writing his next epic, The Legend of Jesse James, which follows on historically from the Civil War, and he presented me with the first demos as we were finishing White Mansions. He had researched this with the same minute attention to historical fact, and after some considerable effort, we were able to convince a wonderful array of talent to appear on the record.

  This time the characters were not fictitious. Paul took a minimum of artistic license in the dialogue but other than that the story itself was really accurate.

  So we started the process all over again of deciding who we should get to play each character. Paul and I were big fans of The Band and decided fairly quickly that our first choice to play Jesse James would be Levon Helm. By this point in time, he had started his career as a movie actor, and we discovered that he was making a movie in southern Spain. So having made contact through his agent, we jumped on a plane with a cassette player and the demos, and met up with him for dinner after what had been a long day’s shooting for him. Levon and I had first met in 1969 when I recorded The Band with Bob Dylan at the Isle of Wight Festival. The following year he had asked me to mix The Band’s Stage Fright album. So we already had a good working relationship going. He just needed to be convinced that the songs were musically compatible with his taste and quite understandably was interested in who else we were going to get to take part. We had a great evening, and once he got over the shock of Paul’s innate Englishness, which seemed so out of context with the subject matter, he fell in love with the idea.

  Emmylou Harris was the obvious choice for the female lead of Jesse James’s love interest, and she readily agreed to take part. Now we were on a roll.

  Next we had to get someone for the part of Frank James, Jesse’s brother. We figured we should aim for the top and came up with the idea of Johnny Cash. Contact was made and the idea pitched. He agreed to meet us to discuss the possibility, which was a lot further than I thought we would get. I suspect that Waylon Jennings and Emmylou Harris had tipped him off that we were okay. He was on tour and we were invited to meet him at a rodeo that he was playing in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Once again we jumped on a plane and turned up at the appointed time and place, both a little nervous to meet the great man. We went backstage after the show and he very politely told us that he was very tired and asked if we could meet him the next day at nine a.m. at his hotel. We said we would be happy to do that and knocked on the door to his suite at precisely nine the following morning. After a short wait, the door was answered by a bleary-eyed Mr. Cash in his dressing gown and pajamas. We were embarrassed at having woken him up, but he was charming and made light of the situation, saying it was his fault that he had overslept. He ushered us into one of several bedrooms off the main living room of the suite and asked if we would not mind waiting in there while he got dressed. We nervously sat down on a bed that we could just make out in the darkened room, feeling like two schoolboys waiting for a beating from their headmaster and thinking that our luck was out, as surely he was not going to be receptive to our project, having just been woken from a deep sleep after what was almost certainly a very late night. We sat nervously on the edge of the bed for some minutes and all of a sudden there was the sound of movement from the other side of the room as someone turned over in their sleep. We both leapt to our feet and exited into the hallway, falling over each other in an attempt to get out of the room before more embarrassment befell us. As we tumbled out into the hallway, we ran straight into Johnny, who, now fully dressed, apologized with a grin, seemingly unconcerned about the room’s occupant, and invited us to join him and June for breakfast in the dining area of the suite.

  There she was. The great June Carter, sitting at the breakfast table, made up to the nines, beautifully turned out for that time in the morning, and charming to boot. They both very quickly put us at ease, and we got straight down to business. June’s main concern was the lyrics that her husband was going to sing, so they were scrutinized while we ordered breakfast and played him demos of the songs he would sing, while explaining all we knew about the project. He seemed very impressed with Paul’s writing, and after we agreed to change a couple of mild cusswords in the lyric, we got the thumbs-up. We left the hotel feeling really pleased with ourselves. We had pulled it off against all the odds and, I am sure, with a little help from Waylon.

  We got Rosanne Cash to play Jesse’s mother, and Charlie Daniels and Albert Lee—the genius English guitar player—to be the other members of the gang. We even managed to get Rodney Crowell to come and sing a small part.

  The band were as impressive as the singers, with Levon playing drums, Emory Gordy bass, Tim Gorman keyboards, Albert Lee and the amazing Jesse Ed Davis on electric guitars, and Bernie Leadon playing guitar and banjo. Charlie Daniels played a bit of fiddle and Nick De Caro did wonderful string arrangements and played accordion, while both Emmylou and Paul glued the whole thing together with wonderful rhythm acoustic guitars.

  Brian Ahern’s studio in Los Angeles was perfect for the project, and he made us feel most welcome. It was a big room with a wooden floor and a high ceiling. So I was able to set up a large rhythm section quite comfortably with plenty of room to spare. I shall never forget sitting next to Emmylou in the control room and hearing her sing in my ear for the first time. There is not a microphone invented that can reproduce the true sound of her voice. It is like nothing I have ever heard. She is one of the truly great singers. Completely without ego. Treats everyone around her with respect, concern, and kindness. The consummate professional. The first to
arrive and the last to leave, and she sings like an angel. It is no wonder that Paul Kennerley fell head over heels in love with her on these sessions and married her not long after.

  We did all of Levon’s tracks with him singing and playing the drums live. The only vocal overdub he did was his duet with Emmylou. Paul and I had rented a house not too far from the studio while we were working on the album and Levon stayed with us. He was great company and I never tired of the wonderful anecdotes he would relate late into the evening with his Camel cigarette–induced, husky southern drawl.

  Johnny Cash was unable to come to Los Angeles for the sessions so Paul and I went to Nashville to record him, having cut the tracks in L.A. It was a Sunday afternoon and he came to the studio on his way back from a hunting expedition, asking Paul and me if we would like a haunch of venison as he arrived.

  We asked if it would be okay to take some photographs while we were working. He readily agreed, but we were made to wait while he sent home for his customary all-black outfit.

  To work with him was, without a doubt, one of the great privileges of my career. He could not have been more professional or pleasant to deal with and was eager to do the best job possible. His voice really is quite remarkable. One of the songs he sings, “Six Gun Shooting,” is up there with my favorite recordings.

  The making of this record was a great adventure. It was a wonderfully conceived piece of work by Paul Kennerley, and all of the artists and musicians involved seemed to enjoy the process enormously, giving some outstanding performances. This and White Mansions were two records that got away. They never received the recognition they deserved, and in my view, they still hold water today and remain albums that I’m very proud to have been involved with.

  MTV

  During the sixties the record companies took full advantage of radio as the most effective and free method of promoting their product. All the labels had staff “pluggers,” whose job it was to get records played on the air by any means. This usually relied on a personal relationship with the DJs, who in those days invariably did their own programming. As a result, human nature being what it is, bribery in various forms became commonplace.

  By the time the seventies came along, radio began to change drastically. It became more corporate, with small independent stations being acquired and having a corporate strategy applied to the way they operated, taking away their individuality, removing control of what was played and when to one central authority, and using what was called “psychographics.” The playlist became a science. Music was segregated into boxes. The demographics of what age group and sex would be listening at any given time of the day were formulated, and music that was likely to appeal was programmed to suit. If your record did not fit into one of the prescribed boxes it would not be considered for airtime. So like an insidious disease, radio slowly began to dictate the types of records that were made, as we were constantly being told that in order to get airtime we had to produce to a predescribed menu. I found this to be most unsettling, considering it to be “the tail wagging the dog.” It is fair to say that we had the benefit of free promotion for years with radio stations happy to ride on the back of the innovation that had taken place in popular music in the previous decade, but this had come about largely through the input of creative individuals operating with little or no restriction. This produced an environment that encouraged and applauded originality. What was happening to radio in the seventies threw a damp cloth on all of that, and what followed became more and more formulated to fit in a box.

  Radio had a stranglehold on the record business that was relaxed only slightly by the advent of MTV in August 1981. All of a sudden, labels could reach the youth of America through cable TV. This was welcomed with open arms as a vibrant new way of promoting music. The new art form of the music video was created, giving many young aspiring moviemakers an opportunity to show off their skills, Ethan Russell leading the charge.

  It was not long before the record companies were spending more on the video than on the production of the record it was promoting. This was fine if it worked and the record was a huge hit, but all too often the eventual sales did not justify this expense, putting pressure on the artists’ viability as a commercial entity in the eyes of their label.

  The constant battle to get product on the air eventually spawned a cynical exploiting of the young, with the marketing guys realizing that sexual titillation will get programmers to use their product. This resulted, unsurprisingly, in absolutely no self-censorship on the part of the music business.

  The Clash, 1982

  My working with The Clash came about through Steve Winwood’s brother “Muff,” the head of A&R for CBS in London at the time. He rang me in desperation, having finally taken delivery of the band’s next album and it proving to be not quite what he had expected. Joe Strummer and Mick Jones would take it in turns to produce each album that they made but there had been some difference of opinion about this one and they had decided to book two separate studios in New York for two weeks and each do a complete mix of the album independently of the other. I am not sure who won, but what they had delivered to Muff did not pass muster in his opinion. So he called me to see if I could cast an unbiased ear on the record and, by remixing it, make it acceptable to all concerned.

  ORIGINAL DOODLED ACETATE COVER FOR WHAT BECAME COMBAT ROCK.

  If I am completely honest, I was not a fan of The Clash or, for that matter, any other punk band that existed. In fact, I had never really listened to them, but Muff was very convincing, and the fact that he had thought of calling me to help him out of his predicament intrigued me, as I had a great deal of respect for him.

  He sent me two acetates of what turned out to be a double album. Someone, probably Joe Strummer, had drawn his version of a cartoon as artwork on the sleeve in thick felt-tip pen. I was quite skeptical as I went to listen, thinking that it would probably be an awful unmusical racket that I would not understand or have any sympathy with. Having listened to the whole thing, I got a pleasant surprise, and as self-indulgent as it was, I realized that they were really clever and that there was a great album to be had from what they had done. The combination of Joe’s energy and intellect and Mick’s musicianship was quite remarkable, along with Topper’s excellent drumming. What attracted me as much as anything was their abundant sense of humor.

  So having agreed to meet, they very kindly came down to my place in Sussex. I stepped outside to greet them as they arrived and the first very strange-looking guy got out of the car and introduced himself as Kosmo Vinyl. Not a good start. Kosmo had driven Joe and the band’s manager, Bernie Rhodes, down to meet me. Mick Jones did not come; as it turned out, he was not interested in the whole idea.

  It does show you how appearances can be deceptive. They turned out to be extremely polite and respectful. I hit it off with Joe straight away. The suggestions that I made about the record were readily accepted by him, so by the time the meeting was over I was even more intrigued and agreed to start immediately.

  The tapes were delivered to the studio at my house in Warnham, and Joe came down from London for the bright and early start of ten a.m. I felt that some of the material was too long, so I set about editing some of the tracks in an effort to make them more concise. I felt the album would be a great deal stronger if it were a single rather than a double. All of these suggestions were greeted with much enthusiasm from Joe, which gave me the confidence to try any idea I had with regard to the sound or the arrangement of any song I was mixing. He encouraged me to be as avant-garde as possible and allowed me to change quite substantially the record that they had delivered to CBS a few days before.

  At around seven p.m., the control room door opened and in walked a somewhat disgruntled Mick Jones. I welcomed him, sat him down and played him the mixes I had done that day. He sat unmoved, and when asked how he felt about what he had just heard, said he had several changes that he would like to make to e
ach of them. I politely informed him that that was a shame as I had finished them and had he taken the trouble to arrive at ten a.m. along with everyone else that morning, his opinion would have been gratefully received and adhered to. However, as he chose not to be there, he had missed the boat, as I was not about to do them all over again. He left even more displeased than when he arrived.

  The following morning, still disappointed by Mick’s reaction the previous evening, and knowing that he was unhappy with the whole idea of me mixing the record, I rang Joe to say although I had enjoyed working with him immensely, I did not think too much of his mate and thought it best not to continue.

  A couple of hours later, I got a call from Muff to say that Mick Jones had apologized and would not participate in the sessions from there on, leaving Joe to be the band’s representative at the sessions.

  So Joe and I reconvened and had a blast, rerecording a couple of his vocals and mixing the rest of the record in a couple more days. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed his company. Certainly one of the most genuine people I have ever met. Bright as a button and seemed to me to be totally unaffected by his success. A truly lovely and extremely talented man. A huge loss to the music community when he died in December 2002.

  I forgot to mention, the album was Combat Rock. There were two hit singles from it: “Rock the Casbah” and the even more popular “Should I Stay or Should I Go.”