by Ramone, Phil
The sound of breaking glass that opens “You May Be Right” at the beginning of Glass Houses was a difficult effect to achieve.
We didn’t want a typical glass-break effect; we wanted the kind of sound that comes when a large plate glass window breaks, and there’s a split-second delay between the crack and the entire sheet crumbling to the ground.
I can’t tell you how many pieces of glass we broke—and how many ways we fractured it—before we found the piercing sound that’s heard on the record.
First we took two pieces of cinder block, covered them with wood, placed the glass on top, and hit it with a sledgehammer.
It didn’t sound right. We tried seven or eight different kinds of hammers and we still couldn’t replicate the frightful shatter that our hearts were set on.
Then I remembered a trick that one of our engineers had used when he needed a glass-break effect for a record: He tossed a few five-gallon drinking-water jugs down the back stairwell of the studio at 799 Seventh Avenue. We didn’t have drinking water in the studio the next day, and the stairwell was a mess, but hey—he was making a record.
I was preparing to toss a few jugs myself when another engineer walked into the studio and learned of our dilemma.
“You’re breaking the wrong glass—it’s too thin,” he said. “If you really want a bloodcurdling shatter you’ve got to use sheets of glass that are more than a quarter-inch thick, and you’ve got to suspend them.”
The following day I ordered the right glass. When it was delivered, I placed a piece over two wooden horses and smashed it from above. I miked the hell out of it; there were microphones all over the studio—above, below, to the right and left sides, far and near. It took nearly thirty sheets of glass, and the best-sounding take came on the last piece, with one crack of the hammer.
The time and expense was worth it: The harrowing glass-break we captured gave Glass Houses the pluperfect kickoff it deserves.
Larry Franke, an A&R engineer who worked on The Nylon Curtain and Songs in the Attic, witnessed the creation of another sound effect we devised for Glass Houses:
“Billy and Phil wanted to create a Spanish flavor for the breaks on ‘Don’t Ask Me Why,’ and were looking for percussive things to achieve the effect. Billy noticed that our receptionist, Laura Doty, was wearing shoes with heels. ‘Can I borrow your shoes?’ he asked. ‘Sure!’
“We set up to record on a little white table in the lobby at 322 West Forty-eighth Street, between studios R1 and R2. Billy grabbed the shoes, we rolled the tape, and he used Laura’s heels to tap out a flamenco-style rhythm.”
Billy Joel overdubs handclaps and heels for the flamenco-inspired bridge of “Don’t Ask Me Why,” 1980 Courtesy of Larry Franke
I had a Pentax 35mm camera with me, and I jumped up on the chair and snapped a few pictures. In those photos, you can see the Shure SM57 microphone we used to record it. Ultimately, the flamenco break featured handclaps and castanets. “But somewhere in the mix are Laura Doty’s heels, too,” Franke concludes.
The Nylon Curtain also offered several opportunities for us to creatively use sound effects.
Engineer Jim Boyer and I searched like hell for the steam whistle and industrial sounds that open “Allentown.” We listened to stock sound effects, and scoured small factories and industrial sites. We finally found a steam shovel working on a skyscraper near the studio; the natural echoes of the buildings surrounding the construction zone are what gave us the huge sound you hear on the record.
Liberty DeVitto remembers an unconventional trick we used for another effect on “Allentown”:
“Billy and Phil were looking for industrial sound effects for ‘Allentown,’ and they located a pile driver sound effect in the tape library. But the canned effect was too thin—it needed bulking up.
“Near my drums was a box of small percussion instruments that came from Studio Instrument Rental: cowbells, maracas, triangles, and such. The box was always in the way, and I had noticed that whenever I picked it up, the instruments tipped to one side. All of them banging together made an elongated ‘Shhhheeeooow’ sound—it was very sibilant. When Phil was talking about the pile driver effect, I ran over to the box and tipped it on its side. ‘How’s this?’ I asked.
“Phil liked it, and when you hear the pile driver effect on ‘Allentown,’ the weird sloping sound is me, jumping up and down so that all of the percussion instruments in the box would crash together on the beat. When we later opened the box, we found that all of the stuff inside had been smashed to bits.”
The sounds we incorporated into songs like “Movin’ Out,” “Stiletto,” “You May Be Right,” “Don’t Ask Me Why,” and “Allentown” were fun. But when we recorded “Goodnight Saigon” for The Nylon Curtain, we reverentially strove for authenticity.
We auditioned many sound effects for The Nylon Curtain: airport, factory, battle, gunshot, helicopter, and rain forest sounds. We also pulled up stock recordings of troops in the jungle, night sounds, and chirping crickets; a priest talking, and an announcement; and ambient sounds reminiscent of Mexico, Vietnam, Brazil, and France.
The whirring of the helicopter blades in “Goodnight Saigon” is a mixture of the Roland JH 720 synthesizer and Liberty’s tom-toms, which he loosened so that when he hit the batter side it gave us a flaccid thwack. The effect was such an integral part of the song that I had to program it on Billy’s synthesizer so he could reproduce it in concert.
The cricket, military, and helicopter sounds on “Goodnight Saigon” were so effective that we began receiving letters from Vietnam vets, telling us how real it all sounded.
The transfer of a realistic-sounding mix to the final master tape occurs during mastering: the last and most influential step in the recording process.
During mastering, the album is sequenced, and the recording levels and equalization of each song are adjusted to make for smooth song-to-song transitions on the final album. At the end-stage, the production master—used for manufacturing—is created.
The hallmark of an expert mastering job is latency. If an album unfolds smoothly and you don’t notice any jarring changes between songs, the mastering engineer deserves the credit.
“The first rule of mastering is, ‘Do no harm,’ explains Bob Ludwig of Gateway Mastering. “The secret to being a good mastering engineer is being able to listen to a mix, imagine how it could sound, and then push the right buttons to achieve the sound you have in your head. For most of the recordings I work on, great mix engineers and producers have spent lots of time trying to get it right in the first place, and I honor what they send me.”
As Greg Calbi of Sterling Sound in New York points out, “Mastering is the last stage of mixing, where the mix is finished in terms of its sonic quality and balance. The perspective of the mastering engineer is, ‘Can this mix be improved in terms of excitement, clarity, unity, or emotion?’ A good recording engineer can make a clean digital transfer, but they still look to the mastering engineer for a fresh perspective or opinion. Recording engineers have such a complex job, and are usually deeply focused on the project they are recording. The mastering engineer has an enormous range of listening experience, a consistent, high-resolution monitoring environment, and the luxury of working without the distractions of a recording session. His or her ear training is very different from that of the recording engineer.”
When we cut records thirty years ago, they sounded good in the control room, but it was hard to channel that sound onto an LP. Session tapes underwent a lot of tweaking during their transposition to vinyl, and the compromising to compensate for vinyl’s deficiencies began in the mixing phase and ended in mastering.
In mastering a tape for LP, you had to cut back the bass, crank up the mid-range and high end, and use compression to make it sound pleasing on an average record player. There was a complex physiology behind groove width and depth, and the width of the grooves changed as you got toward the end of the record. The last track on an album was the most problematic; if you d
idn’t master the tape and cut the disc properly it would sound distorted. You could have the most dynamic mix in the world, but it would sound awful if you couldn’t squeeze it into a record’s grooves.
In the LP era, we had a daily flow of discs between the mastering studio (often Sterling Sound) and A&R. The mastering house would master the disc, send us an acetate of the song or album, and we would preview it. How did it sound on a hi-fi system, and on a rinky-dink record changer? Invariably, we’d make corrections and when we did, another set of acetates was cut for our approval.
With the CD, groove physiology is no longer a factor. But since digital recording’s high resolution can magnify a mix’s flaws, mastering becomes even more critical in the digital domain.
“Vocals are particularly important,” says Bob Ludwig. “People want to hear the words to a song, and the first thing I listen for in a mix is the vocal. Is it prominent enough in the mix? Is the equalization correct? Too much vocal in a mix makes the music uninteresting; too little is annoying to the listener. I work hard to find the equalization and compression that will keep the vocal in place. At one magical point, something happens that makes the vocal blend perfectly.”
The qualities that make for a great mix can be enhanced under the careful hand of an expert mastering engineer. Thanks to the finely-tuned ears of such distinguished mastering professionals as Greg Calbi, Ted Jensen, Bob Ludwig, George Marino, Darcy Proper, Doug Sax, and Mark Wilder (to name a few), the recordings supervised by this producer shine.
Original 10" acetate test disc label Phil Ramone Collection
TRACK 17
Live from the President’s House
Watching Marilyn Monroe rehearse at Madison Square Garden, May 1962 Phil Ramone Collection
When it comes to energy, excitement, and musical vibrancy, nothing beats a live performance.
Back when I started engineering, it was a challenge to provide decent sound in the concert hall itself, much less reproduce it on an LP. But because I started out as a performer, I was always attuned to the acoustics in the venues I played and recorded in.
As A&R Recording’s reputation grew, people began asking Don Frey and me for advice on how to make their studios and performance spaces sound better. We got so many requests to work on television productions and concerts that in 1963 we decided to start an offshoot business as audio consultants.
By that time, Don and I had been working for our most prestigious client for almost two years: President John F. Kennedy. Why start at the bottom when you can start at the top? Our White House affiliation helped solidify our credibility and marketability as sound-reinforcement experts.
How did a New York engineer like me land a dream job in the White House?
One day, songwriter Richard Adler was producing a commercial at A&R, and out of the blue asked, “Can you come to an evening in tribute to the arts, at which President Kennedy is the keynote speaker?” It was a live remote broadcast from the Washington Armory, with orchestral pieces being performed in Washington and New York—a real black-tie, Washington society party. I thought it would be fun, so I tagged along.
The sound in the Armory was atrocious. There were no absorptive surfaces; the acoustics were so bad that everything sounded like a blur. When the National Symphony Orchestra began to play, all we could hear was feedback. Predictably it was President Kennedy who got blasted for it in the press.
Shortly after that debacle, Richard received a call from the head of the Democratic Party asking him to remedy the situation before a fundraiser marking the anniversary of Kennedy’s inauguration. Richard called again, this time asking Don and me to help improve the Armory’s acoustics.
Neither Don nor I had formally studied architecture or acoustics, so we invited Tom Dowd along. All we had were our ears; Tom had the benefit of golden ears and a Columbia University degree in physics. After surveying the cavernous Armory and conferring with Tom, I drew up a plan that I thought might work. It was easy to do, since cost wasn’t a concern.
First, we built a set of risers, stuffed fiberglass insulation into every crevice to prevent rattling, and carpeted them.
Then, I asked Altec to design a speaker system that could be hung in tiers going straight up toward the audience. I wanted one pair of speakers for every twenty people in the room. It was overkill, but I was determined to get the best effect.
Finally, I treated the ceiling to help reduce the reflections in the room.
I knew that NASA was using an experimental weather balloon, and it seemed like just the right thing. We called for and received a bunch of NASA’s weather balloons, stuffed them with Styrofoam, placed them against the ceiling, and swathed them in netting to hold them in place. The party planners hung ten thousand red, white, and blue balloons from the netting, creating a panorama of all-American color. The brick walls on either end of the Armory were decorated with drapes; the set design made the interior look like a classic theater. The program was a resounding success.
At seven o’clock the next morning, the phone in my hotel room rang. I answered groggily. A voice on the other end said, “Phil? This is Jack Kennedy.” Thinking it was one of the guys playing a practical joke, I said, “Yeah, right. Lemme sleep!” I slammed the receiver down and drifted back to sleep. Within minutes, the phone rang again.
This time, I recognized the inimitable Boston accent. “Mr. Ramone? This is President Kennedy.” I was never so embarrassed or apologetic in my life. “I’m sorry, Mr. President. I can’t believe I hung up! I feel terrible.” Despite my faux pas the president laughed and complimented me on our work. He then extended an invitation for me to meet him in the White House.
It was an inspiring and fruitful visit. He expressed a desire to improve the sound in the East Room, where the Kennedys were making history with a series of historic music and theater programs. I was elated to hear that the president was concerned about the quality of the sound in the mansion. He was especially eager to please Mrs. Kennedy, who had redecorated the public rooms in the White House and didn’t want unsightly cables marring their beauty.
Richard Adler summoned the great theatrical designer Joel Mielziner and lighting designer Jules Fisher, and they explained that we could install architectural elements to hide the equipment. Sound, lighting, and design were incorporated into the East Room without compromising the decor.
I suggested to the president that he consider recording all of the events in the East Room—and the speeches he made wherever he spoke—and install a recording system inside the Oval Office with microphones that could be switched on and off. Until then, the only extant recordings were those done for radio, television, and newsreels. I felt that having a high-quality archive of the president’s conversations would be invaluable.
Then I asked if I could make another suggestion. Could we get rid of all the unsightly news microphones that were on his podium and replace them with a simple, two-microphone system that would feed both the public-address system and the press?
Phil Ramone Collection
Visiting and working at the White House wasn’t just fun—it was intriguing, too. President Kennedy was so poised that it was easy to forget that we were in the midst of a cold war, and that there were some terrifying threats facing the nation.
All of us had thorough background checks and security clearances before we were allowed to enter the White House.
When you entered the compound, both you and your vehicle were searched. If you left the mansion and returned, you were searched again. If you walked from the East Room to the president’s office, you were searched yet another time.
If the buzzer that signaled the president was coming through the hallway sounded, everyone cleared the area. Even butlers who were carrying trays of food would instinctively duck into the nearest doorway!
When you arrived to work each day, you were given a color-coded button. The color was changed every few hours, and if for some reason your button hadn’t been replaced and a Secret Service agent
saw you, you’d be led out.
It’s funny now, but the first event we did for the Kennedys inside the White House was a disaster.
The president loved show music, and to please him and Mrs. Kennedy, Richard Adler produced an evening of Broadway favorites featuring music and dance.
Agnes de Mille choreographed a special ballet to the music from Oklahoma! As the stage in the East Room was too small to hold all of the musicians, I suggested that we prerecord the music at the United States Marine Corps studio, using their orchestra.
The show began, and the first three numbers were well received. During the de Mille piece, however, the room was suddenly plunged into darkness.
The tape machine stopped, and the dancers froze in position. The Secret Service swept into action.
Before long, the White House electrician discovered that the fuses in the White House were only fifteen amps, which wasn’t adequate for the demands of our equipment.
The poor electrician got the fuse replaced, and the tape picked up where it left off. The dancers unfroze and finished the number to a rousing ovation.
I felt like my White House career was over before it got started. I felt as though I had embarrassed both the president and myself. It was one of the few times in my life when I felt mortified.
Mingling in the reception hall afterwards, I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard the reassuring voice of the president. He’d seen how distraught I was. “This is not something you could have controlled. It was still a sensational evening.”
I was stunned.
I was a visitor in the president’s home, and here he was trying to console me. “Think about how many people will talk about this, and never forget being in the White House when the lights went out,” Kennedy said. “It’s still a damned shame,” I replied. “We have to do something about the electrical system in the East Room.”
A week later I received a lovely thank-you letter from President Kennedy. Soon after, the White House social secretary called and asked if I’d be available to do the next state dinner.
