Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music

by Ramone, Phil

  Because of my Kennedy affiliation, I got another unexpected assignment in May 1962: doing the sound for the president’s birthday bash at the old Madison Square Garden.

  It was the first time I’d done sound at the Garden, and because of the unions, I was limited in what I could do. I did, however, install special microphones, speakers, and equalizers. Madison Square Garden was, at the time, a fight arena, and the sound wasn’t easy to control. The star of the event, however, wasn’t the sound.

  As a special gift, the president’s friends had arranged for Marilyn Monroe to cap the evening by serenading him with “Happy Birthday.”

  Marilyn came to rehearsal at seven thirty a.m. wearing sunglasses, white pants and blouse, and a simple kerchief. Even casually dressed, she was stunning.

  Her first move was to greet the members of the orchestra, some of whom had played on her album. She was charming, and as she spoke with the musicians I understood why she had such an entrancing effect on people.

  Then she walked over to me.

  “Hi, I’m Marilyn,” she said.

  I introduced myself, and Richard Adler told her that I’d done his Hertz commercials and White House events. She put her arm in mine as we walked back toward the piano. “Where are those damned White House photographers when you need them?” I muttered to myself.

  Marilyn needed to do a sound check, and I don’t think I ever spent so much time preparing a microphone. We discussed how to approach her performance, and Marilyn rehearsed with jazz pianist Hank Jones. It was pretty imposing to be on stage with Marilyn Monroe, Hank Jones, and a nine-foot grand piano!

  Since Marilyn was notorious for being late, they used that as the setup for her introduction: Peter Lawford, Jack Benny, or George Burns would announce her, the spotlight would pan across the arena and shine on where she was supposed to make her entrance, and—no Marilyn.

  After doing this several times, Peter Lawford stepped up to the microphone and simply announced, “Mr. President, Marilyn Monroe.”

  Marilyn came out swaddled in that flesh-toned, skintight Jean Louis gown, cooed “Happy Birthday, Mr. President,” and floored the audience.

  Marilyn was very sweet to me, and we spent a few minutes talking at the cocktail party afterward. There were, however, several other influential men vying for her attention.

  One of the last events I worked on in the Kennedy White House was held on October 1, 1963—a performance by the Joffrey Ballet. Not long after, a White House secretary who helped coordinate musical events asked my opinion on something. “We’ve been reading about this new group from England that American teens are going crazy over. If it can be arranged, would you be interested in helping to produce a White House concert by the Beatles?” Imagine the possibilities…

  Original tape box for the recording of the last event I recorded at the Kennedy White House Phil Ramone Collection

  Barbra Streisand, Central Park, June 1967 Courtesy of Sony/BMG Photo Archive

  RACK 18

  Greetings from Central Park

  Of all the venues in the world, my favorite place to hear and record live music is New York’s Central Park.

  The social aspects of attending a concert in the park are beyond compare; acoustically, it’s among the most neutral settings I’ve ever heard. The lack of reflective surfaces (except buildings) and the natural absorptive properties of the grass (and the audience, when the park is full) allow for better acoustics.

  For me, the adventure of working in Central Park began in June 1967, when I first met Barbra Streisand.

  Marty Ehrlichman (her manager) called and asked, “Could you design the sound system for a concert in Sheep Meadow? We’re expecting about ten thousand people. Columbia Records will be recording it for an album, and CBS-TV will be videotaping it for later broadcast.”

  No one had ever wired the Meadow for sound.

  Barbra was already a star, and I figured that the concert would draw many more people than Marty anticipated. How could we set up the sound system so the people farthest from the stage—thousands of feet away—would hear the music at the same time as those who were right up front?

  The vastness of the outdoor setting required a high-powered system with many speakers, so I suggested that we create a series of speaker towers, and called JBL—one of the biggest and most innovative loudspeaker companies. “I know you’re experimenting with long-throw horns. I’m doing sound reinforcement for a concert in Central Park. Could I borrow some?” They sent them over immediately.

  The power amplifiers needed to drive the humongous speaker system necessitated cooling, so I rented an air-conditioned trailer. I also hired a recording truck and assistant engineer for the night.

  It rained like crazy the night before and the day of the concert, so we couldn’t rehearse in the park. The organizers were so concerned about the possibility of rain spoiling the event that they took out rain insurance from Lloyds’ of London (who refused to include “mud insurance” because no one could agree on a definition of mud).

  I hadn’t met the man who’d be working alongside of me before, and I hoped that he’d make my job easier. It was wishful thinking. The fool brought along his dog, a Weimaraner that barked incessantly, and a bottle of bourbon, which he began drinking in the afternoon. By dusk, he was well into his cups—and of no use to me.

  Wiring the speakers took hours, and about an hour before showtime I heard a loud crack. A lighting truck had backed up and dropped its tailgate on the thick bundle of microphone cables running from the stage to the sound truck.

  The entire cluster of wires was severed, cutting the connection between the stage and the Meadow. Thankfully my friends from Columbia Records understood what a disaster this was, and six engineers—plus a Good Samaritan—sat there for forty-five minutes splicing the wires back together.

  We inched toward showtime. Our final sound check—at the begrudging courtesy of conductor Mort Lindsay—was the “Overture.”

  In the park, the audience awaited Barbra’s entrance.

  As the orchestra segued into the first number, Barbra began singing offstage. Then she appeared, wearing a stylish, billowing gown (a perfect choice for a balmy summer’s eve). The audience roared in approval. In return she delighted them for two and a half hours, singing thirty-three songs, kibitzing all the way.

  Earlier in the week I had suggested that we put out a few more sets of speakers, “Just in case there are more people than expected.” Well, just in case…

  More than 125,000 people came to enjoy the hot June night when Barbra Streisand turned Sheep Meadow into a giant living room.

  The recording truck engineer that I’d hired wasn’t one of them. He had long since passed out, missing the entire show.

  He awoke at the very end, when the audience—surging to rush the stage as Barbra took her bows—nearly toppled over the sound truck. Worse yet, his dog—upset with a policeman—was about to take a chunk out of the cop’s leg. “The dog’s just protecting his owner,” I explained, hoping the officer wouldn’t take more aggressive action.

  Here’s how Barbra remembers our first meeting, and that auspicious night:

  “I met Phil after a two a.m. lighting rehearsal in Central Park. I had shot a scene for Funny Girl in Los Angeles that Friday morning, then got on a plane and flew to New York. I arrived at JFK Airport around midnight and went directly to the park for the lighting rehearsal. My business associate Marty Ehrlichman had warned me that twenty-five thousand people might show up for the rehearsal so I was prepared for a big crowd. To my disappointment, nobody was there, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, what if nobody shows up to hear me sing for the concert the next night?’

  “When the rehearsal was over I was introduced to Phil, and was told he was responsible for making sure that all ninety-nine acres of Sheep Meadow would have the proper sound. It was clear to the audience that most people wouldn’t be able see me, but if they couldn’t hear that would be terrible—there would be a riot.


  “Phil told me that his plan was to erect [twelve] sound towers throughout Sheep Meadow, and that they would be on tape delay so the people farthest away could hear as well as the people in the front row. Of course, what he didn’t tell me was that no one had ever done this before. Had I known that, I never would have slept as well as I did!

  “The next day when I went back to the park for a sound check, I was relieved to find sixty thousand people there. What we discovered was that the park closed at midnight, and that’s why there wasn’t anybody at the rehearsal the night before.

  “By the time the concert started, all ninety-nine acres were filled with people: in front of me, behind me—a few were even hanging out of their windows on Central Park West, which made me feel right at home because it reminded me of Brooklyn. We escaped the rain by about forty-five minutes, and it turned out we didn’t need any cops at all because of all the people who made the happening happen. There were no disturbances, no arrests, no problems—just five tons of debris.

  “Everything went off beautifully that night, and for the first time the Ramone sound was heard by an audience of a hundred and twenty-five thousand people.”

  It wasn’t the last time, either.

  In 1981, fourteen years after Barbra’s incredible outdoor show, Paul Simon mentioned that he was thinking of doing a concert in Central Park.

  By then, Paul had enjoyed success as a solo recording and concert artist, made numerous television appearances, and had starred in his first feature film, One-Trick Pony. A high-profile concert in Central Park would expose him to an extremely large audience and underscore Paul’s social awareness—and his generosity.

  Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels offered to produce the event and edit the show for television; producer Roy Halee and I would supervise the sound and coproduce the album.

  Not long after Paul told me about the idea, I received word that Art Garfunkel would be joining him, and that the concert would be promoted as a Simon and Garfunkel show. The idea was attractive: Besides playing for a staggering number of people in the park, the show would be televised to millions.

  Apart from an occasional appearance on each other’s solo records or at a show, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel hadn’t done a full concert together in years, and a reunion was bound to be fraught with peril.

  To the world, Paul and Artie’s relationship was famously bad. To those who knew them personally, it was a conundrum. Although they’d been friends since childhood, they were complete opposites—even in terms of musical taste. They argued as fiercely as any two brothers I’ve ever known. Yet when they harmonized, it was pure magic.

  Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel, 1981 Courtesy of WireImage

  We began by rehearsing at the Hudson Theater and the Palladium. From the first day, I thought there’d be bloodshed. The bickering started over the most fundamental decision: a concept for the show.

  Because the program had been conceived as a solo concert, Paul felt that he and Artie should use Paul’s band. Paul already had horn and rhythm arrangements for all the songs, and they were well suited to the songs he and Artie made popular as Simon and Garfunkel.

  But Artie wasn’t comfortable with using Paul’s band; when the set list was drawn up, he groused because Paul would be singing several of his familiar solo hits, while Artie had only one. He also expressed particular concern about whether Richard Tee could play the piano solo on “Bridge over Troubled Water” the way Larry Knechtel had on the original record. “I think we’d be better off if it was just us—a guitar and two vocals,” he said.

  I disagreed. “Progress is progress,” I said. “You’ll have the chance to do four or five songs from the past with just voice and guitar, but the two of you should be doing ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’ with a full-blown arrangement.”

  Eventually a compromise was reached: they’d use the band, but they’d also do some songs in the classic Simon and Garfunkel style. But the squabbles continued through the end of rehearsals, mostly over things so petty that I’ve long since forgotten how they began. There were many times during the week when everyone thought the concert would be cancelled.

  Paul and Artie weren’t the only problem.

  A couple of days before the show, the television remote truck nearly got stuck under one of the bridges inside Central Park. The only way to pass through without shearing off the top of the truck was to deflate the tires. When the truck finally reached the concert staging area and the driver pulled onto the grass, the truck sank four feet into the mud. The vehicle had to be winched out, the tires filled, and a suitable parking area found so the crew could set up for taping.

  The day of the dress rehearsal finally came. The rain that had soaked the field for two days subsided, and the weather looked promising for the next night’s show. Our rehearsal and sound check began at six as planned.

  When Artie arrived, he looked around and said, “You didn’t tell me that there were going to be cameras.” I was shocked. “You know the show is going to be televised, and a dress rehearsal sound check for a television show usually includes cameras,” I reminded him.

  “My hair isn’t right, and I’m not dressed for the cameras!” Artie said. The jeans and shirt he was wearing seemed fine for a rehearsal, but Artie apparently felt that he needed something dressier.

  He disappeared.

  We only had until nine p.m. to perform the sound check, and New York City Parks Commissioner Gordon Davis was adamant about the cutoff time. The sound check began without Artie, and when he returned—this time sporting a nicer outfit and neater hair—it was almost over.

  At nine, Commissioner Davis said, “You’ve got to turn off the outside PA.” We turned off all of the amplification except for the stage monitors.

  “I can’t hear,” Artie complained.

  “You’re going to have live with what you hear on stage,” I said. “You won’t be able to hear the audience towers tomorrow anyway—it’s not like you’re in a theater.”

  As we finished the rehearsal, a policeman approached me. “We measured the decibel level with a sound pressure meter, and it’s much too high,” he said. “If it goes over 85 dB during the performance tomorrow, we’ll shut you down.”

  I’d designed the amplification system with towers and delays, and the sound was good—and loud. Jeez, I thought. With peaks, we’re sure to go over a hundred.

  I’m normally cool, but I went at it hammer and tongs with the commissioner. “This is not the New York Philharmonic,” I conceded. “But it’s not Led Zeppelin, either. Simon and Garfunkel have soft, sweet voices. We’ve got to be able to push the volume up a bit.”

  The commissioner wouldn’t budge.

  Fans had begun camping out in the park two days before the show. They’d endured the rain, and were exhausted. I had visions of Streisand, circa ’67.

  “Some of these people have been here for days,” I said. “I can assure you that if the audience can’t hear the concert tomorrow, there might be a riot.”

  “What do you know about riots?” he asked.

  “Well, I know that a lot of people are going to fill the Great Lawn tomorrow night, and if they can’t hear the show they’ll be extremely upset!”

  By the next afternoon, Central Park was teeming with people. As we inched toward showtime, I noticed a cop walking the area with a meter. Amused, I went backstage and warned Paul about the commissioner’s edict, and the meter-toting cop.

  Paul didn’t say much, but I could tell he was thinking.

  Starting on time was a priority, because television director Michael Lindsay-Hogg wanted to capture the sky’s transition from dusk to dark. We stalled the audience for almost an hour, and when Mayor Ed Koch appeared and announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Simon and Garfunkel,” they went wild.

  Artie and Paul strode out and sang their first two songs.

  At the end of “Homeward Bound,” they surveyed the audience. “Well, it’s great to do a neighborhood concert,” Paul said, as t
hough he was playing a coffeehouse. “ Can you hear me?”

  “No,” they screamed.

  “Turn it up, Phil!” Paul shouted.

  I beamed, and the parks commissioner seethed. With the mayor and audience on our side, there was no way he could ask me to lower the volume!

  Near the catering tables, I noticed that the fencing they’d set up to separate us from the crowd was rather flimsy. “How will that stop anyone? What if they start coming over for food?” I asked a nearby police lieutenant. “Don’t worry. If the crowd is well behaved, they won’t bother you.”

  It wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear.

  “But what if the crowd doesn’t behave?” I asked.

  The lieutenant gave me a quizzical look. “Do you see that pond over there, behind the Delacorte Theater?” he asked. “It’s filled with weird fish and crap. If the crowd storms the area, just follow me. We’ll both go in the water—fast!”

  My fear was unfounded—the audience’s behavior was beyond reproach.

  As I prepared to leave, the police lieutenant came up and said, “Knock on wood—we didn’t have any problems during the show. No muggings, no fights, no emergencies to speak of.”

  The post-concert atmosphere blew me away.

  I tried to get backstage, but all the paths were jammed. As I walked out of the park with the rest of the crowd, I witnessed something I’d never seen before: people carrying lit candles and boom boxes, playing back the cassette tapes they’d recorded during the concert. All I could hear was Simon and Garfunkel music blaring from every direction.

  At the small after-party held downtown, I gazed at Paul and Artie.

  That night they’d pulled off what everyone who writes, plays, and produces music aspires to do—they’d killed the audience. The pair had battled each other all week, come together for one brief moment, and were now separately greeting guests on opposite sides of the room. “Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel may be separate,” I thought. “But they’ll always be bound by their harmony and its incredible blend.”