Jay Messina: World-Class Engineer/Producer (Aerosmith, KISS, John Lennon)

Here’s a full transcription of our conversation!

Warren Huart:

Hi, everybody. Hope you’re doing marvelously well. I’m sitting here with the rather wonderful, Mr. Jay Messina. Jay, how are you?

Jay Messina:

I’m doing great, Warren. Good to see you.

Warren Huart:

Where are you at the moment? Are you in New York?

Jay Messina:

I’m in Manhattan and New York city.

Warren Huart:

So are you born and bred New Yorker? You’ve never left?

Jay Messina:

That’s right. That’s right. I’ve done a lot of traveling, but I’ve always lived in New York. I grew up in Brooklyn, been living in Manhattan for quite a while now. Love it.

Warren Huart:

Wonderful. Well, it’s lovely to hear that. Because growing up in the UK, growing up in England, listening to the albums that you made, I have this British over-romanticized idea of New York in the ’70s and all of the great records and everything. It’s wonderful to know that you’re still there, still making records.

Jay Messina:

I am. I was just telling Eric that I’m mixing, I’m just doing a friend a favor and mixing this blues track, and it’s quite good. It’s fun.

Warren Huart:

Fantastic. So can you give me a little bit of background for people that don’t … Well, I mean, obviously you have made some of I consider the greatest sounding of records of all time. I mean, you and Jack together obviously did Toys and Rocks, which are in most people’s books, top 10 greatest rock albums of all time. But you, outside of Jack, have worked on so much stuff through from the late ’60s all the way through the ’70s. I mean, I almost want to just kind of open up all music and just ask you about every record, which will take us about three weeks. Could you give me a little bit of a background how you got started?

Jay Messina:

Well, okay. I’ve told this story hundreds of times, I suppose, but it’s interesting and it’s a kind of a lesson in trusting your heart and your gut. I have an electronics background. I went to a school called RCA Institutes, which was basic electronics, nothing to do with audio. So I had a job lined up and I was going to start. It was going to be in a company that made meters, and I was going to be working in quality control, grabbing every fourth meter, checking it, make sure it worked. Kind of a dry, boring techie kind of job. This was a Sunday night and I was hanging out with a friend of mine named David Lucas, who was a writer, a singer, composer, and an engineer. He worked for his cousin.

Jay Messina:

His cousin’s name was Don Elliott, who was quite a famous vibraphone player. He played with George Shearing and he played mellophone, and he was a good singer. Quincy Jones always used to hire him for all his movie scores. So David, we were hanging out on this Sunday night and he wanted to, as a writer, wanted to get more into writing and do more jingles and get on the other side of the glass, so to speak. So he asked, he says, “Do you want to be an engineer Sunday night?” I said, “Well, I got a job. I’m starting tomorrow.” He says, “Quit, just quit.”

Jay Messina:

He says, “I can only give you just food money, like $25 a week, but it’ll be fun. You’ll like it.” Going back and forth a little bit, I said, “Oh, okay, sounds good.” Did it. Called up the job in the morning, told them I quit. And when I walked in the studio, my jaw just dropped. Number one, Don Elliott had Les Paul’s one-inch eight track machine. This is probably 1965.

Warren Huart:

Wow.

Jay Messina:

Most multi-track studios at that time were either three track or four track maybe. Not many eight track machines. I think Atlantic had a couple, and there was only five in the world. So that was my intro. That was my first gig.

Warren Huart:

Baptism of fire. You’re just an engineer.

Jay Messina:

Yeah. He just showed me … He wasn’t what you would call a technical engineer. He just kind of learned by just doing it, and that’s the way he taught me. After about a month or so there was a session to do. And he says, “We will do it together,” just to kind of throw me in there. He was good at throwing you in the pool to show you how to swim, to teach you how to swim. The first session was Ravi Shankar. And Don Elliott, the owner of the studio told me … Do you know this story?

Warren Huart:

No, no. I don’t know this story.

Jay Messina:

Okay. Don Elliot said, “A doctor is going to pay for this session. Tell him how many hours you use at the end of the night, and he’ll pay you.” So a woman came in. They were going to play to this psychedelic film as a 16 millimeter film, which we had to set up in the control room.

Jay Messina:

So I was making a racket the whole time. Ravi Shankar showed up with his entourage and they were burning incense and laying out all these rugs, and it was quite glamorous. We were wondering what they were going to leave behind for us so we would have a little party, if you know what I’m saying. And so they played to this 16 millimeter psychedelic film, and that was my first session. At the end of the night, I told the doctor, it was this much money, and he writes out the check and he signs it Dr. Timothy Leary.

Warren Huart:

Oh, wow.

Jay Messina:

This is about a year or two before I or anyone really knew who he was. He hadn’t him come on the scene yet and made a big splash. But that was my first session.

Warren Huart:

Wow.

Jay Messina:

So it was quite an introduction.

Warren Huart:

Yeah. That’s absolutely crazy. It was your first session with Ravi Shankar and Timothy Leary.

Jay Messina:

Yeah. Yeah.

Warren Huart:

Wow. What studio was that again?

Jay Messina:

It was a place called Don Elliott, as I said, he was a vibraphone player and mellophone and a really good singer and Quincy Jones-

Warren Huart:

His own studio?

Jay Messina:

His own studio. Yep. And having a Les Paul’s one-inch eight track machine, we were doing interesting things that … Like Quincy Jones would send … We had a 35 mag machine there. Quincy would send a track, just a mono [inaudible 00:07:10] track on a 35 mag, and I would transfer that to one track of the eight track. Don would sing five scat kind of vocals, five parts. I’d mix that down to one track and then bounce it back to the mag again and then send that mag back to Quincy. So there was no real sync. But pretty much as you know, if you record and play back on the same machine, as long as it’s not a real long piece, it’s going to stay in sync. So that’s the way we did it back then.

Warren Huart:

How long were you there? How long did you work with Don Elliott?

Jay Messina:

Probably about a year, and because of his affiliation with Quincy, when Quincy would come into town, he would always record at A&R. So I would go over there, and that’s how I met Phil Ramone and Don Frye. I already had an introduction to A&R and at one point, I guess I felt it was time to make a move. Them knowing me over there, they said, “Come on over.” My first job there was … Now mind you, I’d been doing sessions as an engineer, but I went to A&R and I would have done anything pretty much just to get in there because it was … The problem with Don’s place, although it was great because I was the only one there. I did everything, but that was also the downfall of it too. I was the only one there. So went to A&R and they said, “Well, we’re going to start you in the cutting room. Rudy [Cottman 00:09:05] will teach you how to cut. Cut records.”

Warren Huart:

Nice.

Jay Messina:

That’s what I did for about a year. Then the next person I had to break in was Bob Ludwig. They hired Bob after me. I had to show him the ropes and the [inaudible 00:09:23] basics.

Warren Huart:

The new kid … Bob Ludwig was the new kid … That’s hilarious. Bob’s such a wonderful guy.

Jay Messina:

Oh, he’s great. Such a talented guy. Great ears.

Warren Huart:

How long were you cutting before you moved into making records?

Jay Messina:

Well, on the weekends, I would always go in. Fortunately, my friends were the Brecker Brothers and Mike Manieri and Steve Gadd and Tony Levin. So Mike Manieri was, around that time, he was this amazing vibes player, wanted to write more, get into arranging more. So I told them, I said, “Hey, look, I’m just getting into, I’m learning how to record and experimenting and learning the ropes at A&R. Any time you want to come in, I’ll give you a copy of the tape, and you’ll hear your arrangements at the end of the night. We’ll do it.” So we spent many a night starting at midnight, and sometimes I’d go in on a Friday night and leave Sunday. He put this band together with five, maybe six horns, which were the Brecker brothers and Jerry Dodge and Ronnie Cuber, all these great players and Warren Bernhardt. Before Steve Gadd joined the band and there was a guy named Donald Macdonald was drummer. And Joe Beck played in the band, Huey McCracken-

Warren Huart:

Ah, Huey McCracken.

Jay Messina:

Just about everybody. I did that on the weekends. So I was putting in my hours there just sharpening my skills a bit. Since I was doing that so much, one day Phil says, “Hey, I’ve been hearing good things about you from these guys.” Because they were playing on all of the record dates, and they would see Phil probably every day. So they started saying nice things about me. And so Phil says, “We’re going to get you doing some sessions.” So I started doing just some voiceovers and then doing three machine mixes and adding, let them do a voiceover over a track that was already recorded and doing sound effects and radio spots pretty much. Then slowly I got into doing some records, record stuff. Mostly there again, it was because of what I was doing on the weekends just because that’s what I was loving. It just paid off.

Warren Huart:

Were you essentially working seven days a week?

Jay Messina:

Pretty much. It wasn’t even work, it was playing.

Warren Huart:

But you were loving it.

Jay Messina:

I was loving it. It never felt like work to me. Still doesn’t.

Warren Huart:

So now Phil’s moving you into … But by the way, I only met Phil just a few, a couple of months before he died with Jack. Jack and I were at Capital, but what a lovely guy.

Jay Messina:

Oh yeah. Yeah. Really talented guy too.

Warren Huart:

I often talk about you and he in similar things when Jack and I are talking. When you came down to visit us when we were finishing up the Aerosmith record, he goes, “Jay’s coming down today.” I was like, “Oh wow. A real engineer.”

Jay Messina:

No, that’s the way I would describe you because I’m not a guy that-

Warren Huart:

You’re a real engineer. I’m a pretend engineer.

Jay Messina:

I can close my eyes and turn the knobs until it sounds good.

Warren Huart:

You just proved my point.

Jay Messina:

Well, if that’s what it takes, then okay. That’s what I’m-

Warren Huart:

Yeah, yeah. You used your ears and it … yeah, exactly. No, I mean, I grew up loving your records, and so it’s always an honor to hang out and talk with you.

Jay Messina:

Thank you. Nice to hear. Thank you for saying that.

Warren Huart:

Thank you for doing such great work. So Phil’s loving what you’re doing. You’re working on the weekends. What does it transition into when you first start working during the week? What records are jumping out at you that you remember?

Jay Messina:

I probably started doing some jingle dates.

Warren Huart:

Ah, yes.

Jay Messina:

That was an easier in. Because a lot of those dates, when the studio got booked, the front office would assign an engineer to the project. So on the jingle dates it was easier to shuffle engineers around and get somebody in and get them going. So I started doing some of those music dates, and probably one of the first bands, I guess, was Seatrain that were kind of popular back then. Somehow I got on that session. I don’t know. I don’t know whether somebody asked for me or it was the work of the front office where they saw to it that I got on that session. And it worked out. It was kind of a snowballing effect. Phil Ramone always used to say, “The musicians that you work with or your sales persons.”

Warren Huart:

Right.

Jay Messina:

“They’re the ones who are going to talk, they’re going to go to their next session and talk about the experience they just had with you.”

Warren Huart:

That makes perfect sense. I mean, Dave Jerden once told me 20 something years ago, he said to me, he goes, “The labels hire you because of your chart success. But the artists hire you because of the records you’ve made.” That might sound like the same thing, but you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Jay Messina:

Yeah, Yeah. That’s right. Sure.

Warren Huart:

Because we’re fans. I want to work with you because I’m a fan of the records you made where the labels go, “Oh yeah, that record’s good because it sold 10 million copies.”

Jay Messina:

Yeah. Right, right.

Warren Huart:

You were saying there’s one before Seatrain?

Jay Messina:

Yeah. I don’t remember whether the recordings I did with Seatrain turned into a whole album. I just remember working with them. I remember recording them live. And it’s kind of a funny story that goes with that. They were playing at the Cellar Door in D.C., A club in D.C. And I was out in the truck recording them. I was just in the truck with the maintenance man, and the door opens and a guy comes in whose been drinking pretty heavily with a beer and he slams the door. And I said out, “You’ll have to wait outside please.” And he says, “No, no, I’m with the band.” The band is playing. I’m looking at them, recording them. I said, “Sorry, buddy. You’re going to have to wait outside.” And he says, “No, I’m with the band.”

Jay Messina:

He was insistent. So I said, ‘All right, you wait right there.” So as soon as they finished that tune, I turned to my buddy and gave him the high sign. We went over to this guy, we opened the door and it was snowing out. There was a few steps that he got thrown down, and he landed in the snow and he was gone. So that was on the weekend, on a Saturday. So Monday the band was going to come in and do some fixes. Who comes walking in, is this guy. He was in the band.

Jay Messina:

I didn’t bring anything, I didn’t say anything. He probably didn’t remember. But he was more of a writer and he would do some background parts here and here, but he wasn’t a performing member.

Jay Messina:

Anyway, this other band that I remember recording at A&R in the late ’60s was the first J. Geils band.

Warren Huart:

Wonderful. Yeah.

Jay Messina:

I remember Seth being just 16 years old. They were all so green and great players already. I liked the record. I thought the record was good, but they don’t have fond memories of it. Because I’ve run into, it was either Peter or one of the guys several years later and reminded them of that. And they said, “Oh, we hated that record,” because their two producers … I don’t really remember their names … were like dictators. They’d say, “Okay, now we’re going to do foot stomps. Everybody out in the studio and get out there.” So they didn’t have a lot of say in the production of the record. They played really great. It was their songs, and I thought it came out okay. But they didn’t have fun doing it. That’s what they remember.

Warren Huart:

Which I understand. I’ve been in that position as well. I’m young. You’re young and you’re green and somebody is trying to guide you and you’re out there to change the world and you’re fighting every decision. Actually usually what happens is I look back at some of my early recordings and go, “Oh, why didn’t I listen?”

Jay Messina:

Another band that I remember quite well back at A&R Recording was three girls called The Three Degrees. So it was always a big band, an orchestra. I mean, strings and horns and percussion, a big full rhythm section and they would sing live. It would all happen live. The whole band and this one studio at A&R, R1 was just one big room, but two vocal booths. So on this one particular track that really, I learned a valuable lesson this day. Two of the girls were in one booth and the other one was singing lead in the other. Super exciting. Strings, horns, and she’s singing amazing. She’s singing her ass off. I happened to glance over at the LA-2A and the gain reduction is so far down, it’s just not even moving.

Jay Messina:

So that’s what I saw. I started to take a turn to start to go there. In my first couple of steps … This all happened in under a second … I’m telling myself, where are you going? You just got done telling yourself how great everything is sounding. Don’t look over there. I learned that lesson about to trust your ears and that [inaudible 00:20:49] that day.

Jay Messina:

Oh, and the other coincidental thing about that particular track, it was a song called, Maybe. We did a rough mix of it probably at 3:00 in the morning, 4:00 in the morning. And the … Just a seven-and-a-half mix. IPS mix. When it came time to really mix the record, we’re both looking at each other, the producer Richard Barrett and myself and both saying, “This doesn’t sound nearly as good as that rough mix.” I made a 15-inch copy of the seven-and-a-half so that we could sequence it for the mastering. That became … It wasn’t number one or anything, but it was a pretty big hit for them. It’s still on YouTube. Unfortunately on YouTube, a lot of the copies that are up there were taken from a disc. So the sound quality is not so good, but it sort of puts a face to the story.

Warren Huart:

That’s amazing. I love that story. It reminds me of Shelley talking about Roy Cicala when Shelley points to the meters and says their pinned.

Jay Messina:

Yeah. I’ve covered them a number of times with masking tape. It’s either for myself or whoever I was working with just to not to get fooled by it.

Warren Huart:

You’ve done some stuff, obviously some stuff with Jack we can get to in a few years’ time keeping this in order. But I see you worked with Yoko pretty early on.

Jay Messina:

Once I went to Record Plant after A&R … I was at A&R for maybe four years or so, and I just felt it was time to leave. Because Roy Cicala and Shelly both went to Record Plant, and they were saying what a great place this was. They invited me to come over and check it out. So I went one night and walked in and fell in love right away. It was the coolest place to be. And this is even before you get in the studios. This is just the vibe of the place. So it was like the coolest club in town. So it was there that I-

Jay Messina:

… like the coolest club in town. It was there that I met Yoko and that was quite by just hanging out one night, and Roy Cicala said, “You want to do a session tonight?” I said, “Sure.” But it was my usual answer. “Sure. Who is it? Who’s the artist?” And he says, “It’s John and Yoko.” And so I said, “Great.” It was really Yoko’s record but John was acting as the producer. And they loaded in all their stuff and spent … It was her record called Fly, I think.

Jay Messina:

It was just a few days of recording, but it was a trip, John Lennon was … It was awesome to meet him. Just to be in his presence as a hero. But when people ask, as far as meeting people like the biggest stars or your heroes, biggest heroes, with most people, after just a few minutes that kind of goes away and it’s like, they’re people too, just like us.

Warren Huart:

Yeah. The last thing you want to do is be a fan boy around them because then they won’t respect your opinions. Was all this sort of stuff learned on the job or did guys like Roy and Phil kind of give you pep talks and give you stuff? Or were you literally just watching and being mentored by other people’s actions?

Jay Messina:

The only time I was what might be considered an assistant engineer was at Don Elliot’s, when I first started. When I went to A&R I was cutting records and then I went in as an engineer. I never really assisted anyone. I would hear what people were doing and maybe try to emulate certain sounds, but I didn’t have the opportunity or the luxury, I guess, or the good fortune, of working under somebody, especially like Roy, he was like my favorite engineer of them saying, here, you do it this way or could do this, or you could do that. Or even be in the same room as him while he was working.

Warren Huart:

Right.

Jay Messina:

The few times we’ve done that is because we were doing a project together at the same time.

Warren Huart:

Right. It was always baptism of fire. It was always show up, not … Yeah?

Jay Messina:

Pretty much. It was, like I said, the way David Lucas, his technique of teaching you to swim is to push you in the pool. And you’ll learn, that’s a good way to learn, if you don’t drown.

Warren Huart:

Now, you’ve got tons of records we could cherry pick here and talk about. Maybe if you don’t mind, I wouldn’t mind fast forwarding a couple of years and going to doing some stuff with Lou Reed. I see you’ve got some overdub stuff here on Berlin. Tell us a little bit about working with Lou Reed.

Jay Messina:

It was probably, here again, maybe four or five days or something, but Bob Ezrin as the producer. And one thing I remember about him, besides being the talent that he was, is how animated he was. He could just turn it on and off with a switch, which is amazing. If you wanted a performance out of him, Bob was good at direction and musical direction, and Lou would just snap to it and turn into that other person.

Warren Huart:

That’s amazing. Yeah. We were talking about living in the UK and listening to New York music. Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, that stuff is such an important part of, I think, British music and the late seventies through the early mid eighties. We took so much from the New York scene. All the new wave and punk stuff was so driven by New York, and with Germany as well with the kraut rock bands like [inaudible 00:27:23] and [inaudible 00:27:24], and stuff like that, but we loved those records. And Berlin is such a masterpiece.

Jay Messina:

You have to give Bob Ezrin a lot of credit on that. He is a brilliant musician and knows his way around in the studio.

Warren Huart:

We’re going to jump forward a little bit here, but the next year you did Three Dog Night, Hard Labor.

Jay Messina:

There, again, that was just a little brief encounter with them where I covered for Roy because he was doing them … I think it was in San Francisco at Record Plant.

Warren Huart:

Right.

Jay Messina:

And he had to leave so he asked if I would come out there and that’s what I did. I wound up … I probably did some vocals with them. I don’t really remember. And then I remember hooking up with them again with that in-concert series, Don Kirshner, because I used to mix a lot of that stuff. And I remember running into them later again for that.

Warren Huart:

You know what’s coming up next, it’s Toys in the Attic. Presuming you knew Jack, because Jack was working in the Record Plant as well. Had you guys worked together on other records at that point or how did you guys come together to make that album?

Jay:

When I first went to Record Plant first, jingles that I was doing over there … Jack was probably assigned to do a date with me and we hit it off right away. I liked him. He was good. He was quick. We became fast friends and so I would always ask for him on all of my dates. We became friendly that way and we became like a team, early on that way. And then when he had the opportunity to produce Aerosmith, I guess he felt comfortable in picking me as an engineer because we already had the rapport going and we had that connection.

Jay:

[crosstalk 00:29:34] didn’t really take off until after toys, that really brought it to the forefront. And it also brought a Dream On, which was the first album that Jack, nor myself, had anything to do with. But Adrian barber, who I had worked with back at A&R on another record, he had recorded that. And I remember running into him years later and him thanking me. It wasn’t until the success of toys that Dream On became a big hit.

Warren:

Yeah, that’s huge. Get your Wings, that’s the first album you do as joint producer, an engineer. Was that the first time you’d ever met the band? I’d love to know what the dynamic is when you’re walking into a studio, first time, now you’ve been working professionally for like nine, 10 years, is there always that initial trepidation where the band comes in and you’re navigating personalities and things like that?

Jay:

Yeah. They had their aura about them already, I guess, especially Steven and Joe, they’re the most kind of animated of the group. They had that going already, but still there was that light shade of green yet to them because they hadn’t really taken off yet. They were popular back in Boston as a performing band, but as far as in the studio, they hadn’t gotten all the cockiness that would come later, all the normal stuff that comes along with big success.

Warren:

How good’s your memory on individual songs? That album has same old song and dance. Do you have any vivid memories on that song? Because it’s a pretty massive song for them in their career.

Jay:

On that album, I couldn’t say that I’ve got like real specific memories of each individual song in there.

Warren:

And we can edit all around this Eric, I was just thinking about … I suppose there’s a couple of things, because we can edit all this tight. Because, obviously, same old song and dance I think of for that baritone guitar part, for instance, that tone. I know Jack had told me … Moving on, he had told me about Walk This Way being strapped, I believe, through a twin.

Jay:

If he said it, that’s probably [crosstalk 00:32:38]. Jack has better recollection of being a guitar and bass player. He’s got a better recollection of the tech end of which amps, which guitars we used.

Warren:

For a lot of those guitar sounds, did you have any sort of favorite mics that you would go to? That you may be still used today? Even to this day?

Jay:

Generally, we had a Sony C37 or 38. I always got those mixed up. A 57 and a 421. Generally use combination of those three mics. I remember we did an experiment one time with a bunch of Y chords, and however we did it, we put some guitar signal into 13 amps and miced them all.

Warren:

Wow.

Jay:

And it was one of those things where it seemed like a good idea at the time, it wasn’t 13 times better than just one amp.

Warren:

It sounds like a phase nightmare.

Jay:

Yeah.

Warren:

You made Get your Wings and that had some mild success, but Toys, of course, was where they really broke out. Where did you make that record? Where was Toys recorded?

Jay:

That was at Record Plant.

Warren:

Record Plant. Yeah.

Jay:

Most of the tracks probably in studio A, but we jumped around a little bit. We did some of it up in studio C and probably even some of it in B. Between A and C I would guess.

Warren:

What was the console in those days? Was it still the data mix or had they moved on with Spectra?

Jay:

It was a Spectrasonics.

Warren:

Spectrasonics, okay.

Jay:

Very basic, but clean, super clean, sound. It had one [inaudible 00:34:42] but four switches. You could send it to multiple places, but it’s going to be the same amount unless you figured out another way around that. I used to feel sorry for the guest engineers that used to come in to do a session because it wasn’t very versatile, a great sounding board though, I must say. But if you’re used to an SSL with lots of different [inaudible 00:35:10] and things, this wasn’t the board that you’d want to see if you were going to have to make some quick choices.

Warren:

Great sounding. Absolutely fine.

Jay:

Awesome. EQs were awesome also. 12, turn everything up to 12. That’s as high as …

Warren:

I remember that.

Jay:

I don’t think it went higher. I think that’s the only reason why it was only 12.

Warren:

What was it like coming in to do Rocks? Because I remember Jack telling me that that was done in a … Was it done in a house? Is that correct?

Jay:

In a warehouse.

Warren:

In a warehouse?

Jay:

Yeah, where they were rehearsing. And the band was feeling so good about it Jack said, “Well, let’s just bring the truck up here and leave everybody where they are and record it.” And it turned out to be a great idea.

Warren:

Was that David’s truck? So it had the API in it?

Jay:

I don’t think it had an API yet. I think it was still the … You know what? I don’t remember what that console was. It was very bare bones also, from what I remember. It was not an API. It was before that.

Warren:

This was David, the truck that he ran?

Jay:

Yes. It was the Record Plant truck. He was kind of running it, in charge of the workings of it.

Warren:

And for people watching, who don’t know who David is, first of all, you definitely know who David did is because he’s recorded so many incredible live albums, but he’s also Ryan’s father.

Jay:

That’s right. Yes.

Jay:

When they were rehearsing, Joey Kramer used to like … He used to put an extra 57, or 58, on a pillow in his kick drum, and that went into a big SVT, I think it was, amp behind him. And it went through a little MXR mixer where everything above 125 was rolled off. And the 33, and the 60, was all the way up so that he just touched that bass drum and all he would feel is a big wall of air behind him. And he liked it. He liked rehearsing that way. That’s probably the, if there’s a secret, or the story behind the kick drum sound on that record. Because we kept it, we left that amp on for the tracking so that kick drum went in all of mics. Certainly all the drum mics, probably a few others, whatever else we had in the room.

 

And as you know, low ends really take a little time for it to the wave to really form. Some of the mics were really far away that picked up that kick drum sound and that’s where the extra bottom comes. Of course you could get into trouble with that if you get too much bleed, but it worked out, it was fine.

Warren:

Did you ever tell that story before? And do you know Michael Beinhorn? Who’s obviously another New Yorker.

Jay:

I know the name very well. I can’t place where I would know him from.

Warren:

Well, what’s interesting is I loved his drum sound on a Soundgarden record and I asked him how he got it. And he told me he fed the kick drum through a sub and the sub was in the room going. He said all the mics picked up the low end.

Jay:

Yeah.

Warren:

Interesting. I’ll have to ask him whether he … I know he’s a big fan of yours, and yours and Jack, so maybe he’d read that before.

Jay:

I’ve done it since then where I’ve put the kick drum through the sub and fed it in the room, wasn’t quite the same as that because they were working with it for a while and rehearsing with it. They really fine tuned the sound, what was coming out of there, and placement of it. And, actually, when we recorded [inaudible 00:16:24], in Joe Perry’s house, we put up sub behind Joey.

Warren:

Let’s jump on probably a month or two, Radio Ethiopia. You and Jack again. Presumably chronological order, you just roll on from Rocks? Was it the next record that you made together?

Jay:

Probably, we used to make them so fast. I remember there was one instance that either he or I was assembling one album and the other one of us is out in the studio setting up for the next album. Within one day we were finishing one and starting the next one.

Warren:

That’s amazing.

Jay:

Radio Ethiopia was, I guess, more of an underground kind of success really for Patty. I mean our big hit after that was …

Warren:

Because the Night from Easter?

Jay:

Yes.

Warren:

I’m a huge fan.

Jay:

But making the record, it was definitely a change of pace. It wasn’t a Aerosmith’s record by any means. It was a taste of Patty. She had her own thing.

Warren:

Amazing. Now I don’t want to gloss over Aerosmith’s sort of our drivers in those days, for rock supremacy in America, of course, Kiss. Your back in, presumably, with Ezrin and to do Destroyer.

Jay:

Yeah. A lot of funny moments during that because Bob really took the bull by the horns there and they weren’t used to some of that, the stern hand, so to speak. I remember Jean or Paul made some mistake and just stopped the tape, and Ezrin and got on the talk back and as he’s waving his finger at them, he says, “Don’t you ever stop a take. We can always cut this and that.” And that became the joke of the album. Like, don’t you ever do that again. And Paul and Jean were looking at each other, like, wow, I think we’re getting yelled at here.

Warren:

Getting told off. Speaking from an engineering perspective, you’re getting to work with … You’re second studio is Phil Ramone’s place. You’re getting to work alongside and be around that, you’re with Jack, you were Bob Ezrin, obviously Roy Cicala. I don’t know of sort of better … And Bob Ezrin. I just don’t know the better baptism of fire in so many ways. I don’t even know what the best way of describing it is. I can’t overstate it, these are giants. Bob went on, obviously, to produce The Wall, which I might consider one of the top 10 greatest albums ever made.

Jay:

Yeah.

Warren:

But they’re all such different personalities. We both know Jack very well. Jack is the guy that’s, the sessions are fun when Jack’s around. He wants everybody to feel relaxed. He wants everybody to feel important. I always talk about how it doesn’t matter if you’re the bass player, the drummer, the percussionist, or whatever, your opinion is just as important as the lead singers with Jack. And I always admired that about him and learned a lot from that experience.

Warren:

I suppose I have a million sort of questions that’s really just the same question. You’re going into these situations, every producer’s a different personality, you’ve got the animated Bob Ezrin kind of bit more dictating. And then you’ve got Jack who’s a little bit more go with the flow. Do you find you’re the same guy the whole time? Your job as an consummate engineer is to just say yes and get the job done.

Jay:

I think so. I always feel like I’m working with someone. And I usually tell people that if you have that attitude, then that’s what the reality will be. You’re not working for someone. They’re not you’re …

Warren:

Right.

Jay:

I always feel on an equal footing with whoever I’m working with and I’ll try to stick to my profession and be of service.

 

And the thing with Bob, he used to tell me what he used to like about is that … Because he would say, “I don’t like that snare sound.” But I could give him eight other choices. And that’s what he would like. I’d always have another choice for him. And I remember an instance with Bob, when we were doing Destroyer, we worked, for the whole day, getting a drum sound. And it’s 9:00 or something like that, or 10:00 and he says, “I don’t like the drums, where they are. Let’s move the drums tomorrow.” And my first instinct was to defend where they were. We just worked 10 hours probably, but we put them by a hallway the next day, left the door open, put a mic or two out where the garbage is, and the drums sounded better. A lesson I learned then is don’t be so sure of yourself. This is the right way to do it, always be open to learning something. I learned that lesson from that incident

Warren:

For many Kiss fans, that’s the album, that’s the one that they hold up as being the archetypal Kiss album.

Jay:

It was a big one for them. And Beth, when we did the session for Beth, we went to A&R to record that because it was an orchestra. There was a boys choir of about 40 kids there. And I forgot whose idea it was, I don’t know whose idea it was, but the band came in makeup, everybody that was working on the record dressed in tails and gloves, white gloves. Myself, the assistant, the assistant from A&R, Bob, the staff from A&R was all in tails and all the …

Jay Messina:

… all in tails, and all the string players wore those tux T-shirts.

Warren Huart:

Amazing. Tux T-shirts.

Jay Messina:

Yeah, and Bob, I remember he went out because he played piano on that, and he says, “I always wanted to do this.” So before he sat down, he took his tails and flipped them up and then sat down on the piano [inaudible 00:46:25] very proper, you know?

Warren Huart:

Oh, fantastic. Yeah. I think of the old Disney cartoons that always have the-

Jay Messina:

Yeah, yeah, that’s right, yeah.

Warren Huart:

… piano player pick up the tails and sit down, and that’s amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Warren Huart:

So, Draw the Line, I’m not sure the order whether Cheap Trick was before Draw the Line or which order those two albums came, but I know the release is Draw the Line next. By that stage, now, the band are massive. They’ve had a couple of big top 10 singles. They’re probably touring quite excessive. How was it now? Because you did the first album, did okay. Second album, it’s starting to make them into stars. Rock’s, obviously, just keeps their stratosphere growing. What was the Draw the Line experience?

Jay Messina:

It’s like being on the top of the hill. And they were on the top of the hill there, and they were just starting to slip a bit during that record. And so, unfortunately, it was like, I think, on the way to the wrong side of the hill.

Warren Huart:

So, did you find yourself doing 18-hour days, working around people’s schedules and availability and the sort of stuff that we deal with when bands start to get very successful?

Jay Messina:

Well, the first thing we did for the first weekend was shut all the lights off in this place where we were, which was an abandoned nunnery.

Warren Huart:

Abandoned nunnery. Wow. It sounds rock and roll.

Jay Messina:

It was called-

Warren Huart:

Made an album in an abandoned nunnery.

Jay Messina:

It was called the Cenacle, so it was cool. We unloaded the truck, or the console from the remote truck, and we were set up in a room and we had all monitors, so we could see each other. We had people set up in different rooms. Joey’s drums were set up where the altar used to be in a chapel. So the sounds were … it was fun to getting the sounds, but … And then we all had rooms. We had to find rooms because we moved in there for … I don’t know how long we were there. It seemed like quite a while.

Jay Messina:

But what we did for the first three days was shut all the lights off and scared each other, sneaking around and waiting in an elevator for somebody to come in and give them a dog bite on their ankle and bark at the same time. And that’s what we did then. Then after that it was some drug abuse and a lot of wasted time and that kind of stuff that, like you said, that goes with rock stardom.

Warren Huart:

So Cheap Trick, obviously very famously, Jack went to go and see the band play, Cheap Trick, at a bowling alley in Wisconsin, and then starts a little mini bidding war and they get signed. And now, the 1970s, a record in ’77. I’ve been blessed to meet them a few times. Just lovely guys. Huge, huge fan of those guys, and their work ethic is insane. Was it like that for the record? They came in focused? Just-

Jay Messina:

Oh yeah, great guys, like you said, and everything was like, “Cool, man, cool man.” You know?

Warren Huart:

Yeah.

Jay Messina:

But start to finish, it was three weeks.

Warren Huart:

Wow.

Jay Messina:

Record, overdub, mix. I mean, they were so tight as a band, and I don’t know how many tracks we did, maybe 19, so we didn’t mix them all. But it was fun, very pleasurable, a great band, powerhouse, and they were just killer.

Warren Huart:

But what was interesting is even though it has a big song, I Want You to Want Me, it wasn’t a hit, was it, until live at the Budokan.

Jay Messina:

Budokan, yeah.

Warren Huart:

Jack told me a few of those stories, the kind of things you had to do to get the drums to work. What was it? The speaker under the snare drum? Was that one of the things? So try to EQ it, so-

Jay Messina:

Probably to get more snare sound, we’d gate the snare, send it out into the studio to a speaker, put a snare drum on top of it, and mic the bottom, just to get more of the snare sound. But the kick drum was the biggest challenge because that sounded more like a cow bell than a kick drum. So, what I wound up doing is getting an oscillator and setting it, I think, it was to 60 cycles or maybe 50 cycles and gated it and keyed it with the kick. And first try to get as much bottom out of the mic that was recorded, but to get the real low end, the fatness, it’s the oscillator, just a sine wave.

Warren Huart:

So it’s got …

Jay Messina:

Yup. I have the split sheet, the track sheet, of Sweet Emotion.

Warren Huart:

Whoa. Oh, yeah. That’d be amazing.

Jay Messina:

I definitely took that one home because I’m on track one playing bass marimba, so-

Warren Huart:

Oh yeah, mirroring the baseline.

Jay Messina:

… I grabbed that one. Yeah. Yeah.

Warren Huart:

Oh, let’s talk about that for a second. We’re going backwards and forwards, all over the place, but hey, that’s the way it is. So, on Sweet Emotion, tell us, you doubled the bass line, Tom’s bass line, on Sweet Emotion.

Jay Messina:

Jack knew I played vibes, and we were mixing. Sweet Emotion was all done. And he said, “Hey, what if you played marimba? Double the bass line on marimba?” And then I knew about bass marimba. It’s not something you’d usually see. I said, “Bass marimba would be killer, doubling it with a bass marimba.” So, we rented a bass marimba. It’s a massive instrument. It’s really high up off the ground because the resonators have to be so long for the low notes. So, actually I had to stand on a bench to actually reach the mallets.

Jay Messina:

After a number of tries, we got it, and it worked. And I remember the first time I saw Tom Hamilton after that, he gave me a big hug, and I thought he was joking, but he loved the way the bass sounded. And it does add a cool little percussive thing to the bass.

Warren Huart:

It’s amazing, and what’s incredible is I did not know until Jack told me, and then you go back and listen to it, and then you can’t unhear it, once you know that. But I spent the last blah, blah, blah decades not even knowing it was there. Yeah.

Jay Messina:

Yeah, yeah. It’s got wooden sound to the bass.

Warren Huart:

Yeah, which just makes it so amazing, yeah. And it’s such an incredible bass line. Probably, definitely in the top five most famous bass lines of all time, so yeah.

Jay Messina:

And so it’s all through the whole intro, and then when the intro comes back again, after that first chorus, that’s where it is, just those two spots. What’s interesting, what I noticed was, track one, the bass marimba, which I played, that’s Jack’s handwriting-

Warren Huart:

Oh, it is?

Jay Messina:

… because he was sitting in the engineer’s chair. So, he-

Warren Huart:

I’m looking at it now.

Jay Messina:

You could see, that’s his handwriting. The rest of is mine.

Warren Huart:

Ah, ah, so Jack’s the engineer on that part.

Jay Messina:

Yeah.

Warren Huart:

Let me ask you a little bit about Sweet Emotion, seeing as we went on to that. We got track one, bass marimba. How was track one still available? Was it because you’d use your, probably, tambourine track or something on that because it’s the edge of the tape?

Jay Messina:

There may have been something on there that maybe we bounced. Maybe we were going to need a couple of … maybe we needed a track for the bass marimba, and I think there’s a triangle on there. I forget what else is on there. Or maybe the triangle was already there. I don’t know. It might’ve been something that was on there that we bounced. Might’ve been, maybe, an extra drum track, maybe, that we bounced into the stereo kit.

Warren Huart:

Right. It says “triangle” in there.

Jay Messina:

Yeah. I don’t know at what point, because Steven played that.

Warren Huart:

I see.

Jay Messina:

So the bass marimba was probably the last thing that went on. What’s interesting is there’s two shotgun tracks there. That was a shotgun mic, a Sennheiser 805, I think, that I put up high and aim it down at the snare, and I used up two tracks for that. And we probably used barely any of that in the mix, if any. And there’s two tracks. One is called Yuri, I think, and one is called UA, both just heavily compressed and on separate tracks, and that didn’t really have to go that far. I put a note in there saying that 13 and 14 are stereo drums, 15 was the snare, and 16 was the kick.

Warren Huart:

Oh wow. So just 16 track.

Jay Messina:

From there. Yes.

Warren Huart:

And then just one track of Joe, one track of Brad, bass, group vocal with background guitar tag and lead guitar tag.

Jay Messina:

Yeah.

Warren Huart:

And then it says-

Jay Messina:

There’s no sharing of tracks. Lots of times, you’ve probably done it too, where we put an island in. If we’re out of tracks, and we’re going to add a tambourine, maybe, and the only track that’s open is maybe there’s a lead guitar track, and so it’s easy to punch in. Not always so easy to punch out, so you don’t erase what’s coming up. So we would put a few feet of a leader in there and just record right up until the leader, remove the leader, and then we would have a tambourine that goes right into the lead guitar track or whatever was on there.

Warren Huart:

You like the advantage of having 24 tracks, but at the same time, 16 gives you a bit more tape width.

Jay Messina:

Yeah. See, there again, that’s going back to why do these old recording sound so good, some of them may be with three track or even mono. Some of the early mono recordings still sound good. You’ve got all of that tape width to use up. It’s kind of human nature. You, “Well, we have four tracks now. Let’s split things up.” And you start to sacrifice sound quality for the convenience of having that option of rebalancing things later.

Warren Huart:

Give us a little bit of insight on Miles Davis. Although we were just talking about it, you can’t really say a little bit about Miles Davis. He’s such a giant for so many of us, isn’t he?

Jay Messina:

Yeah. My session with Miles, it was one that lasted about two weeks, and I was really excited about that. He’s always been a hero of mine, as lots of people, I’m sure. He had an amazing band and Gil Evans was the arranger, and always-

Warren Huart:

Oh, fantastic.

Jay Messina:

He was out at his little set up, his little podium set up. We set up for him and he had his grapes and his Perrier out there. Al Foster was in the band. I don’t remember everybody. Mino Cinélu was playing percussion, and anyway, it was amazing. Marcus Miller, probably. And I had a little headstart in the welcoming division, the welcoming aspect of meeting Miles in that we had a mutual friend who was an interior decorator who was doing his apartment, just two blocks from where I am right now. And they recently renamed named that street Miles Davis Way, I think it’s called.

Warren Huart:

Good.

Jay Messina:

Anyway, so of course I told him that right away, that Lancelot was a good friend of mine. But besides that, he looked at my sneakers. I had these pair of sneakers that I used to bring to the studio, where I dressed in the studio, that I used to get in Japan. You could only get them in Japan. So he saw my sneakers. He says, “Oh, nice sneakers, man. Where’d you get them?” I says, “Well, you can only get them in Japan.” When I used to go to Japan, I always used to get a half a dozen of my size and various other sizes, then I’d give them to my friends. They were about $8 or $9 each, very cheap. There was a music fan. He was a big fan of Richard Tee’s and Steve Gadd. So, whenever I would go to Japan, he would always show up at the gigs or at the recordings, and that’s where we used to get them, from him.

Jay Messina:

So I said to Miles, I said, “What size do you wear?” And he says his size, and it’s my size. I knew I had a pair home in my apartment. I said, “I’m going to bring you a pair tomorrow.” He says, “Don’t jerk me off, man,” because I told him that you could only get them in Japan, and I’m telling them that I’m going to bring him one pair tomorrow. I bring him a pair the next day. I gave it to him and he put them right on. He was really excited about it. He probably thought I was … wasn’t expecting it, I guess. That was another intro that put me on his good side.

Warren Huart:

Nice.

Jay Messina:

So I didn’t have any problems with him. He was cool.

Jay Messina:

I tell you a interesting thing I remember from that, and you would appreciate this. For a while, he wanted to try a click, to play with a click track. So only he and Al Foster, the drummer, had the click on. He listened for a while with the click, and then he just took his phones off, because he was just playing in the room. He didn’t really need phones. And he took his phones off, but Al Foster didn’t. And I forgot, along with everybody else, forgot that the click was still running. And so, Miles would count off and it would have nothing to do with the click track.

Jay Messina:

But Al Foster somehow tuned that out and just played, left his phones on, never said a word about shut the click off. And as you know, lots of times, if you leave the click on just a little too long, somebody in the studio’s going to say, “Shut the damn click off,” or, “Shut the click off.” He never said a word, and so after about an hour of them just playing, I went out into the studio, just check the mics around the drums. And Al had put his phones down, on his chair, on his seat, and I heard the click was still playing. It was the first time I realized, after all that time, that he just never said a word about it and just somehow just tuned it out.

Warren Huart:

So it was all recorded track live? So Miles was soloing live with the band as well?

Jay Messina:

Yes, and-

Warren Huart:

Beautiful.

Jay Messina:

… exercise was record everything, so we had two multi-track machines in. So when we got it, it was much like a live recording, a concert. Once we got towards the end of machine A, the last four or five minutes, we would start machine B. Then maybe we would have that time to switch the reels out on machine A. So we recorded everything, and Teo Macero, I wasn’t involved in the editing or mixing process, but wasn’t sorry about missing that end of it, he had his hands full, finding takes and putting stuff together. It must have been a monumental job. But that was the exercise. Record everything. Don’t miss anything. And it was fun. He was great to watch. He was so charismatic and a great boxer, good boxer. I wouldn’t want to even play box with him. He looked like he really knew what he was doing.

Warren Huart:

And what a lineup. Mike Stern on guitar and John Scofield?

Jay Messina:

Yes, that’s right.

Warren Huart:

So these days, just to kind of jump forward, I want to keep going through everything here, because there’s so much to talk about. You are finding yourself, though, speaking of mixing, mixing a lot.

Jay Messina:

Lots of times I’ll do a project … If it’s a record project where I’m going to record a band, that I’ll obviously do in a studio. Most of the time, I’ll wind up mixing it at home. Lately, the last couple of years, anyway, it’s all in the box.

Warren Huart:

And how are you monitoring?

Jay Messina:

I have Dynaudios, no sub-woofer. I usually get in trouble with listening with a sub. I’ll check it on headphones, and any other ways that I can just to check myself, but primarily Dynaudios have served me well.

Warren Huart:

Do you have headphones that you particularly like?

Jay Messina:

I like the Audio-Technica, the 50s, MT50s, I think they’re called?

Warren Huart:

We talk about Audio-Technica a lot when it comes to headphones. I feel like they have one of the most widest ranges of good sounding headphones from the cheapest to the most expensive.

Jay Messina:

Yeah. I trust these phones. It’s got the extra bottom that I don’t hear on the Dynaudios.

Warren Huart:

Yeah.

Jay Messina:

They’re fine. I have a couple of pairs of them.

Warren Huart:

You were just talking about off-camera for a second, we were talking about George Benson. You said you only worked on … was it just overdubs or just one song?

Jay Messina:

It was just … it might’ve been even some vocals. It was a project for a Japanese either television or maybe a Japanese commercial. I really don’t remember. He just played guitar and he probably did some singing too.

Jay Messina:

But what I remember about it is I just took his DIs. I went through a Focusrite Pre, and probably just right into tape. It was probably tape, I would imagine. And I remember when he came in, he said, “Wow, how did you get that sound, man, on my guitar?” And I said, “Well, that was you.” I just took his DI, used some nice pres, and that was it. I did nothing. I didn’t do anything. I felt like I shouldn’t take the credit for anything. That was my experience with him.

Jay Messina:

Oh yeah, the other thing I remember about these sessions, the first day, he was really into tuning. Maybe it was his vocals, because it probably wasn’t his guitar, but whatever vocal he was doing, he wanted to tune this note and that note and got really picky with it. And then he was saying that that’s the way Quincy and Bruce Swedien worked with Michael Jackson, that there was a lot of that kind of stuff going on.

Warren Huart:

How were they tuning it? How were you tuning it in ’83?

Jay Messina:

Just with a harmonizer. Primitive, you know? And I really wasn’t … it wasn’t my idea by any means. He said that that’s the way Quincy does it. I don’t remember if it’s exactly with Michael Jackson and Bruce, you know?

Warren Huart:

Right.

Jay Messina:

I don’t remember those details, but I remember him mentioning Quincy. The interesting part about it is he came in the next day and he sang the thing, top to bottom, perfect. Didn’t have to tune anything. I’m glad that happened too, because I wasn’t going along with the whole process of what we were doing the first day.

Warren Huart:

I saw him live probably about that time, maybe two years later, and I remember his ability to solo and sing his solos at the same time, brings you to tears.

Jay Messina:

Yeah. He’s an amazing musician. That’s why I couldn’t get it-

Warren Huart:

Incredible musician.

Jay Messina:

… that first day. What are we doing here? And it was more like he was driven by the fact that, oh, this is the way Quincy did it.

Warren Huart:

’84, you got Hanoi Rocks.

Jay Messina:

They used to tell me some really interesting stories about some of their Finnish gigs. They told me one story about Razzle, who is not with us anymore, who was killed in a horrible car accident, the drummer. They were playing some gig and they were pretty wild bunch of guys. And people would throw stuff up at the stage, and somebody threw a dart and it hit Razzle right in the forehead. And then the band just went nuts, and they jumped in and grabbed whoever they thought threw the dart, and I don’t know whether they hit him with a guitar or not. But it was a whole big fight broke out after that.

Jay Messina:

Interesting combination with Bob Ezrin and them, used to having their freedom and wild side in the studio, and Bob didn’t want to go for it. You know, it was drugs, lots of drugs floating around, and Bob, he didn’t want to hear about that. So, that was a little awkward there trying to deal with that and not be a rat. And it was a good record, I thought, and I didn’t mix it. I guess Bob stayed involved with it, but I think he mixed it in Toronto, maybe, or maybe took it back in to Canada and mixed it. I don’t believe I was involved in the mixing.

Warren Huart:

Nancy Wilson? Do you have any memories of that album, Nancy Now?

Jay Messina:

I did record an album of her at Carnegie Hall. There might’ve been a couple, because there was one, I think, where it was just her rhythm section, piano, bass, and drums. And what I remember about that is the union over there is horrendous. They don’t want you to touch anything, so much so that they didn’t even … Roy, they didn’t want him to touch his drums. He wanted to set it up his drums. They almost took him in the back room and-

Jay Messina:

… His drums. He wanted it to set up the drums. They almost took him in the back room and threw him a beating, and it’s horrible. That mentality, along side of what Carnegie Hall stands for and the kind of music that’s played in there, they just don’t go together. One thing I remember, and I always had a lot of extra respect for her, she would come in to do a fix, not because she didn’t like the way she sang something, but it was because she misquoted a word, a lyric, or fluffed over a lyric or something. But she would come in the studio to do her fixes for the whole album, and she’d be out of there in like 10 minutes. I’d give her the same 58 that I gave her in Carnegie Hall.

Jay Messina:

She knew just what you wanted to do. It would take two minutes to do every little fix, and there was hardly any fixes to do. Like I said, it wasn’t because of her not liking her performance or being overly critical of her performance. It was just to fix a lyric that maybe was misspoken or missung. I’ve heard the best singers get hung up on their performance, and lots of times they’ll come back to take one again. But I’ve seen the best musicians, not only singers, be overly critical of their performance, and I’m scratching my head and wondering, what’s the problem? It sounds amazing to me, but I guess everybody’s got their insecurities. Even the people the last people that you would think that might be insecure about something that’s got those demons in their head.

Warren Huart:

I completely relate. I’m always continually mystified by singers re-tracking things. One of the things I find with artists, I’m sure you’ve found this, is that sometimes they can’t separate themselves from the performance, meaning they coming one day and they’re feeling crappy so they assume that the vocal’s crap.

Jay Messina:

Yeah.

Warren Huart:

You go back and listen to vocal and say, “Listen to it,” and they can’t emotionally detach themselves. Time is the best healer in that thing. Get them onto a different song, and then they come back and go, “Oh yeah, it’s good.” I’m seeing a lot of Steve Gadd kind of correlations. You’ve worked with some amazing musicians consistently.

Jay Messina:

Steve, I know for a long time. I had met him when he first came to New York. I was still at A&R when he first came to town with Tony Levin, because they’re school mates from Eastman School of Music and they’re both from Rochester. So I met him back then and probably the first project we did together was a band called White Elephant that … maybe we spoke about it earlier, where we would go in, where Mike Minnery would write the charts. I would get a chance to hone my skills, my engineering skills, with that band. That’s when I first met Steve. Then he had a band with Richard Tee and Cornell Dupree, Eddie Gomez and Ronnie Cuber, and it was called the Gadd Gang.

Warren Huart:

For people that don’t know Cornell, look him up. Cornell was like the BeeGee’s, so many huge 70’s funk albums, he’s the guitar player. He’s a fantastic guitar player. Unbelievable.

Jay Messina:

[crosstalk 01:12:34] Everybody. So that was an amazing band and it was going to be a Japanese production. I had been working with the Japanese producer for many years already. Well, maybe 10 years prior to that, and the combination of my relationship with both of them, and me knowing all of the guys in Steve’s band, I seemed to be the logical choice. Following doing the Gadd Gang, there was an opportunity to go and do their live sound when they toured Japan. So I went and I spent two years in a row doing their live sound all over Japan, which was great.

Warren Huart:

I was looking up Cornell and I realized that him and Jerry Jemmott worked a lot together. Of course, Jerry, we interviewed a few years ago, I hunted down and found. He lives in LA now. And Jerry, they were in King Curtis together, weren’t they? Jerry’s horrible car accident they had, Cornell was in the same car. He was in the accident as well.

Jay Messina:

Oh, I did not know that.

Warren Huart:

Yeah. I love this conversation cause it’s sparking … We think about those times, how many amazing musicians there were and how everybody knew each other and was working all these records together. I’m trying to sort of conjure up some imagery here because I’m feeling like you’re going in every day to work on a project and you’re seeing people you’ve known now, what, we’re talking about, ’85, ’86, ’87. I mean, these are people you’ve known for best part of 20 years. The Gaad gang is 91, so over 20 years.

Jay Messina:

Yeah. Well, like I said, I’ve met Steve when he first came to New York, which was probably ’69 or ’70, so that’s how long I know him. But I was just talking to a couple of engineer friends, not too long ago, and we were talking about, wow, isn’t it interesting? And how is it that records from so long ago still sound amazing? And we were trying to figure it out, and we kind of figured as number one, great players so the music was good. It’s like, maybe we talked about when we want to get a good drum sound, you’ve got to get a good drummer. Start with a good drummer. And that’s the first step that you’d want to take, if you want to get a good drum sound. So the musicians were great back then, they got it right.

Jay Messina:

You had to make certain decisions, and you wouldn’t be afraid to rely on the magic of the moment and being in the moment and commit to printing some reverb. Lots of times you had to. If you were doing just like a three track or a four track, and the whole rhythm section was going to be on one track. If you were going to add some reverb on the drums, you had to do it as you were recording, so there was that. And the problem I see, and some of the frustration I deal with these days, is people get so overly involved with all the possibilities that you have with pro tools these days that they get anal and they wind up with a perfect sterile record. Lots of times it doesn’t have that magic that those older recordings had. So it’s hard to put your finger on exactly what it was, but I guess it was …

Jay Messina:

Maybe another thing was the simplicity of the electronics path was a little more direct then, and it wasn’t going through all the extra processing that we do these days, so there’s a lot of things. There’s lots to be said about not having any plugins or any EQ on a particular sound if it doesn’t need it. There’s a certain clarity and cleanliness to a pure sound that’s gotten with a good mic, a good pre, and you put it in the right place and you go right into whatever you’re recording on. There’s a lot to be said for that. I love the UA plugins. Probably 95% of the plugins I use are UA. But as I said, sometimes nothing is better.

Warren Huart:

Absolutely. I think you’re highlighting something very powerful there when it comes to mixing. If we’re tracking something well, we don’t have to mix as hard. And the less you mix, the bigger it sounds. I’ve tied myself so many times into knots of trying to sculpt together a mix and overly applying EQ. And I think it sounds amazing because I’ve just built this incredible jigsaw puzzle to pieces. And then I go back and listen to it two days later, and it sounds tiny. I’ve removed all of the life and soul out of every instrument. I didn’t realize Richard Tee died so young. It’s just like, this is crazy having this conversation and hearing all these names of all these amazing musicians that I grew up listening to on all of his records. And yeah, Richard Tee died at only 49 in ’93. So sad.

Jay Messina:

Yeah, he was such a sweet … I really miss him. I mean, the sweetest guy and what an amazing player. You just know who’s playing instantly, as soon as you hear him. I had such a good headstart. He used to make me look good, right, like all of these guys. I mean, they sound amazing already. You could put anything out there and they’re going to sound great, so …

Warren Huart:

Yeah. My hairs are standing on end. [inaudible 01:18:44] think of the keys on a, “Just the two of us.” That’s him. It’s just like some of the best sounding piano playing you’ve ever heard. Now, you’re working with tons of different people here. You did a Muppets album. I did a Muppets album as well. I did a song on a Muppet’s record. That’s that’s pretty good.

Jay Messina:

I don’t think it was a whole album. It was a-

Warren Huart:

Were you mixing some tracks on it?

Jay Messina:

I think it was Martina McBride, if she sang [crosstalk 01:19:15] one of those. It was one of their movies. I think it [crosstalk 01:19:18]

Warren Huart:

Right, right. Yep. It says the Christmas Carol original motion picture soundtrack, but that’s very, very cool. Everybody needs a Muppets album in their resume.

Jay Messina:

And interestingly enough, when I was still at A&R, I forgot what this session was. It might’ve been a mix session, maybe just a four track mix, and it’s when I met Jim Henson. Yeah. On that Muppets movie, that was his son. [crosstalk 01:19:46] I met Jim much earlier in the sixties, the late sixties.

Warren Huart:

You went back, and how long ago, fairly recently, remastered the whole Supertramp catalog. That’s pretty exciting.

Jay Messina:

Twice. Once?

Warren Huart:

Twice.

Jay Messina:

Twice. One was 20 bit and one was 24 bit. It didn’t make a big difference. What was interesting is I don’t think out of all of it, and I did this with Greg Kalvia at Sterling, I don’t think out of all of the tapes and or three quarter inch safety U-matic digital cassette tapes. I don’t think we had one original quarter inch tape. It was always like a safety copy from when they first mastered it maybe, or a Dolby copy of a mix, so it was never the actually original quarter. It was probably all quarter inch tape, I’m sure. But it was great. I mean, I was always a big fan of Supertramp, but even at that, some of their hits were just so great to hear again and to get in inside them. Not inside them enough to actually hear the multi-tracks, but just to hear the mixes again, which were brilliant. Great mixes.

Warren Huart:

Did you do that to a Supertramp album with Jack? Did we talk about that?

Jay Messina:

No, I did a Supertramp album with Jack called [crosstalk 01:21:34] Some Things Never Change. Yeah.

Warren Huart:

Yeah, yeah.

Jay Messina:

So that was great and fun and getting to meet those guys, Mr. Roger. But Mark Hart was kind of filling in and played his role, who’s an amazing singer and musician, and a really sweet guy. And then there was a record after that they recorded at Albert Hall that I mixed. I did some minor fixes on it and mixed it for them. And then their last record, I produced with Rick and Mark Hart.

Warren Huart:

Fantastic.

Jay Messina:

Called Slow Motion.

Warren Huart:

Absolutely incredible band, incredible band. Yeah.

Jay Messina:

The current band, amazing musician. Several come from a jazz background. Rick Davies is a big jazz fan. He’s got an amazing collection of jazz records and videos and all kinds of things.

Warren Huart:

I’ve been blessed to see them a couple of times in the original line up when I was super young. And just maybe on that last tour, I think it was about 2000-ish, maybe about the time you’re working with them. And it’s all phenomenal and you’re correct, incredible players. And I love this sort of balance for me. It sort of fulfills all of my favorite things because it’s a little bit prog rock at times, so it can get very musical, but they never lose sight of the fact that they write great melodies and really super hooky songs, so it kind of fulfills everything I love about music.

Jay Messina:

Yeah, yeah, that’s true. That’s a good way to put it.

Warren Huart:

What are you working on now? Give us a little bit of an insight. Where do you find your clients are now? Are you’re getting a lot of stuff with the resume that you have? Presumably people are hitting you up to mix albums all the time. Give us some idea of what Jay Messina’s up to these days.

Jay Messina:

Actually, what I was doing just earlier today was I’m mixing up a song for a friend of mine. His name is Early Times, and he has a blues channel on Sirius Radio. And these are like blues songs. And this particular song that I just finished for him, he got a blues legend, I guess, guy named Papa Chubby. He got him to play a solo and some lead stuff on this one particular record, so I’m just helping him put this together. Jack Douglas and I expect to be doing some mixes coming up soon. We finished a band called The 450s that we mixed at my studio. [inaudible 01:24:35] just a little different than just your every day rock and roll band, so it was a good smattering of a cross section of different kinds of tracks. I mean, it was all rock and roll, but there was some nice tasty things in there, so it was fun for Jack and I to do that at my place.

Warren Huart:

That’s absolutely amazing.

Jay Messina:

And I also have a guy named Krishna Das.

Warren Huart:

I saw that. I didn’t know who that was. I saw that on your resume here, and I was trying to think, who is that?

Jay Messina:

He does [inaudible 00:16:07]. He’s American.

Warren Huart:

I’ve done kits on music.

Jay Messina:

Oh, really? Okay. So I’ve done lots of his records over the years, and just recently finished mixing a live performance that he did at a church here. And I was going to have to make the best of the response. It’s all call and response. And what happens is lots of times the audience, the energy in the room, there’s like 1200 people at this church. The energy gets out of hand and they’ll start clapping and screaming, so they’re clapping and singing at the same time. Lots of times the clapping is louder, is going to speak more than hearing the actual response that they’re doing. And what we’ve done in the past when we’ve done a live recording, we’ll go in the studio and we’ll get like 35 people to sing, set them up in the studio, maybe give them six or seven mics. And I’ll set up a couple of nice Gentle X maybe an in the room, and play back the track for them.

Jay Messina:

And you’ve probably done this, but after we do one pass, there’s a certain amount of bleed from … because no one’s wearing headphones. So there’s a certain amount of that track that’s bleeding from the speakers and the singers’ mics. So when I doubled them, I flip all of the mics out of phase, and so I wind up 70 voices and hardly any track bleed in there. It really works, just the way it like the way it’s supposed to work on paper. It pretty much works. It pretty much wipes out most of that bleed.

Jay Messina:

So what you have to do is you always have to, if you’re going to double or triple, you have to do it. You have to double or quadruple. Once you have that odd number of track in there, then it doesn’t cancel. The bleed does not cancel, so it works. It really, really works.

Warren Huart:

I’ve got to see that in action.

Jay Messina:

Oh, you have [inaudible 00:18:28] You’ve got to do that. He was an attorney who was … he was more of an attorney than a singer.

Warren Huart:

Yep.

Jay Messina:

He wasn’t comfortable with the headphones, so I did a pass of him just with the speaker. Then, did another pass after he was … we got a good vocal out of him, fed the same track out into the room. Didn’t change anything with the mix, except to put it out of phase. And when you bring those two tracks up, as long as they’re equal and level, that bleed of the speaker bleed pretty much cancels out.

Warren Huart:

Well, this has been an absolute pleasure. I will say your Steve Gadd association, you worked on Steve 70 Strong album as well, mixed it.

Jay Messina:

Recorded in LA. Dennis Moody is a really great engineer and he did a really good job of recording it. Yeah, and I mixed it and I would send for the times that Steve wasn’t here, he was probably out on the road with somebody. I’d send them MP3s and he’d call me back with his comments, and that’s the way we got that mixed.

Warren Huart:

Thank you ever so much for all of your time here. This has been incredible. Thanks everyone who stuck around here for an hour or two.

Jay Messina:

It was a lot of fun, Warren. It was fun to get to hang out with you. I haven’t had that chance really since … We met a few years ago, but we never really had a chance to hang, so this has been great and good fun for me.

Warren Huart:

Thanks ever so much. Thank you everybody. This has been a blast. Please leave a whole bunch of comments and questions below. There’s also a link to how you can get hold of Jay and Jack. If you have stuff you want mixed, they can mix it. And I can’t think of a better team to mix your albums.

Jay Messina:

All right.

Warren Huart:

Thanks, Jay.

Jay Messina:

Thank you, Warren. Bye-bye.