Insights In Sound 180 – Peter Doell, Mastering Engineer S18 E10

Welcome to Insights and Sound, where we talk to the people behind the scenes, behind the technology, and behind the
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I’m here with Peter Dell, mastering engineer extraordinaire.
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You have quite the history. As a recording engineer, I was around the block many times.
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Let’s start with that. You come from sort of um humble yet rock and roll beginnings.
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Yeah. I moved out to Los Angeles. I’m here 45 years ago
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and it seems like just yesterday. So, a lot of the names I’ll drop probably
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may or may not resonate with your audience, but you know, the audience for this tends to
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really run the gamut from um younger students who don’t know who the Beatles
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were to u you know to people in their 60s, 70s and beyond. So, um drop
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whatever names you want. Well, when I moved out here, uh, my first
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studio was a place called Wall-E Hiders, which a lot of people may or may not recognize. They had a great facility
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here in Los Angeles and an equally great one up in the Bay Area. I was going to say he had another one up
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in that that was I think the San Francisco was the first one and then he moved down here. Is that right? That’s correct. Yeah. But also uh Wall-Ally in addition
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to being a fabulous engineer and everything, he sort of revolutionized the record or the recording industry and
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that you know he showed that he could pull his truck up outside of whatever
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the venue was and record Frampton comes alive over a couple of nights, you know,
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which isn’t a lot of money as opposed to and and some like multi-platinum record.
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Yeah. Right. As opposed to uh your record label paying
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hundreds of thousands of dollars. They have people camped out at the studios for a month or two months.
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Well, and also, you know, the difference being that you have this live audience. You have this live vibe.
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True. Yeah. And a lot of, you know, what we discovered, and I know you’ve witnessed this too, is that a lot of artists just
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don’t do as well without the audience reaction. True that. Mhm.
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but also was a great place for uh myself to sort of expand my horizons
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in that they did film, they did jingles, not so many jingles, but uh TV and lots
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of records. Mhm. And I think the very first record I got to work on was that Eddie Money record
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over there. Uh, and it was produced by Tom Dow and engineered with by Andy
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Johns. This is the first record I get to to work on here. I mean, I I came from Boston after a few years from after
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graduating college with with a degree in music composition, electronic music
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composition, I might add. When I came out here, it was,
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you know, a a great opportunity to really learn a lot more.
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Did you intentionally come to LA with the goal of working in a studio? Uh, I was like many of us, I was uh
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working as a musician. I was a bass player as some other people were s sitting on the same couch were. And uh
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you know, by day I worked in a recording studio as an engineer and technician. So the goal then was actually to be a rock
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star. You just happened to want to work in the studios as well as yourself. I thought one or the other was hopefully
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going to take off, you know. And I was either getting going to get in a successful big rock thing or or get a
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gig at a studio. And I tried the music thing first. Well, first off, it was in the middle of
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the musician strike. Okay. So there weren’t, you know, you you didn’t do a freaking wedding and
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there’s Lee Rednau and, you know, like all these great great musicians on a wedding for Christ’s sake.
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Yeah. But it was a really fertile time, too. I
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joined this band for a bit that was uh that the the lead singer and the bass
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player were leading. And the the singer was Tim Bole’s wife who was another dear
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friend who did a a lot of great movie scores and whatnot. Anyway,
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his wife was the singer who was leaving and the remaining keyboardist and uh
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guitar player would do dates with her cuz she had a deal on some Japanese
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record label or something. and her husband worked at Wally Kinders and he
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was the one who helped me get okay my my first gig in the studios there
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and that worked out well and I worked there for maybe a year before the
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company went up some owners nose shall we say that never happened music industry
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in the 80s no and then the next job I got was uh at Sunset Sound and I got to
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work with, you know, again, I started started started doing uh record days
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and, you know, did a little bit of records with Prince and uh Yeah. Sunset Sound was I mean, it’s been
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the subject of documentaries. It was, you know, one of the one of the legendary rooms.
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Yeah. Yeah. And uh and then from there, I went immediately to uh Capital Records and I
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worked there from like 83 to 99. It’s interesting. there was a a real uh
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almost sort of a feeding path between Sunset Sound and Capital. Um you know,
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of course, our dear friend Paula Salvator did that transition as well and
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so did a lot of other engineers. Oh yeah. You know, um a lot of them cut their teeth at Sunset and then went over to
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Capital. Yeah, it was a really really good place and
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still exists and still cracking out fabulous work. Anyway, so I worked there, but I got to there I got to work
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with people like Savior, the Stray Cats, uh Miles Davis. I did the Tutu album,
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which for me is my high watermark. Wow. Hopefully, uh some of your listeners,
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viewers, might recognize that guy’s name. Oh, yeah. In fact, on the wall, I have a
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drawing. You probably can’t see it, but there’s a drawing of that while of me running
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around like a chicken with my head cut out cut out trying to organize the session. And then Owen is a drawing of
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himself saying, “Fuck you. Shut up. I love it.” Yeah. Uh Jimmy Msina came
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through there as well. And I I worked with him actually first at Sunset. Mhm. and we did uh some stuff at Capitol
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and he tried to lure me up to uh is it Carperia somewhere below seven that he
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had a studio there uh and it was flattering and all that but wasn’t steady enough income to
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Yeah. And and there was something about LA in that particular era. I mean one did not want to leave the you know the
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sort of nerve center of you know because there were a whole bunch of studios at that point. Um
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there were and you know I mean I remember even when I came here in mid80s you know you had
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this u this nexus of you know Capital and Sunset Sound and&M and Cherokee and
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you know a number of other studios right in this United Western. Yeah. really literally in about a 10
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mile square a 10 mile radius you know dozens and dozens of really
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landmark studios you know and that really was it was a proving ground for a lot of us I think
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and you compare that era with today where you know I got to own Minecraft by
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sitting at the feet of Al Schmidt or Churnney or somebody right and today kids have to watch YouTube
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videos cuz there’s no there’s no uh like um not exactly a understudy uh but you
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know there’s no way to learn the ropes. It’s true. Sitting at the foot of some genius or
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somebody who could help you make your own decisions about well if I was if I was in this opportunity like he is I
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wouldn’t do that or I I would definitely want to do it like that you know. Well, and the other thing that you learned
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aside from all of those engineering decisions was how a producer works with an artist.
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That, you know, I got to watch guys like um guys like uh uh not only Don W, um uh
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Phil Raone, um Peter Asher, you know, uh some of the
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masters and watch how they related to the artist. And to me, that was one of the most
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enriching things was watching how they got the creativity to flow among people because that’s what
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that’s what the studios really were. They were temples of creativity more than anything else.
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Yeah. You know, we do have recording schools now and you know, thankfully that’s a that’s a good thing cuz some of them are very very good,
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you know. But um but yeah, you’re right. It’s it it’s a completely different environment now. And of course, you
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know, people are much more siloed now in the way they work. Everybody’s got their own studio. Now, when you moved over to
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Capital, you at some point transitioned to doing a lot of mastering work.
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No, I didn’t get into mastering at all. Then I left there in 99 and then I went
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to Sony Pictures for about 3 years. Oh, okay. And did uh scoring. So, I was a not a
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schooler, actually. I was the recordest. Oh, so you’ve really been through a whole lot of different gigs.
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Yeah. And you know, it’s great to see all sides of um these industries, but
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the movie thing, for example, uh you always recorded it from the the cues
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with the large largest number of musicians to the smallest so you could get rid of people and get them off the
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pay wall, right? So you recorded the main title and then the end credits cuz
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those were the biggest the biggest things and then you would have lived out. So you never actually saw the movie in
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sequence. You never really knew what these movies were about, you know, storywise.
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Yeah. Yeah. Uh unless the director was there and he wanted to see a playback with dialogue, but most of the time
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he did really. And I used to like watching movies until I watched them being made.
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I could see that, you know, it just took took a lot of the uh joy out of it.
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Mhm. But uh it it was a good place, but man, that was so political. And then I ended
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up going to Universal Music Group. I joined the mastering department because
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it at the time they were going to build a a 51 mix room to do all this catalog work. And then
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they cheapened out and decided to not build it. So now I’m on the staff. What am I going to do?
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I got in the master. I see. Okay. And it was kind of by default. Uhhuh. And I found out I had a flare for it,
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you know, having been mostly having been a recording engineer mixer. You had not
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only a sense of, you know, the appropriate colors and the appropriate uh sharp sound and vibe for
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these things. When I was there, I had a spectacular sounding room. And when you
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weren’t mastering on something, you were off often asked to do QA, quality
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assurance on these records that were on their way to the plant. So, you’d hear Beyonce or, you know, uh like all these
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huge sellers cuz um uh Universal had like 83 labels. I mean, you know,&M,
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Innercope, Geffin, you know, other labels. Mhm.
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And so you got to hear the best sounding stuff in all these different genres over
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the speakers you are going to do do your work on. Uhhuh. Yeah. You know, so it was
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you couldn’t get a better way to translate what’s out there to what
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you’re about to do. Yeah, it makes sense. Now, how was that from because you know the thing about
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mastering though is that it’s a little bit of a solitary art much more so than
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let’s say working on the actual recording. But most of that is like uh so different
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since co uh is now I never see a human being practically you know the stuff comes in
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over the internet goes out over the internet and that’s changed the creative process a
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lot hasn’t it? Well, on one level it’s been a really good thing. And I say that
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because usually mastering the sound so weird unless you’re sitting in one spot
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and unfortunately I’m in that spot, right? So, you know, when you attend the session, uh, it usually sounds so odd
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sitting where you are, right? You’re on the couch behind it or something. Yeah. So, it so you have to wait till
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you get home or whatever to really know what the hell you have. Mhm. So in a sense this is cut right to
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the chase. You know when they’re not here the first time they hear it over stuff they already can relate to.
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Yeah. You know so it’s not there’s less of people making you make a
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change when they didn’t really need a change because they’re reacting to what they’re
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hearing sitting on the couch way over in the corner or something. Mhm. Fortunately, the room I had at
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Universal was really great and it sounded the same way in the back of the
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room as it did up where I was. Yeah. And that was all done uh due to H
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handsome shoe HSU, you know, and he Oh, yeah. Room designer.
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Yeah. And we worked together at Sony Pictures. That’s where we went. And then I got him to uh help with the uh design
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of the studios for Universal. Mhm. And that was so smoking.
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And uh unfortunately with us. Yeah.
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Don’t get into the audio business. It will shorten your life. Well, you know, that’s interesting
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though because a lot of people get into the audio business not really being aware of how
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multifaceted it is. And you know, speaking for both of us, I
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mean, we’ve experienced so many of these different aspects of the audio business
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and I think, you know, a lot of younger people coming in, they basically come in
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with rock and roll dreams, you know, I’m either going to be a a rock star or I’m going to be an engineer, producer,
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something like that, you know, and then you discover that there are these completely different roles, you know,
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Foley, things like that, all of these different aspects that you were never even aware of, you know. Um I
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I discovered this with live sound as well, you know, where um everyone I know
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wants to become a live sound engineer wants to be, you know, the person at front of house or maybe mixing monitors,
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you know, and then they discover that there are gigs like systems tech or RF tech, you know, all of these different
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roles that really you’re not even aware exist, right? I remember uh when I first came
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to town being totally unaware of the unions. Oh yeah, that’s
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right. And like fortunat I mean early on my my I I had been in the musicians
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union so I was used to that and then the first real uh studio I worked for was
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Capital and they were IBW what electrical workers but that was the
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union that they were in in New York and it came out with them. Uhhuh. Right. and and then when I was at Sony,
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I joined the motion picture editors guild and that that same union was at Universal.
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So, I’ve had a long career being in the unions of various kinds of unions. And
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not only do they offer uh decent pay per hour Yeah.
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but benefits, you know, like um a small pension, but great health benefits.
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Mhm. I’m so lucky that uh uh between uh Sony
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and Universal, I got 16 years in that union, which you qualified at 15 years
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for their pension and their healthcare. Nice. For a life. Yeah.
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So, my wife and I are I like to pretend that it was a genius master plan of mine, but it’s dumb luck the way it
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worked out. So lucky. But I was going to say that uh when people, you know, in this YouTube
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era where you have to learn your craft that way that it’s like do that but
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cover your bases. I mean, uh there are these brokers for all the union um
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contract services. it’s called and you go and you just sign up get on the list
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to join any and all of these unions like uh there’s u not only uh IATSI which is
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the international alliance of theatrical and stage engineers lots of TV lots of
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film work are in that uh like I said I was in the ocean pictures editor’s guild
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which was all the post production but there’s also uh a lot of work in IAT
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uh which is all the you know the not only pre-production but the production
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you know on the set and all that and then a lot of TV is name it don’t even
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ask me but maybe it’s where association broadcast
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don’t I’m sure it’s the last must be a video in there somewhere with the B but any do yourself a favor
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cover your bases and you know while you’re looking for a job that’s going to
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turn you into a, you know, leaving the ranks of the second homeless, right?
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Uh that, you know, get in line and get in one of these things and if if they
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offer you a job, you know, it’s not like you have to come up with $3,000 on the
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spot. They can take $ 250 out a quarter or whatever. You know, it’s not that
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daunting, but it’s it offers you some real flexibility. Yeah, not only that, you
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could learn something fascinating that you can apply elsewhere. Well, and that’s the thing about it,
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too, is that they have these job listings. They have the ability to find
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jobs, not only help you find a job in general, but help you find a job again that you didn’t even know really
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existed, right? You know, exactly. There are so many of those gigs that people just have no idea, you know, just
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walking around being, you know, even a boom operator, you know, right? These are jobs that, you know, people don’t
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even really know the that these jobs exist, you know, but there really are a lot of gigs like that that, you know,
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coming from an uninformed place, you don’t know they exist, you know. Yeah. And it may not be your aspiration
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to be a boom operator, but you know, if it could get you through a rough time
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financially and again, you’re you’re networking. Well, and that’s the thing right there.
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That’s the thing that I found in our industry in general is the idea that we
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really we have no idea who we’re going to meet and who that person is going to end up working with, you know, and how
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that’s going to lead to another gig and stuff like that, you know. Well, I mentioned to you yesterday, you know, I
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I um I had this job in the late 1980s
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working for a software company that made MIDI sequencing software for the Atari
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computer. And due to that and then my work at Cherokee, um I met our mutual
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friend Gary Meyerberg who called me one day and said, “Yeah, Herb wants to put in a meeting room at&m.” You know,
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Herb Alpert. Yes. And that led to uh putting in mini rooms and working in studios for a
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number of people who you know were building their own rooms and whatnot and all of the you know everything leads to
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something else. You know, we joke about that, you know, networking becoming this term, you know, but before we even
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called it that, it was really just the idea of you’re working with people and you’re acquiring skills and you’re also
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acquiring relationships. This is almost a perfect segue to talk
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about the audio lunch bunch. I was I was leading to that. Very well
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done. Eloquent. Yes. Uh, a little background here is that working for
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Universal, uh, the bosses and I and you know,
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would go to our favorite Mexican giant in Burbank on Wednesdays. And why
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Wednesdays? Cuz it’s two for one margaritas on Wednesdays was the initial concept. But we didn’t always go on
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Wednesday. But I quickly discovered that if I brought along a client or a vendor
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even that the the meal for all five or six of us would go on somebody’s credit
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card. Ah, right. And and then fast forward to 2016
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when uh Universal decided to get heavy and they I I’ll
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make this quick. when they acquired EMI Capital, which was just a couple miles
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down the road, uh they thought, wouldn’t it be smart to combine the two? Well,
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you know, Universal Len the iconic recording studios that Capital was famous for. Uh our big money maker was
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the production studios and Capital really didn’t have that. Mhm. Both had master both union but two
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different unions. And what what was the solution? They closed the union studio
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where I was working out here on the west coast and reopened the non-union one on
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the east coast. That’s how these guys rolled. Mhm. And just as a quick uh footnote, they’re
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the guys who have closed the capital studios for a couple of years now. And the reason
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they did this, I mean the the the the story uh official story
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Yeah. The official story was earthquake. Yeah. Seismic retrofitting, right? Because there was this uh alleged uh
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leg of a seismic something or other underneath the tower, right? And they were going to, you know,
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fortify the place, but there was a line in the union engineers contract that says that the studios are closed for two
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two years in a day. The contract is null and void. Strange how that worked out. Yeah.
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So, anyway, it’s still closed. Uh there’s all these rumors about when or if it’s going to reopen.
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But anyway, I I digress. The the the bosses at Universal,
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we all got fired. They they got rid of the the oldest the highest paid people. Mhm.
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And, you know, went along and did their thing and then worked their way down the food chain basically.
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Yeah. Well, they got rid of the mastering department. So anyway, I I I wanted to keep this lunch thing going so
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I could see my buddies, right? You know, the two bosses and my other couple of mastering fellows, but everybody went to
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the four corners of the of the earth. You know, they retired and moved out of state or this and that. So, well,
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I I’ve worked at a bunch of studio. I know a shitload of people. So we started
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and getting the word out and uh you know it’s just been fantastic and but it’s
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it’s not only the networking because it’s
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the the people who come to this thing are the people you meet in the hallway of any busy recording studio.
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It’s not just recording engineers and producers. There’s, you know, there’s
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equip and manufacturers, there’s acquisticians, there’s uh studio designers.
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Mhm. There’s studio managers, there’s studio owners, uh there’s music publishers, there’s, you know, like I
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say, the whole the gods of Bushbrook as they might say, right? The whole family of people that
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you might meet. And in the beginning, it really took off and we had people
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like Al Schmid, maybe Ed Churnney and um
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you know, Paul Marggo. We had people like, you know, these sort of legendary folks and they took to it like a duck to
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water. They they loved it. And I thought, you know, maybe we should keep this on the on the download would not
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not make too much, you know, like people would publish pictures on Facebook of,
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you know, the gathering. I said, “Don’t show the name of the restaurant.” Yeah. That didn’t work too well, did it?
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I No, it didn’t. because I was mostly fearful that people were going to come and harass
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you know some of our audio royalty. Hey, listen to my demo tape. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Uh and that didn’t actually happen.
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And you know, so we’ve been doing it over 9 years now. You know what I love about it is the
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camaraderie where really you never know from one week to the next. You know, you could walk in there one week and there’d
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be 20 people. Walk in there the next week there’ll be 200, you know. Well, not quite, but Well, we’ve had over a hundred times
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definitely, you know. Well, it’s 30 to 60 every week. Mhm. Right. Yeah. And this is post uh co because during co
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we would do the lunch on Zoom. Oh, that’s right. Yeah. I remember
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joining a few of those as well. You know, just to keep the camaraderie and you know, it’s community building.
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we have this community and it’s you know fascinating to like we were saying
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earlier to find out all these other aspers
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gathering to talk about dither you know or or anything you know really that
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nerdy we’re more likely to talk about the Laker game or yeah I mean you have the Sapphire group for all the nerdy stuff
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yeah true but and That’s the other thing about the lunch bunch. It’s just
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a social thing. There’s no sales pitch. There’s no uh talk about, you know,
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philosophies or techniques or any of that uh instructional.
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No, but you know what? It’s been uh at least for me in the years that I’ve been coming to it, it’s been this um this it
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it’s it’s it’s rich with chance meetings of like, oh, you know, um I remember you
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from, you know, 10 years ago at Cherokee or wherever, you know, and that kind of
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that kind of camaraderie is something that um you know, we’ve kind of lost in the
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era of the recording studios being shut down. You know, it used to be a situation where, you know, you worked at
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Capital. Um, I’ve worked at numerous studios where you had a lounge, you had,
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you know, central locations where you’d find, you know, we were we were talking the other day, you know, we did this uh
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we did this AES uh session about Cherokee and we were talking about the
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lounge at Cherokee and uh Bruce Rob said, you know, I walked out one day in
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the lounge and there’s um, you know, the members of Mley crew sitting there with Steve Lawrence and Edie Gore. for me.
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That’s perfect. These kind of u these kind of chance meetings where you know you would run
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into people that you knew were in the industry. But you know if you just read the press there is this factionalization
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of you know and and in truth no that factionalization didn’t exist at all.
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You know everybody knew each other and everybody worked together in some sort of fashion. you know, the same engineers
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who would work on Steve Lawrence and Edie Gourmet would work on Mly Crew or would work on, you know, and and this to
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me was really the beauty of our industry that we had so many people who really shared
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we shared a wisdom, we shared a certain knowledge and I think that, you know, when you talk about recording schools,
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when you talk about learning stuff, what you don’t learn is the creative process
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that goes on in that room while you’re making that music and that to me is the
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most invaluable thing. I agree. You know, and we don’t have that as much anymore. So those kind of situations
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where you can have this kind of camaraderie, these kind of meetings, I think there’s nothing like it.
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True. Well, I I like to say that the the lunch bunch is the best way to see your pals without having to go to a
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convention or a memorial. Yeah. you know, because there’s plenty
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of that, unfortunately. Unfortunately. Yeah. And that’s, you know, that’s part of the deal, too. But I will say, um, those of us of that
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generation who are still here, you know, we value not only seeing our peers, but
30:44
seeing the younger generation coming up. Absolutely. You know, and I love that, man. I love I
30:49
love teaching. And I love being able to be around, you know, 20 and 30omes and,
30:56
you know, not like, “Hey, tell me a story, grandpa. tell me about, you know, no, it’s more like just talking about
31:02
like, you know, we had we had a couple of um, you know, 20 and 30omes coming into this uh, this thing we did at
31:09
Cherokee, you know, and they’re fascinated too because they want to know how those records were made, you know,
31:18
that to me is like I mean, man, for me growing up when I first got a gig in a
31:23
studio and I realized I was working with artists whose music and not only artists
31:28
but producers and engineers whose music I had listened to as a teenager, you
31:34
know, that was like continuing the cycle, right? You know, so I think it’s really valuable.
31:40
I think so too. Uh especially in this era where you know, especially postco,
31:47
you know, so isolated from one another. Oh yeah. that uh
31:53
I still have some residual depression from you know a lot of people do
31:58
uh from being so forced to be on your own you know and to this day like I was saying you
32:05
know the uh there’s good and bad but the the mastering world has gotten so
32:13
insular you know well then you have all of this do-it-yourself mastering stuff too you
32:18
know let’s not talk on AI. Yeah. A friend of mine now who’s show his
32:25
initials are he played a thing for me the other day
32:32
and it was like a three-piece, you know, piano, bass, and drums. uh you know sort
32:38
of a jazzy trio and with a singer and it sounded like Michael Bublé and the
32:44
lyrics were really really
32:49
it took you somewhere and really wellcraftrafted and everything but the vocal was insanely
32:57
uh evocative and you know all all like the verd and the back phrasing and all
33:02
this stuff that I said who is that you who is That that’s AI.
33:09
Wow. I mean, I I was floored. Yeah. It was so early in the game here that
33:15
like like I say, you totally buy it if somebody said it was Michael Bubé. You wouldn’t
33:22
Yeah. I mean, that’s interesting, too, because of course, as we know, a lot of the labels are doing that so that they could have ownership and not pay
33:28
anybody. Oh, man. Uh even one of the uh file
33:33
sharing services, it was We transfer I think
33:39
that they have a Oh, yeah. Yeah. You have to sign any of the thing that they although that’s now been apparently
33:44
rescended is it? Okay. Anyway, they were they’re saying they own all your
33:50
content. Yeah. Yeah. And they can do whatever they want and you you have to suck it up. But you
33:56
know I think at the same time that this is happening there is in certain ways
34:03
almost a revival of musicians who want to create you know singer songwriters
34:08
who really honestly you know the human condition is such that we need to
34:14
express ourselves. There are artists out there who need to really make this kind of creation. And you know, I think it as
34:23
much as the AI stuff is happening, there’s a bit of a backlash to it now. And there really is Yeah. And there
34:29
really is sort of a cottage industry now of actual artists making actual art.
34:36
I’ve heard I’m all for it, you know. I think it’s a great thing. And I think, you know, maybe we maybe we needed that
34:44
in order to remind us of how important
34:49
and how precious real art is because it’s, you know, I mean, you see this now
34:55
with so many artists who just say, you know, I I needed to write this song, you know, and there’s there’s a genuine
35:02
there’s a genuine, you know, a generation of new artists coming in that I think are just fantastic, you know,
35:09
and they’re not AI I created. So there’s there’s hope. I think so. And you know
35:15
again when you talk about something like the audio lunch you know where we have
35:20
this opportunity to meet these people and these people have the opportunity to talk to us and you know and I mean yeah
35:30
some of it is definitely you know grandpa tell me how it was done you know but that information is valuable and
35:37
that information is then passed on to other people and that’s not a bad thing
35:43
Yeah, you know, like having Bob Margaro sit next to you,
35:48
you know, and you think, man, the f those first couple of Stevie Wonder
35:54
records that he produced, it’s like I, you know, I just wore those [ __ ] records out.
36:00
Yeah. Well, you know, it’s actually, it’s funny because um, you know, Bob called me the other day. I I had left
36:05
him a message to wish him happy birthday. His 85th birthday, I will add.
36:11
And the man is still totally lucid and still funny as hell. We actually uh we
36:17
had been talking because u I had actually been working with him to to help him find a publishing deal for his
36:23
his memoir, right? And now that his memoir is coming out, um, I have scheduled an interview
36:30
with him for the AES show in Long Beach in October. We’re going to do a live interview.
36:36
And, uh, and I love Bob because he’s he’s the only guy who calls me and he says, uh, you know, hello young man, how
36:42
are you? you know, but uh but one of the things about someone like Bob is that
36:49
you can talk to him about this kind of stuff and he’ll tell you not only about how we recorded it and all of that
36:56
stuff, but he’ll tell you how important it was for him to be a part of
37:03
music that helped to change society, that helped to make a statement, that helped to move things politically, you
37:10
know, and especially in this day and age when we’re seeing so much repression and so much um you know political nonsense
37:18
going on. I think that’s really important to give a younger generation
37:24
the perspective that you know music really can change the world and you don’t have to lay back and just
37:29
take it. Yeah. Yeah. And I I mean to me man you know that’s that’s the legacy I want to
37:36
pass on. That’s part of it you know. Yeah. Another thing I wanted to get into a little bit with you was um as you know
37:43
I do a lot of work with um artists who deal with issues of neurodeiversity.
37:49
The reason I bring this up is because I know that you too have worked with a lot of artists who in certain ways
37:58
it’s our job to help them, you know, help them feel normal, shall we say, to
38:03
normalize these fears that artists have. And I know you’ve done a lot of that in terms of your connecting people.
38:10
Yeah. Uh, one of the things that came just came to mind as you were setting up
38:17
the the question was like some some established artists like say
38:24
among the most normal wonderful millionaires you’ve ever wanted to meet.
38:29
But some of these people are, you know, so established, but they’re so desperate
38:35
not to be sliding back in terms of uh relevance,
38:40
not just revenue, but you know, like their music really connects with the
38:46
people and they were like, you know, striving desperately to hold on and not
38:53
slip down. M but once you crack them that they that you could actually get them to like
39:02
see a new way. Yeah. Yeah. And a new way and a new audience. Yes. Mhm.
39:08
And not you know alienate Yeah. your existing audience. That’s the
39:13
challenge, right? And and I think that’s so important too because you know why does an artist do
39:18
this? You know Yeah. And you know, we can joke all the time about, you know, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and all
39:23
we want to do is make money and everything, but the truth of the matter is behind every single artist, there is
39:29
this need to reach people, to communicate. And that’s such a big part of why we do
39:36
what we do. So to be able to help that artist bring that out and realize that, I think, is
39:45
just really it that’s a huge part of what we do. And that’s I’m grateful for the opportunity to be able to do that,
39:51
you know. Amen. You know, speaking of like
39:57
mastering where where you don’t have any humanity, I miss that. Yeah. You know,
40:02
and not only the the thing when you’re working at something and it’s like,
40:08
well, how did they miss fixing that? you know, either it’s out of tune, out of
40:14
time, or both, or it’s like, but everybody’s going home, you know, I can’t Yeah.
40:20
I either have to find an identical bar and the 13th bar of the second chorus,
40:26
cut it in, cut it in. Mhm. Or do some kind of ledger domain to to
40:32
make it, you know, go by without Yeah. But it’s it’s different that you
40:40
know than working around like you say working around with the musicians and when you can actually enhance the uh the
40:49
way the the music performance. Yeah. Yeah. How how we absorbed it and relate to it.
40:55
Well, and I think you know that that’s really to me music is a performance
41:00
and uh you know I was just um remembering conversation I had with um
41:07
our mutual friend Michael Bindorn and he was telling me about how u he had heard this thing on a local a local LA um
41:17
modern rock station where they had done this mashup of a whole bunch of different songs and he said you know
41:24
they were identical down to tempo, down to key, and you know, everything. And
41:29
again, it’s like this homogenization that I think is, you know, not
41:35
necessarily constructive. And so, I love the idea of a a whole performance, a
41:40
contiguous performance. You know, total respect to anybody who is a master at
41:46
coping vocals and stuff like that. You know, God bless Phineas to be able to put together, you know, so many
41:52
different tracks and make a cohesive vocal out of it. But, you know, on the other side of that, you have people who
41:58
will do a contiguous performance, maybe cut in one line. You know, there’s some
42:03
magic to that performance, I think, that a lot of artists now are starting to
42:08
rediscover. Yeah. Bob Singer was one of those. It’s like the live vocal
42:14
Yeah. was often the [ __ ] And you know when you’re mixing quite often
42:21
he’d have you pull up the live vocal to see if if he had gotten that vibe.
42:27
Yeah. Yeah. And so I mean that as an engineer, you know, you have to have this is not just
42:33
a stunt scratch. Well, this is this could be the one, right? And capturing it live like that,
42:39
you know. Um who was it? So, oh, as Daisy was telling me that, you know, he used to do that with the Ramones. And he
42:46
said, you know, Joy Ramon could could literally just like double track a vocal
42:51
and get it exactly the same both times, you know. And I think there’s a there’s an art to that, man. There’s an art to
42:57
just being able to throw that performance out there, you know, and
43:02
just really revel in the spontaneity of it. You know, the name Toby Scott.
43:09
Indeed. Yes. He just passed away. said this last week, I think, but he, you know,
43:15
engineered most of the Bruce Springsteen records. Well, it’s funny. I mean, you mentioned
43:21
Toby Scott many, many years ago. Um, I interviewed him and did an article on him rescuing the tape that had been that
43:29
became Nebraska. Oh, wow. And he talked about how u basically Bruce had this little uh like
43:36
I think it was a porter studio or something that he had in a boat that he
43:41
used to just take out in his property on a pond, you know, in New Jersey, rural
43:46
New Jersey. And uh he said, you know, he he brought the tape to him in this
43:52
cassette to him and said, “Can we get it more like this?” and he ended up restoring it right from the cassette,
43:58
you know, and again, it’s like the the spontaneity of that performance was such
44:03
that as much as they tried in the studio with the best musicians, you know, that you could find, they didn’t get that
44:09
magic, right? You know, and that’s there’s something about that, man. You know, there’s there’s something about that catching
44:16
lightning in a bottle, right? That you know, you you just can’t you can’t equal it with all the technology
44:21
in the world. I’ve got a sort of a left turn here, but uh
44:29
in 1976 it was maybe I was in the Virgin Atlas.
44:34
We were doing a a show and my mission was with my inro. I was
44:40
out getting like jungle sounds at night, right? Cool. And you know you and I I kept hearing
44:47
the phones like this low level
44:53
you know, like a bass, like what? And I kept, you know, going figuring out
44:59
which direction made the bass go louder. And and I I walked and suddenly there was a a big drop off and below in the in
45:07
the water. I mean like a couple hundred feet below the where I was standing was the record plant yacht
45:14
and it was Paul McCartney doing a record and they nigged with So it’s like great
45:21
just what I need. I’m trying to get you know I’m trying to get nature sounds that [ __ ] Shut up you damn Beatles.
45:29
Yeah, but that’s you know I mean sometimes we go to great lengths like that to find a place to create you know.
45:36
Absolutely. certainly did, you know. Absolutely. Mhm. So, tell me about what you are up to
45:42
now. I know you’re still mastering at home here, huh? I’m mastering at home because the studio
45:48
I was working at for about 6 years after Universal closed. They went belly up and I always thought
45:56
it was going to be like if I tried to work at home, then I would need to throw, you know, 50K into treating the
46:03
room acoustically. Mhm. And I just kind of threw this in here to
46:08
get uh you know, something I could earn a couple of dollars with while I was still looking cuz I looked at eight or
46:14
10 places. Mhm. And most all of them were like treated more
46:20
for soundproofing. Yeah. To alienate the neighbors as opposed to
46:25
making the acoustics correct. Right. So until I found something, you know, I I was doing stuff for people who
46:32
were mixers. I won’t name them, but people you know and respect. I say,
46:38
“Please tell me, is this is the bottom, you know,
46:43
like like wolfy? Is it, you know, missing? Is it too bright? Is it too dark? Is it too this? Do
46:50
and man sounds.” So it’s like, okay, I can handle this. But actually for the
46:57
last several months I’m one of the co-chairs
47:03
of the U 159th AES convention which will be in Long Beach this
47:09
I work with as well. Yeah. And man I mean I’ve been involved with
47:15
the conventions in the past but I was always like a a coacher of the record recording a production track or you know
47:23
something analogous. It was more just specific to music and recording. Yeah.
47:28
Uh but Lord knows it’s an audio engineering society. First off, it’s not only music people.
47:34
No, no, no. In fact, that’s one of the reasons that I’ve been getting more and more involved in it is that it’s really very diverse. But anyway, it was uh, you
47:43
know, sort of flattering to be uh, invited to be, you know, at the outset
47:49
and because my other two co-chairs, oh my god, they’re so great. I’m I’m a
47:55
knucklehead. I’m the I’m the, you know, the green guy. Oh, hardly. But yeah, I I I um, you
48:02
know, I’ve worked with, well, I’ve been an AES member since 198 something, you
48:07
know. So, uh, I’ve been involved in this organization off and on for a long time and I’ve, you know, I’ve come and go in
48:13
terms of my distance to the organization and as you know, I’ve gotten much closer with it in the last few years and now
48:20
I’m chairing the LA section and I’m I’m uh I’m now also becoming vice chair
48:27
of the Las Vegas section, right, and reviving that, you know, because again, to me, it comes down to the value
48:34
of community and, you know, what you can learn from all of these people and I love that, man. That’s why I do this,
48:41
you know. And speaking of the lunch box, there’s a bunch of people from AES there.
48:48
Yeah. Um, not that that means anything particular, but another great thing
48:54
about the lunch is I have some people who I think I am really pretty close to
48:59
not knowing everything about them. I I’ve only known them through the lunch,
49:05
you know. Yeah. And not only is
49:11
our lunch, you know, the original, if you will, uh, a very meaningful and
49:17
pretty successful thing. Uh, but there’s a lot of copycats who’ve come to the
49:22
lunch and walked away with it. U Fab Dupant has got one in New York.
49:29
Yeah. Which I thought was going to be a challenge, but I think he’s Is he pulling it off? That’s great.
49:34
I think so. And I but I think he’s funding a bunch of it because one of the things about the success of ours here in
49:43
and downtown Burbank is not really downtown but anyway um is that we’ve
49:49
convinced them we get separate checks for everybody and even though we don’t
49:56
know how many people are coming you know they’re prepared.
50:01
Yeah. And we have this fantastic waiter who I mean
50:07
we’ve had plenty of waiters over the time but the last last six or eight years we want to go at 9
50:14
years. So it’s it’s been a bunch of time. He’s not only good but he’s a smartass
50:21
and I love that about Oh man. But when the lockdown hit when
50:26
the co happened and we couldn’t meet in person we were you know away for over a
50:31
year uh before the it was allowed to hit humans again in the restaurant.
50:38
Mhm. That you know we come in and he say usual you know. Yeah. Yeah.
50:43
And he wasn’t just pulling your chain. He actually remembered what your Yeah. what your normal lunch order and
50:51
or beverage order. He always remembers with me as well. Yeah. Unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. It’s But I think really it’s
50:59
um you know, it really comes down to community, man. And you know, I I
51:05
applaud what you’ve been doing. It has, you know, definitely been an inspiration not only for me, but for so many other
51:11
people, you Yeah. And that’s why there there are copycats. There’s one in uh there’s one
51:17
in Memphis. There’s one in Nashville. Are they finally doing it in Nashville?
51:22
You know. Yeah. But it’s I lived over there. They were trying to, but it was really difficult to get. But it was the engineers lunch.
51:27
Yeah. That’s what they called it. Mhm. And our thing is, you know, way more.
51:35
It’s way more inclusive. I think I was going to say Catholic. And I don’t mean it by the religious
51:40
thing. I just mean embracing everything anything and everything that goes with the audio community. Right.
51:47
Yeah. Yeah. And so there’s those copycats. I I think there’s one up in the Bay Area.
51:53
Mhm. And I know there’s one in in Seattle. Well, they’re trying to get one going in
51:59
Phoenix cuz there’s a couple schools there. There’s actually a really good school in Phoenix, the Conservatory of Recording
52:05
Arts and Sciences. They um I go down there and do um workshops once in a
52:11
while as well. And um my dear friend Rick Allen teaches there you know and
52:16
it’s a again wonderful place you know and Rick I brought Rick to the Burbank lunch you know and he just he came to me
52:25
later on and he said I feel like a kid in the candy store area and I’m never going to remember all these people I’ve met today
52:30
you know and it was just an average Wednesday in that sense you know but this is what I think is so important
52:37
about being able to just meet each other. Yeah, especially since the world
52:43
since co at least for me it seems that the world has gotten a lot more isolated.
52:48
Yeah, it has. And uh you know people have such joy just showing up and
52:54
Yeah. and seeing each other. Yeah. It’s a good thing. It’s a great thing. It really is. So let
53:02
me um let me wrap this with the question that I usually wrap with. You’ve been in
53:07
this industry now for close to half a century probably, you know, off and on, you know. What do you
53:15
tell 15year-old you coming up now?
53:20
Wow. Well, just be open-minded. Like I say, uh there’s opportunities
53:28
everywhere that you would never imagine are even remotely relevant. Like I was
53:35
saying earlier about gun, getting your name on these union lists, even though it doesn’t appeal to you at
53:42
all at this moment, it can open some doors and it can lead to where you think
53:48
you want to go today. Uh and it gets some money in your pocket
53:54
and also you’ll be you know your horizons will open up like crazy. Uh
54:01
that’s among the things I would tell myself at 15.
54:06
At 15 that was about when my brother told me that you know you could keep
54:11
playing guitar on the couch but or could pick up a bass you could be working every night.
54:18
It’s the truth man you know. Yeah. And guitar at that time guitar
54:24
I’m not sure but is he still touring? I don’t know. People still play guitar don’t they? Oh yeah. That’s what I hear.
54:31
Yeah. But it’s true that if there are things that are seemingly less attractive,
54:37
doesn’t mean they’re not as challenging or more challenging. I think the idea of continuing to get
54:43
out there and meeting people is that to me is really really valuable.
54:48
Absolutely. You know, I mean it’s and you meet people in the oddest ways, you know, and
54:54
then and under the strangest circumstances, you know. I mean, the way you and I met
54:59
you know, you can tell them that that that’s actually a really funny story. You know, I um I never considered
55:06
myself a marketing person and yet I fell into basically doing marketing and PR uh
55:14
just by virtue of all these other jobs I had been doing. And then I discovered I could write and um you know and I
55:21
realized early on that wow you know if you think about it there’s a hell of a lot of companies out there that if not
55:27
for their marketing people you know John Meyer would still be building speakers in his garage if it
55:34
were not for his for his wife Helen. You know brilliant marketing people. And so I embraced that and I I one of the gigs
55:42
that I had for the longest time was writing the blog for Universal Audio.
55:47
And they just called me up one day and they said, “Yeah, we got this guy. He was a mastering engineer and uh we want
55:53
you to um co-write an article with him.” And I don’t I I think we didn’t even meet at that point. I just I wrote the
56:00
article and you you looked it over and gave you a couple sentences, too. And and they said, “Hey, good to Oh, you
56:06
know, and then I think about 3 or 4 months later, they called me up and said, “Do you realize it’s like the most
56:13
popular article on our blog?” Like, you know, by a factor of, you know, like
56:19
10,000 compared to all the other articles and I had still never met you and I
56:24
think I just I saw you like in the coffee or something at a convention, the man or something.
56:32
Yeah, it was. And I just came up and introduced myself and this this guy, you know, because you’re wearing a name badge.
56:38
That’s how Yes. And I said, you know, and we might know each other. And he said, you helped make me famous. This cracked
56:45
me up, man. And you know, but I mean, we have been fast friends ever since. And it’s the most unlikely ways you connect
56:53
with people, you know, and really you remember each other. And that’s one of the things I love
56:59
about this industry is just the connections that you make that turn into really lifelong friendships, you know,
57:06
not just working relationships. Sure. And I, you know, that’s what I love
57:11
about working in this industry is that everybody you meet, they really have a passion for what they do and therefore
57:18
they have a passion for other people who love what they do, right? And man, I
57:24
mean that to me that’s really one of the greatest things about this industry. I love it, man.
57:29
Me too. Well, on that note, Petell, thank you for being my guest.
57:36
Pleasure as always. And yes, that too. That too.
57:47
Hey, I’m Daniel Keller. Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button and join us each week for Insights and Sound.