SOUL FIRST Daniel Lanois (Pt. 2)
Jan 25, 2011More of our conversation with the legendary producer.
BY MARCUS BLAKE
Mother Superior/Rollins Band/Pearl bassist Blake recently had an in-depth discussion with his friend and collaborator Lanois, who discussed everything from working with Dylan, U2 and Neil Young, to his own band Black Dub, his recent memoir Soul Mining, and his theories about recording. Go here to read Part 1. (Pictured above: Lanois and Blake onstage.)
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BLURT: Let's talk about your tools of the trade. You've got your 1953 Les Paul Goldtop and your Vox AC 30's. Do you have any favorite pedals and microphones you like to use?
DANIEL LANOIS: I've started using very few pedals. In fact, on the last tour, I was only using my delay unit. I was using this little Korg that does repeat echoes and modulates. There's a few boxes that do that even a Memory Man will do that. So, for my own playing, I find it's best to have that one device. It just makes for a better tone. On this last tour, Marcus, I brought two tweed Fender Deluxe amps from the late 1950s rather than a Vox because my Korg has two outputs. It has a dry output and an effect output. I really enjoyed the twin amp technique which we miked to stereo. It's a really good sound. I think every bit as good as a Vox and about 10 % as loud. A Vox can rip your head off!
It can! (laughs)
Or the bass player's head off if you point it in the wrong direction! (laughs)
Oh, I love it! (laughs) Do you have a favorite vocal microphone for recording for, say, Bono or Trixie? They belt it out when they sing! They are known to be really loud singers.
Yeah, for a belter, a Shure Beta 58 is a good friend. The good thing about a dynamic mic, like the Shure Beta 58, is that you get natural isolation. So, you can get right up on those mics to sing which means you don't have so much of the instruments bleeding in, which can make a junky sound. So, I highly recommend the Shure microphone for that. We used that on Neil Young's record. All the rocking tracks, he sang in a 58. For the acoustic tracks, where there's not so much volume interfering with the vocal, I like to use a Sony C-37A. It's a tube microphone from the 1950's.
Is that the microphone you used with Bob Dylan?
It's the one I used with Dylan, with Emmylou Harris and, mercifully, with Neil Young. It's a great tube mic, that has a big capsule sound and the thing that's nice about it is that you can get right up close on it and it does not break down. Sometimes those German mics, like the U 47, can't handle that kind of closeness and moisture and just stop working.
You've worked with so many great musicians and artists over the years like U2, Dylan and Peter Gabriel: who would you work with again? Also, there have been other artists that you've tried to work with like Mick Jagger and Robert Plant which didn't work out. Why didn't that work out?
I did some demos with Robert Plant which were meant for a Robert Plant/Alison Krauss record. Alison, unfortunately was not feeling well and couldn't make the session. Robert turned up and we did some songs with him. We wrote some songs together and recorded them. There are four of them that turned out great. The Plant/Krauss record never happened so those songs are sitting on the shelf. We may rekindle that fire because three of them are real standout tracks.
So, your collaboration with Robert Plant may still happen yet then?
It could still happen and there's even been an in-house interest in inviting Robert to be a guest singer on the next Black Dub record. Maybe we can use a couple of those tracks.
That would be cool!
That would be cool because Black Dub is a collective. We welcome input from people. Maybe the next Robert, if he doesn't mind the idea, would be a guest on a couple of tracks.
You have to tell me about Mick Jagger.
I was going to make a record with Mick but it was my turn to get ill. I got sick and I couldn't fulfill my commitment to Mick. We tried a couple of times. Years ago, I met Mick in the late 1980s with a view of working on a record with him at that time. That didn't come together. It was more about scheduling then. And then, more recently, I was ill. Our time will come. He's a great singer.
Is there someone you would love to work with that you haven't worked with yet?
I used to say Neil Young to that question but I just made a Neil Young record, so, there it is. Maybe if we resurrected Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix.
Is it true that Jimi Hendrix is a huge influence on your guitar playing?
I love Jimi Hendrix. I think he was the greatest we ever had.
Do you try to emulate some of Jimi's production techniques for your own records?
I love the production on Hendrix records. So, they are a point of reference for me. Those records are viewed as so pure without too much outside interference. But on studying Hendrix productions, there's a lot of layering. There are a lot of emotional layers and sonic layers. For example, "All Along The Watchtower" has got pretty striking acoustic guitar playing. You don't think of it with that but that's what it has upon closer inspection. That kind of [sings "ching ching ching," imitating the guitar intro]. There's something resonating there. I don't even know if it's Jimi playing it. Did you ever hear that Dave Mason was involved in this?
Yes, I've heard Dave Mason and even Brian Jones from The Rolling Stones was reported to have played guitar on that track! Actually, that's a Stones recording technique that a lot of people don't realize. For instance, in "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", there's an acoustic guitar underneath the electric guitars as kind of a bed underneath of it all. So, that's exactly what you're talking about.
Yeah, having a secondary instrument in unison to the main part is a technique that I like to use. It's an old Nashville technique where the bass player and the left hand of a piano would be playing the same line. [Starts singing a walking bass/piano riff] It's like a written part and you don't really hear the piano part. It's like a big truck in the bottom end. We use it on the Black Dub record, on "I Believe In You." There's an electric guitar that shadows the bass part. It took a long time to do that because it's a complex bass part.
Yeah, there's some amazing bass playing on the album. How important to you is bass in the mix in all the records that you make?
Bass is very important to me. Funny enough, as a kid, I didn't get very good bass sounds in my early recordings. I always felt bad that I didn't know how to do it. Then, I had a chance to work with Rick James and then I realized the economy of a bass part. I like a bass part that's well written and that's not smearing the whole track and which then can be turned up quite loudly in the end. You don't need to add too much more if you have a great bass part. Then, the role of the guitar could be harmonizing with the lead vocal.
My bass sounds got from being the worst to the best! (laughs) I was so determined to get it right. I started studying records... a lot of them from New Orleans. Once I had a great education, I was able to pursue the bass and succeed with it.
On the new Neil Young record, the bass frequencies blow the listener away!
Yeah, the Neil Young record has got great bottom. That's a bit of trickery, Marcus. We used one of those cheap DJ machines that give you an octave. We put that on Neil's guitar, which has two outputs. His three bass strings come out of one output and three top stings out of the other. So, by isolating the three bass strings, I was able to send that to one of those DJ boxes. But, the DJ effect box didn't track everything. Maybe 60% of it was great and the rest was a blur. So, where I had the "blur problem", I cheated a little bit, I went to my Moog Taurus pedals and supplemented whatever that was not tracking properly from the DJ box.
Do you have a favorite song off the Neil Young record?
I'm pretty proud of "Walk With Me". Structurally, it was something I was involved with quite a bit in an arrangement for Neil. In fact, the song begins halfway through the performance. I lopped off the front of the song. Then, I included those lyrics in the back end, where the back end goes into this secondary chapter; where it goes into a shuffle. It's just something that I hit on with my dubs, this little shuffle thing that Neil loved and he encouraged me to go the distance.
I think sonically, my favorite track is "Someone's Gonna Rescue You".
Why is that?
I think that's where we really got the balance of the vocal and the guitar right. First of all, all of the vocals and the guitars are live. There are no vocal overdubs. So, part of the challenge is having your amps cranked up to ten but getting a nice developing on the voice. That was one of the last tracks we recorded and at that time we had just found a "sweet spot", isolating the amps around the corner of the foyer and in the other room, on the padded rug. So, if we had to do it all over again, I would start it with that sound and go from there.
How did the concept of recording just Neil and his guitar come about in the first place?
It was only ever Neil and his guitar as a concept. He called me to record him doing ten acoustic songs and to film him because he liked the Black Dub films that we had up on YouTube. So, he saw excellence in our work. He called and said, "Hey! Could I tap into the thing you've already got going?" I said, "Sure, no problem."
The two acoustic songs on the record, we recorded on our first get together under a full moon. That was a three day session. The acoustic songs are "Peaceful Valley Boulevard" and the other being "Love And War". We got them tracked very early in the project and I'm very proud of them sonically. They're great songs.
Is that one of Neil's things, to record under a full moon?
Yeah, Neil likes to record under a full moon. So, we did four full moons. And, of course, in between the full moons, I added some of my sonics, my dubs. But, his performances were all done under a full moon. He knows, historically, those have been productive times for him. If the moon has the power to move the sea and the tide, then it probably does something to our innards. I just followed his intuition and gave it a try and he was right.
Does a lot of your work in the studio and on stage involve intuition and playing off of each other?
Lucky for us, in the record making world, we can change the direction of the ship quite well. We're not operating by blueprint or architectural designs. All we know is that we want to make a great record. So, if the byproduct seems more interesting than what we're going after, I usually shift with it.
Let's talk about different studios that you've had over the years; from Teatro to your current one in Los Angeles to the one you're now working on in Toronto. What's the latest with the one in Toronto? Is it finished?
I'm standing in the Toronto studio, talking to you right now. It's pretty much done. Now, it's down to finding sweet spots. There's a little decorating to do. I want to put in a nice bar.
Can you describe your new studio?
Yes, it's an old Buddhist temple. It's an "L" shape on the main floor, which is where we currently have our equipment. It has an archway from one room to the next. The main room has a very tall ceiling. The light that comes through there is very beautiful. So, there's a shape that shows up on the wall. It's kind of like a sundial. It's got a lot of spirit in it and that's what drew me to it initially. I thought if it was good enough for the monks, I would give it a try! Then, there's a same "L" shape on the lower level, which is the basement level. That might be the most dense sounding part of the building. I may end up with a studio down there. But, at the moment, I‘ve got a studio on the main floor. I have transportable equipment in there, which my studios always have. I like to move thing around to the project at hand. It's private. I want to make it a very musical place for me and my friends and I want it to be a good hang as well.
The studio in California, the El Teatro, might have been my favorite studio because it was massive. It was an old theater, an old cinema house. My engineer, Mark Howard, and I took out a bunch of seats in the middle and built a riser stage. So, all of our equipment was on stage. The cool thing about having seats was that we could invite an audience over. We had a screen and I had my motorcycles in there. I really believe in keeping all of my equipment plugged in and ready to go as we spoke about earlier. So, that was kind of the ultimate studio. I tried to find a cinema in Toronto but didn't so, I went for the Buddhist temple.
What happened with El Teatro then?
I was only renting for El Teatro so we were there for four years. We started and finished Dylan's Time Out Of Mind record there. We did Willie Nelson's album [titled after the studio] there. We did the soundtrack for a film called Slingblade there. Then my partner, Mark, wanted to go to Los Angeles and start his own thing. So, we packed up and that was that. But it's still for rent! (laughs)
You mentioned Mark Howard. Would you consider him your secret weapon?
Mark Howard is resourceful. That's what's great about him. He can do great studio set ups. For example, I wanted to go to Mexico a few years back and do some work down there. So, Howard drove an eighteen wheeler down there and set up a studio for me in the mountains. It was pretty amazing. He's a good road dog. He's got that kind of experience and know-how. He can throw something together in an afternoon. Beyond his capacity as a set-up man, he's very qualified with sounds. He surprises me with set-ups. Even without any input from me, he'll dial something up.
We can't do an interview without mentioning Brian Blade.
Yeah, Brian Blade is a bad man on the drums. We just came off the road and we're reviewing our films and recordings and I'm reminded all the time on how great he is and how dedicated he is. The churchman... he's everyman really.
As a bass player, when I play with him, he makes me play differently. He's that inspiring.
I noticed that, Marcus. In a good way, yeah?
In the best way possible.
I find that, maybe in the way the you feel when you play with him, I can back off a little bit and not feel that I'm carrying all the weight for the group. You can hit on a nice, long note and enjoy the ride. I think when you're not trying so hard, then it becomes more musical.
You mentioned that you are working on films from your tour?
Yes, we have a simple technique on the road. Our cinematographer, Adam Vollick, travels with us. He's on stage with us and he puts the lens at what he sees as the most interesting moment on stage at a given time and that gets projected on screen, above us. That's really good for people a little further at the back because they can't see idiosyncratic details of somebody's handwork or Brian with the sticks. So by having that up on the screen rather than disconnected visuals, the audience feels like they're in on the story. They don't mind Adam up there because he's serving them. I think it's a very inclusive angle on things. Then, we come home and we have a film!
Video along with audio has always been very important to you, right?
We come home with a film. We use a technique that's pretty fascinating. We come right off the stage with our microphones and plug them into our own preamps that we carry on the road. It's a box, maybe an 8U High preamp. That gives us 16 preamps. So, the mics plug into those preamps and those preamps plug into my Radar recording system. Then, the Radar patches into the house console. So, we don't need a [mobile recording] truck in the alley or other people to be recording on a separate rig or anything. The chain of events from a mic to the listening console that we use, gives us a multi track recording. So, any given night, we have multi track recording and a film. It's very, very economical.
I can't wait to see the finished product.
Yeah, I think you're going to like it.
You seem to be constantly searching.
The creative process is a searching process. You're always looking for something that you haven't done before. As innovative spirits, it keeps you asking questions about possibilities.
Do you think your motorcycle accident made you think more about searching than you have previously? [Lanois was in a very serious motorcycle accident last year, while in the middle of working on Le Noise.]
The motorcycle accident has certainly made me aware about mortality. I was right in the wings of mortality! Then, you come out of that and realize how special life is. You take nothing for granted. I want to play every note like it's the last note I'll ever play. I want to be doing significant work .
How are you doing now? Was it difficult for you to travel?
I'm doing okay. My rib cage in the back, just below my shoulder blade, is pushed in about an inch and a half. My bone broke and it never sprung back out. That was pretty terrible for a long time because I couldn't lay down. Those broken ribs were like knives cutting into me so I had internal bleeding. Even to this day, when I lay down, it feels like there's a lump inside of me.
Did it affect your guitar playing at all?
No, because all the weight of the guitar is on the left shoulder.
Finally, you said in your book, that Chris Blackwell likes the records that you and Eno produce because they have soul but your sonic experiments are hard for him to digest. Do you think that soul and experimenting vs. being commercial is a constant struggle for you?
I'm still dedicated to the cause of mixing machine with flesh. Whether that be with beat boxes or things like that. I think if you start with soul, then, whatever you try to frame around that, should work. Soul first, and then go from there.
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Thanks to: Margaret Marissen, Adam Vollick and Keisha Kalfin.
Marcus Blake performs with Mother Superior, Rollins Band and Pearl (just to name a few); he additionally has a series of interviews with record producers in Spanish magazine Popular 1. Contact him at the Mother Superior website.
Black Dub's self-titled album is out now in all fine record stores and digital outlets everywhere. Soul Mining: A Musical Life, the book by Daniel Lanois and Keisha Kalfin, is published by Faber & Faber.
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