Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music (16 page)

Those Friday-night soirees were great fun.

Elizabeth Joel (Billy’s first wife and manager), Brian Ruggles (his concert soundman), and Steve Cohen (his lighting director) would usually show up. We knew when they liked what they were hearing ’cause they’d holler and cheer like mad!

After listening, we’d either open more wine and replay the songs, or go out for dinner. There were many Friday afternoons, though, when we found ourselves in the midst of a bang-up session and said, “Let’s not have any interruption tonight.”

En route to the Grammys with Simon, Matt, and Karen, late 1970s
Phil Ramone Collection

I must say that I loved when my wife and sons dropped by the studio. My older boys, Simon and Matt, enjoyed seeing “Uncle
Paul” (Simon’s namesake), or “Uncle Billy.” When my youngest son BJ was born, we named him after Billy Joel.

Record company people
always
wanted to visit, and they had the right to come in at any time to hear what we were doing. In addition to hanging with the stars, they liked to keep an eye on their investment.

I never wanted to play an executive or A&R rep something that was too far removed from the final product, so I’d say, “Why don’t you come in after the second week, and I’ll play you three tracks?”

In the days before they arrived, I would obsess over every detail.

Which tracks should we play? How should I mix them? What order should we play them in? How loud should we play them?

Record executives loved getting the royal treatment, and Billy Joel has a way of schmoozing ’em like no one else I know. When we held playback sessions for the label people, Billy would mingle and share some of the stories behind the songs. His presence—and his irrepressible passion for the records he was making—went a long way toward keeping the label people happy.

Although it can be intrusive, one can’t discount the value of having an objective set of ears preview works in progress.

I knew presidents of record labels who would play new records for anyone—the bellman who delivered his bags, or a room service waiter—and ask, “What do you think of this song?”

Brian Wilson was famous for doing that sort of thing. He’d invite all kinds of delivery and service people into his home to hear whatever he was working on at the moment. The opinion of the average listener is important.

Perhaps the guy in question loved what he heard—or maybe he didn’t pay much attention and said, “It’s okay.” Either of those opinions could easily change the direction a record was taking—and it often did.

Dennis Arfa (Billy Joel’s booking agent) used to come to Billy’s
playback sessions, and I was amazed at his prescience. His feet would tap to the wrong rhythm, and his head would nod out of time, but he could pick singles like no one else could. Dennis would listen to a song and say, “That’s the hit single.” I’d cock my head and look at him quizzically. “Really?” He’d almost always be right.

Bob Dylan, circa 1974
Courtesy of Paul Natkin/WireImage

I was delighted to receive “the call” from John Hammond in September 1974 asking me to engineer some sessions with Bob Dylan.

“Phil? John Hammond. Listen, Dylan’s in town and he’s ready to record for us again. He wants to come back to 799 Seventh Avenue, and we need to capture the magic.”

Although he’d made his name at Columbia Records, Bob had briefly left the label to record two albums for Elektra. Hammond, who’d recognized Bob’s talent and signed him to Columbia twelve years earlier, wanted to bring him back to the CBS “family.”

I’d toured with and recorded Bob Dylan and the Band in 1974, but
Blood on the Tracks
was the first and only Dylan studio album I ever recorded. Like many fans, I was in awe of Bob’s talent and respected his polite, distant attitude. I’m private too, and I’m tenacious about protecting the privacy of artists. Traveling with Dylan gave me a glimpse of his idiosyncrasies, and I’d developed a real affection for him and his music.

Since many of Dylan’s early recordings had been made in studio
A1 at 799 Seventh Avenue when it belonged to Columbia, his return to A&R brought everything full circle.

It was clear that this album was going to be personal. Bob was going through a separation; he was emotionally fragile and at a creative crossroads. I was elated that he’d chosen A&R, and felt privileged to be the engineer who’d preserve this watershed moment.

Things didn’t seem to be planned, and that didn’t unnerve me. If you understand who Dylan is and what his music is about, you know that he comes to the studio with what I call “prepared spontaneity.” You’re never quite sure what Bob is going to play, or what key he’s going to play it in. He doesn’t like to overdub, so you learn to build around him.

I didn’t see Bob until he came to the first session on September 16. Earlier that day, Hammond called and asked if I could line up a few musicians. I didn’t think the request was odd; I expected that Bob would just come in and lay down some voice and guitar tracks. But at the last minute, Bob decided that he wanted a few extra players.

The New York studio scene was flush with work, and I was expecting to find that most of the A-list session players had already been booked. Luckily, Eric Weissberg—a versatile guitarist who was riding high on his hit song “Dueling Banjos” (the theme from
Deliverance
)—was recording at A&R that day. I bumped into him in the hallway, and told him of my dilemma.

Eric quickly pulled together a small band consisting of Charlie Brown and Barry Kornfeld (guitar and banjo), Richard Crooks (drums), Tony Brown (bass), and Tom McFaul (keyboards). All of them admired Dylan and were excited about working with him.

A few hours later Dylan arrived.

Other than the musicians, the only people in the studio were Columbia’s Don DeVito, John Hammond, and me. Now, you’ve got to understand that Bob Dylan is a bit eccentric: He’ll come into the studio and just start playing. And when he does, he con
centrates solely on the music. When Bob came in, we got a quick level on him, and he launched into the first of more than a dozen songs.

To some, it probably seemed like Dylan was in his own world.

There was no structure to the session, no feeling that he was being guided or limited by anyone or anything. I didn’t yell out, “Ready to roll? This will be Take Two.” I’d stopped making those mistakes long before. Attaching numbers to a performance increases the artist’s anxiety, however subtly.

I could tell that the free-form way that Bob stopped and started a song without paying attention to when a verse or chorus came around rattled those musicians who had come expecting a more focused collaboration. But that’s how Dylan creates—it’s stream of consciousness.

On these dates, the songs poured out of him as if they were a medley. Bob would start with one song, go into a second song without warning, switch to a third midstream, and then jump back to the first.

Bob hardly ever played anything the same way twice, which was disconcerting if you weren’t accustomed to it. On the first go-round he’d play an eight-bar phrase; the second time, that phrase would be shortened to six.

The sessions were unscripted and unpretentious. I saw them as a spiritual release—a letting out of the man’s insides. When he stepped up to the mike and began singing, I saw a sensational album start to unfold. For four days, Dylan stood at the mike and bared his soul on record. The intensity of songs like “Tangled Up in Blue,” “Idiot Wind,” “If You See Her, Say Hello,” and “You’re A Big Girl Now”—which he arranged as he went along—proved that this was a cathartic exercise. Dylan was purging in the only way he knew how, and I respected that.

There were no charts and no rehearsals. The musicians had to watch Bob’s hands to figure out what key he was playing in. Don
DeVito also gave them a suggestion: “To stay in the groove, you’ve got to watch his feet,” Don explained. “It’s something I learned from [producer] Bob Johnson, and that I witnessed on earlier sessions with Dylan.” Between takes (of which there weren’t more than a few), Bob would come into the booth for the playback. His comments were brief and decisive. “I don’t like that. Let’s do another one.”

Bob’s a nice guy, but he’s not a conversationalist. You don’t need that when you’re making records: You have camaraderie with someone, and you enjoy them for who they are. Bob’s self-imposed isolation wasn’t some antisocial posturing; it was clear from his mood and body language that he was vulnerable. My way of working is that you don’t break the code of privacy that the artist sets up, whatever that may be. Dylan shares what he needs to, and nothing more. At one point, we found ourselves in the men’s room. I said, “How are you feeling?” He said, “I’m okay.” That’s Dylan.

I’m amused that I was later criticized for not paying enough attention to the musicians’ pleas to get Bob to communicate more, and that I wasn’t attentive enough to their needs. I understand the criticism and accept it. My view from the booth, as someone who understood the artist in front of me, was that I needed to stay out of the way as the music came down. When Dylan walked into the room with guitar in hand, I knew that it wasn’t about balancing the guitar against the vocal, getting a better sound on the guitar, or moving the bass player around. I instinctively did what I knew was right.

Because of the subdued tone, I even let some small imperfections slip by, like the clicking sound of Bob’s pick brushing against the microphone. I didn’t interrupt the performance to correct it; I went into the studio while Bob was playing and carefully pulled the microphone back a couple of inches. What was I going to do, tell him he had to do another take because I screwed up, or because his pick was clicking in the microphone?

I knew that what I didn’t do for Bob Dylan was as crucial as
what I did, and that in this case I needed to step back and allow the poet before me to shape the music as he saw fit.

Except for a minor fix here or there—and a part or two that Bob decided to add at the last minute—we didn’t overdub. The only corrections we made on the Dylan tapes were a few spots where John Hammond said, “We’re missing a couple of words here,” or, “The guitar gets strident during this phrase.”

After that first prolific night (which yielded about thirty takes in all), Dylan came back to A&R on three successive nights to finish
Blood on the Tracks
.

The second date—on the next night—was far more intimate than the first, as other than Bob only bassist Tony Brown and organist Paul Griffin were present. Dylan was more introverted than I’d ever seen him.

For the final session, Bob asked steel guitarist Buddy Cage to listen to the tracks and overdub some parts. Columbia’s Don DeVito made the call.

“I knew Buddy from the New Riders of the Purple Sage, and when Bob said he wanted a steel guitar player, I got word to Buddy,” DeVito recalls. “Buddy called me and said, ‘A Dylan session? It’s a joke, right?’ ‘No, Buddy—it’s not a joke. It is really a Bob Dylan session.’”

Although Cage brought a special feel to “Meet Me in the Morning,” it took some prodding by Bob to extract the brash nuance he was looking for. It was, as Cage recalls, a session he’d never forget:

“I’d brought along my entourage—I had a limo driver, bodyguard, secretary, and two crew guys. When we arrived at the studio, Dylan motioned toward the group and said, ‘What’s all this?’ ‘Ah well, you know,’ I explained.

“Bob laughed. ‘Well, can any of them go out and get us some wine?’

“Phil Ramone was on the board and Mick Jagger was there too, observing. I looked at them and thought, ‘Holy Christ—what I do
had better be good.’ I went out into the studio, where I found myself alone. It was a cavernous room and I had a sinking ‘Oh, God’ sort of feeling.

“Dylan said, ‘Phil, play him the tunes.’

“They played back a mess of tracks—maybe eighteen in all—and what I heard were some of the most incredible masterpieces that anyone could ever hope to hear. Remember: Bob Dylan had made two, maybe three albums that everyone hated. I didn’t hate them, but everyone else panned them. And here I was, sitting in an empty studio listening to a record that everybody in the fucking world was dying to hear.

“The songs were so good the way they were that I wondered why they’d asked me to add anything to them. I looked at Dylan, then at Ramone. ‘What the fuck am I supposed to do?’ I asked. ‘They’re masterpieces, they’re already finished!’

“My praise took Bob by surprise. ‘Oh, thanks—but I’d like you to put some steel guitar stuff over what’s there,’ he explained. ‘Well, I honestly don’t know where to begin,’ I responded.

“Bob turned to Phil. ‘Play them again,’ he directed.

“I listened to all of the songs again and bookmarked ‘Meet Me in the Morning’ and one or two others. But I was afraid to start playing, because I feared that once I got going I’d record over everything till I burned out spiritually. It’s the way I like to record; once I’m finished, I don’t care what happens—you can do whatever you want in the final mix. Dylan hated working that way. He preferred to keep trying until he got exactly what he wanted.

“Phil cued up the tape and I did one take on ‘Meet Me in the Morning.’ Then, I did a second and a third. After each one, there was nothing but silence from the booth. The red light went off at the end of the third try, and I sat there all by myself. I was scared shitless, but I found the courage to do a fourth take. Again, silence.

“I could barely see into the control room, but if I squinted I could make out Phil Ramone, sitting behind the glass with his head
in his hands. After what seemed like a long time, the door opened and someone came in. It was Dylan. He was wearing a motorcycle jacket, blue jeans, and a pair of black cowboy boots. He walked up, stuck the tip of his boot under my pedal board, looked me dead in the eye and said:

“‘THE FIRST SIX VERSES ARE SINGING—YOU DON’T PLAY. THE LAST VERSE IS PLAYING—YOU PLAY!’

“He turned on his heels and walked out. And in that split second, I felt pure contempt for Bob Dylan, and the old punk ass in me came out. Fuck you, Jack, I thought. I deserve to be here. You’re not getting away with talking to me that way, you twisted little bastard.

“Phil came on the talk-back mike and said, ‘Buddy, do you want to practice one?’ I gritted my teeth. ‘No—hit the tape.’

“When the red recording light came on, I was still thinking about what a motherfucker Dylan was, and I tore right through my part—I took his direction and played it just the way he wanted. I did one take on that last verse, and had the picks off and the bar down before they were done rolling the tape.

“‘There, you son of a bitch,’ I thought, as I stomped out of the room. I shoved the door to the control room open and saw Dylan sitting back in his chair. He and Ramone were giggling like two kids.

“Bob looked at me and grinned. ‘That was great! Play it for him, Phil.’

“At that moment I realized that I’d been had. Bob’s bullshit was all a ploy to goad me into turning out a combustible performance. After the playback I turned to Bob and said, ‘That was the toughest three and a half minutes of my life. I don’t mean the playing—I mean sitting here listening to it with you.’

“‘Can you go and out and do some more?’ Bob asked. ‘Yeah, I’ll go out and do some more,’ I said.”

I thought that what Bob had created during the four A&R sessions for
Blood on the Tracks
was momentous: moving, yet redolent
with the understated sarcasm that had marked the best of Bob’s early Columbia albums. It defined the dichotomy of Dylan.

Whenever an artist lets a recording lie around for any length of time, the temptation to redo—or add to what he or she has done—grows exponentially, and the impulse affected
Blood on the Tracks
. As Dylan aficionados know, Bob is a restless wanderer, and half of the songs we did in New York were rerecorded a few months later in Minnesota, with other musicians.

For those collectors who’d like to hear the acoustic sessions recorded in New York, they’re out there: A test pressing was prepared, and Columbia sent a few promotional LPs to select radio stations before Bob decided to reimagine the album.