Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music (6 page)

It’s easy for artists and producers to get lulled into complacency and rely on what’s been successful in the past, but I’ve found that it’s inaccurate to say, “This (or that)
always
works.” Nothing in this business is a slam dunk; each record has to stand on its own. I’m forever cautioning young artists and producers to avoid repeating themselves or copying whatever’s in vogue.

Yet some producers pigeonhole themselves by only making rock, jazz, or hip-hop records—or by working with just one artist for fear that they’ll lose their momentum. I understand why a producer who’s become known for a specific style or particular sound might be afraid to do a Broadway album or a film soundtrack; there’s comfort in security. But that kind of thinking is precisely what leads to predictable, formulaic records.

George Martin is a good example of a producer who has been successful because of his willingness to grow. The reason that groups like the Beatles endured is because neither they nor their producers were afraid to experiment. Early Beatles albums like
With the Beatles
and
Please Please Me
are as far removed from
The Beatles
(aka
The White Album
) or
Abbey Road
as Mozart is from Stravinsky.

Take Rod Stewart, a rocker whose renaissance came via the classic pop standards written during the 1930s and ’40s.

Rod’s a singer who’s constantly reinventing his image, and after many years in the limelight he has attracted a broad fan base. When Clive Davis asked me if I would work with Rod on his first two
Great American Songbook
albums, I was intrigued. Could it work? I thought so. Were we guaranteed success because it involved Rod Stewart? No. Just because an artist has had success in one genre doesn’t mean that a crossover project will work, or that their record will be a hit.

Luckily, the
Great American Songbook
concept came at a time when Rod and his faithful audience were open to something new. As a result, Rod’s versions of gems like “It Had to Be You,” “These Foolish Things,” and a couple dozen other standards have endeared him to a more mature audience who may never have heard “Maggie May” or “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” The album also exposed his younger fans to the classic songs of the 1940s. Best of all, Rod did it all without sacrificing his foothold in the rock and pop world, which proves that meaningful interpretations of quality songs never go out of style.

While having a hit record and garnering accolades is thrilling, the rewards should never come at the expense of artistic integrity. If there’s one single artist I know who has bridged the gap between old and new songs and audiences—and done so without relinquishing his commitment to quality—it’s Tony Bennett.

Tony began his career in the late 1940s as a singer in the Army, and became a sensation in the early 1950s with hits such as “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” “Because of You,” and “Cold, Cold Heart.” But while he became famous for the catchy pop numbers of the day, Tony was always a jazz singer at heart.

“When I began my career at Columbia Records in 1950, I wanted to sing the great songs by Duke Ellington, Johnny Mercer, and the Gershwins,” Tony explained. “But, producer Mitch Miller insisted that I sing novelty tunes, which he had a hand in popularizing at the time. We had vehement disagreements, and the only way I could stomach recording some of the tunes that Mitch wanted me to do was to compromise: For every two novelty records I recorded, I’d get to make one jazz record, using the musicians and songs that I preferred.”

The standards have always been sacred to Tony; he once told me that his mom, a seamstress who was widowed at a young age, inspired his predilection for singing and recording top-quality songs.

“My mother would become frustrated when she was given an inferior dress to tailor,” he said. “You could see the exasperation on her face as she ripped out the poorly sewn stitches. She would become agitated and mumble, ‘Don’t give me junk; give me a good dress, one that I can work with.’ From the moment I heard my mother say that, it became the principle that guided me.”

Tony’s adherence to that philosophy has served him well. Along with scores of hits, Tony has won accolades for the landmark albums he’s made with Count Basie, Bill Evans, and the Ralph Sharon Trio; he has also won an impressive number of Grammy Awards (eleven in the last fifteen years alone), and has attracted a retinue of
rockers such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers to the graceful elegance of his music.

The consistently high standards set by the Tony Bennetts of the world are a testament to the importance of being faithful to one’s convictions. As I’ve told many students, the mantra that should guide every songwriter, singer, musician, and producer who cares about what they do is, “Music first.”

Songs are the nucleus of my world.

While I grew up with the classic American standards written by George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II, Cole Porter, and Johnny Mercer, my career as an engineer and producer coincided with one of the most profound periods in pop music history: that of the contemporary singer-songwriter.

In the late 1950s, the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway was a magnet for young musicians and songwriters. Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Howard Greenfield, Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, Burt Bacharach, Lieber and Stoller, and two Neils—Sedaka and Diamond—all got their start writing teenage love songs inside tiny cubicles in the famed building.

It was a revolutionary time for contemporary pop music: an extension of the Tin Pan Alley era, and the last major epoch for the American song plugger. Since producers, arrangers, music publishers,
agents, and managers also had offices in the Brill Building it was the ultimate place to write, sell, and plan the production of a song from start to finish.

While the standards of the forties were written to advance the plots of stage shows and films, the goal of the Brill Building writers was to write two-and-a-half-minute hit singles destined for radio. Their success was unparalleled.

The upheaval that America saw in the mid to late sixties—the Vietnam War, race riots, civil rights protests, psychedelic drug use, and overt rebellion—offered a springboard for young pied pipers to profess their political, social, and emotional views in song. Bob Dylan and a handful of other assertive singer-songwriter-activists entered the fray and revamped the way that songs were conceived, performed, and heard.

Soon the Brill Building gang realized that singing their own songs was more satisfying—and lucrative—than selling them off, and started performing careers of their own. By the early seventies the singer-songwriter era had hit America full-force, and artists such as Paul Simon, James Taylor, Jim Croce, and Billy Joel were on the threshold of stardom.

Songs are deceptively complex; their structural variations vast. Arranging thirty-two bars of melody and lyrics to coherently express a thought or emotion isn’t easy.

The late Sammy Cahn (Frank Sinatra’s personal lyricist) once said that, “Writing a song can be agony or ecstasy; it can take half an hour, or half a year.” Cahn weathered the storm well. The songs he wrote with composers Jule Styne and Jimmy Van Heusen are among the most beloved of the last sixty years: “Love and Marriage,” “Three Coins in the Fountain,” “Time After Time,” “Be My Love,” “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” “All the Way,” “High Hopes,” “Call Me Irresponsible,” and “My Kind of Town (Chicago Is).”

And Jimmy Webb—the author of such hits as “Up, Up and
Away,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman,” “MacArthur Park,” “Didn’t We,” “Adios,” and dozens of others—characterized songwriting as “Hell on Earth.”

Why would Cahn and Webb—both highly accomplished songwriters—make such harsh statements?

Because as smooth as they seem when you hear them on record, great songs don’t always come easy. Behind many three-or four-minute masterpieces are days, months, or years of effort.

Yes—believe it or not—years.

It took ten years and seven albums for Billy Joel to complete the lyrics to “And So It Goes,” and he tried to finish it for nearly every album we did together.

This is how it happened:

We would come to a session, and Billy would start to play the song.

The melody was fine, but at the end of the phrase “And so it goes, and so it goes…” his lyrical thoughts stopped cold. When it reached that point he’d begin to joke around, singing it several ways in rapid succession, varying his emphasis on the word
goes
each time:

“And so it goes…and so it
goes
…and so it GOES!”

I finally figured out that Billy had written the punch line for something he hadn’t yet defined, and I told him so. “I’ve painted myself into a corner with a line like ‘And so it goes,’” he admitted. “What does that mean? So
what
goes? What can I write to lead up to it? ‘I jumped off a bridge and fell in the water—and so it goes?’ It sounds like the end of a news program: ‘I’m Walter Cronkite, and so it goes…’”

Billy’s frustration with the song became a running gag. Whenever we’d start a new album, I’d ask:

Billy finished the song—finally—and included it on
Storm Front
(an album I did not produce) in 1989. The song and the recording are resplendent in their simplicity; “And So It Goes” is a staple in Billy’s repertoire, and one of his most moving ballads.

Not every songwriter finds songwriting a chore. Elton John, for example, wakes up inspired.

Elton might start his day to find that two or three sets of lyrics from Bernie Taupin have arrived, and when he does he will walk over to the piano and begin improvising a melody. The ease and speed with which Elton writes is unrivaled; he is exceptionally disciplined. Sometimes Elton and I will talk and he’ll say, “I wrote seven new songs for a show this week.” That’s one song a day! Of those seven songs, three are probably finished.

While most singer-songwriters pen both words and music, Elton enjoys letting others write the lyrics. His primary collaborator for the last forty years has been Taupin, who has helped Elton write most of his greatest hits, including “Crocodile Rock,” “Honky Cat,” “Daniel,” “Rocket Man,” “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” and “Candle in the Wind.”

The way Elton and his lyricists write—correspond would be a better description—is bewildering. I was privileged to witness such an exchange while Elton finished up the songs for
Aida
. In that instance, Elton—who was in the States—e-mailed and faxed the melodies to Tim Rice, who was writing the lyrics in London.

Whether the songs come easily or not, I’m awed by the way a songwriter can take a wisp of an idea—a few notes or chords—and spin it into a full-fledged melody.

I’ve been at dinner with Burt Bacharach and seen him pull a scrap of paper from his pocket and scribble some notes that might later become the melody of a song.

Paul Simon would hum a melodic line in the studio, and it was a privilege to hear him develop it into a song. The most exciting part
of the process for Paul was playing a new song for someone, and he and I would often sit in his study listening to new tunes.

“This is a guitar song,” he would say, or, “This one’s definitely piano.” Paul’s guitar songs have a palpable folk feel—a chunky rhythm. His piano songs are tinged with jazz and blues inflections, and he tends to experiment more with their rhythms. I loved being part of those moments.

My curiosity is aroused by the kind of on-the-spot creativity that some songwriters possess, and it invariably begs a host of questions: “Did that little melody just pop into your head? How long have you been thinking about it? What brought it to the surface? How will you go about finishing it? How long will it take?”

For songwriters who are blessed with “the gift,” songs dwell somewhere within; they’re germinating all the time.

Paul Simon once explained how a musical idea embeds itself in his mind, and how he follows its lead:

“I write from instinct, from an inexplicable sparkle. I don’t know why I’m writing what I’m writing. Usually, I sit and let my hands wander on my guitar. I sing anything [and I] play anything. When I come across a surprising accident I start to develop it. Once you take a piece of musical information, there are certain implications that it automatically contains: the implication of that phrase elongated, contracted, inverted, or in other time signatures. You start with an impulse and go with what your ear likes.”

For Paul Simon and Billy Joel, the process of writing and recording are intertwined. Each of them writes and rehearses their songs in the studio, although their approaches are vastly different.

Paul is precise; he nurtures his music in an organized, cerebral way. Generally, each of his songs is polished before he records them.

Because he often coproduces his sessions, Paul listens critically in the studio. He prefers to make the instrumental tracks first and overdub the vocals later. Whether he’s making music tracks or laying
down a vocal, Paul pays careful attention to the phrasing, tweaking every note and word.

Billy’s approach is just the opposite. He always has plenty of ideas brewing, but nearly all of his songs are born in the studio.

Billy treats a session like it’s a live performance: writing, rewriting, arranging, and rehearsing with his band, relying on the lively interaction between everyone to push things along. Perfection isn’t the goal; Billy doesn’t obsess over small mistakes if the feeling is there.

When Paul and I make an album, he starts with a few of the songs fully written. His studio time is spent working on the arrangements until he gets exactly what he wants.
Still Crazy After All These Years
took nine months to make.

Once he begins writing and recording an album, Billy works rather quickly. From rehearsal to completion, our first album together—
The Stranger
—took only six weeks to finish, because Billy had a number of songs written before we began recording and the band was already playing them onstage. Subsequent albums took a bit longer—nine or ten weeks—because Billy wrote everything for them from scratch.

For Paul, the process of writing and recording merged—but in an analytical way.

In Paul Zollo’s book
Songwriters on Songwriting
, Paul Simon offered some thoughts, and what he said neatly coincides with my theory that understanding the nature of writing is 90 percent of making a record better:

“My writing has always been connected to record-making, and one of the characteristics of my work is that I have very good aural recall—I remember sounds of a lot of things,” Paul explained. “I remember how records I grew up with went—and I remember obscure records, and what part of the record I liked. ‘Did I like the drum sound?’ These were thoughts that I had when I was fourteen. I’ve kept that, and I’m still recapitulating those early sounds in records today.

“When I’m in the studio I’ll say, ‘I want this color and this sound, and I want it to be contrasted with this [other] sound.’ What I’m doing is working by orchestration. I’m working with musicians who are really gifted and, for the most part, supple enough that they can adapt to what I’m saying. Or, if they play exactly the right thing, I’ll say, ‘That’s it—that’s exactly the right thing.’”

A well-crafted song offers infinite possibilities for the arranger, musician, and producer, who can use a melody’s inner rhythms—and the syncopation of the lyric—to emphasize its emotionality.

I marvel at Paul’s persistence. He can work on an arrangement for hours, take it home and rethink it overnight, and have it ready for everyone to hear in the studio on the following morning. The band members will say, “But we did such a good job on this yesterday,” to which Paul will reply, “It wasn’t quite what I was looking for.”

Billy doesn’t have the same patience. And unlike Paul, he loves having the band around him while he’s hammering out melodies and lyrics.

Recording with Paul Simon, late 1970s
Phil Ramone Collection

The birth of a Billy Joel song is organic: He filters and homogenizes his ideas, the producer’s ideas, and the band’s ideas as
he writes and records. Here’s how Billy explained his predilection for working this way:

“I love having written a ‘hit’ catalog, but I hate the writing process. I don’t want to waste any of my creative energy if the band isn’t going to like the songs, so I take them into the studio for a reading.

“I write for the way the band plays; they were there when I was nothing—we all grew up together, personally and musically,” Billy continues. “Their presence gives me a sensible perspective about my work that’s invaluable. If they really like it (which is rare), they’ll go, ‘Yeah, yeah! That’s solid!’ and I’ll finish inserting the bridge. Writing this way is like torture for me, because they’ll be standing there all the while, watching me like a jury, and they can be a really nasty bunch of guys. They really nudge me with their ‘show-us, Billy’ routine, and they do it to spur me on,” Billy concludes.

Although I never fancied myself a songwriter, I used my understanding of song form and structure to help Billy organize his thoughts when we were in the throes of making an album.

Billy and I would work together for a month before the first session. For these casual meetings we would work in a hotel room or at Billy’s New York apartment. Once in a while we would go to his home on Long Island, or into the studio. I’d put together a mini recording setup that sat on the piano so that if Billy was toying with an idea he could record it for reference.

During that presession month, Billy and I would often work alone: he sitting at the piano, and me standing alongside him while he played and sang.