Well, dear readers, I have, as you know, been inspired by having gone back and read some of my old One From Column A stuff, which is why I’ve been doing the sort of notes I’ve been doing for the last week, which I’ve really been enjoying. They do take quite a bit of time to write, so I can’t always do those really long ones all the time, but I shall do them as the mood strikes me. It’s odd that I’ll only do them when the mood strikes me, isn’t it? What am I, a sadomasochist all of a sudden? And why is the mood always striking me? I have certainly never struck the mood – I’ve always been very cordial to the mood and yet the mood strikes me all the time. Damn them, damn them all to hell. I’ve talked about several things over the last week, but how about singers? Without singers what would my albums have been like? There would just be orchestra tracks, that’s what they’d be like. I suppose most of you know that I’ve been blessed to work with some of the best singers ever. You have no idea what a treat it is to walk into a studio and have one great singer after another come in and do vocals. Or, if it’s a solo album, to work intimately, one on one, over a period of days (and months doing the planning and prep). I’ve been asked many times about what it is I do in the studio, especially with the singers. Well, even though I’m the producer, what I really do when I work with singers is to direct them. I’ve always considered that my albums are little movies for the ear. Every singer is different – and I give different sorts of directions depending on who they are, how used to the studio and mic they are, and what kind of things they respond to. I have found that most singers I’ve worked with love the attention to detail and how focused I get about the words and the way songs are presented. One thing that sometimes freaks out singers who haven’t worked with me before is that I never look at them in the studio. I close my eyes and LISTEN, because they can be in there emoting and crying and gesturing and doing intense facial reactions and if I WATCH them it fools me – the only thing I care about is whether it’s translating to the EAR, and I’m rather maniacal about it.
Usually, I’ve had at least one rehearsal session with the singer, but sometimes I haven’t. In any case, I don’t say much at the rehearsal. When they arrive, I always bring them right in and let them do a take. We record it, just in case, but it’s really to loosen them up and to see what they’re doing with the song. Then I have them come in the booth and we listen, and then I say a few things, and they go back to the studio and do another take. Then we don’t do any more playbacks – if we haven’t gotten it, I just go out and have brief little conversations, always positive, and never critical of what they’re doing. I just sometimes take them in totally different directions or give them imagery or say whatever I think will put them in an interesting frame of mind. I sometimes say the most outré things and leave – and then these wonderful performers somehow interpret it and give it to me. It happens time and time again, and that’s what I love about the process, and why singers have enjoyed themselves and wanted to come back for more and more. They know I am there for them. I find a lot of singers initially do what I call flatlining a song – singing everything at one level with one emotion. It doesn’t work, usually. So, sometimes it’s as simple as asking them to just color words differently – asking them to put different vocal emotion on different words, because words obviously have different meanings and bring up different pictures and they shouldn’t all sound the same.
But let me give you some specific examples of what I’m talking about. There are certain singers, people like Liz Callaway, who come in and just nail things quickly, although we’ve done multiple takes on songs to get them better, and give them more levels. Liz is extraordinary and you can just say really subtle things to her, she gets it, and she does it. I remember Kristen Chenoweth coming in to do Lion Tamer on my Stephen Schwartz CD. I hadn’t really worked with her before – I’d just met her a bunch of times and the timing worked out for her to do that track. She came in, we hugged, and I brought her into the studio and told her we’d just do a take to see what was going on. I went back to the booth, Vinnie started the playback of the track, and Kristen sang the song. Perfectly. Simple. Honest. Heartfelt. I got on the talkback and told her we were through. She couldn’t believe it. I said for her to come and listen. We played it back. She couldn’t believe it. She knew it was perfect, we all knew it was perfect. I did let her do another take, and it, too, was good, but not perfect. She said to me, “I just sang it from the heart.” I said, “Yes, you did – and it’s one of the best vocals I’ve ever heard.” And that was that. Other singers it takes longer to get to that point, but we do get there.
Working with the late and much-missed Laurie Beechman on her two albums was magical. We just were musical soulmates and it was a real love affair. I could throw anything at her and she would instantly deliver it – in her own way, interpreting whatever I’d said vocally as processed through her imagination. Two things I remember vividly – one was doing the opening track of No One Is Alone – Stephen Schwartz’s song Beautiful City. We did a couple of takes and they were okay but they weren’t magical. She came into the booth and said, “Tell me something.” I said, “I see you as the Pied Piper leading children through an empty city. She looked at me, walked back to the mic and whatever that meant to her she did a vocal that was exactly that. Then, when she was doing On A Clear Day, the vocal just wasn’t happening. I finally walked into the vocal booth and said, “Listen to the arrangement – it’s really floaty and you should be just floating on clouds.” And again, one take and we had exactly that. She was amazing and I miss her a lot.
I remember doing the cast album of Brad Ross’s Little By Little. Liz Larsen was doing one of her big numbers and I just felt it wasn’t coming across. Now, this was a show she’d been doing for some weeks. So, I called a break and I went into the studio. She was sitting on the floor near the mic and I sat down next to her and asked her exactly what she was trying to convey in the song. She explained a little and I thought I understood what she was getting at, but what she was getting at certainly wasn’t coming across. I finally said to her, “So, you’re like a woman who’s standing off to the side watching herself and commenting – kind of aloof and cool.” She nodded her head, we went back to work, and she nailed it.
I’ve given some of my most outré comments to Michele Pawk, because that’s what she loves. She is an amazing talent with a fantastic voice, and one of my favorite people to work with. We always speak before a session, she always asks me if I want to tell her anything, and I always say no. Then she’ll come in and do a take, and it’s always a little too much and not quite there. Then we listen. She was recording the wonderful Strouse/Schwartz song Blame It On The Summer Night. She was just hitting it too hard. We listened and I just said to her, “I see a woman in a white dress walking down the street on a really hot night, trying to stay cool.” She said, “Okay.” Now, I have no idea where that image came from, but it meant what it meant to here and I swear to you when she did the next take that’s what I got – I saw the woman in the white dress walking down the street, and I see it every time I hear that vocal. On another occasion, she was recording the wonderful, rueful It Wasn’t Meant To Happen, a Sondheim song cut from Follies. She did a take and it was okay. We listened, and again, I have no idea why this came to me, but I said, “I think this is a woman who’s just been punched in the stomach and she can barely breathe, that’s how much she hurts.” Next take, that’s what I got. I didn’t tell her HOW to do it, HOW to get there – that’s her genius all the way.
Those are a few examples of how I like to work, and you all know the singers I’ve worked with and each and every one of them has been different and rewarding and wonderful. I can’t tell you the thrill of working with someone like Lauren Bacall, and yes, I went in and gave her a couple of suggestions, and she loved getting them and trusted me implicitly after that. Dorothy Loudon and I had a fantastic relationship in and out of the studio. She had terrible bronchitis when we recorded Night Of The Hunter, which was the first time I’d worked with her. We were recording the ending first, and Claibe Richardson had written a somewhat difficult to sing melody on the final line of the show, which was something like, “God bless the little children, the endure and they abide.” Dorothy was having terrible trouble with it and it just wasn’t working and didn’t sound good. I did about six takes of it and I knew if I kept going, she’d never have enough voice to finish the session, and I also knew that if we didn’t get past this in a positive way, she would go to a bad place. So, I just walked in the studio, put my arm around her, told her what a huge fan I was, and then said, “Just say the line – don’t sing it – say it, really simply.” She said she’d try it. She did and everyone, including Claibe, knew it was so right and so touching and that’s what’s on the CD. And because the reaction was so good, she just bloomed and got better and better. We went out afterwards, and she said something to me that I’ve treasured – one of my favorite memories EVER – she said that what I’d said to her was so right and got her over the hump and that I was just as good as anyone she’d ever worked with. That coming from Miss Loudon was about as high praise as I’ve ever had from anyone. We worked together a few times after that and it was always a joy and we spoke quite often on the phone. She was one of the dearest people I’ve ever known. A few years ago, when we were about to do Jeepers Creepers, I called her and told her I wanted her to do Whatever Happened To Baby Jane – she loved the idea and couldn’t wait to do it. Two weeks before the session she called me and said she had to bow out – she just wasn’t feeling up to it. Two weeks later she was dead. She is another that I miss a lot.
Working with Petula Clark was heaven on Earth. We became fast friends and she was, of course, brilliant in the studio. Helen Reddy, well, not so much – fantastic voice, but a very strange woman. I never got close to her and even though I’m fond of the album we did, it just wasn’t fun like the others. I’m not naming a lot of singers, but please know they were all singular sensations and their sessions were fun and exciting and creative. And that’s why I love recording.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because the mood is striking me again and frankly I’m a little black and blue and also a little blue and black.
Yesterday was a rather fun day. I got up really early and was at LACC by nine. I then spoke to the class of first semester theater students for about ninety minutes. I talked for a while, and then they asked questions and I had a really good time. This seems like a really good group of kids – bright, funny, and on the ball. I’m looking forward to seeing them in shows in a semester or two. After that, I came home, answered a bunch of e-mails, made some telephonic calls, found out some interesting information about potential upcoming Kritzerland releases, and then I had to go to see Mr. Audio Man to transfer some stuff off some four-track session masters for our new release. The good news is that there were two tracks that were left off the original LP release that were recorded and we’re including them – best of all, they sound great. The tapes were in really good shape. Prior to that, I’d gone to the Studio Café for lunch, where I proofed another two chapters of the new book. After Mr. Audio Man, I came home and finally sat on my couch like so much fish and finished the motion picture on DVD that I’d started the night before. It was a French film from France entitled Viva La Vie, un film de Claude Lelouch. It’s one of his oddest films, but boy does it hold one’s attention, and the actors are fantastic – Michel Piccoli, giving one of his best performances, Charlotte Rampling, Jean-Louis Trintingnant, Anouk Aimee, and many other Lelouch regulars. The structure is very confusing sometimes, but if you stick it out it’s very rewarding and a terrific viewing experience. At the beginning of the film, someone is interviewing Claude Lelouch (it’s part of the weirdness of the film) and he asks that no one say anything about the plot of the film, and so I shall honor his request – if you’re a fan, it’s worth seeking out this film. The DVD is a region 2 DVD from Germany and is readily available on eBay, which is where I got it. The scope transfer is not perfect, but it’s acceptable.
Today is addressing day. I shall be sitting here like so much fish with a helper, addressing over 500 packages, which we will then attach postage to. We should have our CDs either Friday or Monday, but I’m thinking it will most likely be Monday. Still, that’s a month ahead of the street date, so that’s good. I also have had a craving for pasta so I think today is the day I will satisfy it – after all the addressing of packages, it will be a nice treat.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do the long jog, address packages, eat pasta, and then zone out on my couch like so much fish. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I go play some of my favorite tracks by my favorite singers – today it shall be all about the singer, not the song.