By the time I got on the decrepit D train, I emerged into consciousness and started to stew. What kind of lunacy was this? Did he really need this tape right now? Why didn’t he ask for it on Friday like normal people? What the hell was Burt Bacharach doing at the studio at nine o’clock in the morning on a Saturday anyway? Pains in my ass.
After getting over my snit, the good soldier kicked in. I busted it to the basement, jogging through the streets of the city. It took me all of thirty seconds to find the tape in the library. If I’d just been a little more organized anyone could have found it. But, no, the schlepper had to be schlepped out of bed and made to travel halfway across creation to get it. Wow. I was important. I scurried over to “322” to deliver the tape as if it were the Holy Grail.
Two-inch tape in hand, I walked into the control room of studio R-2. Max was standing at attention by the door in his shiny black suit, yellowing shirt, and stained red tie uniform, always at the ready. Ramone was behind the board. He leaned back in his brown leather Knoll chair, his arms resting on his leviathan belly.
Phil’s newly acquired assistant, Danny, sat behind him by the tape machine, affecting coolness. Stealthily, I slid over to him and handed him the tape.
Before I could slip out, Ramone, ignoring me, whispered to Max, “Have him wait in case we need anything else.”
Fuck. Now I couldn’t leave.
I pulled up a stool and hung by my favorite spot near the echo machine. At least I’d do something while I waited for the boss to give his next command. I faced Bacharach, who stood by the row of seats in front of the console, next to the glass that separated the control room from the recording studio.
Burt was chatting away. A minute or two into his monologue, without missing a beat, he pulled his yellow crew-neck cashmere sweater over his head, revealing a pale blue oxford shirt. Then he replaced the yellow sweater with a royal blue number. That lasted all of three minutes until he yanked that one off and changed into a red one. As I sat there, aiming to achieve my Zen stillness, bored out of my gourd, my body aching from so little sleep the night before, listening to Bacharach prattle, I must have watched him change his sweater 15 times. He sampled every color on the wheel: blue, red, pale pink, black, chartreuse, lavender, sea foam, gray, emerald, white, purple, crimson. As my blood sugar plunged and I struggled to keep my head upright, I waited in vain for the music to begin. But not a note was played.
His sartorial regimen complete, Bacharach turned to Ramone, and said, “I’m done. Let’s go.”
What the hell was that about? Bacharach in the studio early on a Saturday morning only to try on a stack of cashmere sweaters? Weird.
Then Max told me that I could leave. Really? They never even used the tape I brought. It was all due to some whim of Phil’s. I was pissed.
Talking about whimsical, and the making of a hit record, here’s a legendary story I heard years later from Phil about Burt. Bacharach had penned and produced the song “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” sung by B.J. Thomas. It was the theme song from the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a breakthrough movie starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. The song was due to be released as a 45 rpm single, back in the days when we listened to music on vinyl. After it was recorded, mixed, mastered, pressed, and shipped to record stores, Burt decided he didn’t like the mix of the intro, a three-second subtlety that would be missed by almost any living human being. But Bacharach was a perfectionist and couldn’t live with it. He had all the discs recalled at who-knows-what cost to the record company. He had Phil redo the 4-beat intro and edit it to the body of the tape. They re-released the record and it went to number one, selling millions of copies, and winning an Oscar for best song. Would it have anyway? Who knows?
I wanted desperately to get out of the basement and into the studio. But given the tales of woe I’d heard, and the glimpse I’d gotten of his majesty that day, I didn’t want to work with this Phil Ramone guy. That would be way too scary. But I was certain I didn’t have to worry about that. It would never happen. Phil had just gotten a new assistant. He only worked with the most seasoned, brilliant guys anyway. Once hand-picked, this assistant worked exclusively for the King.
All the heavies at the studio had come up this way, apprenticed to the master. At that time, the staff of disciples included Elliot Scheiner, who eventually won Grammy awards for mixing Steely Dan; the Canadian funkmeister extraordinaire Don Hahn, who went on to run A&M Studios; and the eccentric, deeply musical, tuba-playing Dixon Van Winkle, who worked with McCartney. The distance between myself and these top-notch senior mixers felt infinite. I barely contemplated ever getting to that level. But I did hunger to be an assistant, one day — just not for Phil.
I knew that if I stood a chance of getting into the studios I’d need to work hard to get my shit together. I did this by arriving at the studio before anyone else. I would find out what session the assistant would be setting up for that morning, and I would do the job before the kid would arrive. The assistant wouldn’t mind the help, and I’d work on my chops. I learned what microphones were used for the different instruments and where to place them to get the best sound. The bass drum had an Altec 633 mic called a “saltshaker;” the snare, a Sennheiser 421; we used Neumann U-87’s on the brass; woodwinds, the Sony C-37.
But most of what I learned was what it meant to be the best. We were there to help the greatest musical artists in the world make timeless music. In order to do that our work had to be impeccable. Any mistake in our work meant that the artist would be made aware of the technology, and this distraction would interfere with their flow of creativity. The recording quality did not come from the engineers, but from the players and the incredible sounds they were able to make with their instruments and voices. The less they noticed they were being recorded, the more likely they’d be able to make beautiful music. Recording, in the A&R school, was about ensuring that there would be as little interference as possible between the sweet sound of inspiration and what landed in your ear.
The studio work went on around the clock, and if I was the first to arrive, I tried to be the last to leave. Even this wasn’t enough for a kid as hungry as me. With the tacit encouragement of management, I’d sneak into the studio on weekends, stealing rolls of tape to record anyone I could. Thus began my training in going without sleep, seven days a week.
After months of this self-imposed discipline, I had managed to get myself to assist on a handful of sessions when an extra hand was needed. I fucked up badly at least once on every session and would get my pipes cleaned by anyone in the room. That, I knew, was the price of admission. I’d put up with it for as long as I had to, if it meant I was getting closer to the castle in the sky.
One day in my rank, underworld confines, I was doing one of my mind-numbing schlepper tasks, endlessly screwing together hubs and flanges, the center rings and the flat metal coverings that together made up the reels that held our magnetic tape. Through the monotony, I couldn’t help worrying if the day would ever come when I would get through a session without making a horrific mistake and having to endure the subsequent emotionally abusive pummeling. I knew that without that, I’d never be good enough to get out of this shit-hole.
While I was enduring this physical and mental torture, the vice-president of the studio, David Sterling, who had once been a top engineer until cigarette advertisements were banned from the airwaves, wandered into my basement lair. He had taken an early dislike to me. I was all firecracker, a grasping street kid, ready to do anything to get my seat at the console, and he was on the other side of that, a bitter has-been. He was Mad Men-early-1960s in his neat silver haircut and finely cut narrow-lapelled suit. I was a post-hippie, ‘70s freak with flame-colored hair, Elton John platform shoes, and living in a cloud of pot smoke. I was more than a little obnoxious. He was a drunk.
After his daily ritual of a four-martini lunch at the China Song restaurant, he arrived in a tormenting spirit.
As I screwed together r
eel after reel, Sterling said, “You better get used to this, because I’m going to make sure that you’re going to spend the rest of your life in this smelly hole of a basement making reels.”
I could feel the heat rising up through my belly and vibrate through my body, a mixture of rage and terror. Oh my god, I thought. My worst fear was coming true. I’ll be trapped in the basement forever. I’ll never get to the 7th floor!
Having dropped that bomb, satisfied with the splatter, Sterling meandered over to another of the basement offices to bullshit and snicker with one of his drinking buds.
Alone and in despair, I began to think of escape routes. I was ready to quit. Maybe I’d get a job over at the Record Plant, our rock n’ roll rival of a studio across town like my friend Jimmy Iovine, who had just gotten fired from A&R. (Jimmy went on to become a billionaire. Maybe I should’ve gotten fired, too.)
Later that afternoon, while I was sitting in my blackness and finding no exit, the phone rang. Fuck. Just what I need, I thought. I was sure it was Tony the studio manager with one of his annoying tasks. But it wasn’t. It was Max, sounding not his usual self. He was awfully serious.
I could hear him chewing on his cigar. “Don’t worry,” he said in a raspy growl. “It’s going to be alright, see.”
Well, that would scare anyone.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Phil needs you to do a session tonight.”
“Who’s the engineer?”
“Phil.”
I felt an instant cramping in my hip-sockets.
“What do you mean? I can’t do that, I’ve never … Where is his assistant?”
“He’s not available.”
“Not available—to Ramone? That’s not allowed, is it?”
“Let’s not discuss it. And everyone else is working. So you’re the guy.”
“Brooks, I’m not ready, I mean …”
“You’ll be fine. We’ll all be right there to back you up. Now go over to R-1. The session starts at 7.”
Ramone, like the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk, was known to eat assistant engineers for breakfast, lunch, or dinner if they committed so much as the tiniest fuckup on one of his sessions. If I had yet to get through one date assisting on my own without screwing up royally, and inevitably getting emotionally beaten within an inch of my psychological life by whichever of the rest of the staff engineers I was working with—and these guys were merely pale imitations of Phil, the big monster who trained them— what would happen when I screwed up on Ramone’s date?
I was certain of one thing. I would never live through the night. I started making phone calls to say goodbye to my friends and relatives.
“I have to work with Ramone tonight, Mom, and I’m going to die!”
No one seemed to be as scared as I was. Well, that made sense. I was the one who was about to be eviscerated.
After saying my farewells to all, I zoomed over to R-1 at “322”, the other side.
The session was a demo for Lucy Simon, Carly Simon’s sister. It was a simple rhythm section: bass, drums, guitar and keyboards, with Lucy singing in the booth. I sped around the studio and had it set up in minutes. I checked the mics and cans over and over again. By the time Phil and the musicians walked in, I couldn’t think of one thing left undone. The control room was spotless, the console was set. The take sheets, track sheets, and tape boxes were filled out in a snazzy calligraphy.
Lucy came in with her manager Ron Delsener, who was a legendary concert promoter. Carly, the bigger and more famous sister, made her grand entrance into the control room. She was gorgeous, with her deep voice, flowing hair, and impressive, if somewhat horsey, lips.
The band members, top studio cats, took their places behind their instruments. I dashed out to the studio to set the microphones in their optimal positions.
Ramone sat casually at the console. I stood directly behind him, never sitting down, crouched, like a runner on first base taking a lead toward second. I was ready to sprint if I so much as saw Ramone take a breath.
Phil seemed relaxed. He offered no critique of my set-up. That was strange. He pushed the volume controls, or faders, all up at once, and the room filled with the sound of each instrument: bass, drums, guitar, and keys. I was amazed. Whenever I touched a fader, everything sounded like dog meat. With Ramone, all he had to do was touch the knobs, and within seconds, it all blended together into magic.
The musicians played, Lucy sang. I kept eyeing the clock. With every passing minute, without anything screwing up, I told myself I was one second closer to the fuck up that would ruin my career for good.
Phil asked me to make a small adjustment on a mic, and I was out in the studio and back in the control room like a blur. I hit the “record” button on his command. When he asked for a playback, I rewound the tape flawlessly to the top. Somehow the adrenaline rush arising from the fear of immolation gave me a focus I’d never found before.
Delsener, Carly, Lucy, the cats all laughed. They appeared to be having a good time, not noticing that, instead of a class act behind the brilliant one, there stood the schlepper. We cut one, two, three tracks. Everyone seemed pleased.
I was confused when the musicians packed up and left. Could that be it? It was as if I had just gone through major surgery without a hitch.
Ramone told me to set up for a quick mix. Shit. Another chance to blow it. Maybe it would happen now. He asked me to patch in a few equalizers and limiters. I took a deep breath and plugged in the cables. Again, it all worked. I didn’t create any horrible feedback, I hadn’t erased any essential drum parts.
Ramone quickly balanced the instruments with the vocals, and we laid the mixes down to quarter-inch tape. It sounded luscious. Jesus, he was good.
I made a 7 1/2 i.p.s (inches per second — the speed at which the tape moved) tape copy for Delsener, and in three short hours, everyone left happily, including Phil. Politely, as if leaving the host of a party, they all said thank you and goodbye—to me!
I now stood alone in the silent studio. I could hear my heart pounding in my chest louder than anything we had just put down on tape. Wait, I told myself, unable to take it in, I’d made it through the entire, mercifully short three-hour session without one single, solitary mistake! The first time ever! I was alive!
I bolted into the studio and ran in circles screaming at the top of my lungs with glee. I jumped behind the drum kit and played a wild, Keith Moon-esque drum solo. Yay!
I went back into the control room and flopped in a chair behind the console, taking some long, deep breaths.
The best part was that I’d never have to work with Ramone again. I was done. I could go back to my hidey-hole in the basement, safe from harm.
I broke down the studio, coiling all the mic cables and headphones, folding the chairs, lining up the mic in neat rows. I cleaned up the control room, leaving it pristine for whoever would come in the next morning. I closed up the studio, as usual, the last to leave.
I went home to sleep a full night for the last time in seven years.
The next morning, my night of torture behind me, I returned to my humble station in the basement, the smelly sanctuary suddenly seeming tranquil and safe. Then, like a predictable bowel movement erupting, I got the dreaded call from Tony to come up to the studio’s main office.
“Get up here, pal.”
Reverend Blalock took me up the freight. “Hey, chicken hawk. You catchin’ any chickens?” I had no idea what he was talking about.
The usual characters were hanging around the office.
Plotnik laughed sardonically, “So, your Ramone’s new boy!”
“Go stick it,” I responded. “I’m just glad I lived through the night.”
“Oh yeah,” Holley added. “Now you da man.”
I was sure I was just getting my usual morning dose of razzing. I felt embarrassed.
Tony joined in. “You’re fucked now, big fella. Come over here and look at the book.”
As I walke
d over to the scheduling book, I felt a strange sense of destiny in a way I have experienced only a few times in my life. Tony pointed his pipe at page after page. Phil’s assistant’s name had been erased from all his sessions, and I saw my name on every one: Paul Simon all day, and an unknown artist named Phoebe Snow at night. The engineer: Ramone. On top of each session was the name “Berger.” That was me.
“Your schlepping days are through. I don’t know why Ramone would have done it,” Tony had to add.
I had just turned 18 years old. I made my way out of the basement and I was saved from the evil alcoholic VP. But the escape meant entering the jaws of the T-Rex.
In a moment of inspiration, Holley said, “Now you da Berger… Queen!”
The office liked that one, and everyone cracked up, repeating in unison, “Berger Queen, Berger Queen!”
I had passed through the initial tests and now my real initiation was about to begin.
As terrified as I was, I knew this was the big break I had barely dared to wish for. On that day, staring at my name next to Phil’s and Paul Simon’s, I knew that a rare, perhaps singular miracle had occurred in my life. Never again would I have to walk down the fetid steps to the basement. I had made it up to the seventh floor for good. I was on my way to becoming a cat. Phil Ramone had chosen me to be his assistant engineer.
I was the luckiest boy in New York City.
TRACK FOUR
Paul Simon: The Superstar
When I walked into “322” that next morning in November 1973, everything was different. No more would I be relegated to the rank confines of the basement; no more would I begin my day with Tony’s call to schlep. Starting that day, I would be Phil Ramone’s personal assistant engineer.
Out of all the people in the world, Ramone had picked me. This was an event I had both longed for and dreaded, like a liver transplant. It could save your life, or it could kill you. There was a part of me that wondered if it had all been a mistake. I worried that there would be a call from Tony, who would say, “Oh, we meant the other Berger Queen! Get over here and grab that hand-truck!” On the other hand, maybe it was really happening. And if that was so, maybe it meant I had something of worth inside me. As soon as I had that thought, the anxiety in my stomach seemed to say, you don’t. Either way, I realized, I would soon find out. My options were to either resist or embrace my fate. I made my choice: whatever hell awaited me, I would face it. After all, this was my shot.
Never Say No To A Rock Star Page 5