While we were still in the basement putting ideas together for our album, I kept harping to John Simon that it had to have a unique sound, a flavor of its own. I played particular records for him from my collection: tracks from Chess Studios in Chicago, Sun Records in Memphis, Cosimo’s Studio in New Orleans, Muscle Shoals in Alabama, and Gold Star in Los Angeles. We listened to recordings by Otis Redding, Phil Spector, Howlin’ Wolf, Lee Dorsey, the Beach Boys, Gene Vincent, Little Willie John, Elvis, and Sir Mack Rice. John completely understood that we were searching for our own sonic identity. Precisely how we would achieve the desired sound, though, was still very much up in the air.
Garth had been working on more advanced keyboard equipment and sounds. One of the new gizmos he had in the works was a black-box, mini Leslie speaker. The box stood about two and a half feet square with sound vents on four sides. Inside sat a speaker and some kind of fan that made the sound coming out of it seem to “whirl” around. You activated the fan/Leslie effect with a foot switch. After Garth tried it out on a couple of his keyboards, we decided to plug my guitar amp into it and see how that sounded. I loved it—a lo-fi, raunchy swirl effect. The black box even sounded good without the Leslie fan turned on; it was something about the speaker Garth used, facing down inside the particular shape of that wooden box.
After months of being pounded down in the basement, the drums Levon was using sounded pretty dull. He was putting on new heads one day while I worked on a chord progression on the piano, and as he tuned the heads, I noticed how deep and rich the drums now sounded. I asked him to leave the toms tuned low, so when you struck the head with a drumstick, it changed tonality and rang out with an ambiguous note. Levon somewhat reluctantly tuned the top and bottom skins of his toms much looser than normal, and when he played they rang out with a song of their own, as melodic as it was percussive. I repeated a few chords I’d been messing with, and Levon kicked in on the drums. It sounded fantastic, and Richard and Rick came downstairs to check it out. By then Levon was into it and stopped to fine-tune the toms even more. Pretty soon he was playing them like a stand-up bass, and the rest of us had to leave room for them to breathe throughout the arrangement of a song.
A couple of days later I joined Albert in his kitchen for edible delights and some business. “Capitol Records wants to know the name of our band for drawing up the contracts,” he mentioned. “Are you still going to be called the Hawks?”
It was a good question. We both knew that “hawk” had taken on a different connotation in the growing antiwar movement, and our politics were at best Canadian, where they welcomed “draft dodgers” with open arms. Besides, “the Hawks” was left over from working with Ronnie. I told Albert the boys and I were talking about new names and we would have something for the record company soon. But when we did try to come up with a name for our band, it felt a bit absurd. We had been together for six years, and now we were going to figure out what to call ourselves?
At home, Dominique had shown me how to make a French filtered coffee. I got into it and started adding a hint of dark chocolate and cinnamon to the espresso flavor. Bob would stop by my house some mornings for a fresh brew. He would light a cigarette, sip on that big cup of java, and say, “This is tasty coffee. What’s in it?” I would just look away with a grin: “There’s some secrets we can’t let out.”
Bob was back from recording in Nashville, and he brought over an acetate along with his big Saint Bernard, Buster. I looked forward to hearing what he had stirred up this time in Music City. On most of the songs there was only bass and drums, with Bob’s vocal, rhythm acoustic guitar, and harmonica—true to the nature of this straightforward storytelling material. “All Along the Watchtower” couldn’t have been more satisfying, with its own mythology and those three chords that never wore out.
After our second cup of coffee and the end of the recordings, Bob said, “Well, that’s the basic tracks. I thought you and Garth could overdub on all of these songs and make the whole thing sound full and complete.”
The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind while I was listening. I took a moment to digest the idea, then confessed, “I wouldn’t know what to add to these songs.” They sounded complete to me in their bold, minimalist way. Bob shrugged, as if to say, Maybe you’re right.
He put on his coat, grabbed Buster’s leash, and headed for the door. As he was leaving, I told him again how much I enjoyed the record just as it was. Soon as he stepped outside, Buster took off, tromping through the snow. Bob had the leash wrapped around his gloved hand. “Buster! Buster, stop!” he yelled, but Buster had not taken too well to his training yet, and galloped on down the driveway and through the snow with Bob tumbling behind.
A couple of days later Bob told me he was going to leave his new songs just the way they were. That was good to hear. He added that several different recording artists had heard the basement tapes and lots of people were going to cover them.
“Really, like who?”
“The list is too long to name them all,” Bob said, “but you’ll see. They’re coming from everywhere.”
—
John Simon had booked studio time for us in his favorite room at A&R Studios in the city. He suggested going in for just a few days at first to make sure it felt right. The boys and I were as nervous as we were excited. We had something to prove and were working on songs and music that didn’t even remotely sound like stuff we had done in the past. The raging rockabilly from our apprenticeship with Ronnie; our rhythm-and-soul period as Levon and the Hawks, filled with “rave on” guitar blues; our explosive “electric” sacrilege with Bob; and finally our loose-as-a-goose, devil-may-care style of the basement tapes—toward all of this we had a subconscious rebellious attitude, even though all these musicalities and experiences added up to who we were at this point.
Packing up our gear at Big Pink to go into the city felt more than a little disconcerting. We had been holed up here for many months, sequestering ourselves from the world. Now we were going to reveal the goods and turn ourselves in. We loaded our equipment into A&R Studios with John’s help. Don Hahn, the recording engineer, and his second, Shelly Yakus, showed us precisely where they wanted our instruments set up. They put out microphones and chairs where we would sit and arranged sound baffles between us. Don explained that this setup was what made this studio sound so good. “This is how we record everybody in this room. Tried and true, it works great.” They gave us earphones because of the sound-isolation baffles and gobos to prevent leakage into one another’s mics. They put blankets over the piano, set the bass amp behind a wall and mine facing away from me, and Garth’s Leslie was padded and surrounded by glass. We followed all this protocol, wanting to be professional and get the best sound we could.
I talked to John Simon about what song we might start with. We thought “Tears of Rage” might be a good opener. I asked Richard how he felt about singing that first. He said his voice felt pretty good, and sure, we could give it a shot. Naturally we wanted to get off to a strong start and stir up our confidence.
I plugged in the black-box speaker Garth had made, which I thought would work really well on this song. They set up a vocal mic at the piano and another for Rick to do his harmony. John’s voice came into our headphones from the control room.
“You guys ready?”
I looked over at the guys but couldn’t see anybody for all the baffles. Richard answered into his vocal mic, “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Let’s run through it so you can get a balance in there and adjust our headphones,” I said. “I can’t hear the bass at all.”
“There, is that better?” said Don, the engineer.
“Yeah,” I answered. “Okay, let’s run through it. Is everybody here? We might as well be in different rooms.”
About halfway through the song, John stopped us, asking Garth about a noise coming from his organ output and for me to try switching the ground button on my amp. These were technical issues that would be sorted out. But mus
ically there was something terribly wrong.
I put down my guitar on the floor and went into the control room. “This doesn’t work, John. Sorry, but we can’t record like this.” John got up and we walked into the studio to join the other guys. They already knew where I was going with this. “We can’t make music with an isolated setup,” I explained. “We have to see one another. We have to read one another’s signals. That’s how we play—to each other.”
Rick said, “I can’t sing with Richard if I can’t see his mouth moving.”
“This ain’t worth a damn,” Levon chimed in. “I can’t feel where to play fills, and it sounds like shit in these earphones.”
John said, “Okay, what do you wanna do?”
I laid out the floor plan. “Rick needs to be right here, facing Richard. Take away all the baffles. I’m gonna sit here in front of Levon, and Garth will be between Rick and me.”
John yelled into the control room at Don and Shelly, “Okay guys, new setup. We’re moving everything around.”
“The drums can stay where they are,” I said, “and we’ll all just move in. Piano, organ, everything.”
The engineer complained that we would get too much spill—leakage in all the mics. It was going to sound really messy, probably terrible. Without blinking an eye, John said, “Then let’s use mics that only pick up what’s right in front of them. You know, those Electro-Voice RE15 mics. Do you have many of them?”
“We got loads of them,” answered Shelly, the second engineer. “How many you want?”
“Let’s put them on everything,”
“They’re not high-quality microphones,” Don cautioned. “I can’t guarantee this is going to work very well.”
“Let’s see.” John shrugged. “We have to make these guys feel comfortable. I’ve seen them play music in their basement and that’s what works for them, so we’ve got to try.”
As they started getting levels and a sound on each individual instrument, John looked reasonably confident about his decision. They tried some different mics on a couple of things, but it was mostly those RE15s.
Dominique and Sally showed up at the studio, our only audience and cheering squad. We started jamming a bit to loosen up and ran through the beginning of the song. When John felt comfortable with the sound in the control room, he came out into the studio and helped conduct Levon to where the fills should go. This way Levon could just play and not have to think too much about the arrangement. Now we could hear one another in the room and make eye contact. We were ready to go.
Richard quietly counted it off, and we set sail. We played through the song and felt warmed up. John ran into the control room to listen, made some adjustments. We were recording everybody live onto three tracks, with one track left to overdub horns. Final decisions in the sound and balances had to be made now. Richard remarked, “It sounds really good here in the room.” I made some tone changes on my amp and agreed. Levon said he was still getting his part figured out and that John was helping a lot with his cues.
We recorded “Tears of Rage” two more times, back to back, and Don and Shelly said over the talk-back, “You guys should come in and hear this. It’s sounding really good.” I put my guitar down and looked into the control-room window. Dominique and Sally were waving their arms for us to come listen. When I walked through the door, Dominique started hugging and kissing me. “This music is incredible. It makes me want to cry,” she said, wiping away a tear. Sally just kept shaking her head and putting her hand over her heart, like, This is going to blow Albert’s mind.
The guys and I thought we’d gotten through the last take well enough, but we hadn’t heard a playback yet, so we didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Then Don proudly hit “play” on the tape machine, and there it was. We all exhaled with joy. It was hard to believe that breaking the rules in the unusual way we had set up in the studio could produce something that sounded this magical. Richard’s voice and piano were sterling. Rick’s harmony vocal was loose and soaring, while his bass playing was like warm chocolate. Levon’s tuned-down drums gave a thunderous heartbeat to the track. Garth’s church organ could bring tears to your eyes. I found a new sound and guitar style with a subtlety to it that rebelled against all rock-raging guitar slingers across the land. I had to hold my breath at points playing like this, slipping in fills just in the nick of time. Then John overdubbed euphonium/high school horn and Garth played sax for our Salvation Army horn section effect. Beautifully sad. Now we were discovering what our new music could conjure up.
John was anxious for us to cut “We Can Talk,” with its piano and organ gospel approach. Rick, Richard, and Levon passed the vocals around like the Harlem Globetrotters. It felt good the way it sounded in the studio with no headphones, and by the smiling look on John’s face, I thought we might have something going on this one. When we listened to the playback, I knew we were making music unlike anybody else.
—
We had a heightened sense of confidence as we regrouped in the studio the next day. I began singing the chorus to “The Weight” over and over to the guys, trying to convey the staggered vocal idea I had. “Levon, you go, ‘aaand,’ then Rick, ‘aaand,’ then Richard on top, ‘aaand.’ Levon, ‘you put the load,’ Rick, Richard, Levon, ‘you put the load right on me.’ ” Garth’s piano playing was dynamic and joyous in the key of A, a bit tricky for a piano man, but not for Garth. Levon would sing the first three verses, and I thought it would be interesting to have Rick, with his down-to-earth sound, sing the “Crazy Chester” verse. It might have seemed random at first, but when we ran it down, it sounded unexpected and refreshing. On the run-down keyboard parts between verses, I asked Richard to try a little falsetto turnaround melody to go with his organ part.
John Simon held a copy of the lyrics in his hand as we ran through the arrangement, working on the vocals. “These lyrics are fascinating,” he said, “even though I have no idea what this song is about. Where did you come up with this?”
“I’m not too good at explaining song lyrics,” I told him, “but basically, it was all I could think of at the time.”
We took our positions behind our instruments and played through the tune a couple of times in order for the engineer and John to get a balance on everything. I asked, into my acoustic guitar mic, if the leakage from the live vocal mics and instruments was manageable. John said it wasn’t too bad, and they were just going to make a couple of adjustments. Again he took his place in front of Levon to help signal what was coming next. I knew this song, but the other guys were still getting the hang of it, and John’s signals helped. We never had music charts. Nothing but lyrics was ever written down.
We got through “The Weight” from beginning to end a couple times and decided to go into the control room and listen. Dominique and Sally sat breathlessly in the back of the room. Don, the engineer, was getting a deep, rich sound, and we heard what we needed to do to make it all come together—we had to get the vocals to fall just right at the end of the choruses. I also wanted to try a double turnaround before the last verse.
We headed back out into the studio while I rattled off some encouragement and cues. Everybody was a bit nervous about remembering all our parts in this delicate balancing act. We laid it down and nailed it. John said, “Let’s do one more for good luck,” and we aced it again. Dominique, Sally, and the engineers, Don and Shelly, were all on their feet in the control room, like Sputnik had just taken off.
As a songwriter, “The Weight” was something I had been working up to for years. I just heard what I was looking for. The images, the stories I had been putting away in my imagination’s attic, had been brought out into the light. We’d aced this delicate performance, and I felt so proud of the guys, shining like this. I shook John’s hand, knowing he had just grown a foot taller.
With our unconventional recording setup in the studio and the lower-quality mics we were using, Don and Shelly asked their boss and chief engineer, Phil Ramone, to come in and c
heck out our discovery. They showed him how we were set up in a circle, with total eye contact. Some of our amps and speaker cabinets were a bit baffled, but the musicians were out in the open. Phil looked around and threw up his hands, like he couldn’t believe this would work. They came into the control room and Phil said to John, “If it sounds okay, that’s all that matters. Does it sound okay?” John smiled and pushed “play” on the tape machine.
Phil sat down and listened intently to a couple of the songs we’d recorded, then looked at his engineers, looked at John, stood up, and said, “That’s incredible. That’s really fucking incredible.” Phil slapped Don on the back and went over to shake John’s hand. John sincerely thanked him and introduced me, saying that I wrote the song he had just heard. “That’s fucking incredible,” he repeated, wagging his finger at me.
The other guys had stepped out for a bite, and I was disappointed they’d missed Phil Ramone’s praise. Up to now, only Dominique and Sally had heard this music, and Phil’s opinion, which I relayed to the guys word for word, meant a lot.
When we cut Richard’s song “In a Station,” Garth displayed his magic touch. I really enjoyed Richard sharing a piece of his heart in that tune. It sounded dreamy and distant, slightly psychedelic, I suppose. For some reason it reminded me of Alain Resnais’s film Last Year at Marienbad, with its misty images and sense of loss. We all fell under its spell.
John asked if we could give my song “Chest Fever” a go. He had changed the arrangement in the verses from how I had written it, with the vocal coming in at a completely different place. A bit tricky, but by now we had a lot of faith in John’s ideas and gave it our best. This song was right out of the basement-tapes program, surreal words and monkeyshine music. Garth kicked it off with that hint of J. S. Bach on a gravel back road. When my guitar riff came in, it made you want to rush a bit, but Levon’s backbeat held everything at bay. We got to the bridge and everybody stopped except for Richard’s vocal, while Levon kept time. When we came back in, Garth played an organ solo unlike anybody else on this planet, floating and soaring into space with a combination of musicalities that you would rarely, if ever, hear streamed together. Then we overdubbed our Salvation Army horn section in the bridge, in a similar style to when we went to serenade Howard Alk for his birthday on the night we first connected with John Simon. “Chest Fever” was definitely a fun track, though we could never play it with that arrangement again. Later we went back to the way I’d originally written it.
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