Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music

by Ramone, Phil

  Bradshaw Leigh became my engineer in 1979, while Billy was making Glass Houses. Here, he recalls what impressed him most about Billy’s sessions:

  “The thrill of working with Billy was watching him sit down, jam on the piano, and come up with an idea,” Brad explains. “Witnessing him write and polish a song was invaluable. It was like watching your favorite band in concert for the first time, every time.

  “For me, the most incredible part of the process was what would happen after Billy and the band had recorded a particular song.

  “Let’s say that Billy and the band had worked through the initial phases of laying down a tune: Billy had delineated an idea, he and Phil had worked out a skeletal arrangement, and the band had gotten comfortable with it. They would run through it a few times, and then record it. What was in the can at this point was, for all intents and purposes, the final master—a perfectly acceptable performance.

  “We would move on to other songs. Two or three days, maybe even a week might go by, and the band would be running down yet another tune that was ‘in-progress.’ Suddenly—just for fun—Billy would count off the song they’d completed a few days before, and the band would launch right into it.

  “Nine times out of ten the band would hit it dead on, and that impromptu take would supplant the earlier one, because it had so damned much energy! It usually sounded better because in the band’s minds, the pressure was off—the master take from the previous session was already in the can.

  “I was twenty-one years old, and I was amazed by what I was seeing and hearing. I have never seen anything like it in all the years I spent engineering, and I’ll probably never see it again,” Leigh believes.

  When Billy discovered what he wanted to say musically, the palette was wide open. I always felt that we could be irreverent; I wouldn’t dare stifle Billy by restricting tempo, style, or feel.

  Because of our mutual flexibility, “Just the Way You Are” moved from a somewhat stiff nightclub ballad into an endearing love song; “Allentown” became a ballsy anthem; “Only the Good Die Young” went from reggae to rock; “The Stranger” evolved into an evocative mood piece; “Stiletto” developed a discernible edge; and “Zanzibar” dripped with the ambiance of a sultry, after-hours jazz club.

  Billy’s willingness to experiment with offbeat instrumentation also gave us wide latitude.

  One example of a seemingly outlandish idea that worked is the effect we achieved on the tag line of “Pressure” (The Nylon Curtain) in which the piquant sound of the balalaika—a three-string Russian guitar with a triangular body and elongated neck—imparts a decidedly peculiar sound.

  Balalaika players weren’t exactly clamoring for work in New York City at the time, but I happened upon a balalaika band from Brooklyn one day and asked them to come to the studio. The musicians were accustomed to performing at Russian Orthodox weddings—they had no idea who Billy Joel was. But they graciously appeared, and their contribution helped make “Pressure” one of the more unusual pop records of its day.

  Another area where I enjoyed freedom was with vocal effects.

  Billy liked to hear vocal effects when he was singing, and to help him find the right voice when he was recording I made him a control box with Echoplexes, MXR phasers, and flangers. We labeled the buttons “Elvis,” “Doo-wop,” “R&B,” etc., and put it right on the piano so he could switch the effects around until he hit on one that he liked.

  He loved Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland, and when Billy made The Nylon Curtain we experimented extensively with panning, phasing, and compression. Almost every song on The Nylon Curtain has a different vocal effect.

  On “Goodnight Saigon,” for example, we used an echo chamber with a noise gate to cancel out the normal ringing effect. The combination gave his voice the sweet, high “youthful innocence” that he wanted, but at the same time it made him sound breathless, frightened, and agitated.

  After my first few sessions with Billy, I made an interesting observation: He never warmed up by singing his own songs—not even the ones we were currently working on.

  Instead, he would start a session by doing impersonations.

  “Remember when Otis Redding sang this?” he’d ask, and start singing like Otis Redding. Then he would slide into a Ray Charles song, or start wailing Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman.” He did the same thing when he overdubbed background vocals.

  It was odd: Here I was trying to get Billy Joel to sound like Billy Joel, while he was trying to sound like anyone but. I was curious, and it took two albums before I had the nerve to ask, “When are you going to just come in and sing like Billy Joel?”

  What I learned was that singing in different styles not only helped Billy warm up before a concert or session; it helped him break through his shyness and fear, too.

  Billy once explained his love-hate relationship with singing:

  “The human voice has lots of nuance, and I like to use humor to drive my point home. I don’t think of myself as a singer; I’m a piano player and songwriter. I don’t have a lot of confidence in my singing voice, so I’m constantly fooling around with it. When I have to listen to my voice cold in the studio, I cringe. I try to give it a ‘live-in the-arena’ setting on record because I think it’s pretty boring.

  “I like to compose and play in such a way that I don’t have to sing all that many round notes, keeping the emphasis on syllabic bursts filled in with drum beats and guitar licks. I sound better when I’m socking out a tune to one degree or another than when I’m crooning.”

  A vocalist is far more exposed when singing a ballad than when they’re singing an up-tempo tune, because it’s easier to hide a crack in the voice behind the brashness of a busier arrangement. Belting ’em out definitely brought fullness and vigor to Billy’s vocals.

  So did singing at the piano.

  When Billy sang and played simultaneously, he put his entire body into the performance. The crook in his neck and the way he faced the mike are what gave him his sound.

  Billy plays an extremely full piano, and to help isolate it from his vocal mike I built a “doghouse” shell for the piano and draped it with thick blankets. The studio was arranged so that the piano was in a direct line with Liberty, who was six or eight feet away on a small platform.

  I was big on putting the drums right near Billy and having Liberty DeVitto play as loud as he wanted. The pressure from the two instruments sounded like a hundred tons spilling into each other, and the leakage is why Billy’s records have such incredible energy. It also didn’t hurt that Doug Stegmeyer could play the electric bass as ferociously as Billy played piano.

  “Doug Stegmeyer, God rest his soul, was like Billy’s left hand,” explains Richie Cannata. “When musicians talk about Billy playing a ‘full’ piano, it meant that he played the way a singer playing in a piano bar would—using the keyboard broadly. Doug embellished the bass notes [that Billy was playing with his left hand] by following it exactly.”

  The guys in Billy’s band weren’t shy when it came to sharing ideas.

  Billy Joel recording at the piano, New York City, circa 1986 Courtesy of Sony/BMG Music Entertainment

  They had plenty of opinions, and the discussions that followed a take would usually end with good-natured attacks on each other. Things could get wild during the sessions. Billy had what we called the “Billy Joel Guilt Complex” because of his relationship with the guys in his band—Liberty in particular.

  As a drummer, Liberty had control and power, and he asserted it in a positive way. He didn’t like to play to a track without lyrics—he needed to hear words. Billy knew that, but he’d sometimes come in after the weekend, and we’d discover that he hadn’t made much progress insofar as lyrics were concerned. Billy would feel bad if he had only the words for one song, and really awful if he didn’t have any at all.

  If Billy hadn’t come up with any lyrics by the time we were ready to record a song, he would hum the main melody, or make up nonsensical wor
ds. There were lots of dummy lyrics (usually devised by Liberty) that filled in for as-yet-unwritten words. Some of them were quite funny: An early incarnation of “She’s Always A Woman to Me” was “She’s Only A Widow to Me,” and in lieu of a firm song title, the word sodomy was substituted for “Honesty” when we were making 52nd Street.

  Like most drummers, Liberty was the band’s engine: he drove everyone, and he made Billy toe the line. Liberty thought nothing of chiding Billy for not completing his work; he’d throw his drumsticks across the room and say, “I’m not playing this shit—go finish it!” And Billy would do it.

  Liberty also wasn’t averse to telling Billy when something was awful. In fact, I think he sadistically delighted in doing so, and I laughed like hell one time when Billy jibed him back. Liberty had written a song, and he played it for Billy in the car. Billy listened and said, “Hmm, that’s not bad.” Then, he caught himself. He sneered at Liberty and said, “I’m gonna do what you do to me. That sucks!”

  In those days there was an untenable bond between the guys in Billy’s band, and sessions were as wild as a garage band’s rehearsal.

  As Billy explained:

  “If someone ever saw footage of our recording sessions and it looks like we’re fooling around too much, it’s because we were. It’s a recording technique we came up with. If the musicians are having fun—if they’re having a good time—it shows in the music. You have to do things to relax because recording is tense. You’re creating something out of nothing; you’re conjuring something out of thin air. It’s a source of amazement to the musicians, too, that we’re doing this. There’s a joyful feeling you get when something works. It’s like, ‘Wow, we did it!’ It’s exhilarating.”

  “We were a bunch of twenty-year-old guys, and it was effortless,” says Richie Cannata. “But it’s important to mention that Phil was the fifth member of the band—the glue. He had the facility to give us leeway, but he knew how—and when—to bring it all together.”

  Food was a source of fun for the band, and I kept the studio stocked with snacks, in case someone came down with an acute case of the munchies.

  There was always a big bowl of candy on the table: Three Musketeers, Baby Ruth, and Snickers bars. I’d also put out a few jars of peanut butter and jelly, a loaf of white bread, and some fruit. On breaks the band would have peanut butter and jelly tasting contests. They’d give an assistant a few bucks and say, “Get a jar of Jif, and a jar of Skippy—both crunchy and smooth.” Then they’d make sandwiches, and debate over which peanut butter tasted best.

  Leaving the studio for meal breaks interrupts the flow of a session. It changes everyone’s attitude, and more often than not, neither the food nor the break ends up being fulfilling. After four or five hours of intense work, it’s better to bring in some food, turn on a ballgame, and hang out in the lounge.

  A funny phenomenon happens when you take a break and somebody hears what I call a “through-the-door mix.” Music sounds different when the speakers aren’t in your face and you’re not concentrating so hard. I can’t count the number of times an artist came walking down the hall, happened to overhear something that the engineer and I were doing in the other room, and said, “Jeez, what was I thinking? Let’s fix that,” or “That could be great if we changed one little thing.” Hearing the music casually gives you another perspective—one that you wouldn’t necessarily notice or enjoy if you were outside of the studio, eating in a restaurant.

  I discovered early on that food was a valuable incentive for the guys in Billy’s band, and when necessary, I’d hold it over their heads.

  The hands-down favorite among band members was Chinese food, and our debates over which take sounded best—the pre–or post–Chinese food take—are legendary.

  Here’s how it worked:

  When everyone started getting hungry, the band’s energy level would drop and the session would come to a halt. They’d pile into the control room, and we’d order in Chinese. Then, I’d send them back out into the studio to continue doing takes until the food arrived.

  After a half hour or so, the deliveryman would come in and put the bags of food down on the counter in the control room. When they saw the deliveryman through the window, the guys would start salivating. I’d open the door between the control room and the studio to allow the aroma of the Chinese food to waft into the other room. When they had finished the take, everybody would come in to eat. They would scarf their food, and before they got too comfortable, I’d shoo them back out into the studio. “Okay—go back out there and do it again.”

  Everyone would grumble, but they’d go out and pick up where they’d left off. Many songs—“Honesty,” for instance—sounded better after everyone had eaten. The food slowed their metabolism and curbed their aggression, which is exactly what the tempo of certain songs needed.

  As Richie Cannata remembers:

  “We especially loved ribs, and wonton soup. There would always be some sort of fried rice, too—probably a ‘Phil Ramone Special’ that the local Chinese takeout place had on the menu, because he ordered it so frequently. The whole Chinese food thing sounds casual, but after a while I realized that everything Phil did was calculated. He had a plan, and he held us to it.”

  As Cannata also recalls, there was one memorable time when we did go out to eat, and someone at Columbia Records decided to hold an impromptu shoot for the back cover photo of The Stranger:

  “We were planning to have dinner at the Supreme Macaroni Company on Ninth Avenue and someone said, ‘Let’s take some pictures for the cover of the album.’ It was spontaneous: no makeup, hairstylists, or fashion consultants. All of us wore exactly what we’d worn to the studio that day. After they took the pictures, we sat down and ate. It was all great fun; for a long time, the restaurant kept copies of the photos on the wall of the back room.”

  In addition to food, humor helped elicit cooperation.

  Getting the band to show up on time was a real pain in the ass. I walked a fine line on this one: I couldn’t allow them to take advantage of Billy and me, nor could I let them waste precious studio time. But I couldn’t piss them off, either.

  To keep a check on their tardiness, we agreed on a penalty system in which I would arbitrarily levy fines based on the severity of the tardiness and the originality of their excuse. It was all in good fun.

  Here are a couple of their cockamamie stories:

  LIBERTY DEVITTO: You won’t believe this, but I was sitting in front of my TV set with my daughter when the TV set exploded. The explosion broke my glasses, and I had to go to the optician to get a new pair. It took a lot of time, but I have a note signed by the doctor.

  Everyone knew that Liberty had forged the note; I imposed a five-dollar penalty for creativity alone.

  RUSSELL JAVORS: I was on my way to the studio in a cab when a guy with a gun showed up at the window and robbed all of my money. He took my wallet, and I couldn’t pay for a cab, so I had to walk all the way from 34th Street.

  Russell’s was one of the most ridiculous stories I’d ever heard. “What? You couldn’t call me collect?” I asked. “That’ll be ten bucks!”

  During production of an album, I made a large grid on poster board listing each of the songs we were recording and what the progress on each was. I hung the chart on the wall of the studio, and as we progressed, I’d check the appropriate box. Often I’d come in to find that Billy or one of the other guys had taped a couple of Playboy centerfolds (or worse) over the top of my list.

  I’ll admit that I was as much of a prankster as any of them. Our practical jokes weren’t always confined to the studio, either.

  Because I spend a lot of time traveling to and from work, the quality of the sound system in my car is extremely important. One day, we were sitting around after a session, and I made the mistake of mentioning that I was looking for a new car stereo.

  A short time later, the guys called and said they were stopping by the house to bring me a present. I got all excit
ed. When they drove up to my house, it was in an old jalopy that they’d bought for three hundred bucks. It had a top-flight stereo in it, but nothing else worked. They left it right on my front lawn, and I couldn’t move it because it wouldn’t start. It sunk into the mud, and I eventually had to pay to have it towed away.

  On another occasion, Billy gave me a beautiful turntable. The only problem was, he had rigged it so that when you put a record on, the tonearm skated straight across the record, irreparably scratching it.

  But I got Billy back.

  I presented him with a gift: a nice clock that I had a friend encase in plastic. The clock told you the time on the minute: “It’s one-oh-one, it’s one-oh-two, it’s one-oh-three…” The clock nearly drove Billy insane! He would kick it, throw it across the room—he’d just abuse the hell out of it. But no matter what he did to it, the clock wouldn’t stop telling the time.

  The closeness we enjoyed, however, occasionally put me on the spot.

  At times I had to be assertive, and when I really put my foot down the guys didn’t always know how to take it. “Is he serious, or is he joking?” they would wonder. Sometimes they’d laugh nervously and say, “Uh-oh, the teacher’s getting mad.”

  Meanwhile I’d be wondering too. Should I step in? Do we need to take a break, or send everyone home, or move on to a different song?

  Like a parent who uses tough love on a child, I’d have to rein them in. One such occasion was when guitarists Russell Javors and David Brown’s foolery irritated Billy. We were recording An Innocent Man at a studio on Forty-second Street in 1983 when things boiled over.

  Russell and David were horsing around while Billy and I were trying to talk. They were trading some great guitar riffs, but the fooling around was distracting, and it drove Billy crazy. It got to the point where I asked Russell and David to leave so we could sketch things out and cut the track without any intrusion.