Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music

by Ramone, Phil

  TRACK 19

  Another Side of Live

  Aretha Franklin Courtesy of Kevin Mazur/WireImage

  There’s nothing more satisfying than using music to raise money for worthwhile causes, and over the past ten years I’ve had the opportunity to produce some musically rich benefit shows, including the annual Songwriters Hall of Fame tributes and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences’ MusiCares concerts.

  MusiCares is a foundation that raises money to aid musicians in need. The Songwriters Hall of Fame is a branch of the National Academy of Popular Music; their mission is to preserve the history of the American popular song, and award scholarships to promising songwriters.

  Creatively, SHOF and MusiCares concerts give me wide latitude to experiment and pair artists with songs they’re not normally associated with. I’ve found that artists—regardless of the area they work in—have genuine respect for one another, and that you can’t stereotype a singer or musician according to their chosen genre.

  When we were putting together the MusiCares tribute to Billy Joel, Garth Brooks asked to perform “Shameless,” and I wasn’t thrilled with his choice. Everyone around him said, “Forget about changing it. Don’t even mention it to Garth—he’s made up his mind.”

  I’ve often found that “handlers”—the cadre of press, publicity, and peripheral management people who accompany a celebrity—don’t always know the artist’s opinion on certain issues. The handlers are there to minimize bumps in the road, keep the artist on schedule, and make that schedule flow as smoothly as possible. Each group tries to protect the artist, and in doing so they sometimes act overzealously.

  During rehearsal I had the chance to chat privately with Garth, and I decided to ask him how he felt about Billy’s music.

  ME: What’s your favorite Billy Joel song?

  GB: Oh, jeez—“Goodnight Saigon.”

  ME: Do you know it?

  GB: Yeah!

  ME: Would you sing it in the show?

  GB: You must be crazy.

  ME: No—no one is likely to ever cover that song, and I think it would be a terrific song for you to sing tonight.

  I’ve got to admit that I was taken aback by Garth’s choice—“Goodnight Saigon” is a heavy song for anyone to select as a favorite. But its symbolism resonates with many people—especially musicians—and I said to myself “Why wouldn’t I want to present that song in a completely different context?” It was something that few in the audience would ever imagine a country singer like Garth Brooks doing.

  The MusiCares house band was very good, but they didn’t know “Goodnight Saigon.” I grabbed an intern, gave him twenty bucks, and asked him to find the nearest record store and buy a copy of The Nylon Curtain.

  Meanwhile I could see that the public relations folks were getting nervous because Garth was spending so much time with me. They tried to pry him away. “Yeah, just a minute,” he said, stalling them. Before anyone realized what was happening, the intern returned and a CD player was blaring “Goodnight Saigon.”

  “Can anyone copy the arrangement for us?” I asked the band.

  Four guys stepped forward and offered to transpose the chart. We didn’t have any horns in the band, so they created parts for the guitars, drums, and synthesizers. Everyone—including stagehands—pitched in to sing the background parts. By the time that Garth finished his second run-through, those present at the rehearsal—including Garth’s publicist and manager—were crying.

  “I’m thrilled that you think that I can do this,” Garth said after coming off the stage. “It’s going to be amazing—you’ve got to close the show,” I said.

  Garth looked puzzled.

  “Who’s on before me?” he asked.

  I went through the lineup, mentioning Tony Bennett last. “I’m going after Tony Bennett?” Garth asked incredulously.

  “Yeah—I’d like you to close the show.”

  “Absolutely not,” Garth said. “Tony closes. I am not going to follow Tony Bennett!”

  At the end of the show Garth received a stomping ovation, and as I watched from my seat I felt confident that my earlier hunch was right: No one could possibly follow Garth’s performance of “Goodnight Saigon.”

  Then, the announcement came: “Please welcome Mr. Tony Bennett!”

  Tony—in his inimitably cool way—glided effortlessly on stage, snapping his fingers to a Gershwin tune. “I got rhythm, I got music…”

  After a few bars Tony stopped, and began singing Billy’s “New York State of Mind.” The place was ours; Tony and the audience became one, basking in the mutual warmth flowing freely throughout the room.

  “Okay,” I admitted to myself. “Garth was right: No one can top Tony Bennett.”

  I rarely sit in the audience during these events, but on this night I’d decided to sit with the honoree. As Tony hit his final notes, I turned to Billy Joel and ribbed him. “Okay, Billy—try to follow that!”

  There’s something to be said for flexibility.

  When MusiCares honored Bono in 2003, I juggled the entire running order of the show to accommodate the opening act: President Bill Clinton.

  Mr. Clinton—a big U2 fan—was delighted, and just before the show began I decided to deviate from the program. “It’ll be impossible to have you sit in the audience for two hours—you’ll be mobbed, and no one will watch the show,” I explained to the president. “Would you mind opening the show?”

  We rearranged the order so that President Clinton could present Bono with the award up front and then speak for ten minutes. From there, everything would proceed as scheduled. Well, the president and the Irish rebel played off each other so naturally that what had been planned as a fifteen-minute prelude turned into one of the best half hours of entertainment I’ve ever seen.

  Who follows the president? It wasn’t easy, but B.B. King, Sheryl Crow, and Mary J. Blige did a fantastic job of entertaining the crowd.

  Traditionally the president of the Recording Academy wraps the MusiCares show with a short speech about the artist. Before the Bono show I took NARAS President Neil Portenow aside and said, “I wouldn’t wish that spot on a leopard!” Neil laughed, but we both knew that the real president had gotten him off the hook. Instead of giving a speech, Bono sang Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life.”

  I didn’t tell Bono what I had planned for this number. All I said was, “I have a surprise for you.” When he came on to do the finale, the curtain parted and a brass and saxophone ensemble began playing a sophisticated, punchy chart written by Rob Mathes. Hearing a band like that playing right behind you is inspiring, and as a closer, “That’s Life” was as rousing as the show’s opening.

  I believe in good karma. There have been many times when I’ve looked at how certain situations have unfolded, and walked away reassured that most things happen for a reason.

  The first MusiCares concert I produced was a tribute to Luciano Pavarotti at Radio City in 1998, and in planning the event producers Tim Swift, Dana Tomarken, and I were discussing which artists we might possibly ask to perform. I knew that Aretha Franklin loved Pavarotti’s music, and having Aretha on any show never failed to lend it an extra-special dimension.

  With Luciano Pavarotti and my son, BJ Ramone Phil Ramone Collection

  I called Aretha, and when I told her that the program’s honoree was Pavarotti she agreed to perform—with one condition. “I’ve got to sing Puccini’s ‘Nessun Dorma,’” she said. The aria was her favorite Pavarotti recording, and she was dying to sing it. I scrambled to find a suitable arrangement; Rob Mounsey came up with a classic chart for her.

  Aretha’s rendition was electrifying and moved Pavarotti to tears.

  Two nights later, Pavarotti himself was scheduled to sing “Nessun Dorma” at Radio City, where he was receiving a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement. Twenty-five minutes before his cue, the maestro summoned me. He pointed to his throat. “I can’t go on,” he rasped.

  At that moment we were live
on the air, and “twenty-five minutes out”—twenty-five minutes away from Pavarotti’s spot in the show. The news spread quickly, and Grammy president Mike Greene and television producer Ken Ehrlich immediately responded and asked if I could convince Aretha Franklin to take Pavarotti’s place.

  It was our only option, and if Aretha agreed to fill in, we’d have to work quickly. Engineer Hank Neuberger located Pavarotti’s performance from that afternoon’s dress rehearsal, and dubbed it to a cassette. As soon as Hank was finished, I grabbed the tape and took the stairs to Aretha’s dressing room two at a time, with Pavarotti’s conductor in tow.

  Although she was familiar with the music, agreeing to fill in at the last minute would take enormous courage on Aretha’s part.

  Pavarotti’s arrangement had an introduction that she was unaccustomed to, and it featured a choir. “The choir will sing the intro, and the orchestra will be behind you,” I explained. “The key is a little lower than you’re accustomed to, but there’s not enough time to make changes. You’ll have to sing it in Luciano’s key,” I explained.

  Aretha listened to the cassette three times. Time was running short, and we anxiously awaited her verdict. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll do it on one condition: You must turn off all of the air-conditioning in the theater before I go on.”

  It was a small but considerable request.

  Aretha detests air-conditioning; it has a deleterious effect on her throat and voice. Although the theater was packed with six thousand people and a truckload of television lights and cameras, the cooling system was shut down.

  I informed Ken Ehrlich of Aretha’s approval, and he rewrote Sting’s spoken introduction. Despite the slapdash changes, Aretha took the stage and performed as though everything had been planned. When she left to a standing ovation I hugged her. Aretha gave a little sniffle, and offered an admonishment. “Phil, it was still too cold out there!”

  On the set with Paul McCartney and engineer Clarke Rigsby, 1986 Courtesy of Alan Dahl

  TRACK 20

  Hooray for Hollywood!

  When I was a child, I dreamed of being a movie director.

  Every Saturday, my sister and I would go to the movies. I sat for hours, studying those wonderful M-G-M and Warner Brothers musicals of the 1940s and ’50s. All I could think about was playing, singing, and acting in them—and maybe even directing them.

  Although that dream hasn’t yet been fulfilled, I’ve never lost my love for film. I’m just as enamored of the art and science behind filmmaking as I am recording, and was privileged to have played a small role in the creation of numerous films and music videos (not from behind the camera—from behind the mixing desk).

  My first involvement in a feature film project came courtesy of Quincy Jones, who asked me to record the score he’d written for The Pawnbroker in 1964.

  Quincy and I had made many records together, and I was excited by the prospect of breaking into the film world. But it would be a big step, given my relative inexperience with the art of film recording.

  “I would love to record it, but I know nothing about movie scoring,” I explained to Quincy. “Neither do I,” he replied. “But I’ve spoken to Henry Mancini in London, and Armando Travioli in Rome. They’ve helped me understand how synchronization works. They also taught me a few tricks about how to arrange and record so that the film mixer can bring out the best in the music.”

  I’m a problem solver, and this puzzle was one that I wanted to piece together. The score for The Pawnbroker, a Sidney Lumet film, took Quincy two months to write, and two days for us to record.

  Quincy hired the best jazz musicians on the east coast, including Freddie Hubbard, Elvin Jones, Anthony Ortega, Dizzy Gillespie, Oliver Nelson, and Bobby Scott, and asked Billy Byers to help write the orchestrations. The sessions were frantic: At one point, Quincy and Billy kept a full orchestra waiting while they arranged the last cue that Quincy had written.

  The Pawnbroker was a revolutionary film.

  The film challenged the Motion Picture Code, and brought the issue of frontal nudity and censorship to the fore. As a result, The Pawnbroker helped establish a precedent, and an acknowledgement that in certain situations, nudity had an undeniable moral purpose in films. But behind the scenes, The Pawnbroker also confronted another looming issue: the acceptance of black composers in Hollywood.

  Until 1954, very few blacks were welcomed into the ranks of Hollywood’s film studio orchestras. It took influential actors such as Marlon Brando—a real jazz fan—and the efforts of black musicians such as Buddy Colette and Nat Cole to integrate the inimitable talents of African American musicians into the studios.

  The musicians may have staked their claim to a small piece of the Hollywood studio scene, but black film composers were practically unheard of.

  So solid was the white line—and Hollywood’s misperception of black composers—that Henry Mancini received a call from a Pawnbroker producer before Quincy was hired. “We know he’s gifted,” the producer told Mancini. “But he’s also black. Will he be reliable?”

  They needn’t have worried. Quincy’s jazz-inflected score—dynamic, yet appropriately brooding and dark—underscored the picture’s dramatic theme, and garnered both Quincy and the producers of The Pawnbroker considerable praise.

  After The Pawnbroker, my recording for film was limited to the commercials that A&R was cutting for the top Madison Avenue advertising agencies.

  Then, in 1967, Burt Bacharach asked me to supervise the recording of the soundtrack for Casino Royale, which was recorded in London.

  The plum to emerge from Casino Royale was Dusty Springfield’s rendition of “The Look of Love,” a performance that brought sensuality in film music to a hitherto rarefied level. Burt had written all of the music in the States, but when he and Hal arrived in London for the sessions, they were told that the script had changed. Consequently some of the melodies that Burt had written didn’t fit the new story.

  Fortunately Burt was in the throes of fleshing out a melody that he’d devised for another spot in the picture; a pretty, Brazilian-influenced melody that he believed could be expanded into a song. Using Ursula Andress’s beauty for inspiration, Burt completed the melody, and Hal wrote the lyrics on the spot. Bacharach may have been thinking of Ursula Andress, but “The Look of Love” fit Dusty Springfield’s voice (and persona) beautifully.

  Years later I was back in London to produce another James Bond film soundtrack: John Barry’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

  I owe a great deal to composer John Barry, for teaching me about how film music is written and recorded.

  John Barry’s scores were always rhythmic, and he often went against the grain. For example, a John Barry cue written to accompany a high-speed car chase was unlike anything you’d expect. Instead of a pulsating theme to underscore the scene, John would go in the opposite direction. Brilliant!

  London had become a popular place to record film scores, and I enjoyed my work there. While British union rules prevented me from touching the board, the English technicians—Jack Clegg on Casino Royale, Gordon McCallum, John Mitchell, and John Richards on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service were sheer professionals, and eager to fulfill my wishes as the soundtracks’ producer.

  I had gotten a taste of the film world from my small part in bringing the music for The Pawnbroker and Casino Royale to life. Why can’t New York become a hub for film soundtrack recording, too? I wondered.

  We could easily fit sixty or seventy men on the scoring stage in Studio A1 at 799 Seventh Avenue, and I set out to make our studio one of the premier film-recording facilities in the East. I started by purchasing the best 35mm magnetic film recording system I could afford.

  Traditionally film music and dialogue are recorded on 35mm magnetic film, the advantage of which is quietness and fidelity. The space between the heads on a magnetic film recorder is wider than on an eight- or sixteen-track magnetic tape machine, and the hiss level is much lower. The amount of headroom i
s double or triple that of a conventional tape recorder, offering increased dynamic range and lower distortion.

  Before digital recording, the fidelity of 35mm film was so highly regarded that engineers in standard recording studios began using it to record certain sessions, and many labels used it as a marketing tool. On the East Coast, Bob Fine was the master of magnetic film recording; I had taken note of what he was doing even before I became an engineer.

  In the early 1950s, Bob and his wife, producer Wilma Cozart Fine, made some startling symphonic recordings for Mercury’s classical Living Presence series. The earliest of those classical sessions were monophonic; Bob suspended a single U47 microphone over the conductor’s head and recorded direct to 35mm film. When stereo came into vogue, Bob designed a three-track magnetic film recording head, devised a multiple microphone system, and made some of the finest stereo orchestral recordings of all time.

  Bob was also among the first engineers to design and use a mobile sound truck, and in the mid-1950s he opened his own studio, Fine Sound, where he recorded dozens of high-fidelity jazz albums for Mercury and Verve Records, including Count Basie’s sonic and musical tour de force, April in Paris.

  Many of Bob Fine’s orchestral recordings were made in the ballroom of the Great Northern Hotel, and when the hotel closed down, some of his engineers came to work at A&R. They were valuable assets; because of their expertise with 35mm magnetic film recording, A&R became one of the best film-recording facilities in New York.

  One of the most important film-music recordings made in our studio was Midnight Cowboy in 1969, and participating in the production was a milestone for me.

  Midnight Cowboy was a controversial film.

  Expletives, the suggestion of homosexuality, or anything resembling prostitution practically guaranteed an X rating in 1969, and an X rating branded a film taboo. Midnight Cowboy touched on those themes, and the X rating it received caused quite a stir.