Post by Sir rogerlejohn jr. on Nov 9, 2014 14:01:53 GMT -5
Head Honcho
After three months of using the RAK mobile, Little and the band moved to AIR Montserrat for a six-week-long round of recording sessions. And Alex Sadkin, who had previously taken over the mix of 'Is There Something I Should Know?' was brought in as the head production honcho on Seven And The Ragged Tiger. A protege of Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, the American-born, London-based Sadkin produced and engineered recordings by Bob Marley, Grace Jones, Robert Palmer, Talking Heads, Joe cocker, James Brown, the Thompson Twins, Foreigner and Simply Red. He would die in a car accident just four years later at the age of 35.
classic 2. Duran in studio.s
Photo © Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis
Nick Rhodes, Simon Le Bon and John Taylor (left to right) at AIR Montserrat during the recording of Seven And The Ragged Tiger.
"I'd helped the band write 'Is There Something I Should Know?' and so by time of the mix I didn't know it from Adam," Little admits. "It could have been a sausage. You lose any objectivity when you've been listening to something that long, and so it needed Alex to come in and get the thing mixed properly. When we'd recorded it, I hadn't overseen this young engineer who was really just a tape-op, and he'd recorded the drums without compression and with no consistency of level. That's why nobody was able to mix it — we did a mix at Good Earth, one at Eel Pie, one at the Gallery and one at the Power Station in New York with Bob Clearmountain, before Alex and Phil Thornalley finally did the job at RAK by replacing the drums with samples triggered out of AMS's. Well, can you imagine how much all that cost?
"EMI was really beginning to get nervous about me and the band co-producing the album, and to be honest I was a little bit out of my depth, so the decision was taken to use Alex. I was devastated. After all, can you imagine what that would have done to any career hopes I had? After producing one single, someone was brought in to mix it with me and then I was gone? I'd be dead in the water. I went to the band's management and said 'You can't do this to me. I'll be finished,' and they said 'We're sorry, but this is a big project and we can't risk it, so you're out.' Then I canvassed the band members and they all appeared to want me involved, but they weren't prepared to stand up to their managers or to EMI, so I went to Alex and he said 'From what I can see you're like a sixth member of this band. I won't do it without you.' He needn't have done that — from a financial standpoint he would have been better off if I wasn't involved, but that shows what kind of person he was; an absolute gentleman. But he also wasn't an idiot, and this signalled a recognition on his part that I was an integral part of Duran Duran's work process at that time. I didn't get writing credits and I don't believe I ever deserved writing credits, but I know I helped them to come up with the ideas during that time.
"Alex didn't lord it over me, and he never thwarted my creativity or my input one little bit, but I relied on him to make sure that everything was being done to the right technical standards. For instance, when we started work on 'The Reflex' and adopted the drum pattern from the demo, I knew the part much more intimately than Alex. I therefore told him what the groove was about, what I felt we needed to do with the bass drum, the snare and the hi-hat, and how I heard the groove working — when you're producing a drummer, you've got to relate to what he's doing with each of his limbs, because the groove's success depends on how he interweaves the various elements. So, I conveyed that to Alex, who was quick on the uptake, and he then took charge of getting the right sounds. Since I was more on the band's side of the fence, making all of them more aware of the rhythmic quality of their performances, he provided us with a perfectly balanced production approach."
After three months of using the RAK mobile, Little and the band moved to AIR Montserrat for a six-week-long round of recording sessions. And Alex Sadkin, who had previously taken over the mix of 'Is There Something I Should Know?' was brought in as the head production honcho on Seven And The Ragged Tiger. A protege of Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, the American-born, London-based Sadkin produced and engineered recordings by Bob Marley, Grace Jones, Robert Palmer, Talking Heads, Joe cocker, James Brown, the Thompson Twins, Foreigner and Simply Red. He would die in a car accident just four years later at the age of 35.
classic 2. Duran in studio.s
Photo © Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis
Nick Rhodes, Simon Le Bon and John Taylor (left to right) at AIR Montserrat during the recording of Seven And The Ragged Tiger.
"I'd helped the band write 'Is There Something I Should Know?' and so by time of the mix I didn't know it from Adam," Little admits. "It could have been a sausage. You lose any objectivity when you've been listening to something that long, and so it needed Alex to come in and get the thing mixed properly. When we'd recorded it, I hadn't overseen this young engineer who was really just a tape-op, and he'd recorded the drums without compression and with no consistency of level. That's why nobody was able to mix it — we did a mix at Good Earth, one at Eel Pie, one at the Gallery and one at the Power Station in New York with Bob Clearmountain, before Alex and Phil Thornalley finally did the job at RAK by replacing the drums with samples triggered out of AMS's. Well, can you imagine how much all that cost?
"EMI was really beginning to get nervous about me and the band co-producing the album, and to be honest I was a little bit out of my depth, so the decision was taken to use Alex. I was devastated. After all, can you imagine what that would have done to any career hopes I had? After producing one single, someone was brought in to mix it with me and then I was gone? I'd be dead in the water. I went to the band's management and said 'You can't do this to me. I'll be finished,' and they said 'We're sorry, but this is a big project and we can't risk it, so you're out.' Then I canvassed the band members and they all appeared to want me involved, but they weren't prepared to stand up to their managers or to EMI, so I went to Alex and he said 'From what I can see you're like a sixth member of this band. I won't do it without you.' He needn't have done that — from a financial standpoint he would have been better off if I wasn't involved, but that shows what kind of person he was; an absolute gentleman. But he also wasn't an idiot, and this signalled a recognition on his part that I was an integral part of Duran Duran's work process at that time. I didn't get writing credits and I don't believe I ever deserved writing credits, but I know I helped them to come up with the ideas during that time.
"Alex didn't lord it over me, and he never thwarted my creativity or my input one little bit, but I relied on him to make sure that everything was being done to the right technical standards. For instance, when we started work on 'The Reflex' and adopted the drum pattern from the demo, I knew the part much more intimately than Alex. I therefore told him what the groove was about, what I felt we needed to do with the bass drum, the snare and the hi-hat, and how I heard the groove working — when you're producing a drummer, you've got to relate to what he's doing with each of his limbs, because the groove's success depends on how he interweaves the various elements. So, I conveyed that to Alex, who was quick on the uptake, and he then took charge of getting the right sounds. Since I was more on the band's side of the fence, making all of them more aware of the rhythmic quality of their performances, he provided us with a perfectly balanced production approach."