Recording - November 2010 - 12

Who will you be playing with tonight at the Blue Note? Larry Carlton: One of the world’s greatest drummers, Billy Kilson, who just happens to be on a 2-week vacation and only lives 20 miles outside of the city. We’re having a ball. He and I have not played together in 5 years. And my son Travis on bass... killing... killing! He just turned 26 in April. He’s been touring with me for four years, out with Robben Ford as well. When I’m not out, Robben swoops him up. He’s going to do another album for Robben in January. He’s got the gift... I’m so proud! No keys, it’s a trio. I started doing a trio last year to do something different. And it’s really fun. It’s so open, I have to use my harmony now a lot more and a lot of chord stuff also. I’m on a 3-week tour in the US and then I go to the Tokyo Jazz Festival next week with Fourplay. Everyone is busy, it’s good. Now you have a new Greatest CD—you re-recorded all your hits from the past? We re-recorded everything. I took songs from certain periods of my career. We did “Room 335” from 1979, but we did “Smiles & Smiles To Go”. On 90% of the tunes I tried to make them sound just like the originals when they first come on. So you might put “Smiles & Smiles” on from the re-recorded hits version and say, “Oh, I know that,” but obviously all of the solos are different and other little sections are different. So it’s really fun to do a tease and then new versions of the tunes. It was a cool project. Who did you use for the players in the studio? Travis on bass, Jeff Babko, one of LA’s best keyboardists. We call him “wonder child” because he is so gifted and he’s only 36 years old. And on drums, Vinnie Colaiuta. Strong band. I still had all of the old charts so I said to them, “You’ve heard them on the radio, so now let’s redo them.” Did you record it in your own studio? No, we recorded it all at Capitol in the B room with Csaba Petocz engineering it. I built my own studio and it’s basically a production room. I have a 200-year-old log cabin that is a story and half, that we converted on my property into my Pro Tools room. We actually added on a vocal booth and a storage area room, where I can put all of my amps and let them breathe. So I can choose any of my amps when I record. So no more analog gear? You had quite a studio back in the day—do you do everything in the box? Yeah, I did have a big studio back then. But today 99% of the time I use it as a pre-production studio. Because usually I get all of my performances live in the studio, so I don’t have to replace any guitars. So I only use it as pre-production recording when I’m writing the songs. And then I’ll just go direct into the computer and pick a sound from Amp Farm or just use the direct sound. I just want the guys to know what the parts and the feel are supposed to sound like. And then we’ll go back and record it with the whole band in another studio. To me—who hears the difference between analog and digital? The listener just hears the music, unless it is offensive. They either like the song and get a feeling from the song or they don’t. I’m really at that point where it is all about the music, as well as the quality.

As Larry Carlton has shown throughout his multi-faceted career as a first-call session guitarist and a successful recording artist, the Gibson ES-335 guitar is his voice. Carlton was constantly featured with stars from every imaginable genre, ranging from Sammy Davis, Jr., and Herb Alpert to Quincy Jones, Paul Anka, Michael Jackson, John Lennon, Jerry Garcia and Dolly Parton. At the same time, he was still performing more than 50 dates a year with The Crusaders. Carlton became one of the most in-demand studio musicians of the past three decades. Carlton’s catalog of work includes film soundtracks, television themes and work on more than 100 gold albums. He built his own studio, Room 335, in his home. During this period he arranged and produced projects for Barbra Streisand, Joan Baez and Larry Gatlin, as well as producing and co-writing the theme for the hit sitcom Who’s The Boss? and co-writing (with Michel Colombier) and arranging the acclaimed movie soundtrack for Against All Odds. Rolling Stone magazine lists Carlton’s tasty ascent on Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlemagne” as one of the three best guitar licks in rock music. As many of you know, Larry had a world-class recording studio back in the ’70s and ’80s in LA. With more than 3000 studio sessions under his belt by the early 1980s, Carlton had picked up four Grammy nominations. In addition to winning a Grammy (1981) for the theme to Hill Street Blues (a collaboration with Mike Post), he also was voted NARAS’s “Most Valuable Player” for three consecutive years. NARAS then named him “Player Emeritus” and retired him from eligibility. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Mr. 335 on a hot summer afternoon on New York’s West Side in the lobby of his hotel. He was as modest as he is gracious and talented. We discussed everything from his new re-recorded hits CD released on his new label 335 Records, to being a part of Fourplay, to his beginnings with Joe Sample in the Crusaders.—BT

RECORDING NOVEMBER 2010

Interview by Brian Tarquin • Photos courtesy of Larry Carlton's management

Recording - November 2010

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