EQ Magazine - May 2008 - (Page 19)

Jack Douglas (left) and Jay Messina (second to left) punching in guitar tracks while 6-string samurai Joe Perry (far right) lays down licks, and vocalist Steven Tyler (background) finalizes vocal patterns. circuit protected the cutter head from too much high-end voltage. It would just lift the head up, and you’d have to start the cutting process over. A lot of things that sounded fine on tape wouldn’t translate to an actual vinyl record because of the limitations of the format. I went to the Record Plant in New York City in 1970. As soon as you walked in the place, it felt like you were going into the coolest nightclub in town. For example, I was invited to see the Who record in Studio A, and there were all these colored lights turned down low. They were about to do some vocals—I could hear breathing out in the studio—and just by the level of the hiss from the return of the EMT plates and the general amplifier noise in the room, I could tell how loud it was going to be. They had a quad system in the room with 300-watt monitors, and they were all on. Sure enough, when they put the tape on, it was incredibly loud, but the sound was just awesome. To this day, Studio A is one of the best-sounding rooms I’ve heard. What console was in there? Studio A had a Spectrasonics console—which is very straight ahead. There wasn’t a lot of flexibility with aux and cue sends, and you didn’t get a lot of bells and whistles. But it was a super board, and you could get amazing sounds down on tape with it. Studio B and Studio C had Datamix consoles at that time. It was while working at the Record Plant that you got hooked up with Jack Douglas, right? Yes. Jack was assisting at that time, and he got on a few of my dates. We clicked as friends, and we also liked the way we worked together. It was a real natural partnership. Then, Jack got a couple of good opportunities to advance his production skills. I guess the first big one was when Bob Ezrin gave him the chance to co-produce Get Your Wings. Aerosmith was up and coming, and Columbia recognized them as a band that was going to happen. So that’s when we met the guys, and Jack and I ended up working on Get Your Wings together. Well, that record didn’t take off, but Columbia www.eqmag.com MAY 2008 EQ 19 http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - May 2008

EQ Magazine - May 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Jamie Lidell, What the New Model of Record Deal Means to You, Part II, Andrew W.K. Tool Box Aerosmith Fast Tracks Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet DigiDesign Pro Tools LE 7.4 Cakewalk Sonar 7 Line 6 UX8 Studio Projects CS5 Art Tubefire 8 Jazzmutant Dexter MCDSP Emerald Pack Overloud Breverb KRK Exposé E8B Mackie MR5 Blue Sky Exo Monitor System Big Fish Audio Around the World in 80 Raves East West Fab Four Virtual Instrument Sony Matt Fink- Starvu Session Keys Room With A VU

EQ Magazine - May 2008

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