Recording - April 2021 - 48

Log
Session
Log
Hal Willner working at EastSide Sound
with Oren of Elysian Fields listening back
Photo by Marc Urselli

AngelHeaded Hipster

The

By Marc Urselli

Part 4:Hal Willner

pril marks the first anniversary of Hal Willner's passing-the
producer who brought us AngelHeaded Hipster: The Music
of Marc Bolan and T. Rex. Hal tragically died of Covid 19
complications just one day after his 64th birthday, and this series on
the making of Hipster is a testimony to the work Hal and I did on it. I
had the chance to work with Hal on many sessions, albums, concerts
and tours during the last ten years of his life, and I was fortunate to
call him my friend. We were kindred spirits who saw eye to eye on
how music should be recorded, mixed, enjoyed, and revered. A
bottomless fountain of knowledge, Hal was an eclectic listener and
lover of music. Tom Waits described him as a " crafty treasure seeker
and archeologist of forgotten islands in popular culture. "
Despite being two peas in a pod when it came to organically
conjuring beautiful music, we were opposites when it came to
how we planned for things. I tend to be organized and plan for
everything; Hal loved spontaneity and thrived in a bit of chaos.
In sessions, he'd add musicians and instruments, introduce new
ideas at the last minute, and he'd often invite multiple artists to
a session to see who would show up and what could happen.
Sometimes they'd collaborate; other times, they would watch each
other in awe and offer support from the control room. Once, he put
together a U2 session in New Orleans on a 72-hour notice. Trombone Shorty was invited to participate, giving us the only U2 song
ever to have a trombone solo! Another time he called me from Los
Angeles (I was in New York) less than 48 hours before booking
a session with Nick Cave, and also inviting Maria McKee to the
studio. We ended up recording two sessions with the same rhythm
section in the same studio on the same day. On another session in
New York, he called Joan Jett, Lucinda Williams and Beth Orton,
and we ended up tracking three songs with them on the same day
with the same backing band.
48 RECORDING April 2021

The improbable matchmaker
Hal was a sketch music producer at Saturday Night Live
starting in 1980. He also produced the 1988-1989 TV show
Night Music. Hal was a wizard when it came to putting
together artists who seemingly might not fit together, and anyone who watched Night Music knows what I'm referring to-
think Conway Twitty, Kronos Quartet and The Residents sharing
a stage! Many of these artists became Hal's friends, and he
coaxed them into collaborations that on paper should never
have worked, but were incredible!

" Hal was our visionary, our ringleader, always working against
reason itself, armed with a deep love and bottomless knowledge of music, an incredible generosity and reverence for those
forgotten and discarded, an eccentric and screwball vision, and
a perverse love of chaos, and who produced some of the most
moving and unforgettable spectacles. " -Nick Cave
Every Hal Willner production I've ever been involved with was
as exciting as it was chaotic. I blindly followed through the storms
he would conjure with unexpected happenings, improvised situations, extemporaneous beauty and ultimate spontaneity. However,
organization was not his forte. His modus operandi consisted
of last-minute changes and additions that could drive you crazy,
but I learned to go with the flow. One of the many lessons I
learned was that it doesn't have to be planned out perfectly
to work magically. It also taught me to adjust my methods for
preparedness, and I chaos-proofed what I could so that I could roll
with the punches and enable Hal in whatever idea he concocted.
As his collaborator and technical right hand, my job was to
make his whims possible. To give you an example: every time
we would get ready for a session or a show, I'd prepare an input
list with two to three times the amount he had asked for. If he
told me there would be two guitar players, I'd prepare for three.

Recording - April 2021

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