Recording - July 2021 - 24

Playing speaks
louder than words
three Marshall amps, open back amps... but in the studio on this
record, we kind of settled mostly on a Vox and I think a Deluxe?
Peter: A '65 Fender Deluxe Reverb and a '64 modified
Vox AC15.
Chuck: We usually had both amps running all the time. Peter
and his guitar tech, Darren, would stand in the room and
dial in both amps to get them to where they were this holy
grail of guitar sound, and I pretty much miked them the same
throughout the album. Sometimes it was a little further away,
sometimes closer, depending on how raw I wanted it to sound.
How did you capture them?
Chuck: It was generally a Shure SM57 and a Neumann U
67 placed on whichever cabinet was the primary amp for that
song, and then we put an SM57 on the other amp. That was
all going through Neve 1073 modules with the EQ out and no
compression ever. I hate to compress a guitar player when he's
recording because it can ruin their feel. The dynamics come
from the guitar player, not the compressor.
Peter: What room mics did you use? Was it the Coles?
Chuck: Originally, in the guitar booth we were using a stereo
Royer ribbon, but then we reamped all the guitars back out in the
studio and captured that with a pair of Coles 4038 ribbon mics
that were left in the same place that we had them while we were
tracking the drums. We did that on almost everything to recapture
some ambience. There was a song where I was struggling to get
a mix, so I ended up putting everything into the room and recapturing
it-pianos, the other guitar player, bass, everything was recaptured
in the room. Then all of a sudden, the mix came together.
A lot of guitarists get disappointed because
they stand in the room. They hear the sound of
the amps, and then they go into the booth or
put their headphones on, and it's different.
Peter: With Chuck, I'll be in the room, getting the amp
sound, and then I come in the control room, and I always think,
" Wow, it sounds exactly like it does out there, but better. "
OK Chuck, what's your secret? And how do you deal
with amp noise, because every time I work with a
vintage amp, all I hear is... [makes a static sound]
Peter: Oh, we don't care about that.
Chuck: That's good stuff. Peter's got some pretty great instruments
and amps, but with a great guitarist, it's all about the fingers
and the ideas. And like I said, Peter's also a tech head. Some
guitar players can play the guitar but have no clue about getting
a sound. Peter knows his pedals, and he knows how to plug one
pedal into another to get a particular effect. On 'Reckoner', as the
solo progresses, you flip on a pedal, and as it builds, you go to
another pedal, and it becomes like a voice singing.
Peter: I think it was a Mu-Tron III with the auto-wah sensitivity
set very low.
24 RECORDING July 2021
Photo by Rob Arthur
Was there any song that was harder than the
others? Or one that was just the easiest?
Peter: 'If You Want Me To Stay' just happened in the spur
of the moment, that's the only take we did. I had a mic so I
could talk to the band, and we did the arrangement live while
we were playing it. I said, " Let's bring it down...two, three,
now! " and we came down. It was like being live on stage with
everyone looking at each other.
So, you gave everybody cues while tracking?
Peter: Yeah. I think the most difficult ones were...
Chuck: 'Isn't It a Pity' was hard.
Peter: Yeah, and 'Loving the Alien', because they are David
and George. To even contemplate doing a tribute to those guys
is scary enough, but to actually get it right. I think I was a little
intimidated by both of those.
I feel like that era of David Bowie kind of
gets pushed to the side a little bit because
everybody gravitates back to Ziggy, or the
Berlin era, and I think that's one of his most
beautiful overlooked songs.
Peter: That was one of the reasons I wanted to do that one
and also because when I did the Glass Spider tour with David,
that was the song that he gave me as my guitar feature, and
now it's my tribute to him.
How did you mic the acoustic guitars on the album?
Chuck: The other guitarist on the album, Adam Lester, was
always miked with a Neumann U 67, and we did do some stuff
with Peter on a U 67. I'd also just gotten a Sanken CUX-100K.
It's a brand new mic that uses a rectangular capsule along with
a 100k capsule. It's a dual-pattern, cardioid/omni mic, and I
just love it.
Recording - July 2021

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