RECORDING September 2022 - 16

Log
L Session
og
Chasing the What Ifs
This turned into four long hours of
trying different things. Lou went as far
as calling his guitar tech Stewart Hurwood
to ask him to bring some guitar
effects pedals from the office so that
he could run the bass sound through
them-Lou loved his pedals. I was a bit
disheartened thinking he was unhappy.
We experimented with analog outboard
and different plugins and tried everything
under the sun, but he didn't seem to like
the results. Around 7 p.m., Lou asked me
to play back my original 2 p.m. mix. LuckLive
in Prague
A year or two later we were on tour
and had a concert in Prague. Lou had a
powerful bond with Prague because of
his friendship with its former president
(and poet), Václav Havel. This was the
last show of the tour and unbeknownst to
all of us, sadly turned out to be the last
ever Lou Reed headline solo show.
I was on FOH duties and the load
in at the Archa Theatre was one of the
hardest. The stage was too small for our
production. Nothing seemed quite right,
yet it was decided this would be the one
show from that tour to be multi-tracked
for posterity. I recall that our digital consoles
did not have the right cards to allow
for multi-track recording. Our system
tech Liam Halpin had to get those overnighted.
He spent hours installing and
testing them before the show.
Back in NYC
When we returned to New York, I spent
six days in the studio (four with Lou and
producer Hal Willner), mixing that live
recording. It was a large rock band with
drums, bass, three guitars, violin, sax, piano
and keys, samplers with live processing
and two background singers. In addition,
there were four vocal mics for the drummer,
pianist and the two guitar players.
So many open mics were picking up
everything. As a relatively small concert
venue, there was even more leakage
than there would have been at an
16 RECORDING September 2022
Bleedand
with
Leakage
Lou Reed, Part 2
ily the Harrison console had total recall, so
I reloaded my mix, played it back, and he
said, and I quote, " Don't change a thing.
It's perfect! " Wow. I was so relieved.
Later that night, during dinner at one
of Lou's favorite pizza places (Lil' Frankie's
in the East Village, a few blocks from
the studio), I asked him, " Why did we
just waste four hours trying things if you
liked my original mix in the first place? "
He gave me an answer that I still carry
with me to this day, " It's not time wasted.
Sometimes in life, you have to try every
other path to know that you are on the
right path to begin with. " The oracle had
spoken like a true poet.
High-Stress Requests
This is what it often was like to work
with Lou: lots of requests, many stressed
people running around to fulfill those
requests in order to please him quickly,
no patience on his part and no time
wasted on anyone else's part. High expectations,
high stakes, little room to negotiate,
no room for mistakes. Yet, these
were some of the best years of my life
and I learned so much working with him.
Lou Reed Prague concert Pro Tools mix screenshot
outdoor venue. I spent the first half of the day cleaning up the tracks. I muted the
regions on every track of the mics that were picking up something that was not part
of the mix. Then I added long, slow crossfades in and out of those muted regions
so when that mic was used in the mix, there wouldn't be a stark change in the
ambiance-a sudden jump or loss of signal.
This is a handy and essential trick I learned years ago when mixing live recordings.
If you mute and unmute open mics abruptly, there's a noticeable change of ambiance
that sounds jarring to the most attentive people, but if you slowly fade in and out of
the region you want to be heard (even 15-30 second fades) then the human ear has
time to adjust. You won't notice that there suddenly is a new open mic with sounds that
weren't there before. This is key when mixing live shows in the studio!
After all that was done, I also added a bunch of gates on things like toms, guitar amps, etc.
Once I had a good band mix, I worked on the vocals, Lou's was first and then the
background vocals. On that particular show, we had one extra background singer
who didn't know all the songs that well, so I had to perform some extra magic. Luckily,
it all came together in the end, and the recording sounded just like the show and
ended up being the last recorded Lou Reed!
Hal Willner and Lou loved and approved the mix, but due to misunderstandings with
the European counterparts and licensing issues, it only saw a limited online release. However,
I know some parties who want to re-release this, and I'm hoping it will happen.

RECORDING September 2022

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