In the Room with Bass Legend Leland Sklar

Lee I can't believe you're here do you believe this I don't believe it so Lee and I have known each other for years now and it's so great to have you here you're in town playing with Lyle yeah I'm thrilled that this opportunity and that you're here because last year when we came through you were out of town and you couldn't be here so you get to come to the show tonight and kind of go that's what he's all about so we were talking about uh that we've already talked about everything on the ride to get here so we're just gonna cuddle we're just gonna sit here and and uh whatever you want so what so so Lee talk about the uh kind of what you're just talking about about at this point in your career that you would be out playing all the time you are always busy still yeah yeah it's weird because when you're starting in this you look at the calendar and it's an endless Horizon on that and all of a sudden now I turned 76 in May and never in my wildest dreams if I put that number in front of a career what I think I mean most of people I know that were in legit business have retired at this point and they're out fishing or doing something whatever religious businesses yeah whatever that is um but it really surprised the hell out of me that things are as busy as they still are especially with the Advent of of covet having put the kibosh on so much stuff where I know I had a date book that was full for a year and it suddenly disappeared like a fart in a hurricane on me like everybody else yeah so um but I it's like I I don't sit still well so I ended up using that period to finish up this book that we've got out to start the YouTube channel which was a total accident um and then getting endorsement from your end which really changed was a game changer for me and I thank you for that so much because as soon as you mentioned it all of a sudden so many more people came up and for those of you that don't follow Lee if if there are are those of you that are not following Leanna's YouTube channel follow him on his YouTube channel so that was really kind of a different thing right I mean you've been out in the public eye for decades yeah it was but the thing that was the norm was gone yeah at that point without any idea when it was going to return because this has been a pretty catastrophic period for all of us um and uh so I just kept looking for things to do I have never recorded from home before covid and I had a friend out in La who contacted me and he said hey we want to do a cover of Easy Lover and would you play on it and I said I'd love to but I you know to me when people would want me to work on something for them I would have them send me the stems or whatever they wanted to send me and then I would call friends of mine who had home Studios and we'd go over there and that gave us an excuse to go have lunch and it was our social life yeah but suddenly nobody was getting together and I told the guy I said you know I really can't do it and he had a friend at SSL and the next thing I know a box arrived in the mail and it was an SSL two plus interface and so I took that out and I called Steve Postell from our band the immediate family and had him give me a tutorial for because with bass I didn't need any more than GarageBand I didn't yeah need any of the other logic or any of that because I wasn't doing tracks um and he showed me how to do it and I started and I've done probably 18 and 20 albums since doing that it's not my favorite way to work because I like interaction I like sitting there being able to kick ideas around you hear a guitar player player licking what was that you know let me double that with you and we get into it um but it gave me an opportunity to work and uh and I really enjoyed it and and now I drag this stuff with me on the road I just finished a project for a guy in Italy who sent me I think it was 16 songs to do for him and I'm three quarters of the way through an Icelandic project okay and so I just I have a base on the bus with me and I take it to my room and just plug in and get the work done there so historically session players right like yourself I mean you're a live player and a session player but yeah would you guys really get involved in the uh the recording part of it would you ever say anything like hey put the mic here or anything or just you would just set up and the other people would do their own thing um I would usually trust the engineer in terms of setup now a lot of times they would say to me um do you want to mic the amp or should we just go direct if you've got the option let's let's do both you don't have to if you if you're happy with the one when it comes down to it you need another track you can go ahead and dump that one if you want but I love having as many options available as possible I would always bring my own di with me but if which would be what kind um it was an old tubeworks okay um it was made by Mossman I think was the company and I remember doing a project up in uh there was a studio called the site which was right across from Skywalker Ranch so George Lucas's place up in Marin and George massenburg was engineering on it and I think it was either Jimmy Webb or Linda Ronstadt project and we ended up with a whole bunch of Di's there and one of them was like almost three grand and all this [ __ ] and we did let's we got the time let's do a blind taste test and I played the same lick same bass and we recorded all of them didn't mark down what the only the second engineer knew which ones were which and we listened to them all back and we went that's that sounds the best and it was my tube works and it was like a hundred fifty dollar is it a tube di well I guess it's got one of those little little things that that justifies me calling it a tube right but I drag that around the studio with me and that's my but uh you know if I show up in the engineer Kai has already got something set up and that's what they're comfortable with I go so we'll just use that what would be a typical session amp it would depend on the project I mean everything is predicated on the song okay even more than the project because there could be a song on an album where you go oh man we've got to have that I mean when I did Children Of The Sun with Billy Thorpe I did that through an SVT and we cranked the [ __ ] out of it I mean it was really loud in the room and we were in there as a power Trio and we we just enjoyed it to the max but but like on things like I remember doing um forget what the name of the almost one of Luke Steve lukather's first albums yeah we did a song called jamming with Jesus that he had originally was going to do with Jeff Beck and then Jeff passed on it now we did it and I ended up thinking this has really got to be nasty and distorted and more than anything I think we I forget what di we plugged in for that but it had a volume control we cranked everything as loud as it would go so this was totally distorted unlike the other tracks on the album but for that song it was the right thing to do so I kind of look at all that when I go to the studio my my thing that I take to the studio is I'll bring if I know in advance they really need something special base wise I'll bring that along like a Hoffner or something like that or my uh my fretless but for the most part I bring Frankenstein I bring my ding wall and I bring a uh euphonic audio my EA combo amp which is like a single 12 and I forget what the 800 had that they've got in that and that works for everything and I have a mic the thing that drives me crazy is when you come in with an amp and they go we want to put it in an ISO booth and I go I want to feel it I hate just listening performing bass through headphones right so I really like having it I said look it you can mic it I'll put it next to me put a baffle up here yeah but I really want to feel that vibration maybe pull the headphone off a little bit so I'm hearing me unless we're to doing some intimate thing with an acoustic guitar and then we but there you address the need for the moment you're not I don't go in with any any preconceived notion of what's going to happen that day okay so I wanna I wanna come back to Studio stuff but I want to ask you about your when you play Live Now do you get do you do you use in-ears no how many of the guys in the band use in-ears the singers have any ears yep um I think James Herod just started using him because he's right in front of the horn section and it was killing him so he's he's better with that and Russ uses in ears but the rest of us Lyle all of us are on wedges okay on I've like when I was with Phil Collins I was the only person on stage with wedges okay everybody else and then Daryl sturmer would come and stand next to me but when did people really start using in-ears the mid 90s or so yeah probably it's kind of like when guys were all starting to Go Wireless too and all that um I tried the only time I ever have to wear in ears is if I'm doing like the Grammy shows or things like that because there's a lot of cues and they can't run that through kind of things are they saying in your ears well they're just you know they're saying you know three four yeah I mean as soon as a person's names go oh like when we do the we do my favorite show to do is it's the pre-grammy show which goes all day and then that breaks down and then they move over to the next theater for the Grammy show which is the dog and pony act right um but during our day they give away like 80 uh Grammys actually all the ones that you want I see it's all the great stuff I mean and then there's live performance seeing like chick Korea playing and all these people um and we've got a great band for that Tim pierce place and that usually with Dean Parks um so they're calling they're calling out like cues like because we've got usually between 80 and 85 pieces of music that we've rehearsed and and and and once again it's all predicated on when that person's called where are they sitting yeah you might only play eight notes and they're in the front row and they're up there but they might be in the back room okay so how do they start it and how do they cut it off if somebody's in the front row and and sure do they literally come out three four well really what happens is cheche Alara is the MD for the for those shows he's a great keyboard player and really great producer um we'll have once they know who it's going to be we've got to grab the piece of music we find out then sometimes they'll play us a real quick snippet of it so we know exactly how it's supposed to sound yeah and then he goes three four and we play it and they could walk up and he goes off stop yeah it's over and otherwise you're waiting and you you might play half the song that we're doing waiting for them to get up to the stage how do you not start laughing with that they don't show a camera on us okay are you laughing sometimes well sometimes it gets crazy I mean it's because it's so intense because it's all in the moment wait a minute when they play a little snippet of the Sun what well they're talking they play a little snippet and then you're like okay yeah I know this one yeah are you scrambling around getting the music or what are you doing well we've got the music is all laid out in order okay for the most part we know what we're going to be playing for all the cues and then we have the ones that are the performance songs that are full songs but we only have a rehearsal sold that day for the show okay um so it's intense going through all this material it's a ton of reading yeah this stuff would I be laughing watching you guys just manically do this no because we make it look seamless okay and that's the beauty of it I mean like cheche um does such a beautiful job on this and people have no idea how intense right this really is they just they just accept it that that this is what you do this is what you do and the things are played perfectly on there and that that they don't even think that anything goes into yeah well that's that's so much of this that's why the sad part of doing music is calling it playing because people have that interpretation he's a bunch of guys having fun they don't realize how much history has gone in to make it look easy and fun and that that's a hard part in this business now too where you're you'll come in and do a session and you can knock something off I mean you're really pushing it hard to like make it last an hour right but you're charging them a session for three hours and they go well it only took you an hour only took me 50 years to make it happen in an hour go hire somebody out of Mi or something that's right yeah I mean I did a project for a guy some years back and this really kind of made me rethink things where he said look I'm on a tight budget I got nine tracks got no charts for anything and we've got four hours can you do so I came in and I did that I wrote my charts I did the thing got all nine tracks done he was thrilled they had three tracks left and they went to England to cut those those three tracks yeah and um Pino played on those who was one of my favorite bass players in the world but he doesn't read or anything right so it took three days for them to do that so he got paid for three days work and I got paid for four hours you know and I just kind of went I really have to start rethinking this because to me I'm a first or second take person unless something's incredibly complicated um that's that's when I'm not thinking that's where I haven't gotten to that space where I'm I'm playing the song but I'm going it's fascinating how my eyes see those little notes and translates it into this and then it goes did we do the bridge you know you know you're lost in just the mechanics of it sure but the first take or two you're completely in the zone of the song and uh that's where I want to be but it gets done like that so once you just tell people you can't read oh sorry I don't read charts yeah around too long words out I did I did a great thing we did a movie called Hollywood Homicide with Harrison Ford and uh there was a Chase sequence in it and I opened up the chart and it's six or seven pages long that started incredibly fast and then got faster and faster it was all 16th Tempo changes um I mean everything imaginable on this thing and I'm just sweating bullets going oh God they went to lunch and I said um skip lunch I stayed and worked on this and Kenny Wilde is also a great bass player in La was playing upright on it and as he walked by me he said better you than me and they all went to lunch and when they came back I got it and then I had the composer sign at henna he wrote is I'm so sorry but there's times you know you get these things put in front of you and and you you do it that's your job you're a studio musician you're not a band guy you're not this guy you you're your definition is the guy they call for are you like a plumber though yeah well it it as a studio player first off 90 of time you have no idea what you're being called for right so you walk in the door and it could be a reggae date it could be a polka it could be shred metal I've done like walked in and it's like Japanese anime stuff which is incredibly intense yeah you just don't know so you really have to have a you may not be the best at any one of those but you've got to have this bag of tricks that you can pull out and have a semblance I mean I'm not Robbie Shakespeare in in Dunbar I mean when they say let's do some Reggae but I know enough about reggae where I can [ __ ] a reggae part because the records if it's not being cut there it's not [ __ ] anything yeah but uh but it's it's one of these things that I I that's been the thing I've loved the most about this business for me is the challenge every day of having to face some new challenge when you walk in and and I've also told people like when I do clinics and stuff I said like if you're in a band and you get in the studio and it's not working out we go well let's go get a pizza see a movie we'll come back tomorrow yeah when we go in you can't you don't have that option it's expensive it's maybe that artist's only shot you have to come up with the goods that day and and there's a stress level to that that people don't really understand but everybody that gets called for those is really working at the top of their game so I was talking with uh Tim Pearson who were talking the other day and this idea about taking gigs because the pressure of having to take gigs especially early in your career because you think if you don't take it yeah that someone else is going to come in and be the guy or the girl that that person hires every time after that this goes in the movie business if you don't if you work with a director in the movie business and they hire you for a score it goes well they hire you for another one it goes well and then they hire you for your third one and you have a conflict and you can't do it then they hire someone else and then that person becomes the person they work with yeah talk about that is that that's a real thing because absolutely real thing and and for me this was first off when I started my first my first real legitimate session my career went from nothing to 100 miles an hour like instantly um a little background is I was in a band in the late 60s called Wolfgang and our drummer had a friend named John Fishback who owned a studio called crystal recording studio and he did all of Stevie Wonder's early stuff song in the key of life and that's uh well he had a really dear friend who had just gotten back from England and he's and he used to come and hang out at our rehearsals that friend was James Taylor so he brought James to our rehearsal and we kind of hung out for a day or two there and listened to his songs and he'd listen to us and we hung out um then after that James had just recorded his not his Apple record but his first like James Taylor album and uh up to that point the only time I'd ever been in the studio was to record demos with Wolfgang and that was one day in the studio the next thing I know James is gets booked into play the Troubadour in Los Angeles now they've got Russ konkel on drums and Danny korchmar and guitar and Carol King is the piano player they need a bass player and James calls Peter Asher his manager he says I found my bass player and they tracked me down and asked me if I would play this now they had just finished recording that first album so we got involved in that but the thing that was interesting was I think at that show when at the Troubadour Del Shannon and Brian Hyland were there and the first album I ever got hired for was Brian Hyland uh before James but suddenly we were like in the middles and it was like like guerrilla warfare because none of us had really any experience so we were suddenly went from no calls to being amongst the first call guys because The Wrecking Crew was phasing out at that point um and and I remember in 1967 I was in a band called group therapy and Mike post was our producer and we weren't allowed to play on our record it was The Wrecking Crew it was Hal Blaine and Carol K and you know and Al Casey and all these guys and I'm looking through the window at OSHA at United recorders going I could never do this look at these guys wait so you were watching them I was watching them do our album and three years later I was working with those people every day go back to this watching them do this yeah at the time what was that like it was unbelievable I mean I was going to college and and I'm in this little band and and and suddenly we're in the city and I'm looking through and I didn't really even realize I mean I'm looking at Mike melvine Larry nechtel and and um Mike rubini were the three keyboard players Hal Blaine's playing drums Jim Gordon was the percussionist okay on the Bobby West was playing upright Carol K was playing electric on it um Dennis budamir LKC Mike dacey maybe one other guitar player maybe Tedesco might have been on that and string section Sid Sharps strings and all this stuff and I'm looking at this going not in a million years could I ever do this this is like magic taking place and we're all saying we were allowed to sing on our record but we're all kind of sitting there going I mean we're teenagers at that point and um and it was so it was interesting that then several years later Mike post started to call me and I did all of his TV shows starting with the Rockford files and played on every one of his TV show this whole thing just kind of morphed and became like this perfect storm that came together we started getting calls for everything because James Taylor suddenly was on the cover of Time Magazine yeah the singer-songwriter movement had hit and the I think that the most important thing that's happened in my entire career was Peter Asher wanted our names to appear on the jacket of the album which nobody ever got album credit like that so why did he do that he thought it was the right thing to do Peter I mean for those that don't know Peter was half of Peter and Gordon from the English Invasion days and all that and he was the first a r guy for Apple records and signed James Taylor was the first artist signed to Apple so Peter put that on there and all of a sudden the labels were looking at hiring you know the Jackson Browns the Casey Kelleys all these different singer-songwriters that were now coming out and they would look at James's album and say well if guys are good enough for this guy and then let's hire them so we suddenly went from having no Studio experience to doing three and four sessions a day every day now we came into the situation of touring right and in my heart of hearts if somebody told me you have to make a choice between recording or touring I would take touring anytime I like I'm a band guy I love playing clubs I grew up playing clubs and I like sitting there you don't really are playing you're playing you know nobody but all through the 60s I was in bands we were playing every time we were playing all the fraternity houses at USC and UCLA and playing for Hell's Angel trophy meetings for American Legion Christmas parties you name it I mean that's all the guys I've sometimes was in four and five bands at one time so if I had to make a choice I still like playing live the hard part of this is giving up the rest of your life for those couple of hours on stage and that's the Dilemma that we all face as touring musicians and everybody all the other players will go what are you doing now for summer so well we're hitting the road to go how can you go I mean you're going to lose your gigs and like I thought about that really seriously and and there was a whole bunch of producers we're talking about a long time ago you're talking about yeah this is in the early 70s yeah because you've been playing live for decades yeah I mean I I have other than covid I've been on the road every year since 1970. and when you're not on the road you do Studio sets yes yeah I mean that's the balance in there but the uh the thing that I that I decided to do early was like if I knew a tour was coming up I would contact all the producers who I normally work for and said I'm leaving town and such and such date and I will be back on such and such date and sometimes they would say well we can move the project up or they said we'll wait for you or they would say we really got to get this so This goes back to the thing and I mean is there interrupt but this goes back to the thing about worrying about losing your a gig with somebody that you would work with a producer or something so you would tell them in advance I would let them know and I would call them at least two weeks before the end of the tour and let them know that I'm coming back and there were times where I would go from the airport right to a studio rather than going home because they held up a project for me where other guys I knew never told anybody and their and their calls weren't being returned so they would call somebody else and find them to be more reliable I really look at this as much joy and and funness I have this is a profession and you have to treat it professionally so you respect the people you work with it's like being in the studio and there's so many guys that you cut a track and then they're doing playback and they're sitting on their phone or they're [ __ ] around and I go you're gonna listen to the playback right you know make suggestions of the worst that happens is they go now we're happy with this right now but there's been so many projects where like I'll go in and listen to something and I'll go could you let me try something else on this one do we have enough time and I'd go try a different partner you just made the record kind of a thing because you're engaged you're you're even though I'm only getting paid to do this to me you bring much more to it would musicians go into the control room typically if you're tracking out with with drums if you're playing in a Rhythm Section would you listen on your headphones or would you not be involved in playback at all what I wouldn't go immediately go to the control room I want to hear it through the speakers okay I don't want to be making judgment calls through headphones okay um and sometimes you're just in there just checking it out you know you got nothing to say other than you know you know not high-fiving each other or anything like that but just but the thing I think that's critical is to me like every single thing that my name's ever appeared on I want to be proud of it I want to give it my best so if I hear something and I kind of go I don't know about that or you know you listen back and the artist is happy but the band might go just one more just let's do one more because we know we can bump at that next level where the artists or sometimes the producer doesn't really think that way if you're playing with somebody that's playing acoustic guitar if James Taylor is is recording yeah would he be record an acoustic guitar part while you're playing absolutely because everything we're doing is feeding from that would he be recording his scratch vocal or would he he would just sometimes he he would have do live vocals there's a couple of times I know with Val gray he set up a thing where he had like this thing you know between his mouth and his guitar because he could play guitar without looking at it yeah and we managed to get some great live vocals that way because that's the essence of it it's it's living in that moment yeah um and and like when we would be at sound uh sound Factory or something they had a real good ISO room but we all had good eye contact in there so James would be in there playing but when you went like on a James Taylor record the thing that's driving the whole thing is James right so if if suddenly you know you're not hearing that you don't know forward to play and it that's kind of me the frustrating part of like home recording and all that like people send me stuff and and I'll play it but I don't know what their plans are and I've heard things later and I go if I'd have known they were going to add that I wouldn't have played that part where if we had been in the studio together the nuances could have been worked out how do you navigate around something that has in in a a range guitar Arrangement that has so many moving bass parts that was the hardest I mean in a way starting with James was the best trial by fire it could have gone through rather than a guy that's just sitting in flat picking or something right um James has one of the most unique guitar Styles and every time I'm around anybody from Garth Brooks to Clint Black or these guys they want to play James Taylor's songs because they've worked so hard on that style um it was a challenge with him because I'm kind of going what am I here for it's already got bass covered so on things where that part was really essential it was really worthy of me kind of not necessarily doubling but really honoring that part sure but there were other songs where he had it so covered that it allowed me the melodic freedom to go explore other things on it and it allowed me to develop more of uh like a melodic style I think because it really forced me into that he's got he's there's nobody like James when it comes down to the Artistry of it all but his his playing is like like nobody else people would always ask you know did you guys have charts chords no James would come in sit down play guitar and we would just kind of collect around him and work on things and then go in and nail it you know we wouldn't would he demo a song though no uh never say no for you come on when you do sessions some people must come in and play the song for you oh yeah no that happens all the time okay I mean the thing is anything you can imagine happening happens okay in there because it'll for us it'll go from no charts according sheets some and sometimes a graph paper and they're going here's my mood okay on it Nashville number charts completely written out charts you know notated now I was lucky that I started as a classical pianist when I was five years old so by the time my studio work came to me I was a strong reader because I had had years of piano even though I never expected to have a life in music I always knew I'd play but not a career so when dates started happening when people knew I was a reader then I got called for jingles and TV and movies and all that so it opened up for a lot of the guys that I was coming up with that weren't readers that work wasn't available to them who is an artist that would write their own charts out that you would record with more producers guys like like David Foster yeah I knew I met Foster when he first moved to LA from Canada and I immediately I think we were doing an album with Brian and Brenda Russell and I called everybody I said you gotta hire this sky so and like they would play a song and he'd be writing ron fair is the same way when we were doing Vanessa Carlton's record he's producing at the same time he's writing string charts out for the orchestral dates and his Minds like going like this most artists I know weren't writers like that but but um some of the producers and stuff were really pretty gifted at that they're I love walking in and seeing a complete chart where I go I just have to perform I don't have to think right you know it's laid out for me and but there's like one I would do all the TV shows with Mike post Mike would always just go here's here's the thing because it's got to be done because it's specific Church gunshot here a squealing Tire here you've got to acknowledge all those but he's saying make it your own so on all those shows read every note but make it your own well yeah and but but he would want me to do like glisses and all kinds of stuff in there to bring a little more personality to it rather than just the specific you know cut chart on it and I've always appreciated that when people say look at you know here's the basic idea the problem that we've had in the past number of years now is with the Advent of such good home studios in those early days a demo was like the guys maybe played guitar now they come in they've spent six months demoing their stuff yeah they come in with a completely finished thing and they want you to make it better and you're going there you've already got it I mean what the hell are we doing here right it's really it's a little weird and we always just call it demoitis you know they've gotten you know they say well make it you know every Nuance of it they've listened to it a million times like anything you change they don't like yeah they go that's nice but I kind of like what I had you know next thing you know you're just you know crawling through this this mosh pit that they've created Lee talk about the thing we were talking about with your fingers and developing your style because of that can you talk about that yeah um I've had issues with my left hand I had some tendon injuries and stuff as a kid so these two fingers really don't have a lot of dexterity I mean I watch some people so most of my playing and this isn't um has has been based on these so when I play a lot of times um where if I really had Mobility here I could be doing a line that gets me here but rather than that working I'll go from this and I'll slide up into the next thing that's your style and it became in my inadequacy became my signature in in a way because people like like Mike post even said one time he said nobody glistens like you and um and it's really was nothing intentional other than a certain limitation in my physical ability if I have to do it I mean when like you know when I did like Spectrum with Cobham and stuff I mean there's like all this linear stuff but for the most part I find it a more expressive way of playing and I hear a lot of bass parts that are very technically very clinical they're very very very precise and I just I feel that this makes for a little more Schmutz and Greece when a bass part has nothing has nose slides or glistens or things like that they don't to me they don't even sound it's cold yeah yeah it's it feels analytical yes to me so I kind of like just being all over the place and uh and if it's right it's right and if it's not then I just point to the drummer okay so give me some funny stories about working with producers you don't have to name the producers where they'll say hey can you play something else and then you play the same thing but oh how often does that happen well I mean not all the time but that's also where my my producer switch came from I was doing a movie at Universal Studios used to have a really great Studio on the on the universal lot and we did tons of TV and movies on that and I was on a a session there and I'm sitting here and right next to me is Tommy Tedesco and there's baffles set up about this size so we all look like Kilroy this is about all you're seeing and it was a pretty good sized Orchestra so across the room the the guy who was conducting the things they were looking they were curious for a different thing and they go Tommy could you play a got a mandolin and so telling me like yeah foreign and Tommy just you know grabbing different things like this and I'm sitting here crapping my pants laughing because all he had was his acoustic guitar so he would just keep going like this instead of but he was so good he would play in all these different positions until they finally heard what they wanted so when that session ended I looked over at him I said Tommy I just learned more in five minutes how this business works then I've all through school would he laughed oh no Tommy was the greatest person in the world the funniest guy you had ever wanted me the most brilliant musician so I immediately went home and took my base and I drilled a hole in it and put a switchcraft toggle switch on it had no wires or anything like that so when a guy would say yeah can you make it Shimmer you know some I mean if a guy really asked me a technical question I knew he knew it he had ears and we could all fall prey to this if so but I would like make sure they saw me flip the switch and then I would move my hand and they go man that's great and just say but time seeing me it's like so many of the studios also have like that producer yeah you know module on there so that they can be involved in it but this doesn't do anything right you know but they're hearing it because they're moving it so um it's the craziest business in the world but pretty I always would tell people that's you know they say what's your definition of a great producer and I'm kind of going okay well I'm not going to be talking about George Martin or anybody like yeah and I said well maybe he he's quiet and then he can see the bands hungry so he orders lunch and puts his plastic down that's that's a good producer right that's good now let us get back to work yeah I mean they're all funny I mean oh yeah and some of them they have different different talents some producers have really no skills in the studio but they know songs okay and they put together the right songs they they know the right person to put together the right band for it because there are some producers that I've worked with over decades that I still have no idea if they know what's going on in the studio but they've made great records wow you know so they've had they have a great engineer that that whatever this kind of mumbo jumbo that they're spewing up this guy knows what it's supposed to be and then you listen to the record and I've worked on things that I thought this is kind of huge this is so good never gets released and other stuff that you think God really and it's a number one record so you know you just you take every day for what it is it's a it's a constant Adventure every day and that's the thing that keeps it exciting to me that you just don't know what tomorrow holds so you want to be there for tomorrow I want I want to talk about the roles of the producer the engineers and how those things have changed historically most many of them wouldn't even know much about the recording process and they would really rely on the engineers for the sounds yeah and would there be Engineers that were really The Producers kind of getting back to what you were talking about that actually were the people yeah that were making the record sound like well in in the early days back back you know when they were still recording on stone tablets right sorry I remember that day they invented dirt you know a lot of times that was real defined there was a producer there and an engineer and the contractor and and the band that was doing it but as years went on and especially as budgets changed yeah all of a sudden you had guys were trying to hold on to a little more of the pie so you ended up with Engineers that were becoming producers but they were still engineering and then they had their friends there that they would hire that could help mold this stuff so it's kind of morphed into a different animal is this where the studio musicians goes all the you know I've interviewed a lot of session guys right uh so is this where the studio musicians I mean Luke talks about this that they're the ones that are creating the arrangements yes and no once again once again it's different with everyone right it's well not only everyone but it's all predicated on the song okay the the song is where everything emanates from and you can work on a whole album and there can be an incredible variety of songs in there and each one has to be treated as an individual you don't come in with this blanket texture for the whole album um so the players many times like there can be a structure that's already been laid out for the song but the players will sit and go this could really use a better an intro or a better intro or it could it's a bridge what do we do and the and the band will come up with these things and because it's amazing how so how many songs are so skeletal when the band arrives and you leave with this incredible arrangement and it was nobody but the band right that did that and that's the nature of what as a studio player you do you're not just hired to sit there with your bass and play these notes you're listening to everybody's parts and coming up with this and you're listening to the song to think what could this use and a lot of times we'll cut it once and go we all go Gather in the control room and then at that point we discuss it and go you know this is good but it really needs you know or even to the point where you look at the Artisan you go you want to try this down a half step because it seems like you're at the top of your range and it might be a nicer you would suggest yeah I would throw it out there okay and they might you know say you know yeah we're good here or they'd say well let's try it because if you got guys that are really good they can transpose on the spots yeah I know we're not only talking about the musicians oh I'll tell you a great moment like that we were on Phil Collins's um it must have been on the um first final farewell tour back around 2004. and he had just I think it was Tarzan had just come out and he had done the music for Tarzan yep and uh we did The View now you do those shows and that's a crack of dawn I mean most people watch these shows and they go I mean when you're doing the Today Show and stuff you're down there at 5 00 a.m and stuff it's really so well it was Chester and Daryl and Brad Cole and myself with Phil and we were going to do a song from Tarzan and um krakadon and Phil goes I'm really the middle of the tour he's gone man I'm really suffering a little bit today um could you guys take this down a whole step for me and so we I mean this is five minutes before show time sure so we like Gather in the corner we're like working on this and it was a conflict it wasn't just a pop too this was like a score to the thing and we do it and it came off perfectly and when the thing's over he looked at us and he said if this had been Genesis we'd had to go into rehearsal for a month that's those guys that they don't think like this sure you know they they come up I mean Tony Banks could have probably hit a transpose thing on the keyboard or something but Rutherford would I mean they're brilliant at what they do sure but that their position is defined and we're like we're the guys there that are like I always tell people I said everything I do is etched in mud you know because you got to be ready for anything you just don't know what's going to happen and uh and that to me is the exhilarating part of this job is that just you know just you know grab your bootstraps and hanging by your cuticles on the precipice every day and some days you walk out and you go sucked I just hate it you know because you're not happy with your performance now they're you're not going to say to them I'm sorry I suck today because they're sitting there going I love what you played right but you know your own you know thing that what you can do and can't do um and I mean you can edit all this crap out when you that's the beauty of what you do is compared to my videos which are like one shot I got hired to do an album for a guy uh named Steve kowalczyk this was just kind of before Harry Connick but this guy's a great singer piano player and that's kind of jazz vain yeah um and almond erdogan was going to produce it okay and so we go in the studio uh and uh and ahmedical said really like upright on this and I go man I'm sorry but I mean I started on upright but I went so many years where nobody ever gave an upright call so I'm not a doubler on this stuff I just I when the time would come I'd say call you know so and so they'd eat this stuff for breakfast but I said I have a Washburn ab45 base that I hated I just it was big acoustic Bass and then I pulled the Frets out and it and it said Thank you and came to life and it's an incredible base and I've got black nylon strings on it so it sounds great I said let's try this and see and as soon as he heard him great it's it sounds uprighty but it's different enough for this so yeah so so we cut everything but there were two tracks left and um I just this really should be upright on this so I said is it in John patatu she still lived in La at that point so let me call John have him come down I said my clock's off but I want to hang out and John was available so he came and did these two tracks and it was really great um then we got to uh I was playing with Judith Owen in Boston and uh Steve Bailey and Victor Wooten came to the show and they said what are you doing tomorrow I said well we're going to New York we got a day off they said can you stick around we could set up a master class at Berkeley for you tomorrow I said yeah sure I guess so I go in there's like 200 people in this room and I'm totally ill prepared I haven't done any and I'm going oh [ __ ] so I I tell the story about what I think is the most critical thing about a project is the project it's not your ego if you're not the right cat for the thing Jeff used to do that old picari sale time he said no call Keltner no keltner's you know he's the perfect guy for so I'm telling this whole story and then I say are there any questions and this guy in the back raises his hand and they go yeah what what is it he goes that was my album and it was the guy Steve Santo Steve kowalczyk and he's now goes by Steve Santoro and uh it was just so funny that's amazing and he was teaching at Berkeley at that point so I mean it's just it's just this whole business to me it's like every day you don't know what the hell you're getting into and you just kind of go in and it was kind of like one of my mantras I was always like suck please don't suck you know when you're going I was talking to somebody the other yesterday about it too I did a project for a girl from South Africa but she lived in Austria and it was 12 songs I was going to be playing on all 12 and there were three different drummers that were going to play on it it was Thomas Lang Simon Phillips and Charlie Watts okay and Charlie's we were all sitting in the studio and Charlie goes I'm happy to do this if I can be first because he didn't want to follow either of those guys right and uh I filmed him in there playing and stuff and he was the best hang but he spent the whole week there he just hung out every day wanted to hear everybody's playing so he was the best cat and at one point when he they were changing his drum heads and I said he please sign a drone so he writes dearly blah blah blah blah whatever he writes Charlie Watson Hanson then he grabs it back and he goes he writes Rolling Stones he said just in case you forget Charlie I don't think I'm going to forget this Mo and and as much as I love playing with those other guys what a joy it was I mean I've gotten to play with Charlie Watts in Ringo no you know it's like done that's it yeah that's a career right there there's those moments that happen where you kind of go if this was the last moment in my career it's it's really good we used to do these there was two DJs in La Mark and Brian and we would do their Christmas show every year which was the craziest thing you imaginable and it would be we'd be at the Hollywood Palladium at like 5 a.m you know we had a like it would be like Keltner or Jeff we'd have Tower Power horns we have like this amazing band and they'd bring in all these people and on this one show I got to do white Christmas with Donald O'Connor and the Christmas song with Mel Torme and went in the dressing room and they were both sitting there I said if I die on the way home it's okay it's you know there are those kind of moments where you those pinch yourself like I did two albums with Andy Griffith wow and I'm sitting in the studio with Andy and I'm just going wow you're trying to be cool but you're fanboying yourself into it and the funniest thing out of that was who it was after Matlock and all that stuff and he ended up winning a Grammy for uh gospel album of the year for what we did thing is he's sitting there and he goes it's got this gorgeous white hair and he says who would have thought I'd still have all this white hair and opie'd be bald it was where we all snot running out of your nose and you're dying and laughing so hard and he was you know and then suddenly I get home you know after that I get home like once a week and my message lightly beeping and I'd pick it up and go Haley Andy here down in North Carolina just checking in see how you're doing wow and you just kind of go it was worth everything just for that you know I mean those little nuggets in your life that are really you know precious I want to talk about all these great drummers that you've played with um you mentioned Jeff picaro let's talk about Jeff there are so many great drummers in Los Angeles and all of them have a unique quality about them Jeff embodied all of them in one guy I probably I can I probably did several hundred albums with Jeff over that brief life that he had yeah every time I'd walk in the studio and I'd see his case sitting there I'd go and I've got date books that go back and all it says is Jeff on the date if I knew he was the drummer I didn't care who the artist was or anything it was I loved Jeff he was a dear dear friend but also just the energy that this guy brought I mean his Vitality when he'd be standing there listening to a playback he was like a whirling dervish his body was in motion all the time I treasure everything I got to do with him but there were so many like Carlos Vega um Ed green the funniest thing with Ed green was when I was studying piano he and I were talking one day and about our upbringings and I said yeah I was a studied piano I said I went through a bunch of teachers finally into it up with a great teacher but I was too far gone at that point her name was Debbie green and he goes That's my mom oh my gosh and probably when I was 12 years old he was probably in the house where I was in the garage taking my piano lessons and years later there we are working together um but the keltner's I spent so much time with Jim Gordon back in the day um and then you know one of the greatest blessings was spending so many years with Phil Collins you know that's the thing that talk about how great of a drummer the thing is if if you were walking down the street and met Phil Collins he didn't know who he was or anything and you got into a conversation and you said so what do you do he would go I'm a drummer nut singer not writer not anything else he felt that his calling was as a drummer then his pocket was so deep and people go it's a simple stuff go Listen to Brand X and check out I mean the guy amazing serious seriously gifted drummer yes um but there are are there I think you know when I've talked to people in the past I almost felt that one of my greatest gifts in this business has been the the drummers I've gotten to play with and every time I turn around you find somebody new there's a guy named Victor in drizzle I love I love Bissonnet I love Jr all these guys and and the thing that's fascinating to me is is it requires you to be very malleable because each guy's got his own thing where he lays that kick where he lays that snare and each one of those things has nuances that you have to suddenly after you know especially a new Drummer who I've never worked with um a perfect example of this was in 93 I was uh Michael frondelli who ran Capital Records call me I was up in again up in the Bay Area working and he said I've got a band that I'm going to be producing and we need a bass player for the project it's called Barefoot servants and it was John Butcher and Ben Schultz and the Strummer Ray Brinker who I had never heard of okay and so I I he said I'll send you a demo and he sent me a demo I listened to like three notes called him said I'm in on this thing and the the first time we did we rehearsed for a couple of days and we cut the um basically we caught the album live it's like pretty much one or two takes of everything and uh after the first song I just went over and hugged Ray I said I want to have your baby I mean this guy's so good he's so great and we had so much fun together on the road and so I love when I get to discover somebody new that comes along I I've been doing stuff with scary Pockets but those guys send this guy temir and he we did a couple of things together and man just sat down this guy's playing I'm just going yes you know it's just a joyous thing to discover new players as much as I love all the guys I mean I've been playing with Russ Kunkel now for 53 years yeah and I'm still sitting on stage right now with him and we've got a band and we're you know we're working but every time a new cat walks in the room it does I'm not giving up anything old but I'm exposed to somebody new and uh man it's it's good it's exhilarating it's because it keeps keeps you fresh yeah you know you don't I the the one thing I've never wanted to like fall into like you know a kind of a blase routine you know I like walking in kind of thinking I'm the weakest guy in this room man I really got to bring my a game you know you really want to you know give everything you've got when you walk in there and the date might not demand that but that's the attitude you bring with you because this is what I do you know you want to be proud every time you leave work you just kind of go this is a great day we got to make music don't get better than that does not get better than that yeah Lee it's been so great having you here thrilled to be here I I really appreciate you uh you know and our friendship and um you too and it's so so good to see you uh see you and yours is beautiful thank you we're gonna go out and weed with you in the yard perfect thanks man that's absolute pleasure appreciate it

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 495,803

Keywords: rick beato, everything music, rick, beato, music, music theory, music production, education, leland sklar, leland sklar bass, phil collins, james taylor, steve lukather, jeff porcaro, studio musicians, lee sklar, bass player

Id: 9XmN5T8jRvU

Length: 53min 29sec (3209 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 15 2023