Jerry Boys Interview: The Havana Sessions

Transcription

1 Jerry Boys Interview: The Havana Sessions Mike Collins talks with Jerry Boys about the recording of a series of critically-acclaimed albums for World Circuit Records over in Cuba last year - Actually, Mike mostly shuts up and listens while the engineering 'guru' speaks! Three critically-acclaimed albums recorded in Havana, Cuba during 1996 were released by World Circuit records earlier this year - the Afro-Cuban All Stars on April 1st, followed by the Rubén Gonzalez album on May 12th, then the Ry Cooder-produced "Buena Vista Social Club" album on June 23rd. Rave reviews of the albums followed in The Guardian, The Times, Sunday Times, Time Out, The Observer, Independent On Sunday, the Sunday Telegraph, Q and Mojo. The Afro-Cuban All Stars is a 13-piece band comprising four generations of Cuba's finest musicians and their album 'A Toda Cuba le Gusta' features 10 songs in a variety of latin styles. Ry Cooder makes a guest appearance on this album as well as playing on and producing the "Buena Vista" album which also features 89 yearold guitarist and vocalist Compay Segundo and 70 year-old vocalist Ibrahim Ferrer. To accompany the singers and musicians on these albums, a legendary Cuban pianist, the 78 year-old Rubén Gonzalez, was invited out of retirement. Ry Cooder was amazed at Rubén's playing, declaring him to be "...the greatest piano soloist I have ever heard in my life. He's like a Cuban cross between Thelonious Monk and Felix the Cat". Producer Nick Gold quickly spotted an opportunity and invited Rubén to record a solo album "Introducing... Rubén Gonzalez" which, for me, in many ways turned out to be the best of the three! The Buena Vista Social Club album entered the UK charts at 44 and has sold about 150,000 throughout Europe since, rising to number 10 in the charts in Holland, for instance. The other two albums have done relatively well - each selling maybe 30,000 copies or so in Europe. Now before you get the idea that these albums might be full of tired old geezers playing cocktail music from the hotel bars of Havana, let me put you straight. I heard "Cumbanchero" from the Rubén Gonzalez album on Jazz FM recently and immediately drove all over London looking to buy a copy of the album just for this one track! Rubén Gonzalez is one of the most refreshing pianists I have heard in a long time and he breathes new life into these recordings of Cuban standards by improvising in an incredibly natural, innocent-sounding and un-selfconscious way. Almost unbelievably, despite the fact that he no longer has a piano at home to practice on and despite suffering from arthritis, he sounds as strong as a 25-year-old when it comes to his piano 'chops'. His presence is felt heavily throughout the other two albums as well, with Ry Cooder's contribution, good as it is, serving merely as a little extra 'icing on the cake' for those who like blues guitar. Once I had got over the shock of how good the music was, I realized that the sound of the recordings was pretty special as well. Then, when I got to reading the credits on the albums, I spotted that the recording engineer was none other than the owner of Livingston recording studios - Jerry Boys. I have been acquainted with Jerry since the early 1980's when he first started working at the studios in Wood Green and I live just a couple of

2 streets away - so I just had to invite him round to tell me how he went about the recordings. A few prompts were all that was needed to get Jerry to open up, and I started him off by asking how come he got to go to Cuba in the first place. "I went first of all two years ago for Joe Boyd and we recorded an album called Cubanissimo by a trumpet player called Jesus Allemany. This turned out quite successfully, particularly in the US, and Joe's company, Rykodisk, had licensed an album called 'Talking Timbuktu' by Ry Cooder and Ali Farka Toure from an English world music label called World Circuit. The next in this series of records with Ry Cooder was going to be a collaboration between Ry Cooder and various Cubans to be recorded in Cuba. When World Circuit mentioned this to Rykodisk, Joe Boyd suggested they took me with them to handle the engineering. Initially it was going to be just the one album, but before we left, Nick Gold who runs World Circuit decided that we would record a second big band album with the Afro-Cuban All- Stars. The piano-player on these two albums was this 78 year old virtuoso called Ruben Gonzalez and we decided that as we had two days left at the end of our trip with nothing to do, we would make an album with him - which we did! So in the space of two and a half weeks we recorded three albums - and that's how come I went to Cuba!" I was curious about the studio, wondering how this would compare with London studios. "Egrem is the main studio in Havana and has two studios along with a couple of mastering rooms. Studio 2 is possibly the deadest room I have ever been in - it is amazing that the sound even gets from the instrument to the microphone. Personally speaking I would prefer to record out in the street rather than in that studio - it would be 'liver'! Fortunately, Studio 1 is a different kettle of fish altogether. This is a large wooden-floored, wooden-panelled room with slots in the panels and some absorption material behind, rectangular in shape, with about a foot ceiling. It is a little bigger than Abbey Road Studio 2, about 10 feet longer and about the same 40 foot width and height. It was built in the mid- 50's, we believe by RCA, and was used for big-band style recordings by Nat King Cole and Cab Calloway amongst others. At some point in the past, some clever person put clear shiny varnish on the wooden panels on the walls with the end result that the room has a reverb time that is doubled at frequencies above 1 khz. Instruments like pianos, basses and congas are adequately controlled and have a nice wooden room sound to them. However, anything that is predominantly mid to high frequency (which in Cuba is almost anything, but in particular, brass, trumpets and cowbells) runs around the studio at a ferocious rate, getting into every open microphone and making the instruments sound as if they are going through a Lexicon on full-bandwidth. This makes for an interesting experience when one is recording a 15-piece band live without the benefit of screens. However, the studio imparted a unique sound to the recordings that seemed to suit Cuban music - while testing my abilities as an engineer to the full! The control room is a rectangle measuring approximately 40 foot wide and maybe 20 feet deep, but only 12 feet high. The acoustic treatment is identical to the studio with slotted wood-panelled walls and ceiling, but with 20-year-old lino on the

3 floor. It has two wall-mounted air-conditioning units - which make for a high ambient noise level! The console was an Amek Mozart RN which sounded great - but just don't try operating it when you are drunk!" I pressed for an explanation here, but Jerry would not really be drawn much further. "Because this console is the epitome of Amek's old approach to ergonomics! That's all I am prepared to say on the subject - as I am the proud owner of an Amek Rembrandt console which fortunately doesn't suffer from the same ergonomic shortcomings as the Mozart! Anyway, the studio has a Studer A80 Mk IV with Dolby SR, which is pretty decent, while the big monitors are some large Westlakes - which are best not mentioned at all. Luckily, there was also a pair of small Westlake nearfields in the room - which sounded fine." I was curious about which tape was used, realizing that there could be difficulties getting supplies in Cuba. "We had to use Ampex 456 as they are unable to obtain Ampex 499 because of the American trade embargo, and they wouldn't allow us to bring in 499 because they had read stories about the early problems of slippage and shedding with 499. We ran the tape at 15 ips with Dolby SR, which is not my preferred choice. I like 30 ips no Dolby, but it is amazing how the thought of having to carry the tapes back concentrates the mind - and particularly in a country where there are no luggage trolleys, couriers, or other helpful assistance." If tape was something of a problem, then my next thought was 'what about outboard'. "MMMmmmmm!!!! There were generally 4 or 5 pieces of outboard equipment available - of which only two would you want to use! There were no decent outboard compressors, which posed a continual problem. We took a couple of dbx 160x units with us, because they are light to carry and sound quite good on most things. Mainly I left compression till the mixing stage. They did have an Eventide H4000, which was amazing to see, but I never used this. There was also a Lexicon 300, with which I managed to create a setting that very closely mimicked the sound of the big studio at Egrem. Sometimes because of the need for separation we would have to record a musician in one of the booths. These sounded pretty horrible and boxy, so I needed a reverb program to make them sound as if they were recorded in the big room. Occasionally we would do an overdub and need to match a sound to the live take, so it came in handy here. Also, we would sometimes need to do overdubs in London or LA and, again, make these sound as if they were recorded in Havana. This was particularly useful on the Buena Vista Social Club album on which I used the Egrem room ambience a lot." At this juncture the conversation turned to the subject of overdubs which I particularly wanted to ask about - as everything on the albums sounded pretty much 'live' to me. "Overdubs varied from record to record. In the case of Afro Cuban All Stars, the Rhythm section was recorded first, then the brass was overdubbed, and finally the backing and lead vocals and solos were added. On Buena Vista, on the other hand, just about everything was 'live' - including most of the vocals. There were a few guest instrumentalists' parts overdubbed in Havana and Ry Cooder overdubbed all his electric guitars in LA at Oceanway. On the Rubén Gonzalez album, I can only actually remember there being one overdub." Faced with the limitations in Egrem studios I was amazed that Boys had managed to achieve such stunning results - so I asked him to go into some more detail about

4 how the recordings were made. "Well, I brought some extra microphones and stands with me - and the pair of dbx compressors I already mentioned. The first album, the All Stars, was recorded in a pretty conventional manner with rhythm section first, then brass, then voices, then bits and pieces. And I placed my microphones pretty much as I would have done in England, except that I probably placed them just a little further away, so that a bit more of the room was in evidence. This album was brought back to England in a finished state and mixed at Livingston in Studio 1 on the SSL. We chose the SSL for mixing because we wanted this album to sound a bit punchier and poppier which I think the SSL is very good at. The album was recorded in 4 days and mixed in 5. The biggest problem with this record was that all Cuban musicians play at maximum volume and maximum intensity. This obviously has its advantages, but even when they play quietly they make a very bright sound! From a recording point of view, I was always trying to stop it sounding too hard and thin. For instance, whereas in England I would probably use U87s on the brass, in Cuba I always used TLM 170s, except on the saxaphones - where I stuck with U87s. I chose TLM 170s because they give a warmer more open sound and they seem very good at handling loud edgy trumpets. Cuban brass players at full bore make the average rock guitarist seem quiet! The second album we recorded was the Buena Vista Social Club. When Ry arrived, we had a discussion about how he wanted me to record it and he made it clear that he wanted to hear the room - and that there was going to be little or no overdubbing. Also, he wasn't going to allow the musicians to wear headphones and that he would get them to play as far as possible at a volume that gave a balance in the studio. So my task was to capture the sound of all this in the room - rather like with a classical music session, which I haven't done since 1969! A typical lineup was three musicians playing acoustic guitars of which two would also be singing, acoustic bass, piano, three to five percussionists, not including congas or timbales, plus anything up to four additional singers and a trumpet player. Fortunately, the trumpeter always played with a mute! They all sat round in a semi-circle around the piano with Ry playing acoustic guitar and organising everything - sitting in the middle. The way I went about this was, first of all, to get a pair of ambient mics that gave me a sound that was as near as possible to the sound you would hear standing in the studio. After much ado I used two TLM 170s (at this point all classical engineers should stop reading) set to omni put as high up as I could get them on two boom stands, and positioned in the two corners of the room looking out into the studio at the piano and group of musicians. I took some trouble to try and make sure that the bass player was equidistant from the two mics so that the ambient bass image would be approximately in the centre. I then close-miked everything, but placing the microphones a little further away than I would for a typical pop recording. The musicians all moved a lot whilst playing, and this microphone placement minimised the problem of picking them up properly. The sound was all built around the two ambient mics and the close mics were just used to give some definition - although in the case of the vocals, most of the sound was from these. I used my magic Lexicon 300 program to blend the close and ambient sounds together. I generally avoided the use of EQ or compression, although a little was

5 needed here and there. Every song had a different lineup, so each time we started to record a new song we had to re-mike most things. I could go on to tell you how I spent most of my time standing up (mind you the chair that was provided was only slightly more comfortable than standing up) and watching Ry for a subtle cue to start recording - so that the musicians didn't know when we were recording - because if they did, they would spend 10 minutes tuning and lose the vibe! Or that most of the time there was a party going on around the mixing console - which made critical listening somewhat of a problem! But I learnt how to cope with all this pretty quickly! Friends, wives, girlfriends, studio people - anyone would just wander in and stand around talking and listening - generally having a good time. It was very exciting." This all sounded like total anarchy to me, but that's probably just what was needed to get such great recordings down onto tape! Now mixing, on the other hand, almost certainly requires a more disciplined approach. As it turns out, there was quite a story to be told about the mixing of the albums, and Jerry stayed much later than planned to finish his tale. "At the end of the sessions, I ran off some very rough mixes which Ry took back to America so that he could work out his electric guitar overdubs. The plan was that he would overdub and mix with his usual engineer at Oceanway in LA. He went back to America and I went back to England. I returned to Cuba a week later with Joe Boyd to record the second Jesus Allemany album and an album with Alfredo Rodriguez - the piano player. When I got back home after this trip, I phoned Nick Gold at World Circuit to see how the mixing for the Buena Vista album had gone and he said that as far he knew it was fine, but he was waiting for a tape from America. About a week later I got a call from Nick to say that Ry had phoned him and told him that he thought the American mixes "didn't cut the mustard" and that he wanted to use the rough mixes I had done in Havana. I told Nick I was very flattered, but pointed out that at least half of the rough mixes were totally unuseable because of major omissions. Eventually, a copy of the mixes from America arrived and I agreed with Ry that they were completely missing the point. I then spoke to Ry on the phone, but despite this conversation, couldn't really figure out where the problem was without being able to get my hands on the multitracks. Finally, it was agreed that I would go out to LA with Nick Gold and mix the album with Ry. We started off in a medium-sized studio with a Calrec console, and spent the first couple of days doing some extra overdubs with Ry. When we came to mix, we set up a balance and then compared it to the rough mixes from Havana. No matter what we did, it never quite had the same air or depth to the ambience that the rough mixes from Havana had - although we got a lot closer than the original LA mixes did. After a couple of frustrating days, in which we tried to convince ourselves that everything was fine, even though we were only managing one mix a day, I turned round to Ry and Nick and said 'look, none of us are happy with what this is sounding like', to which they nodded their heads in agreement. 'I think the only answer is to find a studio in LA that has an Amek Mozart with Rupert Neve modules in it.' At this point, I should tell you that I always hated people like

6 me who thought that little things like a different console made a difference... but it did seem to me that that was the missing ingredient! So we phoned around and eventually found a studio called The Bakery with an Amek Mozart. This was primarily a video post-production studio and only had three and a half days available over the next five. We took a multitrack over there to try it out, and I spent 5 minutes getting a rough mix together and then compared it to the dreaded rough mix we were trying to match - and bugger me if it didn't sound the same! What a relief! So we mixed the whole album in three and a half days and I returned to England a happy man! When we were mixing, we did not use much in the way of EQ or compression, as we were frightened of losing the essential quality that we had just fought so hard to achieve again. I listened to the mixes back in England in great detail, and I felt that there was still more to be got from them with a bit of judicious EQ and compression, particularly on the more uptempo numbers. So I went into Livingston 2 on the Amek Rembrandt, and compared a straight mix on that console with these rough mixes from Havana. It became evident that this Amek console could also deliver the air and depth we so valued. So, I ran off four mixes of the songs I felt needed the most attention and incorporated my personal ideas of how to apply EQ and compression. For example, I compressed the bass closemic and put a high-pass filter on the ambience to try and tighten up the bottom end a little. My new mixes were greeted pretty enthusiastically, and I was encouraged to mix some more songs. A few weeks after this, Ry came over to England and we had a big playback session. By and large, for the softer songs we chose the American mixes, which we did together, and for the more uptempo songs we went with the Livingston mixes. However, as always, a few of the Livingston mixes that we wanted to use were nearly right - but not quite. So Ry came into Livingston with me and we recalled these and corrected them as necessary. So finally, the mixing for the album was about a 50/50 split between the tracks done at the Bakery and those mixed at Livingston, with one song, Veinte Amos, making it from the rough mixes in Havana. By the way, all the mixing, except for this song, was done to 1/2 " analog, 30 ips no Dolby on a classic Ampex ATR. Then there was a whole saga to the mastering of this album. We tried various places in London and one place in LA before finally I was flown out to LA to supervise a final attempt there. We went to Ray at Whitfield Street first, but Ry felt this lost something. Ry then took it to Bernie Grundman over in the states and his version had a nice openness. However, I still felt there were things wrong with this and that it lacked impact, so I went over to supervise a second attempt by Bernie. There were various other attempts by me and by Ry, but eventually Bernie Grundman finished the job off on the lines of the version I worked on with him. I had never realized how much you can lose in the conversion to digital until I did this album! Generally speaking, no compression was applied, and the small amount of EQ was done in the analogue domain before A/D conversion. The third album was the Rubén Gonzalez. Rubén is an amazing piano player who in his youth was pretty famous in Cuba. We came across him because he was brought in to play on the Afro-Cuban All Stars album. He then stayed to play on the Buena Vista album. Nick Gold kept saying "I really think I ought to make an

7 album with this man". Eventually, the two days we had at the end of our trip which we were going to spend as tourists we gave up and went into the big studio at Egrem and recorded an album with Rubén. Again, almost everything on this record is live, in fact I think the only overdub is one trumpet solo. It was recorded using a version of the setup for the Buena Vista album - the main difference was that the ambient mics were only about two thirds the distance from the piano and that there was a timbale player involved - who we had to put in a booth because he was so bloody loud! These tapes were brought back to England and mixed after I finished the Buena Vista album - so I knew to do this on the Amek Rembrandt in Livingston 2 to preserve the same ambient sound quality! Nick and I actually tried mixing the album in the SSL room just to see how this would work out, and we did use two or three of these mixes, but then we went back to the Rembrandt for our third shot at getting the perfect mixes. Between the three mix sessions we found what we were looking for." To wrap up the interview I asked Jerry to say which album he liked best. "I find it hard to be objective about the Buena Vista album as I spent so much time on it, and I think I would like that the best if I had fresh ears. As it is, I enjoy listening to the Rubén Gonzalez album the most. This is almost lounge music - although it is not! But that is not to say that I don't enjoy the Afro-Cuban All Stars also - I just prefer the other two personally." Mike Collins 1997