{"id":12696,"date":"2017-05-12T05:30:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T09:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=12696"},"modified":"2017-05-11T08:01:36","modified_gmt":"2017-05-11T12:01:36","slug":"an-american-in-london-the-shel-talmy-interview-part-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2017\/05\/12\/an-american-in-london-the-shel-talmy-interview-part-three\/","title":{"rendered":"An American in London: The Shel Talmy Interview, Part Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

Over the course of his career, Talmy worked with other highly regarded artists; most but not all of these were UK acts. His production credits include sides \u2013 and, more often than not, entire albums \u2013 by such well-known artists as Chad and Jeremy, Small Faces, Amen Corner, Pentangle, Bert Jansch and Nicky Hopkins. Talmy also produced lesser-known recordings by American acts Goldie and the Gingerbreads, Lee Hazlewood, Coven and the Blues Project. In 1989 he produced In Heat<\/i> for garage rock heroes The Fuzztones.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In 2014 Talmy heard some self-produced demos by London-based quartet Hidden Charms; even those rough recordings displayed the group’s unabashed love for the sounds of The Kinks and The Who. Talmy reached out to the group and subsequently organized a Los Angeles session during which 10 songs were put down. \u201cDreaming of Another Girl\u201d b\/w \u201cLong Way Down\u201d was released in July 2015. The band’s co-manager Craig Tarry died in a traffic collision in Sweden in early 2016. \u201cThat really set them back,\u201d Talmy says, \u201cbut they’re recovering now. Very, very good band.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a reputation as a no-nonsense producer \u2013 one who can smell a hit \u2013 Talmy long ago developed his own approach to working in the studio. \u201cI have always been quoted as saying \u2013 because I have said it interminably \u2013 that a lousy band with a great song will have a hit, but the reverse to that is not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even in the early 1960s, Talmy was known as a hands-on producer. He explains what that means: \u201cI was there from inception. I found the band, I signed the band, I rehearsed the band. I chose material, did the arrangements, did the recording, did the overdubs, did the mixes. I was really involved through the entire process,\u201d he says. Time costs money, but for Talmy it goes beyond that. \u201cThere’s other things I’d rather do in a studio than sit around and wait while people are having a good time and whatever the hell they’re doing,\u201d he says. \u201cThe studio, for me, is a place to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talmy has always chosen which studio to use based on how well it’s maintained, and how good it sounds. \u201cI decided early on that I couldn’t do both producing and engineering at the same time,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause they’re two entirely separate jobs, and take two entirely different thought processes.\u201d And though he handled both production and engineering duties on recordings by The Who and The Kinks, in general, he sought out engineers who he says were \u201creally good guys who I didn’t have to explain things to. That left me the ability to try to get the best possible record I could get.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while it might seem surprising coming from a man who came up in the age of analog tape, Talmy is an enthusiastic user of modern digital recording techniques. \u201cI love all the technological stuff,\u201d he says. \u201cI’m a big fan of ProTools; there’s virtually no [sound] difference between analog and digital.\u201d Still, his analog gear hasn’t been retired. \u201cI still like using it in the mix,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\"\"Alongside his production work, Talmy has engaged in other creative pursuits. In the late 1970s he began a career as a novelist. His first fiction work was Whadda We Do Now, Butch?,<\/i> his imagining of the further adventures of legendary American antiheroes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. \u201cAs far as I was concerned \u2013 and I actually researched it \u2013 there’s no way that they died in Bolivia,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I wrote this thing.\u201d Hollywood has come calling no less than four times, but a film has never been made. \u201cI’ve made a ton of money out of the options,\u201d he says with a hearty laugh. \u201cThey all kept saying they’re going to make the film. I said, ‘Great, please make it!’\u201d<\/p>\n

Talmy didn’t have to dream up all of his ideas for a book about crime and adventure; he has some first-hand experience with gangsters. \u201cSomehow or other, when I got to London, I got semi-involved with every goddamn crook in the music business that ever was! And not by choice.\u201d He recalls one particularly memorable run-in with notorious impresario Don Arden, a man he succinctly describes as \u201cone of the biggest assholes of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Welsh band Amen Corner had worked in the studio with Talmy on their biggest single, \u201c(If Paradise Is) Half as Nice.\u201d As Talmy recalls the story, Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham was in the process of selling the band’s management contract to Arden. \u201cAnd for some reason Arden got it into his head that I was putting a spanner in the works,\u201d Talmy says. Over the phone, Arden \u201claunched into a tirade about what I’d been doing, how I was interfering and what he was going to do to various parts of my body,\u201d Talmy says, chuckling at the memory.<\/p>\n

\u201cI let him run down,\u201d Talmy continues. \u201cAnd I said, ‘Are you done, Don?’ He said yes.\u201d At that point, Talmy calmly replied to Arden. \u201cI said, ‘You don’t know this, but I am from Chicago. And the moment I put this phone down, I’m making a phone call. And if one hair on my head is harmed \u2013 or anybody else I know [is harmed] \u2013 you’re dead.’ And,\u201d Talmy concludes, \u201cI put the phone down. Never heard another fucking word.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he reminisces over these memories from his home in Los Angeles, Talmy is modest about his success. On one hand, it’s a job, but making records is a job he clearly loves. And he’s been doing it \u2013 virtually nonstop \u2013 for well over a half century. \u201cI think I always had the ability of picking a song that potentially was going to be a hit,\u201d he says, \u201cfour to six months ahead of the market. Why that happened, I don’t know. If I knew, I\u2019d bottle it and make a fortune.\u201d In many ways, his approach to recording hasn’t changed from the rule he laid out decades ago. \u201cI always rehearsed the band,\u201d he says. That way, 90% of the results he’d get were expected. \u201cI try to leave the other 10% for inspiration,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two… Over the course of his career, Talmy worked with other highly regarded artists; most but not all of these were UK acts. His production credits include […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12698,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,62],"tags":[3045,3044,3037],"class_list":["post-12696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-rawk","tag-don-arden","tag-hidden-charms","tag-shel-talmy","cat-41-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12699,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12696\/revisions\/12699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}