Recording sessions for The Travelling Wilburys Handle with Care ! ------------------------------------------------------------ Some recollections from engineer Bob Smith who worked at the sessions in Hollywood s Westlake Audio : After work was done at Bob Dylan s garage , the group retreated to a more professional environment, Hollywoods Westlake Audio, to complete the song. Harrison re-recorded his lead vocal and played the songs solo on a Fender Strat, while Lynne added a cowbell and the songs distinctive lead riff, played on his Fender electric 12-string. Ian Wallace even added some tom toms. Present at the Westlake session, too, was Petty veteran engineer Don Smith, who had been asked to assist with some technical issues. Upon leaving, Smith recalls, Harrison, not wanting to wait for a bill, insisted on paying the assistants on the spot. “Its 7:00 on a Sunday morning, the suns coming up, were standing in the parking lot, and George goes, ‘Im not leaving until somebody gets down here so I can pay ’em!” A month later, Don Smith, who was working in Montserrat with Keith Richards, got a call from Petty asking him to return to L.A. to continue with the next phase of recording the album. “Keith gave me three weeks off,” he recalls. “I left Montserrat on a Tuesday, rested on Wednesday and was working with them on Thursday.” The band again retreated to the home of a friend to record; in this case that of Dave Stewart. “Dave kind of moved through everybodys life in one way or another,” says Petty. “He was out of town, so that became the clubhouse The “studio” was a guest house on the property. “It was not a studio — nothing worked,” Smith says. “It was a kitchen and a room with a console in it. There was a little vocal booth, but there were no acoustics. I was like, ‘Why do you want to record here? Are you guys out of your minds?’” Smith had two days to build a studio. “We got phones, had people come in, and we rented carpets and stuck them on the walls. And not one patch cable on the console would work. We had to go and have all that done.” Smith recorded through Stewarts small Soundcraft 1600 console onto a rented Atari MTR-90 tape machine. Mics included a small selection of Neumanns, an AKG 414 and a pair of prized Telefunken 251s rented from a friend of Smiths. “They were in brand-new condition, with consecutive serial numbers and ‘1963’ on them. George wanted to buy them real bad,” Smith notes. The group set themselves up in the kitchen — the only place available — in a semicircle. “I had five guitars and five microphones,” Smith recalls. “We only recorded two tracks of acoustic guitars, all pre-balanced.” Writing, in the kitchen, started around 11 each morning, with recording beginning in the afternoon and usually lasting until about 8 in the evening, after which the group were often treated to Beatles tales from Harrison. Sometimes, one of the band would come up with a new song during the recording of another. “We were right in the middle of getting the sounds for ‘Last Night,’ and Bob starts coming up with the rhythm for ‘Congratulations,’” Smith says. They went, ‘Did you get that on tape?’ ‘Yeah, I got it.’” Drummer Jim Keltner was brought in to overdub drums, replacing a click track from a DMX drum machine used to record once a handful of songs had been tracked. Keltner was set up in the main house, Smith miking him simply with a Neumann U69 two feet in front of the kit at about head height, “just picking up what your ears are picking up,” he says. This was supplemented with an Electro-Voice RE20 on the kick and an SM57 above the snare. Safety copies of the tapes were made — under strict supervision — after which the masters were loaded on a plane with Lynne, who joined the rest of the band (minus Dylan, who was on tour) a week later at Harrisons home studio in England for three or four weeks of overdubs and mixing. Copyright !Don Smith ! George with Don Smith
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 07:51:52 +0000
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