Sound City Page #7

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All they kept on saying about

was, "Ah, there's no Paula.

This is really weird".

And I was just, like, "You know,

seriously?"

Shivaun was great.

She didn't take no sh*t off

nobody.

Yeah

You wreck me, baby

Yeah, you break me in two

Then, right after that, Rick did

a record with Johnny Cash.

He was the coolest guy in the

world, and he was really humble.

He was sick during the making of

that record, and there were

times where we would have to

take breaks, but he loved

recording.

He loved being an artist.

Too cold to start a fire

I'm burnin' diesel, burnin'

dinosaur bones

We kept on calling him

"Mr. Cash," and he would get upset.

He said, "No, call me Johnny".

So we all started calling him

"Mr. Cash" behind his back.

Johnny wanted to play with

a band, and he picked us, which

was totally off the map for me.

It was never like

The Heartbreakers playing their

normal stuff, because, for each

song, everybody would pick up

different instruments.

Gonna break my rusty cage

And run

One of my greatest nights was

when Carl Perkins came down.

I was the runner, and I'll

never forget sitting at the

front desk at Sound City and

Tom Petty and Carl Perkins and

John Fogerty walked in, and it

was just like...

"Wow".

Come on, go with me, babe

Come on, go with me, girl

Tom Petty never loses his

cool, and he walked out of the

control room totally calm, and

he just, like, slammed his hands

down on the table and goes,

"It's Carl f***ing Perkins.

Can you believe it?"

Good ol' Sound City came

through for us again.

Other rooms in other studios

all around town started to shift

because more and more people

started to use Pro Tools.

Everybody just jumped on this

bandwagon of, you know,

"Everything's got to be

digital" - digital consoles,

digital tape machines.

I mean, they hadn't decorated

since 1974.

They sure as sh*t weren't gonna

spend 20 grand on a f***ing

Pro Tools rig, you know?

When you came to work at

Sound City, you knew what you

were getting.

It was a tape-based studio.

At some point, it became

cultural - "We're against

that".

Starts from the runner all the

way up to all the engineers and

the studio manager.

They were just against it.

Like, digital sucks.

You know, bring them in the

room and mike them up and just

let tape roll.

Well, I've got a secret I

cannot say

Blame all the movement to give

it away

That's what Queens was all

about. We were not only analog.

It needed to be live.

It needed to be something you

could be proud of that you had

done, you know?

It was just what you had to do

if you were a real musician.

Whatever you do

Don't tell anyone

Sound City was a place where

real men went to make records.

It wasn't gonna be easy.

But, you know, all good things

take an effort.

And make a mark on the tape.

And that is gonna be where I'm

gonna cut.

When you have to record on

tape, it's pretty difficult to

manipulate the sound.

We do the same thing there.

You have to really focus,

one, on how it sounds going in,

and then, two, the performance

has to be amazing.

Okay.

Part of making it in the

record business back in the old

days was that there was

something you could do and

nobody else could do that.

Pro Tools has enabled people -

any average, ordinary person -

to achieve those sorts of

results now.

To do that same thing with

Pro Tools - there we go,

done - it's really that simple.

When Pro Tools came in, it

freaked me out when I realized

that you could drag music onto

the grid and make it sound

perfect.

The good thing about the

digital technology is if

somebody makes a mistake, like

the bass player hits a wrong

note or something, you might be

able to fix it much easier than

we used to.

The not-so-great is, it's

kind of enabled people that have

no business being in a band or

the music industry to become

stars.

I heard some young guy in a

band say, "Well, you don't have

to practice anymore.

You know, you just slice it up

in the machine," meaning the

computer, "and it comes out

perfectly".

Somebody like Andrs Segovia,

you know, who played the guitar

beautifully.

There's no machine is gonna do

that.

I am not a Pro Tools fan.

But Trent and Atticus, they

really use it as a tool, and a

real creative tool.

I never went into the kind of

fear of, "It's cheating".

I never use samplers as a way to

sound like the real thing.

It was really amazing, 'cause

here's a thing that can record

sound like tape, but you can

f*** with it in million

different ways.

It's just a wildly inspiring

tool, really.

I believe I can see the

future

I like to record it in analog

at the highest level and listen

to it that way.

But that's not what's happening

on the street.

That's not where our audience

is.

You want them to live their

lives the way they want to live

it.

I think it makes a lot of

independent music right now

possible.

It's one of the reasons why

we're able to make records for a

couple hundred bucks.

I think one of the big tape

manufacturers went out of

business, so that really pushed

everybody into the digital world

and the Pro Tools world.

The days of moving into the

studio and writing your record

and recording your record and

mixing your record, those days

are gone now.

They used to have $200,000,

$300,000 $400,000 budgets to do

an album.

Now the money is just not there

the way it used to be.

Budgets were so small, we'd

be tracking late five days,

It was always last-minute,

"Can you work this afternoon?"

or whatever.

So...

In the end, it was a little

hard to swallow.

You know, we started selling off

the gear in studio "B", 'cause

the studio was way behind on

bills.

Lover, there will be

another one

Who'll hover over you

beneath the sun

Most of the great studios

have gone out of business, and a

lot of what you hear on the

radio was made on people's

laptops.

I think Pro Tools just really

was, to a lot of people, was the

death knell.

It always was an insider

place - always.

But it could not survive against

Pro Tools.

You know, the internet's cool

for some stuff, but, like many

things, there's no bookstore,

there's no music store, and

there's no Sound City.

And show you the way to

go

It's over

It's over

I had heard that Sound City

was about to close.

Someone said, "You should call

Shivaun".

And I talked to Shivaun, and she

was in tears, man.

It was - it was heavy.

Sound City was my home.

And, basically, after all those

years - after 19 years, laid

off, no severance pay, no

medical, nothing.

Shivaun was like - she was

like a mom to me, you know?

I - I left my mom.

My mom was in Tennessee and then

I was out here, and Shivaun was

so cool, man.

I love her so much.

Shadow on the things you

know

Sorry.

Feathers fall around you

Yes, it's been hard.

It still - I try to move on,

but it's - it's hard.

It's over

It's over

Ooh, ooh

Looking back, I was just a

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