Shel Talmy: The Mix Interview

The first surprise is that he isn’t British. Despite making a name for himself producing a string of UK hits in the mid-’60s for such artists as The Kinks (“You Really Got Me,” “All Day & All Night,” “Tired of Waiting,” etc.), The Who (“I Can’t Explain,” “My Generation,” “The Kids Are Alright,” etc.), the Manfred Mann Group (“The Mighty Quinn”) and The Easybeats (“Friday on My Mind”), Shel Talmy is a Yank from Chicago. He also produced hits for Chad &Jeremy, albums for the great British folk group Pentangle, he “discovered” the 17-year-old British singer/songwriter Davy Jones, who went on to become David Bowie, and he was at the helm of albums by a number of other great-but-less-heralded-English artists such as Bert Jansch, Roy Harper and Nicky Hopkins.

By the end of the ’60s, though, Talmy had grown weary of the day-to-day grind of recording, and his work trailed off through the ’70s as he became consumed by a plethora of other interests. He worked as music supervisor on several films (including Butch Cassidy), he dabbled in real estate, started a book publishing venture, wrote three adventure novels, and also began a successful computer company involved with optical scanning and storage.

Still, he always kept up with changes in recording technology, and then, two years ago, he began recording hands again. A stint with The Fuzztones for RCA inaugurated the latest phase of his long, distinguished career. More recently, he was at the helm for a new album by the popular Milwaukee acoustic band Ecoteur (on Chameleon Records). I talked to Talmy about some of his career highlights and about his decision to get back into music after an eight-year absence.

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Mix: Why did you decide to come back to producing, working with The Fuzztones?

Talmy: It’s a simple and mundane answer: They approached me shortly after they’d signed to Beggar’s Banquet Records. I listened to their tape, and I liked what they were doing a lot, so I thought it might he fun. And it was. I liked the label, too. They’ve been good at promoting their releases. Also, this came at a time when I had sold my interest (in the computer company), and I frankly missed being around artistic people.

That’s something you just don’t find as much of in straight business. I ended up liking the experience so much I decided to go back into it full time.

Mix: I guess working with a raw band like that hasn’t exactly thrust you into the world of digital recording.

Talmy: Hardly! They’re really adherents to the ’60s way of doing things. We’re using Farfisas and old Vox amps that buzz like crazy, ancient guitars. It was great fun.

I want to be selective about who I work with. There’s only so many records I can do a year, and I don’t want to get into that thing of overcommitting by booking too many projects. So I’ve been moving slowly, letting the industry know I’m back producing again and seeing what develops.

Mix: Is it a liability that you haven’t been around much, and that your name is so closely associated with artists from a specific time period so long ago?

Talmy: Oh, definitely. This is the sort of business where if you’re out of it for a year, people wonder if you’re retired, and I hadn’t done anything [in music! for about eight years. Personally, I’m trying not to look at this as a “comeback,” because it’s not like I was ever dismissed in the first place. I just got out of it. I got bored with it, I got burned out on it, and I thought I probably wouldn’t return to it; but things change. The climate in the business has changed. I hear more bands playing straight-ahead, good songs, which is what I’ve always liked. Down here [LA.], most of the bands I’ve seen are playing live without synthesizers, and they want to go into the studio and record live. There’s a move back to actual drummers, instead of machines. Those are all encouraging developments to me.

Mix: You made your name in England. Where did you get your training—Chicago?

Talmy: No, I only lived there until I was about 15. I got into recording after I moved to Southern California, where I worked in TV for a while, and eventually I met an engineer named Phil Yeend who had a studio called “Conway”—in fact, the Conway of today is an outgrowth of that earlier one—and he trained me. It was 3-track and I picked up on it immediately. Three or four days later, I was an engineer. I had always liked technical things, and I just took to it. This was 1960 or ’61.

It was a very good little studio. Phil was fairly avant-garde for that time. We did a lot of experimenting on separation of instruments, which hadn’t been done much at that point. He used to let me do whatever I wanted after our regular sessions were over, so I used to get guys in and work out miking techniques for how to make drums sound better, or guitars sound better. A year or two earlier, it was almost all mono, and engineers weren’t that concerned about separation. So all the work we did there on separation held me in good stead as the number of tracks available increased through the years. We weren’t the only ones doing that, by any means. There were many good engineers around L.A. who recognized when 3-track came in that it was probably just the tip of the iceberg, and that both tape and recorders would continue to get more sophisticated. This is really even pre-transistors.

Mix: When you moved to Britain in the early ’60s, what was happening musically over there? Talmy: Very little. A lot of people were doing covers of American records, and there was a lot of local stuff that would obviously never make it out of the British Isles.

Mix: How did recording there differ at that time?

Talmy: It didn’t really differ very much. The equipment was similar; everyone was using Ampex recorders and Altecs. I think EMI had some old Philips machines.

Mix: Most of the top producers in England worked with specific record companies, didn’t they?

Talmy: That’s right, and that meant that most of them were on salaries and not really getting royalties. I declared my- self an independent producer when I arrived and got royalties from my first record, so I was always a little bit out of the system. I don’t know if people resented me for that, or what. But I always got along well with other producers.

Mix: Were there specific producers who influenced your style?

Talmy: It’s hard to say. I can honestly say I never heard a record and then said, “I want to use that drum sound on my next record.” On the other hand, I can say I was influenced by some records, like I loved that Marty Robbins record that had what was the first fuzz guitar I’d ever heard. It happened by accident, apparently; there was a short in the amp, and the guitar made this distorted sound. Well, that was a real revelation to me.

But with the kind of music we were recording, there weren’t many precedents, so we were all doing it for the first time together. It was all totally new.

Mix: What was it about The Kinks that knocked you out originally?

Talmy: The songs—which is virtually where it started with everyone I’ve ever worked with. They were called “The Ravens” and had already been together a couple of years, and they were already quite good when I heard their acetate. They had this upper-class manager and were playing mainly debutante dances. [Laughs]

Mix: Did they pose any special challenge in the studio?

Talmy: Well, I don’t know if Dave [Davies, lead guitarist] had heard the Marty Robbins record, but he sure loved fuzz guitar, and he used to slash the cones of his amp and kick it to get it as grungy-sounding as he could; and it certainly worked. They had great energy and a different sound than anyone I’d heard in England or the States at that point.

Mix: I have this sense of The Kinks, the Stones and the Beatles coursing together through the late ’60s on similar but still different paths. Were you constantly checking out “the competition,” seeing what new tricks George Martin came up with?

Talmy: Not really. I certainly admired his production: obviously, he knew how to make great records, but I didn’t analyze it too much. As for the Stones, well, frankly, I thought the sound on some of their early records sucked, but they had something that was clearly unique. It was obvious they were a great hand.

We all were aware of each other, and, of course, we all knew each other. At the beginning, we were all a little naive, I think.

Mix: You didn’t do much overdubbing, did you?

Talmy: Well, as we got more tracks, we did more overdubbing, and I always liked to overdub voices. One of the things I started doing as an engineer was double-tracking voices. You talk about deficiencies in equipment and acoustics—these days you can go in, find all the dead spots and correct them in no time at all. But that wasn’t the case in that era. It was trial and error, and so I discovered that double-tracking the voices let me fill in some of the holes in the sound. I’d also move the singers around the mic to alter the way it sounded in relation to the first track, to fill in the sound. I did that with The Bachelors, with The Kinks, virtually everyone.

Mix: Did you have to deal with many old-guard engineers during the early ’60s?

Talmy: Oh sure, especially at Pye [Recording], where I did most of The Kinks records. There were a couple of older guys there who really resented both the music and all of us, because we were all young. It was all crap as far as they were concerned, and they wanted to do big bands and ballads. However, a lot of younger engineers came on the scene right around that time. I still did a lot of my own engineering with The Kinks, even though I was mainly producing, in part so I could have more control over my sessions. I’d hire a good assistant to do some things.

Mix: How involved was Ray Davies with the early Kinks records?

Talmy: Quite a lot. He was without a doubt the most prolific writer I’ve ever known. He’d come in with 30 songs that he’d written over a few days, and we’d go over the material, putting stuff aside for later, choosing what we’d do immediately. And then we’d talk extensively about the arrangements. I was always happy to hear what his ideas were because they were usually good.

Mix: Looking through your discography, it seems like you did an awful lot in a very short time. Was it actually a situation where you’d work with The Kinks one week, The Who the next and so on?

Talmy: At one point, yeah. It sounds more difficult than it actually was at the time. We were all young and full of energy and right in the middle of…well, I know you’ve read about the “swinging ’60s in London, but if you didn’t actually experience them, it’s hard to explain what they were like. They were energy-filled. Nobody got a lot of sleep, but nobody gave a damn. We all worked long into the night, and then we’d go out to parties.

Mix: So you socialized with the bands outside of the studio?

Talmy: No, I didn’t really. We went to different parties. [Laughs] I always felt it was important for me to keep some distance from the people I worked with, though I must admit I now regret that decision. I wish I had spent more time socializing with them and getting to know them outside of work. I thought at the time it might not be good for the work, but now I believe the opposite.

Mix: You were with The Who during a brief but seminal period in their career. What ended your association with them?

Talmy: Actually, it had nothing to do with anything I did. The Who were managed by a fellow named Kit Lambert, who was very gay and much older than all of us, and he was extremely jealous of anybody he thought was usurping his influence over the band. As a producer, of course, I did have some influence over them. From the first record, I made hits with them, but then one morning I got a letter from Kit saying, “Your services are no longer required.” I didn’t like that and my contract didn’t agree with that, so I sued him and won. Unfortunately, winning didn’t mean that I got to record the group anymore, and I’ve always been sorry about that.

To be fair, I think the group felt like they had to listen to Kit, because obviously he was great at PR and did a great job of marketing them. So if he said I was a bad guy, I guess they had to go along with that. I don’t think they gave a lot of thought to it. They were all very young; we all were.

Mix: What’s the deal with Manfred Mann? I’ve liked a few songs, hated others, and I could never quite figure out who he was and what he brought to those records he did.

Talmy: That’s a very good question. [Laughs] He’s what people would now call “a concept man.” In other words, if he wasn’t in music, he’d probably be in marketing, or at an ad agency. The Manfred Mann Group was his band, to be sure, but his main strength was choosing other people’s material and then knowing what to do with it to make it commercially palatable. Obviously, Dylan was a favorite of his, and he did very well with a few of his songs.

He brought a bunch of disparate personalities together so they could work together, though there were times when I felt like my role in the studio with them was as resident shrink. He was a strange guy in a lot of ways, but he was also very nice and very bright, as were all the people in the band. And they were very successful, of course.

Mix: As an independent, did you have to be particularly budget-conscious?

Talmy: Absolutely. Either I worked for a company and was in charge of the budget, or I did it out of my own production company budget, like with The Who, where I put up the money myself. So I was very aware of what I was spending. With The Kinks, which Pye was initially funding, they had a real scumbag president who said that if we went one penny over budget, it would come from me, so I was under a lot of pressure.

Mix: Did you ever have any of those classic, late-’60s projects that went seven months longer than they were supposed to, and you wanted to put a calliope on this track but decided on a full string quartet instead?

Talmy: [Laughs) I saw it happening around me but it never happened to me, thank God. I never had the patience for that kind of stuff.

Then and now, I’ve always tried to have everything pretty well worked out in advance in terms of the material and the arrangements. We’d work in rehearsal rooms and really have it to about 90 percent of what we wanted when we actually recorded it. I don’t really like big surprises in the studio. I like to leave enough room for startling creativity if it happens, but it’s still nice to know what you’re doing.

Mix: In the ’70s, we saw more and more bands writing their material in the studio and spending horrendous sums.

Talmy: I think it got to be an ego trip for those bands—to see who could spend the most time and money in the studio. I never put up with that. I was very careful about the bands I chose, and I was very upfront: The studio is a place I like to work. It’s not a place I like to eat and hang out and play pinball.

Mix: In the late ’60s, you moved in more of a folk direction with Pentangle and Bert Jansch. Was that strange for you?

Talmy: No, it was great. I grew up loving folk music, so when I got the chance to work with some of the best people of that time, I jumped at it, and I loved doing it. They were all great musicians and real individualists, to say the least. It was a real pleasure, and Basket of Light remains one of my favorite albums that I’ve worked on.

Mix: You’re returning to music in such a conservative climate in terms of what gets played on the radio. That must be a little frustrating for you.

Talmy: There really isn’t very much good radio out there, it’s true. Even here [in L.A.], it’s hard to find a station that’s at all adventurous. Fortunately, college radio seems to be filling the gap somewhat.

Mix: College radio may play The Fuzztones, but who’s going to play the next Pentangle that comes along? There are entire genres of music now that can’t find a home on radio.

Talmy: That’s a good point. It has gotten narrower. But at the same time, things do break through, whether it’s Tracy Chapman, who has helped get more folk music on the radio, or other people who are somewhat out of the mainstream. The fact is, you never know at any given time what’s going to be popular.

Mix: So what’s the answer as a producer? Be true to yourself and keep your fingers crossed?

Talmy: That sounds like pretty good advice. I’ve always tried to do work I could be proud of, and I expect to continue that way.

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This article originally ran as “Shel Talmy: The Producer Behind Legendary Hits by The Who and The Kinks is Back Behind the Board” in the October 1990 issue of Mix.