Q: What first got you interested in audio engineering?

A: Well, I already thought that I was going to do something in media when I was a little kid. My dad, R.G. Barncard, was and still is a ham operator, and broadcasting fascinated me. I started listening to radio a lot and really liking it, and dug all kinds of music. I was brought up in a house with a lot of jazz and swing--my dad liked acts like Woody Herman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Nat Cole Trio, Fats Waller, the Sauter-Finnegan Orchestra and people like that, and I loved those acts as well as the rock and roll that came out of my radio.

Q: Did your dad indulge your interests?

A: Yeah. My dad always taught me about electronics and helped me build stuff. When I was about nine or ten he bought me a tape recorder. He got this ‘Wilcox-Gay Recordio’ tape recorder -- he traded a camera for it. It was in a little suitcase and it had a ‘magic eye’ meter on it (laughter). It was a horrible sounding machine, and we bought this cheap tape for it, with this oxide that you could scrape off with your fingernail (laughter). That could have been part of the problem! (laughter)...

Q: So you were moving right into hi-fi here...

A: (Laughs) RIGHT into hi-fi. Even before this, starting when I was about seven to about age 13, I had my own radio stations. I had this illegal transmitter, little 100mw things that I would hook extra wire to, and a couple of turntables, and I would do the DJ bit. Then somehow I made contact with this guy in Kansas City named Don Burley, who retired last year. He was a Kansas City radio personality, and he was a mentor to me. He helped me a lot with my delivery and pacing. He worked at a country station, KCKN at the time, and one day he took me into this barn that they had on the property of the station, which was in a cow pasture, and the barn was filled with 16 inch radio transcriptions from the thirties and forties. He said, ‘just take a bunch of those.’

Q: Oh, wow...

A: Yeah! It was just classic stuff...network delay disks of ‘Fibber McGee & Molly’, the ‘Vaseline Program’ and shows like that. I found these Japanese turntables that played four speeds, and for an extra twenty bucks you could get a 16 inch arm. So I started using that with my little radio station, and I got good at back-cueing and talking over intros. I built my own console, and I even had an FM transmitter, so I was going AM and FM, and I would steal network news (laughs), and set my clock to the second. So, I was preparing myself for a life in radio. I tried to get a job at KCKN but I blew my audition...

Q: You auditioned when you were thirteen?!

A: Yeah, they gave me cold copy, I was nervous and my voice broke. Howard Stern got it right in his movie, it was just like that. I eventually got a job at another station called KCJC. A guy had a jazz show at midnight on Saturdays and at first I read news, then I moved on to do the entire jazz show myself, then whole weekends and holidays. I played things like Les and Larry Elgart, Anita Kerr, Herb Alpert, and movie themes, but certainly no Rock. It was a real FM station though, and they were stereo and that was very cool, because it was the dawn of multiplex and I could listen to a lot of recordings and visualize how they were made.

When I got on the air, it was cool being in high school and being on the radio. I even loved turning on the transmitter! At the same time I was playing in Rock bands, playing bass. I was also feeding an interest in recording and started to accumulate several tape decks and a disc cutter so that I could cut demos and acetates of my friends’ bands. I got this old one, like the type that they used for Robert Johnson field recordings, it was a Presto 6N and I put a 240 lps microgroove lead screw on it. I slowly built up a studio in my basement. I had the disc cutter, a couple of full track 1/4 inch machines, my dad helped me build the studio walls, a neighborhood friend named Ernie Sarazan designed and built the tube electronics and I built a patch bay in metal shop at Shawnee Mission East High. Later on I went to Kansas University, and all the new music was starting to happen, I was hearing the Byrds and Rubber Soul. I even had a dream of being a DJ on a pirate boat in the North Sea near England. Then I got the draft notice.

Draft morning came along, and I thought I was dog meat. So I had an idea, I would try to fake my hearing test. Most of my buddies were headed for Viet Nam, and I had determined that I was not going to go. So, the army doctors put me in this room...is there a statute of limitations on this? (laughter). This is where my audio self-training really saved my life. I was standing there in my underwear looking at this chart recorder with a paper roll, and they would give you like, seven frequencies--50hz, 100hz, 1000hz, and maybe 5000, and they would give you a button, and you would push the button when you heard the thresholds, high and low. So I thought, ‘This is it, what are they gonna do, arrest me?’ So I just played the game and let it go a little louder in the high end, let the chart pen go a little farther in my thresholds. They made me repeat it FIVE times, and I was able to duplicate my responses.

Q: Right ON!

A: (Laughs) What did I have to lose? My life. I already knew that it was an unjust war, and that it was a fucked-up thing...I was ready to go to Canada!

Q: The ramifications are not lost on this interview of an audio engineer...

A: Yes! So, the upshot of the whole thing was, "I am sorry, Mr. Barncard, but you are not going to be able to participate in the United States Armed Forces"....

Q: And, "We suggest you get a hearing aid..."

A: Yeah! (laughter) They set me up with some rehabilitation services (laughter)...they were calling me for weeks. So around this point, the band situation that I was in was getting stale, and so was radio, although I was still working in it. I worked at some Top-40 stations, and learned some of the inner workings of that mechanism. It was real (exaggerated radio voice) "BOSS RADIO!" (laughter) K-U-D-L Fairway, Kansas!! That kind of thing. I had started growing my hair real long, and I realized that kind of radio was bullshit. Later I did work for one of the first underground FM stations, KCJC-FM that was bought by KUDL and moved to their transmitter site. Its signal was only in mono, so it didn’t sound that good, but we had a lot of fun; we could play anything we wanted except profanity.

During this time I met someone who lived on the west coast, and I had already read about the Airplane and The Grateful Dead, so I thought it might be advantageous to check out what was going on there. I drove out with about a hundred bucks in my pocket and stayed with that person for a few days.

After arriving in Hollywood, I met this guy named Tommy Oliver--not the same guy who worked for RCA--who played in a lot of bands and was a guitarist and home recordist. He had bought this house that used to be Gary Paxton’s house in Hollywood. It was the first garage studio in Hollywood, where The Association had done all of their early hits. Gary Paxton had a schoolbus with an eight track in it, one of those modified Ampex 300, with the 351 electronics and the sel-synch panels and manual lifters. Nightmare machine, but it was EIGHT TRACKS! He had it in this schoolbus and the garage was the recording room. He would just run a snake in there, record and then mix down at Capitol.

I don’t know what happened to Gary Paxton, but Tommy came into possession of this house, and he offered me a living space if I would help rebuild it. Plastering, odd-jobs, anything so that he could just get his studio started. Tommy realized that I knew what I was talking about when it came to recording...I think that I had even brought some equipment with me...I had an Ampex 300 and some microphones. I was able to stay there for about six months.

Sunset Sound was about four blocks away, and we were about two blocks down from Heider’s on Cahuenga. Had I known, I would have been knocking on the doors and just asked for a job, but I didn’t know where to start. There was a demand for someone like me in independent recording and they needed people, but I didn’t know that at the time.

Q: This must have been around the time CSN were recording their first album, right?

A: Yeah, right around that time they were doing their first record with Bill Halverson but I didn’t know that, and I was a bit unsure about LA, anyway. When my girlfriend, Ellen Burke came out to join me for Christmas, we got fearful of earthquakes and decided to go back to Kansas City by way of San Francisco. When we got up there, it was really more of what I was looking for. The air was cleaner, the musical atmosphere better -- What a city!

During this trip, I saw The Grateful Dead for the first time on New Years eve--(December 31, 1968) at The Fillmore. I had never liked their records very much. Seeing them live, I went "Woah! Who’s that groovy guy with the beard singing ‘St. Stephen’ and ‘Dark Star’?" It was great. I actually taped it. I had a little Norelco tape recorder with an SM 57. I guess I was one of the first tapers, it just wasn’t a big deal back then, nobody minded. I wish I still had the tape; it was either stolen or lost. Anyway, the show left an impression on me. So did San Francisco. My girlfriend and I went back to Kansas City for a little while, I went back to KUDL/KCJC-FM and then that first CSN record came out.

Q: This is mid-1969, right?

A: Right. And I heard those voices and said, "My god, they got a 16 track!". I could tell that they doubled or tripled the voices...plus the guitars, plus the bass, etc. So after 6 months in Kansas City, I decided that if I wanted to make records, I had to get back to the West Coast. I had to make a choice: East Coast, Woodstock, or West Coast, Bill Graham’s ‘Wild West.’ I blew off Woodstock, flew to San Francisco, stayed with some friends, grabbed a phone book and opened it up to ‘recording studios’, and I saw Wally Heider’s listed and thought, ‘okay, this is only a few blocks away.’ I went over there and talked to a very nice guy named Mel Tanner who was the general manager, and he gave me a tour of the place. They had one studio operating, which was Studio C. Studios A and D were still under construction.

Q: What projects were going on there at the time?

A: The Jefferson Airplane had just finished "Volunteers". They were probably the first clients and they had stayed for months. I think Eric Jacobson was doing work there too. As it turned out it was the only real world class studio in San Francisco at the time.

So I asked Mel what I should do about working there, and he told me to write Wally Heider directly. So I wrote Wally a rambling four page letter, basically the technical story of my life. By then I had moved back to LA for a little while, and stayed with Tommy Oliver, who was by this time one of the people building the Village Recorder and he gave me a job wiring there.

After about two months of working at The Village, I finally got a call there from Wally. "Ah-ah-ah-can-n you come over here right now?!" (laughter) He stuttered a lot. He was really intense, like a speed freak. But a wonderful guy. If you ever want to know what Wally was like, see ‘Monterey Pop’. Wally was the rather large guy running up during The Who’s finale, trying grab his microphones before the band destroyed them . Between them and Hendrix, it’s amazing that he didn’t have a seizure right there! (laughter) That was Wally. A hard guy to work for but I owe him a lot, may he rest in peace.

Q: Didn’t he start out as sort of a field recordist?

A: He was a lawyer from Seattle who’s hobby was making recordings of big bands, like Stan Kenton and Woody Herman. He would record them live, two-track, with an Ampex portable mixer and four mics. That’s what started his remote business, ‘cause he was always a remote guy. Then when independent recording studios became popular he got a storefront and a studio business going; he was a really shrewd businessman. He was the guy who invented real service in the independent recording business. If someone wanted the latest 3M 16 track recorders, he would get them 2. When someone wanted fifteen dancing girls, he would get them thirty dancing girls.

Q: I understand that he had his consoles custom built...

A: He had hired this guy named Frank DeMedio to build these wonderful consoles made out of UREI solid-state pre-amps and Switchcraft telephone quality switches and relays and Gotham faders. Balanced everything. Transformers, transformers, everywhere. As designed, they would work great. If somebody tried to modify the design though, they could get into trouble.

Frank designed quality consoles that always worked. They were like battleships. As built, they were amazing. They only had one pre-amp per channel, one amplifier stage, and they would use that same pre-amp for mic and line. He just used resistive pads to take down the line level signal going into the preamp.

Q: How did you actually get the job with Wally?

A: Well, when I finally got my meeting with the guy, he checked me out. He goes, (loud, stuttering voice) "Wha-wh-wa..can you go get a phono pick-up in..ahh-ahhh-Santa Monica?!!...here’s the keys to my T-Bird and $50.00." So I did this errand, and gave him the change. That was part of my audition, to make sure that I gave him all of the change. So I guess he thought I was competent and honest, and seemed to like me. A day later I was back working at The Village, and he called me again and asked me to go up to San Francisco with him. We took a plane up there that day, and he showed me the different rooms at the San Francisco facility, which I had seen already...I think he wanted to give me the official tour. He said, "Whadda ya think, you wanna work here?" and I said, "My god, are you kidding?"

He needed me to be an assistant, and there was no other assistants there. There was an engineer, Russ Gary. But he was mainly a first engineer.

Q: Was this right before "Deja Vu"?

A: Right. Part of Wally’s mission in going up there was to get an assistant for Bill Halverson on an upcoming CSN&Y session, which turned out to be "Deja Vu". I think Wally wanted a second that looked like he fit in. I was not only qualified, I also had the look, with my John Lennon glasses and long hair, to make the clients feel at ease. Most of my engineering colleagues at the time were pretty geeky pocket-protector types. Like I said, Wally was a shrewd studio owner. He had forward attitudes for 1969.

Q: Wow, this happened pretty quickly...

A: Yeah, and I only had two weeks to get ready and to learn the rooms. I learned the patch bay in a few minutes, it was pretty simple. Setting up mics running a tape machine and handling tape was something I already knew, the tape was just bigger. By the time CSNY got in there I had it pretty well figured out and was ready to do the dates.

Q: Could you describe Wally Heider’s studio at the time?

A: The room was smaller than control rooms are today, but it had pretty much the same layout. The console was on a little six inch rise, with a ramp to get the machines up to the back....there was a speaker soffet over the window, a little couch in front of the console, a big gray rack next to the right of it for the power amplifiers, and another rack at right angles next to the console to put the small amount of outboard gear that was there.

The console was a Demedio 24 position 8 bus with 8 meters, one for each buss or track coming back from the tape. If you wanted to monitor more than 8 tracks, you had to look back at the machine. A lot of people today think that console was tube, but actually, everything in the room except for a Pultec and the monitor amps was transistor based.

The monitor section was kind of strange, but typical of the time. You’d have 8 knobs, and the speaker that each one would feed was fixed. Because of the traditions of the time, there were four monitor speakers, big ones -- Altec 604Es, one next to each other. Maybe that was a hold over from the days of four track, so that you could send a track to each speaker rather than worry about mixing it. But that meant maintaining four separate speaker systems and amps. The soffet was just a big hole above the window, and they had made each speaker cabinets out of a single piece of plywood; the dimensions were dictated by the stock size of a piece of plywood rather than any science.

But in spite of that, the 604Es, when they were set up right, sounded pretty good. They had the high frequency knob right up there, so anyone could turn it and change it. We’d put a little grease pencil mark to remember where we set it (laughs). So consequently, there was no real standard, no reference. The concept of speaker fatigue was not understood, so the same speakers would stay in until they blew out, and they would change over time. You just had to play something you knew before a date.

Channels 1 and 2 from the 8 track would feed the first speaker, 3 and 4 would feed the second speaker, and so on. So playbacks would be pretty intense because you’d have four speakers rockin’. But it made you lay it out so that your basic tracks would be on the first eight, and then for overdubs you’d have to switch over to another mode. It was tedious to switch from one to the other without zeroing your basic tracking setup, but that’s the way we did it.

The console had two cue systems with the eight monitor returns from the machine. There was relay switching so that you could select if it was coming back from the machine or the busses, and that a master selector would also feed the monitor and the two sets of cues. There was a way you could connect the two cues together to get 16 tracks back. Sometimes I even used that cue system as a monitor so if I had to monitor 16 tracks I could sort of do it there, but more likely, what you’d do is do your basic tracks and stay with the 8 original busses then you’d bring everything down and use the faders for monitoring, becasue it sounded better through the mix section anyway.

Q: What about monitoring in stereo?

A: Buses 4 and 5 were the stereo bus. There was a switch that would take those two busses and spread them out to the far speakers 1 and 4, then you could do a stereo mix. It was a little weird, but it worked.

It didn’t really matter about tearing down the set-ups, because there were no lock-outs in those days. It had to come down anyway. Even with CSN&Y, we’d set it up, then tear it down again every night , because we had Creedence Clearwater during the daytime, so during "Deja Vu" I would stay until 2-3 in the morning, take all the mikes down, put them away, come back in the morning for Creedence by 11:00. It was crazy.

Q: You were doing both sessions?

A: Yeah, and one night I kinda wrapped around, because Stills sometimes stayed until 6:00am. (laughs) Wally came out and said, "ah-ah-ah..d-d-d double time after fourteen hours!!". (laughter) I was like, "Fuck you! I don’t care..." I was so tired. He walked in at 7:00am, and I was like, "Oh, god, please go away!". Fortunately Wally didn’t hang out too much in San Francisco because he had to run his business in LA. He used to make everybody nervous.

Anyway, back to the control room. They used these UTC O-10 [OH TEN] transformers everywhere. They would bridge the tape machine return or bus signal and feed it into the studio monitor, the cue, and second cue. Tape machines terminated at 600 ohms. Everything transformer isolated.

To the right towards the back of the console there was this rack that held all of the power amplifiers and it had its own patch bay, so you could re-arrange the speaker and the amp feeds. Heider’s used nothing but McIntosh amplifiers, two 275’s for the control room monitors, and two 240’s for the cues. Right next to the mixing position they had the outboard gear, and there were a couple of the blue-faced UREI 1176’s. Also, on the tape machine returns there was a whole patch area dedicated for the tape returns and the pads. Sixteen of these returns had UREI Passive EQ’s coming right off of the machine, because the EQ’s on the board itself were very limited. There was also a couple of Pultec EQ’s, but I’m not sure of the exact model. Oh, and there was a crappy little Altec 5 band graphic equalizer.

Q: Were you pleased with the McIntosh ?

A: Yeah, they sounded pretty good, although they could have had more power, but for the time it was loud enough. There were also a couple of Lang EQ’s, but they weren’t that good, except for bringing up a snare. They were very peaky and I hardly ever used one. That was about it for outboard gear.

We had some excellent live chambers; two or three. I think we had an EMT, and there was an echo central, a master patch in some room somewhere that we could assign it to the three rooms.

Q: How about the console?

A: The Demedio, yes. It was not constructed with module strips, it was one big plate and everything was mounted to it. No circuit boards. All of the switches and controls were really high quality, hot molded AB pots, Switchcraft lever switches and full size single TRS patch bays. The one-per-position UREI amplifier cards were in a cage accessible from the back. All of the rotary switches were ceramic wafer, high quality silver contacts. The faders weren’t that good, they were Gotham Audio, 2 dB per step sliders. They weren’t really sliders, they were a slider mechanism and dial cords attached to a rotary stepped attenuator. Those got replaced by real Gliss faders later...

Q: That must have been a challenge for you...

A: It was the finest thing I had ever worked on so it’s all how you look at it. If it was good enough for CSN&Y, it was good enough for me. This was what I used on "American Beauty" and Crosby’s solo record, too.

Q: For tracking and mixing?

A: Yeah. And a pay telephone on the wall (laughter). It was really funny when it rang. There was always someone looking for Jorma (Kaukonen). There were these clay acoustical tiles on the wall that people used to rotate to weird angles, and Wally used to get pissed off and try and straighten them out (laughs). Then the bands would randomize them again.

Q: What was the material on the walls?

A: I think it was just straight plaster...

Q: Wood and carpet?

A: There was carpet up to maybe chest height, and there were these clay blocks that I mentioned, that would break up the surface at least. The electronic systems were pretty good when I got there, but as time went on it got worse and worse as later techs made "improvements" (laughs). They later added, in place of the UREI EQ’s on the side, some 550’s, which was a nice addition in theory, but somebody got the gain structure wrong so it was crunching. That was a later time, like mid-1973.

Q: How about the recording room?

A: There was a little tiny booth, where you could put an acoustic guitar or vocalist, but CSN&Y didn’t use it much. I think we put the organ Leslie in there, to isolate it. Eric Burden sang/rapped his big hit ‘Spill the Wine’ live on acid in that booth. When CSNY did "Almost Cut My Hair", though, the vocal was live in the studio. Live vocal, live everything. There isn’t one overdub on that song...

Q: Pretty cool...

A: Yeah, and that’s one reason why it’s so intense.

Q: Tape machines...

A: When I got there Heider’s SF had two 16 tracks. One was an MM1000, which The Jefferson Airplane had requested. Wally didn’t like them, but that’s what the RCA union guys used, so Wally got one for those guys. But Bill Halverson always used 3M’s. We used the M56 model, which I still think to this day was one of the best sounding 16 tracks ever made. It sounds great, it’s compact and was very reliable. Wally liked those too and used them is his remote trucks because they were small and reliable.

We had both 3M and Ampex 440b two-tracks. ‘Deja Vu’ wasn’t mixed in SF, it was mixed in LA. We didn’t use cassettes for client take home mixes at first, we’d put them on the 2 track and band members would play them on a 1/4 track machine and bring up the right channel because of the track positioning differences. So, that was the back wall machines.

There was one 24-input microphone panel in the recording room. The microphone selection was in keeping with Halverson and Heider’s experience, as it was originally a remote recording company. A lot of SM57’s. A workhorse for scratch vocals, instruments, just about everything. On overheads we’d use the C37i Sonys or the Neuman 87’s, or a couple of 67’s. My favorite condenser there was the AKG C-60, the predecessor to the 451 series.

Q: What was it like working with Bill Halverson?

A: I was real impressed with Bill, and he was the second guy that I assisted, after Russ Gary. When we started doing the sessions, there was a dispute between him and the band about production credit, I believe, so he wasn’t there for the first sessions I worked on. He didn’t record "Woodstock" and a couple of other tracks. Russ Gary did it, and received no credit. I later helped get him a long deserved credit on the box set. CSN didn’t want a producer, so Russ went it alone and did his best, and I although I thought his recordings sounded good, he just didn’t click with the band. I don’t think that he was responsive enough for them. They liked to roll a lot of tape--tape is cheap, time is not. He might have missed a couple of spontaneous things that happened. It was a full set up every night, we never knew what was going to happen. The band were staying at The Red Lantern Motel up the street...

Q: They call this the ‘Tenderloin’ district?

A: Right, the Tenderloin. Crappy neighborhood. It’s been the same way there for 50 years. But what I’ve noticed about really good band albums, is that if a band is forced to stay in the same area, and they have really nothing else to do and aren’t distracted and they are not in their usual home routine they make much better records...

Q: Focused...

A: More focused. And to have Neil there, focused, because he didn’t have anywhere else to go, he was far from his place in LA. Everybody was kind of stuck there. Graham didn’t have his Haight-Ashbury place yet, and David didn’t have boat in Sausalito then. I think that helped, the social compression factor.

Stills would stay up all night and do guitars, some of the bass parts, and work with Dallas. That "Everybody I Love You" thing, they would just work and work and work and Halverson would edit and edit. I finally fell asleep in the corner some nights. They would truly go till dawn.

Q: What kinds of sounds did Halverson get, for example drums and acoustic guitar, that you really learned from?

A: He got great drum sounds. It was an education, definitely. I never checked out his mic positioning, because I had my own theories, but I did watch how he squashed the shit out of the acoustic guitars with 1176’s and EQ’d it kinda bright, that was pretty cool. But he was more a teacher on how to deal with the social and production aspects of recording a band. Even though they didn’t give him credit as the producer, he certainly encouraged some great performances out of the guys and should have been credited as a producer.

Q: How would he be able to do that?

A: By flattering them; giving them good feedback by manipulating the situation in a way to get them to adapt to the technology, bringing them around to hearing things his way, in an almost ‘fawning’way of showering them with praise and encouragement.

He truly believed in the band, and really meant it. He turned to me one day and said, "You know, there’s nothing like working with talent." And he was right! Also, he made Dallas Taylor, who was not the greatest drummer, sound really big. I was impressed with that. He did a lot of overdubing, a lot of editing, and a lot of punch-ins on the drum parts.

Q: I hear he was good with a razor blade...

A: Yeah, he was. And CSN trusted him to do the impossible and he would always pull it off.

This was an amazing recording, with magic all over the place...and a lot of angst too. David’s lady Christine had died a few weeks before, and he was very upset and on the edge. But that tension among all the players also drove a really dynamic record.

Q: Yeah, you listen to "Almost Cut My Hair", and it’s scary.

A: That’s it, it’s scary...

Q: Did you do the tracking for "Country Girl" yourself?

A: Yeah. Bill Halverson was a really great engineer, but he had a little drinking problem then, which I think was largely due to his domineering and bitchy wife at the time, who sometime would WALK IN ON SESSIONS, and drag him away... I actually saw this one night.

Q: Oh, that’s what you want to see...(laughter)

A: Yeah! He was distracted, and there were times when he couldn’t make it. And one night, Neil wanted to RECORD. He’d be playing guitar or piano, and the moment’s now, and he would say to me, the assistant, "Hey, get this thing working". I had never had to do a "panic, let’s go now, get the headphone mix, get everything working NOW" kinda session before...trial by fire.

Q: In the deep end for you....

A: It was. But I got it going. I don’t think he (Halverson) showed up for another three or four hours after that. But that was a great opportunity for me. I’m happy to say that Bill is clean and sober and working in Nashville these days.

Q: Did Neil have some session players on that track?

A: No, he used the same players, Taylor and Reeves....

Q: Because there’s the timpani on there, some other Netzchie-inspired things going on...

A: He probably overdubbed some stuff in LA. My understanding was that he would separate the master reel, and take his songs and go off to his home studio, which he had in Topanga Canyon. So he was always the loner, not there for every minute. Nash and Stills were present the most. Crosby was there as much as he could be. The three of those guys would make the best effort to be there together, because that's the way they made their first record, just hanging out, but Neil hated sitting around for someone else’s overdubs. On the 1977 record "CSN" in Miami, Crosby Stills and Nash were hangin’ out together at the same house in Miami, and that’s one reason why that record is so cohesive.

Q: I’m curious how you went from being an assistant engineer on "Deja Vu", to developing such a great relationship with Crosby and working on his solo album?

A: Well, that’s a whole other story. I guess I’ve talked enough about "Deja Vu"...but just to say that there was a lot of magic and fire, and then they took it off to LA, and did a lot of overdubs. I would say that 80% the live performance and recording was done in that little studio. What happened in the mix, I don’t know, it’s an awful sounding record in my opinion. I heard a magic and brilliance in the room on the playbacks during the original tracking dates. Recently, in the last five years, I’ve heard those multi-tracks and they sound as good as the day they were recorded, and are in excellent shape. They’re on Scotch 201, and every piece of Scotch I’ve ever heard that was done at that time has no high frequency loss, and no baking is needed. You know what the "Deja Vu" mix sounds like...it’s kinda muffled, distant, inter-modulated...

Q: Except for some odd moments, you can kind of hear sort of a blanket over the speakers...

A: Yeah, and you can’t master that out, and because they made so many parts from that master, the two track is worn through in places. It has massive oxide degradation, in fact it says that on the tape box....

(At this point, the phone rings, and it’s none other than Graham Nash. He asks Stephen to locate a version of "Everybody’s Talkin’" from 1969 that is in the tape vault...)

Q: So, what do you think might be the solution to the problem with the "Deja Vu" master that you were just talking about?

A: Well, the thing’s been digitally remastered at least three times. One in the early 80’s, which is really horrible, and another one later which is a little better, with more modern converters. Then Joe Gastwirt re-mastered all of their stuff as best he could when we did the box set.

What I’m proposing to the band is a 30th anniversary edition, going back to the multi-tracks. I want to use a clinical approach ; I don’t want to go into another harangue and try to re-mix anew, but to transfer everything to ProTools 24 in 20 or 24 bit, and model mixes exactly what’s off of the record, match the echo, match the bass...

Q: Sort of ‘A/B’ it...

A: Right, I’ll put the old mix on another couple of tracks and I’ll ‘A/B’ it. I’ll use the Halverson mixes, the stuff they did, and I’ll match it, only it’ll have the clearer signal path, and I’ll extend the endings. Almost every song had a jam at the end, it was incredible! But it will be the band/Halverson mix concept.

Q: Kind of like the "Almost Cut My Hair" that was on the box?

A: Yes, only without my mix mistakes! There’s a story behind that. After they recorded that song, the sessions broke for Christmas 1969. Everybody left the room on the last night, and here I am at Wally Heider’s with this hot multi-track master tape sitting on the machine (laughter).What would you do? (laughter) So for the rest of the night I stayed up and made my own mixes of "Almost Cut My Hair", "Deja Vu" and "Everybody I Love You", "Lee Shore" and one other one I think, and I mixed it on to a reel to reel. I carried it around for 25 years, and when I brought it to the box set sessions, and Nash grabbed it and absorbed it into his collection --(laughter). "I want THIS!" (laughs). So, they mastered this cut on the box set from my old 7 1/2 rough mix that I made when I was starting out. I really wanted to remix it for the box, but Graham wouldn’t hear of it. But on the multis you could hear that fire, and the jams go on and on.

So what I want to do is move the multitracks into ProTools 24, and take some time with it. It’s basically a lab process, it’s not something where we have to bring all of the guys into the studio in person to approve every move. I would send the mixes in to each band member for approval. Neil’s probably the one who’s gonna be the stickler on that, he’ll be the one to want to mix his own songs.

First I have to get Atlantic to go for it, then Neil. David and Graham are already into it and I think Stephen would like the idea. I’ve got enough time to plan for a 30th anniversary edition before the year 2000. I see it taking less than a year. Some purists may balk at using a DAW for such a project, but it’s the only way to do this project economically. With ProTools 24 and removable hard discs, I can use a 5.2 gig DVD RAM disc for each song, and automate it on the desktop, and I think make a really, really good record. I know the great sound is on the tape, because I played it during the box set project. But I also don’t want to lose the immediacy of what was there, so I’m gonna be real, real careful. It’s like making an archeological dig.

Q: Does that concern you at all, when some people say, "Oh, revisionism, I don’t know..." ?

A: Well, I think an exception has to be made in this case. I would never touch their first record (Crosby Stills, & Nash), it’s perfect...I would never touch Crosby’s solo album ("If I Could Only Remember My Name"), unless I wanted to mix it for dts 5.1 surround or something. But I think there’s a real reason to re-mix "Deja Vu". I think it didn’t get the treatment that it deserved, even though it was a multi-million seller. This is the one that got away, this is one that’s real special. I’m normally one of those people who would cry "revisionist" too...but this is an occasion that we keep the multitracks for.

Q: How about "American Beauty" (Grateful Dead)?

A: I wouldn’t touch that one, either. It’s perfect, it’s clean. And the master tape is in good shape. There aren’t any outtakes from that record, either. But a dts 5.1 mix? YES!

Q: Aside from your technical chops, what else did you bring to the table on that record?

A: I think I helped to bring order to a complex situation. "American Beauty" happened right before David’s solo record. Let me try to explain what happened. Crosby, understandably at the time, was a very uptight guy. He had little respect or patience for people like studio assistants or roadies. Support people were there to serve him. They would also be a convenient target if things went wrong. I was one of those targets, and he had treated me like shit if things bogged down during "Deja Vu" and "Blows Against the Empire". I did not like him personally at the time, although I thought he was talented and a fan. I loved The Byrds, and David’s music far over anyone else in The Byrds, I was truly a David Crosby fan, but I was a little disappointed in his social graces and the way he treated people. I did see his happy, bouncy, wonderful cheerleading side sometimes. But I had developed an opinion that I basically didn’t want to work with him. Anyone who had mixed monitors for him would get the Crosby dagger stare when the monitors would feed back, and he’d make you feel like a pile of shit. So different than the guy I know today. So, after the "Deja Vu" sessions, I started doing other projects, like Creedence, but I was the assistant on that. I didn’t connect with Fogerty very much, either. I thought he was an absolute dictator in the studio. He actually made his band wait on the couch outside while he worked in the control room. He would do overdubs and edits and call band members in one by one, and wouldn’t let them stay in the room and participate in the process. He was doing little window edits, slivers, little half beats, things like that. He would work with Russ Gary, and to his credit, he could handle that. You know, you were hired to work there, it’s your job, what the heck?

Q: Didn’t you work with Harry Nilsson around this time?

A: I did work with him. I was the third engineer on "Nilsson Sings Newman" I got to work with the RCA guys, Pat Iraci and Allan Zentz. Harry really liked me for some reason. I went and got coffee and I didn’t have much else to do -- they just did vocals, so I’d set up the one mic and sit around and share the sacrament with Harry for the rest of the session. He was a great guy...may he rest in peace. He was a lot of fun and a truly gracious fellow.

Q: How about "Blows Against The Empire"?

A: Yeah, same thing, I didn’t have that much to do but watch, so I set up and then hung out with Paul and Grace. I had to go get microphones once in a while, but they had the RCA guys, Pat Iraci and Alan Zentz...and the band used to get Alan SO wasted (laughter)...they would put LSD in his drinks, and he would go on and work somehow, grinning from ear to ear. I still talk to him via email.

Paul and the Airplane guys had a unique deal with RCA, they had unlimited studio time. I don’t know how that worked out on their contracts, if that was recoupable. Bill Thompson (the Airplane manager) probably negotiated that on their deal.

I liked Paul and his music very much. Still do. He would do stuff very meticulously, track by track. It was a bit tedious, it wasn’t the live thing that CSN&Y had. Jack Casaday would come in and do a bass track on one song for like, five days, which I thought was a little indulgent. Around this time I started doing my own sessions. I recorded Nils Lofgrin’s first record, and a guy named Jerry Williams who now is writing songs for Eric Clapton. I did those records with David Briggs, later of Neil Young fame. I also recorded old friend Chet Nichols... I worked on a lot of people’s early records.

So, then I started to have some hits, some significant records with people like Brewer & Shipley, as well as Seals & Crofts. Then one day, Mel Tanner, the studio manager met with me and said that The Grateful Dead wanted to come in and audition the studio, and record a couple of tunes, and if I could get a good bass sound for Phil (Lesh), then they would record there.

I said, "Okay". You’ve got to understand, I really didn’t care who they were. I liked a lot of music, but I was not easily impressed. Being an engineer was something I could do until I was allowed to produce. You know, "So and so is coming in..." "Okay..."...

Q: I think that’s a healthy attitude...

A: Yeah, so I didn’t have any expectations. And neither did they, they just wanted to check it out because they’d come from the WORKINGMAN’S DEAD experience at Pacific High, and they were probably less than happy with it than the stuff that was coming out of Heiders’, the only world-class studio in San Francisco.

Q: Like CSN&Y...

A: Yeah. The workmen had finished the studio downstairs, Studio A, with a Quad Eight in it, and it had a little more space, and we did the first songs in there. You can see a brief snippet of film of me and the band in there on the BBC documentary "Anthem To Beauty". I can’t tell you what songs we did first. It might have been "‘Till The Morning Comes", which was fairly simple. Well, the whole record was simple.

I’d heard the horror stories about The Grateful Dead, about how they drove engineers crazy to distraction, and that David Hassinger had walked out of the studio with his hands in the air, (laughter). and that they couldn’t communicate well with anyone. I like to make a decision about someone after meeting them. As it turned out, I could easily relate to them, and they seemed like very reasonable, smart guys who had their shit together. I hadn’t heard WORKINGMAN’S DEAD, and I wasn’t a Deadhead, really.

The sessions went very well. What was unique about working on AMERICAN BEAUTY, and what sets that apart from any of their others, is that all their support people, bless them, were off somewhere else. It was just me and the band. And I think that’s one thing that helped make it what it was. There was no Bob and Betty, there was no Healy or Bear. I’m not saying that these people didn’t contribute greatly to the Dead legacy overall, and they’re all past, and present friends of mine, but it’s one thing to look at as why this record is so different. Technically, there was one point of view, mine, not a conflagration of opinions.

There were two roadies that stayed on, I think it was Ramrod and Kidd. Everyone else was out on the Medicine Ball Caravan...

Q: Tom Donahue’s thing...

A: "We Have Come For your Daughters....". With Quicksilver and whoever else was on the road. The Dead decided to stay in town and do the record so I had the band entirely to myself, which was wonderful. We got the tracks in a couple of weeks, we did the vocals in two more. Before we mixed we took a little break. At this time Garcia was hanging out with Crosby, and David was getting ready to do a solo record, so he had conversations with Jerry, and probably said, "Who would be good for me to work with on my solo record?". So, lo and behold, Crosby’s calling me and asking me to do his record...

Q: This is the guy who you said you’d never work with again...

A: Right! I told him "I don’t know if I want to do this." In fact, I avoided his calls for two weeks, I really didn’t want to do it.

Q: Probably made you more attractive...

A: (laughs) Probably did! I probably made it better for me, trying to be cosmic (laughs) or whatever place I was in. It was so funny. And he said, "I’ll make it worth your while.", or something to that effect. Finally I gave in and said, "Okay, I’ll do it." And I reluctantly agreed to do it, because I was still afraid of him. As it turned out, he was in a very happy period, and incredibly creative, and very nice to me. And that’s the beginning of our friendship, and the adventure to follow.

So, I had just finished the tracks and overdubs for AMERICAN BEAUTY, and we were just getting ready to mix. I was apprehensive because of the way he had treated me . But now I was in the mixer’s seat, and I had some credentials, and I was treated quite professionally, and he was very friendly, very nice and very mellow. Man, seriously, it was scary...(laughter). Some of the best music I’ve ever heard, let alone to be involved with.

I think one of the first things we did was "Laughing", or "Orleans", and it was just him and his acoustic guitar, and we layered on vocals, and it just clicked, and we knew we were on to something pretty good here. He was jumping up and down and being the cheerleader...and it was during this time that Jerry started showing up.

Garcia and Lesh were still working with me mixing ‘American Beauty’ during the days and they started staying after the Dead sessions at night to see what was up with Crosby. It was interesting to see The Dead be, not sycophants, but just standing by and waiting, and being there almost at David’s beck and call. They were truly awed by what strange lands David led them through. The chemistry was so good, and the songs were so good that everyone really enjoyed the hang. And the Dead never hung out at someone else’s session, this was special. Every night it was a party, sometimes it was just me and David. Sometimes it was ten people, and sometimes nothing got recorded at all, just a playback party. And I never, ever knew what was going to happen on any given night.

I developed a technique, because I knew he was demanding. I knew in advance that he wanted to record everything , so I set up a wall of tape machines...a sixteen track 3M, an eight track 3M, a couple of two tracks, and a cassette machine to make him a nightly copy for him to go home to his boat in Sausalito and listen to all night. I had this wall of machines set up and a couple of microphones ready, but as I said, I never knew what we were going to do. Since we did a complete teardown every night, I waited ‘till he came out there to set the mics.

Q: Would David know what he was going to do?

A: No, not necessarily. Sometimes he would, he would have a sketch, an idea. But, it wasn’t like these songs appeared out of nowhere. As I did research for the box set and the library in later years, I would find demo of some of these songs from ‘67, ‘68. Some home tapes had some of these songs. I think "Laughing" may have gone back to even The Byrds days. There was a bracketed period of a few years where most of these songs happened, but they weren’t all used. I guess he developed things in his head.

When he got in the studio, it was spontaneous, we would get a track, and he would add a part, work on another part, another part, ‘bada boom’ make a rough mix, and the rough mix was pretty close to what it would be in the final. In fact, I started making a rough mix reel right away, and it started accumulating, and it became the tape that we would spin for people when they would visit the studio....

Q: For playback parties?

A: Yeah, Joni Mitchell would come in, David Freiberg, Paul and Grace, you know, and David would say "Listen to THIS!" Also, at that time I got into the habit of recording things at 30 ips on the two track, which was pretty unheard of at the time. I said, "Hey, there’s 30 on here! Let’s go for it!" (Laughter). I was really glad it did, because it just sounded fantastic.

I already had some techniques worked out--placement, EQ, how much to do the limiting. There were times when I had to ask, "Is it a Crosby session or a Planet Earth Rock & Roll Orchestra (PERRO) session?" there was so much collaboration. With Crosby, we would always have a song, work on it, and sometimes finish it that night. The pace was relaxed, and that was a good thing because in the daytime, I was mixing AMERICAN BEAUTY. The Dead would be in at 11:00 or 12:00, I’d work on that, take a dinner break, and then do the Crosby session. He’d come in at 7:00 or 8:00. He was living on his boat in Sausalito. He would quit about 11:00 PM, he never worked really late, so it was good for me.

Q: Different than the CSN&Y sessions....

A: Exactly, because of Stills. He would work all night. David never liked to do that. He usually had a female companion, so he er....wanted to leave by then...

Q: Did David do most of the acoustic guitar tracks?

A: He did almost all of the acoustic guitars. There’s a lot of stuff vocally and instrumentally that he did by himself. "Orleans", that’s all him. There’s no Nash on that. Nash hung out, as a friend, but didn’t sing too much.

David wanted to prove something, that he could stand alone. "Laughing" is almost all his vocal, except for Joni Mitchell’s ‘in the sun..’ part. All of the guitars are David, the electrics and the acoustics...

Q: And Jerry’s playing the pedal steel...

A: Right. And Jack on bass.

Q: I don’t think I’ve ever heard a pedal steel sound like that, before of since...

A: Jerry was just learning, too...

Q: He got such a non-Country sound out of it, that drone...

A: Uh hum. I just put some echo on it and printed it as we recorded it, because I only had one chamber that I could work with that was any good, I committed stuff to tape. I like to print effects to tape because it travels with the overdubs, it’s always there, it’s part of the music.

Q: You were also using your intuition, too...you were on a creative roll...

A: Yeah, and if Jerry didn’t like parts of his steel track I’d bring down the fader and remember the moves. He just went, "Woah..." We just kind of looked at each other, we knew it was right in those places. There’s even that major-minor clash that he plays near the end that’s followed by the biggest, fattest steel note in history...We just had to leave it all in at that point....

Q: It goes along well with Crosby’s modal D drone thing...

A: That was my dream, to record a guitar album like that. I’d probably prepped myself for that for years, and the Chet (Nichols) record that I had done a few months before helped me a lot. I was able to have a large creative hand in the way David’s record sounded. No one was telling me what mics to use. It was like a mental telepathy thing where it would just happen, like we were following a script or something.

Q: To step back for a second, with AMERICAN BEAUTY and David’s record, were you aware of how extraordinary the music was, apart from everything else they’d done, not even knowing how it’s holding up now?

A: I knew Crosby’s record was something special. I got the same feeling during the recording of "Deja Vu", which is an ultimate Crosby song. I was just sitting there, kinda drooling. AMERICAN BEAUTY was kind of a business thing at the time. All I know is that I was there to make as good of a record as possible, and I think we succeeded. I mean, I loved the songs and it was going really well and it was fun and very pleasurable. It was definitely nothing like anything else I’d ever heard them do. And it was acoustic music which I love to record very much, and it gave me a lot of room to get in there and work with it. But we never set out to make HITS. I had nothing to base it on, like everyone else, I thought The Dead was a cult group. I probably underestimated the impact of "Truckin’", for instance. I thought it was a nice shuffle, and Garcia’s great solo...

I made the edit on the single. It went (hums) ‘dee dee dee dee’ change ‘DUMMMM’ (laughter) Remember that!? (laughs). I said, "Jerry, are you sure you can play that live?" (laughter). But, I knew something really different was happening with Crosby’s record...I didn’t get that same feeling with AMERICAN BEAUTY, although I loved working on it. The experience of working in a facility does not always offer one a choice in clients, so to work with, so working with Crosby and the Dead were truly a gift. There was a sense of equality and camaraderie that I’ve had trouble reaching in sessions since.

Q: There are great acoustic guitar sounds on Crosby’s record, as we spoke about. Did you replicate, say, if Crosby said, "I’ve got a great acoustic guitar sound here, and this is the mic placement every night..."

A: No. It was more like, "I’m playing this song, go ahead and do your thing." There was never an attempt to make it like anything. There were no expectations. I don’t have a formula. I intentionally don’t. Because I’ve found that every guitar is different, every mic is different, every night is different. The barometric pressure has something to do with it, the temperature of the room, the attitude, the song, the capo, the tuning, the technique....

Q: The player...

A: The player on that night, right. It’s always different. You know, I have to laugh when I read in ‘Music Connection’ where somebody says, "Well I used a so and so on the kick..." and on and on. That’s a bunch of horse SHIT. Because anybody who thinks they’ve got it down, and anybody who walks into a room and has their equipment pre-set, is a fool, because you’re just trying to make the music fit your vision, your box.

With these kinds of players that we’re talking about, the more room you leave for serendipity the better it is. Sometimes the sound might come out bad from a technical viewpoint but if the songs are strong, it doesn’t matter. "Cowboy Movie", was really a crappy sounding track! We never had TIME to get a drum sound. It was pure luck to be on tape at all. It was loose. People would come in the studio, sit down in plastic chairs, and start playing.

I’d start the tape first, then run out and start plugging mics in. I’d run a two track, too, and then refine the mix as it went along. I’d always have very little live time to mix and tweak and get it into shape. When it came to drums, man, sometimes I’d have to get a snare, and a kick and a couple of overheads set up while the thing was going, because I might not get it again. I learned some really good four microphone drum techniques from Glyn Johns, another one of my main influences aside from Bill. I worked with Glyn on a Steve Miller record.

Q: I find it interesting that you say you’d roll the tape first, and then run out...

A: Yeah, some tracks I may get one or two mics going and then run out to the room. I’d have the tape ready, already, I’d hit ‘record’, ‘cause I could at least get the two guitars, then I’d throw up the vocal mics, then I’d plug in the bass. So you’ll hear ‘crrrkkk’ clicks because of the phantom power, when I’d plug in mic’s. I’ve looked for things, maybe external to the center of the music that maybe nobody else would go for, like Crosby’s foot keeping time; on "Kids And Dogs", an unreleased track, I put a microphone on his foot to get a metronome beat.

Q: The first track, "Music Is Love" has something like that...

A: Yes, a couple of times, I’d have to work with tapes that came in from somewhere else. "Music Is Love" is really interesting because it was another one that wasn’t supposed to happen. Henry Lewy was doing a session with Crosby, Nash, and Neil Young (at A&M in LA). They were just sitting around, writing a new song with a room mic. That’s what "Music Is Love" is for about the first three minutes, nothing else. Maybe EQ’d a little bit, and a little echo. Henry recorded it directly to a full-track mono machine. Then he transferred that mono track to the first track on an 8 track 1" Scully.

Then Neil took the tape and overdubbed vibes and bass, and vocals and Nash put on a harmony vocal. The two of them put this eight track together after David had left. Later, during the Crosby sessions, Nash brought a mix of it up to San Francisco as a completed two track, and said "Hey, here’s a gift. Here’s a song, your song that you developed with us, and this could be on your record." David loved it. And I said to Nash, "Well, don’t you have a multi track of this?, I want to remix it." Nash was kind of put off because he thought it was finished, but I thought I could improve the mix and, reluctantly he had the tapes sent up.

When I listened to the 8 track, the first track, the mono log tape demo was very distorted, sort of messed up. I guess they were really pushing Henry to put the demo on the 8 track RIGHT AWAY, because he must have transferred to an unaligned machine. When I listened to the original mono log tape, it was not distorted...so I decided to ‘fly’ in the undistorted original tape. rather than what was on track 1.

It was an attempt to ‘wild sync’ that and put it on an open track on the eight track (laughter). I was trying to lock it in, and flange it with my thumb, and it makes this sound (makes phasing sound) ‘whiss shooo wsss’, of course. Crosby walks in and goes, "What is THAT!!" (laughter) "That is fuckin’ GREAT!" (laughter) I said to him, "Sorry, I’m just tryin’ to synch this up, you won’t hear that later." He says, "No, man, we’ve gotta do this! This goes on the record!" So that’s how the phasing worked in there. I used the clean track in the beginning, brought in the phasing track to open it up, when he starts kinda playing the opening riff, ‘da da dada..’, and then the other instruments came in there...

Q: Yeah, that one note of the vibes...

A: Yeah, then I had something to work with, before that I had no stereo at all. Then I just panned it open. I still get chills whenever I hear that. It wasn’t as clean as "Laughing", but it was so musically cool, that we had to go with it.

On "Cowboy Movie", it was a dirty track, and really hard to mix, I tried several times and finally we fell back on an early rough mix that was full of compression and echo and it just somehow made the dirtiness kinda round, nice, and compact. So I just transferred that to 30 ips.

Q: You know, there’s a theory that the 20th century is going to be known as the century of ‘performed art’, and the reason that it’s being called ‘performed art’ is because of our ability to record and store performances like never before. Obviously, 400 years ago, people would say, ‘he’s a great singer’, you’re saying ‘great’....

A: 400 Years into the future people will still be listening to Crosby and his buddies . When working with talent of that caliber, one has to take great care in capturing their muse. I like to view all recording projects as works of art while I work on them, but of course only a few of them will endure. David’s solo album will be one of them.

Q: And it tells me how important it is to be able capture the moment, and it sounds to me like the thing that you’ve been able to excel at.

A: That’s what I sell myself on, you know. I feel like retro approaches to new artist projects are coming back. The more machine music and sample records get made, the more backlash there will be as people want to hear more randomness, human happy accidents. There’s an increased desire by record buyers to favor works that do capture the moment, as opposed to being force fed what radio tells them to buy. I like working with live tracking, because I get to delve into that serendipitous area where sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, and I take the best of what really happened instead of trying to manufacture it.

So the Crosby record was three months of sheer recording bliss. You know, "Laughing" is probably the most near perfect recording that I could hang my reputation on, I think. I was just glad I was the guy that was there to capture it. I guess I’m always searching for another project like that one, and it doesn’t happen too often.

END PART ONE...

 PART TWO