Al Schmitt

- (Voiceover) Al Schmitt is one of the music industry's best known and most revered recording engineers. He's worked in over a hundred and fifty gold and platinum albums and has won an astounding 23 Grammys for his work, that spans multiple musical genres, including Harry Mancini to Diana Krall, Toto, Steely Dan, and Paul McCartney. I'm honored to speak with Al Schmitt. Thanks for being here, Al. - My pleasure. - Let's go back to the beginning. How did you get into the recording business? - (laughs) Well, it started when I was eight. My uncle had a recording studio in New York City, and I used to get on the subway every Saturday, go over to his studio and spend the weekend with him. He was my father's brother, and he was also my godfather. He didn't have any children, so I was like his son. I would go and clean patch cords, and help set up chairs. And people like Art Tatum would be there, and Bing Crosby would come, and the Andrew Sisters, and you name it, you know. Just, I would spend every weekend there from the time I was like eight until I was about almost 13. I would go over every weekend. - There weren't many recording studios back then. - It was, his was the first independent recording studio. He was an engineer for Brunswick, and then left there and started his own place. He broke in so many guys, you know, that were outstanding engineers at the time. So, anyway, that was it. I always wanted to be like him. We were kind of poor, living in Brooklyn, and he had a beautiful apartment on Riverside Drive. He always had a lot of money. He always took me to fights. He took me to hockey games. As an eight year old kid, and you get to meet all these people. Art Tatum would take my hand and show me little boogie woogie licks on the piano. It was amazing, and it's all I ever wanted to do. - So then you went to the navy, right? - Yeah when I was 13, I stopped going over there when I was 13 and started hanging out with a gang, and getting in trouble. On my seventeenth birthday, I enlisted in the navy, so I could get away from there. Cause, half my friends were in jail, and I knew I was heading that way if I didn't do something. So, I got in the navy and spent a couple a years in the navy. When I came out, I was gonna go to college, and my uncle called me and he said a friend of his had a studio and they were doing all the jazz records, and all, at that time. It was called Apex Recording Studios. They were looking for someone to break in and would I be interested. I said of course, you know, sure. So I went over and interviewed for the job, with the guy that owned it. His name was Bob Schulein. They hired me and I started on a Monday and he took me in and introduced me to this engineer who was gonna be my mentor, and it was Tom Dowd. - No kidding. - So, Tommy and I liked one another right away. We got along really well. He was responsible for so much of what I learned early in my career. - He wasn't that much older than you, was he, at this time? - Yeah, he was older than I was. He had been in the... He was in all the Atlantic Records, and all that stuff. And what happened, was there was another engineer by the name of Otto Oftringen, I think, and he was a German engineer, and he wore a monocle, and he clicked his heels. I mean it was unreal-- - Really? People were actually like that? - (Al) Yeah, oh yeah. He was like something from a movie. So I remember that he was doing something over at Atlantic Records, and he wanted more bass. He said, no, you have enough bass. I can't give you more bass, for whatever reasons. Cause he wore the white smock, and all. - (Bobby) Yeah, yeah. - So, the next session they had, they asked for Tommy, and when Tommy said, they wanted to ask Tommy for more bass, he gave it to them. They loved him for that. So they started using Tommy all the time. I broke in (coughs) and when Tommy couldn't do something, I did it. The first hit I had was a record by the Clovers called Don't You Know I Love You, and back in those days, they were called race records. - Yeah, yeah. - It was a big race record hit. Then Prestige recorded there, National Records recorded there, a company called Abby. These were companies that were doing a lot of Jazz work. So I got to work with all those top, top guys. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, you name it. And I was a bebopper, as a kid. I just loved bebop music. - Must have been heaven, then. - (Al) I was in heaven. It was like I died and went to heaven. So that was basically the start of it. Then the company, believe it or not, the guy that owned it, was an alcoholic. He just had us shut down. He drank all the profits up and everything. So they went out of business. Tommy went to work for a studio called Coastal, Fulton Recording. I went to work for a little studio called Nola, which was a rehearsal studios, and they had a little room to record. I was there for about a year, I guess, and then I got a call from Tommy, saying the studio he worked at, Fulton, were looking for somebody and another engineer. He recommended me, so I went over there and got the job, with a lot more money and all. So, it was a nice boost up for me. So all in all, Tommy and I were together about eight years. Except for that one year that we were away. - Wow, I had no idea that there was a connection. I knew you knew him, but I didn't realize he was a mentor. - We were, I was like his kid brother. Yeah, it was amazing. - How did you get to California? - That's another little story. I started doing a lot of jazz stuff and you know, I was getting a good reputation. Dick Barker, who owned World Pacific Jazz, would come to New York to use me. I was doing (sighs) Gerry Mulligan, and Chet Baker, Jim Hall, and Bobby Brookmeyer, the Street Swingers, for him. So, jokingly one day, we were (coughs) Excuse me. We were in the studio, and he said you know Al, if you came out to California, I wouldn't have to come all this way to use you. I said to him, well get me a job out there and I'll come out. That was it. Three weeks later, I get a call from him. I got you a job out here, Al, if you really want it. It's the best studio in all of Los Angeles. Radio Recorders. They're doing all the top stuff and they're looking for somebody and I played them your work, and they're anxious to have you. So, I moved to California. - Radio Recorders, yeah that-- - Yeah, and then we were doing only RCA stuff there. Bones Howe, was a great engineer. He was doing this record, where the producer was Sy Rady, and the artist was Henry Mancini. Unheard of artist, doing a TV show called Peter Gunn. Well, Bones and Sy Rady got in a beef over something. I have no idea what it was and Sy kicked him off the record and brought me on. That was one of the big breaks in my career, because then I started doing everything for RCA and then when they opened their studio, in I guess it was in the middle of 1959, I was the first engineer they hired. So I was doing all the RCA stuff there and staying busy. I was doing three dates a day, six days a week. I'd go and do nine to 12, two to five, eight to 11. Six days a week. I just so busy and everybody wanted to use me. It was a new studio and it was a great room. I was making hit records. So it was cool. I was doing Ike and Tina Turner, and the Ike Heads. Billy Eckstine and Billy May, and Rosemary Clooney, and Gordon Jenkins, and classical music. I was doing country music, Bobby Bare. So it was just an incredible way to learn. And learn different microphone techniques, and anything we needed, they got us at RCA. We had all the latest Neumann microphones. Money was no object. It was at the NBC building, on Sunset and Vine, that we had the two studios, and the only thing there was You Bet Your Life with Groucho, and the 11 o'clock news. So I got to see Groucho all the time, which was kinda fun. - Yeah. - Every time he'd pass me in the hall, he'd have a remark, you know. He was very funny. - Tell me about Sam Cook. You did Sam Cook. - Yeah, yeah. I did all the Sam Cook things. I was his engineer for a long, long time. I did Bring it on Home, and Cupid, and Twisting the Night Away, and Another Saturday Night, you name it. - All the big ones, yeah. - A lot of the big hits. Hugo and Luigi were his producers, at the time. Then I went into production at RCA. Once I got into production, I couldn't engineer anymore. You know, they had strict union rules there. But, Hugo and Luigi were starting their own label, Avco. I forget what the name of the label was. I think it was Avco. So they left. So Sam Cooke, since I had worked with him so much, and he liked me, we got along so well, asked me to be his producer also. So I started producing Sam. I did Shake, The Whole World is Shaking, When a Boy Falls in Love, I did the Copa Album. Live at the Copa, in New York. I was with him, I had dinner with him the night he was killed. Yeah, he was a dear, dear friend and I still miss him today. There was nobody like him, in the studio. He was an amazing talent. Great writer, incredible ears. - Wow, wow. - (Al) yeah, it was cool. - Well OK, here's a question I've always wanted to ask you. Jefferson Airplane. - Oh. - So you did a second and the third Jefferson Airplane. - I did, I did-- - Volunteers, right? - I did, that was the fourth one. I did After Bathing at Baxter's, Bless its Pointed Little Head, Crown of Creation, and Volunteers. Then I also did the Hot Tuna acoustic album. - What I noticed, I was hoping we were gonna do this, so I went back and I did some listening, and the first Jefferson Airplane record is really swarming and reverb, and everything. It's not the fine-- - (Al) That's why-- - And when you, you're stuff, is really crystal clean. - Well, that's why I was doing it. Rick Jarrard was the producer, staff guy at RCA. He did the Surrealistic Pillow, which had White Rabbit, Somebody to Love, the big hits. - Yeah. - They hated them. Not him personally, they hated the fact that they were buried in echo. They couldn't stand that stuff. So, they fired him. They said no. They, for some reason, liked me. I'd never worked with them, but I stopped in on some sessions, and watched what was going on, so I wound up producing them. - But there was a period when you were a staff producer for RCA, right? You stopped and you went back to engineering. Why? - You couldn't engineer when you became a producer because of the union rules. You weren't allowed to touch the board. So, I had to stop engineering and just produce. But I was so busy producing. You know I had 11 acts, from the Womenfolk to Hugo Montenegro, to Sam Cooke, to Eddy Fisher, to Jefferson Airplane, Gale Garnett, god, there's... You know. So I was jamming. - (Bobby) Yeah, yeah. - So I didn't have time to really think about engineering. - But then you eventually went back eng-- - Well I did, when I left RCA. - Oh I see, OK. - What happened, and this is a funny story, I was doing Eddy Fisher in the afternoon from two to five. When I finished with him, I'd go upstairs and meditate. I was into transcendental meditation, at the time. Then I'd go down at eight o'clock for the Jefferson Airplane. We'd go till four in the morning, sometimes more. Then I'd go home, get a few hours sleep, come back to work. I had to do my budgets, I had to look for material for my other artists, cause not all of them wrote, so I was seeing publishers all the time. They'd play me songs, and all that stuff. So, I was just killing myself. So I call my boss, his name was Ernie Alshela, and I said, Ernie you gotta do something. You gotta get somebody to do Eddy Fisher. I said I just can't do it anymore, I'm killing myself here. You know, I said I'm doing this, and I'm working like 16 to 18 hours a day, and then you know I'm getting ready to get another divorce. His line to me was "well gee Al, truck drivers do it." (laughter) I said Ernie, get yourself a couple of truck drivers. I quit. I tendered my resignation and I left two weeks later. I was home, I didn't know what I was gonna do. You know, I was home. I get a call from Jefferson Airplane. They wanted to give us some guys there, and there was nobody there we wanted to work with, we liked working with you. They said we could hire an independent producer. Would you do it? I said absolutely. So I wound up independently producing their records. The funny thing about this was, as a staff producer at RCA, I was making 17 thousand, five hundred bucks a year. I could make a bonus of five thousand dollars, every year, which I did, cause my records were selling enough. So I was making 22 five. With doing 11 artists. Doing one artist, Jefferson, my first royalty check was 50 grand. - Wow. - (laughs) So I realized I had made the right decision. - Yeah, no kidding. - Then of course, I started doing a lot of stuff with Grunt Records, with their label. - So you're independent, ever since then. - Ever since, yeah. - You've been mostly an engineer, you haven't went too much into production. - Well, yeah, when I did.. I was producing. I was, you know, I did co-produce Jackson Browne. - Oh, I didn't know that. - There were certain artists that I've worked with that I've produced and co-produced. What happened was, my friend Tommy La Puma asked me to mix a record for him. I said, gee Tommy, I haven't done any engineering in six years, I don't know if I can even do it anymore. He said, oh sure you can. It's like riding a bike. So I said OK, I'll give it a shot, but if I feel I'm not doing it, you've got to let me out. And if you feel I'm not doing it, you gotta let me know. No hard feelings. Cause we were really close friends. What happened was he was doing an artist, with Dave Mason and Bruce Botnick was the engineer. The album was going longer than they had anticipated, and Bruce was already signed to do a, going with The Doors again. So, he had to leave. So that's when Tommy asked me. So when I got in and started mixing it, I started bringing up the faders and listening to Only You Know and I Know, and thought oh man, this stuff sounds so good. This is the reason I got in this business in the first place. The capture of sounds and the mix. So that was it. I was off and running back to engineering and I wound up doing the first two Earth, Wind & Fire records with Joe Wizard. - I didn't know you did Earth, Wind & Fire. - Yeah. - Especially, those records. - Yeah, the first one had a girl in it. - Yeah, I remember. - Yeah. So, yeah, yeah. - Wow. - I got a deep history. (laughs) - Yeah, absolutely. You've done so many different genres and it goes from classical stuff that you've done, to jazz, to bop, to Jefferson Airplane, to Earth, Wind & Fire. Is your approach the same? - Pretty much. You know, music is music. I would listen to what was going on in the room, you know as they'd run something down in rehearsal, and I would work by the instruments and listen to everything. Know what was going on, who was playing what, or whatever. Then I would go inside and bring up the faders, put my mics where I thought they should belong, and then if there was something I didn't like, I'd go out and change a mic, or move the mic. So, yeah. Whether is was country music with Bobby Bare, or whatever, it was music. Even like polka music, which I couldn't stand, I kinda null that out and just listen to the sounds, capture the sounds of the instruments. Pretty cool. - When you're doing any kind of record, it doesn't matter, you're doing a recording, take me through like a typical day. - Typical day. Depending on what I'm doing, whether it's a big orchestral day, or big band, or whatever, I always get to the studio maybe two and a half hours ahead of time. I've talked to my assistant before then, so we have a diagram. We talk about what mics we're gonna use, and how we're gonna set up the studio. So usually when I get there, the chairs are in place, the risers are there, and everything else. So then my assistant and I, we get the microphones, place the microphones we're gonna use, the way we're gonna use them. We get all that. We check out every mic. We talk into them all and make sure that they're right. We don't click them. We do click em, to make sure about phasing. But we do talk into them, make sure they're right. Usually we're done 45 minutes before the date starts and we have a chance to have a cup of coffee and relax. We get everything set up. Everybody comes in the room. Everybody sits down. If it's a big band date, the first run down, I go by the conductor, or the arranger and conductor, and I listen to everything from his standpoint of what's going on. So I know who's doing what. When there's muted brass and open brass, and you know, muted trombones, and so forth. And then I go in and then sit down, and I'm really quick. I don't use compression or equalization so I don't have to deal with any of that crap. It's just a matter of using good microphones. I get my balance and usually that's it, and we're off and running. - How often do your mic choices change? - They change, you know with certain mics, you know when Royal came out with their microphones, I had stopped using Ribbons for awhile, because they were noisy and you couldn't always... Every 77 sounded a little different, the 44s. Well, when Royal came out with these great ribbon microphones, god it was fabulous. So, yeah, I started using them. Certainly on acoustic instruments. I started using them on trombones, and things. I'm a microphone freak, so when new mics come out, I'm into it. I want to hear everything and try everything out. - What I've noticed about you, the few times I've watched you work, is it's so effortless. But, your sounds come through your microphones. You're not one of those guys that... I think most modern engineers, they're fillers or tweakers. - Yeah, yeah. - You're not like that at all. - No, no. And the reason being, the way I learned, when I learned, we didn't have any equalizers. We had one equalizer and it was Cinema equalizer, and if you put it in, it equalized everything. - Oh yeah. - So you couldn't put it in on an individual thing. You couldn't just equalize the bass. So, we never used it and there was no compression. We didn't have compression. So, everything was hand compression. Riding gain, and stuff. That's how I learned. And I learned to use my microphones, as my EQ, really. If I put a microphone up, and it's not quite as bright as I want, I'll come up with another microphone, that I know is a little brighter, and use that. Sometimes just moving the mic a little bit, makes all the difference in the world. - What monitors do you like to use? - I've been using, for all I'd say, the last 15 years now, maybe that long, Doug Sax's the mastering lab, you know the tannoy, 10 driver with the black case and the Mastering Lab crossovers. Yeah, I use them all the time. Those are... I don't know what I'd do without them. - Which you can't get anymore. - You're right, exactly. And every time I bring something up to Doug, the first thing he tells me, don't change those speakers! (laughs) - But everybody I know that has those, they would never have anything else. - (Al) Yeah, I love em. I had 11 of them, at one point, and people were on me about them, so I gave two away, and then I sold two to somebody that wanted them. But, I kept five, for surround. So, I still have five, in good shape. - (Bobby) Yeah, very cool. The music business has changed quite a lot and you've seen it change more than anybody. It's changed considerably. Up and down... - Absolutely. - Where do you see it going? - Wow. I don't know. You know, I don't know. I think when guys were able to start to make records in their own home, I think that was the demise of studios. You know, so many good studios went out of business, cause guys were over dubbing in their little home, saving money where you'd normally go to a studio to have it done and do it. So that was one thing that I thought, it broke my heart. To see some of these great places go out of business, because of that, because there wasn't enough business. One of the reasons was because a lot of guys were doing everything at home. Then they started mixing at home, in a box and all this stuff, and so mixing rooms went down. I'm still the old school. I don't use plug-ins, I don't mix in a box. I don't know how. (laughs) And I don't care to learn about it. I'm happy, when people hire me, they usually have enough money to pay for the studio and I get to work in the best rooms. In fact, I feel sorry for the guys that work at home all the time, cause they miss, like at Capital. I'm out there, my stuff is in the hall. My name's on it. Guys are there, you know musicians from doing other dates. I'd run into people all the time. I'll run into somebody and they'll say, Al, man, are you busy next week? You know, I get work. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - So it's great. And then the camaraderie of it all, it's just special, you know. - It is. - And I love musicians, man. Musicians are crazy, son of a... So much fun to be around, you know, in general. - By the way, congratulations on your star, on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. - Oh yeah, how bout that. I'm not sure when it's gonna be. They originally told me, maybe in January. Now it looks like, we'll be lucky if it's in February. I'm hoping that it's done in February and we get it done. It's gonna be right out in front of Capital. - (Bobby) Oh, that's awesome. - I told Paul McCartney, I could just walk a couple steps, and I'm at your star. (laughs) - (Al) So we're neighbors. - That's excellent. Thank you for coming. - Oh you're welcome. Thank you for having me. - Thank you. - It's a pleasure.