NECKTIE SECOND 03 - Recording Pt. 2

"It's a one-take Suzy!" Cutting tape! Lessons in comping! And more!

Necktie Second, my major label debut on American, turned thirty in May. To celebrate the occasion I’m sharing memories of making the album in a multi-part series. Here are links to my previous posts in case you missed them. My Debut Turns 30 • Recording Pt. 1

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The first song we cut was “So I Am Over You.” For the basic track, producer Brendan O’Brien joined in on electric guitar. I still remember the high I felt listening to the first playback. It sounded like a record. In addition to getting great sounds on the way in, Brendan was an A-List mix engineer. And he was fast. He could whip up what he called a ‘hot mix’ in no time. It was a thrill to watch him twiddle knobs and push faders on Southern Tracks’ big SSL console.

I don’t recall how many takes we did. Generally, we would cut multiple takes and often edit the master together with sections from various performances. For example, we might use the first verse and chorus from take two, the second verse, chorus and bridge from take one, and so on. Remember, in those days we were not working on computers, so these edits took place by literally cutting the tape with a razor blade and then splicing it back together. Check out this clip of our fearless engineer, “Razor” Russ Fowler, making an edit on the Studer 2” machine. The second half of this clip features an instrumental backing track for a song that ultimately did not make the record. For the life of me I can’t recall its title.

No edits were required for “If You Don’t Love Me.” I remember Brendan declaring, “It’s a one-take, Suzy!” after we completed our first take. The track was recorded in a mad dash. Right after finishing the basic, Brendan instructed me to go up to the lounge and grab one of the cheap Silvertone guitars off of the wall. I tuned it up and knocked out an overdub (or two?) in a jiffy. Then he told me to jump on his old Gibson Les Paul Junior and add that. This time, we dialed in a more cranked sound and used it only in specific sections. After knocking out my vocals real quick, Brendan printed a rough mix.

Later, we tracked Elaine’s cowbell and the ‘ahh’ background vocals, and once all the tracks were in place, Brendan tackled mixing. However, after completing a proper mix, Brendan decided he had not bettered the rough. But the rough did not include the cowbell and bgvs. So we flew in the cowbell and background vocals to the rough mix. In the days of tape, flying tracks was a complicated, challenging process that required firing off the new tracks at the precise moment to get them to be in time. Here is Brendan explaining the process:

“The cowbell and backgrounds were indeed flown onto the mix (the master 1/2” mix is actually a second-generation copy).   I think I got pretty lucky getting the timing right. That’s why the cowbell is kinda loud.   Didn’t wanna re-do it.

The process would’ve been to get a mix matched up as close as possible with the cowbell and bgvs blended in ……then just print those tracks to tape. Probably would’ve rolled the 1/2” with the rough mix and a 1/4” with the bgvs/cowbell (flying those in free-hand) simultaneously back to a DAT.  We only had those two tape machines so it had to be something like that.    Then print the DAT back to 1/2”.    It would’ve been pretty easy to print as many passes as needed on DAT , then edit back to 1/2”.   The process may have varied somewhere along the line but not by much.”

Confused? That’s okay. All you need to know is that it worked. And thanks in part to Elaine’s cowbell, “If You Don’t Love Me” was a hit!

In addition to his engineering and production skills, Brendan is a ridiculously talented musician. I learned a lot watching him do his thing. In this clip, he and “Razor” Russ dial up a killer guitar tone for “Two Steppin’ Monkey.”

Brendan and I shared lead guitar duties. That’s Brendan on “So I Am Over You.” The solo on “Fourth of July” is yours truly. I vividly recall how that went down. I took multiple shots at nailing it. None were good all the way through. It frustrated me that I could not get it right in one pass. After several attempts, Brendan told me we were done. I assumed he meant that it wasn’t happening and we were moving on and I sulked up to the lounge to mope.

A little while later, Brendan found me and told me to come down and listen. I assumed he had stepped in and played the solo himself. But when he hit playback, I was astounded to hear my solo cranking out of the speakers. It was flawless. It even broke off into a two-part harmony bit at the end.

This was the moment I learned about comping. It turns out they had recorded multiple takes, found the good bits, and strung them together into one seamless performance. Brendan explained the process to me and said, “Everybody does it. It happens all the time.” To this day, I am super proud of that solo.

Stay tuned to this space for more on the recording of Necktie Second. Then later, I’ll get into the year-and-a-half-long touring cycle that followed its release.

Peace & Love Songs,

Pete