The Midas Touch
An Interview With
Mitch Easter
1984 was a great year for Mitch Easter.After all the compliments for his incisive production work with R.E.M.,his own recording career blossomed and he picked up well deserved plaudits for the excellent "Cypress" album (IRS) which he made with Let's Active.
The following Interview took place on Thursday afternoon,October 18th,in Mitch's room at the sprawling Cunard International Hotel in Hammersmith at the tail end of the Bunnymen tour.Primarily it's an attempt to meet Colin Hill's call for a definitive Easter piece in B.O.B. 9. Depending on how much blue pencil the new editor applies to it,I went for an exhaustive approach as possible. To fill in the gaps,particularly Mitch's career in the 70s,I suggest you read the dB's piece in Comstock Lode 10.
OK,crank Cypress up to a reasonable volume and off we go.
B.O.B: Were you in any bands before Rittenhouse Square?
M.E: Yeah,the first group I was in was in 1968 or something - it was called Loyal Opposition which I found out later is like a term for the Republican Party in the United States,but I didn't know that.That was the first group I was in when I was in the seventh grade.I was in several groups before R2,most notably this one called Sacred Irony that existed from '69 to '71.It was a group that I forced into doing all original material and stuff like that, we were a pretty good group - we went into the studio and all that.
B.OB: Were you friends with people like Chris Stamey from when you were really small?
M.E: Yeah, I've known Chris from the second grade.I've known all those guys from way back.
B.O.B: Who was in the Sacred Irony group?
ME: Well, none of those guys went on to the dB's or anything.They're not names that would ring any bells,most of them are still playing though.
B.O.B: Where did this take place?
M.E: This was all in Winston-Salem.
B.O.B: Were you actually on the album that was recorded by R2?
M.E: Oh yeah,have you heard that?
B.O.B: No.
M.E: Good!
B.O.B: Peter keeps threatening to send a couple copies over.I don't know if you saw that weird dB's thing in Comstock Lode:they went right back to day one and talked about all these bands.
M.E: That sounds kind of familiar, was it Peter talking?
B.O.B: It was all of them I think I'm not sure if Chris was there or not.
M.E: Peter especially seems to be a real good archivist.
B.O.B: Did the R2 album actually ever get released?
M.E: Well, in a way, it wasn't released in the sense that things are released today.What happened is that I was really big on going into the studio back in those days, I was the one who would make us go do these tapes but there wasn't really much to do with them, we'd just make them and we'd hope that somebody would fall out of the sky and discover us.After the group, Rittenhouse, broke up the drummer decided to cash in and he put out the record on his own, I don't know how he tried to sell it or anything - I just know that it popped up in places.I had nothing to do with the record coming out and actually we were all horrified at the time because we didn't think it turned out very well. We didn't try to stop him;the next thing we knew - it was out.
B.O.B: So did it have a proper sleeve and things?
M.E: No,it didn't.There's like a limited edition, of about twenty, that have these cardboard sleeves that are silk-screened by hand.Actually after the record came out and I accepted that fact I made those sleeves.I realized that was going nowhere fast so I just sort of disappeared from doing that.Then the drummer went on and got those sleeves made up from this horrible publicity picture that we had taken wearing matching shirts really hideous picture - and he had these printed on those sleeves that have a hole in the middle so there's four bodies there but all our middles are missing because of the hole, so all the ones that exist have that sleeve as far as I know.
B.O.B: So what instruments were you playing in that group?
M.E: It was really just guitar, bass and drums. Me and Peter played guitar, Chris Stamey played bass and this guy Bobby Lock played drums and I think there was a smidgen of electric piano on there but it was pretty much a grinding guitar record.
B.O.B: Like metal?
M.E: Sort of like metal - except we weren't thinking metal at all.The stupid thing about it, that you can never hear listening to it, the thing that I wanted to be at that time was " Message From The Country" vintage Move.I just didn't have the brains to accomplish that, but that's what I was thinking.The stuff that we actually did was like the heavy riffs but it wasn't at all what Motorhead does today.
B.O.B: More like Brontosaurus?
M.E: Yeah, we were certainly thinking along those lines, that type of 'heavy' would have been really good to us - if we could have accomplished it.
B.O.B: Have you always been a big Move fan?
M.E: I don't think I heard them until 1970.Chris Stamey had 'Shazam' and from there I went back and got the first record and all the later ones.
B.O.B: The first Move album is a personal favorite of mine, the one with the 'Fool' cove, I don't know what it was like in America.
M.E: Well I have an import. I don't even think it came out over there.
B.O.B:Did you ever get to see them at all?
M.E: No, but supposedly Roy Wood is going to come to our show in Birmingham because we've talked to him about maybe producing something in the future and he said he would come so I may get to meet him but I never got to see the band. A lot of our friends went to see Wizzard, in '72 or something.I haven't really heard anything he's done in the past ten years.
BO.B: After you split from R2 did you get into the H-Bombs then?
M.E: No there was a pretty big gap.The R2 group lasted until 72 then it sort of fell apart and what happened then is Chris Stamey got a Teac 4 - track machine, that was when they first came out, and he and I started making tapes down in my basement - for the years '72 and '73 we made all these tapes and that's where both of us really learned how to do all this.It was just so free because we didn't have to convince other guys in the band to play these songs - we just did'em. I played drums, I took up cello and saxophone and all this kind of stuff - we really went wild. The year after that he and I went to college and, I guess, neither one of us really got anything going for about the next year, then about '75 or '76 he got that group Sneakers started, that was the next thing.
B.O.B: You were still at college when that started up?
M.E: Yes.
B.O.B: What were you actually doing at college?
M.E: I was just going. I didn't want to be there - I wanted to be playing music but all my old connections had scattered and I just didn't know what to do with myself. I was just stupid, I didn't jump on a plane to New York and try to really do it or anything. I wanted to have a band but I wanted to have it on my own terms - I guess I wasn't ready to plunge into some music capital and try to really do it right so I just wandered around until I finally blundered back into small bands, made tapes and stuff.
B.O.B: Do you think that any of those tapes that you did with Chris will ever see the light of day or were they just messing around?
M.E: I don't even know where some of them are.I do have all those very first ones and with a little bit of re-mixing maybe they could see the light of day on flexi-discs or something.They were really crude, in a way, because we didn't even have a mixer we just plugged the microphones right into the machine and just went. So a lot of stuff is real rough sounding, but to us - we were breaking down all kinds of barriers - we thought. There are a couple of tracks that I'm proud of that would be nice for people to hear - the only thing is the singing is the most godawful thing you ever heard of and it's pretty embarrassing. I don't know if the public could get past the singing.
B.O.B: Did you co - found the Sneakers or just join?
M.E: No, I joined. he started the band, he called me in to play guitar because they didn't sound quite good enough or something.
B.O.B: I believe on of those records was released posthumously, is that right?
M.E: Yeah, the big one ('In The Red') was after the band didn't really exist.The big one was, for all intents and purposes, just me and Chris again - other guys are on there to some limited extent on some things.
B.O.B: Looking back at that record - do you still like it?
M.E: No, when I was in the band I'll bet we didn't play more then ten times - if that.It was weird years - like "76 and '77 was the very beginnings of the punk scene and stuff and that was already helping us with that band - but only the tiniest bit. It still wasn't like there was a world of clubs out there that we could go to. We went to New York and played once, Max's Kansas City, that was like a big event but it was just one night. We came back home and played a couple of shows but it was really weird because we'd be playing in these clubs thattraditionally had heavy rock cover bands and there would be some guy in the audience who had dimly heard that we'd played New York and he's be yelling these insults like " Hey, fuckin' New Yorker, go away" - weird and confused - half the audience would hate us, they didn't know what we were doing but all we were doing was playing rock music but at the time it was well polarized.
B.O.B: The second record that came out, did it come out on Carnivore Records?
M.E: First it was Carnivorous and then it was just Car.
B.O.B: On that it seems that you're more of a side-man - it seems that the personnel split into two segments on the back sleeve.It lists Chris Stamey and two other guys and then you and two other guys - it just credits you as acoustic guitar player.
M.E: Oh you're talking about the first one. What had happened, to give you exact details, is that the first time the group played I was playing with them and it was this really, funny, disastrous, show and things happened like Chris was playing an acoustic guitar and it exploded while he was playing it - the head just fell off. It was like his world debut, as a star, the first time he'd had his own group where he was singing and everything and all those things going wrong really upset him and at the end of the show everyone was really dis-spirited. We didn't get back together for a while and then Chris was actually afraid to ask me to play with him anymore because he just thought that I wouldn't do it after that night, but the fact is I really didn't care one way or the other and in the meantime they got back together without me and couldn't really get booked to play anywhere so they decided to do that record. The record was just like an amusement - the way I turned up on it after all was that when they decided to record he somehow thought it would be better if I played guitar on it too. I was called in to play acoustic guitar but not as a member of the band so that's why I've got smaller type down there.
B.O.B: So that was in fact the first one, the other one was released ...
M.E: The big one came out in '78.
B.O.B: Were you an H-Bomb by then or what?
M.E: No, not quite, I don't think. H-Bombs started in '78, I think, somehow I don't think the H-Bombs had got started at that point.
B.O.B: So what were you doing after the Sneakers?
M.E: I don't know exactly but it did ooze into being the H-Bombs. Me and Peter Holsapple started doing some tapes and we decided we wanted to play out live, actually it had to do with that guy Kim Foley. He discovered that The Sneakers had got some press and he started calling up me and also Chris - he was going to make us famous, you know, he would call up and he would say things to us like : "Okay, I'm going to be bringing you out to L.A. pretty soon now, if you've got girlfriends or anything I want you to get your relationship with them really squared away because when you get to L.A. these L.A. chicks are really going to fuck with your head, man". He was saying things like that to us on the phone and we're just going, "O.K., O.K.".Then the Sneakers broke up and he called about the time that the H-Bombs were getting off the ground and said, "Okay, I'm really ready to do something this time, send me a picture of your band right now". So the H-Bombs were really formed so that we could send a picture to this guy.We thought that if we could get a trip to L.A. and play out there it would be fun and so a couple of guys that were around and, we thought, might potentially form a band - we called them up and said come over and lets take some pictures, so we did and sent the pictures off and that also led to the first practice of the band.
B.O.B: Who else was involved?
M.E: Me and Peter Holsapple and the bass player was Robert Keely, who had been in the Sneakers, and the drummer was this guy named Chris Chamis who had played with some of those people earlier - he wasn't in the Sneakers but he was another guy from our town. By the time the scene had got better and the group played out quite a bit in public. We lived in Chapel Hill,North Carolina which is a college town and we were considered to be a loud, punk rock band and so it was a kind of spectacle when we played. Looking back on it - it was really humble but we opened up that town for today's scene.
B.O.B: Can you describe the music you were playing then - was it like the stuff on Peter's Car EP?
M.E: Yeah, in fact we played those songs in the H-Bombs. The reason it's not H-Bombs on the record is that what partly because me and Peter had been making tapes before the H-Bombs and we were really happy doing it that way and we thought we would get better results continuing that way. I know it was offensive to the other guys in the band but we just did it - but it would had been nice to do it with the other guys in the band.
B.O.B: You get credited for just playing drums on it.
M.E: That is all I played actually, I didn't play guitar on it at all.
B.O.B: So Peter actually plays everything else?
M.E: I think so, I mean, I might have played some guitar but I don't really remember.
B.O.B: I've never been able to fathom out the whole Car Records scene, so maybe you could clarify that a bit.
M.E: Well, Car Records was one of those things that from a distance may have looked like a record company but when you get up close was just, you know, a bedroom. It started out when Chris put out that Sneakers record, which was the very first one on Carnivorous. What happens, he went to New York and happened to see Television play and got the 'Little Johnny Jewel' single and that just changed his life, he got a hair-cut and everything and came back and was ready to put out an independent record, and, you know, he was really ahead to be doing that, cause, there really weren't many at the time. So, at that time he got the records manufactured by this place in Nashville that normally did gospel groups, and school bands, and stuff and just had them shipped back to his house and then, I think maybe he had an ad put in Trouser Press, and also got reviewed in Trouser Press which helped, and it was just like, us, because there were so few independents at the time he got just thousands of letters and it was almost all mail-order at first, and they sold something like six or eight thousand copies of that thing, which was amazing.
B.O.B: Which one was this?
M.E: The first little one, the first Sneakers EP which was the first Carnivorous record. And then, after that, it got picked up by some distributors and stuff.
B.O.B: It did quite well then?
M.E: It did really well, I mean like it had four or five pressings of it and then, uh, we did a second one, and by that time Chris had sort of become, like, known to there distributors, a little bit, and we were able to sell through distributors a little, but it was always a one-man show, I mean, like it was him, and some time I had a little bit to do with it. The only experiments that label ever made were having other people do records like that Chris Bell single and Peter's record; those were sort of like attempts at going outside and putting out other people's records, but by the time it was getting to the point where it's real hard to get paid, and when you're selling records on that level the distributors don't want to fool with you, and they know that you don't have any leverage with them; and it got to where he wasn't making any money and he was busy with the dB's and it sort of fizzled out...
B.O.B: So, how much was Alan Betrock's role in that company?
M.E: As far as I recall, none at all, except just as sort of a mentor, you know he was like a guy in New York, who knew more about all this than us, he was real nice to everybody, and interested in what we did.
B.O.B: Had you been doing any producing at this point?
M.E: No, the only thing close to producing was like when Peter and I would make tapes, Peter would just play guitar and I would turn knobs, and make funny noises, and I was sort of in charge of the noise end of it and he was in charge of playing. By doing that and, even going back to those tapes I was saying Chris and I were doing earlier, that's how it started. But none of that was in studios or anything.
B.O.B: It was just bedroom...
M.E: Yeah.
B.O.B: So, when the dB's formed you were pretty close to those guys, was there any talk of you joining the band?
M.E: I don't think so, I think the way that group got going was that Chris was living in New York and Gene Holder had moved to New York and Will Rigby decided to move to New York and they started the dB's without Peter.And it went like that for several months, and they were really pretty happy but they wanted a keyboard player, and they originally didn't want to get someone like Peter, they didn't want another songwriter, they just wanted a sort of, hack! They never could find one, and Peter had gone to Memphis for a while, in search of the Big Star mystique and all, and that was sort of an unpleasant effort, and he just came back, and didn't have anything to do so he went to New York and joined. At that point they were four people which was enough.
B.O.B: Did you actually work as a soundman with them at all?
M.E: No, only when they came to England in '81, and that was just a nice thing they did for me, they wanted somebody who knew their stuff to mix them instead of someone who had never heard of them before, and they thought it would be a nice trip for me, which it was, and they just paid my way.
B.O.B: So once they got started, was that when you started the Drive-In studio?
M.E: Well, it was when I intended to, they got started in '78, and that's when I got out of college, and there wasn't much going on round there. I'd learnt how to play drums and bass, so I could do stuff on my own, we were all starting to use studios a bit and I thought it would be great if I could have a professional studio. I started work on getting the equipment together, and in late '78 I bought the tape machines, and my plan was to start a studio in North Carolina, but it didn't actually get started until 1980, as I got the creeps about doing it in North Carolina so I took the stuff up to New York and got real close to it but the business scene in New York is heavy duty and I realized I'd turn into a business man and never get to play music, so I just stored the equipment, and played in a couple of bands in New York, then moved back and finally started the studio in 1980.
B.O.B: So which bands did you play with when you were in New York?
M.E: First I played bass with the Cyclones, who are friends of the dB's, they needed a bass player and I needed something to do...and then I joined a group called The Crackers, who were from Minneapolis, I played with them for about four months; by then I was itchy to record, I hadn't been satisfied playing with them...
B.O.B: Had you been writing songs during this period?
M.E: Yeah, but the whole time I was in New York I had this terrible kind of writers block and only wrote about three songs during the time I was there. I moved back down South and immediately wrote a million! For some reason it was the right thing for me to do. The Crackers did a few of my songs.
B.O.B: So whatever happened to them?
M.E: Well the guy who was the star is called Steve Almaas and he's still around with a group called Beat Rodeo, which, as we speak may have been signed to IRS; and the drummer and the guitarist played with some friends of ours in New York for a while, until the drummer moved back to Minneapolis and the girl who plays guitar is still in New York somewhere. I don't know what she is doing.
B.O.B: ...you produced that guy's record?
M.E: Yes, me and Richard Barone recorded the first one, there's a new one that's going to come out on, I guess, IRS that I recorded about half of. Don Dixon recorded the other half.
B.O.B: I believe that you did quite a lot of work on the dB's first album, though there's no credit for you on the English sleeve.
M.E: Well, it's actually correct that there's no credit on it because I didn't work on it. In the United States I 've got to be real famous as a producer and I didn't know why really because I haven't done that much, well I've done a lot but not a lot of what they think I did. I've been given credit for producing the dB's for example - which I never did. The dB's first record was recorded completely in New York but it is true that when I first got my studio together they came down and mixed down three songs there - but they actually did it. In fact it was actually so early in the days of my studio that the hole in the wall for the glass to look out of the control room hadn't been put in yet and so Chris Stamey and Alan Betrock and, I think Don Dixon were in this other room, with the console and the tape machines, mixing and Gene Holder and I were on the other side of the wall with this power saw cutting a hole in there for the window - there was this great moment when we finally got all the way around and the plaster finally fell out, crash, and there they were mixing the record. It was really stupid. That was my role, not really very musical!
B.O.B: Maybe this is a good point to ask you about Don Dixon because you're always getting credited for the R.E.M. stuff but I've never really read much about Don Dixon and you've mentioned him a few times.
M.E: Well fortunately he just got a whole lot of press in the United States, last month - he really deserves it. He's a little bit older than I am. The first time I saw him was in this incredibly good metal band called Arrogance around 1970. He's a guy from South Carolina and he'd come up to North Carolina to go to college. A couple of guys from Winston-Salem were in that band as well as him. They were really into stuff like Black Sabbath back when it was called progressive rock and Dixon is really great singer, he was this real dramatic guy with big hippy hair, playing bass, and he had this great voice and everything - he was real impressive. I used to see him in that band but I really didn't know him, I just used to see him around. I finally got to know him well about six or seven years ago because he works a lot in studios and we started crossing paths; Chris got him to record the Sneakers record because he was a little more experienced in studios. I just started seeing more and more of him. That's what he still loves today; he's a musician and he records and he also does a lot of production. He lives about seventy miles away from me, he does a lot of stuff in my studio. The reason he and I worked on the R.E.M. stuff for the Murmur album, the record company insisted on them using a big snazzy studio and the one that we went to was one that this guy Dixon had worked at a lot and he offered to engineer because he was used to the place. Once we started it, we just kept going.
B.O.B: How much control do you have over a band like R.E.M.? From what I gather having met them and all these things that get released as 'b' sides - they seem to be very prolific and indulgent in the studio.
M.E: They indulge their sloppiness, they don't indulge much weirdness,really, which I think is a shame, I mean it depends what you call weird. Weird like being drunk and doing bad versions of songs - they'll do that all day, but being weird like hooking up equipment a funny way to make a funny noise, that just doesn't interest them. I think that the fact that Dixon and I worked on them has had an effect on the sound but it's not one of those situations where they're like raw meat and make it into burgers - it's not like that at all. Both of us having played in bands, we wouldn't really appreciate some guy telling us what to do either. I think R.E.M. know exactly what they want to hear and they should hear it. It doesn't interest me to try and impose anything on them much, we talk them into stuff now and then if we think it's a good idea - but it's very polite, we don't say " Look pal, if you want to have some hits you better do it this way" - we just don't do that because it's not the way any of us are thinking anyway.
B.O.B: It's like you think of Cale producing the first Richman material - you can definitely tell it's John Cale having produced it - the sound is there. I just wondered how much input there was from you and Don?
M.E: There is, I think, plenty but we don't try to re-write their songs for them. If they don't want to do something then we don't do it, it's like that.
B.O.B: Do you think you'll be working with them for much longer?
M.E: I figure it's up to them if they want to do it and if I'm around to do it.
B.O.B: Which one of the three R.E.M. records are you most proud of?
M.E: It's hard to say. At the moment I'm inclined to sat that 'Murmur' may be the most interesting. 'Chronic Town' was really fun to make even though it sounds really basic - it was fun to make because it was recorded a real long time ago in October '81. At the time they were really excited about being in the studio - we did all the stuff with tape loops and the noise stuff on 'Wolves' and feedback - they were just having a great time then; by the time it came around to 'Murmur' they were a little bit paranoid that the music business was gonna' mess them up and I think to some extent they don't exactly trust anybody as much as they used to. Back then I think they thought "Wow, this is great, we can play with this stuff" and now it's like ; "Don't put that high tech shit on our record" - it's a little bit like that I think and it's taken a little of the fun out of it. I don't want to exaggerate that, the albums were fun to make too, and they were definitely progress over the EP in a lot of ways, but the 'Chronic Town' was like a tiny discovery for them and was just kind of fun.
B.O.B: Going back to the dB's again ; were you involved to a large extent on the'It's A Wonderful Life' Chris Stamey solo album?
M.E: No, it's just his name for something that people have been doing for a long time - the only difference is that he integrated it into the songwriting and stuff. Those things with noise-gates on have been around for quite a while, but he did have a pretty cool set-up for playing live; these drums would trigger the keyboards that were set to play fixed chords and things, he actually went out and bought a bunch of fishing weights and would just set them on the appropriate keys so that the keys were held down all the time and when Ted would hit a drum it would turn on and you'd hear this chord and that rhythm pattern would be part of the song-writing. I give him credit for coming up with that approach, the Groovegate is not something that he built in a lab or anything, it's just a stock piece of equipment that he bought.
BO.B: When the LP came out there was a press release that said it something that he'd been developing over the years at 'Car Labs'!!!
M.E; Well, he's a pretty funny guy. He is like that - he meant that to be funny, I remember reading that press release and thinking...oh gosh!
B.O.B: Have you worked on the new Chris Stamey record?
M.E: No, but I guess it was mostly done at my place. It was done this summer - he recorded two new tracks there with Don Dixon and I think I sang on one of them or something; he did a cover of 'Instant Karma' and I sang on the back-ups and he did a song of his called 'Excitement' which is a dB's vintage song - but I never remember hearing him do it - it's real good. Then there was some stuff that he'd done on a 4-track machine in New York and he mixed that down at my place.
B.O.B: How did you come to play on the Kimberley Rew single ('My Baby Does Her Hairdo Long')?
M.E: It was when the dB's were here, Peter had met him somehow or other.
B.O.B: ...when the Soft Boys played at a club in New York in 1980 he was in the audience.
M.E: He knew all about this, Kimberley had these songs and the Soft Boys had broken upand Richard from Armageddon had booked a weekend at Advision, anyway I heard that this was going to work out so I pestered Peter to let me play on the session because I was bored just doing the sound and wanted to play, I weaseled my way in to play bass on it, it was fun because I'd always wanted to go to that studio too becauseit's where the Move records like 'Shazam' were done and all those Yes records, I just wanted to see the place.
B.O.B: Did you actually play with the dB's while they were over there?
M.E: No - I don't think so, I mean I have played with them, they used to get me up to play on some encores or something.
B.O.B: Were you at the Virgin Megastore in Oxford Street when they played that acoustic set?
M.E: I was supposed to play on that but I got sick that day and stayed in my room. We worked up a version of 'Public Image' on the accordion;: Peter played accordion and I played bass and we practiced it at the Marquee one night, it was really funny and I was really looking forward to doing it - anyway it didn't happen.
B.O.B: Prior to getting you own band off the ground you produced quite a lot of different people like a band that I particularly like called The Windbreakers - can you tell me a bit about them?
M.E: They're from Mississippi, a town called Jackson, which is a place that's got a lot of music but it's all black music, they've never really succeeded in being able to play much but they're real good. They, somehow or other, found out about me and came up and did some recording. Then they came back without their drummer and did some more stuff that I played drums on so that record that's out 'Any Monkey' - I play drums on four of those songs, I just think they're real good, they're both from the same school of having liked Big Star, but they kind of like everything, Tim Lee really and truly likes the Scorpions at the same time that he likes Lou Reed. He's got this incredibly wide range of taste. They did some stuff in my studio this summer that's really good and it's gonna come out pretty soon I think. Tim is gonna play with us on our American tour as the fourth person.
B.O.B: I mentioned them partly because Matt and Steven from the Rain Parade will maybe do some producing for them - they were interested in maybe getting into some more 'psychedelic' things,perhaps a sitar...
M.E: Well, there's a couple of silly psychedelic moments on the thing we did this summer.
B.O.B: Who else have you really enjoyed working with?
M.E: This is a question that always makes me go blank, I don't know why, if I could see a list,I could tell you who...
B.OB: I know you produced a record by a band called Pylon...
M.E: That's another one of those things I didn't produce it, Gene Holder and Chris Stamey produced it, I just engineered some of it, I didn't even mix it down, I recorded the basic tracks, those were interesting sessions.
B.O.B: There's a band called the X-Teens....
M.E: That's another of those things, their first album was done in my studio but Don Dixon did it, I was just there. There are a lot of things that I have done, but not those.
B.O.B: Presumably you were approached to do this Game Theory album?
M.E: Yeah. We recorded it in California and we mixed it in my studio this summer. We did a whole lot of tracks, I don't know how many are actually on the record. I think only about ten. Did you hear their last record that 'Distortion' record...
B.O.B: Yes, the one that Quercio from The Three O'Clock produced.
M.E: Well this one is sort of more straight ahead than that one, there aren't so many weird noises on this, it just seems like there were more straight ahead songs.
B.O.B: I think one of the problems I've found with Game Theory is that, if it was a less democratic band and Scott Miller had more control, I'd prefer his material to the other guy.
M.E: That's certainly a fact. I think that only about half the bands that have two writers really work, lots of times it doesn't really make any sense. I know that it's all Scott's songs on this one. They did record one of Fred's songs but I don't think it's going to be on it. Yes,it's true, they just didn't make sense having those songs on the same record together. I told them that a long time ago. If you've never heard the band and you put on a record and it jumps back and forth like that it's just disturbing.
B.O.B: That's the problem that I've had with that band, I really like Scott's stuff but some of the other things are a bit...
M.E: Apparently they started out and it was really Scott's band but they sort of got more liberal and now they wished they hadn't, it's all real creepy stuff because I don't like to get involved in those politics, but I did tell them a long time ago that they should do it that way.
B.O.B: How long have you known them?
M.E: I think the first time I saw them play was last November (83), I talked to their manager about a year and a half ago, he came to a show that we were doing in Sacramento with R.E.M.and gave me their records.
B.O.B: So it was him that got you to produce them?
M.E: Yeah, I've been really busy this past year and I haven't done a lot. Actually I have done a lot in the studio but to do something like an album, I haven't had time to do much and that guy's been like incredibly persistent in tracking me down and making me do it. I just finally flipped "OK, I'll do it". It's not like I didn't want to, it's really hard to schedule it. They wanted me to do it last January in which case I would have done some of those songs on 'Distortion' but anyway I did it in July or so.
B.O.B: Up in Davis?
M.E: Well, no it was recorded in some little town called Newark down near San Francisco Bay area - out in the middle of nowhere next to a salt factory.
B.O.B: There's another band I like, with all those connections, called Thin White Rope.
M.E: Oh yeah, we played with them. I liked them: they have a good bass player and he'd only been playing for about two weeks or something.
B.O.B: I heard their demos and Scott Miller's going to produce them I think.
M.E: I told them they should put those demos out, I think they're perfectly fine.
B.O.B: In-between Let's Active and your stay in New York (when you played with the Crackers and things) did you get any other bands going?
M.E: I played with the Crackers and moved back down south and recorded in my studio for about a year and then Let's Active started in about October 1981.
B.O.B: Did you just get the bug suddenly to just get up and play?
M.E: I sorta had it all along I just didn't know what to do about it. I was amusing myself making tapes - actually it's always been a problem for me between making tapes and having a band because I make the tapes exactly as I want them when you've got a band you either have to hit people over the head with a board and say "Play it like this" or you've got to give up and let them play it the way they're gonna play it, with the right people that's good,but sometimes...I mean like in this band for example, when we started out, Fay who's the bass player - she didn't know how to play bass so I had to tell her everything to do. It was a weird thing, in a way I'm not comfortable telling people what to do - but you have to. That sort of put me off starting a band in a way but I also realized that if I was going to get anywhere I would have to have a band. There's something different about it when you're out in public, it's just better. From my point of view too, I'd rather buy a record by a band then by some guy for some reason - I don't know why.
B.O.B: Did you play live for a while before you recorded that six-track record?
M.E: The first time we played was November 1981. We recorded that record in March '83 so it was a lot later. We had done some stuff...now I think about it there's a track on the new album that was recorded in January '82, it's called 'Counting Down", so we had done some stuff a long time agobut for the most part it didn't really turn out very good and we didn't use it. The thing was the EP was just a demo tape that we just had around that time when the record company signed us - they just wanted something out fast.
B.O.B: Do you find playing in your own band and producing the record at the same time problematic?
M.E: It's hard in that sometimes there's a level of 'slickness' or something that I want to getwhich involves having somebody do something ten times and it's no fun for me to make them do it. If we had some other guy to be the bad guy and make them do it then it would be easier. That's the only problem, that's why we had Don Dixon to help on this new one because he could decide and I could just walk out of the room sometimes. When we did that stuff for the EP I had the remote control for the tape recorder pulled out into the studio and I was like pushing the record and playing and all and it was really stupid.
B.O.B: Are you pleased with the reaction you've been getting over here?
M.E: It's got better, actually it's been good, I'd figure that there was a fair chance that someone would throw a molitov cocktail on stage the first night, you know! But nothing like that's happened and we've actually got more applause as it goes on - which either means that we've got better or that people actually have the record now. Some of the shows have really been fun, none of them have been bad. I really expected in England, I don't know why maybe just because of the press, support bands were really shit here even in a way that they're not at home.
B.O.B: I suppose it just depends on the calibre of the support band really. What I was really asking was more the critical reaction. I find what's happening in America really exciting and refreshing but there's almost nothing comparable over here, only about five bands that I like and over there there's like five hundred! I'm surprised that people like the NME and Time Out have gone overboard for 'Cypress'...
M.E; It's surprised the hell outta me I didn't know about the Time Out thing.
B.O.B: They're very much into anything as long as it isn't guitars and stuff, with honourable exceptions like R.E.M.
M.E: I guess there will be a moment when it suddenly dawns on everybody at once that they HAVE to like guitars really.
B.O.B: Do you feel that there is a healthy climate in the States at the moment?
M.E: Yeah, there must be because everybody talks about it. The other thing that makes me think it's healthy is at my own studio I get a million 'phone calls from people that want to record there and they send me tapes and a lot of them are good - it surprises me because when I first started getting them I'd put them on and like, urgh but then again, and again, they'd be good.
B.O.B: With Let's Active being more and more successful, and having to go out and tour a lot, your time for producing things and running the studio is obviously going to be cut down - so what are your immediate plans, is there anyone you're going to produce when you get back?
M.E: There's nothing planned. There's people that want me to do it but what I see is that we're going to tour up through Christmas in the States and when we get back from that I'd like to just write songs for a while and maybe Let's Active do some recording. The studio business is really great because I've met a lot of good people that way. Sometimes I think it helps people to have recorded there because the studio has got popular and people think if it's recorded there it's going to sound a certain way which, if that's happened, it's just coincidence because I've felt like, from the beginning, that I had to have this real communist view of that studio to serve the people and not be discriminating. I didn't want to set myself, or the studio, up as some kind of thing you had to pass a cool-ness test to record there. Now, in a way, I've got to be selective because I'm not there very much, and that's good and bad. There's some sessions that I did in the early days which were like really terrible AND really great too. I don't want to get myself channeled into becoming a producer that only does budget records, it's so much fun to record these people that have never done it before.
B.O.B: Is there anyone that you'd like to work with in the future? Alex Chilton?
M.E: If he ever came down from trimming trees, I'm sure it would be pretty interesting. That might be a good thing because that might be the kind of studio scene he'd need to record in right now. I don't think anybody is going to get him a lot of money to go into some New York place to do it.
B.O.B: Is there anyone else you'd like to work with?
M.E: I can imagine that if R.E.M. wanted to do another record that would be real good, especially as both of us are, sort of, more mature now we could really do something interesting maybe. There's a lot of people that I can't think of the names of, who have sent me tapes in the last months that are good and if it works out then we're going to do them. The Windbreakers are my standard for a really good session - it's just fun to do them because they'll just do anything y'know, and I get to play drums.
B.O.B: To finish off, you mentioned the possibility of Roy Wood producing Let's Active - could you actually stand to work with another producer?
M.E: In a way I have my doubts. The thing about him is, the way that came about is, the record company wanted us to record this one track that we tried to record for the LP that just didn't turn out that well. We didn't have time to re-cut it so it isn't on the record, and they were thinking that while we were in England we could do it with some big shot producer and I know they were thinking of this really slick sound. They were saying " Think of people you'd like to have produce you" so we came up with the kind of names that we knew would horrify them so we come up with Roy Wood and Jimmy Page. Both of them would have been a real treat to meet and they've also made some of my favorite records, no doubt about it, but as far as working on something like that then I don't know because I've never really done it. I think I'd feel really nervous with somebody watching me do a guitar solo or something. I guess if you're a normal musician you get used to that but I've never had a producer work with me. I can see how if you made friends with someone like that then it could be really good but really I don't have any plans to do it with a producer. I'd rather be in Prince's position, he does his stuff, he gets engineers so there's other people involved but it's his thing - that's what suits me I think.
B.O.B: Are you still doing 'Classical Gas'?
M.E: No, not this time around. It was actually pretty good - there were a couple of times it went to hell. Before I learned to play guitar I thought that song was incredibly cool so now I'm finally able to play it...how did you hear about that?
B.O.B: I read it in an article in a little magazine from the States called 'Brave Ear' - the article started off saying you were trying to find some guitar strings...
M.E: I remember that, we drove around looking for a string because I broke one on the classical guitar.I might do that again in the future - it was really fun to play - it just didn't make any sense.
B.O.B: Are you doing any odd things on this tour in terms of covers or...
M.E: We're doing two covers: 'Kizza Me' off the third Big Star album and 'Blue Line' which is a cover, I think that the Outskirts, the band that originally did that song are going to be at the show tonight.
B.O.B: Do you intend to do 'Kizza Me' tonight?
M.E: Yes, we don't do a real precision version, we just do it. I went through a period of listening to his (Alex Chilton's) stuff so much and then I went through a period of not listening to it and now I'm back listening to it again. In fact I'm having a '72 through '74 revival right now.
Nigel Cross
