Producer Jack Douglas

Interview Excerpt

Producer/engineer Jack Douglas has worked with music legends like John Lennon, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Alice Cooper, The Who, Patti Smith, and The Band among many others, and has produced a number of celebrated albums like John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Double Fantasy", Cheap Trick's "Live At The Budokan", six of Aerosmith’s best records, and Patti Smith's "Radio Ethiopia." He’s also engineered such seminal records like "Who's Next", "Woodstock", and "Imagine" among others. Obviously Jack's work speaks for itself, and as expected, he has some particularly interesting observations on recording past, present and future.

How is dealing with artists different now from the way it was when you started?

The way I deal with artists is still pretty much the same in that I really dig into an artist to try to find out what that artist is trying to say on the record.  I want to find out what vision it is they have, even if they don’t think they have one, because there’s always something.  I try not to put some kind of stamp all over it that says it was made by me.  I really try to get the total artist record.

Do you have a method about how you go about doing that?

Well, it's really important that I get along with an artist pretty well, so I like to hang out and socialize with them. I also like to have a pretty good pre-production period.

How long?

That varies. A pretty good pre-production period could be a week for some artists and it could be a month for others. That’s not to say that it’s all rehearsal, because you’ve really got to find out where the artist is coming from.   

Do you have a particular trick to working with an artist?

The trick to working with an artist is to let him realize that you’re on his side. I like to work with new artists and new artists have always been suspicious of people that are on the other side of the glass. They feel that in some way or other we’re out to get their music and do something to change it. I want to convince an artist that all I want to do is take his music and help him get it on the record so that it is in fact what he wanted to begin with.

New artists especially get very insecure about their own stuff so it’s important that they’re confident after we’ve worked on the material. If I can keep an artist’s confidence up in the early part of building a record, that record is going to work. A label signs an artist because they have a sound and gives them all this money to make a record that sustains that sound and that’s what I try to do. The other trick is to try getting it live.

Do you track everything live?

As often as I can. If I’m working with a band, I try to track with the whole band together.  And if I have good players I will really try to make it as live as possible.

Are you trying to keep all those tracks as well?

Absolutely. In fact, I go for a lot of leakage. I like to hear guitars and bass in the drum track, and on one guitar track I like to hear a little bit of the other one leaking in there, if there are two guitars. When you put it all together it just sounds so much bigger, so I try to hold onto those if I can. I love live vocals. I mean, you really get the excitement and that’s important. It goes back to pre-production. You have to get the artist ready for the studio. And I don’t mean ready like there’s not going to be any surprises like they’ve learned it like robots.  That’s one of the big problems with rock n’ roll now.  Kids get into garage bands and they get in the habit of memorizing everything. Sometimes I get a band and I have to go the opposite way in that aspect. I have to say, “Lookit, let’s not lock in so much here.” 

I can remember recording this guy (I don’t want to mention the artist’s name) and if he was going to sneeze in the middle of this guitar solo, he’d make sure that he did that every time he played it. Every single note had to be perfect.  That doesn’t work for me. There’s gotta be some surprises  Generally, I like the band to know and to understand the piece, and usually drummers have to work a little harder at this for some reason so they know where the shots are and what has to be emphasized. Plus, you’re almost always dealing with someone that doesn’t read music so I usually have them draw little charts. But, for the most part, I encourage them to let go and try things.

I always tell them that they're holding back during rehearsal, even if they not. Even if they're at rehearsal playing their absolute best, I will say, “Well, when we get into the studio you can really let go.” 

I take it that you’re not one for studio perfection, so to speak.

No. I mean, I don’t like a real blatant mistake at all. But what I’ll do if there’s a mistake, rather than go in and just have the guitar player or the bass player fix this one piece, is just cut in another take so that I can keep that sound, rather than all of a sudden have all the leakage disappear from the drums or the guitars. I don’t mind imperfection or that the band goes in and changes the whole arrangement around on me because all of a sudden it felt better that way.  That’s cool if it really works.

How are things technically different from when you started?

Well, I feel like I’m going to say I started recording on stone. [LAUGHS] I went through a lot of different changes and I ended up just like I started out; recording analog. I started out using tube equipment, went through every piece of gear in the world, and ended up trying to use tube equipment as often as I can. When I started, we were working 4 track, then the move up to 8 track was quite a big deal. Then for a long time we made records on 16 track. I sort of like that format and sometimes I will still use it, although it’s very difficult to find 16 track head stacks at times. If there are gonna be string overdubs or orchestrations, I really prefer analog for that, but for keyboards and vocals, that works digitally.  I’m still using the same mics, because they don’t seem to have improved mics that much. 

How critical is the engineer for you? Can you get what you want or need out of anybody?

No, not out of anybody. The guy’s got to know a little bit of what’s going on. I mean, I’m an engineer, so I can be really tolerant of somebody that’s kind of new at it as long as they have ears. But I prefer to work with somebody really good because then I can really give my all to the artist and not have to think so much about the sound, especially if I’m cutting tracks. 

And the other thing is, there’s a class of engineers that’s really just tremendous.  I’ll take the tracks to where I think they should be with the engineer and I’ll say “Wow, that’s terrific; great drums, great guitar, phenomenal bass.” And then when I’m out in the studio running it down with the band, cause a lot of times I prefer to be with the band during the take, that super class of engineer has taken it like twice what I heard while I was in there. I’ll come back in and get a great big surprise. That’s what I really like. Engineering is really, really an art and there’s some real good artists out there.

How have things changed in terms of what effects you use?

The options are just phenomenal now. Things that I used to have to go crazy doing are just so simple to do now. But again, I find I end up going back and doing it the old way. I mean, I still like the sound of real tape machine flanging better than anything. I like natural acoustics rather than artificial, so I guess I’m just an old-fashioned guy.

Does that mean that you still use real plates and tape slap and stuff like that?

Yeah, sure. I prefer live chambers, a plate with an analog tape delay on it, real tape delay, real tape flanging and natural acoustics when possible. I did a album with The Scorpions in Germany in a great big old house which was, for me, just a gold mine. It had marble staircases, bathrooms that were full of mirror and tile, and an indoor swimming pool with a roof that opens and closes. We drained the water from the pool and put the drums in there and as a result I got all kinds of really great effects. I’m in heaven when I’ve got that kind of stuff. The sound of it is just incredible because it’s a real physical sound. It’s like theater in that it’s real, and when you hear it like this, you can see it in your mind as well. You can see the sound that’s surrounded by this strange ambiance. You can’t identify what it is but it alerts your senses that this is not the norm.

Certainly by now every listener out there has really heard every possible device and plug-in that you can buy on the market and there are thousands and thousands of kids making records in their houses with inexpensive DAWs. We’ve become desensitized to most effects. The only thing that’s going to stir your senses again is if you walk into a cave and yell out and hear the echo that naturally happens by itself. That’s how we started out because we were forced to go that way. And like everybody else, I tried all the new toys, and some of it is so convenient that you can’t not use it. But for the most part, give me something organic and I’ll give you a record that sounds different.

I’ve always enjoyed your guitar sounds, especially how you treated a guitar where the reverb on it is very short but loud and made it sound really big and fat.

Yeah, it was like when you were doing 16 track, you had to stack so many things onto a single track because there was no place else to put them. On most of the Aerosmith albums, we had to stack things one upon the other, so any effect that you were gonna do on that instrument, you had to put it to tape when it was going down. 

So you printed all your effects?.

Printed everything, so I’d really make sure that I was going to have all the loops and the ambiance and everything I wanted on that track. During the mixing process I might have to brighten it up a little bit and it might need just a little plate reverb just to meld it into the whole. Then this guitar would come roaring in with a sound that had become visual because it would just cut right into the track with all the personality already on it.