In the days when we had CAA book our tours life was easy. We would usually get a call or an email asking us if we wanted to open up for a national band on a national tour (that is how we ended up opening up for Glen Phillips, Everlast, James Taylor). Once we responded “Yes”, there was nothing else to do except turn up for the first show!

Life was equally easy when our record label, Sanctuary Records, would book the gigs for us. Usually, this meant one of the excellent young chaps at the label, either Eric Briner or Alex Hackford, would bust their balls getting us onto a bill such as Tegan and Sara, and again all we had to do was turn up and play.

Having an influential manager is also handy. It was the, by now legendary, Merck Mercuriadis, who put in a couple of calls and had the band booked and recorded at Bonnaroo. It was Jim DelBalzo who somehow got the band playing Tulip Fest in Albany.

So, what about now? We don’t have a booking agent or a label, and our managers hands are mostly tied because we don’t have big hit on radio. We book ourselves. Actually, we have tons of experience doing this. Even with a label and a booking agent we still booked over 100 shows a year ourselves – in case you were wondering, in this industry no one does right by you except for you. Yet, booking yourself is one of life’s major hassles predominantly because you end up having to work with some of the worlds biggest douche bags. It is the typical little guy in a little job who thinks he is in a big job and lets it all go to his head syndrome. Now, just for the sake of transparency, there are tons of great bookers out there who are super cool and we have been booking great shows with for a number of years. This is not a story about them.

This is a story about trying to book a gig in Brooklyn, the land of the hipster (let’s no go there as I have a whole slew of issues with the hipster). Anyway, long story short, we (buddahead) had a show planned for July 10th at Public Assembly in Brooklyn. This would actually have been our first Brooklyn show so we were super excited. We had worked hard on curating the night but, alas, in the last minute we hit a couple of stumbling blocks. ONE: Toby Evers our bass player who recently had a major back surgery has not been healing as well as expected and had to bow out of the show (the last time we played a show with out him the set sounded like someone had just tripped in the kitchen utensils section of Bed Bath and Beyond in the dark); TWO: Both other bands who had originally agreed to playing the show with us cancelled in the last minutes. Actually, one cancelled and the other did not bother confirm.

So, as soon as we realized the show was not likely to be a success I emailed the booker:

From: buddaheadmusic@mac.com
To: boyracerxxx@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: july 10 Buddahead @ Public assembly
Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2009 22:02:04 -0400

Hi Belvy,

Bad news! The other bands that were due to play on the 10th have pulled out last minute. I won’t be able to pull something together so close to the date. Let’s cancel this. I am so sorry.

Raman

In case you missed it, please note my apologetic tone in the email!! What I received back from young Belvy was therefore somewhat shocking and, well to be honest, not bloody nice!

From: boyracerxxx@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: july 10 Buddahead @ Public assembly
Date: June 29, 2009 12:04:12 AM EDT
To: buddaheadmusic@mac.com
ugh.
after having the date for 3 months you give us 10 days notice???
fine.
fyi – we NEVER rebook cancellations.

Belvy/General Manager, Program Director
Public Assembly
www.publicassemblynyc.com

Is the “we NEVER rebook cancellations” a real policy? If yes, is it a good policy? Is it just mean? Nasty? Angry? Unfriendly? Is not like we just didn’t show or promote the show. We have been promoting the show through our website, myspace, and ilike accounts for weeks. We are even losing the money we spent promoting the show on ilike.

I think any absolute is a half measure. Thankfully, I have never before had an encounter like this before. In my opinion, this is very poor behavior by Blevy and the venue that he represents. Over exercise of power for the sake of it.

Tags: Alex Hackford, Bed Bath and Beyond, Belvy, Belvy/General Manager Program Director, Bonnaroo, boyracer, boyracerxxx, Brooklyn, Buddahead, buddaheadmusic, CAA, Creative Artist Agency, Eric Briner, Everlast, Glen Phillips, hipster, James Taylor, Jim DelBalzo, Merck Mercuriadis, Public Assembly, Sanctuary Records, Tegan and Sara, Toby Evers, Tulip Fest, www.publicassemblynyc.com
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I still remember the call. It was a Sunday afternoon and the sun was shining. London was gorgeous that day and I was depressed because I was cooped up in the small bedroom of my London flat, thinking as hard as I could about what I wanted to study for my doctorate. My degree was in English Literature but was teachers had warned me not to continue with English unless I planned on becoming a teacher. I did not. My masters was in Marketing Strategy which bored me too death. Still, I was not ready for the real world. Student life was great: cheap loans, cheap life, and the opportunity to keep making music without having to commit to the life of being a musician which often played out in one of two ways. For a very few stardom, glitz, and money; but for the majority absolutely nothing but heartache and poverty. I did not want to be the old guy busking on the bakerloo line.

That was when the phone rang and a high pitched voice said, “Hey! This is Jimmy Iovine. I am looking for Buddahead”.

The voice sounded so fake that I thought it was friend scamming me. So, I did what any one in my shoes should do and I hung up the phone. About an hour later Merck, Buddahead’s then manager, called to say that Jimmy Iovine had been trying to reach me and that I should call him.

I know of Jimmy Iovine. I knew him mostly as the producer of U2’s Rattle and Hum. That afternoon when I called him back I discovered that he ran one of the most powerful music empires in the world (Interscope, Geffen, A&M) and what he wanted more than anything else in the world was to sign me.

“I have heard your demos and I know there are lots of guys who want to sign you, and they are all good guys, but I don’t want to open up a magazine next year and read about your record being amazing. I want it to be on my label”. That is what he actually said and with that we agreed to meet in LA the following week.

The following week Merck and I turned up to Jimmy’s office in Santa Monica. No windows. That struck me as strange. Then again rumor had it that some people wanted him dead. Our meeting happened to be the day of the Grammy awards and Jimmy’s office was packed with stars. While we sat there R. Kelly came in and left, Jacob Dylan of the Wallflowers came in, sat down, and left. Then Jimmy played us the new Eminem single.

“Isn’t it amazing?. It’s going to be a huge single for us.” He looked at me and then leaped onto his chair. “So you are going to play for me right?”

That is what I did. I grabbed my acoustic guitar and played When I fall and Take it all away.

“Wow. You know if I were still producing I would produce this record. But I am not producing anymore. You know what you should do? This is what I did with Bono. I gave him an SM57 and told him to sing in the monitor room. That is what works for him. I bet you will sound great like that. I love these demos. Maybe we just keep them. You know when we were making rattle and Hum the band had these songs they had recorded in their studio in Ireland and no matter how hard I tried to re-make them better, the demos just sounded better. So, what are you looking for? What do I have to do to make you sign with me?”

What a question. I knew I couldn’t say write me a big check. Though I wish I had. The first semi-intelligent that came to my mind was, “I am not looking for a record deal. I am looking for a mentor”

With that he got up from his seat, shook my hand, and said, “I would love to be your mentor. I am not sure if you need much from me though. This stuff is really good. But you know when I was working with Tom Petty the only think I said to him was that he should add a keyboard to his sound”. He then left the room and headed off to the Grammy’s.

Pst…if you haven’r realised all NSFW photos are photoshoped

I could write a whole lot more about Jimmy Iovine the record executive. Now is not the time though. This entry is about record producers and Jimmy Iovine is what I categorize as the middle man. His strength is truly not as a musical force. His strength is his phone, his paiger, his contacts, his friends and colleagues, and his power to get them to do what he wants them to do.

Think of the middle man as a musical broker. When Jimmy was trying to musically guide the making of Crossing the invisible line he would call me randomly with strange requests. Some of my favourites are:

“Hey Buddahead. How about you use the guitar player from Linkin Park?” but why Jimmy – Don Gilmore produced their record and actually played a lot of the guitars himself.

“Hey Buddahead. How about you use the guitar player from Limp Bizkit?” but why Jimmy, you already sent me to meet Wes and only his wife turned up

“Hey Buddahead. You should sound more like Harry Nielson.” But why Jimmy, okay if you insist I will rip off “Without you” and call it “Outside”.

“Hey Buddahead. You should sound more like dashboard confessional.” Who?

“Hey Buddahead. You should sound more like Coldplay.” I already do though!!

“Hey Buddahead. You should sound more broken”. What does that mean?

“Hey Buddahead. You should produce with Brian Eno” but Jimmy you just begged us to work with Don Gilmore.

“Hey Buddahead. You should scrap all of this and remix the demos with Andy Wallace” but Jimmy Andy already said that the demos are awful and sound like they were recorded in a tumble dryer

At the end of each and every one of these calls Don Gilmore and I would sit in the studio perplexed. What we needed was a translation book, a Jimmy Iovine dictionary. But that is what Jimmy does. That is what middle men producers do. They produce more like movie producers than music producers. They inject the money, throw a million ideas out, if one sticks then they will facilitate it. Any if you don’t take in their ideas you will suffer. They are mercurial in attention span.

On the other hand, if you are the lucky recipient of the master idea, if you are Tom Petty and you realize you need the keyboards; if you are Eminem and you realize you need Dre, if you are 50 Cent and you realize you need Eminem, if you are Gwen Stefani and you realize you don’t need a band, or even if you are U2 and you realize all you need is Bono, then the stars have aligned and the Iovine machine is in over load, and soon you will find an entire building worth of people (including the parking attendant) bowing at you.

Tags: 50 Cent, A&M, Add new tag, Andy Wallace, Bono, Brian Eno, Buddahead, Buddahead Crossing the invisible line, Buddahead Outside, Buddahead Take it all away, Buddahead When I fall, coldplay, Crossing the invisible line, Dashboard Confessional, Degree in English Literature, Don Gilmore, Dr Dre, Eminem, Geffen, Gwen Stefani, Harry Nielson, HArry Nielson Without you, Interscope, Jacob Dylan, Jimmy Iovine, Jimmy Iovine's office in Santa Monica, Limp Bizkit, linkin park, Merck Mercuriadis, Music producers, R. Kelly, Rattle and Hum, Shure SM57, Student Life, Tom Petty, U2, Wallflowers
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Many years ago, through a chance connection, a crap demo of an even more rubbish song I had written, ended up in the hands of a manager named Ian Wright. Ian who had passed the song around to a bunch of his producers, who had somehow miraculously reported to him that I had talent, had decided to sign me on as developing artist.

One day Ian and me were sitting in his Notting Hill office listening to my usual run of the mill rubbish, when Ian gave me a press copy of Achtung baby and said, “Steve (Lillywhite) just finished this and when we heard it we were all like holy shit. I think you’ll like this one”.

“Ian, why don’t you hook me up with Steve Lillywhite?” I asked.

“Nah, you don’t want to do that. Steve can make your record sound great but he can’t make it into a hit. You need to write that first and then give it your sound, he’ll then just make it sound great”.

Back then, of course, I had no idea what he was talking about. I was knee high to a chicken and thought my musical droppings where ultimately brilliant. In many ways I saw that as Ian denying me the opportunity to work with Steve, something that hurt me and ultimately led to the end of our working relationship.

Ian was right of course. Steve Lillywhite is a captor and what captors do is capture the essence of a band that has their songs, and has their sound, but needs to make sure their essence is not lost in the mechanics of the recording studio.

Steve Lillywhite has during his incredible carrier produced tons of great albums for bands such as U2 and Dave Matthews Band (including the famous Lillywhite sessions after which the band and Steve split and DMB for the most part lost the art of capturing their magic in a studio). If Steve would have only produced my album the ky would have been the limit. I would have formed a super band with Bono and Dave, been as cool as Jason Mraz and Chris Cornell….a boy can dream, can’t he…

Not so long ago I was sitting in Pete Glenister’s studio in London, working on Ashes, when we started talking about Steve (Steve and Pete have a long history). The conversation began with Pete mentioning to me that he had played Ruin to Steve. Steve had really liked it and had made a comment about how much he liked my voice, and asked to be sent a CD of my music. Steve was at that moment in time working at Columbia Records as an A&R manager.

Again, I jumped on the opportunity and said to Pete, “why don’t you ask Steve if he wants to produce this album with us?”

“Nah, not sure if he is right really. Steve is great at getting a band that has their sound and capturing them in the studio. I am much better at understanding what a singer/songwriter is all about. He just doesn’t get it.”

This time the older and wiser Raman knew exactly what Pete meant. Steve had just won a grammy for his most recent work on U2’s “How to dismantle an atomic bomb” and had produced really rubbish albums for Jason Mraz and Chris Cornell. Pete was right, but then again he is rarely wrong.

A few weeks later Steve Lillywhite called. He had received his copy of the Buddahead material and he invited me to meet with him at his office at Columbia Records. Armed with my copies of the Steve Liilywite produced albums I wanted him to sign I arrived at this office.

“You are a tart,” Steve said to me as he signed the album covers, “Shall we listen to some music?”

Steve looked entirely different to what I had imagined the great British producer who had produced so many cool albums would look like – he looked, well, to put it mildly quite Hollywood. Bleach blonde hair and chiclet white teeth. I stared at him while he played his air guitar along to a song from “Crossing The Invisible Line” called Strong.

“I love it mate. This is fab. So, I have an idea, can you write a song for Aerosmith?”

WHAT? WHAT THE HELL IS HE TALKING ABOUT?

“What kind of Aerosmith song?” I asked politely.

By then Steve was half way out of his office. He turned around hurriedly and said, “Anything. I need a new single for their greatest hits album”.

Ian Wright and Pete Glenister had both been right. Steve was not right for me. He got my music but not my essence. He didn’t know what to do with me. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying the rule is that a singer/songwriter can never work with a Captor; but before you do you have to meet a very basic requirement: You must be really developed in your writing and performance, and confidence. So much so in fact that all you need is for your producer to figure out how to capture your essence.

A great case and point for this is the relationship between Andy Wallace and Jeff Buckley when they were working on Grace together. One night Andy and I were sitting in his studio listening to mixes he had done for Crossing the invisible line when somehow we started talking about his work with Jeff Buckley. That is when he told me the story of how Hallelujah was recorded. These are Andy’s words, pretty much word for word as he recounted the story. They have been ingrained in my mind:

“I knew that Jeff played a lot of shows around the city and he was really good live, and that everyone talked about his live performance. So, every night after we finished recording I would invite a bunch of people to the studio to sit around and watch Jeff perform. I would set him up like he was sitting on stage and then while he played I would just have the record button pressed. The album version of Hallelujah is just one of those performances. One night he just nailed it”.

So the lesson of this story is if you are an artist, and you really honestly have your songs and sound together but something is lost in translation when you record in a studio then you may benefit from a captor. Captors are not there to make you sound good from a technical point of view; they are the ones who capture the essence. Still, not every artist who is great is great because of his or her essence. Sometimes there is no essence to capture. From Chris Cornell to Jason Mraz, there is no essence. Essence is that identifying factor that no other artist or group of artists can recapture except for the one artist or the one band (and their captor). Think Dave Matthews Band, think U2: It is exactly that combination of musicians with that producer that make that sound happen.

Tags: A&R Manager, Achtung Baby, Aerosmith, air guitar, Andy Wallace, Bono, british Producer, Buddahead, buddahead ashes, Buddahead Ruin, Buddahead Strong, CHris Cornell, Columbia Records, Crossing the invisible line, Dave Matthews Band, DMB, How to dismantle an atomic bomb, Ian Wright, Jason Mraz, Jeff Buckley, Jeff Buckley Grace, Jeff Buckley Hallelujah, Lillywhite sessions, Music producers, Navigating shark filled waters, Pete Glenister, singer/songwriter, Steve Lillywhite, The Captors, U2
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In my opinion, music producers can be put into one of the following categories: The Operators, The Captors, The Middlemen, The X-Men, The Wizards, and The Charlatans.

We are starting with The Operator, and you will be forced to return to read my blog to hear about the rest! Ha-zah!

The Operator

When I was sixteen years old and enamored by Led Zepplein, GN’R, Queen, and pretty much all the legendary rock bands in the history of rock, I booked myself a couple of days at The Refuge, a local recording studio in Reading, near where I went to school.

A strange man who looked like Spike from Notting Hill’s identical twin owned the Refuge. He also had the strange habit of collecting his own shit and using it as fertilizer to grow his vegetables (which tasted much like the fertilizer).

Anyway, The Refuge was armed with Jim “The Tree” Warren. At the time Jim wasn’t “The Tree” yet but due to his height Thom Yorke purportedly gave him the nickname while Jim was working on The Bends.

What made Jim special was that he was in absolute control of the equipment he operated. He had the ability to “dial” in a recording or a mix so it sounded just right. Just right might sound ominous but there is no other way to put it. The Refuge was a small studio with only a few mics and a few pieces of outboard gear, an old Akai sampler, an even older 16 track Raindeer desk which ran with a two inch tape and used Notator as a sequencer. Most producers couldn’t imagine working with such an old and unsophisticated set up, but the Operator knows exactly how to make the equipment sound great, and relies heavily on his own ear.

When an Operator works on your recording it sounds professional and you basically cannot fault the recording and mix quality. Now, note I am not talking about the song writing, or the performance, or even the artistic merit. I am simply talking about the sonic quality of the recording.

The Operator cannot polish a turd. In other words, as Jim explained to me when I was sixteen, “Don’t come in here and tell me you want to sound like Eric Clapton – you have to play like Eric Clapton first”.

If, like me at the age of sixteen, your songs suck, your arrangement is crap, your performance is even worse, then working with an Operator will leave you with a sonicaly perfect fart. A fart that has been recorded perfectly and mixed to sound huge, is still a shit bubble.

An incredible recording of a slightly musical shit bubble is exactly what my recording session with Jim Warren ended up being. I was basically a teenage douche bag.

Not only I was a terrible singer and a horrible guitar player, when I played the drums I sounded like the Energizer Bunny…

So the first moral of the story is the first “shark” you will encounter when looking for a producer is your own ego. If you can’t look past your own ego and see that you might not be good enough or ready enough yet to get in the recording studio, then your recording will most likely sound like anal acoustics, or a great sounding one cheek sneak– remember what I said about polishing the ol’ steamer? So, be honest and true to yourself, put your ego aside, and don’t be a shit-head like I was.

The second moral of the story is that you should never be fooled by the size of a producers studio or the amount of equipment they have because The Operator knows exactly how to work a few pieces of equipment and make everything sound just right.

Tags: akai sampler, Captors, Charlatans, Energizer bunny, Eric Clapton, GN’R, Guns and Roses, Jim Warren, Jim “The tree” warren, Led Zepplein, Middlemen, Music producers, Navigating shark filled waters, Notator, Notting Hill, Operators, raindeer desk, shit as fertilizer, Spike, the bends, The Refuge, Thom Yorke, two inch tape machine, Wizards, X-Men
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Before going any further, for the sake of those of you who are new to this site and buddahead, here is a little about me. I am older than the Jonas brothers and I am the kind of artist that Simon Cowell would probably hate – I am old and unmoldable. Still, I have my hair, I shit like a swiss train, and I am writing better music than ever before. I have had the record deals, I still have the money, and I pretty much know everyone. In other words, I have the beans and have nothing to lose, so i might as well spill them.

(On a side note: I am not really old. If I was an actor I would be considered young enough to play a superhero like Batman. For what is worth, Batman and I, or I should say Christian Bale and I are the same age…but this is the music industry).

So, what the hell is music publishing anyway?

According to Wikipedia: The primary job of the music publisher is to link up new songs by songwriters with suitable recording artists to record them, with the intent of creating a hit record and generating large numbers of sales and airplay.

Honestly, that is not what publishers do unless you live in Nashville and have the luck to bump into a Scott Gunter type! A Scott Gunter type, named after the real life Scott Gunter, is a traditional song man. The real Gunter has discovered a great number of the most successful country writers of our time. Gunters’ are music’s cupids searching to match the beautiful music of an ugly writer to the beautiful voice of an uninspired star. When a real band or a real artist walks in the room with music written without any intent of being covered by Faith Hill, the Gunter type is confused.

I remember when the real Gunter told me his thoughts about my song “When I fall”,

“Now Raymon”, he began in speaking in a southern drawl, words drooling out as slowly as molases, “I gotta tell you; I really gotta tell you; I just love this song; I mean it is a great song; this is a great song and I know that. I mean I just love the way you hold those long notes over the chorus and all, but heck, I have to admit, I just can’t figure out what the hell you are talking about”.

Just to clarify the mystique here is said chorus:

“When I fall, When I lose my head, you’re the one I call; when I fall, when I bleed, the one I need, the one I want, you’re the one I call” – Not exactly James Joyce now is it?

Listen to When I Fall

Gunter did his part for Buddahead. He tried anyway. He arranged thirty minutes for me to write a song with Craig Wiseman, one of the most successful country writers of all time. Craig is a cuddly bear of a man who travels with a goody bag his wife packs for him every time he leaves the house. Craig has the undisputable quality know by the French as Joie De Vivre (the joy of life). That afternoon, in castle in France, owned by Sting’s manager Miles Copeland, Craig and me met to construct the mother of all ballads. Craig broke the ice by saying, “I love your song When I fall, I really do, that is great. So dude, I have an idea for you, check it out.”

He then got his acoustic guitar out and started to strum the C chord, followed by an E minor, and then started to sing, “Shafts of moonlight beaming through my bedroom window”.

“HOLD IT SCRUMPY PUMPY”, I cried, ” I’m from London. I wrote most of the songs in a shitty room over looking a railway line in the pouring rain. There are no shafts of fucking moonlight beaming through my dreams even, let alone my bedroom window. Maybe a wandering hobo, but no moonlight.”

(Okay – that is not exactly what I said but needless to say, we did not finish writing about shafts of moonllght)

The point of this story is if you are a cool artist, and you write your own cool shit, you don’t need a publisher to hook you up with cheesy pop and country writers. Keep the rights to your own songs, join ASCAP or BMI, and keep all the money. So, WHY DID YOU DO IT RAMAN? One name: James Dewar.

(yeah I know, he looks just like James Blunt but trust me he is not nearly as whiney)

Hi, my name is James. I started work at Island Records in the warehouse in 1990 and progressed into A&R department where i found my true vocation. Moved to MCA Records for a year in 1992, before landing a job at independant publisher, Rondor Music in 1993 where i remained for 11 years signing such artists as William Orbit, Kaiser Cheifs and dEUS. Left Rondor after the company was swallowed up by Universal and took a sabbatical for a year traveling round the world and started at SonyATV publishing in 2005.

That is something James wrote about himself that I found on a social network I found him on.

Yes – it is true he started in the warehouse at Island.

Yes – it is true that he was at Rondor for 11 years where he signed loads of cool bands and artists including William Orbit.

Yes – he is passionate !!! about music, russian women, guitars, rock, the devil’s dandruff, Audi TTs, garlic, and traveling to the desert. He fights for you when he believes in you, will sign you for a nickel but gives you mad studio time and he will never put you on hold when you call him. He will always call you back about 2 hours later.

Yes – basically James Dewar made a shit load of money for the company he worked for and still Universal Music fired him when they bought Rondor.

But…the rumor is that James Dewar could not get another job in the industry because he passed on signing one of the greatest (not) rock bands of all time. This is why even with all his success he had to start as part-timer at Sony Publishing. The douchie von douchie pants band we are talking about is: The Darkness.

Hello industry! The man was right. Did you hear Darkness’s latest album? No? No worries, nor did anyone else. Give James his Audi back goddamn it! James Dewar fought for me. He gave me studio time, some money, introduced me to tons of cool people, spread my music, and eventually got me a record deal with Interscope Records. But there is only one James Dewar, try him: [Insert email] but if he doesn’t sign you…plan B is your only way to survive.

Plan B: So if you want to survive the music publishing industry my advice to you is this: If you are a song writer and want to write with other song writers and have other singers sing your songs then move to Nashville, get your music to Scott Gunter or some other Gunter type, and if he or they likes your music, you most likely will be made. On the other hand, if you are a an artist and you write your own songs then join ASCAP or BMI, keep your own publishing, get a licensing person to license your music out to TV, Film, Ads or whatever, and keep all the money and all the rights to everything you write. There is no need for you to sign a publishing deal. These days the money is not that good (the terms and conditions have never been good) and keep the right to your own songs.

Tags: ASCAP, ashes, Batman, BMI, Buddahead, Christian Bale, Craig Wiseman, dEUS, Faith Hill, Island records, James Blunt, James Dewar, James Joyce, Jonas Brothers, kaiser chiefs, MCA, Miles Copeland, music industry, music industry dirt bags, Music Publishing, Nashville, Navigating shark filled waters, record deals, Robbie Williams, rondor music publishing, sales and airplay, Scott Gunter, shark, shark filled waters, Simon Cowell, songs, songwriters, SonyATV publishing, Sting, successful country writers, superhero, swiss train, The Darkness, truth about music industry, truth essays, When I fall, wikipedia, William orbit
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