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Veteran Recording Engineer Roy Halee On Recording Simon and Garfunkel and Others-Part II

Roy Halee

MF: Sonically, the 3 CD set (issued by Columbia in 1991) is a real disappointment.

RH: Yea, well hey! It's fourth and fifth generation tapes! They lose tapes now. They had a foolproof filing system at one time. I don't know what happened. Anyway, here come these things in the studio, what am I supposed to do with this stuff? So my first reaction is send it back! I call CBS. I say “Hey, give me a break! Let's get the originals. I'll remix it. I'll do anything. Anything you want! I don't care. It's history, I want to do it right. Some of this stuff sounds very good.” I want it to sound very good. I don't want to beat it to death, but I couldn't get the tapes. So I'm thinking, “Do I do it or walk?” Finally, I decide to do it because otherwise, maybe whoever will do it, might make it worse. They'll come in with equalizers, suck out all the midrange…

So I did it myself. So getting back to “The Boxer,” to this day I think that record stands up. It's 20 tracks, 4 totally wild-that is synched into the mix by hand. So from a technical standpoint it's quite an achievment.

MF: Getting back to the old days, when you made those recordings, was it a lot more fun in certain ways, doing all that experimenting?

RH: Enormous fun. But then when we went to do Graceland there was more of that kind of challenge, same with Rhythm of the Saints.

MF: You recorded all Paul's solo albums?

RH: Not all of them, no. There was a time when I ended up doing Artie's first solo album and there were some bad feelings going on so we just kind of split. Actually, I recommended to him that he use Phil Ramone because Phil was my favorite guy.

MF: Was he upset with you for working with Art? Or was it just a scheduling conflict?

RH: He was upset, of course. But I had to finish that record and it was fun too, because it was my favorite way of recording pop records and it still is, in the multitrack vein-the best sound is using two 16-track machines running in synch.

MF: As opposed to a 24-track?

RH: Absolutely. Or two 24-tracks, or digital. Talk about polish, presence, you don't have to use any processing-sort of like the old 35MM recorders. You have lots of head width.

MF: Before we get into the last couple of records which obviously were huge successes, let's talk about The Byrds.

RH: I was out there in LA for a very short time working with Paul and Artie. We had that rhythm section out there-Hal Blaine [drums], Joe Osborne [bass], Larry Knechtel [keyboards]-they were doing everything. Those guys are the greatest. Hal Blaine is the greatest thing that ever happened to pop records. So anyway, Gary Usher asked me if I would do that twin eight-track thing I'd come up with, for The Byrds, because nobody else was doing that kind of recording. And I got to do Notorious Byrd Brothers and Sweetheart Of The Rodeo. But the guy who did the early Byrds stuff was Ray Gerhardt-great engineer.

MF: Who else did you record?

RH: Laura Nyro. I did New York Tendaberry. Again, I got burned by experimenting because I found that Laura going in and performing with a band didn't work. She couldn't perform what she did best with strict time in the studio. She was unbelievably great. If she could sit down at the piano and turn the lights down, and you could put candles-what have you-out, she couldl perform for you like you wouldn't believe. And that's been proven, because when she used to do Carnegie Hall dates, they'd sell out for years in advance and guys would storm the stage. She had magnetism beyond belief. Nothing could hold her back. So to get a performance from Laura live, accompanying herself on piano, and band, you had to do a lot of cutting. I came up with a idea-let's go in and spend a lot of time with her accompanying herself on piano, and overdub the band, but we didn't use an click tracks. And I think the piano vocal performances are the greatest on record.

MF: So who else did you do?

RH: I was doing Blood Sweat and Tears, Peaches and Herb-a lot of R&B stuff. Jazz stuff. I did stuff for the Dave Clark Five, The Yardbirds. I cut “I'm a Man.”

MF: Then you left Columbia?

RH: I finally left Columbia and went with A&R studios. Phil Ramone finally got me. I worked on Mitch Ryder and Frankie Valli sessions with Bob Crewe. Again at Columbia's old 799 studio. Phil is doing outrageous stuff out of there.

MF: When did you exclusively start working with Paul?

RH: Well, I started doing a wonderful project with Artie and a composer I adore-Jimmy Webb. They were going to do an album called The Animal's Christmas-it's not gonna sell, but I'm thinking digital is in now, and I want to get into it. This is a new thing. And it's going to be great, it's classical. We're going to cut the tracks with the London Symphony Orchestra. Well for one reason or another, that fell apart.

Meanwhile, I get a call from Paul-we had just come off Concert in the Park.

MF: Great sound.

RH: That was a ball. That was done one take, one show, outdoors, in the cold, no repairs from the band, no band overdubs, but Art Garfunkel overdubbed some vocals. It was originally intended to be just a video. We may do the same thing with The Rhythm of The Saints tour, because Paul is doing a lot of the older material, and it may work out well, but we'll have to wait and see how the video comes out first. We're planning on shooting the shows in Brazil later this year.