Teo Macero – Working With Various Artists – Part 3

You know, and I liked all these guys because I had a lot of fun with them.  Not only working with those musicians but other musicians.  Working with big bands.  With Woody Herman.  Doing Woody Live and doing Duke Live.  I mean, working with Duke Ellington’s band.  It was really a pleasure.  Duke would, I remember working on a single one night.  He brings the band in and he has nine page, nine pages.  I said to Duke, the music was from here to there (gestures with hands widely) “What are we doing Edward?” He said, “We’re going to make the single.”  I said, “We only need two and a half minutes, I mean, there’s only those little forty-fives.”  He said, “But…”

I think I still have that in the can.  I think it’s still there.  I don’t think anybody ever pulled it out.  But anyway.  So we finished the session that night.  We cancelled it.  So the next night he said, “Look, you take over the band.  You do it.” So I’m trying to take a look at the score.  I said, “Okay.  We’re going to do the opening chorus.  We’re going to do this, we’re gonna do this, this, and then the ending and then that’s it.  And then the guys did it and did it superb.  I think it was Blackboard Jungle, I think that’s one of the singles I think I put out.  But it was fun to work with these guys because they were so creative.

But working with a record company, I know that you guys would like to know.  Working with a record company was not that easy.  These guys were all stepping in your way.  Putting their foot out so that you trip over it and blocking everything that you tried to do.  If you wanted to make a single they had their own opinion what the single should be.  I said, “If you think you’re so goddamned smart then you go down there and do it.”  I mean, I told that to Clive Davis.  He said to me, “I don’t like any of these songs!”  I said, “Then Clive… you think you’re so smart!”  I says, “You go down there and make it!”  Well he never did.  And I understand that he makes some records but I don’t think he really does them anyway.  Working with Clive Davis, I don’t think he knows his, from his elbow.  Because I remember him from his days at CBS when he used to come in and sit with me in my office because I had the office with two doors.  A front and a back door.  My back door went into his office.  So he used to come by and sit with me.

He’s say, “Who’s that?” And I’d say, “Well that was Dave Brubeck.  That was Thelonious.  That was Charlie Mingus.  And then finally would bring some materials to me and I’d say, “That’s a piece of crap.  You want to do that?  I’m not interested.”  You know… and then he became a great producer.  I don’t think Clive knows what the word means!  To produce a record you’ve got to be able to get out there and do something.  Do something!  I mean, John knows what I’m talking about.  

He just has a way of getting in the way.  I mean, sure, he can give instructions to people.  He can say that he doesn’t like it.  But what don’t you like about it?  The easiest thing, he says, “I don’t like the arrangement.”  Well, anybody can criticize an arrangement.  Say maybe, the band is too loud or whatever.  Or the rhythm maybe.  He might have learned something over the years but I don’t think too much.

But then, you know, working with a guy like Andre Castilange, we had ninety men sitting out there and you want to do six numbers in three hours!  Six numbers and three hours!  And make the thing really pop?  Brother, you’ve gotta know what the hell you’re doing.  In those days you had to do the mix there.  And you had to get everything right then and there.  You didn’t have the luxury of spending $100,000 or half a million or a million making a record.  And you didn’t have the option of coming back and redoing it.  Because you had to account for every dollar that you spent.  So during some of those sessions, I would run out.  I mean, the Maestro couldn’t see me.  I mean, I’d run out and I’d be on the floor and I’d be telling the drummer (mimics drumming) and I’d run back in the control room and I’d make up a cockamamie reason “Hold it, hold it, hold it! The machine just went out!” Laughs.  It had nothing to do with the machinery.  I said, “Let’s take it from the top Maestro.” And the guys would be popping!  And I’m just saying that you really have to know what the hell you’re doing because when you got back to the editing room, you only had the two tracks to work with.  There were certain things you could do and certain things you couldn’t do.

We couldn’t change the speed because we didn’t know too much about what the hell was going on.  You know, especially in the early 60s, late 50s, early 60s.  It was a new beginning.  And some of the tracks were not in stereo.  They were monaural.  So even when you were doing monaural, I did those, you really had to know how to mix that stuff.  Brother, what you tried to do, you’d put the echo, you’d get it all at once!  I mean, your ears had to be like elephant ears, you know?  Out here (gestures big elephant ears) to try to figure out how to do all of this.  And then there were times when you wanted to just get up and scream!

I remember with Castilange at the end because he would take an hour and a half trying to setup the balance for the band.  Now, from all of my experience, assistant conductor, he’s sitting in the control booth with me.  He says, “Alright! At letter A! Leon!”  I’d look around.  The assistant conductor would start giving the downbeat.  “Stop, stop, stop!”  I said, “What’s wrong Maestro?”  He said, “A little more echo in the woodwinds!”  Laughs.  Meantime my Italian blood is starting to boil.  I said, “Maestro, look it, it would be much better if you went out there and conducted because those guys are not going to play for him as they will play for you.  When you’re conducting they’re going to shape up!”  You know, he never did that.  I tried it for about 18-19 years to get him to do it.  He would not do it.  The one night at the end of one of the sets I tore the goddamn score and I threw it against the wall on 30th Street and I ran out of the studio. 

I was so goddamn mad because he would take an hour and a half and then we’d have an hour and a half left, with breaks, and you had to do six numbers!  And he used to infuriate me!  I said, “Look it, if you’d just conduct!”  You know, I would try to say, “If you just would conduct, so I can get the balance.  The engineer can get the balance.  He can see what’s going on.  He can hear what’s going on.  I mean, they were talking, you want to know about the engineer.  If you don’t have an engineer that’s receptive and can do these things quickly, brother, you’re in trouble. 

I mean, I had a session just recently where the engineer couldn’t find out where the hell the buttons were.  I said, “Look it, I want to solo this.”  And he’s looking over the board.  He punches that.  I said, “No, that’s not what I want.  I don’t want the whole band.  I want that instrument.  That trumpet or that keyboard or that piano.  I want to see what the microphones are doing.”  Now, you punch everything else around it and let me see what’s happening.  Maybe there’s some leakage.”  Now, if you listen to my records, there’s very little leakage on any of the stuff unless it’s done deliberately.  Because that’s one thing, in case you want to remix or do something, change something.  I mean, you can do it nowadays but it’s very difficult. 

The more we go ahead, the further we’re going backwards.  The music isn’t progressing or anything.  It’s like going backwards.  The sound on some of these records that we hear is atrocious!  You wonder where the hell the guy was!  He might have been in another room playing poker with somebody or maybe having a couple of drinks or a little cocaine.  Who knows? 

With Gil Evans, the man behind the orchestral thing was Gil.  And Gil was really quite a talent, well he was always very talented, and I got along with him very well.  And we used to laugh and joke about certain things.  But when we did Sketches of Spain for instance, Miles didn’t show up for six sessions.  We had about 30 guys and I was doing a show with the president on Sunday and I said, “Look, I really got a problem here. Geez..” I says, “I’ve done six sessions and Miles is not here yet.”  And he says, “How’s the record gonna be?”  I says, “It’s gonna be fantastic as soon as I can get him in there, and make it, it’s gonna be a brilliant record!”  He says, “Teo! Stay there until you finish it!”  I said, “Well, it’s a long way away.  Maybe another 10 or 15 sessions.”  He says, “I don’t care how long it takes, you know what you’re doing.  Just do it.”  And so when Miles came in, he played and we made the record and we were there, I don’t know, the last session lasted something like 14 hours or 15 hours.  We started at 10 in the morning and we finished at three in the morning.  And Gil kept saying to me, “But Teo.  I gotta make four bars.”  I says, “Geez.”  I says, “You know, it’s one o’clock now.  I don’t know what to do.”  I said, “We’ve been here.  We’re all exhausted.”  He said, “I gotta make four bars.”  I says, “Can I just hear the four bars?”  So he played the four bars.  I said, “Okay, I’ll give you till three o’clock.  Three AM.”  And I said, “At that point, I’m gonna pull the switch, and that’s gonna be it.” 

You know we never made the four bars?  We never made the four bars.  I mean, he wanted to change it.  I know what he was driving at but as I was telling people much earlier in my career that the way to do it is not with full microphones and balancing them up.  This is with one microphone because the way Gil was writing, you needed four microphones to do it.  But if he had done it maybe orchestrally, and done it acoustically, correct.  Which I learned to do while I was at Julliard; one microphone would have done it and it would have solved the problem.  But he didn’t change the orchestration so consequently we never did make it.  

And then there were other times when we were doing various records and we never finished them.  And what I did, there was one compilation, not so long ago, and there was a thing called Falling Water which I titled and I actually even conducted it in the small studio at CBS.  Because Gil, I don’t know if you people, he would like wave (imitates a low fluid conducting style) and the musicians couldn’t see, you know.  And with me it was (shows clear 4/4 conducting style) this is where it’s going to go and the downbeat is here and so forth.  So what I would do, I went out and I rehearsed it and finally Gil came up and took over and we finally made it.  But we never made a finished take.  Now, I’ve got a track of Miles, of this particular piece, that is the most gorgeous piece Miles has ever done.  Now what they did in the last compilation, they used the last take.  Now, the last take was crap.  It was the first take.  It was one bar, two bars in the last take and I cut it all up.  I cut up all the takes to make one 13 minute piece.  And it’s absolutely gorgeous.  I don’t have it here but I do have it in the country.  If you want a copy I’ll be glad to give it to you.

When I was working on this I did a couple of other things.  I went back in the vault and discovered that there were a lot of things that Gil didn’t use on the original Porgy and Bess.  I said, “My God!”  I said, “I wanna mix it.”  So I did.  I took all the outtakes.  These are only outtakes.  There’s things that he didn’t do.  What I did, I made an overture to Porgy and Bess.  The overture is gorgeous!  You hear it, I mean, there has to be a little tweaking here and there because I didn’t have all of the equipment.  We didn’t have the Pro Tools like they have it now in that we could move everything quickly.  We had the 16/30 tapes and you couldn’t echo the outgoing.  I tried to get the Japanese.  I said, “Figure out a way so I can echo the outgoing.”  And what we’d have to do, we’d have to make it on a separate machine, copy it, and put it back in the tape.  It was a helluva job!  But then I did this overture of Porgy and Bess.  It is absolutely out of sight.  I mean, you hear things in there.  I mean, I took the introduction for example, which Gil never used.  It was a little thing and I reverted it.  I played it backwards so it starts off in a dissonant and it comes up to such a peak and then the band is there.  And then going out, it goes out the other way.  I tell you, I did this with a couple of his other pieces at the same time when I was doing… But these people wouldn’t listen at CBS.  You know, they do whatever they wanted to do.  I was supposed to do all of the mixing, editing, and so forth.  But when they tried to tell me that they were going to do this to Miles’ tape;  Put in all the outtakes with the original.  I said, “Look it, you don’t need me for that. I just can’t do that.  I can’t do it to the artist.  I wouldn’t do it and I’m not going to do it!  Take your goddamn contract and shove it!”  And I did.  I walked off the project.  And they didn’t want to pay me a lot of money.  They were going to give me a royalty plus money and I said “I’m not interested.  Take the whole goddamn thing.”  

So I’ve got those tapes socked away but they were done to such a degree that its absolutely perfect.  And when you listen to them, you say, “Geez, why don’t you put this stuff out?  There are at least a half a dozen things that I know of that I could of Miles and put them out.  Like the movie.  The movie is great!  When you hear all this music and you say, “How’s all of this possible?  How did you figure it all out?”  Well I just sat with a Pro Tools.  I said, “No, that’s gotta go, that comes in two bars later or whatever it is.”  I said, “We’ll work around it.”  And I made some good tapes which I have in my vault.

Interviewer: Which movie were you talking about? 

It was called The Boston Symphony.  And the guy that was going to do the film died just recently.  It was just one thing after another and I just sort of abandoned the whole project figuring that maybe somebody someday will do something with them.  Because they’re too good just to leave them there.  I mean, the guys who like Miles, the people who want to hear that stuff will flip out because Falling Water is absolutely gorgeous.  You say, “Geez!”  Miles played so beautifully.

I cut everything minutely and laid it in to come out to 13 to 14 minutes and we did this with two or three other pieces.  Then, of course, the overture of Porgy and Bess.  I mean, that would be a natural.  That would be a million seller.  Guaranteed!  But you know, those jerks, they don’t wanna listen so I’m not gonna argue with them.