Teo Macero – Working With Various Artists – Part 4
Well John Hammond, everybody thought he was a great producer. John might have been but he never really had control of the artist. It was the artist who was really controlling things. I mean, I would sit there and I’d watch him work but it was the artist who decided what the take was. I mean, I called them Time Stoppers. Everything by the watch. Two and a half minutes. Three minutes. I never used a watch. I never listened to them. With me there was a complete abandonment. I’d just take my ears and say, “Okay, let’s make it.” And I’d go out there and I’d try to tell the bass player or somebody else, you know, “Don’t give me this routine. I want (sings). I want you to walk that goddamn thing, you know. And do it with Brubeck’s groove. If you listen to that stuff it was always (sings). The root and the fifth, the root and the fifth.
One time I says to the bass player, Gene, I says, “Can’t you play anything but..” He says, “I watch the left hand. I’m instructed to watch the left hand.” Because when I was rehearsing with them out there when Dave wasn’t right there at the moment, man those cats would be cooking! Gene would be (sings descending bass line). And this is what you have to be doing as a producer. John, I don’t think had that capability. I know he has a great legend and a great whatever you want to call it but to me he’s not really a producer. I mean, a producer, you have to be able to do things in the studio and make the guys work. I mean, whether he had that ability I don’t know but you have to encourage the artists to perform.
I was always routing for the performance. I didn’t care whether they played 12 wrong notes in a row or everything right. I said, “I want a performance. I don’t want an shenanigans. I don’t want any tired solos.” I said, “I’ve worked with some of the best. I know what they can do. You can do it if you put your mind to it.” And I’d sort of wind them up, sort of like a toy doll. Laughs. Even with Miles. You’d stand next to him and you’d give him something to work against. Because even with Miles you’d put up four microphones and say, “This is your microphone, Miles.” You wouldn’t tell him the microphones that you were going to use that might be in the studio. But you’d say, “Miles, this is your mic.” He’d deliberately walk away from that one and walk over here in the corner. I said, “I didn’t give a goddamn whether he walked out the door! I had him covered!” He could do whatever he wanted to do. He used to do this when we’d do things live! So I didn’t care where he went in the room.
The guys that I worked with, they were so clever. Those engineers, those guys really made those records because they would put those microphones. I’d say, “Look it, can you sneak one over there in the corner?” And sure enough, that sonuvabitch, he would deliberately walk away. When we did the Plug Nickel and there were microphones all over the place, he would deliberately walk away. And I’m saying, “Why?” He was doing it to say “that white so-and-so, I’m going to show that bastard what to do. What I’m going to do! I’m the boss!” I’d sorta laugh because when we’d normally do the Plug Nickel in Chicago one time, the drummer said he didn’t want to record so we didn’t record. So I said, “Okay fellas, pack up.” I went back to the hotel. I get a call at two o’clock in the morning. Who is it but Miles. He wants to hear the tapes. I says, “Good luck Charlie.” I says, “There are no tapes. We didn’t record. Everything’s packed up and we’re ready to leave at 6am. It’s two, I’ve got a couple of hours to get ready and I’m leaving at six.” (imitates Miles mumbling unhappily)
He cursed me out in four letter words. So we went back the next day and the next day recorded some great things. And then they finally, as I said earlier too, that CBS people over there, the Sony people decided to put the outtakes back into the original records and destroyed the records! I mean, if you listen to them. And now the musicians admit that their solos weren’t that good, and they weren’t! At that point I didn’t have much control. I tried but I couldn’t get them to change their minds. They were going to do whatever they wanted to do. It came from Clive, or, I don’t know, whoever was in charge. This is what they’re doing. I don’t think you can do that. I think you have to listen to a record. You have to analyze it. You have to dissect the music with your ears. And you know something about it and you go in and you edit it and you put it out. And you mix it to such a degree that it sounds, even some of the records I made 30-some odd years ago, they sound just as good as the day we made them. In fact, better!
Because the image of Miles is there. And the image of all of these other people. You know I did this with a lot of records recently and one artist in particular, she said to me, “Jesus, Teo.” She said, “When you listen to this on the radio in the car it sounds gorgeous!” I said, “Yeah, you’re right. It’s right there. You can almost stick your head in the piano and hear it.” I said, “Yeah, well that’s what I try to do. I try to make everything respond to such a degree that you know, ten years or fifteen years from now it will sound even better. And this is what you’ve got to do.”
But getting back to John Hammond. I didn’t watch him work that often. I know he threatened to be my boss for awhile. I said, “Look it, you’ll never be my boss.” I said, “I’d walk first.” I mean, that’s the sum total of it. I mean, John was a nice guy but I’d talk to Lieberson and he’d tell me “don’t worry about these people.”
I remember talking even with Clive Davis. Clive Davis said I was spending too much money going back and forth from 30th Street to CBS at night. And he wanted me to take the bus. I said, “I’m not taking a bus at three o’clock in the morning. You can go to hell. I’m just not going to do it.” So he was complaining to me and then he finally complained to the president. So the president decided to take us out to lunch. And what happened was that we finished lunch and on the way back he said to Clive, “His expense accounts come to me directly. On the 34th floor.” I said, “Yes sir!” And from then on Clive never opened his mouth. I mean, he tried to tell me what to do. I wouldn’t listen to him when we did The Graduate. I don’t know if I should tell you about The Graduate. Because this is all part of these so-called “geniuses” at the top. The Graduate was a record that I did for CBS and what happened was that I was doing a Dave Brubeck session on 30th Street around ten-thirty, eleven o’clock we’re going to finish and the executive vice president says, “Look it, Teo, get your ass up here.” And I said, “Oh geez, I’ve been up for two goddamn days! I just finished Dave Brubeck. I’ve got Thelonious tonight at seven o’clock.” I said, “What do you want me to do live in this goddamn place?” He said, “I want you to go to a movie.” I said, “A movie?! That’s all I need is to see a movie. I’d fall asleep!” I said, “I can’t go this afternoon.” He said, “You go this afternoon.” I said, “What’s your problem.” He said, “We need a record right away!” And he hands me two seven-inch boxes over the desk. I said, “What the hell is that?” He said, “This is the record that we want you to work on.” I said, “You’ve got to be kidding, you can’t be serious.” He said, “We need a record by Friday.” This is, I think, Tuesday. And I said, “Friday? You give me two little boxes.” I says, “Where are the other tapes?” He said, “I think they are in Hollywood.” I said, “That’s a great place, why aren’t they doing it there?” He said, “They’ve been working on it for three months and they couldn’t come up with the record.” And I said, “This is Tuesday and you want the record by Friday?” He says, “Yes!”
I said, “You’ll have it by Friday!” and I pointed right at the sonuvabitch.
So what I did, I called California. I said, “Airmail so I get it the next day, Wednesday.” I got the tapes Wednesday morning and I listened to all the tapes and I said, “Geez, they’re right!” There are only seven and a half inch boxes. The things they never finished. Mrs. Robinson was just like a little episode. If you listen to the original record nowadays you’ll hear that it was just like a little throwaway. I tried to make it into something but I did the best I could with what I had. And what I did, I went in the vault, took out every Simon and Garfunkel record and I made bridges with all the little cues. I pasted it all together. And it sold, the last count, which is about 20 some years ago, 8 million! And then finally Clive calls me down to his office, he says to me, “Oh, I’ve got something for you.” I said, “Well, you know, that’s very nice.” He hands me a check for fifteen hundred. I said, “Look it. I don’t need fifteen hundred. You can keep the goddamned check.” I threw it back on his desk. And then I’m thinking, “Geez, I did have some bills to pay.” I took the check and I put it… I said, “Nobody could have done this goddamn thing like I did.” And I said, “When it came out, it sold 8 million. It was like a runaway hit.” And then Simon and Garfunkel went back in the studio and did Mrs. Robinson and that became a smash. But that was all made of bits and pieces.
And who’s the guy, the other guy who wrote the music. There was another guy that wrote the, he was the composer. He used to be at Columbia and he wrote a lot of scores. But anyway, they never even thanked me. Nothing! None of them! Not Simon. Not this other guy. I’m saying, “What kind of nonsense is these bastards up to?” And I made them copyrights! I copyrighted this, I copyrighted that. I gave it to this one. I gave it to Paul Simon. I gave them all copyright. Because some of that stuff, there was nothing there!
Then I said to the manager, “Can I get a couple of tickets to the show at Carnegie Hall?” The guy said, “Yeah, it will be seventy five dollars a ticket.” I said, “Go to hell.” And I said, “If the record gets a Grammy at the Grammy’s, can I at least go up there?” “No.” Because I had a little speech I wanted to… They didn’t even invite me to the Grammy’s! And I get nothing for it. And I’m saying, “Isn’t this something? Not even a thank you from these two creeps.”
So you think artists are very nice but sometimes they’re not functioning on all 8 cylinders. They’re like on one and a half. It’s really hard to deal with these people but you know, as a producer, as an employee. I think at that time I was going through a divorce that was really very difficult. That was another thing. You could do no wrong with Goddard Lieberson. I mean, anything you wanted with him. He was a prince among men. He took care of me through my divorce. Anything I wanted to do. I wanted to take time off. Whatever. We used to double date. Laughs. Because I had a big yacht. I had bought a big yacht. Laughs. And we used to get on the yacht. But it was all in good fun! I mean, you could do whatever you wanted to do. I mean, when I was out in Las Vegas, he had everything taken care of for me. I mean, anything I wanted. It was wonderful!
