Craig Leon

Hanna Bächer

A very warm welcome for Mr Craig Leon, please.

Craig Leon

Yes. Hello everybody. Is this on? Yes, can you hear me? OK, then, I am in a dead spot here. OK, well, thanks for listening to that so early and thanks for coming out so early. OK…

Hanna Bächer

It’s a late-night track. What was it that we just listened to?

Craig Leon

It’s a good thing to wake up to if you want a little atmospheric stuff to start the day.

Hanna Bächer

It was Suicide “Frankie Teardrop” for anyone who doesn’t know the track or doesn’t know its name, and it’s been produced by you and another fellow. How much of what we just heard was brought by the band to the studio? How much does this resemble the original?

Craig Leon

What do you mean the original? Oh, what they were doing out in the studio?

Hanna Bächer

Yes.

Craig Leon

They were playing what they would do live. They had everything, this band, in particular, had everything pretty much arranged in the order that it was going to be, because they had been playing it already for five years or so, all of these songs that they had on their album.

The effects and the general atmosphere, they never really did. They did some primitive versions of that with repeat echoes, like a Roland voice box, Roland guitar echo and things like that. This huge dub kind of sound wasn’t part of the band then. It became later. They adapted that after we did that on the album. You got to remember that this is done before sequencers of any sort and before looping really existed. They had an old little, little old drum machine that was part of this thing called a Seeburg rhythm machine which is a, people would use it to play cha-chas at weddings behind, they screwed around with it to make it do good things, instead of just play cha-chas, which are… Cha-Chas are nice too.

In any case, and then, it was one guy playing a Farfisa organ, it’s not a synthesizer, that went through a bunch of radio tubes and radio pre-amps, and one little tiny amplifier, about yay big, that was made to sound a little bit distorted, and then, everything else was done in the control room in the studio.

In those days, it was a primitive control room, as well. We didn’t have many of the effects that exist now. Mostly what you’re hearing is something I had learned on a previous record in Jamaica, with a guy named Bob Marley that I was working with, and his producer Lee Perry. We did a record, the three of us together. They did this thing with dub to make things repeat on themselves, so we just started making more things repeat, more and more and more and more, on themselves.

As they played this live, we did this, we being Marty Thau and me, who was the manager of the band who owned the label and me, and the engineer was hiding somewhere, because we were driving him crazy. He would have nothing to do with the record whatsoever except run away most of the time, because it was driving him nuts. Everything was wrong, technically, [but] for this, it was right. Excuse me [coughs].

In any case, the, we recorded everything as they were doing it. It was like a live set and then we would print that to tape. If you played everything back in a straight line, you’d basically get that with whatever variation you do. There was no separation of anything. You had the organ separated. The drum machine and the organ on two tracks. We couldn’t get them separated. Alan [Vega]’s, the leads singers, vocal, and then all the effects and that was it. I still work that way this day. I mean, we may be working on something later today that sounds like it has tons of effects and everything on it, but it’s only two tracks – about 140 things going on to make two tracks, as a drone, but it’s just down on two tracks. If I hear it that way, that’s the way I like to capture it.

That comes from my classical background, believe it or not, but yes. It’s a little different than the way things are done by other people.

Hanna Bächer

Talking about this classical background, you grew up in Fort Meyers in Florida.

Craig Leon

Not even in Fort Myers, in hell outside of Fort Myers, yes.

Hanna Bächer

Too small to be…

Craig Leon

I grew up in the Everglades, in the swamps, yes, literally. I was lucky enough to have a bit of talent when I was very young for playing piano. My parents sent me to a piano teacher, and then, it was one of these, literally, after six months kind of things, we can’t teach this kid any more.

Luckily, they found somebody who’d retired from a university, up in the north of the US, down to this area where I lived, who agreed to take me on. She had a long background going back to Germany where she was a concert pianist in the ’20s.

I actually found some masters of 78s in the Deutsche Grammophon library of her playing, so I was part of that whole German tradition that goes all the way back to the old litany of trained by Liszt, trained by Czerny, trained by Beethoven, blah-blah-blah, all the, it’s totally interesting, and it’s totally meaningless as well. That’s what I started out to do and that’s kind of what I’m doing now in a weird way.

Hanna Bächer

What took you from Florida to New York, where you later produced Suicide?

Craig Leon

Well, I started working in a studio in Florida. Actually, I started working in a TV station, playing… just, it would be live when guys would try and sell corn on the radio and stuff to the farmers, I would play country music on a piano, while they were doing it, a live advert and I’d pick up some money, on the weekends.

The guy at the radio station new a studio down in Miami where, in the summer, when I was off school, I went down and worked, because I knew how to write music, obviously, so I would chart out things – you know, very simple stuff.

From there, I was introduced to a producer from New York, named Richie Gottehrer who was involved with a lot of old things, old, old, old, he wrote a lot of old hits like girl group stuff, in the Phil Spector time, “My Boyfriend’s Back” and all this. He owned part of a label called Sire and brought me to New York to work for him as an assistant producer. In that day, the producers were there A&R guys and we actually found bands and championed them and supported them.

Hanna Bächer

You sort of ended up on Sire, because you tried to get Suicide...

Craig Leon

Well, yes, I was actually looking at another place. I had a friend in New York that recommended me to work for a bigger label. Before I agreed to go to Sire, I went for an audition to a big label. This guy was cool that recommended me. I mean, it was a guy who had signed The New York Dolls and worked with Lou Reed and all these other in-crowd New York bands. Also, was the first guy to ever write about New Bob Dylan when he was a journalist.

In any case, he recommended me to a label and they asked me if I would go see some bands over the weekend and tell them what I would sign as an A&R guy. They asked me to go see a very trendy band that was opening for the first appearance of this band Suicide at a club.

I hated the band that everybody wanted to sign. It was just bullshit, New York Dolls imitators, Bryan Ferry imitators, and I can’t even remember their name. Joey Ramone may have, actually, been the singer, I was told, at one point. In any case, Suicide played, and I loved them. I went back and I said, I saw this band Suicide that I’d love to sign. They said, get the hell out of here. No job for you. We wouldn’t sign a band called Suicide. I called up Sire and say, yes, I’m going to, let’s go to work.

Hanna Bächer

How was Suicide live back then, because they were more rooted in a performance…

Craig Leon

They were like performance art, as were all those old New York bands. Maybe we’ll get off of old history as soon as we can, but I’ll do it if you’d like. Yes, all the New York bands were from an arts background, and the whole scene was very much with this new thing called video art that was starting then, and film, and it was all multimedia stuff that was happening. Visual art was happening as a part of the whole scene.

Even the Ramones as performance art. They weren’t really seeing themselves as, they saw themselves as rock & roll, but they saw it as an offshoot of pop music. Everything was much more categorized back then. Today, everybody’s so lucky that you have the internet. We’re not lucky that you have things like Spotify that don’t pay, but we’re also lucky for our influences. The good side of that is that we can see everything that was before us and everything that’s happening now at the same time. Then, everything was in a niche. Even some New York bands wouldn’t listen to other New York bands because this was cool and this wasn’t cool, which is ridiculous, because all music is cool. Even the things you think are really crap have some redeeming value.

In any case, they would all do the art pieces. Suicide, Alan would beat on tables with a chain and cut himself and do all the stuff that Iggy Pop later went on to do, as part of this destructive thing. It was more or less of a representation of where they lived.

Their music was actually, this is going to get into a thing where the lecture could last all day on it, but for me, pop music and mass-produced music is like folk music for a given audience. It’s people talking back to themselves and to their friends that are like them. That’s what you get out of all of… that’s what these people really were that were down there, and this is what they were communicating.

New York was a very gritty place where people, you’d have to watch that you wouldn’t get killed. It’s not kidding. It wasn’t homogenized, stock broker idiocy. That’s why I hate New York now. It actually, it was a dangerous place like what that music sounded like. It was very, very aggressive, and that fed what the art and the music and the writing and everything, of that era, was in the ’70s.

Hanna Bächer

Let’s listen to a Ramones track, since we mentioned...

Craig Leon

Yes, they were pretty loud too.

Hanna Bächer

A very special version that you brought for us. This is “Blitzkrieg Bop.”

(music: Ramones – “Blitzkrieg Bop”)

Craig Leon

Yes, there you go. I’m sorry I’ve fooled Hanna there, because I was bringing the old mono mix which is really, in my opinion, better, but the record company said we had to do stereo, so we did stereo like the Beatles with stuff on each side, very wide. They wouldn’t let us put out the mono version, which is actually, maybe, if the band stays quit fighting, we’ll have it out for the 40th anniversary. We did, the whole album was mixed three times in one day.

In any case, interesting thing about the Ramones is, see, all of these people –we just heard Suicide and the Ramones. You got to remember what radio was like and pop music was like. It was just as bad as it is now. First of all, anybody, just hands up, anybody here fancying being a producer that produces the music of other people rather than your own? By doing like that, there’s one guy there, OK, I got a tip for you. You’re going to get the same thing that I get and every other producer gets. One day, somebody will come after you’ve done a track like that and say, well, why wasn’t our band No 1. Well, maybe because you had lyrics about “beat on the brat with a baseball bat” could have had [something to do with it], not the fact that it was in stereo.

Suicide… “Gosh, I wonder why ‘Frankie Teardrop wasn’t played on the radio very much…” OK, you’ll get it. You’ll get it, something even if you go ahead and it’s part of the job, you’ll go ahead and do what’s right, in your mind, to help this artist get their point across. You will do it or sometimes you don’t do it. I’ve had a few records where I haven’t been able to do it at all. Luckily, only a few, and you haven’t heard them because they never came out. Everybody has that, but you’ll get asked, “Why aren’t we a hit,” no matter what you do. Do a 47-minute dub version of invasions of a country, and they’ll ask why it wasn’t a hit. Yes.

Hanna Bächer

Did things get released, at that point in time, where you felt like they’re actually not ready, because you’re unable to change things after they’re out.

Craig Leon

No, this, to me, was always representations of folk music. There’s a difference between folk, which I think pop is a part of, and alternative pop or whatever is part of. Then, there’s written music which is done with training. They’re both different methods of doing the same thing. If it’s written music, you have more of a chance of changing it before you do it. If it’s something that comes from expression in playing, what they do is what they… it’s what it is at that point in time.

I would say that, you take a band like Blondie, which is another band I produced that, in 1974 or 1975, they were probably voted the band that wouldn’t ever get signed, because they were very, very shoddy players, even by CBGC and Max’s standards, although they were very good, that’s what they did.

They’re playing much better now, but what they did in 1976, 1977 and so on, it’s like a time capsule of a folk thing of what they did now. You don’t say Blind Willie Johnson… maybe if Blind Willie Johnson had lived another 50 years, I don’t even know if you know who I’m talking about, but a guitar player that…

Hanna Bächer

Who are you talking about?

Craig Leon

Blind Willie Johnson is one of the best expressed pieces of music ever created, “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” if you want to look it up on YouTube, by Blind Willie Johnson. It’s a guitar instrumental and it’s all sloppy and it’s all over the place, and it’s amazing. It makes “Frankie Teardrop” look like there’s absolutely no emotion in it whatsoever, comparatively, and it’s one guy on an acoustic guitar playing in a hotel room.

In any case, if he had played for 50 years more, instead of dying younger, yes maybe, he would have played better and played that song, what he thought was better, but the picture that came out and when he did it in the ’30s is the picture we have. That’s the picture of the Ramones playing in 1976.

Hanna Bächer

Actually, we could show a picture at this point in time…

Craig Leon

Oh gosh.

Hanna Bächer

The video people in your box of the Ramones. You got them signed to Sire Records, right?

Craig Leon

Oh, that’s in the control room [references slide]…

Hanna Bächer

Yes, that’s you…

Craig Leon

There’s the very complicated control room with the studio that we did the record in.

Hanna Bächer

Massive.

Craig Leon

Well, it was a massive studio with a very small control room. I liked it a lot because it was a very big room that was built for classical music, actually. It was where Arturo Toscanini used to broadcast the NBC Symphony Orchestra for radio concerts. The room itself was, I don’t know, I’ll go, maybe 65 feet by about 55 feet high, by about 200 feet. It was a huge concert hall with a pipe organ in it, but very, very small control room. Yes, I was instrumental in bringing them into Sire because that was my job. I’m going to write all about this for the 40th anniversary, so I don’t know when, and I’ve said it a lot before, but it wasn’t so easy to get them signed is what the story actually is. It took quite a bit of time and effort.

Hanna Bächer

You produced their very first album.

Craig Leon

Yes.

Hanna Bächer

And stopped working with them after that – how come?

Craig Leon

That was all that we did. I mean, it’s just circumstances. A lot of that had to do with the fact of politics, internally at Sire, because there were two owners of Sire. I went out of Sire at the time that album was released, actually, and went with the partner who left and we started working with a couple of other bands, with Blondie and Richard Hell and Suicide, actually, came out of that, indirectly.

If I wasn’t at Sire and they were, it was something that the boss that was remaining at Sire said, we’ll get somebody else to it, anybody can do that, and yes, yes, sure, anybody can do it. So much of what’s producing is dependent on what the band actually, and the artist, actually does. It gets to another story which, for most of you, which is what I’m doing now, which I love doing and it’s all I’ve done for 15 years, is produce myself and my own music. That’s a whole different kettle of fish. You’re not dependent on anybody but yourself and that’s cool stuff.

Hanna Bächer

One of those anybodies though that you mentioned, who could produce and who produced the Ramones was Phil Spector. How did you get along with him?

Craig Leon

I didn’t work with Phil. I’ve, I know him…

Hanna Bächer

You have met and there has been a bit of controversy.

Craig Leon

Yes, it was the typical thing, we can go into all kinds of stories about Phil Spector and they’re true, for the most part. Everything you’ve read about Phil Spector, to some extent. I mean, it’s debatable about the thing with Lana, and I say that because I knew her, the lady that was accidentally or not, unfortunately, passed away at his house. A lot of the stories that bands tell were true of him pulling guns in the studio and stuff… I’d get phone calls when I was in LA of get the hell out of town or else you’re dead and stuff like that, who’s this on the phone, it’s Phil Spector. I learned to love that when I was in LA.

Hanna Bächer

Let’s listen to some music...

(music: Blondie – “X Offender”)

Craig Leon

...about that, and that’s really, sounds like power pop nowadays, but that was a return of the 60s consciousness. If I was Phil Spector and heard somebody doing that in a style that I did, I’d probably say I’d kill them too. No, I’m just joking. In any case, that’s Debbie who I’ve had the privilege of recording over many decades and Blondie, the band. That’s all live at that big studio, with overdubs, but live playing. There’s, obviously, no sequences or anything in that with that timing in it.

In any case, just to show you the thinking in that time. This song was called “Sex Offender” which is about a sex offender that falls in love with the cop that arrests him or her. Again, Marty Thau, who we were talking about with Suicide, who was the manager of Blondie, at this time, briefly, there was a radio promo guy to get things sold in America’s thought, well maybe if we called it “X Offender” it’ll get played on the radio. That’s why it got titled “X Offender” instead of “Sex Offender,” and a lot of good that did because it did not get played on the radio.

Hanna Bächer

You have shared production credits with Marty Thau on Suicide, but not on Blondie as well.

Craig Leon

He didn’t produce, he wasn’t even in the studio on any of the Blondie stuff. My partner, Richie Gottehrer was, and he has credits on stuff. There’s a lot of stuff that he has credit on, and then, I mixed or I arranged. There’s even stuff that was arranged back then that ends up on Mike Chapman’s stuff. The one that I did myself with nobody else, and again, this, all these pop things are collaborative. I’ve never minded collaborating with people or sharing credits or whatever, because it’s not… if it’s my own work, I’m very enthusiastic to say it’s my own work.

If it’s a conglomeration of everybody in the room, OK, maybe I brought something to it, maybe Richie Gottehrer brought something to it, maybe Marty Thau did, maybe the guy who delivered the pizza did it at the right time. That was all part of the folk process that got it done. That’s why you’ll see, on a lot of my old records, I actually, though I didn’t have to, credited people as associates or assistants or we did things together. That’s the way that I feel, even to this day.

Hanna Bächer

Marty Thau was not a trained producer though, so...

Craig Leon

Nobody’s a trained producer. You just kind of do it.

Hanna Bächer

He was not a trained producer.

Craig Leon

There wasn’t a university...

Hanna Bächer

He didn’t really...

Craig Leon

… of producing back then.

Hanna Bächer

He didn’t really know what to do, right, when he had it…

Craig Leon

Well, the thing is, what he did on the Suicide record, he did a couple of productions because he was a manager of the New York Dolls, and he went through a horrible experience where they’d failed and somebody else ended up managing them and he said, I’m going to be a producer. He decided he was going to manage and produce The Ramones and made a demo on them, which almost, he brought into Sire at the same time I was trying to bring them already into Sire, and almost got them not signed to Sire, because it wasn’t very good, because the guy wasn’t a producer, but he wanted to be.

On Suicide, like I said, everything was in blocks. If you were going to mix Suicide again, and if you wanted to mix it again today, you’ve got a choice. You got track, vocal and effects that you can move up and down against each other.

What Marty would tend to do, in any one of his productions, he’d move something, go, oh that sounds good, let’s smoke another joint. Let’s move, now the track is too loud, let’s move the vocal up, it’s typical amateur stuff. Oh, now the vocal and that’s loud, we don’t enough effects. Let’s make them real loud. Oh, no, now the vocal needs to come up again.

All you ended up with is a louder version of what you already had and that’s, indeed, what happened on the Suicide record. We went into master it, and the mastering engineer said, well, some of the distortion is intentional, but it was just too much of a mess to actually do it. One of the tracks that he, quote-unquote remixed is on that album. They did three. They did, I can’t remember, “Ghost Rider,” “Rocket USA” and the slow one that actually is on the… “Cheree”...

Hanna Bächer

They meaning Marty...

Craig Leon

Marty and the band got high for a couple weeks and messed around in the studio, while I was gone, unfortunately – everybody knew I was going to be gone and then I came back and we re-did “Frankie Teardrop” again, in an hour or something, because it was all plotted out, except there was a new vocal in sections which was cut in and then that’s it.

Hanna Bächer

Apart from you having to re-do a few of the tracks, was there also a lesson for you in that, to work with someone who, basically, has no clue what he’s doing and...

Craig Leon

I work every day...

Hanna Bächer

Just making creative mess.

Craig Leon

… with somebody who doesn’t have a clue what they’re doing – it’s me. I work all the time with people, what you know and what you don’t know doesn’t really matter in this area. It’s what you really feel and what you hear and what you can create with whatever you can do that really makes sense. Again, if you’re Blind Willie Johnson, and you can play one thing up and down with a slide, you’re just as much of a genius, in that one moment, as Phil Spector who made a tremendous thing that was created in his mind, from scratch, in a studio in 10 days, with Tina Turner. It’s no different, yes. You got to respect what everybody can do.

Hanna Bächer

It’s maybe a good occasion to play something that you didn’t do alone but, that is your own music, off of Nommos. If you could please see the video.

Craig Leon

Oh, this is more like it. ... Yes, I like that one.

(music: Craig Leon – “Donkeys Bearing Cups”)

Craig Leon

Oh, this is more like it... Yes, I like that one.

Hanna Bächer

This is “Donkeys Bearing Cups.”

Craig Leon

Cups, it’s the name of the actual, of a piece of art. This isn’t, well, it’s kind of folk. It’s something that was an idea that I had and it’s actually structured and written out, believe it or not, this whole album. It was, originally, supposed to have orchestra on there with it, at the time we did it, but we had no budget.

We were on the smallest label known to man that had no budget to do it. My partner in crime, who co-produced that with me and I, she produced me, that’s Cassell Webb over there, and she’s on most every record I’ve ever done since then. In any case, what we tried to do was inspired by an art exhibition that we had seen in New York of these things that you see here and I don’t know if all of you know this story, but I’ve talked about it before...

Hanna Bächer

Could you please show picture no 2, so people get an idea.

Craig Leon

This is from the album that came out in 1979.

Hanna Bächer

What we just heard was first released on an album in 1979, but then, got reworked later...

Craig Leon

It’s reworked there...

Hanna Bächer

2013.

Craig Leon

… to be more like what it was supposed to be. We’re doing it with the original scores now, reworked because of this, either in a quartet version for people who don’t have money, with a quartet and now, that we’re doing it with a large orchestra which we’ve only been able to afford to do once.

Hanna Bächer

Back to 1973, there was an art exhibition in Brooklyn...

Craig Leon

Yes.

Hanna Bächer

Showing these statues. What are they?

Craig Leon

Yes, and then, there was a book that we got out of it. Then, what these statues are is there’s a tribe in Mali which had a tradition that these guys, that you see on here, came down from another planet, and were their version of what we would call angels in western culture, that taught them all how to grow crops and live and all of this sort of thing.

Actually, the roots of the Egyptian religion is in their religion which was that and they had a very, very specific litany of where these people came from, that when you apply astronomy to it, actually indicates a very specific star, that existed then and now, that people didn’t know existed, in the form they described it, until telescopes were invented many years later.

For maybe 1,500 years, all of their art is pictures of these creatures in various positions, everything, and that’s what was in this exhibition. They had the art of these people called the Dogon and these creatures are called “Nommos”. That’s what they called them and they came from the Sirius star system in their belief – it’s just as good as any other belief. In any case, it got us to thinking.

A few years later, I was asked to make a synthesizer record by an unlikely label that was a folk label. I said, okay, I would like to think about what would be the folk music of these guys, not the African tribe, but of the Nommos beings from another planet. What was their Blind Willie Johnson? What was their ancient Greek music in our culture? What was their ancient Nommos music?

I figured, well, you’d have to start from very simple rhythms. Let’s say they were the people, assuming the story is correct, and I’m not saying it is, it’s science-fiction. If you’re going to buy into something speculative, you have to assume it’s correct. Then, the music that came right when they came down, would be stuff that they imbued within the music of the Earth inhabitants.

You would have very simple drum patterns that are reminiscent, although not exactly typical of the rhythms of Mali at that time, and you would have very simple, multi-tonal, but only pentatonic, at the most, chords – and they’re not chords, they’re actually single notes – similar to what’s in ancient Phoenician music and ancient Greek music.

Again, something of its own, not that exactly because, coming up to the second album later, things I’ve done, if you keep that thread going, we mutated it in the folk process. I went to this folk label and they were saying, you want to make an album, and I said, yes, I’ll make an album of the folk music of another planet for you, instead of the folk music of America or Africa or something like that. There was a very important record that inspired a lot of folk singers in America called The Anthology of American Folk Music...

Hanna Bächer

It inspired you to. Later. say that one the US will have an alien president.

Craig Leon

Oh, well, that was because there was this guy, Harry Smith, who was a real interesting fellow. Harry Smith was, amongst other things, he produced The Fugs’ first album which is enough to get him into the Hall of Fame. He was also an expert in north-western American Indian beliefs and religions, and he also had the biggest collection of American folk 78 records from the ’30s with things like Blind Willie Johnson in it.

He created one of the first LP box sets in the 1950s called The Anthology of American Folk Music and he did it all according to – OK, we’ll get a little hippie here, because he was a big hippie – numerology and ancient mystical traditions. He said, “Look, the way that I’ve cast this record out, it’s going to make a big impact.” This is in 1951 that he did that. What he did, when he made this record, every young folk singer that was coming up, let’s say, 10 years later, used this as a basis to learn the American folk history. People like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, all of the American folk singers studied this collection that he did and was called The Anthology of American Folk Music.

What he said in 1951 is that, 50 years from now, and he might have been out of not, if this record works, racism in America’s going to end and we’ll have a black president of the United States. I said, okay, I’m going to do The Anthology of Inter-Planetary Folk Music, Volume One. He had volume one, two, three, four and I’ve done volume one so far and, in 50 years' time, we’ll have an alien president of Earth, so there you go.

Hanna Bächer

Back to the actual music we just listened to, which instruments were on that?

Craig Leon

Very few. There was a very early prototype of the LinnDrum which is a ubiquitous thing that did a lot of dance records in the late 70s, that made loops. I played most of this in live from things that I’d sketched out. This one is one of the least written, but it’s in sections, but the rest of the album, all the music was written out.

Basically, this box, it’s mainly a couple of Roland JP4 synths, which were new at the time, four-voice, polyphonic, analog synths, which I still own. They’re still setup in my, if you go on my Facebook, there’s a bunch of new stuff which, maybe, we’ll be fooling around with later on them. There’s some old Moogs and whatever else I could borrow.

There’s an old Moog 15 model on it. There’s Arp 2600 on it. There’s a bunch of different things because what happened was is I made a deal with a music shop in the place where we were going. Every night, when they closed down, I would do a demo for the guy who ran the keyboard department, and, what he would do would loan us the synths from the shop and we would use them all night and then he’d come back in the morning and I’d give them back to him.

Whatever showed up, I used. I mean, there might be a Prophet on that. I’d have to ask Cassell. No, the Prophet’s, later, yes, there was Prophet 5 at one point, but it’s all the old analogs. There was no digital stuff around yet.

Hanna Bächer

There’s a very prominent effect, though, on this album that is a harmonizer, right?

Craig Leon

Well, it’s a harmonizer done in repeats and delays, which I love, for a number of things, which is also going back to the Suicide album. It’s the same sort of thing of things feeding back into itself. It’s a harmonizer and I don’t know, what was it, I can’t remember the number.

I think it’s a 910 or something like that and it had, it’s the successor to a thing called the Cooper Time Cube, which was, basically, two frequencies that would make a delay that all the rock bands and pop bands were using. This one you could actually have something where you could change the pitch slightly or a lot and feed back.

I figured, since in the myth or the legend or the truth, whatever it is, of these people from another planet, they lived in a very watery planet, which is why it’s all blue, and they’re so elongated and everything that, obviously, they would hear things differently. If they heard things kind of watery, that was the thing that would put everything through that. Why not? I still put the orchestra through that, which I did on another album as well, Bach later, last year.

Hanna Bächer

You put the orchestra through a harmonizer?

Craig Leon

No, I put them through a fixed frequency filter and a Moog 55, one-by-one mic at a time and created a hybrid orchestra. Yes, and played along with it with a violinist. That’s another story. That album’s out now. It’s a classical, very classical record. It’s actually Bach played like Bach. It’s not Switched On Bach or anything.

Hanna Bächer

I’m going to play a track though.

Craig Leon

What?

Hanna Bächer

I’m going to play a track by one of your earliest fans.

(music: The Fall – “Mollusc In Tyrol”)

Craig Leon

Yes, OK.

Hanna Bächer

A long bus ride in Austria.

Craig Leon

The Mollusc is this bus going like a snail up mountains in Austria. It’s a band called The Fall and it’s a fellow, named Mark E Smith, who’s a pretty – again, a multimedia artist – he’s one of the most literary people that I know.

He inspired me with one of his lectures once where, in England, they asked him to Cambridge University to talk about his writing and why he wrote things and all this kind of spouting like I’m doing here. He sat down, opened up a book and started reading it. After about an hour, he said, “James Joyce,” closed the book and left. That’s one of the best lectures that anybody could possibly have about why you’d write a book.

Hanna Bächer

In this case, he took one of your tracks from Nommos...

Craig Leon

He took Nommos and just played it through a PA live. They used to use it as the intro to his Fall shows and here, he’s doing a rap over it about the bus going up a hill. Donkeys going up a hill also, is what the song’s about. It put it in his mind and, luckily, he put a piece from Nommos into the folk culture so that’s really cool.

Hanna Bächer

That coincides with your move to the UK though, in 1983, more or less, that you started working with The Fall?

Craig Leon

No, The Fall’s a little later than that. We moved in 1983, Cassell got a record deal with Virgin, and we ended up producing a number of things, commercial and non-commercial stuff, and The Fall was one of the things that we did here when we moved. We went to Holland first, and I was thrilled because the first thing they asked me to do was go on the radio there. I was expecting, okay, we’re going to talk about The Ramones, we’re going to talk about Blondie and we spent an hour talking about Nommos, which was a new album at that time. I liked Holland. I said, this is where we’re staying. We stayed in Europe ever since.

Hanna Bächer

Mark E Smith is not the first British singer you worked with though. There’s someone you met in Austin, Texas, I suppose, yes?

Craig Leon

Oh, that was when we were doing Nommos. That’s another… see, there’s this whole thing about the folk thing being collaboration, which just occurs amongst musicians and they do whatever they do. When I was testing out the LinnDrum to learn how to do it, very similar to somebody was doing here in the studio was to learn how to do this [inaudible] thing or some kind of a modular pseudo-Buchla little thing that’s sitting in the studio. I was playing around with this LinnDrum, trying to figure out what to do. I was creating very simple patterns and playing along with them with the synth. A fellow had heard them, because I was in my usual youth… I was much worse than I am now about playing things really loud, and it actually was shaking the windows in this little studio. This guy came up, this big, tall guy comes up and looks into the window and says, that’s great, and he’s knocking on the window. I said, well, come on in, and I let him in and he’s listening to this drum beat, and little bit of synth I’m playing and he goes, “I can sing over that,” in a very deep, very British actor’s kind of voice. I went, “Oh yeah, here’s a mic, go, do it please. I had no idea who this guy was. Then, he picks up the mic, goes in this little studio that’s about the size, from one side to the other of this couch, and he starts dancing back and forth, one foot to the other, hand held, very expensive Neumann mic on a wire, and he’s dancing.

Like this, he picks up the mic off its stand and he goes… “Waaaaah!” out of the top, and I said, “Oh shit, that’s Arthur Brown,” and it was Arthur Brown from this old band called The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, the god of hell fire. He had moved to Austin, Texas, and he was inspired by those rhythms to want to sing over it.

Cassell was in the studio with me and Cassell, Arthur and I made an album in a weekend of, it was about two days, of all this stuff I was experimenting with, with him just jamming live over it, with vocals with her on some tracks and that was pretty much it, very much like Suicide. One synth, but not so many effects. We were more purists because Arthur was weird enough on his own. He didn’t need the secondary help. You don’t actually have anything from Arthur, do you?

Hanna Bächer

I do.

Craig Leon

Do you have “Not Fade Away”?

Hanna Bächer

The album...

Craig Leon

No, what do you have?

Hanna Bächer

The album was called The Complete Tapes Of Atoya.

Craig Leon

Atoya...

Hanna Bächer

I was going to play “Conversation,” since it’s sort of had a second life as a dance...

Craig Leon

Oh, yes, it was a dance...

Hanna Bächer

Many...

Craig Leon

It’s been remixed about...

Hanna Bächer

Many years later.

(music: Arthur Brown & Craig Leon – “Conversation”)

Craig Leon

Right, yes, that’s an idiot’s guide to learning how to do drum sequence. That’s got a Roland and two different Moogs on it. It’s got a Mini Moog and a 15...

Hanna Bächer

You recorded that over a weekend?

Craig Leon

That’s all live, essentially, with one overdub synth on that. Yes, we recorded it what, two days? Yes. We did turn the bass drum up because, when we turned in the Suicide album the first time, the guy at the dance label that was putting it out, it was a very early dance label, said, “Hey, there’s no bass drum on this, how are people going to buy it,” on the Suicide record. I’ve made sure, ever since, that if we were ever going to have anything with sequences, the bass drum would be real loud.

Hanna Bächer

If you could choose at that point in time, that you rather do overdub or have everyone in the recording room at once?

Craig Leon

I like everybody in there at once, which is why I’ve only done quote-unquote classical in my own music for about 15 years, by choice, because it’s a whole different, better thing. There’s a great energy about just going in for three hours and making an album of people just playing what you wrote, and then, going in, playing it live and you get the energy of 50 or 80 people, all contributing to it and putting their input to what came out of your mind. That’s fun to me.

Overdubbing, I’ll sit at home. I did hundreds of overdubs on the Moog record that I did, earlier this year, because you can only get one voice at a time out of a monophonic Moog. If you’re going to make an orchestra out of an old Moog, or play through the Moog, you have to do each thing over and over again.

It doesn’t matter. The thing is it doesn’t really matter how you do it as long as you do it. That’s the thing. It’s, there’s a lot of emphases these days, because there’s so much technical stuff going on, about, “Well, I need a this or a that, or whatever is a better system than another.” You should be able to just use whatever’s the most basic thing that’s sitting in front of you and make some noise on it that works. Then, you’re a musician. That’s it.

Hanna Bächer

As you just said, in the past 15 or 16 years, you’ve mostly made classical music…

Craig Leon

Well...

Hanna Bächer

It was after the last single you produced, which I’m not going to play because everyone has probably heard it, which is Blondie “Maria”. What led to that change? What led to you going back to classical music?

Craig Leon

It’s quote-unquote classical. It’s been a means to get my own work out, actually. A lot of what I do, in classical music, that, unless you’re following it, you wouldn’t know, is take ancient music and folk music and modernize it in a new way. Very similar to the fake folk music of Nommos, but I do it with the real stuff and the, usually, doing it in an orchestral situation with vocalists. That’s why I was called upon by various classical labels to make new projects because their singers had run out of things to do.

I worked with a countertenor, Andrea Scholl, and we did an album of American and British folk songs with an orchestra. It’s done sequentially. I mean, the orchestra’s playing it, but it’s done as if it was sequenced. I’ve, basically, been doing that for the past 15 years. I’m doing some straight classical things too. Somebody asked me to record an opera this morning, but we can’t do it.

Hanna Bächer

As you just said, some albums that you’ve made, and which are great, have been recorded over a weekend. How long does it take to record a classical album?

Craig Leon

Well, the orchestra stuff, it takes a long time to write it. If you write it out, and I write and arrange all of it, it can be six to ten weeks, maybe, to do a full orchestral album. I’m old-fashioned. I was trained to sit and write it out on a piece of paper and that’s the way I do it. It’s not played in or sequenced or anything. I write it. I use a program. As I’m getting older, I’m sloppier on paper, so I put it on the computer but I still write it, so it takes a while. To actually record it, if you take anything more than about 15 hours to do a classical record, you’re way over budget and you’re dead. They don’t give you a lot of money to make them, and it’s very expensive, paying 100 musicians or 40 musicians, so the orchestral things are usually done in a matter of hours.

Hanna Bächer

Let’s listen to a piece you’ve done with Moog synthesizers.

Craig Leon

Now that, the orchestra was done in an afternoon, with the violin live, and I was conducting. Then, I went back and took it to my studio and I put the Moog on very, very meticulously for a very long time. The Moog took a long time, but the overall sound of this one was done, pretty much live in a room.

Hanna Bächer

This is “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”...

Craig Leon

That’s mostly Moog.

(music: Craig Leon – “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”)

Craig Leon

She played the thing that didn’t have an orchestra on it. That’s pretty much the way that we do it live. We did it live in London and a couple of other, nice violinist on that record, and it was a duet between Moog and violin on that one. That’s what you’re hearing there, with a couple of Moog set up.

Hanna Bächer

How do you get them in tune?

Craig Leon

Very difficultly. The new ones are more in tune than the old ones. That’s one thing that’s lucky. I had a system that Moog put together for me that I still use, that actually, was an eight-voice, polyphonic system that I’ve expanded to 16, which was a defunct thing called, with one of their odd terms, fatty something or other. I put 16 of them together to be able to play polyphonically on it like an organ. What we tried to do on that record, and you don’t get it from that one, unfortunately, because there’s no orchestra, is it was the 50th anniversary of Moog, so I was commissioned to do this thing.

The Moog modular was 50 years old this year. Many years ago, there was an album called “Switched on Bach” that came out that Wendy Carlos, who was Walter at the time, did where, very laboriously, they took an old modular Moog and did Bach one note at a time. Kind of like back in the days when there was still the wars between Buchla and Moog about whether you should have a keyboard on a synthesizer or not.

In any case, they wanted to do something 50 years later. I said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we actually reversed it. If we took an old Moog 55 single note and actually made it part of an orchestral ensemble, to where it actually joined in in classical instruments?” It worked because, I mean, our review in one of the more prestigious classical magazines, which I thought was going to kill it, actually said, “Welcome to the Moog as a period classical instrument, along with the harpsichord and the clavichord,” and was very, very positive about it.

That was what I was trying to do and that’s what I achieved. It was not to make a synth album. It was actually to put a synth in a non-synth situation and we did it. There’s other tracks on the album where we do run the orchestra through the Moog and it creates a kind of a hybrid orchestra, but we weren’t up to a point where that actually does it in this one, yet. The orchestra only comes in in the second half.

Hanna Bächer

There has been lots of criticism of this album that you’ve been talking about, Wendy Carlos album, and the criticism is that, basically, instead of exploring the new sounds that synths could provide, it was trying to make synths sound like existing instruments. What is your take on that?

Craig Leon

Is that what Walter got or is that what I got?

Hanna Bächer

No, that’s what Walter got. You got just positive results saying wow...

Craig Leon

No, no…

Hanna Bächer

The Moog sounds…

Craig Leon

I got one...

Hanna Bächer

Like a classical instrument.

Craig Leon

Strangely enough, and this is another thing, who all here is playing analog synths, everybody probably, right? Your biggest criticisms, if you do anything that isn’t really lead-eyed and old-fashioned, your biggest criticism is going to come from the journalists who do analog synth criticism. They’re worse than indie rock, they’re worse than classical. They’re worse than any bunch you’re ever going to see because, “Keith Emerson, everything else, forget it.” There’s a lot of them that are like that and that’s fine. That stuff doesn’t matter. That Suicide record that came out, when it first came out, people said, what an idiot Alan Vega was to actually be trying to sing like that, on and on and on. Don’t listen to any of them. Just do whatever you do. In any case, I think, Wendy Carlos, just to get two of those in tune, with the equipment that she was using, is a miraculous achievement. Even more so, if you can, with Wendy Carlos, and it’s hard to find them, forget about the Switched On Bach stuff, which is interesting. I mean, it’s good, it’s nice and it does show the, and is absolutely correct, brilliant stuff.

She did some new scale-invention albums, later on, that are actually really, really cool and I think, pushing the boundaries of music with the synthesizer, similar to what Harry Partch did with built instruments, which is something I like a lot, I wanted to do. My first idea, when Moog wanted a 50th anniversary album, is I wanted to do Switched On Harry Partch but they wouldn’t let me. Malcolm Cecil from Tonto’s Expanding Head Band and I wanted to do that. We did a little but like it at the Moog sound lab, but I think, I don’t think the label thought it was commercial enough.

Hanna Bächer

After working on these classical albums for a while, something surprising happened because you were able to re-released Nommos and Visiting as this anthology of inter-planetary folk music but you had to, actually, re-record it. Why was that?

Craig Leon

Well, there were bits of it that I wanted, I wanted it to run and, I didn’t re-record, basically, didn’t do anything different, musically, in a lot of places but there were certain elements that I wanted to add in it, and there were certain filling things and certain pieces that belonged. For this and an album that came after it called Visiting – they were supposed to follow-up each other, but they were on two different labels for economic reasons. If you just reissued the two of those, as they were, it wouldn’t be a work as a whole, so I tied things together. I also thought I could get the sounds a little bit better. I used a lot of the original patches on them, which I still have, and I like digital recording as well. It’s obvious, if you listen to the old Nommos record and then you listen to the new one, that the new one’s recorded in a cleaner, more classical way or something like that.

Hanna Bächer

Apart from being able to re-record it, because you had to put down notes on all the patches, etcetera...

Craig Leon

I still...

Hanna Bächer

Saw a necessity for that because...

Craig Leon

Yes.

Hanna Bächer

The masters was sort of with a few other labels by that part, that point.

Craig Leon

Yes, I couldn’t reissue them because they were all over the place and they don’t exist anyway, The actual multi-track masters don’t exist of that. They’re not exactly the same. There’s things that were done and duplicated on other synths, because I didn’t go back and do everything on each one exactly on the original synth to do it because I couldn’t tell you if I could remember which was one. You can tell, pretty much, which is a Moog and which is an Arp and which one is that, yes.

Hanna Bächer

How do you feel about old albums by you getting remastered?

Craig Leon

As long as I have some idea, again, if it’s on my own work or if it’s somebody else’s, that’s the different thing. If it’s on my own, I should have something to say about it. I never do get a chance to do that. There’s people that put out an old album. The reissues on The Ramones records are horrendous. Eddie Stasium, the other guy who produced a lot of their albums, will tell you the same things. You have to go back to an old vinyl copy to hear the real thing. People end up criticizing the sound on something that isn’t even as good as an MP3. It’s like a six-bit digital remastering of your album from 1988 or something like that, and they go, “I wonder why this doesn’t sound really powerful,” well, duh, it’s a horrible reissue.

Hanna Bächer

I guess this is the point where we’re going to open it up to questions by participants. First?

Craig Leon

Whoever wants...

Hanna Bächer

Give you my mic for now.

Audience member

Thank you for being here. Talking about the genius, Harry Partch, in what degree did he inspire you to, maybe something that I don’t know from you yet, make music in different scales and different micro-tonal kind of tunings and, is it something that you are busy with?

Craig Leon

Not at the moment. I’m not, he did it, I mean, in a 43-tone scale. We were actually thinking of doing a jam in a 43-tone scale, with Malcolm Cecil and I. We spent a long afternoon designing about how to do it with the people from Moog, but nobody was really interested in it, so we didn’t do it. Harry Partch is this, there’s this kind of behavior that you might call eccentric, which is exemplified very much by both Harrys, Harry Partch and Harry Smith, let’s say, that always inspires me. If you try and do something that’s actually outside the realm of what people are expecting you to do and that’s what he does. I’m not going to go building my own instruments. Although, I might have been inspired. I heard there was a lecture yesterday where you guys were designing your own instruments on a modern Harry Partch level with the guys from Holland...

Hanna Bächer

That is too [inaudible].

Craig Leon

Oh well, maybe, if I can talk to them, they can build me an 86-tone-scaled instrument for Malcolm and me to play jazz on, and it could be with Annette Peacock doing vocals with Cassell and we’ll make that album, maybe, when she’s in town in November, if Malcolm can come over. Yes.

Hanna Bächer

Any other questions? I don’t have a mic at the moment.

Craig Leon

Oh yes, somebody in the back there, yes.

Hanna Bächer

[Inaudible]... trying it again. I’m going to try it one more time. That’s fine. We’re with the questions anyway so.

Craig Leon

Yes.

Audience member

What, I guess, maybe it’s a big question, but what does it mean to be a producer, for you?

Craig Leon

That’s actually a very good question. The, to be a producer of yourself or to be a producer of other people? There’s two different things. That’s the thing.

Audience member

I guess both.

Craig Leon

Well, it’s almost the same thing with how it applies. To be a producer of helping other artists, you have to sublimate, you have to push back your own ego and what you do, unless you’re writing it yourself. That’s another story. I’m not talking about producing a pop record with Rihanna and 37 guys from Sweden that all put one note on it and something like that, where you just coordinate it. That kind of producer is like a television producer or something. It’s not a musical producer. They’re very good at doing that.

Somebody who actually works with an artist and tries to draw out what they do and help them get their voice heard on recordings. I think it’s always good to be collaborating in a studio on things that are found or pop music like that, because it’s an interchange of ideas.

On the other hand, now, when somebody has written something out and it’s on a piece of paper and it says, this is the way it is, then your job in production is that you get the best performance out of what’s intended by the guy who wrote it.

Things that are written usually have much more detailed instructions as to how to play it and so much in classical music is so-called, quote-unquote, interpretation, they completely ignore what the guy wrote on the page. Beethoven will write, “Play it at 78 BPM,” and so, some guy says, “My interpretation of this is to play it at 98-BPM.” Well, no, idiot. That’s what the guy wrote, you know?

You have to be very true. You’re either true to the artist that you’re working with, rather than put your own ideas on it, or if it is your own idea, make sure it’s something that’s backing up what they do, or you’re true to the printed score. That’s what being a producer is, and also, not spending too much money.

Audience member

Thanks.

Craig Leon

We all have to earn it back, if we can earn anything these days.

Hanna Bächer

There’s this quote by Rick Rubin who said that he sees himself as a professional version of the outside world and he does not want to know what a song is about and why a certain sound matters to the artist. He wants to be that fan who doesn’t know anything. Do you want to know about the person, of an artist, before...

Craig Leon

Yes, the artists I work with, it’s a little bit different, yes. Rick Rubin – everybody has a method that works differently for them. There’s one very famous producer, who will be nameless, whose main talent is rolling joints. Yes, OK well, and then, and hey, maybe he did the perfect joint to help them have that hit. I have no idea. There’s another guy that’ll sit there and, in very great detail, discuss how many inches the high hat should be off the ground for the mic. Well, maybe that’s what made the hit. When I mean that it’s a hit, I don’t mean that it’s commercial because that, anything outside of Rihanna and all that isn’t commercial these days in real terms. What I’m talking about is a hit that conveys the music successfully. That’s a hit to me.

Hanna Bächer

Talking about joints, what are your ways of making an artist feel at ease if they don’t?

Craig Leon

I can’t roll a joint to save my life. I quit doing that a long time ago. The joint of the matter is that, I remember back to those days. I don’t do what another producer I’ve collaborated with, which is make them the best salad they’ve ever eaten, but I do, basically, sit and play music with them a lot and listen to their music and listen to them rehearse. I don’t do this any more, actually, by choice, Now, I walk in and I’m a dictator because I’m producing my own music. I conduct it and, if they don’t do it, I throw sticks at them and make them do it again. I usually have somebody producing me in the control room to say, “Bar 46 was out of time, do it again,” and all that and I trust them. There’s usually a team. Cassell’s part of that and usually I have, mostly, I work with an ex-Deutsche Grammophon producer who criticizes me for everything and I’ll trust what he says, and he has to roll the joints.

Audience member

Craig, I’m reading a book at the moment called, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire and it’s...

Craig Leon

Talking Heads?

Audience member

Really perfect, say again.

Craig Leon

Talking Heads song...

Audience member Yes.

Craig Leon

Oh, it’s the one about all New York...

Audience member

Yes.

Craig Leon

In the ’70s

Audience member

Yes, it really, really expertly captures...

Craig Leon

It’s a big thing about every...

Audience member

Yes.

Craig Leon

Musical scene going on.

Audience member

Yes, it’s really, really...

Craig Leon

I haven’t read that.

Audience member

It’s really good. It really recommend it. It really captures the whole thing very well.

Craig Leon

Yes.

Audience member

I’m really interested in how a place shapes a musician or an artist or whatever, or their approach to making art or music. I feel like, is there… a lot of what we’re talking about at the Academy is what is the future. I’m wondering is there anything post-20th-century where you feel like there is a place that’s influencing a musical movement or scene, or is it, do you think, based, mostly, on the nostalgia that was created in past decades?

Craig Leon

Yes, good question. I think, in a real sense, the environment where the artist is living, for any art, actually, does add an extreme element. It’s the reaction to that that, music is a reaction to what’s around you. All of that from New York is, like I said, what New York was then, if you go on classical music, you can’t think of the Tyrol, which they were crawling over and The Fall thing. You can’t help but know that a lot of that was written with the memory of the Tyrol by Gustav Mahler when he wrote his music. You can’t really say it’s divorced of, strangely, of some of that’s in your head. I write a lot of things that are based in American folk music, though I live very, very far from America now, and a lot of things that I remember when I was a kid. I don’t know if there’s a scene. Chances are… I mean, I’m welcoming the scene that’s sort of accepted me in things like what we’re doing today and… I don’t know if I can mention all these festivals, Unsound and...

Hanna Bächer

Of course.

Craig Leon

A lot of cool people and RVNG and the whole world that you guys are in, actually, for the most part, or because that’s a kind of international, no-borders scene, which we have here today, that’s something that’s really thrilling for me for the 21st century. It’s because of the internet, you can get a collaboration and you can be in Brazil from here right now, and that sort of thing, only you would have happened in a Phillip K Dick novel in the past.

In terms of interaction between artists together, the only place I’ve actually seen where that may be happening, and it may be too commercialized even now, is Berlin. I’ve seen that in Berlin when I was recently with you there. It exists in Paris, I know, from personal experience, but it doesn’t usually get out of France, so there must be pockets of individual communities. I’m sure it exists in Brooklyn, in New York, I just am not there, so I don’t know what it is.

Audience member

It’s interesting to hear. I think about it a lot because I feel like you don’t, like places like New York, Detroit, Birmingham, whatever, they don’t have, I think young musicians rest too heavily on the nostalgic sort of essence that was created during those key times where, maybe, it was driven by politics or depression or oppression. I just feel like, I don’t know, maybe it’s just a musing rather than a question. I feel like a lot of young musicians aren’t asking maybe political questions or being driven by their own environment as, at present, it’s too based in the past.

Craig Leon

You hit exactly the point of what I hope we can do in our hands-on stuff today. The one criticism that I have of younger musicians is they all are, and we all have done it – and it’s not really a criticism – it’s just an observation, is that there is a kind of a falling back on a niche, exactly what you’re saying, of a style that’s already existed and operating within that.

That doesn’t matter what the style is, whether the style is swing or downbeat or old-school or techno or whatever you want to call it, or hardcore, whatever it is, it’s something that’s already been and you’re pushing the boundaries of that, but let’s do something that’s more from your actual roots and your subconscious and your own being, and then, move that into something new. There’s very little in the stuff that I’m doing that actually came before me, in terms of my own music, and I’m not being a braggart about it. There’s two or three things that influence me. I don’t think you have one of, I don’t know if I brought one, but the very first sequenced record ever made was done in 1926.

Talk about analog, it was seriously analog. It was seven player pianos hooked together with rolls that were punched like a sequencer, and then, made to go all in the same time in coordinations, with 12 drummers playing, 16 sometimes, drummers, and airplane effects and everything else going on with live things at the same time.

This composer wrote this and premiered it right down the road from where we are right now. He’s an American that lived in Paris. He was a guy named George Antheil. He went by the name, “Bad Boy Of Music,” and I like to call myself Bad Boy of Music occasionally, at home, when I do something I really like. He was hated.

One of the greatest videos ever made is a video that he made of the premiere of this particular piece called Ballet Mécanique which was done at the [Théâtre des Champs-Élysées], down in the eighth [arrondissement]. What they did is, everybody knew that the critics and everybody were going to hate it. They set up a camera with all of his friends sitting in the front row while this was played.

His friends were like Man Ray and Picasso and these guys and they’re all sitting there. James Joyce, I think, is even there, on a Mark E Smith level. They filmed the audience while this thing was playing. Unfortunately, it’s a silent movie, but you get all these guys in the back that were paid by the critics to throw tomatoes and stuff at them.

It’s generally a riot going on from this music while his audience is all sitting, the guys in the front row are all sitting there, being really, really happy about it. It’s a really brilliant thing. Do you have Ballet Mécanique?

Hanna Bächer

I have Ballet Mécanique.

Craig Leon

OK, now, this is one that influenced me that’s from a generation, many generations before, 1926, guys...

(music: George Antheil – “Ballet Mécanique”)

Hanna Bächer

[Inaudible]

Craig Leon

Yes, yes, now that’s, I can say, now that’s what I call classical musical. Well, you can see how that was an influence, if you listen to all these effects and everything, and all the sequences. That is sequenced. That is not live, OK, in terms of the pianos and everything. The drums and everything are live.

We actually saw a performance of it, which is very difficult to do, in New York, by accident one afternoon. We walked into a hall and it was a bunch of percussionists decided to play that and they actually rigged up the player pianos and did it. You can buy a MIDI score of it and do it now, so that means, somebody could remix it if they were inclined – not giving anybody any hints.

Hanna Bächer

Are there any other questions?

Craig Leon

Yes. Oh, he needs a mic.

Audience member

Hey, so how, in your beginning of your career, did you deal with conflict in the studio in the sense that your vision differed from the artist that you were producing or vice versa?

Craig Leon

Usually, if it’s an artist that I was producing, the artist wins. I modify what I do. It’s the other way around now. I mean, I’m Putin or something in the studio. That’s OK if you’re writing it. Whoever actually wrote it is actually the person that you should be following their lead. If you suggest something, if they respect you, the person that you’re working with, they’ll try it. The thing that I need always is feedback.

The times that it hasn’t worked in the studio is when I’ve suggested something and the artist goes, “Oh yeah, that’s great,” and, if they change their mind about it, once they’ve heard it or something, they don’t tell me.

I mean, it’s not going to hurt me if you say, “That idea’s no good… you wrote it, I didn’t write it.” If I say, “Try it with such and such a way to do it,” they’ll listen and then if they say, “That stinks,” then you go, “OK, next idea.” That’s really what you got to do, yes.

Hanna Bächer

Anyone else? We should have drones flying around microphones.

Craig Leon

Yes, it would be good if it was on a big thing that… Hi.

Audience member

Hi.

Craig Leon

Muted.

Audience member

OK.

Craig Leon

There you go.

Audience member

I think that, what’s the real challenge for a producer today? I mean, in the past, there were more, less opportunities than now, with all the technology and all the infinity now of choices we have, but the attitude like you showed, the DIY attitude back in the ’70s, back in this kind of revolutionary way to do things, to break some barriers, some boundaries, how do you feel it now? What’s the real challenge, right now, for a producer to make it happen again? To make it something really, really strong, like a sparkle that it’s totally different from…

Craig Leon

That right there, you’ve almost answered your own question, is that all this technology exists and you have to choose what your weapons are going to be in your arsenal. That’s, basically it. You’re basically in a war of trying to get your point, or the point of your artist, out to people and get them to do it, so you have to choose what the method is, and then, not get hung up in choosing methods or what that method is, or the way that you’re going to do it, and forge it into a coherent, individual sound that isn’t the same as what everybody else is doing who also has all of these things. Everybody does it. If you go to what samples are on a lot of remixes and stuff, there’s probably 200 samples that they use over and over and over and over and over again. Well, that’s OK. If, and this is why I love Ableton or something, where you can actually really mess with things, if you’re going to use those samples, or whatever it is, do something that’s radically different. Make it your own thing is the real challenge that you have to do, I think. Yes.

Audience member

For an artist, I think, it’s a little easier to write your own music. When you produce you have to choose some sound to shape something, to shape the sound or to decide what’s behind the sound and make it sound in a certain way that make it… goes in a direction or another direction...

Craig Leon

Yes, you have to be, unless your artist, if your artist has a suggestion, the best thing to do, this is not you writing it, the best thing to do is to follow them. Then, from there, use your own knowledge to say, what about this or what about that, and show them examples of things that are similar. I know another producer that, when he’s working with a singer-songwriter, just plays them Beatles records and it works. They go, “OK, do you want to do something like this bass riff?” Just anything to get it going. They’re not going to play a Beatles riff. It’s just something that gets them inspired to actually do something new. Then, you follow that road. Then, if you step back as the fan that’s the outsider, then I think, you have to go, “Well, does that really work, or could it be done a better way?” Then, you have to develop a trust that that actually works…