Jimmy Douglass

TOBY LAING

We’re very lucky to have him here today. He’s a busy man. He seems like he hasn’t stopped working in about 15 years. He’s taken the time to come over here and talk to us and we really appreciate that. Thank you. I guess what we’re here to talk about is that you’ve been working in the industry for a long time, and what you’ve experienced in that time. You started in the mid ’70s.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

[begins to talk but mic isn’t switched on] Oh, look at that.

TOBY LAING

Not the industry, you have to experience working in the industry, but more just working in the studio.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

We’ve got a few minutes, right? If you want to we can start by playing a few things. Is that alright? [”Yeah” from audience]

TOBY LAING

Of course.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Ahhhh. There’s nothing new here, by the way, it’s just the way it’s put together that’s interesting. I’ll move along as I go, but for those of you who don’t know, I’ll just do this. People still let me do this by the way. [music doesn’t play] Aw, this sounds like nothing to me.

(music: Missy Elliott – “Get Ur Freak On”)

(music: Aaliyah – “We Need a Resolution”)

(music: N.E.R.D. – “Lapdance”)

(music: Nelly Furtado – “Turn Off the Light” / applause)

JIMMY DOUGLASS

That thing goes on for another hour actually. I just wanted to play a bunch of stuff because one of the things that’s really rewarding to me is that I’ve done all kinds of music. The world thinks I appeared suddenly with hip-hop, and I’ve been making records for a long fucking time. And I’d be willing to bet that I’ve made records that a lot of you probably were born to, if you catch my drift. Like your parents were digging the records and you guys came along. Get it? It’s a joke. [laughs] There’s a group called Slave, back in the day. Are there any DJs here at all?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Slave!?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Yeah, I produced all that stuff. So I’m saying, I know some of y’all folks was rocking to Slave, and here you are. I don’t know what the interest of everybody here is, really. It’s probably very varied and diverse. And it’s an international group, right? There’s not a lot of, um, I guess, I’ll call ’em boring old Americans. So I don’t really know what it is. I can speak to anything. That’s one of my other traits. I know everything. And even if I don’t know about it, I can talk about it like I know about it. I would like to just be able to offer something that you guys could really latch onto. If anybody hears anything they really dig, say stop, go back, rewind, tell me more about that or whatever. I can talk about me if you like, I can talk about…

TOBY LAING

Well, yeah, I was going to start by talking about how you got into engineering but the thing is that you just played us all this hot music. So, how do you make hot music? I mean, it’s from a long experience working in the studio, that’s what you’re drawing on.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

It’s from my background in the studio and it’s funny, I kind of don’t talk about it that much anymore because it was in an era when things like this could happen and they don’t happen that much anymore. Technology’s changed, the whole world’s changed. But I started doing this when I was in high school in the ’70s. I kinda ended up at Atlantic Records [smiles bashfully], you know, Atlantic Records! I was going to school and I knew somebody in there and they were like, ”Jimmy, you got to be ready to go to college and you’re going to need a job, so let’s get you this job now.“ And at that time, I didn’t even know what a studio was. And when I say studio, I don’t mean the little studios we have upstairs here, a little home joint. I’m talking about a studio. If there wasn’t a real big tape machine, and there wasn’t a big board and somebody with a lot of money, there was no studio. There was no such thing. So, it was a magical place. It was a magical time. When you walked in the doors it was like – magical! When you walked in, you’d look and you’d just go “Wow!” I say that because now when I’m working I’m mixing, I’m mixing with my hands on the faders and somebody walks in they’re like, ”Hey man, what’s up [mimes getting surprised and knocking the fader down]?” I’m like, “Yo man, I’m mixing!” They don’t get it. They think you’re just there. They don’t understand you’re working because it doesn’t mean anything. Because now you can do it at home, so there’s not the same, I guess, urgency is the word. That’s what I really miss, the urgency. No messing about. A magical land. You walk in and there’s somebody doing a vocal, and they’re going to get it because they’re not going to get a chance to come back and re-do it. They’re not going to get a chance to come back and recall it. You got to do it now. You got to get it right now. It kind of made, I guess, the artistry and the awareness of everybody involved, everybody was more on their toes and everything really meant a lot more. I think people cherished the moment more as well. In the studio, you really cherished it because you just couldn’t go in the studio. It was a lot of work to get into the studio, a lot of energy to convince a lot of people, or you had a lot of money. Anyway, that being said, I was just a kid doing my thing. I lived in the suburbs of New York City, and I played everything. I played guitar, I played keyboards, I was a player. [gestures at a turntable] This didn’t mean anything back in the day. A turntable meant nothing. A turntable was some place you played records, come on, let’s face it, you know? And in terms of creating music there were no sequencers, so either you played or you didn’t. If you didn't play, you didn’t have music. It was a real simple concept. So you worked a little harder at practicing your craft, whether it be guitar, piano, whatever. If you liked music you had to play something. And a little singing.

So anyway, I was doing that a with a lot of the local bands I was working with. So that was the music part. What it seemed like is whenever I worked with these bands, it always seemed like I was the guy that they’d always be asking all the questions to. As if I knew anything. I don't know, whatever it was, they would just always be asking questions. And I always knew how to make it sound good. You know, in America the gospel churches are a big reference for kids growing up. Especially the black urban kids. It’s like the gospel church. Every Sunday, we go. We sing, we jam. We get down, we have fun. You know, and we actually increase our music ability. So maybe all that was inside of me. I don’t know what it was, but anyway, when I got this gig, my job was to do one of two things. Atlantic Records was very big, they had the whole era of Aretha [Franklin], their golden era.And suddenly, you had the three owners, Ahmet Ertegun, you may have heard of him, he was in the ‘Ray Charles’ story. Ahmet and his brother, Jerry Wexler. These were old guys; these were the pioneers of the record business. Up to that point, they had been doing all the stuff themselves. They listened to the records, they quality-controlled them, it was a handful of records. Then all of a sudden it got really big and they couldn’t do it, they needed a kid to do this shit for them. And one of the other things I did – it’s done differently now, you got all kinds of ways to do it now – the internet and so forth. But when they made a record, pick any record... Anybody know who the Cream is, by the way? Let’s pick the Cream. We had the Cream on that label. So what would happen is that Cream would have a record out over here, in America, and then in order to make a record you had to master them. I don’t know how far I can go with this?

TOBY LAING

Keep going.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Really? OK. Anybody know what a piece of vinyl is? [laughter] OK. Seriously, because I came into this game when all this stuff existed and this was the state of the art. I knew how to do all this great stuff. I learned how to cut discs, to actually cut on a lathe, because that’s how you did it. That’s how you got it out of the studio. That’s how you got it to the consumer. When I learned all this stuff, I was like, “Wow, I can cut a record.” I could cut the actual acetate, which they would take to the plant and press and do all that shit. But there was a point to this and I lost it. I do that a lot by the way.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

The Cream.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

The Cream, there you go. The thing with the Cream was, you have Atlantic Records here, they’re selling all these records here, but they need to come out in Italy, Germany, England and all the other countries, right? So what they did was, they couldn’t send them back because once you make a master out of the acetate, it’s burnt, it’s gone. So what they would do is they sent the actual tape copy of it over to those various countries and they’d make their own little acetates and send them to their own plants. So, my job was basically to send tape copies to all these countries of all their big hits. It was an interesting job because I’d come into work after school, and I’d put on all the fucking hits. Because they were making hits. And I’d be sitting there, this is my job. And I’d sit and listen to these hits and make a tape copy and get paid. And I liked that. That was very, very cool. And I got to hear also, the ones that weren’t the big hits. I got to hear Atlantic’s catalog.

At any record company, there’s a lot of records that don’t sell. You just never know about them, but there are. So I got a good learning experience with that. And the process of doing that – Atlantic was very interesting. Back then, they had the whole office, I mean everything, there were a lot of people. And then in the back door, there were like two studios. And in this back door, I’ll never forget the night I got singed for this thing. I was doing the tape copy, and then I was like, ”Yo, they got this shit going on in the back. I don’t know what’s going on, but whatever it is...“ And I went back there, and there was Aretha singing. I mean, it was like the fucking band, everything. They were recording. And I was like, ”This is crazy.“

And the thing about doing a tape copy is, they came with two sides. You know, records have two sides? Well, the tapes were on two sides, so there was only so much physically you could fit on a tape. About 20 to 30 minutes. Twenty-five minutes. So you had to do side one and take the tape off and do side two. And so, in my task – and remember I was supposed to be doing my homework – that was the whole reason for me to be doing tape copies, so I could put the thing on and do the homework. But they didn’t tell me the part about all the shit going on in the back! So I was like, I’d put the tape on, start the copies, and I’d go “Ok!” And I’d run down the back. And I’d be there for 25, 30 minutes. Then I’d run back, change the side, and go back. And that’s what I started doing, you know? I’d do it every night. Put the tape copy on and go and see all these great sessions that were going on. And there was a guy, his name was Tommy Dowd. I don’t know if you know who he is. There’s a movie out, I think it’s called... ’Something About the Music’ Do you know what it’s called?

TOBY LAING

Yeah, I know the movie, I don't know the name.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Yeah, Tom Dowd. If you ever get a chance to see this, it’ll blow your fucking mind. I’m serious. If you get the chance to see this movie, it’s really dope. It’s about Tom Dowd, and he was so different. And matter of fact, I’m not saying this because I knew him. I’m saying this because when I saw the movie I was like – I knew him, and I thought he was crazy. I thought he was on another planet. I saw the documentary, I was like, ”Woah. This dude was in a whole ’nother league.“ But anyway, he was the guy back there. And I’d go back and hang with him. You know, it’s funny, we never really said much, I’d just watch him. Everybody would leave, and he’d be left with the mixing or doing whatever he was doing, and I’d just sit and watch him. I’d just sit and watch him every night, just watch. And I never said a word, never wanted to be in the way, and eventually, I got to the point where I could almost tell what he was going to do. I could tell what he was going to use next or whatever. I started jumping up, I’d give him a patch cord. You know, they didn’t have assistants in those studios back in the day. It just wasn’t on that level yet. Everybody, you did what you had to do.

Anyway, to fast forward a little bit, it became very nice and Tom was like, ”This kid’s pretty [good], we got to give him some more shit to do.“ So they did. And like I said, I don’t really tell that story very much anymore because I think that opportunity doesn’t exist for a lot of people because everybody has everything now. Everybody and his brother make beats. Everybody and his brother make records. Everybody can do everything so it’s kind of like the word has gotten out, and everybody’s standing at the barn door trying to beat it open so it’s harder to get a break that way.

So there’s that, and I’ll fast-forward to something that’s really interesting, it would be the fact that... Oh, I have a good one for you. One of the things I would do, I would actually go into the studio before I went to school in the morning because I saw Tom working the boards, and I wanted to know how to do it. But I didn’t ask him. You know, it was just one of those things. It didn’t seem right for me to ask him because I didn’t know enough, and I thought, “This man doesn’t have time to tell you that shit, you just have to figure it out for yourself. And that way you can ask him the really good questions.” And I did. I’d teach myself a little stuff, I’d see him, and then when I asked him a question, it was a question of quality and he’d be like, ”Oh!“ And I’m like, "That’s how it’s supposed to be. I’m not wasting your time. I got this, I want the good shit now!" So anyway, we were doing that for a while, and they still never recognized me. They wouldn’t let me in. I was a kid in school. You know how they treat you up there. They’re just like, ”You’re just a kid in school.“

And then one day, all the quote-unquote big time engineers in the house – now I’d been going in every morning and messing with the stuff and I figured out how to do it and I could do it pretty good. And they let me use all their demos in the house, so I was getting pretty good. But they still didn’t trust you. They don’t trust, you know, when you’re young like that? People don’t trust you, they just think that you don’t learn. Kind of like how I do with kids now. [laughs] So this one day all the engineers had gone, I don’t know where the hell they had gone and all of a sudden a Jimmy Page shows up and he wants to do something, and there’s nobody there. Just me. So you have what you have, you have the record company, all the big honcho heavies and they’re all freaking out because Jimmy Page showed up. My god! And he wants to do something and they don’t have anybody and they’re like, ”Oh my god! Listen, here’s what you do. Can you just like go in there with him, and just watch until the real guys come back, don’t worry about it. We’ll bail you out.“ And I’m like, ”Cool, I can do this, man.“ See that’s the thing. I could do it. So I was like, I wasn’t even sweating like that. And one of the reasons I wasn’t sweating it was because I loved Hendrix. I thought Jimmy Page was alright but I thought Hendrix was better. So I was like, ”OK, it ain’t like Hendrix walked in the door.“ You know what I mean? [laughs] So we were in there, were doing this thing, and he had like ten reels of solos on two-track tape. That’s what he had, like ten reels. And I was like, ”This is crazy!” And they’re just like solos. And we’re sitting there and he goes, ”I want to make a solo out of this.” And I’m like, ”You want to make a solo out of this?” And we sat there, and we ran through these reels and we were just chopping little bits out. Little pieces. And putting them there. And we had it done and it was a solo. But it was a solo that was collected out of, he went in the studio and just went nuts. Instead of actually trying to create a solo for a song, he went in the studio and just had tape running, and was just doing all kinds of great ideas. And I actually thought this was brilliant. A brilliant way to put something together. And we snipped them all together, boom. And we stuck it in the middle of “Heartbreaker,” that was the record. And one of the reasons that’s really interesting to me, I’ll never forget this because I was excited as hell. So I go back to the hood, to my whatever, and I tell my boys, ”Yeah man, I got to work with Jimmy Page, the whole nine,” you know?

This was an era, when you did a record, it could be out the next week. It wasn’t the same traffic jam you have now. Now you do a record and it won’t come out until next year or something, right? It was like the moment you did a record, they could literally have it on the radio the next day and out on the street like that. So the thing is like a week later or two, I think the album came out. It came out and there it was. And what was really funny, was all of my friends was copying the solo. But when I did this solo, I made this one edit. It went [mimes playing guitar fret board] da na na, da na na TICK. The little tick was there and it was a bad edit. And I said to Jimmy, ”Aw man, want me to do it again?” And he goes, ”Nah man, leave it, it’s great.” And I was like, “OK!” And the thing that was really funny was that all my friends who were listening and trying to copy the solo were going [hums and mimes guitar playing] ba na na na da na na na TICK! And I was like, ”That’s a fucking edit!” [laughs] Anyway, I thought that was funny.

TOBY LAING

Can I just ask you out of interest, tape editing’s something that’s completely foreign to us, you know? I’m interested to know how you actually do that stuff in time. How many bits of tape were strung together for that solo? How many little bits?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

[laughs] I don’t remember.

TOBY LAING

A lot.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Well, the thing about tape that’s interesting – and this is what makes it interesting for me now. Because with the digital technology, which is available to you, there’s non-destructive editing, right? You can do what you want to do and if you don’t like it, you take it back. When you’re working with tape, when you cut the tape, if you were wrong, one of two things would happen. You’d have to re-cut it again – or, if you happened to cut it too short, you got to find the piece on the floor that belonged there and put it back and stick tape there. And the thing is, you had to do this and you had to put the pieces back, and every time you cut tape, it actually would physically make a little noise because it was taut and you’d take a razor blade and you’re actually cutting the magnetism and something happens at that point. Tape was really difficult, but it was the medium that you worked with. But it gives me such a different outlook on the digital editing. I don’t know, I can’t describe it.

TOBY LAING

You just wind the tape over the heads until you found the place?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

You wind the tape over the heads. Well, it’s like this [gestures at the CD deck] Imagine if you would like when you... [cues the CD in the deck, rubbing the cue point back and forth]. That’s all you had. You’d see the meters and you’d go, ”That’s a kick drum.” And I’d go, ”OK, there’s a kick.” And I’d cut it, or I’d put a little mark, and then I’d go to the next section where I wanted a kick drum, and I’d do the same thing. You scrub it, and you go, ”That’s a kick drum.” And you cut ‘em together – pull the piece out the middle, stick them together, put some tape on it, and you sit back and you hope that it works. We had a little trick too. We did edits. Sometimes, you’d do an edit and you’d mess the tape up a little bit, like if it crinkles the edge of the tape or something, it would always make a little noise that wasn’t really, really clean. Like, you probably couldn’t hear it but if you really worked on it, you could hear it. So I had this thing, like if you did it enough times, and it wasn’t going to work and you just knew it wasn’t going to work. If it was close enough, you’d make a little edit, and during the playback when everybody’s in the room you’d just go, ”Yeah.” [nods head to imaginary beat before making sudden coughing noise] And they’d be like, ”Yeah, that was good!” [laughter] You’d use these little tricks, you know?

TOBY LAING

After the point when you did the session with Jimmy Page, did things change for you?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

After the session with Jimmy Page, I retired. I said, “That’s it. I’m never doing this again. I’m done.” [laughs] No, nothing really changed believe it or not. People are just so weird. It changed for me because it felt good. It’s great, but life went on. The thing was, I was still going to school. They had this issue with that. A year or two later, I switched over to college, but they were still dogging me. They wouldn’t just let me do my shit.

One of the things that happened for me was groups would come and find me. To go in the studio and do a multi-track recording, it was really, really [hard]. You had to know somebody or have a lot of money or whatever. I was just out there waiting for people to come. This group from Boston came down. They heard about something, they found me. Nobody in the record company would talk to them. And I’m around, and I lived across the street. I had the keys to the studio because they just let me. When they found me, they were playing this stuff, and I was like, “That shit is crazy, man!”

First, I saw this group on the street and they were playing acoustic stuff and they sounded like Crosby, Stills & Nash. They were really dope, so I took them in the studios and we did a demo. And I was producing the demo, and it was all good. The stuff was really good and the stuff was really great, and I got an answer from the record company which really… I learned a lot by being in the studio and working at a record company because the answers I got were record company-related as well as studio-related. And the record company said, “Wow, it sounds really good, and they’re alright.” And I said, “They’re alright!? They sound like Crosby, Stills & Nash.” And they said, “We have Crosby, Stills & Nash.” To me, it was like, “What are you talking about?” But I understand today, it’s like, they have the real guy. Why would they sign an imitator?

But they kept saying, “Geez, this stuff sounds really good!” I wanted to be a producer, that’s my thing. Fast-forward, I found another band, and once again, the same thing. “This stuff sounds really good. We like the songs, the band we don’t care for much at all.”

So basically, at some point, they decided that, “Wow, this guy gets some good sounds.” And my thing was like, “Whatever it is that allows you to pay me to come in, I’ll be that.” I knew what I wanted to do, but if that was a way to get there, then so be it. A lot of the bands that would come in – not the bigger acts, but a lot of demo bands, they had no producer. You know, the producer back in the day, like I was saying, you were in this room where it was magic. When you saw a big console and there was no Mix Magazine or EQ, whatever the hell you read that tells you, ”Oh yeah, he did this, he does this.“ It was just, there was a room with some microphones and a big ass board, and what do you do? You depend on the guy that’s running it to take you through it because otherwise you’re not going to get anything done and that’s kind of the way it works. So a lot of bands would come in, and they’d be doing their thing and they’d really rely on you. The man behind the seat was really in charge. I mean, you could really screw a record up. Really badly. And there’s nothing anybody could do about it. If you were terrible.

I used to think I could really make it work, or if you were a real dick you could fuck it up really bad for people. And I always thought, “Woooow, that’s important.” But at the same time, one of my things that I’ve always maintained – because I play everything and I sing a little bit – I always thought, “If you come in here, in this studio, and you can’t play better than me, and you can’t sing better than me, then you probably don’t belong here.” This is just my attitude about things. I’m not trying to put people down, but I worked hard to get this, to do this, and I don’t think I’m good enough. I don’t think I’m the shit to be an artist necessarily. So if you walk in that door, I think you should have done a little more work than I have. I shouldn’t be able to pick up your guitar to show you a chord that you said didn’t exist because this happens a lot. I go, ”Why don’t you play a dissonant version?“ And they go, ”Oh, there’s no version like that.“ “Ohhh, no you didn’t say that...?“ And I walk out there and I go, ”What about a dissonant version?“ And I pick it up and I play PLONGGG [and they react] like, ”Oh! See, you don’t belong here. I can’t get the best out of you if you can’t do more than I can do because I can do this and I can do this really well and I can help you do what you do even better if we’re all on the same wavelength and we’re all professional and we’re going to go to the next level.

Back in the day, there was this guy named Chuck Rainey. He’s the guy on bass… [to audience] You ever hear of Sanford and Son? You’ve never heard of Sanford and Son? [imitates bassline] This guy Chuck Rainey actually invented that style of playing. The last thing I was officially was a bass player before I decided, “I’m going to be head engineer now.” But I remember walking into Atlantic Studios, and he was playing the fuck out of the bass. And I was going, “Holy shit! This dude is unbelievable!” And all I remember thinking to myself, I was like, “You know what? I can work and try to get as good as him,” and I thought, “Yeah, but by the time you get there, he’s going to go to the next level. You’re always going to be chasing him.” That’s what I thought. That’s one of the things that led me to think about being behind the glass instead of in front of the glass. But it also set my mindset for what I thought a musician was.

I mean, I think if you’re going to call yourself a musician, you really need to work hard and you need to do your homework. That’s what it’s really about. And I can fast-forward you on that. Today, I have a definite view on that with modern technology. I mean, if people aren’t playing instruments, there’s still homework to be done. You got to know your shit. OK, if you’re going to be a beatmaker, you got to know your samples, you got to know your references. You gotta! You can’t not do it. You can’t just be walking and go, ”Awww [mimes fiddling with buttons]. Hey, I’m a beatmaker!” Sorry! You got to know some stuff. You got to know that when I say, ”That’s really cool but I need something really, I don’t know, from Chuckie D or something.” You got to know what I’m talking about. We got to know where we’re going; otherwise we’ll never get anything accomplished, you know what I mean? I’ll go further on that. But I really believe that whatever you do, I don’t care what you’re doing, I don’t care if you’re the turntable master, you got to be the master. You got to do it well.

Toby Laing

You’re talking about, the role of the producer has changed. Back, it was about getting a good sound. You got a bunch of great musicians and you made them sound good. And I mean...

Jimmy Douglass

Well also, no, and also, you would insert into what they’re doing ideas that would make their whole concept sound better. Like, “Hey, gee.” Vocals is another good example. Right now everybody is one track, one vocal, you can do it forever. Everybody has a thousand vocals on their records, and it’s like, “Jesus Christ, it just sounds like a thousand vocals on the record. There’s no life in it.” But when the technology had it that you were limited. There’s a formula, by the way. One of the formulas works like this: One of the worst things that can happen to you is if you have an album that has no budget, and no time limit. No, not no budget, unlimited budget. If you have unlimited budget and no time limit, you’re dead. That’s like a Michael Jackson scenario, and that’s what he does. The guy, he goes in and he makes 15, 20 albums, for five years, because there’s no restraints of anything. It’s kind of the same thing. If you’re in a studio, and you have X amount of dollars, and you have X amount of time, and everything is ticking, and suddenly you’re doing a background part, and there’s four people there, it’s like, “We’re going to do this all together, right now.” You know what I’m trying to say? Because we have to, and it has to come out right.

Toby Laing

The creativity just thriving on the limitations, and the parameters that are set by it.

Jimmy Douglass

And it’s creating another way of doing things for that reason a lot. A lot of the things that I would do is like, people would do stuff, and they’d leave, and it would just be in a very basic form. Then when I was mixing it, I would do all kinds of little tricks. I’d play around and throw stuff on this, and throw stuff on that, just to make it come to the next level. It seems that I’ve learned to see that, because everything is so available and so easy, people expect you to do that all the time. Just to do it. Quite honestly, half the stuff that I hear, the effects and stuff, I’m like... Maybe because I’ve worked my ass off to be able to create effects. The thing, to actually create a flanger. Which, I made a flanger happen. I got to tell you, it sounds so different than that crap you buy as a plug-in. They’re day and night. I can’t even tell you. What happens to me is, I listen to this stuff, and I go, “Why is that on there?”

AUDIENCE MEMBER

How do you make your flanger?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

How did I used to, you mean? Because right now I use an MXR box. But, back in the day – I think this is very interesting. Nobody knows what a flanger is, do you? Nobody even knows what tape is, so you couldn’t possibly know what a flanger is. So I’ll give you an example. So back in the day – [takes the two slipmats from the turntables] these will represent two metal plates. You’ve seen tape, right? Like this, the two metal things around it, little holes in it and the tape goes around. But, when I came into the game, to buy it in that form with the screws in it, it costs more money. So when you bought it from the manufacturer, you bought the actual piece of tape. With no flanges on it. So you had to hold it like this [mimes pinching together the reel of tape]. Because if you held it wrong the shit would fall out of your hands. And then, when you put it on the tape machine, you’d put one flange down, it was called a pancake. You’d put the pancake of tape there. You put the fuckin’ thing there, and there you go. You clamp it down, and now you got a reel of tape. OK, these things are called flanges, right? [waves a slipmat] They’re metal. Pay no attention to the fact they’re bending; it’s really metal. So, what you do when you do flanging? What flanging is, when you send two signals out together and they’re running side by side, they create a sort of a phasing sound, right? Like even with turntables, you run them together, you hear that. But it’s digital, it doesn’t sound nice. But you do it with tape, it sounds nice. It just does, it’s just the variable. Now what you do when you have flanging, you have the original source here, right? Then you send it to another tape machine there, and another tape machine here. So now we got three tape machines, that’s what we had. Tape was the medium we had. I sent the signal through both tape machines, equal level, and then I put them both on playback. So, as I’m sending it through, you’re listening to the playback of the tape machine and I receive it on another tape machine. So I’ve got four tape machines running to do this thing. And basically, what you do is, as it’s running, the way you vary it is by touching the flange. And as it changes speed it goes wahhhhhhhh. And you can stand there all day. And what comes out, comes out. It’s really like that. It’s so variable. One record I did, a group called Foreigner, you might know them, they’re from back in the day, a rock & roll group. Foreigner had “Cold As Ice,” I know you guys have heard “Cold As Ice,” right? “Jukebox Hero,” et cetera. They had this one record where they had mixed it before I came and redid it again. And in the middle, there was this one flange section for the toms, and man, I tell you it went BOOM. And it really went low, and really went high. And it was just so lovely. And when we were doing it, I had to try to recreate that one. I didn’t get that exact same thing, I got something else, but I stood there, it was like four hours. I tried. We stood there for four hours. And that’s the beauty of a real flange. It’s so… what’s the word? Unpredictable.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

What did you think about the original reverb machine, where they had the steering wheel? And I guess they turned it like that? What is that?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

You’re talking about, that would be like a plate, an EMT plate or something. And what that steering wheel represented was a way to change the decay time. Like, inside of the reverb thing you’d have the big box. You have the plate, and then you have the microphone and the speaker inside. So all they’re doing when they’re turning that wheel, they’re moving the distance, that changes the reverb time. It looks impressive but that’s all it was. It could’ve been a knob.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Do you think that way of reverb is better than a plug-in reverb?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Oh, hell yeah. Are you kidding? Whenever I go back in the studio, if I can get a real plate, I definitely use it. And even if I don’t use that, I’ll use a nice expensive… Sony has a reverb that’s really thick and really lush. It’s the 777, which you can sample. Those plug-ins, they’re alright, they’re good, but they just sound so clean.

Audience Member

I notice what sounded to me like tape bleed on some rap records that you’ve made. Maybe you could talk a little bit about using tape on the rap stuff, and in a modern setting.

Jimmy Douglass

Actually, in the last two years I stopped using tape. On a lot of those records I was playing I was using tape right up through the... I was doing things like, for the tracking, I was definitely using the tape. That’s how I was getting that thick, fat kind of sound. People use compressors and stuff to get bottom-end, but if you go to tape, you get natural tape compression. Once again, this is one of those things I didn’t know, because I didn’t read it in a book. It’s just something I found out because I would do it. Because the thing is, nobody taught me how to do it. Everything I was doing, I was just kind of doing to get through my job. Suddenly, the guy is playing the kick, and it’s fucking hitting the tape hard. I’m going, “Ah, I don’t know what to do about this.” But it was all right, it got away with it this time. After I while, I was like, “Oh, I like it when it’s like that.” Later on, as time went on, people started reading and telling me, “You know, what you’re doing is tape compression.” I’m like, “Oh, thank-you, I didn’t know.” I really didn’t know. I’m one of those engineers that’s ignorant by textbook. A lot of the stuff I know, a lot of different microphones I know what they sound like. I know what they sound like because I had the choice of using them and having them in front of me.

Audience Member

So you’re tracking with drum machines and tape, or you were.

Jimmy Douglass

No, I was definitely tracking that stuff to tape. If you want the real secret, I’ll tell you the real secret. I ain’t shy. A lot of that stuff is really an ASR-10 through a Neve console, through tape. Just pounding the shit out of it. Seriously, just hitting it so hard, right before distortion, and it comes back sounding just, it comes back sounding like that. Because I’ve taken it off, and I’ve tried, and it just doesn’t sound the same.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I’ve heard a lot of different stories about the relationship between the songwriters and producers. Particularly in the projects that you’ve worked on, what has your relationship been to somebody who’d come and say, ”Yo, I have this rhyme, let’s make a track,” or do people bring you tracks? What is your role as a producer? Are you generally very, very involved in the sound, or you like to be very involved or it depends on who brings you what?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Well, you know, it’s interesting. I’ll get into the producer thing right about now because one of the reasons I have a really successful relationship with Timbalandjust is the fact that I spent a lot of years producing records because there was nobody else there. And I work with great singers. There’s no doubt about it. You know, it’s funny, every time I mention somebody I’m like, ”Oh, you guys don’t know these people.” This was years ago. There’s a singer called Donny Hathaway...[lots of people call out ”Yeah” in recognition]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Aw, come on... give us a little credit. [_laughs _]

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Well, I don’t know! But you asked me about one of the earlier things I did. Donny was signed to the label. They decided, ”You can work with Donny.” I was working with Donny all the time. So me and Donny was working together. You know, he’d work with the band and we’d been doing overdubs and our mixing and that was what we were doing. But I didn’t really get it like that. It was like, he was cool. It was great to hear him sing, the guy was a genius. No doubt about it. Working with him, people like Roberta Flack, Aretha. Your ears get tuned to this great stuff, no doubt about it. These people were not playing. They didn’t take a long time, they didn’t do a thousand takes, they didn’t punch in a million little things. They did their thing. And you got to hear what doing your thing sounds like. And once you sort of reference your ears to what that is, when you work with other people, it’s a little easier to help them to try to get on that particular track. So, I spent a lot of years producing records for people simply because there wasn’t a producer there. And I knew better, and I could do it well, and it sounded good. What happens is, fast forward to the hip-hop era, you have an era where you have a Timbaland and a Missy, for instance. And Tim makes great beats, and he knows what sounds really good on vocals and stuff, but he doesn’t have the patience to want to sit in there and do the vocals. But I’ve done this all my life because I’ve produced records. So I do that.

So he does his thing, or Missy will write the song, or even Aaliyah is a good example. “One in a Million,” let’s take that specifically. Timbaland did the beat, we did it in Detroit I think and it was just a demo. And the beat remained in the sequencer, it wasn’t to tape yet. When the deal went down, they said, ”This will be great, we’ll do this with Aaliyah.” So we go in the studio, we track it out, we do all the great stuff to make it really thick and really fat and really warm, and then Missy, of course, had written the song. And when Missy writes a song, she will write the song with all the parts perfectly executed. We were up in this place called Rochester for a lot of years before they broke out, we’d be doing demos all the time, and she would sit there for four or five hours on a vocal. I’m going, ”Missy, who’s the song for?” [She’d reply,] “I don’t know, it ain’t for me!” “Then why are you fucking spending all this time making everything so perfect?” I get it! I don’t feel like spending all this time sitting here pushing buttons because it was analog. I don’t feel like sitting here punching in all day. But that’s how she does her work.

Fast forward to Aaliyah. So now, Missy’s already laid all the parts, how every single thing should go. And then Missy disappears because she doesn’t want to deal with it. So I sit there with Aaliyah, we sit there and we match her parts. There’s an art to doing it. Obviously, it’s got to be done well. That’s the kind of stuff that I would do that they didn’t want to do. They would have me there while they would be doing whatever they do. That’s kind of how that relationship works. With a rapper, it’s more like, ”Here’s a beat.” If you want to talk about Jay-Z, Jay-Z’s cool. He just walks around the room and just starts… He’s crazy, man, I love him. Mad respect to this dude. He’s probably one of the best out there. But also as a human being. He’ll walk around the studio and just start talking. He’ll just start saying a word or two, just kind of walking around the corners and stuff. And then he’ll go, “OK, I’m ready.“ He’ll just start spitting a verse or half a verse, he’ll just start doing it and you’re like, ”Oh god.” And he’ll go, “Play some more,“ and you’ll play some more and he’ll do the same thing. Then he says, “I’ll come back tomorrow and do the rest.” It’s not like he sits and laboriously writes it out. He vibes it. And that’s how that relationship goes. I don’t know. Was that interesting? [laughs]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Do a lot of people hang out for the sweetening and the little things that I would say are the work of a producer? The little things that make a track have power.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Do they hang out?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Are they with you in the studio side by side? Or is it a lot of people just say, ”Alright, have fun, go and finish the track”?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

It depends on who you are and what level of the chain you’re on. At the level of the chain I’m on right now, no. [smiles] Visitors are not welcome. No, really! Because it’s a distraction, and I mean it’s just weird. But you know, it’s such a hard question because you never know when people are actually contributing or detracting from the actual process. It is so difficult to know. So, in general, we’ve decided that people who aren’t a part of it really shouldn’t be there. And you’ll hear it when it’s done and we’ll listen to your comments then. Otherwise, everybody’s got something to say about something.

Audience Member

Hello. You were discussing the difference between analog and digital processing production. Recently, I was doing music with a friend, and he was like, “I have this new Native Instruments reverb,” or DC Native reverb. I don’t know.

Jimmy Douglass

OK, I can’t really hear you.

Audience Member

I was telling him I was doing music with a friend, and he goes like “I have this new DC Native reverb.”

Jimmy Douglass

Oh, Native?

Audience Member

Very good, and he plugs it, and it chugs up like 20 percent of the processing from the computer. And at that time I tell him look, what’s the purpose of the reverb? You know, give space. Make it spatial. Spacious, whatever. I’m like well, you have this shitty reverb here that doesn’t take 20 percent, so you were talking about the difference between analog flanger being warmer and all, and I can really get that, but most of the times, isn’t this supposed to be just like aesthetic and understandable as an effect? You know what I’m saying? To what extent is it really important for you to be using all the best sounding technology all the time if the purpose it serves is just like to give details, not actually the whole idea of a song?

Jimmy Douglass

I’ve got a rack of all kinds of shit, and lately I’ve been using a lot of plugins, but I’ve still got great vintage gear. You know, I’ve collected it, and it’s really nice, but I’ve also got an Alesis Qudraverb. You know the old Quadraverb, that old little shitty box? I use it all the time, especially if I want some chorus. No other box for me will do. It’s something about the way how crappy it sounds. It’s just so ... The bittage, it’s low bittage. It’s like low resolution, and to me it kind of, maybe it acts as tape in my head. I don’t know, against the digital. I don’t know. Maybe that’s what I’m thinking, but that resolution is what I want. And then on the other hand, you get a vocalist that want to be heard very clearly, and you can’t use that on the vocal. It’ll make it sound kind of muffle-y and dull-y perhaps. Every one them has its own particular purpose depending on what you’re doing, and I don’t think that you can say what you said would always be the case. What I would do in that case, if I really wanted the good reverb like you said, and it was using up all the power, I’d print it and then take it off the plugin, and then now you’ve taken care of that problem.

Audience Member

Yeah, but we’re not producing Donny Hathway or anything like that, we’re just doing a track.

Jimmy Douglass

You’re talking about simple stuff.

Audience Member

Yeah. Sometimes there’s just no need. I don’t know to what extent you agree with this, but it all depends on what you’re trying to do, right?

Jimmy Douglass

Absolutely.

Audience Member

You don’t have to take such an existentialist stance, defending vintage and all that, because sometimes you just don’t need to. Also, another question I have for you. Do you think that it is possible in digital technology and digital producing, that as long as you have the least required quality of sound, you can work on it enough until it gets to a point where it’s good, or do you think it will always be cheaper?

Toby Laing

That’s a hard question. No, there’s no such thing, because when you listen to records and you listen to what sells and what doesn’t sell, there’s no such thing. People have a damn 808 and they’re selling records, so who’s to say anymore. I mean, the one thing that’s really happened for me listening to what’s going on is, like, there are no rules, and you know what? It’s always been that for me. I’ve always worked that way. I’ve always said there’s no rules. Whenever somebody walks in the door and tells me what’s got to happen, we’re going to have a problem, because maybe that’s what they want to happen, but maybe I don’t see it that way. Maybe I can’t deliver it today. Maybe I can’t deliver what you want. Maybe what you want is not really right for that. How about if we just like have an open mind and let’s see where the journey takes us? To me, that’s when creativity happens at its best, so I don’t know. I don’t think so.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I’m just curious because I’m a big fan of Donny Hathaway, and I’m curious as to how he worked in the studio.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

You know, if you talk about those people, it’s not very exciting at all. I mean it in a real sense, it was real simple. Here’s a man with a golden voice, here’s a man who plays, he plays great. You got that left hand on that Rhodes, that heavy gon-ka-ka-ka-kon, you know? He had a style, he sang great. They bring a rhythm section around him, sometimes some strings. He also arranged a lot of his strings and horns by the way. He was an arranger. The guy was ridiculous. When you say exciting, it wasn’t exciting like that. What was exciting was to watch Donny in the studio while you’re recording, do a song for you. And he’s singing it while he’s playing. That’s exciting. The take is happening, and you’re going, ”This is fucking great. This is unbelievable.” At that point, it isn’t about selling records, it feels like this dude came here to entertain me. I mean that. With Aretha, it would be me and her in the room alone, and I’m sitting there and I’d watch her. She’d go, “Laaaa,” [imitates Aretha belting out a tune] and I’d sit there and go, “This is great. She came here to entertain me in my living room.” You know what I mean? It was a lot simpler. I think because of our processes of recording and all of our choices we have now, all the quote-unquote, clever stuff. People walk in with these preconceived concepts. ”We’re going to do this, we’re going to do this.“ You want it to be such a big event that many times it supersedes the actual creativity, which many times is so simple. Most of the biggest records are the simplest records when you really listen to them. Eras come and go, the funk era, disco, early hip-hop, when you listen to records that really happened, they’re all simple. Simple bassline, a part inside of it, a simple little line, a simple little hook. Those are the records. I guess it’s our nature. And then you have records that aren’t so simple, like “Cry Me A River.” That’s more of a production. It’s a great production. But there’s lots of records like that which are never going to see the light of day because they’re just too presumptuous of how great they’re going to be. You know, one word says it all.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Do you think expectation is a turn-off for creativity?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

It is for me. Because you’re trying to tell me what I have to do. And you know, this is just individual. There’s engineers I know that could do this to the tee. It’s almost like sampling, and knowing all your samples on record. [adjusting microphone] There’s engineers who listen to records and they go, ”He used the 480.” And I’m listening and going, ”I got to be honest, I can’t quite tell you what he used. I don’t know, I can’t hear it like that.” But then I see beatmakers and stuff, they do the same thing. They listen to a record and they go, ”He used a snare from Mary J Blige!” I’m like, ”Ahhhh, I don’t know how to hear it like that.” I only know how to hear very linear-ly. I go from here to there, and I can hear it. I don’t really pick out pieces and go, ”That’s on that record.” There are people that are really good at it, and to me, that’s an art. It’s an art that I don’t really understand. I’ll give you a good example. There’s a record called “Money Ain’t a Thing” by Jay-Z and Jermaine Dupri. [sings the bassline] There’s this thing with me and Timbaland. He’s got his thing going on, and I have my day making beats or working with the band. With Slave and stuff. But we have these little things, like, “You know! You don’t know!” kind of stuff. He’s always like, ”That shit was cool but it ain’t hitting like that stuff now.” Whatever. So, I remember when that video came on, and it was him and I don’t remember who else was in the room, and I’m listening to the track and they had the claps and stuff, and they’re going, ”This is dope here.” And I’m listening and I think, “That sounds like some shit I would do, I don’t know why you say that’s dope. That sounds just like the shit you say is boring with me.” Fast-forward, I don’t think about it. And then one day, he’s going through records and he goes, ”I got it! I found the ‘Money Ain’t a Thing’ record!” And he goes [mimics playing the sample on a drum machine pad], “Ba-doom, makes you weak at the knees…” And it was my fucking record! I couldn’t even hear it, inside of that, because I wasn’t listening for that. I was listening to the merit of what the fucking record was. And then when I listened I was like, ”You’re such an idiot.” And then, of course, I checked it, and everything had been cleared, everything was done and it was mine, but I don’t hear records like that. I just don’t have the ability. I hear a record that goes from here – give me four bars, that’s what I hear. I hear a piece of creativity. I don’t hear a speck of a particular sound. But that to me is the same thing as adding different reverbs and adding different stuff like you’re saying. And I’m quite impressed when people can do that. Because that’s what I call homework in the new era.

If we’re using these instruments, these samples or whatever. You know, the turntable’s now an instrument. Let’s face it. At first, I balked. At first, I laughed. Here’s a guy who plays. I can do all this stuff. I can do this. You didn’t bother to do any of that stuff and your instant gratification! I got over that, I was realizing you know what? They dig up some pretty hot stuff, man. They’re digging up some pretty hot little pieces, and they’re working them around quite nice, and there’s some people that have really good… Actually Timbaland is a great example. He has a really great ear for old records and picking the good shit out. He really, really does and I can’t front on him. Like I said, that’s an ear that I would love to be able to have.

Toby Laing

Musicianship’s changed a lot over the years, but new skills have come about. There’s different techniques now, and also like working quickly, editing quickly are just as important now in the modern studio. I mean, you got to work faster, or you got to ...

Jimmy Douglass

No, you don’t have to work faster, and you know, it’s really interesting. The adage when I was coming up was. The word adage means like you know the phrase: “You never write in the studio.” It was too expensive. You couldn’t have a band come in, play your stuff, and then sit around and write the song. It just was too expensive, so there was like you don’t write in the studio. Flip it to now. You write in the studio, because the studio is. Your demo is now your master, if you do it right. And to me that’s one of the pluses of modern technology. It really is a great plus that you can always go back and put the stuff together.

You know, there’s a period like in the early ’80s when this all wasn’t together yet, and they had ... I had moved. I think I had got an eight-track in my crib where you can work at home. “Yeah, I have an eight-track, wooh!” And they had little reverbs and stuff. And then they had this thing called a Portastudio, and what it was was it was a cassette deck, and it had like four tracks on it, and so this is as close as you could get without having to use a big eight-track and all that tape, and all that other stuff, to just putting ideas down. And the only thing about that that I look at as like if… Because what I would do is I’d play a couple ideas and I’d go that’s a good idea. When I get to find a band and everything, I’ll make it better da, da, da, and then I have different melodies running. I would just run by the rehearsals basically.

I wasn’t able to really cut them together, because I’d have to go into the studio, put them together, edit them, and a couple ideas, but by that time it became very laborious, so a lot of the great ideas and stuff that I have, it’s still sitting there, whereas when you do it now in digital medium, Logic, whatever the hell, Cubase, whatever you use, you can do it instantly. You have one idea? You have another idea? You put them together instantly. Right away you’re moving along to the next level. I think that’s what makes it great now. What I don’t think makes it great is the fact that nobody bothers to take the time to really think about what they’re saying, because they don’t have to.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

You’re talking about ProTools and stuff like that. Well, where I’m from, in St. Louis, you can go to a studio with your stuff dropped down in ProTools, some of them may not even take it. They’re like, ”Oh man, you already got it dropped.” They won’t make enough money. They make sure they take super long even if you already got it dropped. Just real trickery-type stuff. Were there a lot of slick cats doing stuff like that back then?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

When you say dropped, what do you mean by that?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Say, for instance, I had a song and I dropped it into a ProTools session and carried it to the studio, some engineers won’t even take it because I guess they feel like it’s a waste of their time. I’m not wasting enough time for them to make money. That’s just how it is.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Do you have a ProTools system?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Yeah.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

So why are you going to the studio? You’re in the studio.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Because I want their sound.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

So basically, you’re going for the show?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

[laughs] I don’t know. You’ve got to explain that to me.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

This is something, I go through this with my cohorts or whatever. You got all the equipment, you got yourself a nice little near field set of speakers, you basically got it going on. But I notice when we, I call it wasting money in the studio, we’re paying some guy all this money so we can hear the speakers loud. And I’m like, ”I own everything that he owns, I can do this at home.” I don’t have the ability to have the circus and the show. And basically, people come for the circus and the show. And that is really the truth. Do I lie? Do I lie?

[mic gets passed through the audience]

JEREMY HARDING

My name’s Jeremy Harding, I’m Sean Paul’s producer and manager, and I’m speaking here tomorrow at three o’clock.

[applause]

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Tell them, Jeremy, tell them!

JEREMY HARDING

Jimmy Douglass mixed the new Sean Paul single “Temperature,” which comes out on December 5th so that’s the plug! [laughter] I had a reaction recently in dealing with Atlantic Records records where they seem overly concerned with turning all their songs into ringtones. There’s a very big market for them. So you just finished your album, it took you one year to do it, you spent all this money, you rented all these big studios, bought your ProTools, you agonized over it forever. Go home, take all the songs, chop them into 30 seconds each. MP3 them to me, because we’re going to make lots of money selling ringtones.

So you kind of feel like you’re working in a manner contrary to the way the business is going. You’re working so hard, to try and make better quality recordings, whether using vintage gear or digital gear, you’re pushing the boundaries. You know, frequencies and sample rates, and all that stuff that you’re doing, yet the format in which you’re listening to the music seems to be dropping as to what the consumers want. You understand what I’m saying now? Like people are more excited about buying a 30-second ringtone on a phone for three bucks, and they’ll buy ten of them before they’ll buy your CD in the store. So I’m just wondering, for you as an engineer, as a producer – I know how it makes me feel – does it make you feel any different about what you’re doing when you realize at the end of the day the label’s more concerned about the 30-second ringtone than they care about the quality of the CD that you actually made for them?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

No. You know what it does for me? The first time around, I don’t care what you’re going to do with it, I give it my 100 percent because that’s what I know how to do on everything. When you call me back again and tell me you want to do it a second time because of something minute and silly, I’m not necessarily going to agree but I’m going to do it. When you call me a third time, but now because you want me to send you the MP3, which is almost what you’re saying, I’m like, ”You know what? I have to get paid but you’re wasting my time, because what you’re talking about is not going to make a difference.” When it comes down to how they’re listening to it and the basic consumer. I don’t believe it’s going to stay that way. I believe, between surround-sound and all that kind of stuff – I’ll give you a great example of something. This is called stepping into the new world. There’s a drummer called Omar Hakim, he played with all the great English rock guys, great drummer. So there was a period before ProTools was really accessible, it was really expensive. There was a thing called the Synclavier, a post-production Synclavier. They had like eight tracks of digital recording. It was a big deal. And I was doing this album, and I got to be the master of this particular machine. That machine cost about a quarter of a million dollars. Stevie had ’em, Herbie Hancock, all the big dudes had them, but I got to be the master of that. This was digital editing before ProTools made it simple for everybody. So I paid no attention when little kids came in and were like, ”Oh, I can do the same.” I was like, ”Get out of here. ProTools, get the fuck outta here.” So here I was with this big great machine and I’m recording all the great stuff in the studio with Hakim, I’m recording the samples, I’m recording the drum samples, unbelievable. Because the sampling rate was something stupid. The bittage wasn’t up there but the sampling was. We’re talking in the ’80s, the late ’80s? It was great. So I’m like, ”Yeah, this is dope.” And I got snares that were just like bop! So, fast forward, I did a record with this group called the System, “Don’t Disturb This Groove.” And it was, you know, a great record. And we had all this stuff and it was great.

Next act I’m doing was a guy Steve Arrington. Hip-hop, the word didn’t really exist, but he wants to go back, he wants to go home with the stuff, you know? And I’m producing this with him, so I’m creating as well. And we’re trying to get great snare sounds. And I’ll never forget this. This killed me. There was a guy I got, a musician and a programmer, Bernie Worrell, and he had himself a Roland D-50. Real, real low-key, the bit rate was real lazy. But he used to laugh at me. He’d go, ”This is my baby Synclavier.” Because it sampled. But it sampled like shit, you know? Like that small. And he would laugh every time I did something, he’d go, ”My baby Synclavier” and go ping-ping-ping [mimics Bernie playing the keys], and we’d laugh. Back in the day, people looked to you to make things happen. It’s like, ”We’re all here, you make it happen. If this day isn’t happening, it’s your fault because you’re the producer.” And that’s really the truth, that’s what a producer was then.

So, I remember we were trying to get someplace, and we were trying to get excited. I’m giving it the best shit I got, man, I really am. My top shelf shit from my Synclavier! And they were all kind of like, ”Ehhh.” And I’m like, ”Check this out.” So I gave them this one kick and snare. Boom! Plap! It was so clear. It was unbelievable, and I was like “Wow.” And they were like, ”Ahhh, I don't know, man.” When they walked out the room they were like, ”You keep working, we’ll come back in a minute.” So my boy in the corner, he said, ”Yo Jim, shoot me that snare, man.“ I sent him the same snare, he put it in his little S50, it sounds like shit.” But he goes ‘Pow’. And they came back and they were like, ”What was that?!“ ”Oh no, no no…” And that was an education for me. It really was. That’s what they wanted to hear. The other shit was just too good for them. And what’s funny is that now, when I learned that lesson and I learned to go down into the ASR-10, this low sampling rate stuff and so forth? Now that I’ve done that, people come to me and they go, ”Have you heard of da da da? It’s got a sampling rate of whatever!” And I’m so bored. I’m so over this. I mean, you want me to go down, now you want me to come back up and get excited? I can’t do it, you know? [laughs]

Audience Member

Just another question for you, what for you is the best playing format? You don’t seem to get out of this studio that much but you still should be interested in what format your works comes on. Is it vinyl?

Jimmy Douglass

Oh, you mean what do I listen on?

Audience Member

Yeah.

Jimmy Douglass

CD. I haven’t really made the transition to iTunes yet really. I just haven’t done it. I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m holding back on them.

Audience Member

Don’t you think there’s more warmth?

Jimmy Douglass

The iTunes?

Audience Member

No, no. More warmth in an LP probably than on CD?

Jimmy Douglass

Where am I going to get an LP from?

Audience Member

Just get out there.

Jimmy Douglass

Well, yeah but they cost a fortune and who’s going to cut them?

Audience Member

[inaudible]

Jimmy: Huh?

Audience Member

[inaudible]

Jimmy Douglass

What is? They don’t do vinyl on everybody’s records.

Audience Member

Not everybody.

Jimmy Douglass

Well, so there you go. You got the needle. You got the needle. I can’t put it in my car. There are certain things that have happened that you have to go along with. Like I said, I’m holding out on iTunes. I’m just holding out. I don’t know why I’m holding out. I’m still happy to have a thousand CDs in my bag and do my thing but iTunes is definitely the way to go. There’s no doubt about it. It’s a digital medium, everything is accessible. You go to your computer, etcetera. I think I might give it up this Christmas actually. CDs would be the way to go for me right now.

Audience Member

I just thought first of all to do a small comment on one what you were saying. I read recently Future Shoc by Alvin Toffler and there’s a part where he says, “One of the things that characterize current society or a futuristic society will be the sharpening of periods and why you can enjoy an object.” You eat a McDonalds burger and you throw away the box. The number of things that go through your hands are thousands a day sometimes. When it gets to music, it’s your personal object. I guess what I’m talking about all of this DJ producers here and our love for vinyl is about that. Now if you go to iTunes and you download something, you get a virus on your computer, and your money down the drain. Of course, you buy a vinyl, it’s a cherishable object. All of us, our collection, we’ll never sell it. That’s why for as many iTune MP3s you can download or you can burn as many CDs as you want but you don’t have the source material. That’s what I think regarding format. Of course, it’s crap to see CD DJs. The sound is not the same.

Jimmy Douglass

Well, I will inform you one thing. If you really, really want to break it down like that, a couple of things have happened. One of the things is I don’t mix the tape anymore. I stopped doing that years ago. Part of my new history is how I met Timbaland and Missy and Ginuwine and those guys. We were stuck in this place up in Rochester, with DeVante Swing from Jodeci. We were all stuck there for like a year. And they were just people. I mean, they’re still just people, you know what I’m saying? They had no names attached to them. He was a kid who could do this crazy shit, and I thought, “Wow, he’s really good in all of the above.” But in that period of time, we were up there, we must’ve done about four hundred records. In about a year and a half, four hundred records. One of them was “Pony,” actually. We did “Pony” one night, just as a demo. Actually, that record was the demo. We didn’t have the multitracks anymore. I just took the demo, and we got a deal. They put that out and the rest is history. But one of the things they didn’t have in the studio up in the woods was they didn’t have a tape machine, a two-track tape machine.

So when I was mixing the stuff, I would always mix to DAT because I just didn’t have a tape machine. Now, what the DAT afforded me, it afforded me the converters going analog to digital into the DAT. As time was going on, and I worked in a lot of different studios, and everybody’s so in a hurry. You know, like the assistants. I’ll be like, ”OK, so burn me a copy of that mix,” and they’ll go, they’ll suck it out of the machine, and I’ll go, ”No, do it off the DAT. I want to hear how it converted to whatever.” [And they replied,] ”Why would you want to do that? It takes so much longer.” And you know, after a while, every now and then it would slip by me because I wasn’t watching somebody and they would do it anyway. And after a while, you know, I really couldn’t tell the difference. Maybe I didn’t take the time to tell the difference. So after a while, it’s like I’m slipping into the same, "You know what…?,” [leans over to one side] and somebody calls you and goes I need this and I need that! You know what, you’re going to get it off the computer because it is faster. And before you know it, I’m listening and I’m going, ”I don’t know. I don’t know if you really do hear the difference.” I mean, I do hear the difference between a MP3 and tape. Like he was saying. But that kind of stuff, I don’t know. But the vinyl thing, that’s like a whole ’nother world.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

When you go to a club, you’ll see the difference, of course.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

In the club? Yeah. I mean, how many DJs are here? [a few audience members raise their hands] It’s a DJ house!

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Anyway, another question. Did you produce Aurra, the other project from Slave?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

From who? Aurra! I didn’t do Aurra, that was Steve Washington, he was my co-producer. But Aurra started from Slave, yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I was just thinking about what you said earlier about the whole situation when you were at Atlantic, and you were listening to a lot of demos that never actually made the release. But as such, would you be able to put Timbaland up on some shit to sample that never made it as a release, as in demos?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

There are some records, I’m not going to tell you which ones. [laughs]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

[smiles] Yeah, that’s what I was thinking because essentially it’s a goldmine, right? You know what I mean?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Hell yeah!

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Yeah, he’s at a great advantage over all of us here, because he’s got your ears and his own! Yeah, that’s all I had to say.

Toby Laing

Can I just ask you about random things making it on to your records?

Jimmy: Random things.

Toby Laing

Just accidents that you leave on there. That seems to be a way that this clean digital world can actually get a better life pick into it when you allow maybe something wasn’t meant to be on like a track or something that made it on to the mix and you don’t get back and polish up the accidents. You just leave them there. Is that something that you think about?

Jimmy Douglass

That’s an interesting thing. I’ll tell you what. There is one record that me and Tim did actually. It was called, “Same Ol’ G.” I really remember this. I had a very, very clear vision in my head about this. What we would do is we’d have our stuff and as we were tracking it out, we got so… One of the ways I track out, when you have a multi-output sequence or whatever, I don’t use the individual outputs because I don’t think they sound the same as the outputs of the stereo. The stereo output is something. It sounds totally different. We would actually sit there and do a pass for every single instrument. It takes a long time just to get it on tape but it’s like that’s part of what that sound was and a part of what that sound is. After a while, we got pretty good like watching the meter and not having to listen. Getting cocky, right? We’re listening to some other records while the pass is going down. We’re just listening to the other stuff. I remember he went back to the keyboard and he did something. Think as strings were playing, the string pass, which is live out of the keyboard. I think he did whatever. When I played it back, I was like, “Oh, shit.” I was mixing it and halfway through, sure enough it goes [makes whining keyboard sound]. I thought, “You know what? Let’s just leave it. I think that your record making right now is to the level where that’s not going to be it. Nobody’s going to return the record to the store because they hear this thing at the end of the record that does that. On the other hand, the converse side of that is people get bent out of shape over stupid shit that’s never going to make a difference to anybody. They really do. It’s a fine line trying to accommodate what you really believe is really, really, really, really going to make a difference and when people are getting totally crazy. Because people get crazy making records. They believe it’s the last record they’re ever going to make, which is a good idea to think like that but on the other hand, I always say you can make another one. If you’re that talented, you can always make another record.

Toby Laing

Do you manage to distance yourself enough from the crazy industry side of things and just work in the studio and make those people leave you alone, or is it an ongoing problem?

Jimmy Douglass

It’s ongoing and I lose a lot. I lose a lot of battles because I say the wrong things to the wrong people. I tell them this stuff and that’s not the answer. That’s not what they want to hear. They want to hear what they want to hear, which is, “Yes this is the most important thing in the world,” and I’m like, “I’m sorry. I can’t go with you on that.” They’re like, “OK. Then we won’t call you anymore.” That’s like, “OK, fine. I’m going to do something else.” Take your little ball away. Go on, take it away.

Toby Laing

What’s ideal situation for you? What do you want to go with your music now and the future?

Jimmy Douglass

I’m working with two acts right now that I really actually believe in a lot. One of the person that is actually very close to me is something like I’m thinking that one, that particular act is one that I want to do. I think that regardless of the outcome, I’m very happy doing it because I’m supposed to be doing that particular one. There’s a million people making music. I get stuff all the time from everybody and his brother. Now like I said, because technology is easy, everybody’s stuff can now even close to even done. The playing field is more level. It’s really hard to judge. Earlier it was easy to judge because a lot of the stuff around this stuff would be really wax right away. Now, they can get some pretty impressive tracks, some nice beats, the new word “producer” or “producer beatmaker” we should call it to do stuff with them. Somebody just sitting at home with the little ProTools and do a couple of things and put some reverse and a couple of delays and make them sound nice. It’s really a lot harder to discern what is possible and what isn’t anymore. It’s really, really, really gotten very much harder.

Toby Laing

Any more questions for Jimmy Douglass.

Jimmy Douglass

You’ve got to have questions. Come on. I flew a long way here. Inquiry in the back. Inquiry in the back.

Audience Member

You might think my question is a tricky one but I’m still a bit confused about your lecture. Basically, are you hi-fi or lo-fi?

Jimmy Douglass

Am I hi-fi or lo-fi?

Audience Member

Yeah.

Jimmy Douglass

No. I’m hi-fi. I’m just saying that but I recognize I’ve gotten over. What I was trying to say was I’ve gotten over fighting the big battle for hi-fi because obviously I’m going to lose the battle. I’ve learned how to incorporate. You have to understand one thing. Think about this now. Maybe when you go back, you can listen to some of the earlier records I did and listen to the sound and quality of those records. I think they’re great. I think sonically they’re just like that. Then you’ve got to think, I start working with people. One of the things I did for this transition in my life was I started having kids come over my house and I have a record collection that’s really speaking to this DJ. I got this shit like it’s real. It’s like when I was a kid. These are my records and they walk in there like fucking going nuts, apeshit. I’m like, “It’s just records guys.” To them it represents that whole thing from the era. They put the stuff on and they’re like, “Oh, yeah.” They start playing stuff and they start grabbing shit out of it and they have this grimy stuff and they start putting it down that’s a little grimy and I’m like, “That sounds like shit.” To me, it did. It was like, “This is offending my ears,” but they were getting off on it. See what I’m saying? What is it about this that makes you get off? It’s like, I call it retuning your ears because I’ve done a lot of rock & roll, I’ve done a lot of R&B, a lot of funk. Whenever I do any of those things, when I do like the… Do you guys know Rob Thomas at all?

Yeah? No? I mix that this last album, the last record that he had and that’s a far cry from this other shit I just played for you. Totally. But when I mix that stuff, what I tend to do is I spend a week or two just listening to music in that particular genre. I do what I call is called is tuning my ears. Basically, just getting the reference of what that particular box holds in it and what the world expects of those sounds today. That’s kinda what I do. Same thing. When the kids were doing this stuff and they were putting this really lo-fi stuff on my ears, I’m going, “Woah.” From what I’m used to listening to, that is really not acceptable. But it has become acceptable and I learned how to listen with those particular ears, the hip-hop ears because a lot of that stuff is really grungy, it’s nasty. It’s dirty. That’s part of what it is. The thing is, I’m trying to answer your question as best as I can. That thing is like, no, I recognize really, really good sound when I hear it, but at the same time, I enjoy having records being played that I did because what it is, this is the ultimate statement. Music is meant to communicate with people. And there’s nothing like when you’re a part of something that makes people go, "Oh man, I love that!" That – besides money or royalties or whatever you could possibly get – that moment means everything to me. I mean, that’s... [applause]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

If you were now to work with a band that really wanted an old-school sound, would you be willing to go back to your old machines and everything?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

I did this! It’s so funny. There’s a group called the Rapture. Do you know the Rapture? Yeah, I was working with them, I was going to produce their new album for them. And we went to a studio in Virginia, where I just came from, a studio that me and Timbaland built. It sounds freakin’ amazing, it sounds like right out of the ’70s. All the gear, I brought them in, we started doing it, it sounded like just amazing ’70s rock. I mean, it was unbelievable. And they were so bored. It was unbelievable, I couldn’t believe how bored they were. And this sound, it was so clean and ridiculous. I was like, “Oh, man.” And they were just like bored, bored, bored. You know what they wanted to hear? They wanted to hear that garage sound where a guy records in a little garage, and because he has a garage he puts all this crap on it, so everything sounds small. That’s what they wanted. I’m just saying, it’s the same thing again. I loved it and they hated it. And I was like, “Jeez, I can’t catch a break here.”

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Would you still say you adapt your work to the artists’ work, in the sense that you give them the kind of mix [they want] or you use different devices depending on the artist?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Absolutely, yeah. It’s really important that when you work with people, you have to see their vision and you have to share the vision. If you don’t share the vision, it’s just never going to happen.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

What for you was really the first track or even the producer was really an epiphany for you? Like, ”Wow, that is the power of what a producer can do or can bring to music“?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

“Just a Touch of Love.” [sings] ”Just, a touch, of love…” That shit was dope, man. When that came out I was like, "Oh my god!" And what’s really interesting about that song, I can give you history on that song. The way that song worked was, I was working with Slave when they did “Slide.” They were just a bunch of kids. They came in with this record demo, whatever the hell it was. And the bass player’s dope, you know, they’re just a bunch of little kids. And the head of Atlantic, the president, he says, “I got these kids, man. What do you think about it?” I listened to it and I said, “This is alright, man, except they’re out of tune and they really need work.” And he said, “Will you work with them?” I was like, “Yeah, OK.” So I worked with them on the album and just did a lot of stuff, and they had their hit “Slide,” which was nice, very nice, it happened. And then, there was a kid in the band, and I didn’t catch this whole thing. He wanted to be the man. He was George Clinton’s nephew or whatever. But he wanted to be the man. But I don’t work like that, because there’s room for everybody to do everything, and I didn’t notice what he was doing. So when I had taken over it had kind of pissed him off, and I didn’t notice. And then there was another guy who was in charge of whatever. Anyway, the way it worked was, I was telling this kid everything about this other guy, but I didn’t realize he was the guy who wanted [to be in charge] but he kept talking to the [executive] and so eventually they got rid of me. That was cool, and the next two albums didn’t really do anything. I’m not saying that I am what I am but it just happened to be that way. So there came a time I’m in my life, doing other projects, I’m doing my rock shit and I’m enjoying my life. And it comes to the fourth album and they went in the studio and they did all this stuff. No, go back. On the second album, all the guys kept looking to me to help them, because like I told you, I could play it. I was teaching them to do picking and all this stuff. But this other kid, he wasn’t liking this because it was like, it was supposed to be his thing, and I didn’t know. I was just doing what I do. I love to see people grow. That’s my whole thing. If you can grow, if you can sing better after working with me, I’m happy. Even if you don’t sell a record. But anyway, they did their thing, get to the fourth album. They make a whole album. A long diatribe. And it wasn’t happening. And the record company was like, ”We’re kind of done with you guys if you don’t get some help.” And the president comes to me and he goes, “Listen, man, you really got to help me.” And I was like, “Sorry, I’m over it now.” I’m like, ”I’m sorry, da da da," he’s like, “Oh, you got to help.” I was doing a Foreigner record, actually. I was like, ”I’m sorry, I’m busy, what do you want me to do?” He’s the president of the company [saying,] “You gotta…” [So finally I said,] ”OK, OK, OK. I’ll do it if you let me make three new sides. And then I’ll fix whatever’s left of theirs and I’ll make that the b-side.” He was like, “OK.”

So we did that, and the reason that was really interesting to me was, I had gone back into the rock & roll world so hard, I really didn’t know how to make a funk record. I didn’t know in my mind what funk was. Remember what I said about tuning your ears? So, then I started going out and listening to funk records, and I remember at the time there was the Brothers Johnson – [sings] ”We’re gonna stomp! All night…” Chic was out with ”Good Times.” [sings bassline] And I was like, ”Oh man, this shit is crazy.” So when I went to make the record, I was thinking, “Well, what we’ll do is…“ I told the bass player and they got this drummer Steve Arrington, who was brand new. He had just come to the scene. And he was the drummer, and he was pretty good too. And we went to the rehearsal room and they said, “What are we rehearsing?” I said, “I don’t know, you guys just keep jamming.” So I had them in there for like two days. Just the two of them and the guitar player. They’d just be jamming and I’d go, “A-hah! Great lick! That’s a great lick. OK, keep that lick.” They’d do some more, “A-hah! Great lick! That lick there, I’m telling you, that’s the lick.” So we just put a bunch of licks together until we had our little jams, and it was very cool. And when we got to “Just a Touch of Love,” I mean that shit was crazy. It was just nice. I mean, we had the little change, [sings bassline] all that stuff. When we got to the vocals, we did the backgrounds, we just created it, I wrote it with them. Doing parts. Just throwing parts at it. [sings the alto part] ”Just a touch…” [sings the backing vocal] ”Just a touch…”

But Steve Arrington, he wasn’t the vocalist, he was the drummer, right? We couldn’t find anything that was a lead that was any good. He walked in and he went – and this is one of those cases that as a producer you really – anyway, he walked in and he started going [sings in slurring falsetto], “Keep me high, just… a little bit.” And I was going, ”That is fucking crazy, that’s the craziest shit I’ve ever heard. I don’t know if this is really going to be cool!” And everybody’s going, “No man! That’s it!” I don’t know how to judge this. I’d never heard anything like it, so I’m like, “Do me a favor, sing me one that’s straight.” “No, no, no!” I’m like, “You got to do this because I don’t know what to do.” So he goes [sings in very plain, enunciated style], “Keep me high, just a little bit” And I was like, ”Nahhh, we’re going with the other thing.” And fortunately, it all worked out. That’s what producers still do, I guess. They make decisions overall for the band; you need another mind especially when you’re recording with groups and stuff. I used to call myself the sixth member of the band. That really was my function. Just to help everybody along.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

What system do you use at home?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Yeah, I use different things, I use Logic at home. I still use my ASR10 a lot for sequencing. And of course in the quote-unquote real studio, I use ProTools. One of the main reasons is because I grew with ProTools. Also, most of the formats of the records that come to me, they’re already in ProTools. I think most of the pros are using it.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

So it’s the industry standard?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

It is, it is.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I’m just interested to know, in the last maybe three years, if you could run us through all the people you’ve worked with. Like, everything you’ve done in the last three years or something like that? You were saying Rob Thomas – I’d like to hear who you’ve been working with and how varied they are.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Oh, the people I’m working with?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Yeah, just to get an idea of how varied they are.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

[smiles] Well, Sean Paul like he Jeremy Harding was saying, I just did that. Brandy, Rob Thomas. There’s a guy I just did this thing with, matter of fact… if you’ll indulge me. [cues up the CD player]

(music: Hall & Oates – “She’s Gone”)

Anybody know that record by the way? [applause] That’s the record which, if you asked me which record I engineered that I thought was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done, that would be it. That was Hall & Oates. That was their first hit. And actually, there’s a story behind this record. Because that is the record that was a hit for them, except when they did it, it wasn’t a hit. Atlantic released the record, and it flopped. That record flopped. And then their manager was Tommy Mottola, that’s when he was just on the bottom. He got pissed at Atlantic and he took the act away to RCA, and they went and recorded this record called “Sara Smile.” [sings] “Sarah... smiles…” That was like their first big record, Atlantic re-released the exact same freaking record, and it was a smash. So that was my first lesson in understanding that it’s not always about what’s on the record. Many times it’s about the way that they promote it or they do it, whatever. Because it’s the same record, not even another mix. Whatever happened the first time, it didn’t happen. That’s a great record. That particular album was one of the first albums where I was really excited because I learned a lot about recording.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

How many years between the original release and the re-release?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

I think it was two years. Because they got off the label one year, and when “Sara Smile” came out, Atlantic jumped behind them. So they had two records on the charts right behind each other. So maybe two years at the most.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Did you do all the Hall & Oates?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

No, I just got to do that one. [smiles] You know, and it’s just enough to put on my resume that I worked with Hall & Oates, it’s the truth.

[music: Ricky Martin – unknown]

That’s Ricky Martin. It didn’t happen, actually. They chickened out on that record because it’s about him coming out of the closet obviously, baring his soul. And the record company decided that was a little too risqué for him. I think it’s a great record. I think it’s a great move for him to actually come out that way because the record is a good record. And if you don’t know it, it’s just a great record. For those that do know, it’s even a better record. It means a lot. I’m still looking for the record that I wanted to play.

(music: unknown)

This is one of those records that I’m really working to do. It’s a project I’m working on. But this is the one I want to show you.

(music: unknown)

So that particular artist. What do you think about that artist actually, that guy?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Who did the beats?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

I did.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

That’s your beats, yeah?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

But what do you think about the artist? What do you think he looks like? What do you expect to see?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Do you know Cool Runnings? [laughter] You know that film, yeah? When I heard the music I was picturing the intro to Cool Runnings where the guy’s doing a sprint.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

His name’s Matisyahu, and he’s a Hasidic rapper, actually.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

From Brooklyn?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

From Brooklyn, yeah, yeah. And he looks like the rabbi. It’s crazy man, it’s absolutely crazy. You’ve heard him, right? So, that’s one of the projects that I’m working on lately actually, which is very nice.

TOBY LAING

I’m just wondering how many studios you have around the place? There’s a couple. You’ve got your own?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Yes. I had one in New York City, which I just let go of this year. It was my place, my place to chill. Then there’s one that me and Timbaland built in Virginia Beach. Then I’m in Miami a lot.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Hit Factory.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Sometimes the Hit Factory.

TOBY LAING

What takes you ’round all these places? What’s the purpose of all these different locations?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

You follow the artist, I guess. Miami’s a hot spot right now for hip-hop. You got Pharrell down there, you got Scott Storch. You know who Scott Storch is? Of course. And Timbaland’s down there. You know, it’s like a hot spot. Miami is just a great place. Could be doing this in Miami instead of here, guys. It’d be warm. You’re getting the work done, but you’d be having a ball. [laughs]

TOBY LAING

I think there’s a question over there.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

There’s actually two little points you briefly touched on that I would love to come back to for a brief second. One is, you mentioned, the whole beat shopping process. I mean, everyone and their mama has seen Fade to Black, and seen Jay-Z and Timbaland going through beats, how that works. Then, on the other hand, now that you mentioned Hall & Oates, how do you achieve a consistent sound in the classic sense of an album? I mean, if you take something like Abandoned Luncheonette, that’s a true champion lover record start to finish, you just put it on and… I mean, it’s not just because you’ve got Purdie on drums but you got one consistent theme going on.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

How do you get consistency in an album, you’re saying? You know, those albums, I got to say, one thing about those albums is that they had one producer that led the whole album. Even if you listen to Ginuwine’s first album, we did the whole album front to finish. It sounds like one piece – it starts, it ends. It’s like you never left the same environment. Unfortunately, the world is so full of, "Where’s the single, where’s the hot joint?" So, "Let’s get him to do a joint, let’s get him to do a joint and let’s get him to do a joint." And now basically all the stuff comes and it’s disjointed because one guy does it a certain way, another guy does it another way. That’s why people don’t buy albums anymore. That’s the vinyl answer, too, by the way. There’s nothing to buy anymore. You want one single off of a record, or two of them. There’s no love. There’s no taking you on the journey, as it were. That’s how I’m answering your question, basically. And I think that’s how you achieve that, by having the same people from beginning to end.

If you know that Abandoned Luncheonette, you must know that album, right? And that album, it’s crazy, it’s got like a kazillion things on it, right? I mean, that was one of the first albums I really learned how to do a lot of shit. But the consistency was it was the same minds from day one to the end of it. So even though it was all over the place, it all still came together the same way. Even if they would mix whole albums instead of turning in singles, it might have some sort of consistency. I believe the Rob Thomas album sounds kind of same-y because I mixed the whole thing. And also they did the same, the producer Matt Serletic did the whole thing so it’s kind of all consistent.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

But on that note, when you were chopping up Jimmy Page stuff, obviously you’re not afraid of bridging the gap in a way. But Hall & Oates probably don’t get a whole lot of kudos for their blue-eyed soul approach. Could you elaborate a little bit about where they’re coming from, especially at that time. On those two or three albums.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

At that time, they were two kids that came from Philadelphia, working with Gamble and Huff, I guess they’d been rejected. Not rejected, but they weren’t quite good enough for that camp. You know that whole Philadelphia movement? Back in the day. What was out then. [sings] “Burning inferno”… all that? When Philadephia was really on fire? They were two writers, two little kids that knew how to do what they do. And Daryl is a great singer, a really good singer. And they came from that school of blue-eyed soul like you said. They didn’t get any love for it. I don’t know, it’s sad. That’s always a weird question, defining what the world is [ready to accept]. And I never thought about it ‘til you just said it, but you’re right. All of their hits really came from being on more of the rock side. But if you listen to their records, it’s the rock side, but underneath it, Daryl was a very soulful singer.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

So what has changed in way? Because essentially, Justin Timberlake is doing the exact same thing, recording with Timbaland. Why is it so much more approachable or acceptable these days?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Why is it more acceptable?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Yeah, I mean why cana white soul-boy crossover?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Well, because Justin had a fan base that was just stupid, you know? He had all these people from the ‘N Sync thing, and this was something that was really viable – half viable – and they loved it! [laughs] And then take the Justin – alright, that’s a good example. Take a Justin who isn’t Justin and bring him to my door. We may have a Timbaland, we may not have a Timbaland. We may have a Kanye, or we may not have a Kanye. But let’s take a Justin without Kanye and never having had a hit. And I’ll bet you there’s probably about 15 of those out there right now that you’re never going to hear because of the timing. And actually, this was a good example too with the Hall & Oates thing. It didn’t happen for them, it only happened because of the other one, the “Sara Smile.” They got love. And once they got love, people could all of a sudden hear the record differently. Isn’t that amazing? [smiles]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Mr. Shocklee dodged a question the other day, but he basically tried to do the same thing that you guys were doing trying to revolutionize the R&B game. Bringing something to the mainstream airwaves, as in how far can you push the boundaries sonically? I mean, these days every momma down in the shopping mall is dancing to beats that would’ve been too harsh in a techno club ten years ago. You’ve been in those meetings when you’ve dropped a single and all these A&R’s have been looking at you. Was it a constant slide towards it?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

I missed a part there somewhere. Start at the mommas in the shopping mall. [laughter]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

When you go out shopping in the mall nowadays, you hear sonically so many more challenging things than what you heard in techno records ten years ago. And obviously, you had to deal with all these major execs at God-knows-where where you shopped all the Missy Elliott things and stuff. How did all the A&R meetings go? I guess, that was a pretty grim reality.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Ahh…

TOBY LAING

I suppose he’s saying, how did you get the industry to accept this imaginative music that you’re making? You’re making it for a commercial market, but it’s extremely imaginative and creative music, you know? But I suppose, I could answer that question! [laughs] You want to hear it in the club, and it’s hot music that you want to party to. And I think maybe the A&R guys recognize that. Is that true?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

That’s it. I think that’s all they really do know. The new buzz word [makes finger quotes] on the table is, "It doesn’t have enough energy." And I got to say, when you say A&R guys, I give no weight to – and I hope there’s no one in this place [who works as A&R] – but I give no weight to what they do. They don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. I hate to say it, and I’ll say it again. They don’t know what they’re doing. They really don’t. [applause] There are a few, there are those that do, but they’re under such stress with the way the companies are built and the way the whole chain goes, and the big guy has to sell records. And even if you get a product that’s really good, you got to get five guys to go with you to get them to push it, to get it to get out there to sell. And then you’ve got five guys who are sitting there, and everybody’s fighting for their own product. They’re just fighting for their jobs, really. And they really don’t know. I mean, I can tell because I get calls from people to do stuff, and I can just tell that they basically looked at my name on the back of an album. They don’t even fucking know me. They don’t know what I do. There was a record that happened and they look and they go, ”Get that guy!” You know what I mean? And that’s what they think they’re supposed to do. That’s what I guess they’re supposed to do, I don’t know. I’d like to see more people with knowledge in that position.

Also, a lot of those guys in that position, it’s so easy to make beats. What they really want to do? Is to get in a position to be the beatmaker and the producer and make the real money. That’s really the truth. There was a guy named John Kalodner – I’ll never forget this, I’ll always remember this because I thought this was really special. He worked with Foreigner and his interesting story is, here’s a guy, he has this long beard, right? And when Foreigner came to Atlantic, there was another A&R guy who was right under the president, and he was like, ”I don’t like them, I don’t want to sign them.” And John’s like, ”Come on man, they’re going to be hot!” He was like, “Nope!” There was this ego thing going on. The guy couldn’t even hear anymore, he wasn’t even listening, he didn’t know. So John did this thing, which I thought was very, very clever. He went to the president and he said, ”Listen.” And he’s grown his beard for years, I’m talking years. It was like down to here, you know? And he goes, ”Listen, you sign this group, and if this doesn’t happen I’ll cut my beard.”

So, I guess they thought it was funny, whatever, they went ahead with it and the rest is history. Foreigner was like mega huge. So, a couple times he’d give me instructions on mixes or something, and they were very intelligent instructions. That always threw me. They were intelligent instructions. So one day I said to John, I said, “John, you’re one of the people I’d listen to that really says something that was a good idea.” When I go back I think, ”Wow, that was a good suggestion.” I said, ”Why don’t you produce records yourself?” And he goes, ”I’m not a producer, I’m an A&R man. I find the right producers to do this stuff.” And I thought, what a freaking great answer. Because all the other guys think the opposite. They think, ”I can do that.” Was that a good story? [laughs / applause]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Um, I’m just interested. It’s a stupid question. Do you know Claude Nobs?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

From years back, from Montreux.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Yeah, yeah. But did you actually work with Atlantic at Montreux?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Claude Nobs used to do the… (tries French pronunciation) Montreux?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

The Montreux Jazz Festival. He still does.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

He still does, yeah, but that was his thing. He would come over and he would talk to Ahmet all the time. They were buddies. I just know him because I went over there one time. I recorded the first session in the new Montreux. Just so you all know; you know the old Montreux? You know how it went down? It was burned. Anybody know where Montreux is, and you know what song was written out of it? Come on!

AUDIENCE MEMBER

“Smoke on the Water.”

JIMMY DOUGLASS

That’s it! Yeah, “Smoke on the Water.” That was written about the Montreux festival burning.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

So you did also do some engineering for live shows?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

No, I was doing this Billy Cobham year of the drummer. That was great. Once again, I was on a high, I was just enjoying life, like, "Wow, this is great." I went to London to record his album. In the middle, he had to go to Montreux, so he was like, ”Come to Montreux, do the sound for me.” I’m not going to say I can’t do it. Of course I could do it. [laughs] Anybody else?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I’m someone that’s almost obsessed with the sound of some of the records you’re making. It’s like drum machines and things that sound inherently small, they don’t actually move any air. But how do you put so much space in it and make everything sound so big? Does that make any sense at all?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

It makes sense but I can’t really answer it because I can’t really think like that. I’m not hiding anything; I just don’t know the answer. I just kind of do what I do. You know what I mean?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

It’s the kind of thing where maybe you’ve done it so many thousands of times that you don’t even think about it any more?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

No.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

No?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

I don’t know. Records are so funny lately. One of the things that’s coming back is that 808 thing with the little claps. [claps his hands to imitate the sound] That’s another thing. Claps are back. I’m like, “OK, explain to me!” Once we had claps in records, it was really cool, and suddenly they’re not cool anymore. “We got a snare. Oh, the snare’s nice.” Now it’s a small snare, and all of a sudden, you got claps again. I’m like, ”Who said?” Nobody knows the answer to that one, do you?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Lil’ Jon.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Who?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Lil’ Jon.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Well, Lil' Jon started it, but the people could’ve said no. I mean, you know? I’m just saying, ”Who said?” [laughter] Who decided all of a sudden that it’s cool. It’s just a freakin’ 808, the same 808 it was 20 years ago when you got bored with it.

TOBY LAING

I got a silly question. Where’s the music going, do you reckon?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Where’s the music going? If I knew that would I be sitting here? I’d be out sucking down them things, laugh a minute.

TOBY LAING

So it’s just a constant surprise? The whole hip-hop thing could just stop overnight, and we’ve got to re-learn some skills and go on to the next thing.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

I don’t know, I don’t think you’ve got to re-learn skills. I don’t think it’s going to happen overnight. Music is no longer that way. If you look at the funk era, and the funk era did exactly what you said, it was overnight. One day it was cool, and all of a sudden it was like, ”It ain’t cool.” I mean, you can almost laugh about it, but to those that were doing it, it’s like, ”What the fuck? I was cool yesterday, now I’m not cool?” Because there was something else happening, another movement on the side, which was independent of those that push the shit down your throat, right? It was rap in its infantile stage, people at home with turntables doing their little thing, putting out records and all of a sudden they created a new movement. But that movement had a purpose to it. It had a reason why it existed. It was people talking about how they lived. I don’t see any substance in the music we have now. People are just talking shit about nothing. You know what I mean? Like the bling era’s come and gone, that was cool for a while. Now Pharrell’s talking about being in his jet. That’s great, I can relate to that, "Yeah, OK, great." I can’t relate to that! I don’t think most people can relate to that either. You’re kind of going above their heads. Hey, going above their heads, the jet, get it? Come on guys, you guys are… [laughs]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

For the second album of Bubba Sparxxx, did you do the majority of that album?

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Which one?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

His last one.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

No, the last album I didn’t do at all.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

OK, just checking because I think that album is one of his best albums because it seems – I don’t know, I was listening to that album and I think that was one of the albums that wasn’t really pushed for. Like the label wasn’t. It was a good sounding album to me. Timbaland did a good job on that album, that’s what I’m saying. [laughs]

[microphone gets passed along as two people hold up their hands]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I beat you to it! Just a final comment. I think out of all the lectures, this was probably the most pragmatic one. We’ve been talking about figures and selling. I guess what sort of makes the lecture a bit weird for us…

JIMMY DOUGLASS

It’s weird for you?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

In a sense because we have been talking about topics that are perhaps something we don’t really have to deal with.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Today.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Yeah, today. For example, you were saying the funk era ended overnight, I guess for all of us it was never over and we never lived it. And good acid jazz or whatever, good soul, it never really lost anything. My impression is that perhaps for such a knowledgeable producer as yourself, you’re seeing things from a perspective that is perhaps focused on the present all the time. Maybe you lose track of the fact that the work you’ve done before is also vital to all of us here and still as a reference tool. And although you might think right now it’s not hot, there’s a record in history of what you’ve done. Maybe people here, we’re talking about Donny Hathaway and all that. For us, it’s like classical music. It’s sort of a crystal in time, and it’ll be eternal and it’ll be always a reference for everyone. Same with Slave and all – much more than I guess the recent stuff you’ve been showing us. The old stuff you did in that era is really going to shine forever. It’s not going to last for a month or so, like probably these beats we have been hearing. So this is my final closure if I’m entitled to one.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

No, that’s cool. I only use that stuff to actually show the reference of the stuff I had the advantage of having that probably a lot of people are never going to have. That puts me in another place. I’m not separating myself from those that I work with now, but there’s certain things. It’s a gift. To be able to witness that? It’s fucking ridiculous. But at the same time I understand what it’s worth today. I made a statement about the music before, and this is one thing I really stay with. I believe that music is marked. For every generation that comes along, you mark music with the emotions that you’re feeling in your life. And what I mean by that is, if you’re 15, 16, 17 or whatever, and you’re getting into your shit with the she and the he or whatever it is, those hormones that start to grow inside of us, then the music that’s playing will be burned inside your mind forever. It’ll never ever go away. And I’m adding to what you just said, but I’m just saying, I’m legitimizing the music of the day saying there’s a generation of people that some of this stuff, they’re going to remember it forever because it had to do with their lives. And that’ll never go away. Those feelings, you’re never going to forget that. The music becomes a sort of soundscape for those emotions. I’ve witnessed that, and I always think to myself, “That’s what will keep music alive.” Regardless, it could be a club joint. It doesn’t matter what it is. When you’re going through that, whoever’s around is down.

TOBY LAING

Yeah. [applause] It’s been great having you here today, Jimmy. And you’ve given us a perspective that I think what he was trying to say, it hasn’t been weird for us! It’s been interesting to us because everyone here is into underground music and you’ve brought a perspective which is bridging both of those things. Commercial music, you can talk about how bad labels are, but man, that’s an important level of our culture. And it’s a global part of our culture, and this man’s music is traveling ’round the world. It’s touching people in New Zealand, it’s touching people everywhere. So, I want to thank you very much for all the work you’re doing in the studio, and it’s been very nice to hear the things you’ve got to say.

JIMMY DOUGLASS

Thank you. [applause]