And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 95: Daniel Lanois

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

He is one of the world’s most influential music makers. An artist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, visual artist, and producer. Hailing from Hull, Quebec, this guest is the sonic shaper and spiritual inspiration of albums by the likes of U2, Neil Young, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou Harris, and Bob Dylan. An ambient music pioneer, his unique and innovative approach to sound is a key ingredient to the many well-loved songs he’s written over the past four decades that appear on his critically acclaimed solo albums such as ‘Acadie,’ ‘The Beauty of Wynona,’ ‘Shine’ and Grammy-nominated ‘Belladonna.’ His music, whether vocal or instrumental, has always maintained a cinematic quality, which carries through to his steel guitar symphony projects ‘Flesh And Machine’ and ‘Goodbye To Language’ albums. Most recently, he co-wrote and produced the ‘Red Dead Redemption 2 Soundtrack’ and is currently working on his upcoming project, ‘Daniel Lanois & Heavy Sun’, soon to be released via eOne. “The road is calling as the music keeps on guiding me through the labyrinths of song, messages, and inventions. Surrounded one more time by talent I admire, this new body of work features harmony singing with built-in capacity to raise the spirit." And The Writer Is...Daniel Lanois!Art: Michael Richey White Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey guys, welcome to Ann the writer is. I'm your host, Ross Golan. I've written with hundreds of artists and writers over the years, and my favorite part of each session is the first hour when we catch up about life, the industry, politics, composition, whatever. So this is a journey of learning why people write songs, how people write songs, and most importantly, who the people are who write the songs.

I'm producing this with the Great Joe London, big deal music publishing, and mega house music management. If you want to listen to the songs we discuss in this podcast, follow us on our socials, find out about special live events, or buy that merch, aka that hat I always wear. Go to our website www. and the writer is.com. For a little bit of context,

we just wanted you to know that a lot of these were recorded before quarantine. And as we know, a lot has changed in 2020. So again, please stay safe out there. and enjoy the new episodes of The Writer is. Yeah, we good? I do the same thing when I always trying to get that first. I always try to not, especially when there's a music bed first of any sort, to try not to hear it until I'm in a booth and with the mic going.

And it's amazing how many times we've freestyled songs that, you know, are heard throughout the world kind of thing. at least the parts of it, even if 20% of that first take has like that improv emotion in it, you know? Oh yeah, man. I went through that when I made a record with Emmy Lou Harris. We did all live vocals. And I always made sure that Emmy sang two more right away. Okay, it looks like we have a take, Emmy.

Would you sing another vocal? please and would you sing another one and because she's so good that first vocal was likely it but if there was a funny phrase or maybe she didn't like the way she sang online then we had two backups to go to it and she said to me

historically whenever she went in to try a vocal again a few weeks later it was never as good yeah of course of course so in support of what you'd just said spirit of the moment, freshness, all that. All right, here, I'm going to do the intro and then we'll get into it. Okay.

All right. Welcome to, and the writer is, I am your host, Ross Golan. Today's seven-time Grammy-winning multi-diamond certified maestro has constructed an incomparable discography as he continues to leave his mark on music history. Now entering his sixth decade as a writer-producer, this man has defined some of the the most iconic careers in artists of all time and continues to push the boundaries of composition to this day. In addition to transforming popular music with artists like you two, Peter Gabriel, and Bob Dylan, this guy's unequal talent now underscores one of the biggest video games of all

time. This Quebec C-Bos Canadian began making prodigious productions at 17 before turning into a wizard with a star on Canada's Walk of Fame. What a pleasure to hear the story of this unique overachiever and the writer is Daniel Lanhois. Boy, Russell, that was quite an intro. My goodness. I think maybe even some of that's accurate. Oh yeah, okay, yes, of course. You know, I always want to start from the beginning because I think the

the shocking thing of somebody once described I called you a wizard but somebody wants to describe the music industry in the context of Harry Potter to me and you know it's just describing muggles and wizards you know the people who've made a living at it are wizards and so I always think it's really interesting

to see how does a wizard find his way to Hogwarts so to finish the metaphor So in 1951, you're born. Then what happens? Where were you born? I was born in a place called Gettino, which is in Quebec, about an hour from Montreal and Canada. And I grew up as a French-Canadian child. Did you speak French growing up?

Did your parents speak French? Yes, we spoke only French until I was nine or ten years. old and then we moved to Hamilton, which is near Toronto or near Buffalo on the Canadian side, and I switched to English at that time. What kind of music did you grow up doing? Did your parents play music in the house? Were they musicians too? I grew up listening to French-Canadian violin music.

My grandfather was a pretty good violonaut. Violinux is a fiddler, so he knew a lot of the traditional music. traditional jigs and my dad also played. My dad wasn't as good as my grandpa. But I grew up listening to a lot of these melodies, you know, beautiful melodies, things like, ah, and da, and da, and da, and da, and do. And those melodies are still in my head today, you know, So I'm glad they played them. And there was piano playing as well. But it was a self-entertaining culture, you know.

We didn't come from money, so there were just parties at home, and the violins would come out at a certain point, and the old guys would do this little tap dance. And it was all very charming. How old were you when you first started playing? I started playing when I was nine. Who introduced you to that, just your parents saying, hey now you have to go and play.

I saw a clarinet player on TV and I fell in love with the clarinet. Really? I thought one day I'd like to play the clarinet. And my mom used to give me a dollar a week to go to the movies. And on Saturday, on this one Saturday I walked by a music store and I saw something that looked a bit like a clarinet for a dollar. And I went in and I bought it, but it was just a plastic penny whistle. sure of course

is what it was and I loved that penny whistle and I played it and I didn't go to the movies anymore and I got better and better at it and I drove everybody crazy playing this little whistle so that was the beginning

I mean there's not really a there's we were just talking before we started recording about how Canada produces such incredible talent and we've talked about it on this podcast before because we've had so many of these legends

from Canada but why you know why do great musicians come from Canada what is it about Canadian culture that supports

young musicians well speaking for myself I just loved what I was hearing on the radio as a child we didn't have a record collection at home I think we had two records a Saravan record

and a Frank Sinatra record but I I love the radio, and I'm speaking now from having lived in Hamilton. Hamilton is near, it's sandwiched between Detroit and Buffalo. So I got to hear a lot of soul music on radio, and I love what I heard, and I just became fascinated with all of it, and I wanted to know more about it, and then I got myself a little tape recorder, and I started doing home recordings. It was an all-in-one recorder.

It was just this little machine. It came with a mic and had speakers on board and everything, and I started recording my friends. And so that was beginning of the recording studio. But all along, I was listening to radio. And, you know, I caught the wave, the coming of Motown, the coming of surf music. I loved, you know, the safaris when I was a kid,

you know, listening to Wipeout and Surfer Joe was the flip side of Wipeout on the 45. And you mentioned Paul Ancock before. How does that song go? You're so young and I'm so old. This, my darling, I've been told. But you and I will be as free as the birds up in the tree.

Please, please be with me, Diana. So I heard Diana on radio, and I was like, I thought, oh, that sounds great. I wonder who Diana is. And there were no music magazines. So all you had to look at was made the back of a vinyl record, and it made one photograph, and it was all this mystery. And I loved the world of mysteries. Radio is my friend.

But to buy a tape recorder is such a sort of in Hamilton, Canada feels like that's a fairly random act to do when you know you've you've at this point played other instruments but even just looking at a the back of a vinyl to buying a tape recorder is sort of a jump somebody must say oh we got to actually record this music on a on some tape do you have any what what inspires you to say oh yeah you know I'm going to record my friends and make music Well, when I found this little recorder, it seemed so instant. It was just a flea market, you know, I think it was for sale. Somebody was moving down the street and they had a recorder.

I think they may even have given it to me. And I got to play my penny whistle. And I just press record, play the penny whistle, and then rewind and play back, press the play button. I hear my penny whistle. Isn't that great? And it went from there. Crazy. Do you remember your first recordings, what they were called,

even of your friends? Do you have any of the first music that you recorded? I don't have the very first ones, no. But, you know, we had, there were some other kids on the block that played, and we formed a little band, and they'd come over, and I'd record them. And it was so much fun, because if somebody was too loud, then they'd just, do you mind, you know, sitting back a little? little further way and the singer a little closer and I started learning about

about blend by proximity. I think it's, you know, 17 years old is, you know, seems to be when you, I don't know if you called yourself a producer at that point, but that seems to be when you were doing your first recordings, right? Yes, I was doing, I was very busy as a teenager, let's say 17, yeah. No, I never called myself a producer. or I just had a little studio, and people would come over, and I'd help them out the best I could,

and I just love the whole process. But around that time, maybe I was a little older when this happened, I was connected with a Christian music association in Canada, and they brought touring quartets from all over the world, gospel quartets, and one of the stops was my studio, And we make a record in two days. So I made a lot of gospel records as a teenager. And this was a very big part of my education

because I got to hear the structure of the four parts. And I was already pretty good with melody, you know, having come from Quebec with the violin melodies and all that. So I was able to experience the position of the support roles to the melody. And, you know, without going to school, I was in the hotbed of a great education. Yeah, I mean, those people who've been on tour, they also, you know, they're not coming,

they probably weren't just writing in the studio. At this point, they were well rehearsed and what they were doing. So I imagine a lot of the parts that you were recording were well thought out between those, the members of these bands. That's right. In the case of these gospel records,

whatever they were singing on tour is what went on the record. Did any of those songs ever make Canadian radio that you were recording. What's the first time you actually were able to walk into a store and buy one of your records? Well,

specifically this gospel chapter of my life, I guess these folks just sold records at their shows out of the trunks of their cars. I started a little record company because of this. I started providing a service of

a thousand pieces of vinyl and the artwork and my brother Bob and I we had this little so we record a band and then they picked up the records two weeks later in boxes and we had a little markup

we weren't a label we just provided we drove to Toronto and did the mastering and had the records made and handed them to people I mean that's a real record label it is that's an independent record label that's an independent record label what was it called

we were called master sound recording amazing did you want to move to Toronto or Detroit I mean what keeps you in Hamilton at that point just age well it's where my mother set up the family

and I tried to get a job in Toronto I was a pretty good guitar player as a teenager so I was doing sessions in Toronto and I like the whole scene, the recording scene and but nobody wanted to give me a job. And so I thought, well, I don't know, you know, maybe there was other people that had the job and they didn't want to give it to me. And so I thought, well, I'll just keep pushing the button on my own recording studio and keep building it up and maybe I don't need to get a job somewhere else.

So I'm self-taught really with all that. What was the first time you worked with sort of an international artist, an American? Well, I worked with Rick James, who was from Buffalo. He's American. Did he come to your studio in Hamilton? He came to my studio in Hamilton because I had a buddy, Eddie Roth, played Oregon with Rick. And he said, well, maybe you should record with this kid in Hamilton. and that's how it started.

Is that intimidating? I could not believe it was happening. He was so talented. He laid down the drums first and then the bass line and he did all the overdubs himself. And I was on a four track back then so we would fill up three tracks, bouncing down and then keep filling up tracks

and doing bounces. But in a matter of 20 minutes, Rick would have this incredible track pouring out of the speakers and I was speechless. I didn't even know how it happened because he was that talented and striking. It was unbelievable.

I thank him for providing me with yet another level of great education. Whenever you get to that next level, you know, that Rick James level, was it hard then to work with, you know, those touring

gospel records or something? Or is it just sort of whatever showed up is just what you would do. Whatever showed up. I was running a recording studio. I wasn't a songwriter then. I was an accomplished player, and I was happy to be that.

I was a hired guitar player for touring bands in Canada. Why weren't you a songwriter? I don't know. I was happy to be of service to other people. I really liked the recording studio. and the innovation that came our way. And I felt that I like being helpful to people.

What made you want to be a writer? What made you end up writing at all? That came much later. Let's move the clock forward to when I was working with Brian Eno. I made a lot of ambient records with Brian. And I loved him so much. I thought, man, this is. but God's sin that he came into my life.

And I like that he was really devoted to ambient music, which was a pretty obscure music. But we spent all our time processing sounds, and it was just the most fantastic thing that happened in my life at that time. And having made a bunch of ambient records, he started a little label called Opel Records with his wife. at the time, Anthea and Norman Taylor. And Anthea said to me,

would you like to make a record for our label? I never thought of making a record because I was a studio rat. And I said, okay, I'll get started, and that was my first batch of songs. Crazy. How did you meet Brian? I met Brian through these two women from Toronto. They were called The Time Twins.

We made some demos together, and they were were very inventive, super smart girls that, you know, and they love all the crazier stuff in the studio. They took those demos to New York, bumped into Eno, played Eno the recordings. He said, oh, these sound curiously inventive. And how did you make this? He said, well, this kid in Hamilton,

and we like working with him. So Eno had a girlfriend in Toronto at that time, so he just called up and booked a session. I had never heard of them. And he just shows up at your door. That's right. Did you think of what you were doing as inventive? Or when you're, you know, as you were saying,

you're making music sort of service to these artists that are coming in, were you thinking of it in terms of this is my stamp on this music? Or are you, is it just naturally what you do is what Brian heard as inventive? I think we always had an inclination to, go to the unusual. I worked with a good record producer at that time, Billy Bryan's, and he was always pushing me to, let's weird it up a bit, you know,

try this kind of a sound. What about making the detail really loud in the front, a character, put it in the background, and he was always a supporter of, and he was a good drummer himself. So we had a nice relationship and made some, he was the one who was producing the time, wins for example you know not me i was i was the studio engineer um but i i like the inventive stuff and

i always had a a liking for going in a different direction than other people you know doing ambient music which obviously you know a lot of the stuff that you've done you know when you're talking about fast forward 40 years later and you're doing scoring for video games and you've done ambient music on and off for years it's sometimes really hard for people to define the difference between music and songs

when do you do music when do you produce songs well the more we do this the more collisions we experience you know that I was talking to Wayne on the way over here, if we could segue

to a U2 song called, I still haven't found what I'm looking for. It started up with a drumbeat that Larry had played on a jam and the jam didn't go anywhere, but the beat was always my favorite.

And so I cherished that beat and I did some work on it, you know, cut it up a little bit and played it back for the band and Edge came in with a ding zang, gizigizang, dcigiz-d-d-d-d-don-don on top of it, and it became that song. So who would think that a drumbeat would be the seed for the message of that song? So the point being that we never know where they come from.

Sometimes we might start with a texture. But for sure, the one thing that is constant is the beginning always has to have magic. that's what we look for. When you say cut up, you know, now people who are listening to this are used to, oh, you copy and paste on, you know, Pro Tools or whatever there, DAs. But you were quite literally cutting tape and moving patterns around. Describe what it's like to hear a drum pattern in real time and then think, okay, I'm going to cut this actual tape

and put it in order that you're hearing, or was it always an experiment? Well, specifically in the days of tape recorders, I would just make copies. I always chop my 24 tracks, so the drums were likely recorded on six or eight tracks. And if I found a section I liked that deserved to be repeated,

then we'd make a 20-4. 24-track copy and then chop that into the original 24 track. And hopefully the levels are such that all works. The bass drum always suffer a little bit. Oh, no, the copy's not quite as nice.

But we'd compensate. But what's nice about that gets you thinking about arrangements. Like, oh, okay, well, that's going pretty good. Okay, we're at the 1. 1 minute 37 mark. Why don't we bring in that fill here? So to cut something together was a lot of fun.

And specifically with Larry Mullen, he always played to a click. And so we had the luxury of fixed time, so the edits always worked up pretty good. Yeah, with a drummer like that, I'm sure. So, you know, at this point, let's go back and a little bit chronologically, you meet Brian, you guys are doing ambient music, and he's really, the artist and a lot of it but you guys were doing it together did you feel like you wanted to be an artist at all during that or were you inspired or were you just enjoying being behind the scenes I was I was enjoying being serving Brian Eno's vision that's all I wanted to do

and we when we got into making these ambient records I stopped doing everything else I thought this is more interesting than what I've been doing otherwise and I just went full force with Brian, I devoted my entire life to making these records with him. And he was the kindest person, the most inventive, and the records were strange. And I thought, this man's vision really suits me. And he was very, very kind to me. And he included me as a composer in some of the tracks

because he figured that the labor that I was pouring into this, qualified as composition ultimately. Agreed. I can't say enough about it. It's a gods. When how does you know, you two shows up

in the picture, young for them, young for you, how does that happen? How is it that you end up you're making ambient music with a legend you guys are now collaborators and then in comes one of the hotter bands,

but they still were nowhere near, you know, what we know of now. How do they show up? And why then, if you're so inspired by doing this, you know, Brian's albums, why work with you too? Well, it's a bit of a funny story because Brian Eno got the invitation to work with you too. And he said his response was, I'm not producing any records anymore. Just making my own work and I'm not interested.

And a demo had been sent. And I said, well, let's at least listen to what they sent, shall we? And he was living at my house at that time, you know. And so we listened to the recordings. I said, I don't know, the kid's got something, you know. Check out this thing. And he's hitting those high notes. That's kind of rare, isn't it?

He's like, I don't know, man. I'm not producing records anymore. I said, come on. Let's at least go and see them. And he agreed to at least have a meeting and went to Ireland together. I said, listen, man, if you don't want to produce them, let me do it. But you should make an introduction. And would you at least do that for me?

And he said, okay. So we went to see them in Dublin. And Bono being the politician that he is, he convinced Eno and myself that we're now producing the new YouTube record. Do you remember what the demo was? Well, I listened to the records they had already made with Steve Lilly White, and they were great. And the demos were, I don't remember specifically what they were. I think there was a lot of... Because when Bono sings, if the song is not fully formed, he still sings as if it is formed.

And he convinces people that he's singing lyrics. When you start listening closely, he's like, oh, wow. Maybe he's not... It's the curse of listening to a good singer, too. It's hard to tell what a good song is. It's hard to tell if it's a demo or not, because everything he sings probably just sounded like... But he was very, very convincing.

We like what we heard. We thought we were hearing finished songs, but that was not entirely true, of course. But some of the playbacks were driving around Dublin, the whole band of me, you know, in the back, and it's blaring. and it's like lots of arms waving and and uh were you living in dublin during the recording of it oh absolutely i was living at the gresham hotel did you like that i love dublin i love the gresham hotel

me and eno used to stop they had these little um casino arcades on the way to work and we'd always stop because eno liked to gamble and he always won really oh we always had a little much money I think it would just like so one-armed bandits and you know just it's pretty low-level stuff but we always always got to the studio

of a little pocket change that's really the first album that becomes an international success for you as a producer writer right the the U-2 work went very

international how did that change your motives as a musician. You know, you have such, I mean, it's one thing when you're working on music that's respected and stuff that's successful in your home country, you know, you've worked with obviously some legends

at that point, Rick and Brian and whatnot, but it's a different thing when you're sort of watching a worldwide phenomenon happen. Well, I was always a very insecure teenager, and young man, I'm still that way now. You know, because I was French, and it took me a while to learn English, and I always felt, and I never went to school.

So I always felt a little inferior, but I knew that I was pretty good in the studio, and I had my talent. But when I got to Ireland, I was able to apply my skills and my knowledge to, to the work at hand and I think that's what

the fellas and you too appreciated about me yeah I was a pretty good engineer in that but they appreciated that I had musical knowledge and I was able to help them with harmonies and maybe the baseline should go here and they figured that okay well this guy's

musical and I knew I knew more because I had studied music I knew more about music than they did in the studied way and they really appreciated that I was able to bring that to the sandbox. And I loved Larry's drumming. And he was a great high hat player.

He always had, you know, one of the best of the time. And I made a simple suggestion to him. I said, you know what you're doing on the hi-hat? Let's move the timbali over here and do half the figure on the timbali. so do do do that that that that do go do that that that do go do that that get that and then opened up this whole box of possibilities based on his high hat skills hitting other things hitting things other than just the high hat sure and then that's it we've got some new beats out of it it's what makes of producers that you know there there aren't that many producers who want to hit random things and record random things. But there are the certain producers

who can't wait to hit that file cabinet over there to record that because that's going to have more attack than other things than a normal kit. The idea of just playing with stuff is fun. I'll give you a little secret here. You go to Chinatown.

You can get one of those little fans. You know, they have a hand-painted fans for fanning your face when there's a heat wave. And you get a pencil and you use the eraser head of the pencil and you put the fan really close to the mic and you hit it softly, boom,

and you turn up your mic pre, and you get a bass drum sound out of it. Try that on. Did you ever use it on a record that we know or anything else? Have you used it a lot? Hey, Wayne, let's go to Chinatown, pick up some of those fans. I was making records,

back in Canada now, making records with a group called Martha and the Muffins and they liked all that stuff so those records have a lot of those kinds of sounds like. You know, you follow up that year and, you know, so for Peter Gabriel

becomes also just a massive phenomenon. It's sort of right when MTV is just peaking, it feels like these videos are massive. The songs are just so big. It's, you know, you're starting to get nominated and for Grammys

and, you know, songs are just hits are just pouring out. You know, I know that Joshua Tree comes on the heels of that. Do you start thinking that it's easy? Do you even look at things like charts and were you into the business

of what was happening around you? Or were you still such a studio rat that you were studioing? Let's get one thing straight. Nothing is easy. Nothing. We just hope that we bump into some magic, and once we have that, we add to it.

That's the formula. And how does magic come our way? Blood, sweat, and tears, and patience. But in regards to, you know, suddenly there's hit records, I remember come from LaGuardia to Manhattan, and the taxi driver had the radio on, and I heard one of my productions and I was in tears

do you remember which song was I think it was it was one of the U-2 songs that might have been pride in the name of love yeah did your family understand what was happening in Hamilton well yeah my mom

she was so proud that all those years in the basement had come to this this new position now let's segue to I take my mom as my date to the Grammy Awards

and I win the producer of the year award and she comes backstage with me and Tony Bennett got got one that year and she got to hang with Tony and my mom very good looking and Tony took a shine to my mom

I look over and Tony Bennett is given my mom I'm a foot massage in the back of Radio City music hall. I was like, my goodness, you know. How about how many kids get to do that for their moms? Tony Bennett gave you. And it made her sister. It made her sisters jealous.

What? Tony Bennett is giving you a foot massage? Like for my mom's era, you know, this is pretty big stuff. I mean, legendary. Tony hit on my mom. That's good. Dude, that's shocking. Between those years of So and Joshua Tree,

after this, you know, it's the first time you work with Bob Dylan. Neville brothers in the 80s couldn't have gotten bigger than that. But one of the things that's most interesting is how different these projects are from each other. did you always seek out artists that were different from the last artist? Because I would imagine a U2 comes up, 6,000 U2 wannabes, you know, then call you to say, will you produce this? And you jump ship from that because you're like,

that's what I do with YouTube, but I'm going to do something different. Who is advising you to do that? Is that instinctual to write on different things? Well, I was looking to broaden my education and so my going to let's talk about the Neville brothers for a minute I never thought I would make a record with them

but I wanted to go to New Orleans because I wanted to hear where the funk had come from and to be because in Canada we at that time there wasn't a lot of great bass playing and the bass lines that I admired had come from the south

and so I decided to go to New Orleans to hear some of that music music and sure enough I heard great bass lines I heard great bass lines coming from tubas and I thought myself oh that's where a lot of the funk comes from because the tuba players and those great marching bams are playing things like bop bopo bopo bopo bopo bopo and the drums rock to duck duck duck duck da da da bha i thought this is it that's where the meters got their thing I don't think they got it from the upright bass I think they got it from the tuba and I loved it all

I just soaked it all in and I thought okay I've come to the right place to learn more about bottom end about bass lines and then word got out that I was in town and an introduction was made and I did some demos with the Nelma brothers and we just went from there

I made the demos in my apartment I had a 12 track of Kai at this point it recorded on kind of a videotape Sure And I think I had a built-in No I had a Hill mixer And a 12-track of Kai And I mixed down onto a Sony cassette machine

A little, a really nice little Sony cassette machine And they'd all be built on board and everything And I recorded the Nebbels And it went fantastic And I tried Well, maybe it's okay to let the can out of the bag now, but two of the songs on that record were, I used the cassette mixes.

So we mastered from cassette. Crazy. The ones you did in the, like that you started in that. I recorded in my apartment, and those songs, those mixes show up on Yellow Moon. They came from cassette. Amazing. Working with Bob Dylan, you know, he's from Minnesota.

it's probably from north of where you, from Hamilton. Did you grow up listening to, that seems to be the first one where it's really before, his introduction to the music industry is before your time. Yes. You know, what's it like to work with someone like that versus you too, who is kind of the new kid on the block,

and then you have someone like Bob, what's it like to have to follow up somebody's legacy, already. Well, the introduction to work with Bob, the matchmaking was done by Bono. He saw Bob and he said, you should work with this kid. I think he'd be great together. And so that's how that came to be. Thank you, Bono.

It was quite a, I mean, I'm not very star-struck because I've always been working in the recording studio. so we're used to working with people who have big reputations and so on. But it was quite a, if we could use a contemporary term, quite a challenge to work with Bob because he had done so much great work. And I was reading between the lines of the invitation that I was meant to be the guy who might bring him back to visibility with a masterpiece of sorts, you know. So I knew I had to make a masterpiece, and that's a lot of pressure.

Do you like that pressure? I like the pressure. I want to make masterpieces. I don't want to make average records that people forget. I want to make records that touch hearts that live on. I was going to ask you this later, but right after the first Bob album comes out, you have had success with a lot of these people, but the next phase really is that all these artists came back to you.

Most producers, they work with an artist and they move on to something else, and the artist moves on to something else, and no one has an attention span, and no one has loyalty. This is not the industry for that. Let's talk about attention span and loyalty. I'm glad you mentioned those, because when I was making records with those folks, they had my full attention.

No distractions. I never talked about other work. I was not picking up the phone lining up the next thing. I was completely devoted to the matter at hand. And that's a big part of why we made records that resonated true to the artists. And I would say that that's probably why I got called back. Danny's not distracted. And he loves us.

And he wants to do his best work with us. Do you think producers and writers today have any hope in being focused? I mean, I know a couple guys who are. who are really good about turning everything off once they walk in the door. I mean, ask Wayne is sitting right there. I'm not on the phone while we're in the studio. Our values have not shifted too much that way. The coming of the cell phone has meant that people are just automatically more distracted.

I'm not saying that in a critical way. It's just a different time, you know. I'll tell you a funny telephone story. Back to Dublin. when I first worked with YouTube in order to make a phone call out of Ireland you had to book it a week ahead if you wanted to call internationally

for me to call my mom I'd have to say all right Saturday morning at 10 I mean it wasn't that long ago I think you think of that as being you know an old gramophone where it's you know the earpiece to the ear and you're holding the base on the other hand I don't think that people realize

that that's not that long ago to have to do that. It's amazing. But, you know, this next phase, you have Actung Baby and us, you know, for Peter Gabriel, Acton Baby, you too, obviously. Again, you get these sort of,

you get the waves that are going along with these artists. Are you finding any new voices in your productions for yourself? Or was the trying to create a masterpiece? Was that pushing you in a certain way? to create something different than you had previously, or were you still serving them as, you know, songwriter-producer relationships? Well, what we haven't talked about yet is what people are going through in their lives.

And that's probably the psychologist in me understood that very early on, that I'm not just here to record songs, and we don't know where they come from, and, you know, I'm here to make a record with somebody who has feelings who has lived through something, maybe a lost love, or maybe there's something politically happening, as was the case in Ireland at that time. What are these people being driven by in their lives?

And so when I realized how important that was, I pushed that button and made sure that I paid attention. So our philosophical exchange, you know the talks at dinners and going to a club singing in the rain crying in the rain dancing in the rain whatever was happening I started paying attention to all that and I realized at that time that my responsibility was to make sure that that got on the record and that and that would make for a truer record in the end and not just a good song and a good singer I mean I'm wrong with that but the records I was making with people

at that time, I knew that they had something to say that was coming from inside. Working with such political artists, even Emmylou Harris later, you know, but Bob Dylan and Bono are pretty vocal. Did you ever disagree politically, or were you pretty much in sync with them? I don't remember ever having disagreements, philosophical disagreements with people. I was always interested in what they had to say because a lot of these people had lived a lot more life than myself.

You know, I never went to school. I was isolated, but people like Eno had been to art school and had already been to New York making Remain in Light. So I thought to myself, this is the man who made Remainant Light. And I'm just going to shut up

and listen to what he has to say. And so I became the sponge of information and I thought to myself, for a kid who never went to school, I'm now in the best school in the world. And I'll just listen to what people have to say. But when they asked for my opinion, I would give them a proper opinion.

And usually it was a very educated one. I was informed, and I was able to offer advice not only about how music can be constructed, but how their voice could be heard within a song. Did you have a personal life? I mean, with all the amount of music that you're doing and the devotion you've had to music,

did you have a personal life? Well, that's pretty interesting. Could I diplomatically say that I gave up a lot? Yeah. When I worked in England with Peter Gabriel, we made that soul record at a farm in a barn, really. and the farmhouse I lived at the top floor of the farmhouse

and I lived for nothing else I took no calls and I had no social life never went out much and I had a girlfriend at the time she visited a couple of times and she thought I was getting fat were you?

I was getting fat Was she right? She was right everything is cream on cream what's for dinner cream asparagus What's for dessert? Cream on creams

Even in the morning You get that scone with the It's like It's what is I always read it as Carotid cream Which is not correct But it's not incorrect

Either Oh Cream you don't know the meaning of it I tell you man I mean I'm recording I'm recording in a barn One window And I look out the window

I see a cow And I'm not exaggerating The cow's face is on the window And I know we're having cream for dinner. Yeah, for sure. Looking at you, being like, you better enjoy this.

This is not easy being a cow. But sacrifices is what you're talking about. What are we willing to give up for our first love? And in my case, a lot, my friend, a lot. What do you do it for?

It's what I know best. It's what I do best. It's what I love the most. and what it has done from me it has allowed me to be surrounded by people I admire which is one of my latest slogans I'm very very fortunate to be in the presence of people that are devoted hearts

Wayne Lorenz is sitting right there he's my co-producer he doesn't like me to call him that because he likes to be in the shadows but without Wayne I wouldn't be as good as I am currently that's interesting you know at the end of that sentence

you just said currently staying up on trends as a musician doesn't always really make you you as a musician you know I was I was watching this

master class with this author and they were talking about how they're that maybe what they're do just isn't it just isn't right for right now but that doesn't mean that they don't just keep doing what they do and they stay focused on themselves and on their craft rather than chasing trends you've managed to get in and out of different eras doing what you do and I know we've sort of talked about that but I don't know why why stay current

well and how do you stay current? If you try and stay current then it's not going to happen I don't think and then you're chasing something that's already happened but

getting back to a magic beginning of something that will always be current as a bedrock you know I have my tools we can I hear current music

that has Roland 808 on it I still have my rolling 808 on it I still have my rolling 808. In fact, we're working on a track right now that has a rolling 808 on it, and it sounds current. Yeah. It's a very old box, but, you know, it's still, I don't know what to say about current. I appreciate that some of the hip-hop records I hear have some of the best fidelity.

You know, as a recordist, I'm always, always have an ear open to what sounds the best. and I've been very impressed with what I've heard from hip-hop people. And so I see that as a bit of a fidelity benchmark to operate by... Have you wanted to work in hip-hop? Have you worked in hip-hop? It's kind of odd that I haven't because I'm very rhythmic. And I guess the closest being that I co-wrote and produced a track for Red Dead Redemption, you know we did a song called Unshaken with DeAngelo

we did it in New York City and that's a beautiful sounding tracks got all that fidelity, great bottom end and obviously fabulous singing from DeAngelo so that's as close as I've come to the hip-hop world and I was hoping that would be a little bit of an advert out there for people to call me up well maybe this is

well I promise you you'll get some phone calls after this you know I just want to give some shout-outs to some of the albums that you did from where we left off just because they became so influential but time out of mind for Bob Dylan was really you know

maybe is to me that's one of his biggest albums in the last you know certainly in the last 30 years it's maybe the biggest influence at least for me as a writer. Willie Nelson, you get to work with Willie. Then you have all that you can't leave behind with you two.

Another one, another big album. Do you appreciate it differently as your discography goes on? When you're in those moments and you have another hit, is there, do you ever question if the next one's going to come? Do you not even think about that? I try and not think about whether it's going to keep coming my way or not. But when I look back at those records that we made at that time, I realized that they were part of what we were going through as technicians, as human beings,

what we're going through emotionally. And I look back and I see blocks of usually five-year blocks where there was an inclination to go a certain direction. when we were making the ambient records in Hamilton, we then went to Ireland to work with U-2 and some of those sonic values, let's call them, made their way to those people's work. I wouldn't make a record like that now,

but at that time is what we were most excited about. And so we caught, we managed to make a record at a time of, of excitement about what we were doing. And that's probably the most important lesson to catch it, to snap the camera, you just take that picture, we just cut the light, it's just right. And there was a little star on the edge of the glasses

and blah, but yeah, we got it, we captured it. And you try and recreate that photograph and it'll never happen. So that's why they're called records. It's meant to be a recording of something that was happening at that special that was happening at that time. What happens

throughout the, you know, it starts to amp up in the 90s and the aughts and so on, you really start pursuing being an artist yourself and putting out your own albums. Why

make the jump? Why do that to yourself? Being an artist sucks. It's hard as shit. I know. Everyone's looking at you now. You went from being the guy who got away with, you know, being able to do something as weird as sledgehammer

and sit back there and be like, hi, you have to go and perform that now. Have a blast. And now you have to go. And why would you do that to yourself? Why be an artist? I know. I ask that question myself. Well, Antoine Norman Taylor and Brian Eno are responsible.

They said, why don't you make a record? Oh, okay. what am I going to make a record about? And I, at that time, I thought, well, I will make a record about the songs will be about how I grew up. That way they'll be true. So I wrote songs about my family, about my parents splitting up, about the native community near where I grew up on the Grand River. And I just started writing songs about what I knew. And I was wise enough at that time because I wasn't a child.

I was wise enough to know that that's what resonates with other people ultimately. If you make something that's true to yourself, then they might feel they're involved because people like truth. That's the basis of comedy. True. And also vulnerability, Ricky Reed, one of our friends, and producers said that he was telling me how vulnerability, is the currency of social media now

because people are so used to putting up walls everywhere and the idea of being able to say you know to say my parents split up is already you know for you to say that is already a vulnerable thing to do maybe you're used to saying it but it's not less vulnerable for me is hearing that for the first time well that's a good point

in modern times we like to show our best side all the time I'm having a great time and here's a photograph to prove it but comes song if you had a broken heart you're not going to say hey I'm dating

every night of the week no I have a broken heart and that's what has to make its way to the song I guess maybe did you ever say anything in any of your sorry to interrupt but did you ever say anything in any of your songs that you felt so vulnerable that you weren't sure if you should release it? Yes, I felt that way about some of my songs.

I thought, well, maybe it's a little too personal. But I changed some of the names of the characters in my songs. You know, my mother's name is not Louise, but Goli Louise is about my mother. You know, and so I think all writers write from personal experience, and we may change the names of our characters. Do you enjoy touring? Do you enjoy performing out? I'm enjoying playing live now more than ever.

Let's move to immediate times, current times. I'm writing songs with Johnny Shepard. and Rocco de Luca, and we have a little band called Heavy Sun. So it's Daniel Lanwa and Heavy Sun. And when I play with these guys, I feel a real kinship. I feel that feeling that I had as a kid and my first band is there now. And I appreciate that these guys also have, they're all hungry and everybody wants to do it.

And when we play live, we have a lovely exchange. and that's what people in the audience appreciate about us. They feel that we're really taking a risk and we have this communication, and it's pretty far away from cookie cutter and, you know, a tour in production where every lighting move is connected with the audio. So we're the opposite of that.

We're very resourceful at a given moment on stage, and I really appreciate that it's pulling what I have in me as a guitar player I like to respond to other people so I can rise to the occasion at a dynamic moment and that's very special. What's success for that band? That band, they're really...

We really enjoyed the songwriting process and it's part of what we're here today for is about songwriting. Johnny Shepard is our organist. He came up in a Baptist church. He never sang outside of church until recent times. And Johnny's enjoying writing songs with myself and Rocco. And being a church man, a song has to have a message.

And he will not be involved if the song is not, doesn't have, will not make its way to joy and provide, you know, something for a listener to, has to raise the spirit. So I like that about Johnny. And then Rocco is a great man. He's a great bohemian, a great poet, and he keeps an eye on the lyrics.

And as I do, but I'm the guy with Wayne. I'm at the consulant, trying to make sense of it all. And so we've really got to, but everybody's hungry. We want to make a great record. We want to play live. We've got a little West Coast tour. coming in May. In fact, let's make this

the advertising part of the show. We play the Ace Theater downtown Los Angeles on May the 14th. And we're really looking forward to it. We're hoping folks come out. We hope the virus doesn't get us between now and then.

Exactly. But if it does, let it get all of us. Let's just jump to Red Dead Red Dead redemption because I know we, you know, think that's... So it's kind of an outlier of things that you're working on. Why work in video games?

The Reded Redemption, the video game, that invitation came out of the blue. I just got a call. I was already doing a show in New York City, the Poisson Rouge, and we stopped by the Rockstar Games office, and they showed us some of the scenes. I happen to have some music with me.

Wayne came to the meeting with me, and we just plugged in a few things, and it seemed to connect with the game. I had some of these crazy recordings I did with a great Canadian artist by the name of Venetian snares. And so we had some of that in our pocket. We plugged it in and said, wow, you know,

it was like because there was a lot of action in the game, and that stuff kind of resonated automatically. And I like that these guys were, they were on fire and they were doing something fresh, and they said, you want to work with DeAngelo. I said, what? Okay. I love DeAngelo. We met DeAngelo. Off we went.

And it was a nice way to make music because we were serving something that already existed. It was a Western. And the tug of war, being that, being a Western, there might be an inclination to use the rusty instruments of that time. Bring out the banjos and the mandolins and the acoustic pianos and the bow rounds and that would all be fine.

But I like to think that the music we make sidesteps the obedience to a genre. So we were able to use the Torah space pedals and the strings on the melaton. There's a melaton in the corner right there I saw it. Joe's onto it too. And so to build to provide, have music touch people's hearts

without them thinking about genre or the specifics of an instrument. This is where we come in because we're good at manipulating sound. And so to manipulate sound to the point of beyond identification. I like that as an idea. And that game, that was part of the

invitation and challenge to provide music to that game. And then songs, wanted me to make songs. So I wasn't just a, you know, a scoring musician. We did plenty of that, but they wanted me to produce songs. And I said, okay, they talked about Willie Nelson, and I was going to write a song with Willie. Willie was in Hawaii. He was stuck because it was a hurricane, and we never wrote the song. And I said, what are we going to do about that? So I wrote the song by myself. I was talking to one of the

Rockstar games guy I said you know some good old friend of mine just moved to England we never saw her again because she didn't want to be around the cruel world anymore she wanted to start a family nothing to do but the cruel world he said that's a great title write the song I wrote

cruel world and that's the one Willie sang once we got him out of the hurricane what do you feel like you have an accomplished um all the there's so many

accolades so many records sold is there anything you wish you would have done I think the the rhythmic part of me has not been fully expressed and we've got we got a track on the burner right now at the shop called under the heavy sun and it is a bad dog of a groove

and I'm very very excited about it it's made up a three angry rhythmic components. We cut the track to a rhythm king, which is a little beatbox. And it's got sort of a janitor with a broomstick in the corner. And then by hand, we overdubbed

an 808. I found a pretty good 808 pattern, and I dropped it in manually two bars at a time. And then a buddy mine came in to play acoustic drums, and that worked up pretty good. I went through, with Wayne, went through, His performance of a fine-toed comb.

Two bars here and a fill there, but we put the whole thing together with technology and a killer bass line. And Johnny Shepard, our singer, is provided such a great vocal. So I keep my fingers across it. It might be a little dance club hit, you know, when we're done. There you go. So we'll go to this next segment.

I'm going to list five things. Just tell me what comes to the top of your head. Five for five. Let's start with Brian Eno. Well, Brian Eno was my mentor and a brilliant mind. A brilliant mind then and a brilliant mind now. I can't say enough about this guy. He was a great teacher to me.

And we had a... He always encouraged innovation. And thank you, Brian. The lessons I learned then. I was still using the same technique these days. what a great human being and the planet is a better place with Brian

Bono Bono is a great friend I've sat on a couch with him much like the couch I'm sitting on now we keep a beta 58 stuck in the crack of the cushions and then when track starts smoking

I hand the 58 over he takes it and off he goes he's a great improv specialist you know even in the absence of a fully done lyric, Bono will deliver something that will inspire the next level of writing. And how special is that?

A great man. Peter Gabriel. When I walked up the garden path to meet Peter Gabriel, I saw me. He was about 200 feet away. And I thought, I know him. I know that man from before, from another life. I knew he was a relative. Now, it gets into the mystical part of myself.

But I felt that I knew him already. And I thought he was gentle. He was hyper-intelligent and very inventive. And I thought, I've come to the right place. I know this guy. And we're going to make great music together. I thought he was a brother. Let's go with Wayne.

Wayne Lorenz. We've been all over the world together. Wayne is a history major. So there's never a dull lunch hour. Wayne 1979 Russia Dan let me tell you And off we go

Wayne has great taste And he keeps me From stepping into the tar pits Of record making And he'll let me go on On my way for a while Then the next The next history lesson at lunch

He'll say By the way Have you thought about Bambum And it might be good If you think about this And that and the other thing I think, I think, Wayne might be right.

And then I go in the studio and I do something about it. So that's the mark of a great mate and co-producer. He waits for the right moment and brings something to my attention. Your mother? My dear mother put up with a recording studio in her basement for a decade. And coming and going of reggae bands, Rick James should be making bacon and eggs for all. kind of people she'd never met. We only had one bathroom, so they were all

traipsing through the house upstairs. Bless her heart. My mother never told me what to do. Not once did she say, you know, you should be careful to do this and that and the other thing. Never. She let me do what I wanted to do, and bless her heart. You mentioned that we didn't talk about,

really, your spiritual side or your mystical side, or however you just described it. Describe it now. I've always been aware of what I call the force. The force is something that lives outside of one's skills, and it's what one might be driven by in a subconscious way. And the force has been with me since I was a child, and there have been a few times when I was struck by the force.

I was struck by the force in Mexico. in the west country of England, by the river Liffey, and a canoe with my uncle, maybe six times I've struck by the force. And some people might describe that as a calling. And I don't have a full understanding of the force, but I know it exists. It's bigger than me.

What does it tell you to do? Or is it not like an action? Is it more of like a... It tells me to stay on course and have kindness via the forefront of my being to always serve something or someone. It tells me to stay on course with fidelity, with commitment, the best arrangement.

It's my guiding light. Maybe another way to describe as enlightenment. and I think the best artists have been enlightened somehow along the way. I can't imagine Bob Marley not having been enlightened somewhere along the way for him to bail to deliver what he did. I think Ena was enlightened along the way. Most of me, I worked with Jimmy Cliff in Jamaica, and the force I felt around him was unbelievable.

That was a very enlightened person. And I've been lucky enough to be in the presence of people that have been enlightened in my absence. You know, they came into my life having been enlightened already. And so the force that they had in them jumped on me. How could you make a record with Bob Dylan and not feel what he went through or came to? And so to be sitting in a chair next to an enlightened person, it jumps on you. And only a fool would not notice it. So I'm very well aware of the force.

Well, thank you for doing this. One, thanks for letting me borrow some of your force for the last hour. I mean, I do think that's part of why we started doing these conversations is that, you know, who's more enlightened than the people who are sell

you know I always say they sell musicians sell air for a living you know like who are these people who can create seemingly nothing

or can create something from nothing on a daily nothing I'm glad you said that on a daily basis on a daily basis we start with nothing You look at a piano and there's just so much potential right there to your side. And there's no question if you played one note out of the, you know, any note on that keyboard.

And my guess is the people in this room could create a song off of it. Whether it's good or not arguable, whether it's impactful, you know, impactful, you know, whether people ever hear it, totally irrelevant. Well, it wouldn't be hard to get something going, that's for sure. And we probably be all smart enough to say, oh, that one little part there, let's make a riff out of that, and then we're able to get going. We don't require a lot as creators of music. Well, I think the final two things I would say,

you know, for me to get to spend time with somebody who created so much music that coincides with my lifetime that was so influential in my lifetime. It's obviously an honor, but it's rare to be around people who created music that is in a way business-wise, this doesn't sound sexy, but commercially viable rather than creating a song that can be produced into music.

For some reason, when I mentioned something like sledgehammer or something or some of these songs, they're just not cookie cutter. And what you said from what you learned about, throwing a little dirt on it, you know, making something unique, you do that on all of these songs. It's really impressive. Can I tell you a little trick? Yeah, please.

All right. so we'll use sledgehammer as a point of reference we were playing to fix time a little beatbox boom you know a pretty simple thing and we recorded the song as we had planned we kept the box going

and then at the end we just kept playing and it started getting a little more free and people started jamming boom Looking at Peter. Kick the habit. Shared that's skin. This is the new stuff.

We go dancing and show for me, and I'll show for you. Wow! And the whole room went crazy because we had done the song. So this was a chance to have a little bit of fun. And Peter really went for it with the vocals. He was just having so much such a good time. And then everybody went home and then I listened back that, yeah, the track was pretty good, but the end was the best stuff.

Of course. And so we took the best up at the end and brought out to the front. And that was a big part of the forming of that song. So what's the lesson there? Well, when we start having a good time and, you know, we like to be responsible. But if we've been responsible, it's okay to have a good time. and something good may come out of it. And I have some other examples if you want to hear them.

I mean, sure. Why don't you give a couple more? Well, okay. A beautiful day by you two. We had been bashing this thing around for a while, and it hadn't really gotten to the magic place yet. And then, you know, and I always come into the studio early, and he dialed up this little beat,

a little kind of German big box. And then I played this little guitar part. Ding, ding, ding, ding, which was just a harmony above what Edge had written the day before. And we built this little track quite quickly. And then the band came in. I said, what's this? Well, this is your song? Oh.

And they plugged in, everybody jumped in. And then we started playing to this electro-backing. do do do do do do do do and uh then it was time for lunch because bono was getting hungry and he's and he the sun was shining and come through the window and he said and it's a beautiful day let's not let it get away beautiful day don't let it get away he's kept saying that you know it's a beautiful day maybe we should just go for lunch and uh we went for lunch you know and i came back downstairs say those little beautiful day thing's got something

and Bono's he's done it again the kids done it again and we took same thing took the stuff at the end and brought her to the front and built a chorus out of it so sometimes

it's just one little thing will trigger we'll speak the truth man's got to eat wow well you know again thanks for I was going to say the other thing is the fact that

your creative spigot is not turned off. You know, you're still creating and as somebody who's been making music is the only thing that I know how to do in my life, it's nice to see that we can keep

doing that for as long as we want. Yeah, well, let's just that's a very sweet thought and we know no other way and And that virus doesn't get us, man, look out because the hits are going to keep on coming. Yeah, let's get it. All right, man. Thank you so much.

Thank you, my brother. Thanks for listening to this episode of And The Writer is. If you want to hear music from this songwriter I just interviewed, be sure to check out our Spotify playlist. Or visit our website at and The Writer is.com. If you like what we're doing, please subscribe to us. can also like us on Facebook and Twitter. And The Writer is, is produced by Joe London, edited by Miles Berg's mom, and published by Big Deal Music. A special thanks to David Silberstein from Mega House Music and Michael White. Until next time, this is Ross Gold.