The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Chairman at the Board: Recording the Soundtrack of a Generation by Bill Schnee

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

Chairman at the Board: Recording the Soundtrack of a Generation by Bill Schnee Chairman at the Board is an intimate, funny, and absorbing look at the music business by an insider who has recorded a host of the greatest musical artists from the 1970s to today. Bill Schnee takes the reader inside the studio—behind the curtain—and through the decades with a cavalcade of famous artists as he helped them to realize their vision. After his high school band was dropped by Decca Records, Schnee began his quest to learn everything he could about making records. Mentored by technical guru Toby Foster, mastering guru Doug Sax, and recording legend Richie Podolor at his American Recording Studio, he immediately began recording the top acts of the day as a freelance engineer/producer in Hollywood. Clive Davis soon hired him to work for CBS where he partnered with famed music producer Richard Perry. Schnee went on to record and/or mix many of Perry's biggest albums of the '70s and '80s, including those by Barbra Streisand, Carly Simon, Ringo Starr, Art Garfunkel, and the Pointer Sisters. With his deft personal touch with musicians, he continued to engineer and/or produce the likes of Marvin Gaye, Thelma Houston (the Grammy-nominated, direct-to-disc album I've Got the Music in Me), Pablo Cruise, Neil Diamond, Boz Scaggs, the Jacksons, Huey Lewis and the News, Dire Straits, and Whitney Houston. With over 125 gold and platinum records, and two Grammys for Steely Dan's Aja and Gaucho, Schnee has been called a living legend—recognized and respected in the industry as the consummate music man with an incomparable career that he lovingly shares with his readers in humorous detail.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in, keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Thechrisvossshow.com.

Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Oh, my gosh. It's another amazing podcast on The Chris Foss Show. Another amazing morning. To see the video version of this, you want to go to YouTube.com, Forge Us, Chris Foss. See us on all the groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, all that good stuff.

Go to Goodreads.com, Forge Us, Chris Foss, to see all the books we're reading and reviewing over there as well. Today we have an amazing author. He is the author of the book, Chairman at the Board, a recording, the soundtrack of a generation. His name is Bill Schnee. He is a multiple Grammy and Emmy award winning producer, engineer, and now author. So we'll be talking about his book and all the incredible stories he has over his career. He has over 125 gold platinum records and 50 top 20 singles he's known as an engineer's engineer he's worked on dozens of grammy nominated and winning albums and has been personally

nominated 11 times for the best engineered album category winning twice for steely dan's asia and gaucho he also has won an award emmy the Best Sound Mixing for a Variety Special and a Dove Award. In his 50-plus year career, Bill has found success in every music genre, from pop to rock to R&B to gospel and to country, and he joins us here with the release of his new book, Chairman at the Board. Welcome to the show, Bill. How are you? I'm great, and thank you for having me. And boy, do you have some energy? Yeah, well, it's the coffee. It's the coffee. We have coffee in the morning. That's what's

good. But thank you very much. So Bill, give us your plugs so people can look you up on your dot com and find out more about you in order of the book. That's pretty simple. It's Bill Schnee dot com. Bill S-C-H-N-E-E.com. There you go. And you have an illustrious career, 50 plus years. Oh my gosh. I started when I was two years old. I love it. It seems like a dumb thing to say because with all the accomplishments and career length that you have, but what did motivate you to write this book? Over the years, I've been very fortunate to have an incredible career. And I love telling stories

at a certain point in my career. In fact, I thought, why did I do music? I should have done movies. I should be a director, but I love telling stories. And I've been telling some of the stories to friends and whatnot over the years of what I've done. And they would inevitably say, why don't you write a book? And I thought, maybe. But as I thought about it, as time went on, it was like too self-serving. It would just be a lot like I did this, then I did that, then I did this, then I did that. And it was an artist producer that took me to dinner after finishing an album, a Brazilian album. And he said, how'd you get started? And I started telling stories. And he said, they're famous. Why don't you write a book? And I said, yeah, I know. And he said, but seriously, the music business as we know it, was born in the 50s,

grew up in the 60s, and peaked in the 70s, going into the 80s. It was a very short time, very iconic time, never to be repeated again. And then the magic words and you were there. And when he said that, I realized I could write stories that have nothing to do with me that would take that spotlight off of me and make it a lot more, at least for me, interesting. And I left that dinner and got in the car and called my wife and said, I think I'm going to write a book. What did the wife say? Really? She was like, get you out of the house for a week or two. That's awesome. So give us an arcing overview of the book, maybe just an overview of it, and then we'll get into some of the details. The overall arcing would be pretty simple because it's a memoir.

And so it does start with my beginnings, figured people should know something about where I came from and why music interested me and so on. And then I've been very fortunate that I popped, as it were, I became successful rather quickly. And so from there, it just starts going and keeps on going. And you named the title of the book is called Chairman at the Board. Was there a reason you chose that title? I just thought it was, a friend of mine gave it to me as a suggestion. And I just thought it was an interesting title. Take off, obviously, on Chairman of the Board, but because of my reputation and being at a recording console, which are known as boards, just thought it was a great title. Then the publisher took another one of the titles that was up for consideration and put that as the subtitle, Recording the Soundtrack of a Generation. You should have sued.

And it mentions in your bio that you're an engineer's engineer. Can you expand a little bit on that title? Just that I find myself rather highly respected by some of the best engineers in the world, comments and whatnot over the year. And in fact, I, I asked several of them to give me their endorsements, which are on my website by, like I said, what I think are some of the best engineers in the world. There you go. And you start telling us about how you, of course, began your career at two, but, but what's interesting, what's interesting is you're a firecracker baby. Yeah, born on the 4th of July.

There you go. In Phoenix, Arizona, which just to show you how times have changed and is the fact that my mother, my dad was a physician. And it's interesting because back then he was not allowed to come in the room while she was delivering. Oh, that's right. She was allowed between contractions to have a cigarette. So I'm just telling you how things have changed over the years. And that was in Phoenix, Arizona with at the hospital in those dark ages, no air conditioning. I'm sorry for you. Then usually hand a cigarette to the baby. When it comes out,

the mom just passes it right over to the baby, get them started young. Congratulations. They actually put up fireworks for your birthday. That's got to be freaking awesome. And I convinced our boys when they were young that it was all for me. Really? Look, they're dead. This is how cool your dad is. That is freaking awesome.

I love that. Unfortunately, that went down the same drain that Santa Claus did, but they got over it, I guess. Yeah, it's tough being a dad, man. It's tough being a dad. You don't get no love. You teach them how to play baseball or football, and then they finally get on TV, and they're like, hi, Mom. And you're like, what the hell? I want to chop liver over here.

So give us an idea how the book lands out. And I imagine it talks about you, the basis of you growing up, and what got you into the music business first, or what struck your eye? Okay. The beginnings would be with regard to music is that I'm an only child, spoiled rotten, as it were. Just ask my wife. And I was a lonely only child. Some only children love it. I didn't particularly love it.

But my friend was the radio and I spent a lot of time with my friend. And in those days, again, showing the age, in those days, disc jockeys held all the power and they played whatever they wanted to play. Now, certain disc jockeys would be known for certain genres of music or whatnot, but they didn't have to stick to it. They played whatever they wanted. They just heard something wherever they pop it in, even if it wasn't in their genre. So you got a wide variety of music to listen to. And so I started music lessons when I was young, first on the trumpet, then I jumped to sax, and then jumped to keyboard. And that's what kind of stuck with me. Then when my parents moved to Los Angeles for my senior year

of high school, I met some guys that were starting a band. And I said, Hey, what about an organ? Would you guys want to put an organ in the band? And they said, let's try it. And so we got together and started writing some songs. And it came pretty natural. And we were having fun with it, playing at all the places back in those days that you would play, which would be a bowling alley or a sock hop or something. And we finally saved up our pennies and went to a local recording studio and recorded four demos of our songs. And one of the mothers knew somebody who knew somebody that was in the music business. And so it got passed over to him. His name was Gary Usher.

Gary was a, actually was good friends with the Beach Boy Wilsons. In fact, wanted to be a Beach Boy and didn't make it, but he did write In My Room and 409 with Brian. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so he, and I was a huge Beach Boys fan. So when we went to meet him, his office at that time was in the Capitol Tower, Capitol Records Tower, where the recording studios and so on are.

And so I was really excited to go there and see the studios and whatnot. And we met with him and he talked about our demos and liking our songs and whatnot, and then took us down to the studios to see them. That was the first time I was ever in a real professional studio. And I said, wow, is this where Brian records? And he said, no, he records across town at an independent studio, Western Studios. But he offered us a deal. He had just made a production deal with Decca Records, and he offered us a recording contract. And we got our parents to sign. We weren't old enough. We weren't 18 yet.

So our parents had to sign for us. And we got the deal. And we went into Capitol Studio B and did our first recording sessions. And on that session, he brought in a session guitarist to augment the band, an extremely talented guy named Richie Podler, who would go on to produce and engineer Three Dog Night, almost all the Three Dog Night records and Steppenwolf, Black Oak, Arkansas, Iron Butterfly, big, long list of credits. And he played on our song. And in those days, it was very common. You signed and you did four sides and they put out a single or two. And if it hit, if one of them hit, you ran in and finished

an album. We never finished an album. So we got dropped right after the second single. And I went to visit Richie and his, at that point, newly built studio and told him what had happened. And he said, you guys were really good. I can get you a record deal. Go see this guy, Mike Curb. He's going to go places. And for those of you that know anything about Mike Curb, he went places. But so we started again with a new label and Richie producing us. And it was, I, that was my aha moment. The first session that we did with Richie, we went out and cut the track, came in to listen to it. And I looked up at the speakers as it was playing. And I'd never heard our band sound like that. There was an emotional quality of emotional added content emotionally that just from the sound is what I perceived.

And when it was over, I just turned to all the equipment and I said, can you teach me how to do all this? And he said, no, I'm teaching Cooper, go out and do another take. But that was the aha moment. That's when I knew I want to do this. Wow. That's awesome. That's awesome. So how did you find your way into making that transition to learning the board and learning how to be an engineer? I went off. I was still living at home with my parents. And one day I'm driving down the street where we lived and I saw a new recording studio.

And then this was a suburb of Los Angeles that was a strange place for any kind of quality studio. And don't worry, it wasn't a quality studio. But I went by every day knocking on the door and there was never anyone there for a week and a half until finally the owner opened the door, happened to be there. And I went in and said, can you teach me all this stuff? If you do, I'll sweep the floors. I'll do whatever you want. Help you with sessions. And he said, okay. And this was not a real studio. Like I said, it had egg cartons on the wall for sound absorption. It had just a door and a window in a wall as opposed to real studios have double walls for isolation. We only had two professional

condenser microphones and it was two track with a two track mixer that had no equalization, no tone controls, and only a Fisher Space Expander spring reverb, like in a guitar amp for echo. But the good news was the clients that came in, everything had to be live. It was just two-track. So you had to mix everything live. And as I would later learn, that was a great way to learn. But that's how it started. Within six months, I was doing all the sessions because he thought I was better than he was.

And about a year later, he said, we're moving to Hollywood. I said, what are you talking about? And he said, I found a place in Hollywood, an empty studio. We're going to move there and put the equipment in it. I said, I'm not ready to go to Hollywood. And he said, we're going to Hollywood. Much to my chagrin, we went to Hollywood. And he said, we're going to Hollywood. Much to my chagrin, we went to Hollywood and there I continued to work with less than talent almost always. Although we did pick up

one client, a country client that would drive down from central California. And those were the most professional sessions I ever did there. With one exception, which is the most bizarre thing. The first time I ever heard anything I recorded on the radio was of all things, a Toyota commercial. And I didn't know any, I knew so little back then about the business. Now I can't help but wonder why in the world did an ad agency go to that studio with a young kid doing the recording for something as important as a Toyota commercial. But they did, and that was pretty exciting hearing it. What time context was that in? Was that in the 70s or 60s? That would be 1970.

Okay, yeah. They were just coming, Toyota was just barely coming to market, I think, back then, weren't they? Yeah. Where were they? I think them and, maybe I'm getting them mixed up with,

boy, I'm going to date myself, Dotson, which is now something else. But anyway, so what the long story trying to make shorter would be that Richie Podler, I kept in contact with him and told him what I was doing and whatnot. And he would just say, oh, that's nice. And, but he had an engineer that worked for him then that decided to quit the business. And that engineer, his name was Tommy. He would come over to my Hollywood studio and visit me. And in fact, he started doing a couple of sessions there when he couldn't get into Richie's. And when he told me he was leaving, I said, wow, do you think Richie, do you think I could

have your job? And he said, let's talk to Richie. And so we started between the two of us a two-month sojourn of hitting him up over and over again until the day he finally weakened. And who could blame him? Two and a half years before that, I didn't know the difference between a limiter and an equalizer. And now I was asking to engineer in the hottest rock studio in Los Angeles.

Wow. Which is what his studio had become. And what studio was that again? You might have called it American Recording Studio. And so that day came when he finally buckled and said, okay, there's a demo tomorrow morning, come in and do a demo. These were publishing demos in those days. A publishing company would send one of their writers in and they would record very hastily four or five songs three or four songs then throw vocals on them and then do rough quick mixes not rough but quick mixes and that would give them the tape to go make acetate discs that they would in those days

send to the different artists that were here record my song funny enough one of the early guys that i met doing that there was, and here's a brain, there's a gap. I do that all the time on this show where I end up. I'm like, where is that? Footloose. Who sang Footloose? Kenny Loggins. Kenny Loggins was one of the guys that one of the cute things I wrote in the book was we became good friends back then. He was starting out. I was starting out. And what was interesting is that back then, my apartment was $125 a month. His loft was $75 a month. demo. So I did the demo from nine to noon left. They set up for the next session, called him, said, what did they say? And he said, they said, you did great. Okay. What do I do now? He said, there's another demo tomorrow for a

different company. Come and do that. I went and did that. He said that afternoon, how did I do? They said, you were great also. I said, okay, what's next? He said, okay, come in tomorrow night and do tracks with Three Dog Night. He said, huh? At this point, Three Dog Night had already had a hit. They were on their way to being one of the biggest bands in the country. This was before Richie was producing them. Their producer, Gabriel Meckler, also produced the early Steppenwolf records. And Gabriel was obviously Richie's

biggest client. And why in the world Richie would take a chance throwing me in there when if I'd fallen on my face, he would look like an idiot wasting their time and really ticked him off. But I didn't fall on my face. It was the deep end of the pool and I managed to swim and that's what got the ball rolling. Awesome sauce. So did you get credit on that first, uh, or not on that, uh, three dark night album or anything? Uh, no, that in spite of the fact that Richie told me, I would later learn from Richie that, uh, credits are more important than the money you make from a gig. Oh, the money you make from a gig, you will spend and it'll be gone. But that credit will get you the next job. And so it will continue.

And he made sure that I got a gold record, but he also made sure I didn't get my name on the record. Was it his name then that got the credit for it? There you go. You're starting out. But that's pretty awesome, man. The 70s were, like you say, I agree with you, one of the greatest eras of music ever. It was just an epic time going into the 80s.

Then the 80s started getting weird with all the A&R guys who showed up. You can correct me if I'm wrong here, but all the A&R guys who showed up said, we need more synthesizers. There's probably a few other things you can tell on the story. Bad subject in most cases. Boy, in the 70s, you hit it on the head. In the 70s, of course, all of the record companies in the 70s were by and large owned by what we call record people. They loved music and they knew music and they understood music and they understood artists and all that kind of thing. And the 80s, one of the many things is that the record

companies begin to get sold to big corporations and those people don't know music. So they have to depend on who? The A&R people. And there's nothing, great A&R people, like I said, are worth their weight in gold. But boy, what it turned into was really sad because they became so powerful, way too powerful. They ended up making decisions in the record making process instead of leaving the producer and the artist to work on their art. They got involved way too much, in my opinion. I mean, did that largely take place in the 80s from what I understand? Or did that start in the late 70s or in the 70s? I missed one word. Did what start?

Did the A&R people start showing up? Was it the 80s or was it the 70s? No, no. If an A&R person showed up in the 70s, it was a positive thing in all of my dealings. They were sure they would show up just to hear playbacks and stuff. How's it going? I'm coming in tonight. How's it going?

That kind of thing. But they might make a suggestion, but it wasn't the power that started in the 80s into the 90s where they were running the show. There was a certain brand of recording console that came out of England called SSL, Solid State Logic. And this console had, among other things, a compressor, a limiter on every channel and one on the stereo bus with a very unique sound, shall we say. And a lot of the A&R people loved that sound. They would say it sounds like it's on the radio. And of course, if anyone's ever heard FM radio on a really good system, the music playing, it's anything but good sounding. It's compressed. You hear the compressor pumping and that's evidently fooled some of these people. And they got to a place where they insisted that a record be mixed on that console. That's just beyond interfering with creativity, in my opinion, whatever.

And there's a, when I was a kid growing up, looking at the back of albums, you and I both lived through the age of where an album was like a really big deal. As a kid, I didn't have money to buy albums or a lot of albums. So when you had that $12 or I think it was $13 or $10 back in my day, you didn't buy the 8-track. I came in right between the 8-track and the record, switch over. But you would spend hours listening to the album, looking at that album. If it was a fold out or a trifold,

you would look at that, but you would read like everything. And I would read about all the producers and all the, the who's the famous guy who mastered so many great albums. Doug Sacks. That doesn't ring a bell. He did a lot. It was Bob.

Was Bob Ludwig who used to master a bunch of the albums? Is that him? Still does, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I take notice of, oh, he did this album and he did that album. And you look through and just learn all the, everything, everything. Sit and go, whoa, what is this? And what does it mean?

It could be a sign. Is Paul McCartney still alive? That sort of crap. And yeah, it was a great time for music a beautiful time i think was pale really rolling in the 70s or did it not come into play till the 80s oh i don't know okay no yes of course it was of course it was yeah yeah what can i say in the 70s is probably mostly cocaine and then but i mean i i don't even i didn't want to know and i still don't want to know what record promotion men would do to get

records played at radio yeah but i'm pretty sure some of it might not have been exactly legal yeah i've got a i've got a another gentleman i think that we're going to be having on soon he's got a book and he tells some interesting stories about 30 grand and stuff appearing at his house and shit and so what is this for he was a radio dj but this is really interesting what as we go through this you want to just bang off some of the top bands that you maybe worked with and then was there any stories that you particularly want to share with the audience that really stuck out of your maybe your favorite stories i don't know they're all my children chris oh they're all favorites now that I've written about them. Excuse me. Let me just grab Carly Simon. Because I came out of Richie's studio,

I was known in the beginning as a rock engineer. And the record business, like the film business, they love to put you in a box. There's all these boxes and you belong in some box. And fortunately, I was able to break out of the box pretty much. But at that time, at that time I was known as a rock engineer and I had worked one of the first big acts, huge acts that I worked with was Barbra Streisand when Richard Perry was producing her. Wow. And Richard went to England to produce an album with Carly Simon and he called me from England and he said, the album is almost done, but there's two rock tracks that I'm saving for you to mix, which I thought was looking back on it as hysterical.

10 years later, I couldn't get a rock act to hire me if I tried. But back then, 72, I guess that was the here, do this. And so that was interesting. So he came and I did that and met Carly and like a lot of guys fell in love with her. And, and he went on to have me, why don't you try this, try and mix on this one and then try and mix on that one. And I ended up mixing the whole thing, but it was pretty wild too. And that was the first really super creative artist I'd ever worked with. Still to this day, that No Secrets album, that's the album that has Your So Vain on it. Some of the songwriting on there is just wonderful. Yeah. It was nominated several record of the year, song of the year, best pop vocal performance, female of the year, best engineered record. Yeah, that was my first. Whose name do I see here? Bill, you're on here.

That was my first, but that was a great experience. And especially, I think one of the funnest parts of it all was it wasn't labeled Mick, but on You're So Vain, Mick Jagger is singing harmony with her. Oh, really? Yeah. But now that I've told you that, when you hear it next time, you listen and you'll go, how did I ever miss that? It's just that you didn't think about it probably, but that's the way most people are. But it's Mick Jagger. But I was sitting there pulling it up going, wow, I'm mixing Mick Jagger. How about that?

That is awesome, dude. And Carly Simon, oh my God, what a knockout she was in the 70s. So can you confirm or deny that song was written about Warren Beatty or not? It was. Now I can, yes. It was. Actually, it was written about three boyfriends, but he gets most of the credit, if you want credit for being so vain. He was up to, he liked a girl or two in the 70s from what I hear. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. What a famous song. For a long time, that was kind of like the hidden secret of who Deep Throat was.

Everyone was, who's the song about? Tell us. Tell us. Awesome song. Yeah. And then I suppose the next best thing to tap on would be the next big thing I did with Richard, which was a Ringo Starr album called Ringo, an album that was very successful. And I'm hoping, in fact, people have just contacted me

because the 50th anniversary is coming up next year of it. Oh, yeah. And not next year, year after. And they're going to put a push on it, a start over push, because this album is the only album where three is the only album i where three of the beatles i had three of the beatles playing in the room at one time it's the only time after their breakup that ever happened again wow and which three beatles i guess it wasn't lennon then maybe no with lennon it was the only one that in fact the pro at that time mccartney had a drug bust

and the government u.s government wouldn't let him come in the country for a certain amount of time. And this album, I've always looked at it that the guys were, the other three were giving Ringo a leg up. They knew that their solo careers were going to blossom. So let's give Ringo a nice launch. And I'm pretty convinced that the bad blood between Paul and John had calmed down enough that if Paul could have come in the country, there would have been a full reunion. Wasn't that in China or Japan that he had that bust? Or am I not remembering? Well, he might've had more than one. I thought it was here. I thought it was something when he was leaving the country. And so we ended up going to England to record Paul's song. He wrote a song for the album

as well. But yeah, as I set up for the first session with Ringo and walked into the studio, and there's a flight case that the drums had been in with Ringo Starr, The Beatles written on it. And then I walk over to the drums, and it might not have been the same kit that he played on their records, but it was still Ringo's kit. And so it was pretty exciting moment for a young man. Yeah, you're working with the freaking Beatles, dude. That's awesome. And then as I remember writing, then over the weekend, after the first week, Richard called and said, by the way, John's coming in on Monday.

That's when we would have all three of them, three of the four. And that was one of the most magical nights in my career. Wow. I remember thinking when this was, when that album was over, it's all downhill from here. Certainly it hasn't been all downhill, but that was a very special night. And I think for them as well, needless to say, we started the album with just Ringo. George came over a couple of days later and listened to what we had cut and was very complimentary and then overdubbed guitar and a couple of things. And then we did that week, we did a song that he had written with

Ringo for Ringo and actually recorded a track of called Photograph. But the track that he had was Forlorn and it was decided that we should redo it. We redid that, which became the biggest hit off that album. And then that following Monday, John came in to do his song. And here Ringo had been, just as you've always seen him, the happy-go-lucky guy that he is. And then when John came in, it was like all eyes were on him. It was just obvious what was going to happen. We would be done with the song when John said we were done and he ran the session. And of course, it was a little nerve wracking for them because they hadn't been together at that point for

almost three years in a studio, a little more than three years in a studio probably. So it was a little, I didn't sense nerves, but it was tense. It was tense. And, but it, everybody relaxed and it went rather quickly. And in fact, a little all too quickly to be, to have John in and out that one night. But after that night, the word had gotten out that three of them were in the studio together. So we had in the parking lot news trucks the next night and every night thereafter, hoping to catch a

glimpse of what was rumored to be a Beatle reunion. But unfortunately, it didn't happen. Wow. This is astounding. Wow, man. That's an amazing, man, thing to live through. Meeting John Lennon. Oh, my God. I mean, my whole life, one of my axioms of life is the words of the song Imagine. Of course, it's a beautiful song, too, but the words, everyone living in peace together. I'm going down your list on Wiki of albums, and it's like reading my music library that you have here. Neil Diamond, Olivia Newton-John multiple times, Neil Diamond multiple times. Art Garfunkel's in here in 1975 with the album Breakaway that you mixed. One of my favorites.

Mm-hmm. Carly Simon. here in 1975 with the album breakaway that you mixed one of my favorites uh carly simon let's and then up through here let's see there's somewhere was that i saw that there kenny rogers you mix or did some mixing on his album huey lives in the news that was pretty awesome i bet i at least i assume i don't know it could be yeah but they seem like a nice bunch of fellas great bunch it was uh the story there is i produced a band called pablo cruz and we we had some good success with them and the manager bob brown of pablo cruz called me one day and said uh would you come up here to the bay area and i found a band and tell me i'm crazy so i I went up to the Bay Area and went into Uncle Charlie's and saw Huey Lewis and American Express was their name at the time. And sat through their set and

went up upstairs to the little band room and chatted with them for a little while and went back to my hotel and came home to LA. Bob called me and said, what'd you think? I said, the band is good. The songs need some work, but that kid is a star. And he said, okay, let's, why don't you start, you know, working with them and let's see what happens. And so we, I did that and we went in and did, went into a studio in San Francisco called Different Fur and did some demos of their songs, which they were at that time, they were very new wave. There was that movement that was going on, which included a lot of eighth notes. Wasn't my favorite thing or not, but whatever. And we did the demos and Bob took

them and got turned down by every record company in LA until Chris Ellis of Chrysalis came up to San Francisco and heard the band and saw what I saw. And because to see them was to love them. It was just the energy and Huey just was very commanding. And he signed them and we did the first album in LA instead of San Francisco, thinking that it might be a creative turn on for them. We ended up getting a house in Laurel Canyon being the famous place in the 60s where so many artists lived and it was just a creative wealth of talent. And we got him a nice house there and for them to live. And funny enough, I took Huey to see my old digs, which was American recording, and he fell madly in love with

the place and wanted to do the record there. And I just went there to show him and have him meet Richie and see the place. And by then I had developed my own style of recording and everything with regards to tools and stuff. And so I was not exactly jumping up and down about wanting to do it there, but his energy, he's like a steamroller. When he gets excited about something, you got to get out of his way. So anyway, but yeah, just a fabulous guy. And may I say this right now, how sad it is. Those of you that don't know that poor Huey has contracted Meniere's disease, which does not allow him to hear pitch of all things. Wow.

Obviously, I speak to him still. And he's talked to some of the best doctors in the world about it. And the most they can say is, it may change. It's one of those things they don't know anywhere near enough about yet. That's just heartbreaking. I loved all their albums. And I got, of course, I think I discovered them with news. But then the first two albums and stuff, Chrysalis had a lot of great artists, I think.

Didn't they get eventually bought out by Arista? I don't know. It's been a long time with My Old Marine. There's some people you work with that were interesting too. Steely Dan and then the Jacksons. And I see also here, crap, I lost track in the list, Whitney Houston. Yeah. As far as Whitney Houston, one of my favorite R&B artists was Teddy Pendergrass, who unfortunately got in a very serious car accident and became a quadriplegic. And I didn't work with him in the glory days, but I mixed the album, the first album

he did after the accident, which was not the Teddy Pendergrass of old because singing from a wheelchair, whatever other damage had been done, he didn't have the power he once had. But the producer, we were finishing a mix and I was about to start another one, he said, okay, well, I've got a session across town. There's a duet on this album and I'm going to record the female duet partner. And so he took off and I went going to record the female duet partner. And so he took off and I went on to the next song. He came back several hours later and I said, how did it go? And he said, oh my gosh, this girl is drop dead gorgeous and sings like a bird.

And I said, wow, who is she? He says, she's unsigned. Her name is Whitney Houston. I later found out he actually, she actually was signed. Her name is Whitney Houston. Holy wow. And I later found out she actually was signed. Clive had already signed her. He signed her the year before that. He signed her so no one else could. And if there's anything Clive has been good, no, great at, it's finding artists and developing them. And boy, he did a masterful job on her.

He really did all the legwork and heavy lifting that it would take to make the superstar that she became out of her. But that song was on both albums. It was on Teddy's album when it came out and then a year and a half later on her first album, which I also mixed several of the songs, two of the three big singles on. So. And that album just went through the roof. How was, what was that like?

Yeah. But by that point I had done enough big albums that say it's just wonderful. It's so exciting to, to get the charts and watch, see how they're climbing and whatnot. If you want a good story of excitement, I can tell you one that put the hair on the back of my neck straight up. Okay. Quite a few years later, I did a few things with her over the years after that first album. But quite a few years later, she was about to do her first movie, The Bodyguard. And David Foster, producer David Foster, did all of the songs in the movie that she would sing supposedly on stage. And she plays an artist.

Those of you that don't know, she plays an artist, funny enough, typecasting. She plays a big artist in the movie and has this relationship with her bodyguard. And, but for David called me and said, for the closing song of the album of the movie, it she's on stage and it's a ballad and she wants, she doesn't want to lip sync all the other songs when she's on stage dancing around with a mic, you can't tell she's lip syncing, but this one, the camera's going to be right in her face and she wants to sing it live. So they're filming at the Fountain Blue Hotel of all places in Miami. So he said, find a recording truck and meet me there on such and such a date. So that's what we did. And I got there and did the setup with the truck.

And I was very good friends with most of the members of her band. And so we hung out waiting for the star to get there. And so she came in and it was obviously to do I Will Always Love You, the closing song and a mega hit that it became. And the most interesting thing to me is that here by that point in time, she had sung in front of 20,000 seaters many times, festivals of 100,000. But here in this relatively small ballroom in a hotel with the lights way down and a crew of maybe 30 people, she was very obviously nervous. And so the first couple of

takes that they filmed were not very good. And Kevin Costner had a little talk with her and they took take three and it was better but she was still a little not there she just wasn't what you expect and so they took her 10 everyone milling around and whatnot when they got back to it kevin came in the truck actually with me the recording truck which is basically a control room on wheels and And he came in the truck and said, she's going to get it. And I said, I'm sure she is. And take four was really good. But then when take five happened, it was like, and when we knew it, and when she got to the end and did that, and I, that famous acapella, and I, that hair on the back of my neck and probably everyone else's went straight up.

It was just magical. You guys knew it was there. Yeah. And then the good director, he said, oh, that was amazing, honey. Let's just do one more for protection. That's the problem with a recording. You're like, I hope that got recorded.

What's the old famous story of Engada DeVita by Iron Butterfly? I think it's's a famous story i don't know if it's a famous story but evidently the engineer left the recording board on and they were just jamming and they recorded or something i don't know if that's true but you've worked with good no i think you're right yeah he went to go to the bathroom or get some lunch or something he accidentally left the board on they were just like screwing around they're jamming and came back and they had a hit up came the jam yeah the you work with so many people i'm just reading the thing here it's just a chicago uh a lot of people i loved in the jazz business that you worked with where bob james i love that album double vision god that thing was

huge mile davis david sanborn i I was a huge David Sanborn fan. And then I noticed here, Dire Straits on every street. If you don't mind me asking about that, that's one of my favorite albums of Dire Straits, next to Brothers in Arms, of course. But the sound quality on that is just exceptional. It's just like a perfect album from beginning to end. Yeah. I was very fortunate to be called by Mark to mix a movie soundtrack that he had done. And I ended up subsequently mixing another soundtrack that he did. And then he had a pub band in England and I went to England and mixed that with a little of his pub buddies that

he put together. And then he did a tremendous album with Chet Atkins, one of his idols. And that's just an amazing album, those two guitar whizzes. And that album was especially fun for me because it was the only one we mixed in my studio. And Mark liked, he liked recording with the Synclavier, which was one of the first computers for recording and later in digital. But that album had to be analog because Chet didn't have, Chet only had an analog tape machine in his home studio. We were mixing that album and we went, another reason I loved it was because when we were in England, we never went out for lunch. It was always brought in. And I always prefer to get out and look at the sun or rain, but get out of the control room, take a break. So we were able to go to lunch on that album.

And we were walking into the restaurant one day for lunch. And he said, I'm going to do another Straits album. And I'd like you to do it. And I went, oh, really? What about, here's another brain fart. Can't find it. The guy that did Brothers in Arms. And because, you know, what about him? And he said, I have my reasons for wanting you and they don't concern you. Just want you to do it. I went, okay, I'm in. I'm in. And so we started talking about it over lunch. And he said, now it'll probably take six, eight months to do in total.

And I'm going to do it in England. And I went, great, great. This sounds like so much fun. And I went home that night. And as I started to tell my wife the great news, as I was telling her, I should say, it dawned on me, wait a minute. This isn't great news being gone from home for six to eight months. I had two young boys at that point. And I had a recording studio that I ran. How does this going to work exactly?

So I called the manager the next day and I said, no, I'm thrilled what Mark has asked me to do and whatnot, but I've got to be honest, I'm going to have to move my family to England. And so the only way it really makes sense for me is to get either production credit, work on it with him as a co-producer, or at least some points on the back end. And he said, his manager said, okay, let me talk to Mark. So he talks to Mark and calls me back the next day and says, Mark doesn't really want to do that. And I went, oh, I'm really sorry. I just, I can't do it. I just can't then. And he said, oh, nuts. About three, four days later, he called back and said, I've got an idea. Why don't you come to England and do the basic tracks?

That shouldn't be any more than two weeks, three at the tops and show Mark you're involved. He knows that you've produced big records, but show him what you could add to the pie, as it were. And maybe you can change his mind. And I said, OK, let's do that. Let's do that. So that's what I did. And it was especially gratifying to me because Jeff Peccaro, a name that most of your listeners

probably don't know, but he was, if any of a drummer, you just say Jeff Porcaro and watch their eyes. He was my favorite drummer by far. He and I were very close friends and just an amazing talent. And Mark had asked him to play drums in the band for the record. So that's what we did. I went to England at the old air studios on Oxford Circus And we, we recorded the tracks and about the third day we, we were upstairs in the tea room. They're very civilized there. We take tea breaks with a cuppa, with a cuppa and a saucer and a biscuit. And we drink the tea and eat the biscuit. And that's quite fun, actually. Yeah. And, and Mark went, Bill, it's sounding just fantastic oh thank you so much i went thanks mark and he went i sure hope you finish it with me and i went i sure do too mark

about a week later the same tea room the same thing i sure hope you finish it with me bill i sure do too mark we finished the tracks he said i'm going to take a week off and we'll start the overdubs. And as my last meeting with him, I told him, I said, look, you've got a really great album here. I assume you realize that you don't have anything like Money for Nothing. So I don't know if you want to think about adding a track like that. Some fans are going to want that for sure. And he said, I'll give it a think, but I sure hope you come back and finish it with me, Bill. And I said, I sure do too, Mark. Bottom line is the manager called me and said, he's not giving in. And I said, okay, go ahead and finish it and do the overdubs. And I just assumed he'd call me to mix it. And he did call about four months,

five months later and said, I'm coming to town to do background vocal, coming to LA to do background vocals with Vince Gill. And he's going to sing all the backgrounds with me. And so I'd like you to do it. So he came and we did that. And it was great seeing Vince. I got to tell him the story that I passed on producing him when he was in Pure Prairie League. When he joined this band, Pure Prairie League, that had a couple of hits in the 70s. And the manager sent me the tape

and said, listen to this new singer guitar player we've got. And as I told him, I said, I heard a great singer and an incredible guitar player with not very good songs. And that's the reason I passed. And he said, you were absolutely right for doing it. He said, at that time, when I got in the band, they said, have you ever written any songs? And I said, I've written five. And they used all five on the album. So that shows, he said, they weren't very good. And I said, my, haven't things changed since then, Vince? Because he's obviously had just an amazing career

in country music since then. But anyway, Mark went back to England to finish it off. And I just assumed he'd call me to mix it. And he didn't. He did go back to the guy whose name still is escaping me that recorded and mixed Brother in Arms. But when they did the world tour and they came to Los Angeles, Mark called me when he got in town and said, Bill, I want to thank you for doing my two favorite albums of my career. This one and the Pub Band, Nodding Hillbillies. Those are my two favorite records. Wow. Thank you, Mark.

And there you go. And I couldn't believe and I still can't believe that he would punish me for not letting him have his way. But the great part of the whole idea of Lemonade Out of Lemons, when I started writing the book, I bought a laptop. And I don't know how far in I was to writing it, quite a ways. But six months into this laptop, the hard drive, solid state hard drive went bad. Now, of course, everything is on the cloud, except as I found out that had stopped working for some reason, like six months earlier. But of course, being that I work in computers every day, I knew to have a second backup on a thumb drive, which I did, but hadn't done in about six weeks, two months. So I did lose that

much. So the good news is when I got the computer back, I started, I had no choice. I had to start. And the first thing that I had lost was everything about Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits. And so the first thing I did was get on the internet to look up Mark Knopfler to get some dates. And I saw that he was coming to Los Angeles on tour. And so I got word to him that I wanted to see him. And we got together and had a great time, just a marvelous time. And because it had felt very strange there for that 10-year period that I never asked him and I never will, but we just picked up where we left off. So it's wonderful. He's just an incredible man. As I put in the book, he's one of these people like David Gates of bread, that if you met them you'd never know in a million years that they were incredibly talented and sang in front of hundreds of thousands of people he's and he's done work on so much stuff to in fact just like two or three days ago i was listening to gaucho and i was testing out some new speakers that we have because

we do a lot for speakers and stuff and i i was sitting there, and I really love Time Out of Mind. I just love that. It really makes it like a feel-good sort of track. And the other tracks are awesome. The whole album is just wall-to-wall great. But I was like, man, I really love this song. And one of the interesting things about this album with the Dire Straits album and a lot of silly dn and any great album that i've ever gotten is the music and the sonics i'm not even sure what the right verbs are for the ambience

and you probably know better than i do being an engineer just the sound quality the richness is just washes over you and just so compelling that there's some times where i've taken years to learn the words like i'm just singing the words and every now and then the other day with of mind, I'm like, I should stand and find out what the fuck this song is about. And this album, On Every Street, was the same way. I must have played it for a year before I even, I started thinking about the words and started, what am I singing anyway? I know what Heavy Fuel is about, Colin Elvis, but the sonic quality of like on every street, you and your friend, just the sultry nature of that. Let's see, Planet of New Orleans just has a really good, just the whole album is just wall-to-wall banging.

And it was like, I think it was like a year or two before I sat down and said, I should figure out what some of these words are. And yeah, of course, I learned like literally three days ago that Mark Koffner or Knopfler, am I saying?'s it's not for not for mark had played on time out of mind or he's got a credit on there of some type so what he did but i was like wow yeah it's it's funny to mention that and not gaucho as much as asia which was very similar to to the Dire Straits album in that it's just your talent doesn't change. I try to do the best job no matter who I'm recording, whatever.

But sometimes everything just falls together in an amazing way. And of course, on Asia, it absolutely did. And that was music that like, what is this? Every day we'd make a cassette to listen to what I had done that day, what we had done. And I'm driving home going, wow, what is this? It's jazzy. It's rocky. It's bluesy sometimes. I don't know what to call it, but other than great, because they were just great. And a lot of them didn't have lyrics at that point, just an astounding time. So one of the reasons we got hooked up to you is our good friends at Qobuz. David Solomon was wearing his Facebook group and I'm friends with him for years.

He sent me all sorts of speakers for the companies he worked for and worked for Tidal before Qobuz. And so I took my finding of time out of mind and learning that it was a heroin song. I mean, 20, 30 years of listening to Steely Dan, I just found out that was a heroin song. And so he caused a big whole kerfuffle in the Facebook group, not a kerfuffle, but I threw down, I said, I'm pretty sure Time Out of Mind's the best song with Mark Koffner. Oh, wow. On the group. Them fighting words. Oh yeah. We, there was some, there was some, there was some fighting words over that, yeah. But everyone was pretty nice. Speaking of things that you didn't know, do you know where the name Steely Dan came from? Yeah. Dildo, right?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know that. And I was a fan of theirs from the previous records before I got involved, but I didn't know that until a couple of years later. Yeah. Just an astounding stuff. But any great album that I've ever had that's sonically written, and you have a whole list of some of my favorite albums. I think it was Double Vision. You've worked with Al Jarreau, Aaron Neville, George Benson, Neil Diamond. Man, the Neil Diamond days. I remember when every song on the radio was like Neil Diamond, man. That was amazing times. Yeah. Great artists, great voice. One of the, one of those voices I remember I wrote in the book when it was always, it's always been fun when you work with someone that you've heard on

the radio and in his case since the sixties, and it was, I don't know, 74 or five or something when I worked with him, I was very well familiar with his voice. And he walks in the room and says, hello, Bill. And this is one of those guys that he would have made an amazing disc jockey if he wasn't a songwriter artist and sing, but yeah, it's so great. And then he goes out in the studio and you pull up the fader and you're by golly, that's Neil Diamond singing. Yeah. That's awesome. Herb Albert, the Pointer Sisters, we can go on and on. You've got an incredible list here. In fact, one of my favorite songs, I think the On Every Street is probably my top 10 albums ever played. And then whenever to, Boz lives in San Francisco, and I was in San Francisco at the time. And they came to perform there, and he and I went to hear them. And yeah, we were both just blown away with especially him.

But that song was so great. So what do you think, I'm looking through your list here, and you must have six to 10 books of stories. Do you anticipate doing more books after this? No. Here's what happened. Interesting. I started writing and I just wrote and wrote. I'm just, this is my life kind of thing. And I figured I started writing chronologically, but I went to major steps, shall we say, bullet point artists at first. I didn't, yeah, go in between the cracks, as it were. And I was introduced to the head of the publishing company that I'm with. And I talked to him on the phone and told him what was going on. And he said, okay. And I said, how long should the book be? And he said, no more than a hundred thousand words. And I said, oh, I'm at 140 and still going. And he said, that's what editors

are for. And I said, oh, okay. So I decided to stop writing and send it off to him. And see, I wrote the book, as it says in the intro, I didn't write it for the people in the industry. Some of my engineer friends and up and com-comers whatever might be disappointed because it's there's no how-to in it it's really just my memoir and whatnot and I wrote it for the guy next door who like me loves music and records but hasn't been as fortunate as I have to go behind the curtain and hopefully what this book is and does and the early reviews all are a lot of them are saying it which makes me very happy is that it's just giving those people that love music and records a chance to go behind the curtain and hear a little bit about what is Clive Davis like and what are the egos of some of these people and whatnot.

It's not a salacious book. There's plenty I could have done like that, but that's not me. I do touch on egos a little bit and mention a name or two, but it's in a comical sense in a way. But anyway, so I said to the, when I turned it in and the guy had read it, I said, what do you think of my voice in it? He said, I think it's pretty good. For educational purposes, you really should put some stuff in there. So I went back and wrote about 15,000 more words, a lot of which about half of, close to half of it I like, I really like. The rest of it, I don't know, but it's there. And what I love is what the editor did is he made those bits, a appendix in the back of the book. So the people,

the lawyer next door or whoever is reading and he'll start that stuff and he'll go, I don't get this and give up and that's fine. Other people may start back there and they figure out what I've done. But so we were chopping it down and he, it was almost 160,000 words. And the editor got it down to a hundred and gave it the form that it has, which includes all the tech stuff being in the back. And I was on the phone, it was turned in and I was on the phone with a friend bemoaning the fact that it's over a third of the book is not there. And he said, why don't you get a website and put it on the website? And then in the book, tell the people,

go to this page and put in this and did it. And that's what I did. So I had BillSnead.com. I'd never done anything with it. And I got a local company here in Nashville, near where I live, to build a website for it. And they said, you should be branding yourself and not the book. And so we, I had billsnay.com, but never done anything with it. So we got that.

And there's a tab on it called got a key. And at the end of the stories before the appendix, it says, if you still want more, go to billsnay.com and put in this magic word, which I won't tell anyone. Got to buy the book. And then it opens up and you get two thirds of the book in length again. That's the best teaser of all to get the book. Remember we were asking about doing teasers lately? It's either that or it's either that or one of the albums you mentioned was the Jacksons. I did an album with the Jacksons, a live album, the only one they did with Michael like that. And I was on the bus with the Jacksons i i did an album with the jacks the live album the only one they did with michael

like like that and i was on the bus with the jacksons i bet you want to read the book now yeah yeah i tried to cue that out of you earlier but that'll do that's a good tease yeah i was just looking at your site and i noticed they got a key thing early on what was funny was i was sitting here i i hit the mouse button and it scrolls like all the album covers of all the work that you've done. And this is like my childhood right here. Boss Skaggs, Ringo Starr, look at Pablo Cruz, all these great things. It was moving a second ago. Maybe I stopped it somehow.

But this is awesome. This is awesome. This is an extraordinary book, extraordinary time, probably the best time, in my opinion, maybe music ever. It's hard to say because we grew up in there. So we're prejudiced, I guess. But it really was, I think. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. We'll go with that. I mean, yeah. Undeniable. There we have it. It's been wonderful, Bill, to have you on. And thanks for sharing some of your stories. Sorry if I got a little too dire straitsy on you with the whole thing. No, that's fine. I pulled it up on my rune and I was like, wow, Mark was on this. Oh. And then I started a big fight and Dave was, so thanks. Thanks to Dave and our good friend at, at a great good friends

at Cobas for helping us out with hooking up with your thing. So you have to go hunt down your agent. So great. And you should probably check out his interview with Cobas. I'm not sure where to go get it, but I think it's on the interweb somewhere or YouTube for Cobas's channels or something. So we'll give a shout out or link to the Cobas thing. As we go out, anything more you want to plug on the book or give us? No, not that I, you've covered quite a bit quite well. Yeah. I boy, I'm just going to listen to on every street, like for five hours now.

So thank you very much Bill for being on the show and give us your plugs one more time. So if you can go look up the book, they can of course, order the book so they can get the key to get that other third that's there. Yeah. It's just simply on bill Schnee.com and it's all there, including the Amazon order if you want to do it that way, but it's in all the bookstores too. They tell me.

Awesome sauce. Awesome sauce. So thank you for being on the show. We've loved it, Bill. And just it, wow. The stories you could tell just amaze me. Thank you for having me. It's been great. Thank you. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go order up the book, Chairman at the Board, the recording, recording the soundtrack of a generation. I think you'll love the book. It's been wonderful to talk to Bill. And this gentleman has been behind some of the most greatest things that have changed the world in music that I've experienced. It certainly has made a difference in my life. So thanks for tuning in to see the

video version. Let's go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification button. Go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. You can see all the books we're reading and reviewing over there. You can also go to Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. There's multiple accounts and groups over there. You can get involved with all that stuff we're doing. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you guys next time.