The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan - Brian Kehew: The Beatles Archivist Preserving Rock’s Lost Recordings | The Magnificent Others

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

Billy Corgan sits down with Beatles gear historian and Recording the Beatles co-author Brian Kehew for a deep dive into vintage synths, mixing boards, and the hidden machinery behind rock's greatest records. Kehew explains how The Beatles pushed EMI’s engineers to invent new sounds—and why George Martin was essential to the band’s identity.The two swap stories about Van Halen’s mysterious tape vault, including why a third of Eddie’s famous wall was blank reels and how he and Tom Petty raced to buy the last remaining rolls of analog tape in Los Angeles. They also discuss the decade-long making of Recording the Beatles and why Ritchie Blackmore belongs alongside Jimmy Page and Eddie Van Halen.Kehew explores AI’s role in preserving classic recordings and Master Tape Rescue, his nonprofit reuniting artists with lost recordings. He also previews a Pete Townshend project devoted to his pioneering electronic music.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Don't worry what other people think. Yeah. What other people think is fashion or what other people think is the cool music. Yeah. It's very important. I feel like we should do like some sort of warning, like this may get really into nerd territory since we both love our gear. When you play with something older, it has character. Synthesis is the only way you can have sound without environmental affectation.

The new things coming out didn't sound so good to me and I trusted my ears. I heard your name 500 times before I never actually talked to you. It's true and it's not true. Brian Kihoo, thank you for being here. Thank you. I feel like we should do like some sort of warning. Like this may get really into nerd territory since we both love our gear. I try not to.

It's one of those tendencies where you have to, it's like sports people. When they get together, it starts to amplify to a point where normal humans don't like it. Yeah, well, in full disclosure, I've always admired you from a far because you kind of have like the dream job I would love to do if I wasn't doing what I do. So I'm very envious of the worlds that you go into. So hopefully that will come across in the interview. I wanted to start with something funny. Oh, so 1992, Chris Cornell of Soundgarden with Cameron Crow arranges us for to be in the movie singles with a song. We send the demo of the song, Drown. Great. We're going to record, but the band's constantly on tour. So we get booked into Lenny

Cravitz's studio in New Jersey with Hank. I can't remember Hank's last day. Henry. Henry. Yeah. Henry was there. Lenny wasn't. But I remember going to the studio somewhere in the haze of our touring in 1992 and I'm walking down the hall and I see the red 37 and I'm like, is that the it was just like laying in the hall, you know what I mean? And I thought that was the first time I had this conscious thought of like, wow, you could own that stuff. So that is Red 37, an R-E-D-D is a technical name. That's the number of the Beatles, one of the Beatles mixing boards, right, from the 60s.

Now, that particular board would have been involved. Like, is it, it's the early? Oh, it's more early, yeah. Yeah, first two years, let's say. Right. So I just remember thinking, like, and I took a picture of it, which I still have, and I was like, how do you arrange to own this historic year?

Shouldn't this be in a museum somewhere? Yeah. Or so, and now that board's for sale. Seems no one's willing to pay the price. It's hard to say what those things are worth because once something like a pencil loses its intrinsic value of what it can do for you, maybe because George Washington owned this axe or whatever, Jimmy Hendricks or guitar, then there is no value to it.

And so are you not sentimental about that type of thing? Oh, yeah. I just bought some Beatles gear last week. Can you tell me? an original tape recorder from Abbey Road. Okay. It may not be a main Beatles thing, but it was an Abby Road four track.

Oh, it's a four track, yeah. Yeah. And I do use tape machines all the time, so that has some function for me. So I try to stick with things like that that I like, but if you were I found a incense stick from, you know, the white album sessions, we would want to put it on a shelf and show it off.

Yeah. But is that a board you would want to own the, I call it the Lenny board, but. Yeah, but I'm kind of grounded and realist about these things. For example, that board has very strange levels and can only put out a couple channels at a time. What would you or I use it for? I see. That being said, we've done some work at Abbey Road and they have older boards.

And when you put stuff through them, it does sound better than anything else. Really? Yeah. You think it was the hand sort of manufacturing that they did? Because back then, there weren't manufacturers the way we think of them today. Like it was all done at EMI, right? I mean, yeah, one of the, it's not a secret, but one of the things people don't think about was 50s and 60s recording was still new. So you couldn't just grab a catalog for most companies and buy something.

So at Ivy Road, for example, they were making their own tape machines. They made their own mixing boards. And so that's the way it worked in those days. You had to go design something for your needs. Yeah. Yeah. I have the infamous recording the Beatles book that you and Kevin Ryan did. Yeah.

So my understanding is, but please correct me, is it just started as kind of a personal passion project where you just started kind of trying to figure stuff out. Can you illuminate me on that? Yeah, Kevin and I, in fact, Kevin should be sitting here every time we talk about these things because he does so much work with me. We are true partners in that,

but we started out independently, producer-engineer people making music, and he had the idea to make a book about the tech side of the Beatles. How did they make drum sounds? how did they mix tracks and things. And I had the same idea. He was in Texas. I was in California.

We hadn't met for quite a few years. And then finally somebody introduced us. And it's a great lesson in humility, but also better in partnership, and that working with the right people makes you so much better. So it's not that two of us is twice as good. It's like eight times better when we work together. Yeah. Because I bought the book when it immediately came out.

If people don't know, I recommend it because it's such an insubes. site into the into one of the great sort of recording periods of all time, not just the Beatles, but as you know, because you're a studio guy like me, it's like we would sit around and think, how did they get that sound? And there really wasn't like, there was kind of, there was always colloquial talk, like, you know, the bass sound on rain by the Beatles and how they used a speaker. And, you know, but you would hear these things, but there was no, like, there was no good, go-to resource, like, this is actually how they did it. there were no recording magazines back then.

We're used to these things existing now. There was no, certainly no websites and things, but the making of movies, the making of recordings was a mystery. So we had to go do primary research, which I guess seems to be rare, although people, we found a lot of people make a phone call or two and then put out a story or a book,

but we decided to take the long road, get to know people. We're still friends with most of them that are around and hundreds of contacts, and we go deeper and deeper, and what so-and-so says, we feed it to them, and they change it and adjust it, and we feed it back.

And it gets you closer to the truth, if there is a truth. But in the case of more technical things, there's pretty close to a truth a lot. When the book came out, I was surprised that there had never been that book. I mean, there had been sort of similar things, like, I guess, anecdotal stories,

but nothing that was comprehensive. This was the reason the book was made, Kevin and myself, are the perfect people that wanted that book. Oh, I wanted it too, yeah. We're the same cloth. And most people that work, I realized at least once a week we would mention the Beatles. Somebody would say, oh, how did the Beatles do this or that?

And it was kind of a mystery. They also lived in that world of EMI Studios, which was the original name of Abbey Road. They had their own equipment. So when you see them with a tape machine, and we have no reference point for what that is. So it seems even more mysterious, even if it is a tape machine or a microphone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This occurred to me when I got the book. It's like because the book is chock full of like,

now this might seem super nerdy, but I was totally geeking out. There's like actual pictures of the sessions, but it's not of the band standing there with their gear. It's just like, here's the micing for a certain kit. Here's the way the studio looked. Like all these behind the scenes photos that had never been seen by, I think, by anybody that I'd ever seen. We have a theory that every picture of the Beatles recording, we own it. I mean, at least I have a copy of it. Thousands and thousands. And so, So when we found photographers, which was another way to research it, there's 36 rolls on a, on a roll of film, if you will. And they'd have two or three good shots where their faces are bright and there's a good pose

with a guitar. We're like, no, we want to see the other shot. When you were shooting sideways in the corner and it shows the melitron next to the microphone and something procedural that we didn't have. So all the cool pictures of the Beatles jumping on the steps and stuff, not useful to us, but all these cool pictures that we found for the book. You know, here's George and Paul, and there's like five instruments sitting around them. Amazing for what we want.

Yeah. And there is more coming. Really? Oh, yeah. Hold that thought for a second. So, because it seems to me you just don't call up, you know, Abby Road and say, hey, by the way, let us into your archives. Because, you know, the Beatles are probably the most exhaustively researched musical subject in our lifetime. I cannot think of somebody that's more greatly explored.

So I got to imagine there's a. sort of a kind of a weariness there, a privacy weariness. How do I know? You're not some crazy fan. How did you get through the layers of bureaucracy there? I would like to think we were at least aware of that going into it because we rarely mentioned the B word when we talk to people. Yeah, no, it's true. Wow. We would say, I want to talk to you an engineer person about your days at Abbey Road, EMI. In fact, we would say EMI because it was the more proper term. Oh, yeah. And who did you work with? We worked with the shadows and Helen Shapiro, and I did some Beatles sessions,

and then we'd start connecting with them, and they understood that we knew what they were talking about and the people in their world. So Kevin and I both developed a feel for, our focus is the Beatles, of course. It's what we all care about, and for good reason. They're beyond amazing.

But everything else also informed us what Freddie and the Dreamers might have caused something to happen in the Beatles world, so why wouldn't you want to know about it? I see. So going deep into it and not mentioning the B word was a very critical thing. What ignited your passion for recording? Were you a musician who kind of fell into recording?

I have some early memories of like my parents having a little hi-fi system at home, the stereo thing. And one of the speakers stopped working and I took a screwdriver and took it apart. And then there was one wire connected and one wire was loose, connected it up. And my mom said, how did you know how to do that? I didn't know, but I was fascinated by how it worked. And then what happens if you put your finger on the speaker? What happens if you put some paper over the speaker? Tinfoil.

And then one of those people that just likes to mess around with sound, as you probably do with everything. You know, guitars and pedals, and we all do. It's an art form to sculpt sound into different shapes and then put them together. Yeah. So speaking of the B word, what was your sort of point? Because back to, I think, our concept. language here is that as a musician, at some point you, at least in my, I mean, even Ozzy

talked about it. At some point, the Beatles become this kind of touchstone of understanding. It's a sort of a kind of a rosetta stone because of the width of the recording history and because of the common knowledge, you can basically walk in any studio in the world. And if you kind of speak beetle language from a recording point of view, you can kind of find common ground, right? So what was your first kind of like, I'm not saying which Beatles album or song did you love. What was the first time you thought, wow, I wonder how they did that as a recording unit or as a production unit. I even know where I was on the freeway when I heard birthday from the white album, great track. And they have this weird piano sound on there.

And I thought, that is so weird. No one has a piano. It's a piano. It's an acoustic piano, but weird. Wow, wah, wah, wah, kind of weird filter sound. And I went, what the hell is that? And I had, I had amps, I had pedals. I was working in music stores.

And I was like, I don't know what would do that. And it was driving me crazy. And there was no one to talk to. No one knew. There was no book. And so years later, this man named Ken Scott, who became a close personal and family friend of ours, who's one of the greatest recording producers? Also did Pipers at the gates of dawn and Floyd.

Yeah, of course. And all the way up through missing persons, even. Exactly. I asked Ken, you worked on that session, and he was really proud of saying, oh, yeah, I took the piano track down into the room, put a Vox amp on the floor, and I went, oh, the mid-range boost, MRB is what it's called. And it's like a filter that boosts, a low, middle, and high frequencies. And he was musically playing the knob as they recorded it through the amp.

And I was like, wow, there's my question answered. From the guy. Yeah, but now there's 10,000 more questions to do. But that was the moment when I thought, wouldn't that make a great book? I would buy it. Most people would want it, and it's never been talked about. Yeah. How, how, it's hard to, it's hard to quantify this question, even because I'm not a particularly technical person.

Okay, what do they call in-house at Abbey Road, what we now know is Abbey Road? What did they call the department that made stuff? Was it an engineering department? Oh, the nickname was. the amp room, which is kind of different. We don't think of Fender amps or Gibson amps. They were thinking of amplifiers, meaning rack-mounted boosters of signals, that kind of thing. But they were the tech guys, which in England they call a boffin. Okay. So those guys are there. At what point did they start actually making their own equipment in house? It was kind of an ongoing thing because you're probably

aware of how echo chambers work and the Beatles had an echo chamber to use. Each of the studios there had an echo chamber. So before we have all these other possible ways to make that sound, they had taken the 1950s technology designed here in America of an empty room with a speaker in it and a mic to make sound bounce like when you sing in the bathroom. It's that kind of trick. And so they had echo chambers that they had built themselves. Those guys were doing it in the 50s pre-Beatles. And even some of the pianos, like one of the pianos they wanted for a guy named Russ Conway, and he wanted the honky tonk sounds. So they were literally lacquering the hammers and detuning the strings. Let's make one of our pianos the weird out-of-tune piano.

Okay. So the people that work there were also creative, but in talking to them over and over again about this strange group, the Beatles, the Beatles were pushing them to be more creative. They said, we weren't even that adventurous, but they'd be like, put the drums in the corner, put the vocal in the corner, try these weird things, put a microphone under a glass of water, what does it sound like? And so things they wouldn't have thought of, the way the Beatles think was highly creative.

So when Kevin and I do talks, we often say, you know, you can buy all the tape machines and microphones the Beatles had, but you won't be them because your brain is not the Beatles. Where do you think that came from within the group? You know, they each had it, they all had a version of it, maybe obviously John Lennon who went to art school and years ago talking to Pete Towns and who I know,

who also went to art school. He told me they don't teach you to paint in art school in England. Sid Barrett went to art school. These people went to, it's not how to paint or how to be a sculptor. It's how to be an artist in the world. Yeah. It's how to be different than everybody who's stuck in a box.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. So they learned to think differently. Pete Townsend learned to smash instruments. from there. Sid Barrett learned to do bizarre things with lights and sound there. They taught their artists to become those people and they really impacted the world. So Lenin certainly went to art school, but I think Paul was as creative in his own ways. Yeah. Yeah. When I was doing some research to talk to you, my understanding is that one of the Beatles recording consoles was missing,

but now that's apparently not true. Is that, do you know what I'm talking about the, was it the revolver council or something? Well, I would say the main. board that they used, no one has a clue about it. Right, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. And I looked and I, it seemed to, so I knew you would know. So there's, there's one of these boards where it's just disappeared into ethers. No one knows where it went, right?

Doug Figer, RIP, who was the leader of the NAC, became a good friend of mine in later years. He's also a massive Beatles nerd, one of the biggest. And he said, I bought that console. It was at Abbey Road. It was in a back room. I paid $5,000 for it, which I don't know what the exchange rate was, but it wasn't that much. And this is when the knack is peaking early 80. And he said, I bought it, but the shipping was so much,

because it's heavy steel. It weighs more than a car in some cases. Shipping was so much, I just left it there. And then a year later, they said, somebody else wants it. Will you let it go? Sure, just give me my $5,000 back. So it sold to someone else, and we never found it.

But years ago, I was at a great English studio called British Grove, which Mark Knopfler owns. Okay. And they record the stones there and all kinds of great people. And I was visiting, interviewing one of their texts who is an ex-Aby Road guy. And he got a phone call as I was sitting there. Oh, an old EMI board in Italy, send me some pictures. And he sent me pictures of the identical board to the one at Abbey Road, but with one change.

And I was like, it looks just like the board we've all been looking for from Sergeant Pepper, from Revolver, and the white album. But it's not. It's from Italy. So EMI had studios all over the world in Japan and in California with capital. And so that board turned up and I said, just by it. It's the only one in the world at this point. So they have that identical brother-sister console is a British Grove. I heard about that.

But again, to be redundant, no one knows where the actual one, what's called Beetleboard is. No, I mean, a lot of stuff is gone. That's just talking to people. It's so crazy, right? You think it's got to be somewhere, right? We probably, FYI, we talked about recording the Beatles, and Kevin and I have taken it out of print

almost 10 years ago to rebuild it. Meanwhile, the price of the old ones went through the roof, which is unintentional. But we want to make it twice as big. We have so much information, more photos, more stories, more stuff. It will probably be hopefully twice as good as far as detail and depth and accuracy. But one of our...

friends got us pictures of the auction they had there in the early 80s where they were selling off all the old equipment and the melitron. This hurts my heart. Time machine and a bank account is all you need, right? But in 1980, what could you have afforded? Yeah. Right? Almost anybody.

And in England, it's not even current right now to like old equipment. They tend to be a more forward-thinking recording community. America loves the old stuff. But you can see in the pictures there, Beatles 4. track, Beatles 8 track, Beatles 4 track, the Melatron from the White album, the Melatron went for a thousand pounds to Mike Oldfield. Now McCartney has it. But, you know, they were selling the four-track machines used on various Beatles records, some of them, for like three, four hundred pounds. And yet they were not that usable. Uh, 24 track was in. They sort of like buying an old Apple computer

now. Who thinks of that? Who wants to do it? Whereas other things are very cool. But when I was growing up and into guitars and amps and things, if you wanted Fender and Gibson, you didn't want Dan Electro, you didn't want Silver Tone, and now those are cool, you know? Yeah. This is kind of the cheesy, obvious question,

but has anything really surprised you in this process of pluming the recording archives and so something that really stuck out? Well, we like to see that the Beatles are greater than we thought they were. In other words, over and over again, they proved that they were pushing ahead, even at their own peril. I mean, I remember talking to one guy who said, the Beatles were washed up after 64.

Because they had those great songs, and they were tight, and they were harmonic, and they were beautiful, and they were clean, and then they just started messing around. True, in one way of looking at it. The Beatles are bulletproof up through 1964 and a half. I mean, some of the best tight pop songs ever written, but that's not, I Want You, She's So Heavy, which jams on and on at the end,

which is a piece of art in a different way. No, the chances they took, I think, because they're so successful that people don't really understand that the chances were really monumental. You know what I mean? They were risking a lot more than just whether or not people were going to like what they were doing. They were the top pop group in the world.

And if you compare it to a Taylor Swift or Olivia Rodriguez, you know, imagine taking those mad leaps of aesthetics and sonics. there's very few people, I mean, you could say Bowie, but maybe not as much even. Bowie didn't have an eight-minute noise piece on his album. And Madonna, who has often shifted and changed styles and not left her audience behind taking them with her. That's pretty bold to do these strong moves,

but not as strong as the Beatles. I mean, the White album is a favorite of many people because you've got these beautiful things like Good Night that could be a Walt Disney track sitting next to why don't we do it in the road, which is almost a trashy resident song. Yeah. Yeah.

I remember one time I was at, when Howie Weinberg, the Master Engineer, was in New York at MasterDisk, we'd finished a session early and how he said, hey, I've got this dupe of the Sergeant Peppers. I've heard of that, yeah.

And it was a, it's, so it basically, if you can imagine, it would have been a friend of his at Capitol had duped the Capitol copy. So basically it's, I guess, a second generation. It's a one-to-one transfer of the American master. Yes. So imagine, you know, incredible mastering suite, you know, tune for sound, big speakers, he cranks it up.

And I'm listening to Sergeant Pepper's, and I'm hearing stuff that I've never heard before. And kind of what you said, I'm like, this band's even better than I thought they were. And this is considered one of their great albums. It's even better than I thought it was. And I've listened to it a hundred times. So I'm with you. on that. They really are even better than we think they are. A lot of things sound too dated, and I guess you could say...

But let me stop you there. So what in your eyes, what do you think sounds dated? Well, just saying that like drum sounds from the early days, there's hardly any kick drum. It's not a lot of bothering. Things like that. It does sound like a 1963 recording. But given the Beatles, and you hear twist and shout, it's up there with the stooges as far as energy. Yeah. It's up there with anything I've ever heard. And we keep saying over and over again that that was a live performance and a live mix at the same time. They're engineers, especially Norman Smith, who did half their records, Jeff Remmer, Ken Scott, Phil McDonald, these various people that worked with them, they're geniuses too.

And as you probably know, engineering can make or break an entire record. Yes. I've been blessed to work with some greats. You know, sometimes I find if you over-investigate a subject, you know, it changes something about how you feel. Sometimes I lose my enthusiasm. I don't get to feeling you've lost your enthusiasm for the band, but did it change your perspective looking from the inside out?

Maybe it's the same question's voice differently. But I mean, do you see them differently now that you've gone so deep into their world? It's a little less magical. That being said, it still sounds cool. But when you hear these John Lennon vocals that are all trippy, like seen the scab of diamond.

So, oh, it's ADT and a speeded up vocal. and it's John Lennon. So, whereas that sounds very trippy, and it should sound trippy. How they did it is a magic trick revealed when you study how things go. So you were saying the recording book is essentially out of print now

and you're going to do a... Yeah, Kevin and I decided after 10 years, everybody's already bought it, that wants to buy it. I mean, 10 years is a long run. And we did really well with it. We are just two people. We're a company,

which is people think it's some office or something. It's two people. Yeah. And we put out our own, books because we wanted other companies, the big companies to put it out, and they wanted to cut the arms and legs off it. And we're like, after all these years, 10 plus years, there's no way. So we decided to be, oddly enough, a book company and sell and make things. And luckily, our subject matter was a lot more interesting to people. And the quality of the work was hopefully

good enough to last. So we decided to stop making it. And we are rebuilding it now for maybe next year, 2027, R-TB-2 will be out. Oh, very good. For somebody who, maybe is a Beatle fan, would not think they would be into a highly technical kind of book. Could you at least explain to them why you might think they'd enjoy the book? I gave it to my mother to read, and she understood it. So there you go.

I said, you know, here's a section on compressors, and, you know, studio people really care about that function, right? That's a specific thing, but it makes the world of difference. and she's like, I sort of don't know what the sound is, but I know what you're saying. They're automatic volume control that shapes the sound too. So we find that it is a technical book if you aren't interested in that, but there's enough about Ringo's drums.

There's enough about the guys working together. And honestly, it was a process where almost eight or ten years together, Kevin and I had finished the book. We'd written all the chapters on, there's a chapter on microphones, as a chapter on speakers. We just wanted to break it down and introduce a cast of characters.

This speaker you see in the picture is this guy. And then in 68, they changed to this guy. Just so you wouldn't wonder anymore. We wanted to know what every box in the room was. And then once we explained that, I stopped and we had written the book. And I said, Kevin, it doesn't make sense. I mean, it just doesn't flow.

It's too much technical. And so Kevin took it and ran with it. We came up with a third of the, book, mostly his work that says production in 1964. Here's what they're using and how they did Hard Days Night. And here's what they're using in 68 to do the White album with stories from people that make it more juicy about staying up all night and stuff like that. So that really tied it together, whereas that section wouldn't work if you didn't know the things we're talking about. Yeah, I understand. But people who are mostly recording people, they do want to know what microphones

that you. Yeah. So I wanted to share with you because I've actually never told this. story, so it's been indulgent on my end. But so years ago, I can't remember the year, the Dark Side of the Moon, sorry, the Abbey Road through Dark Side of the Moon transistor EMI, TG, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It's a big mixing board. It was for sale.

Yeah. Mike Hedges, the famed producer, The Cure fans would know Mike Hitchies. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Great producer, and he was selling the board, and somebody goes, would you be interested in buying this board? and I said, sure. So I think the original price was somewhere in the $700,000 range.

And comparing the price at the time, the same series of board with the same similar series of channels was about a third of the price or something. So, of course, one person in my life said, you're insane. If you want the board because you want the sound, you can get it for far cheaper over here. but you know look it's a museum piece kind of to your point is it really going to be functional for you and I just so love the idea of owning this kind of and it goes back to seeing the boarded Lenny's studio all those years ago and I had the money and I thought okay so then I said okay I and I think I asked like some obvious questions suddenly the price turned into like $800,000 and then the next time I called it was $850 and the next time I called it was $1.2 so after $1.1.000

I was like, okay, I'm out. And I think eventually the board was bought $2.2.2 million. Yes. It lives about a mile from here right now. Okay. Well, let's go visit it because I at least like to see what I almost bought. Well, whoever got it, probably a private producer who I know has some crazy equipment and knows what he's doing. He is a good recording engineer producer.

Is the person known? Can we talk about that person? I don't know. Okay. So it doesn't really matter. If they want to be known, I'm sure they will. Yeah. But I'm a big fan of Kate Bush.

So the Kate Bush records were made on that board, too. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. And so it was there through the 70s. And if you see a picture of Kate Bush in the studio, that's the board too. But as you said, Darks Out of the Moon, all kinds of cool stuff. It's post-Beatles, but it is Abbey Road, and it's a more usable console. Was it used for Abbey Road or because I was told that at the time, but weren't it?

The Abbey Road board is another, well, that's the mic, well, there's two Mike Hedges boards. So maybe we're talking about the one that was Dark's of the Moon has gone up and sold. the one from 1969 and 70, which is used on Abbey Road and so forth, is still for sale. Ah, okay. Yeah. At a very reasonable few million,

if you want to throw away some more. So the part B of the story was, at that point, I started thinking, well, I'm sort of intrigued to own the series of boards. So eventually I bought a board that was EMI,

I think was EMI Sweden. They would build it at Abbey Road and then they'd ship them. And you know about those boards. They would float around the world to satellite you my or BBC stations so

so I bought this board and in the exchange of buying the board I said something just casually about it being a beetle board and I won't say the name of the company I'm sure you know who they are they got kind of grumpy and they were like now now wait a second you know we're not selling

this as board as a beetle board you know don't call it the beetle board like by the way I'm spending a lot of money and I'm getting lectured. Don't call it the beetle board. We're not selling it as a beetle board. You don't have a right to call it a beetle board. It was like it was a bit silly.

I understand that. But an auction house has to protect their reputation? No, this is not an auction house. Oh, yeah, just a sales firm. You know who I'm talking about. Okay, I see. Okay. They don't have the best reputation.

Let's put it that way. I understand who that is. Yes. So I buy the board and I still have the board. I love the board. I've used the board. I think it's a... They sound great.

It's a magical thing. And it's, it's, it has a sound that's wholly onto its own. And I look forward as I get older and I make less commercial work and more artistic work. I think I'll use the board a lot more. It's a, it's a treasure that I have. But the funny thing was, and I wish I could remember the name of the tech, and I'm sure you know the gentleman, because he was one of the original texts that used to fix the board back in the day. Brian Gibson?

There's the man, there's the man's name. Thank you. Yeah. So Brian came over to Chicago to work on the board for me. Nice. And because, of course, the company I bought it from, you know, had indicated it was in better shape than it was. So, okay, great. You know, whatever it's going to cost, come on, make it work.

And he comes. And so, you know, he's at my, I had a different place at the time in Chicago. And he's working on it. And I just, you know, we're sitting around shooting the, as you do in studios. And I tell him the story I just told you about them getting grumpy about calling it the beetleboard. And, you know, he kind of laughed. And he, you know, he's an old school Beatles EMI guy. So he's heard it all.

Yeah. Sweet guy. Great. Awesome. Did a great job on the board. Okay. So about three days later, I come back just when he's about finishing up. And he goes, he goes, remember that story you told me?

I go, yeah. He goes, I want to show you something. Uh-huh. And he takes me around the back of the board. Yep. And he goes, see how the, there's different coloring on the wiring. He goes, see this part here? He goes, this is actually from the abbey.

road board. I've seen that secret revealed, although it's not out there publicly because he wanted to protect the thing, but it is the proof from the people at work there. Brian Gibson, by the way, not a famous person, and he wasn't a recording engineer that set up the mics and moved the faders. He was a technical guy, the boffin, amp room people, who I love the most almost. They're so good. They were the tech guys, and he was there from 64, but mainly 68 onward. So when those boards came in, He installed them. When those boards were breaking, he fixed them. Perfect guy.

He's passed away now. But he was the one. God bless. Lovely, sweet guy. He was the one that introduced Kevin and myself together. He said, Brian, I was interviewing him. He goes, there's a guy I've been talking to for a while, also from America who's doing a book. And it was such a perfect thing.

Also, Brian has most of the pictures in the book that are behind the scenes came from him. Oh, wow. They weren't supposed to take pictures during sessions. and a lot of things. So he has a lot of tech photos perfect for what we wanted, and he just let them use us. So recording the Beatles, which is our greatest hit at this point,

book number one didn't go to Kevin or myself. We gave it to Brian Gibson. Yeah. So just to finish the story, so I'm standing behind this board, and he goes, do you understand that this is actually from the Abbey Road board? And I said, how is that possible?

And he said, well, when people would, when things would fail, they wouldn't send us back the whole board. They take out a cassette, they called them, right? Am I being accurate? Yeah. And he goes, they ship them back to us. And sometimes it was just easier to send them back another one that was just laying in the shop. And we just switched stuff out. They didn't care.

It wasn't a big deal to us. So it goes, so basically, you know, to the people who sold you the board because you actually own a part of that board. Amazing. That is, and it's, it's proof. This person knows exactly what to do, what is there and what's real. And his authorization is good as gold. Yeah. So, God bless to him.

He was, what a sweetheart. This episode of The Magnificent Others is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean, hundreds more in your pocket. Visit to oppressive.com after this episode to see if you could save.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates, potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. I was wondering, doing something so comprehensive, have you gotten any personal reflections from the guys in the band? Or even the states. Like, I'm friends with Sean. So, like, you know, when I see Sean sometimes, obviously we'll talk about Beatles stuff too, you know inside baseball stuff so how have they been reactions have you gotten any personal

reactions from the estates or the or the guys themselves we know quite a few beetles kids um sean is a good friend from way back we used to tour it together zach i worked with for years with the who good guy and then kevin knows julian well danny harrison we've known and been to this house and so forth. But I would say the nicest compliment came from Danny Harrison, who told us that he went to interview George Martin one time and that George was talking about the Beatles and he said, and Danny asked him what they did on something. George said, hang on. And he pulled our book off the shelf and looked it up. That's awesome. I do think our book, honestly, when it came out, wouldn't have interested, like Paul McCartney or Ringo or George Martin that much,

because the songs and the music, that is a thousand times more important than what kick drum mic they used. It really is. Our book is a niche thing, and it's focusing something. David Bowie, by the way, got a copy of our book, and his review was, train spotterish, but good. And so in England, a train spotter is a person that checks all the details on every little, this one has two bells and this one has one thing. So Bowie realized it's a little goofy that these guys care about the speakers that much, but it is cool.

So that was nice. I'm a fan, so I think it's a treasure. I recommend anybody you can find the book, and I look forward to the new edition. I saw this in your history, leaving the B word for a second. Is it accurate that you went to school for synthesis and synthesizer? Is that accurate? Yeah, that's a deep dive. I went to a college, which is still there, Cal State,

Mingus Hills. And when I was reaching college age, I wanted to train and learn more. I was into the tech side of things, like how everything works. And I grew up a guitar player. Most of my thousands of hours are playing guitar, but nobody's ever said the words, we can't find a guitar player. No one's ever said those words. But I love synthesizer technology. Yeah. And when I was going up analog since and all the records from Wendy Carlos and Keith Emerson and whoever were just blowing my mind, those sounds were cool. And since we're unavailable, like if I went to stores, you didn't see a synthesizer in a store when I was young.

We'd have to drive to L.A. or something just to see one. So it was like a weird thing. But I love that. And I found this school Cal State Dominguez not only had that, but they had a Sinclaver, which was definitely state-in-the-art in the future as far as I thought. So I went to that school, which is basically Compton in the middle to late 80s. That's where I lived. So it's a really cool school.

and the nice thing I loved about it was they would give me the studio keys, stay up all night, do what you want. Amazing. Yeah. So if I went to UCLA to just study recording, you wouldn't get a chance to hold the studio for yourself. Now it's my understanding you have a very good vintage synth collection. Let's say I did, although...

Oh, you got rid of it? Well, in some ways, trade it up. Like, who needs a mini-mug when you have a giant Moog modular, which is the original and the King of the Hill? It still sounds better than every single. made today. Yeah.

Things like that. I had melitrons, which are the great keyboards with tapes and samples in them, but I found the 60s version that has the original, like the Beatles version, King Crimson, that's a rarer one and more cool. Are you talking about the Mach 1? Mark 2, yeah. Because I have a Mark 1 that was converted. See, that most of them are, let's say half of them were.

Mark 1 is just the same thing with earlier versions. So they updated the tape and made it a little bit. cooler, but yes, you know what I'm talking about. That's an amazing machine and they're very rare. Because, yeah, because I got very into vintage since about 15 to 20 years ago and I have pretty silly collection. But it was at a point where there's like now that's gone to the roof in terms of prices and it's crazy. I'm glad there was a time period in the 80s, 90s when a mini-mobile was $300. They're easily $5,000 now up and climbing. And yet there are replicas that quite good and different versions of that.

So the time when we spoke briefly before this about, I remember the time when good gear was always in the past. In the 80s and 90s, I didn't love the mixing boards. I didn't like the microphones. The new things coming out didn't sound so good to me, and I trusted my ears. Even early digital, most people wouldn't want that now. I didn't like it then.

I stayed with you. Yeah, a lot of his records, unfortunately, aged very poorly because of the limitation of the sonics. If you were listening, An old analog synthesizer sounded better than a DX7, but DX7 was the new thing of the hill. It did its thing, but to me, I was like, listen to the Oberheim over here,

listen to the old ARP. And so I started buying up the $100 and $300, and I filled a room with keyboards for like $1,000 back then. There was just, there were times when you like what you like. And one of my favorite things is you do you. it's not only a guidance for you to choose what you want to be. Like, I want to play country with a martial lamp. But U-D-U also means that don't worry what other people think.

Yeah. What other people think is fashion or what other people think is the cool music. Yeah. It's very important. You-Do-you is so simple, but it's a guide as well as a restriction. Yeah. It seemed in the 90s, I mean, I had my thing, too. there was a, and you were involved, and this is where I first started hearing your name,

you kind of got the rep as like the synth guy, or the, or the guy if you wanted like a melitron or something. Like you, like your name came up a lot. I heard your name 500 times before I never actually talked to you. And, uh, but what do you, what do you think that was? Because I looked at some of the artists that you work with. And again, I don't know, I know, I know you worked a lot on that one Fiona record, a Fiona Apple record. But I'm saying is, you know, John Bryan was a name that got thrown around back in the 90s as well in town here in L.A. Because there were a lot of guys who really understood the gear. But I guess less about, what do you think of was about those times that suddenly people sort of turned back to some of those sounds? I think at the time the current offerings were not that great.

And you could put that into the recording systems or the type of effects. I mean, there are crazy things like these tell ray echoes. John Bryan was my roommate for a while, but I was like, John, you've got to hear this Tell Ray Echo, and he made that the sound of his movies and his records for years. It was just this weird looping drum, oil can echo that sounds like you're underwater. Nothing modern would do that.

No digital rack-mount thing. So the deficiencies, which are also features, were good. Right now, you almost can't buy a guitar amp that isn't like a tube amp. That's what people have accepted as a good sound. Yeah. Unless it's a digital modeling thing, but we've come back to those ideas that many people rejected.

And I do think when you play with something older, it has character, which may not be flexible. Some of these great reverbs of the past, like an EMT plate or even a spring reverb, doesn't do much. But really what it does is so strong. In one direction, you're like, I love it for that. Yeah. Yeah, Jimmy Chamberlain from The Pumpkins always calls it musical. That's his way of explaining. He loves things that are musical.

It's like there's a sort of call and response that goes on with the gear. We could detour because I always use that when I talk about musicians. My favorite musician is Michael Schenker. So funny, I was talking to his son the other day. Oh, yeah. He's a cool guy. I know him as well.

And is he better in a speedway or an inventive way? No, he just has a perfect voice for what he wants to do. And I love the melody, perspective. Oh my God. One of the greatest guitar players all time. First band ever saw was UFO, and I've been working on their old tracks recently. Oh, that's cool. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's a new thing for me, but a dream come true. But as I was saying, the word musical,

it doesn't really matter how fast you play or, but as one of my friends calls it note choice. It's a funny word, but it works. He's a supreme note choice guy. Yeah. He just picks the greatest, coolest notes. Brian May, Richie Blackmore, I know you've mentioned. him, but one of my biggest influences, when I hear him, he sounds like himself, he sounds confident. The notes are primary. It's not shredding, really, but there's something about it that is so bold, and he's very confident. There's no question about that. And yet, I think that there is a distinctive voice there, but it's always musical. Yeah, I was in communication with Richie's wife, Candace, just begging to have Richie on the podcast. He is. He is.

the best interview in the world because he's so wacky. And if you go look up Richie Blackmore interviews, which I do every six weeks, I can't wait to see what he says because he's always out there and funny. He's so funny. And his memory is insane and he has such an incredible recording history even before Deep Purple with Joe Meek and all that stuff. And it's just like, Richie would be a dream guest. I wouldn't say that he's underrated because most people have a certain time period. I think he is underrated. Well, yeah, but I was going to say that when you talk about the pantheon of people, Jimmy Page, Pete Townsend, Jeff Beck,

Eddie Van Halen, of course, you know, those people are up there and do it. But Richie Blackmore should sort of be there, in my opinion. And, but we always talk about these kinds of things. I don't care how well you play. It's the songs you write that is what makes me listen to your music. So there would be no Eddie Van Halen if he didn't write some of the greatest songs ever written.

Well, those things, for that level of art, artists, those two things seem to go hand in hand. Yeah, true. Maybe it's a taste sense or a musical discernment. But I can also... It has to be. You can feel their influences, but it's how they rechannel it to become original. Yeah. Yeah. Because even if you like, in my mind in a weird way, and I know not every musician would make these parallel. Van Halen Eddie and Blackmore run in kind of almost parallel tracks. They are singularly. their guitar players. You can hear the influence, but somehow it doesn't show up in their playing in the way that it seems to show up in everybody else is playing. And then through the majesty of

their innovation and ability to play the guitar, they literally create genres that do not exist before they start playing. I'd say that's true. Yeah. Like, because I was listening, I love Rainbow, which is Blackmore's band after Deep Purple with Ronnie James Steele singing and then ultimately Joe Lynn Turner and Graham Bonnet. I mean, Richie's basically inventing hair metal in like 76, but no one calls it hair metal, it's just called hard rock. But if you listen to some of the Rainbow in 76, it's literally Sunset Strip, air metal seven

years in advance. Yeah. When Ronnie left Rainbow to join Black Sabbath would become a very big thing. I mean, Sabbath was my favorite group growing up, although when he joined it became a different thing. But it sounded like Rainbow to me because they had keyboards at Martin Birch recording. It didn't

sound new to me. It sounded like, but everybody else went, wow, this is amazing. I never made that parallel. Well, I just said to people, you should go buy some rainbow albums. If you love this version of Black Sabbath, you will love rainbow. Well, you have to go back to Elf, of course. They're the, sure. They're the root source of it all. But you mentioned Richie, if you listen to the very famous live Deep Purple record, 72 in Japan, he's doing these muted jing, jing, jin, jin, I don't think anyone had done that before. It's the sound of heavy metal. Interesting. That muted

power cord jing jing jing through a martial thing. Yeah. I was curious because, you know, you're living in this world and you're still so actively involved with everything that's going on. How do you feel about sort of the plug-in that's become such a big business now for in recording? Before I ask you, and you pick it how you want. Because over here we have like, you know, a thousand plug-ins for gear, meaning like, you know, the teletronics and, you know, including like Abbey Road, reverb chambers. You can get the capital reverb chamber. there's all that.

And then even on their side, now you have the synthesizers, the software version of synthesizers. So most of them are as accurate as could be, whatever that means. And usually when it's not accurate, it means the original has some flaw or weirdness in the way it works.

I mean, no, if you buy an old mixing board like you did, not every channel's going to sound the same. Oh, no. But in software, they will, which is a feature as well as a problem. Yeah, yeah, I get that. I never thought of that. If I want 10 EQs on every channel

to sound the same, If you do that on your board, the same boost, it will slightly be different, although is that a flaw or a feature? Yeah. So I think they've done a great job of figuring it out, how to replicate a synthesizer, a channel on a board, a compressor. I use that all the time. That being said, I used to record the traditional ways, and I was one of the last people. I didn't have a computer until 2009. Okay.

I had a rule, no phone, no computer in my studio. That was like for a long time. but I kept tape machines around and that's currently still what we're doing at the studio is all my old tape machines are there just so we can transfer tapes for people, old stuff.

But when I got into plugins, I was like, well, I can save this, it'll be here tomorrow. That's a huge feature. I can try different versions and then come back to this one. And if I only have one Fairchild, which I never owned that expensive thing,

I can have six of them on the mix. So the benefits do outweigh any possible limitations right now. That being said, I have an old mixing board. And when the pandemic hit, I actually took, for the first time, a computer home with speakers and did some mixing at home. It was a replacements project for Warner Brothers. And I did some mixes and they said, oh, it sounds great. And I went, it sounds good.

No, it's great. I said, no, that's a good sound. But a week or two later, we could move again and get out of our homes. I went back to my studio working solo and I just put it through the board. And then it became 3D and powerful and alive. I didn't do anything. And then I sent it to him, they're like, oh, wow, that sounds really good. And I was like, it's a secret weapon to have hardware.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I certainly believe in moving electricity still. Yeah. How did you get into this archivist is this sort of the benign word? But I'm fascinated that you're sort of involved in this, like, you know, digging through catalogs and finding unreleased stuff. How did you get that gig to begin with? A good producer friend of mine named Bill Inglot was producing a record for me,

me and the artist was there doing a very 60s type sound and he said wow you work really fast and I was like drum sounds 15 minutes you know you shouldn't you can only move the mic so many times before you're done and he liked that and then he said at one point could you make something sound old and I was like I cannot make a modern record I can't do that I can't tune a vocal like Katie Perry yeah I can't do drum samples I can do anything Led Zeppelin did I can do the doors yeah and he goes great come with me to Capital Records, and we started working on a Doobie Brothers box set. So Rhino is the wing of Warner Brothers that does their catalog projects.

So any band that's not currently actively working with them, which is Fleetwood Mac, Aretha, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, all those tapes, they're like, it's time to go into Alice Cooper's 50th anniversary of Schools Out. Let's pull the tapes out. I have a tape machine. I still have all my old machines. And originally, pre-computer, we were just going through like, again Fleetwood Mac, one of my favorites going through the tapes of rumors, et cetera,

my studio just listening to the versions and trying to make something that is respectful and releasable as a bonus track. Yeah. How do you feel about the rise of that? I mean, it's, you know, when the CD box set kicked in sort of, you know, in our generation, sort of somewhere in the 90s. Sure. Now it's kind of turned into like, now we're kind of past that line and we're into like

things that were never finished, incomplete. takes. And I'm the guy buying that stuff. So there's no judgment from my end. But how do you feel from your perspective? Because you work in the, let's call it, that side of the business. We have a weird overabundance of options in this world. And that's ubiquitous, whether you're into cars or sports, you can know about the girlfriend of your favorite catcher this weekend. You know, it happens. So in the case of music, I do love hearing. There are some tracks by some. of these groups that are far better than the version on the record. Maybe they were dabbling in some substances,

or maybe they were just thinking it needed more backing vocals, but going through things like Fleetwood Mac and taking it off all the overdubs to put five people back in the room, wow, that's Fleetwood Mac that we love. And it shows how good they are without assistance. Yeah. I still love their production when they go into Tango in the Night and Mirage and stuff. There's amazing layers of vocals and guitars,

But when you strip it back, they're a phenomenal group. I mean, not just good, but something magical. Yeah. So I love to hear that stuff and reveal it without not tuning vocals, not really fixing things much, just trying to show a better version of something that hasn't been heard yet. But back to your question, you know Pat Smir. He's a good friend of mine. Funniest guy in the world.

And he said, oh, box sets, those things you listen to once. Right? That sounds like that. And so I have bought a few, like Rainbow Rising, where the bonus disc, I listen to it a bunch. It's really good. But even some Beatles stuff, I'll listen to two or three tracks over and over again,

but the outtake of this one song, where I would have died for that in the 80s as a bootleg. I listened to all my bootlegs in the 80s to death, especially the Beatles. And now I have better quality versions, but so much is coming out and so much is competing for our attention, including this show.

that it is very hard to give it the kind of focus we used to have. So I will ask you, does music feel like it sits in a different place in today's world? It does, but it feels like something's coming back, and I don't mean it's coming back like how it used to be. I think it's coming back like the new version of the old version. And I don't know what that is yet. When you were a young teenager, how many records did you have? Well, my father was a musician, so we would have had maybe like 20 albums in the house.

lot in some ways. Probably, yeah. Compared to most people, yeah. You'd listen to it front and back over and over and over again, right? I listen to stuff I didn't even like. What kind of stuff would that be that's inside your brain? You're talking about back then? Yeah.

I mean, we're talking about like Return to Forever. Romantic Warrior was the record. I love it. We're talking about Sly Stone, Jimmy Hendricks, Led Zeppelin. I had my own Black Sabbath albums. Let me said something very prescient, and I think, is sort of a genius in ways beyond music, but one of his things he said was,

we all had that music we heard before our filters went up. And he said, for me, that's Buddy Holly, the Beatles. He goes, not Elvis, but Buddy Holland the Beatles, you can never do wrong. Everything they did was gold. And that is pretty strong music, of course. But, you know, he saw the Beatles before there were famous extra impact with him.

But he said it could be a boy band, or it could be Metallica that you listen to before your filters went up. Nothing can ever touch that for you. I see. So I grew up with like my parents' show tunes, like Sound of Music and Jesus Christ Superstar, burned into my brain, and I can't ever not like them.

Nobody can even knock them down because they're just pure. Yeah. I know every state or every band's difference, but generally speaking, there's got to be that moment where you're in a room by yourself and you're here, you've got the master tapes, you know, these like in our world, kind of our audio version of goal.

you know, whether it's Fleetwood Mac or whatever, or it's Black Sabbath. You've got the tapes. You're in the room. You're by yourself. There's a certain responsibility that comes with being a kind of a preservationist, archivists. I mean, you're given a great responsibility, and you're a sensitive person, so it strikes me that you would take that responsibility seriously.

Very much, but it's interesting, too, the perspective where transferring things, and almost everyone comes in and says, this recording is very important. It's the only recording of my dad's group. This recording is my grandmother sending a message to us. It's very important. I said, almost every tape at this point is one of a kind. Almost every tape, even outside the world of big labels, is actually more precious because it could not be replaced. But if you gave me the Hoto, California tape and I threw it off the Santa Monica Pier, Hoto

California would still exist. Yes. So in some ways, that tape, which I've had, Hoto, California is here, 24 tracks, amazing, sounding, incredible production. Who produced that? Bill Simzik. Okay, yeah. There's like two or three producers who I think no one could touch, but that's one of

them. And the recording is phenomenal. You put up the faders. That's the record. It's unbelievable how good it is. But if that tape disappeared tomorrow, not that it would. Yeah, we have it. But we have it.

And does it need a surround mix? Does it need a commercial mix with no vocal on? Probably not for the Eagles, but more and more, we have found what's out there. I don't know if you know about this side project, but one day I was at Sunset Sound, and the owner, a good friend of mine, Paul Camerata, said, we have like 2,500 tapes in the attic,

and we've got some Who tapes up there. What? And it was the Who by numbers, multi-tracks from 75. They never recorded there. So I talked to Pete Townsend, and he's like, what? Oh, great, we'll send them back. There are so many tapes in this world in studios or in producers' closets that no one knows

that I started a nonprofit. It's just a website called Master Taped Rescue. And anybody, including me, that has tapes on their shelf, put them up and list it like Craigslist. And it's anonymous. No one knows like Craigslist

where you live or you are. But studios have given us 500,000 tapes to list. And then Steve Miller writes in and says, hey, you've got a live show of mine. REM wrote in and said, you found a live gig with Multitracks. Can we have it?

Yeah, I stay out of it. There's no money exchanged. Let me connect you to those people and they can get the tapes back to you. So it's a really interesting idea because I realized, let's say there's a studio here in Santa Monica that's been in business for years, they don't want to go through the closet

and make an inventory and put something on the web. But it's too much work, but giving us a listing, Bowie Live, 76, what does that mean? Doesn't matter, just put it up there. And then if somebody needs that for a documentary or a project, then we can ask those people directly, and they'll pull it out and take pictures or whatever. Oh, wow.

Yeah. You've been linked here to the never-ending saga of the Van Halen tapes. One personal story is I interviewed Eddie for Guitar World in 98. Yes. And once he realized I could actually play the guitar, he really warmed up to me. For sure. And towards the end of the four hours that I was with him, he took me in this room and sort of pointed to this wall of tapes. I know it that well.

And I said, what's that? And he goes, well, there it is. You know what I mean? and I go, are you ever going to do anything with it? Very Eddie, you know. True. Now, the story I heard years ago was when Eddie was still alive. God bless him.

He basically said, I don't want any of this stuff to come out. Is there truth to that, or do you know about that? I wouldn't say that's true, although I can't speak for another person. Alex is a good friend of mine. We met late in life, and he's a good guy, and I like what he's doing. but their world is a bit like a soap opera. I've heard. The Kiss is a soap opera.

Yeah. But Van Halen has a bit of comings and goings. It depends on what year you talk to so-and-so or what's needed. It's been pretty dysfunctional as to who can work with whom. It's very tough right now for them to get things done. So I don't have high hopes for it. But many years ago, just the basic assignment, Warner Brothers always gives, let's go through the Van Halen

tapes and to clarify when you work for a label, you're supposed to give them your tapes when you're done with the record. That's the rules. Doesn't always happen. Sometimes they get left at a studio. Usually they go there. And we went through the Van Halen tapes. There aren't a lot of outtakes.

In other words, there's one recording of Jamie's crying. If they did three takes, they threw them out at some point. But we did have some alternate versions. And then there were these amazing demos they did with Ted Templeman before the first record where they just knocked out like 30 songs in a day or two. Here's our whole catalog. And they had a lot of later songs like DOA and stuff that became Mean Streets later on. So they had a lot of good material to pick from A, to get signed and B, to make the first record. So we went through this stuff. I'm a massive Enhaling fan. And regarding guitar players, I actually think Eddie is in a different category

than everyone else in the world. I mean, maybe Les Paul is in his own category, too, and how much they changed the universe. Yeah. But those two people were a seismic shift and also the quality of the musicianship is way up there. It's hard to even fathom. But also, Eddie would be nobody without great songs.

I wouldn't care if you went to GIT and played better than that. It's not important. The songs is what counts. So I do love Van Halen as a performing group. They're one of the last groups to grow up like the Beatles did playing covers and bars. so they knew pretty woman, they knew ZZ Top songs,

they knew superstition, they were doing these cool covers, so they knew how to do modulations, they knew how to do syncopations, they knew how to do baselines that went opposite the, they learned from all those songs when you grow up in that world of cover tunes. I was in a band that did covers.

You had to learn funny ninth chords and things you don't know about it. So they learned their lessons the way the Beatles did. At that period, It just about changed. I would say around the 80s, most people stopped playing covers and started doing original music.

So whatever chords you choose or your fingers choose tends to be your style rather than even learning, we will put some jazzy, funky things in this rock music. So Van Halen and the harmonies as well, there's so much,

and they found Ted Templeman, who found them, it just works so well that Van Halen is sort of a different animal. However, there is a great amount of disagreement between the people and how they want things to be. So you talked about this wall of tapes.

I've seen the picture. Al showed me the picture and I said, one third of those are blank. And he went, what? I said, the whole right side I can tell this blank tape. How do you know that? I said, there's nothing written on them. But Eddie at one point and Tom Petty went around LA

buying up every roll of tape because they stopped making analog tape. Yeah. And Petty and Ed always liked analog tape. So the two of them were fighting. each other to buy up all the tape in town. So one whole side of it is blank. The other two walls are mostly two-inch tapes, some mixed tapes, and so forth. Everything done before 5150 Studios was built is in the Warner Brothers' fault.

Okay. Warner Bros. keeps that. When 5150 was built, they were supposed to turn in the tapes legally, contractually, but they never did. So at this point, the Van Halen family archive, holds those tapes. Warner Brothers isn't contesting or fighting it. We'd love to know what's on there, but they have talked about it. We've talked about archiving it for the Van Halen family, but it's never happened. And I know that they can go through and hear stuff and probably are working on something with that stuff. What that becomes or how it goes? Yeah. Okay. So yeah,

so I get that this complicated. I'd be remiss not to mention your new project, which is the George Martin scores. I watched a little promotional video that you and your partner did. And it's very interesting, really a passion project. Yeah, I would say it was the hardest thing we've ever done. Kevin and I have done several books together, recording the Beatles was the first one, and then two very beautiful photo books with a photographer, friend of the Beatles, who we met. And then as we were about to rebuild the new recording, the Beatles, Val's Martin approached us and said, we've got all these orchestral scores. To be fair, that's not the world I live in. I can read some music, but I'm not, I love symphony music. I grew up with classical music too, but there are people that live in that

world every day, writing for oboes, transposing instruments, all these things. But we felt that it was a good job for us to take something that might appear lofty and intimidating and make it friendly and cool for rock and rollers and people that just love the Beatles to learn what George Martin was doing. Yeah. So more than 10 years of our lives went into it. I don't know that, I mean, it's thousands of hours working with all these people around the world who are orchestrators and conductors and so forth, they advise us on what they're seeing here.

So besides you get yesterday, but then you get a few pages telling you what's happening. I see. So it's fascinating because we got to go into it and then go back to Abbey Road and re-record some of the orchestras, and then we give people the thumb drive that gives you the multi-track. Yeah. You can play and mix your own stuff. So it's four volume set, book? Well, there's three, and then there's a bonus version,

which has like a conductor's baton and DVD Bluroy of extra stuff. Yeah, three giant books, and it's about 22 pounds. It's huge. Is it surreal to stand in Abbey Road and sort of hear this music, you know? Yeah, that was a strange thing. We had one day booked years ago when we were doing the project originally. George was still alive at one point, and Giles was going to be the producer,

and then George had passed away before the session. Giles couldn't be there, so we ended up producing a George Martin session in Abbey Road with some of the original pages there as people are playing the string quartet or doing, I'm the ballast. So it was weird. We do have a, we've been there enough times now to,

we appreciate every time I walk in, the smell, the view, it looks like the 60s in there. They keep it that way for a good reason. And it sounds amazing in that room. It's very different than you'd expect. Because it's basketball court size, but there's almost no echo. It's a big warm resonance,

which is great for drums and piano and vocals. Have you ever gotten to record there or work there? I've never even been in the building. Time to make a trip over. Yeah. Yeah. I've thought about it. This is a little bit of a punter question. So how long did you know George before you?

passed, George Martin? Not much. I mean, we spent days in his house. We'd go there and then we came back on another trip to come go through stuff. The first trip was just to see what they had. They only really knew that they had yesterday, Ellen Arrigby and Strawberry Fields, but they didn't know what else they had. And we wanted to know, not just the Beatles, but George is a multi-dimensional person. And we asked them, could we expand it to show more than the six years where he did orchestrations for the Beatles? Yeah. But there's just a multi-dimensional person. And we asked them, could we expand it to show more than the six years where he did orchestrations for the Beatles? Yeah. But there's just. But there's Jeff Beck. There's some film stuff he did, James Bond and stuff. So we asked about that. And yeah,

they thought it was a good idea to broaden it, just not Beatles, Beatles, the B word all the time. And we love doing it. Meeting with George, he's the man you expect, kind and gentlemanly and older English guy who's really, really cool. And he was funny and he was charming. And we got to work with them. And it was a pretty serious level, though, because we're Beatles fans, but we're, We're not fan boys. So driving out there, Kevin and I were like, if you told us when we were 13 years old, or 22, we'd have a heart attack. But today we're here to work.

And sometimes it's like, hey, we've got work to do. You know, we can't talk. We've got to keep working. Yeah. Having been inside sort of the beetle machine, I don't know a better phrase for it. How do you view George now, especially since she went so deep into the recording side of the equation? Kevin and I were among the biggest fans of George Martin you could have because we really paid attention to the details.

Given that he was doing comedy records and sound effects and things, the Beatles are the group that plays on stage. George Martin is the echoes, the backwards parts, the flanging, the cellos, upside down things, orchestrations that we consider the Beatles. That's George Martin in their sandwich, if you will, right? We can't separate them now, but it's one of the, the things that made the Beatles greater. And had they had a different producer, I don't know that would have happened.

So it's one of the reasons we still referenced them. If you think about trumpet arpeggios, you say it's the Beatles. Well, the Beatles don't play trumpet. But George Martin made it fit with what they do. It's a theory I kind of came at later in life as a Beatles' wonk. And part of it was at least informed by Jeff Emmerich's book. where he talks at great length about recording the band being in the room during those sessions.

And it was more of a greater appreciation for McCartney's vision of the band and his influence as a producer. How do you rate McCartney as a producer both then and then posthumously? Because it's not a story that gets talked about a lot, but I think there's probably more there than even a Beatle fan would think. I'm a big McCartney fan,

And in some ways, it's like Beatles and Stones, McCartney and Lennon, some people have their sides they choose. I'm glad I don't have to choose a side, but John Lennon had a distinctive voice and a distinctive approach. He was more throw a hand grenade in the room and see what happens. And Paul was more about controlling things, it seems. And so if you have a McCartney song, they can play it with five horns at Disneyland.

But a Lennon song doesn't even translate with a rock band on stage. I don't want to hear Lenin covered by most people. I see. It's so distinctively him that hearing somebody else do me and my monkey, I don't really like those covers very much. Yeah. It doesn't really work, although his singularity is a strength, but Paul's music is a little bit more musical and a little more melodic and timeless.

Although they overlap. You could do in my life on a harpsichord at a wedding. Yeah. And Paul has these raucous rock and roll songs, but the ones we know them best for, Paul lands into arranging, careful orchestration. So to what you say,

at one point, the Beatles are producing themselves. In the White Album era, George is off looking for a new studio that would eventually become Air Studios. But he's leaving the Beatles to do what they needed to do, and they made the White album, a lot of it. Yeah.

There was a lot of talk in the last couple years about them using AI and Gile. I have a father-in-law who's Gilles, So, yeah, Jean-Martin. He talked about, you know, being able to rescue things that they'd never been able to use. Like, you know, there was a live recording where they used AI to do the separation and stuff like that. Do you have any particular opinion on them? Because I have a theory, and I always use the Beatles as an example, because obviously the number one topic, at least what I found in the music business in the last couple years is AI.

What's going to happen? What's AI going to do good and bad? particularly with songwriting and all that. Anyway. It's been six hours than that. Given the Beatles situation, I think sometimes the word AI is misapplied to anything that's large learning models and sort of trickery, but it may not be an intelligence type thing.

If you're training software to do certain things, it's not necessarily AI. It parallels or works with it. But those of my friends of mine who are coders say, oh, that's definitely not AI. It's a misapplication. And in some ways, that's a buzzword, like we used to say, interactive or HD or something. A buzzword that makes things sound cool. In a lot of cases, the Beatles were doing stem separation, and that was new technology at the time. I first heard it at Abbey Road where they said, we've got a Beatles song here in mono, and we'll play it for you in stereo.

How could you? It's on one track of tape. How could you, we figured out how to separate the guitars. But as an engineer, those frequencies, no, it's not frequencies. it's the shape of the note, the length of the note, makes it a bass in certain frequencies with a shape. And then a piano has a different attack, so it knows that even though it's the same note,

that's a piano. It's really cool how it figures it out. Yeah. Yeah. So what I've been saying, just sitting around tables, when these subjects come up, is, and it's an interesting litmus test question, which is, if you could hear Meet the Beatles as if it was recorded yesterday, would you be interested in that?

Yes, as long as the original's there. You can always give me a black and white. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, I mean. You don't mind the upscale if this doesn't destroy the original. Yeah, I can't wait to see the Wizard of Oz at the sphere with all the extended screen and all the things flying around. Just leave the original piece of art where it is. Some artists have taken, I won't mention names, but some artists have taken the original off the market and left a new version with new drummers or new mixes.

And I think that's kind of, it's okay, but it's not fair to say this is. superior. Yeah, yeah, because I just, I know how the music business operates. The once they figure out they can make a whole other round of money off of 50s and 60s and 70s catalogs by doing stem separation. Yeah. They're gonna. I've been playing with it recently, one of my new projects right now is a famous group on a famous tour. And all they can find is a mono tape.

And all we can figure it was a broadcast on the radio. It sounds really good. It's in mono. So I'm now splitting the guitars, drums, vocals out. Yeah. to just pat it out, not really to change the mix, but just to be able to give you some stereo. And the guitar is over here,

although that software is always a bit flawed, how could it know that a, on the guitar is not a backing vocal or a horn going up or a mini mode, bend in a note? It's really tricky to know those things, even if you're a human, what all those notes are. So it's great what it does. It's one of my favorite tools.

Right now, if I'm mixing a live record, like we just did a Fleetwood Mac Live thing, Lindsay's vocal, he's got a loud guitar booming behind. You can get rid of it. Yeah. I can take that out and I get a good clean vocal to work with. So it was an actual spill from the stage sound, but very hard to work. Or Christy McVee has a lower voice and she's got a loud monitor so she can hear the band rocking. And oftentimes it gets in the way of a low note. Now I can turn that down. Ah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I feel like this is a good way to end because the synths, back to synths. Oh, yeah.

I'm sort of probably mangling it, but I saw this thing where Bob Moog was saying once about that he believes in the electricity and the wires, that there's almost a spiritual capacity to what goes on with synthesis. Do you feel that way? Years ago, I was doing a lot of deep therapy. Okay. And I came to realization that the therapist said was very Buddhist,

is that it's true and it's not true. I'll leave it there. Yeah. Yeah. As fellow synth enthusiasts, I'll give you this softball. How do you, because usually when I try to explain my interest in synthesis, particularly since I'm identified as a guitar player, and let's not forget Eddie Van Halen had probably his biggest hit by playing the synthesizer,

which gets lost on a lot of people. But from your end, explain to the lay person with the, with the, what the particular attraction is. Well, sculpting sound, I'm very particular what the term synthesizer is, and this is more academic than not, but I would even say a mini-mogue may not be a pure synthesizer. Why is that?

Because it has a certain fixed routing. It has a certain set of options. They're pretty wide-ranging, but it always sounds like a mini-mog. I can't put the amplifier before the filter. I can't put the oscillators between. And so the older sense, you have a big modular synth, I understand, right? The kind of you patch the panels together.

I have plenty of. I know. And so when you understand that, it's like a cook with a kitchen full of nutmeg and flour and sea salt. And a great cook knows how to use that better. But most people want to go fast. They want to go easy. They don't want to learn all the differences between the kinds of salt. So what I find is that synthesis who know what they're doing,

doing, prefer to not have someone limit you with, this is the way it goes. Like a Profit 5 to me is a boring synthesizer. It's one of the top rated most valuable ones, and I love the records that were made with it. But to me, it's a little box that you can't get much beyond. Yeah. The kind you have and then I have where you patch it in together. Incredible sound options. You can do the worst and weirdest and the best things with it. There are still sounds, my synthesizer from 1969 to 74 is when those modules were made. It makes sounds every day that I've never heard before. Yeah.

No one's heard before. Yeah, it's the closest. Working with modular synthesis is the closest I've ever felt to, if you want to be spiritual about it, would be God's choices on the universe, right? It's all the building block components are in front of you. And I think that's what gets lost with most people. And so when I've done live, I've done live performance synthesizer shows where I literally just set up a modular. Cool. And I've released the records and my fans don't care about them, but I still put them out.

Sure. One time I did like an eight-hour performance and recorded it. But what people don't understand is, and you hit on exactly what I would say, it's hard to imagine that if you give a musician a guitar or some pedals in an amp or even a keyboard, like a profit five, you are on some level you're dealing with limitations. Somebody else has pre-made the choices for you. So a guitar player, what are your choices? Well, I can tune the guitar differently.

I can run it through this wacky thing. but at the end of the day, I'm really not in control of what this thing actually does. I'm not even control of how hot pickups are or something. Synthesis allows you to go to the actual foundational thing. So like you said, you can choose 800 different versions of salt. You're not just given this one salt. And when you get to that, especially from a composition mind, it's sort of mind-blowing because it takes you back more to the primitive state of music making.

It bypasses the intellectual overlay, which is like, what would the Beatles do or what did Jimmy Page do in the studio? And now you're just down to primitive synthesis. And I saw this quote once from Stockhausen where he was explaining what his attraction to synthesis was as a composer. And he said, synthesis is the only way you can have sound without environmental affectation. Oh, because if you play any sound in a room,

and even as we're talking, we can hear my voice bouncing off the wall. He's like, synthesis, you can actually have pure sound without environmental effect. Reverb, the airplane going overhead. Or you could create that environment too. Exactly. What was your first synthesizer and how did you learn how to use it? Well, it's funny. Like a lot of people in the 90s, you know, there was a situation on a record where I needed a synthesizer for something.

And I had a buddy who had vintage synths. He even had one of the early PPGs where it had the screen and the screen. And, you know, to me is like, give me it the synthesizer, press the button until you find the sound you like. Maybe you'd alter it a little bit, you filter it a bit. And the buddy was like, no, let me bring in my vintage sense and I'm going to show you. These are supreme instruments. And I made it actually the first time I ever really work with any real synthesizers, I had a hit record with it. It was song called I, which was for a David Lynch film. David Lynch had rejected my first offering.

And so on a whim, I sent this other song and he liked that. So I was scrambling in one day in between tour dates to make this record. So I'm using real synthesizers for the first time. And it was sort of illuminating. It was like, wow, there's this whole other world here. The lazy take of the one button and you hit the sound. You know, the guitar center thing where you're just like, you know, and drive you crazy, you know, you get a new synthesizer and it's like the wacky patches to sell the synth, but none of them are functional. So it was the idea of like, wow, I could really get under the hood here. And I have a different level of control. And it opened me up as a composer to other tonal things, probably more akin to what an orchestral or symphonic person feels with the

tonal palette of a full orchestra. And having just done an opera version of my album, Melancholy in Chicago last year, you know, standing in front of an orchestra where 60 people playing in the orchestra in a 40-piece choir, the tonal palette as composed to like a normal rock band where it's like, is the Marshall working today? Because there's not enough power coming in in Malaysia. It really opens you up and understands if compositionally you're you're so used to in rock and roll dealing with limitation. I think that when you had your first experience with synthesizers, you didn't know what the capabilities were. When I had my first ARP synthesizer, I didn't even know what all the sliders did, but eventually, okay, this one makes it higher,

this will make it brighter. You start to figure it out. It's a new language. But the theory of synthesis, going back to the 60s original patchable synthesizers is you design the sound, let's say it's four minutes long. My note will be evolving over four minutes. There are conceptual things as well as what works, like a fat bass sound, but I really still like the inspiration of saying whether it be sampling, let's not sample trumpets and drums. Let's make garden gates into Jimmy Hendricks feedback, right? Let's sample the kitchen sounds and make music. People aren't doing that much, but the potential is there. And just this year, I met these inventors from New Zealand.

They have this thing called the field guitar, which is not out yet. My mind exploded like when I first had a synthesizer. This guitar, it's not a guitar synth, but you can process it. Like, first thing asked him, can you put a slow attack on every string? It's not a synth. It's still the guitar, the e-string, twanging, but with a slow attack. So I can play Blackbird on polyphonically or have vibrato on the, top three strings, but not on the bottom strings.

I put a tremolo on each string at different speeds, or you move the guitar and it senses your positions to change the speed of your Leslie and your filter. It's doing all these things that my mind is going, wow, I'm a guitar guy like you. We spent our lives learning to do this stuff, and then I don't have to change that language that I speak, but now I can have some of those sounds that I always wished a guitar could reach the next level, you know? Okay, well, thank you.

I'm trying to find something that feels, I like a good ending, you know? Yeah. So give me something that you're excited about. Well, I would say, we didn't even talk about the Who, but I've worked with them for years, and what I'm excited,

we just talked about synthesizers. I pitched an album to Pete Townsend, and then I'm finishing last night, which is a record of his electronic work. No guitars, no singing. Yeah. Probably called electronics tentatively, double album of just the Baba Riley, the Won't Keep Fooled again, the electronics and other pieces you might not have heard. But it's all the synthesizer side of Pete Townsend because I love that part of him, but you never see it on stage.

You've never been in the studio with him. So we get to focus on that part. And he loved the idea. And he said, go, make this record for me. So it's coming soon. I love Pete. So that's cool to hear. But is it true that the Bobo Riley sound is really like a ham in Oregon?

Lowry. Lowry. Yeah. See? At least I don't know that much. It's a great tidbit. Thank you. Thank you. Take.