Interview: Kenny Rogers Reflects on Career, Crossover Success

At the dawn of the ‘80s, as outlaws and urban cowboys staked their turf on either side of the country and pop fence, Kenny Rogers bridged the divide.

A mere four years since he first attained mainstream solo stardom with “Lucille”—and after a string of subsequent smashes like “The Gambler” and “She Believes in Me” continued his good fortune—the former First Edition singer achieved the highest pinnacle of his career, topping not only the country charts but, for the first time, the pop charts as well with “Lady.”

While he’d flirted with the pop charts before, with “Lady”—composed and produced by another proven hitmaker of the era, Lionel Richie—Rogers assumed the sort of stature otherwise reserved for music’s unmitigated superstars. Indeed, the rhapsodic ballad broadened his audience to an unprecedented degree, while at the same time heralding even more crossover collaborations to come, not only with Richie but also with likes of Barry Gibb (“Islands in the Stream”), James Ingram (“What About Me?”), and Richard Marx (“Crazy”), among others.

Now on the road for the final time, on a tour billed as The Gambler’s Last Deal, the 78-year-old music legend recently reflected on how his mainstream appeal—particularly how such crossover success hasn’t compromised his homegrown country music credentials—bears its roots in his earliest, most foundational experiences. In doing so, he reminisced on how his adolescent musical passion ultimately inspired one of the most celebrated careers in all of popular music.

“When I was in high school I played guitar,” Rogers explained during a conference call with select music journalists, “and I met this guy [Bobby Doyle] doing commercials in Houston who was blind and he was about my age and he said he wanted me to come play bass with his jazz group. I said, ‘Well, Bobby, I don’t play bass and I don’t play jazz … I’m a country singer and a country player.’ He said, ‘I’ll teach you how to play bass and trust me, there’s more demand for bad bass players than there are bad guitar players.’ I thought about every group I’d seen. They’d all had a bass player; they didn’t all have guitar players.”

Rogers was convinced, and the tutelage he received as a bassist began to serve him well in short order, manifesting in both practical and often surrealistically impractical moments. “We used to work across the street from the Shamrock Hotel in Houston,” Rogers recalled, “and people would come in—big names would come in to work there—and we had an after-hours job. They would come over after hours just to have a place to go. Tony Bennett used to come in and sing with us all the time. Every time he was in town he’d come across the street and sing with us and it was really something special.”

Beyond reaping the benefits that often come with knowing how to play a musical instrument, Rogers said the experience of performing live with Bennett and various other artists of the day in turn facilitated the eclectic—and successful—career that lay ahead. “When people came in you had to learn to play their type of music,” he said, “and we would do that. We had all kinds of people come in, and each one of them was kind of different. Al Hirt used to come in and play with us. So that was another direction we had to go. It was just a wonderful life.”

Read on...

An Interview with Bobby Caldwell

Ever since “What You Won’t Do For Love” first catapulted him to stardom in 1978, Bobby Caldwell has cultivated a singular brand of sophisticated soul, culminating in more than a dozen studio albums that have as well embraced aspects of pop, jazz, and big band standards along the way.

On the recently released LP, Cool Uncle, he’s collaborated with GRAMMY®-winning producer Jack Splash (Kendrick Lamar, Jennifer Hudson), summoning moments that are at once urban and sumptuously urbane. Featuring cameos from the likes of CeeLo Green, Mayer Hawthorne, and Jessie Mare, the album is primed to broaden Caldwell’s audience while at the same time satisfying his music’s most ardent connoisseurs.

With the Cool Uncle album, what did you guys initially hope to achieve? What was the goal?

Initially the goal was to write for other artists, but it quickly kind of morphed from that into something entirely different. It was Jack who came up with the idea about, “Why don’t we make us the entity and give it a name and use it as a vehicle not only for us but for other artists to participate, not only on the current album but future albums?”

Did you have an idea for how you wanted this album to sound? I’ve read something in which you said you didn’t want it to sound like what you were already known for.

You’re absolutely right about that, and maybe 50 percent of the success was me getting out of my own way and letting Jack do what he does best. Once you establish the roles of the players, you’re probably better off if you understand what each person is going to be doing. Because when you get too many chefs in the kitchen, it’s usually a disaster.

You’ve always struck me as an artist who enjoys stepping out of your comfort zone a little bit to see what that yields.

That’s a real good point, man. I kind of knew that going in, that I was going to be out of my so-called comfort zone. When it comes to something like that you’ve just got to embrace it. And, like I said, letting Jack do what he does best and him letting me what I do best is really why it all came together, I think.

Considering the eclecticism of your career insofar as the styles and genres you write and record in, is there a place where you are not so much complacent, but most comfortable?

Geez, that’s a tough question. I’ve never thought about it in terms like that.

Do you know what you do best?

Yes, I do. Look, yeah I do know what I do best and I know what I can’t do best. I’ve never lived the Black experience. So, I leave that to people who have, who know about it, who’ve lived it. I’m just a fan of some of the greatest Black artists of all time, and I’m sure we’d agree on who those are. I [am], basically, a white guy from the South doing what he does that’s been influenced by all of those things. I don’t think anybody in this world is original. We’ve all stolen from somebody. We’re like the sum total of our influences. But I don’t know anybody that tries to do what I do, but I’ve been guilty of trying to do what other people do.

You quickly come to realize … what you do best and try to stand out of your own way, because sometimes you get so close to these projects you can’t see the forest through the trees. This is when it’s nice to have a team because often times Jack would lure me out of some kind of thing that I was on that was leading nowhere and vice versa. We’re constantly checking each other, and that’s a good thing. The way it all comes together at the end of the day is just incredible.

White artists who’ve recorded and performed traditionally Black music have often had to prove themselves to a Black audience — maybe in ways they would not have had to prove themselves to a mainstream white audience — but once they did so they were not only accepted but were shown incredible loyalty. I wonder if that has been your experience as well.

It’s absolutely been my experience, and still is. A lot of people misunderstand what were the Black radio listeners, who they really were. They grew up and got married, had kids, and those kids are basically inner-city and they listen to their folks’ record collection and they get turned on to this old stuff, too. I look out at my audience and I see three generations of people, which is … about how long I’ve been going, a little over 35 years.

Going back a little further, for someone who was a teenager and came of age in the era of the Beatles and the Stones and Motown, where did your appreciation come from for Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett and Nat “King” Cole?

That came from my folks. They were in the theatre, and had a television show in the early ’50s out of Pittsburgh. I was always surrounded by Ella Fitzgerald music, Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Nat “King” Cole, the big band stuff. That was a great environment for me to grow up in, [along with] an appreciation for songs and those singers of the day. It wasn’t by choice. It was just something I was inundated with. I lived in Sinatra headquarters. That was all I heard, twenty-four/seven save for the music I hid away with in my room.

Man, I was exposed to so much stuff. You just named a few things, but growing up in Miami I was exposed to reggae and ska, Calypso music. We had a couple of serious R&B stations, and I believe they’re still there, if I’m not mistaken. WEDR was one of them, [and] WMBM in Miami Beach. They played just the stone-cold Philly/Motown/Muscle Shoals, all that shit. We had back then, basically, the Hot 100 that is still around today, but, see, in that Hot 100 there was all kinds of stuff. I mean, you’d see Sinatra songs, you’d see Beatles songs, you’d see Four Tops, you’d see Temptations. It was all over the map.

All modesty aside, you must have at some point recognized that you had the goods and the talent to sing the music you most enjoyed. Was there some moment or epiphany or experience that convinced you that you could not only appreciate all that great music but sing it too?

Just to get there you’ve got to believe in yourself, but a lot of times along the way that belief gets shaken sometimes to the core where you just think, I’m not going to make it. It’s just not happening for me. There’s always that struggle. It was like rolling the dice, and I didn’t actually know until after the first album did what it did.

Really? You didn’t know you had something with that first album when you finished it, before you released it?

No, I didn’t know who I was, where I was headed with the music. I just kind of let it take its own direction. So, when I say “until after the first album did what it did,” in a lot of respects it’s the record-buying public, the fans, who determine — now, I’m talking about first-time artists — who you are, and you get anointed with this “blue-eyed soul brother” [label]. It took years for everybody to finally realize that I wasn’t Black. That was the least of my problems. [Laughs] But it was really them; they determined who I was. That was great, to have that validation: “This is a bad boy.” To have that, you’re pretty much on a course as long as you don’t fuck it up, and that happens too.

Despite what you looked like when you walked out on stage, though, people recognized that there was something special about those songs on that first album that could perhaps evolve into something even more special on subsequent albums.

I’d like to think it did, yeah. Then again, the first album was so, so huge, not just in the States, but globally. It was massive. A lot of artists — and this in some respects is definitely true for me — they get this brand of “one-hit artist,” and I just kept on releasing the best albums I could. Oddly enough, it was only with other artists that I achieved the same sales numbers.

You mean in writing for the likes of Boz Scaggs [“Heart of Mine”] and Chicago [“What Kind of Man”]?

Yeah. That’s why, actually, I started writing for other artists because my sales… When you go from selling five million albums to, like, selling 150,000, you’ve got a problem. And so I left Miami and I went to L.A. and I started making the rounds with other songwriters. Fortunately, for me, I had already earned a lot of their respect, having that massive song that was still fresh in everybody else’s mind and still is today. So, I got into these circles and it was just a great bunch of people all with great track records as writers. I got very fortunate with about four to five years of doing that, and then I picked up my mantle again and started making more Bobby Caldwell records.

After having that massive success with that first album, and with people associating you with one type of music, was it difficult to then later on venture into recording the standards albums [1996’s Blue Condition and 1999’s Come Rain or Come Shine]? Did you think you might alienate your audience?

No, because my desire to do it was so strong, and I knew that at some point in my life I had to do this. It was something that was really comfortable — to point out one of your previous questions, a comfort zone — and I felt I could do it as good if not better than the handful of other people that were doing it. At that point in time it was Natalie Cole, Harry Connick, Jr., Brian Setzer; they were doing this stuff. I did it on two albums, and it was great. I got a whole new audience and managed miraculously to keep my [existing] audience who came along for this ride and loved every minute of it.

Is it hard to shift gears when you’re on tour, doing the different shows?

No. It’s really fun. It’s great. When I’m out doing the orchestra, the big band, it’s a great departure to get away from the R&B even if it’s for a second. Once you’ve come to know the power of a 16-piece big band or an 18-piece big band, it’s stunning. There are actually people onstage moving air instead of synthesizers and all that stuff. It’s a whole different vibe.

And you’re not stumbling over speed bumps trying to transition between the two.

No, and I will tell you something that I’m adamant about, and that is that if I’m appearing somewhere with the orchestra, wherever it’s advertised whether it’s in print or on radio, I make sure that people know it’s the orchestra. When I first started doing this, there were a couple of shows where people would come out thinking they were going to be hearing the orchestra and vice versa — people thought they were going to be hearing R&B. So once I got over that hurdle, albeit small, the same fans show up, man. I’m telling you, it took some doing, but they come in droves whether it’s R&B or the orchestra. I’ve been really fortunate that way. Obviously I do more R&B shows than the orchestra, and doing the orchestra, it’s not cheap. Gone are the days when Benny Goodman used to get on a bus with all his players and go from state to state without taking showers and stuff. [Laughs] Those days don’t even exist anymore.

I remember Barry White would tour with his core band and then — to fill out the Love Unlimited Orchestra — he’d use local players.

Well, I do that with the orchestra. In other words, I’ll take my key players, like the drums, the bass, and keyboards, and I’ll hire what people call the A-players in any given city. As long as they can read music, the charts are there for them to read.

Do you rehearse with these musicians in each city, then?

Yes, and that’s also a cost. Also you’re dealing with different unions — they all have different rules in every city — and they can be tough.

There’s more to what you do than what you do onstage.

Oh yeah. Absolutely.

Does songwriting come relatively easy for you? A lot of songwriters I’ve spoken to love the finality and the accomplishment of having written a song, but hate sitting in a room and actually grinding it out. Do you enjoy the process?

I’ve got to be totally honest with you, man. In my early career, it was just so passionate, just something I would always look forward to doing. But at some point, you have kids, you get married or whatever it is you do — I did all of that — and everything starts to change. Priorities start to change. Now, it’s become grinding them out. I’m kind of on a treadmill that I can’t get off of. I’ve got twin daughters, they’re 23. I’ve got a stepdaughter, she’s 24. I’m fucking surrounded by women. Everything changes, that’s all I can tell you. Do I like it when something great has happened or I’ve done something great? Sure. But, I tell you what else, doing a project and finishing, completing the work, I let it go. You have to let it go.

In what sense?

When I say I let it go, if it does well and it’s a success I’m pleasantly surprised. If not, I’m not in total despair.

So, you’re not anguished over whether it’s number 10 on the charts or number 14.

No. No, I gave that up a long time ago. Look, I’ve got to tell you, man, you’re old enough to know that 20 years ago a normal platinum, really smash album — we’re talking about Universal, MCA, Columbia, any of those major labels, Warners — they were celebrating, like, 20 million sold. Now, they’re dancing in the streets over a million. This is how screwed up everything’s gotten, not just their numbers, but this intellectual property issue with the downloads. This is serious shit and it’s never going to change now.

It’s not going to go in the other direction, that’s for sure.

No, it’s not. Although, for myself and so many other artists, we blame the labels because they had the chance to fend this off with coding the product, but they thought Napster was going to go away. It did go away; it just moved into international waters and all of a sudden all of these other things started popping up like a cancer.

Do you ever gain new insight when you hear someone cover one of your songs?

No, not necessarily. I kind of anticipate how they’re going to do it because I wrote the song for them.

You wrote “Heart of Mine” specifically for Boz Scaggs?

I did initially write the song for Boz. It didn’t end up that way. It kind of went around and around. It was going to be on the Chicago album, then it wasn’t. Then Boz did a demo of it that I thought was fucking great. I don’t know whatever happened to that. Then he lost interest. Then he did the song again, and had a number one adult record with it. It went through a lot of changes. But when he did it, it sounded like Boz to me. There’ve been some surprises, like Go West doing “What You Won’t Do For Love,” that surprised me. I wasn’t expecting that at all.

When you wrote “What You Won’t Do For Love,” you couldn’t have anticipated the amount of people who would cover it.

No, I didn’t think it was going to be a hit record. I had my eye set on something else on the album. I was wet behind the ears. I didn’t know shit, but what was about to happen was just insane. And what kept happening, all the covers of that song, I never would’ve predicted that.

Is that something you appreciate, the covers and the samples?

Oh yeah. I get asked if I get tired of performing the song or hearing the song, but every time I perform it the audience makes it feel like the first time. So I’m appreciative of that and that it even happened to begin with. When that album was done and it slowly made its way up the charts, my dear friend Natalie Cole had a number one record with her debut album. She was number one on the Hot 100 and I was, like, number nine trying to get up into the top five. She called me one day and was embarking on her first tour. At this point I was looking for something to happen, regarding full-scale performing where I could get all over the country. This was perfect for me, the audience. It was a mix. Obviously, there were more Blacks than whites. It was a good mix, let’s say 6,000 Blacks [and] 2,000 whites, something like that. So, most of the people are coming out to see “soul brother” Bobby Caldwell. The first show was in Cleveland. When I came out on that stage to open for Natalie, you could hear a pin drop. It hadn’t even occurred to me, “What’s going to happen when they see I’m white?”

Did you know before the tour that people perceived you as Black?

Oh absolutely. Everything was pointing in that direction. Most of the radio personalities didn’t know. Some of them did.

That goes back to what I said earlier, though, that once you prove yourself they’ll accept you.

Yeah, and I think you said earlier, Black audiences are loyal to the core. They’re not going to, like, unfriend you.

.

Read on...

An Interview with Tony Bennett

On the heels of two critically acclaimed Duets albums, including last year's wildly popular Duets II, Tony Bennett now rounds out the trilogy with the Latin-themed Viva Duets.

Following much the same format of its two predecessors, Viva Duets finds the 17-time-GRAMMY-winning legend collaborating with what he calls “a small army of the best performers that sing Spanish music,” including Marc Anthony, Thalía, Christina Aguilera, and Vicente Fernández, among others.

While Bennett was familiar with a few of his latest guests prior to the project, with most others he admittedly was not. Still, Bennett says he was nonetheless impressed by everyone’s contributions and the chemistry they achieved together.

“The Latinos sing right from the heart and with a lot of feeling,” says Bennett. “They're such wonderful, friendly people.”

That’s high praise from an artist who for over 60 years has provided a veritable soundtrack for romance, his rich and intimate voice serving as a tonic for anyone with a beating heart, be it broken, unrequited, or in the throes of an all-consuming passion. 

I wonder if you feel a particular affinity toward Latin music considering you grew up listening to Italian music, which of course has a lot of passion as well.

Absolutely. A long time ago, I realized that the bottom line — the actual truth of the whole situation — is that if the music hasn't got feeling it's actually boring. When there’s feeling, it’s meant. And if it’s meant, it’s forever.

The Latino artists, they believe in melody and harmony. And the majority of them sing right from the heart. They look for good songs that they can sing that’ll last forever.

The Viva Duets version of "The Way You Look Tonight" with Thalia is especially lovely, with how it’s given such an understated treatment.

I love that song. Dorothy Fields wrote it, and it’s just the most beautiful song. People love it everywhere, not just in the Latin countries but internationally they love that song.

Since very early on in your career you’ve demonstrated an appreciation for well-written songs and great songwriters — Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter. Where did that come from?

I had a good education, and I learned that we’re such a young country. When you talk about France at the turn of the century, when there was the impressionistic period — where you had Ravel and Debussy and Tchaikovsky for music, and for painting you had Monet and Van Gogh and Manet and all the great painters — they were treated like they were scribblers. The critics just blasted them. They said, “These people are terrible!” Now we look at the impressionist paintings as some of the most glorious things that were ever done.

Well, in our great country, it’s so young that we still don’t realize that we had our renaissance period-it was before my time-and it was in the ’20s and ’30s, when I was a little child. That was the beginning of talkies so they brought in Fred Astaire and Jimmy Cagney and great performers for film, and between the stage and films, the greatest songs.

It was a renaissance period that will never be topped. You can’t get better than Gershwin. No one’s better than Cole Porter. Irving Berlin is America. Irving America Berlin, that should be his name; his middle name should be America. It was just the greatest period of songs. They’re never gonna die. They’re never gonna sound dated. They’re never gonna be old-fashioned. It’s not trash.

You’re one of the few artists to have covered a Hank Williams song [“Cold Cold Heart”] while Hank Williams was still alive.

That’s right.

Is it true that he called you after he heard your recording?

Yeah, and he said, “What’s the idea of ruining my song?”

Was he joking?

He was joking, yeah. [Laughs] Actually I found out later on from his friends when I went to Nashville that he would always put my record on the jukebox. He would just listen to it all the time. He liked it so much.

It’s often said about you that there is no complacency in how you approach your craft. You never take an audience for granted. You never take a song or live performance for granted. To what do you attribute that?

I was in the Second World War as an infantryman, and at the end of the war we had to wait for enough points to come home. So they put me as a librarian in a big, beautiful orchestra where every Saturday we would go to Hamburg and do a radio show. And they made me the vocalist for that show. It was such a good experience that I said, “When I get out of the Army I want to go into show business.”

Then, under the G.I. Bill of Rights, they allowed us to go to any school to get the education that we missed when we were on the line in Germany. I chose the American Theatre Wing, and because it was “The Good War” as they called it they gave us the best teachers. I had the best education of theatre, of dance, of singing, of learning how to memorize things.

Each teacher was magnificent. All of them insisted on, “Never compromise. Only do quality. Stay with quality.” I took that advice and stayed with it and found that I was in verbal wars for the next twenty-five years [Laughs]. Because corporations were saying, “You’re not doing disco! You’re not doing rap! Why aren’t you with the times?” I’d say, “Well, I just do quality songs.” So I stayed that way and it all paid off. And I feel very satisfied with my life as a result.

Read on...

Tony Bennett, Timeless and On Top of the World

Tony Bennett (photo courtesy of Josh Cheuse)

Tony Bennett doesn’t like to talk about his legacy. Maybe it’s just the humility in his character, but even after 60 years in the music business he continues to look ahead. “You’re only as good as your next show,” he likes to say.

In other words, the best is yet to come.

Truth be told, Bennett, 85, is too busy these days for any such reflection. He’s got a hit on his hands, Duets II, the first Number One album of his prolific career.

It’s also one of the few unqualified blockbusters of 2011… and maybe 2012, as the all-star collection—which features collaborations with the likes of Carrie Underwood, John Mayer, Lady Gaga, Norah Jones, and Amy Winehouse in what turned out to be her last recording—has garnered three nominations for the upcoming 54th Annual GRAMMY® Awards, including Traditional Pop Vocal Album.

Such achievements and accolades are but the latest testaments to Tony Bennett’s timeless, seemingly universal appeal.

“It’s always about growing with your audience,” says Danny Bennett, son of Tony and, in matters pertinent to his father’s career, his manager. “We don’t feel like we’re cranking out toothpaste,” he quips about the notion of marketing one of popular music’s all-time greats. “We’re helping propagate the art.”

And yet even a legend as renowned as Tony Bennett needs a game plan when it comes time to release an album. For Duets II, Danny explains, “We started [planning] in February 2010, strategically thinking, How do we make this different from Duets I? [Who] are the artists that we’re going to [use]? What does the marketplace look like? How is it different from when we were successful with that first record so we’re not just sitting on our laurels?”

Danny Bennett (photo courtesy of Kelsey Bennett)

Indeed, a host of factors and circumstances were considered—and as he recounts some of them in detail Danny makes his father’s offer 30 years ago to handle his business affairs seem like the wisest move in the world—but of most importance was that the album complement the current musical landscape without compromising the integrity of its artist. “It’s a balance between art and commerce,” he adds, affirming a philosophy he's found truth in despite musical trends and, on occasion, because of them.

In the mid-‘90s, an era in music which is often most associated with the propagation of grunge, Tony Bennett gained perhaps unlikely favor among Generation X, which embraced him as an elder statesman of hip. He was on MTV, appearing at the Video Music Awards and recording a performance with his quartet on MTV Unplugged; his LP of the latter won the GRAMMY© for Album of the Year in 1994. “If you think about it,” Danny says, “Tony in the ‘90s heralded in the iPod generation by presenting music and saying, ‘Guys, it’s okay. You can listen to Nirvana and Alice in Chains, but also Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday and Tony Bennett.’”

Such inclusive musical appreciation is not only supported by the diversity of artists on Duets II, but specifically, Danny maintains, by those who “grew up with hearing about Tony Bennett and learning about him through MTV Unplugged, not through the ‘50s or the ‘60s. So there are artists, like John Mayer and Carrie Underwood and Lady Gaga, who [have] looked at him as a role model.”

Duets II remains a bestseller over three months now after its release, which just goes to show that great music will never go out of style. Then again, neither will Tony Bennett. “How many artists, their greatest accomplishments are towards the end of their career as opposed to the beginning?” Danny reflects, sounding less like a business executive and more like a proud son. “I mean, that’s a pretty huge accomplishment.”

Read on...

Tony Bennett Delivers Flawless Performance

Tony Bennett personifies excellence and class. On December 5, before a sold-out audience at Clearwater, Florida’s Ruth Eckerd Hall, the music legend delivered a flawless ninety-minute performance of time-honored hits and standards.

Taking the stage to a standing ovation, Bennett, dressed in a dark-blue suit with silver tie, commenced with “Watch What Happens.” Backed by a four-piece ensemble, he sauntered across the stage to the swing of the music, looking far spryer than his age of 81 would otherwise suggest.

More impressive than his vitality, of course, is Bennett’s extraordinary voice. Deepened and enriched by decades of experience, it seemingly has lost none of its resonant power. On animated versions of “Sing You Sinners” as well as “The Best Is Yet To Come,” the latter featuring former Count Basie drummer Harold Jones, Bennett sang with astonishing range and resilience.

Songs like “The Way You Look Tonight” and a measured version of “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams” allowed Bennett to accentuate the subtleties of his sound, conveying each inflection’s importance, every note’s absolute necessity. He treated “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” with utmost consideration, singing his signature song like he’d just discovered its charm. And he concluded an impassioned rendition of “For Once In My Life” with a soaring crescendo, eliciting yet another enthusiastic ovation.

“Turn the sound off,” Bennett directed the audio engineer as he lay his microphone down. To the accompaniment of his now-acoustic ensemble, he performed “Fly Me To The Moon” with supreme command and passion, his unamplified voice booming toward the back rows of the concert hall. In a night of magnificent moments, this one topped them all.

Bennett then brought the evening to a close with “How Do You Keep The Music Playing,” summoning as much emotion as the poignant song requires.

At one point in the show, Tony Bennett reflected on his sixty-year career, saying that he wished he could sing for another sixty years. Much to the man’s delight, his audience whole-heartedly agreed.

Read on...

Book Review: Making Records - The Scenes Behind The Music

Imagine yourself facing the task of telling Tony Bennett during a recording session that he’s hit a few bum notes. Not only should you have the credible acumen for identifying such flaws, but also the knowledge of how to correct them. Fortunately, Phil Ramone has an abundance of both. One of music’s most prolific and distinguished producers, he candidly shares experiences from his career in his new book, Making Records: The Scenes Behind The Music.

While neither a strict memoir nor a technical manual, the book blends elements of the two, usually within the context of representative and applicable anecdotes.

Ramone writes an engaging account of his ascension in the music industry, from working as a studio apprentice to engineering recording sessions and ultimately producing albums and live events. As a result, the reader gains priceless insight on some landmark recordings as well as perspective on the evolution of music production over the last 50 years.

What makes this book such an enjoyable read is the producer’s unassuming way of relating his memories and knowledge. One would suspect that someone as proficient and experienced as Phil Ramone would have, by now, lost all sense of wonder in regard to how music is made. Quite the contrary, while he undoubtedly knows what he’s doing in the studio, he seems just as amazed and inspired by the creative process as any typical fan would feel.

Fans of Billy Joel, in particular, will take pleasure in reading what Ramone recollects about producing many of the Piano Man’s greatest albums. He recounts how certain iconic sound effects were achieved, like the shattering glass that opens “You May Be Right” and the reverberating helicopter propellers that bookend “Goodnight Saigon.” He explains his view on what was lacking in Joel’s first four albums—which he didn’t produce—and why that deficiency resulted in releasing Songs From The Attic. He even divulges how he would humorously blackmail Joel and his band into working whenever they got hungry or distracted.

In sharing his experiences of working with Billy Joel, Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, and a plethora of others, the consistent factor is how Ramone approached (and still approaches) each project with the artist’s intent foremost in his mind. He astutely notes that his name doesn’t appear on the covers of the albums he produces. Thus, instead of attempting to conform an artist to a certain style or standard, he respects and caters to each artist’s creative goal.

Ramone and Billy Joel, 1986, during sessions for The Bridge

At the same time, Ramone justifiably points out the credentials that he brings to the making of an album. A classically trained musician in his own right, he understands music from both sides of the glass. Even when he has worked with artists who’ve had production experience, like Paul Simon or Paul McCartney, Ramone says that he contributed a sense of objectivity that the artists found helpful.

Accommodating in his profession as well as in his prose, Ramone has graciously written a book that music fans of any age or education can appreciate. Given his expertise, he could have easily filled these pages with professional terminology related to record production. While he certainly refers to technological aspects and specific equipment associated with his work, he does so without leaving the average reader overwhelmed or confused. Rather, he only mentions something of this sort within the context of recounting a pertinent (and understandable) experience.

Making Records: The Scenes Behind The Music offers an intriguing glimpse into the art of music production, and few careers in this field have rivaled that of Phil Ramone. Now, in addition to albums, concerts, and other live events, Ramone has once again produced a quality work. And this time, finally, his name is on the cover.

Read on...