Eddie Kramer: - Nowadays We Just Get Discount Sound
May 21, 2007
Henrik Friis |
Eddie Kramer has worked as a sound engineer and sound inventor for a long list of the biggest acts from the late 60s and onwards. Today he feels that the new generations are being put off with simplifying discount, when it comes to sound – despite today’s technological possibilities. Meet him at SPOT, where his point of departure is his own atmospheric photos of Hendrix, Zeppelin, Stones, etc. ……
Eddie Kramer - co-creator of that "much-gritter-in- your-face-heavy-duty-ballsy-gritty-sound" on Stones' "Beggars' Banquet".
‘If you took Billboard and you took the top ten-fifteen albums and just went from one record to the next: they’re all the same volume, there’s no dynamic range. The tendency today is … I’m not saying this for everything, I’m saying this is about the general state of the music business… the tendency is that a lot of records sound the same, and the reason is that they are heavily compressed.’
‘And the most important thing: the saddest commentary that I have about what is happening today is that we are breeding a generation of kids who don’t know what good sound is. They’re listening to mp3s which SUCK… you know; we spend all this time in a studio trying to make a record sound good, and then…… it’s awful. I feel that we need to re-educate our kids and show them what good sound is all about.’
Eddie Kramer is finding his pace – he knows that he is making generalisations and that a few bands don’t deserve the heavy criticism, but he has a message to convey, because this matter is terribly important to him.
For his own part he has played a vital part on some of the greatest albums in rock history. He helped define the sound of The Rolling Stones’ “Beggars’ Banquet”. He contributed to Led Zeppelin II and the band’s next four albums. He managed the sound for Santana, Joe Cocker, Frank Zappa, even The Beatles. He was in charge of the sound recordings at Woodstock. He has worked as a producer for the likes of Kiss and Anthrax.
And then he was behind the sound desk on all the official Jimi Hendrix albums, inventing and developing new sounds and moods together with the guitar wizard – and he followed Hendrix from the UK to the US, where he created the famous Electric Lady studio.
In other words, Eddie Kramer was in the frontline, when 40 years ago rock music exploded in experiments and innovation, and having turned 65, he might reasonably permit himself to relax and rest on the laurels, but that’s not Kramer’s style – something that he stresses repeatedly during this interview at the Hollywood Inn in Woodlands Hill, L.A. – close to Kramer’s residence.
Besides being in charge of production on the previously unreleased Hendrix material in collaboration with the guitar legend’s relatives – both on CD and DVD, he still works as a producer – also for new bands, who get in touch with him via his website. He develops guitar pedals, exhibits and gives lectures – and is willing to speak his mind when it comes to the present condition of the music world.
Mixing old and new I’m being critical, and you can accuse me of being old-fashioned, but at the same time I also feel that’s it’s necessary that we educate our kids in the history of music and the history of rock’n’roll, classical music, political, economical ideas. Because if we don’t learn from history, then we will never advance as a civilization. I think a kid’s attention span is very short. They’re used to downloading just the best one or two songs from an album, and then you lose the whole concept of a record. A record is supposed to make a statement about a band, who the band is, what direction is and stuff like that.’
Eddie Kramer is not allergic to new technology though. Obviously he accepts that bands send him mp3s to give him an idea of their sound. And he uses pro-tools himself when it comes to sound editing and mixes analogue technologies with the newest and most up-to-date ones. Plug-ins, music waves, etc. – ‘the new stuff is important’, he says.
‘But it is also important for kids to understand how good sound is created. Why do you think it is that kids today still want to listen to Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, Stones and he people like that? It’s because it sounded bloody marvellous. It was pure, it was honest, and there was no bullshit with it you know. And it wasn’t created as some sort computer program. It was genuine musicians getting together in a room, looking at each other, fighting with each other – making great music. That’s what it’s all about.
It was not a single artist sitting in a room with a computer trying to stack things up. Ok, you can create nice little demos, and make nice little songs like that – and there ARE some artists who can just work with themselves. But there’s something about rock’n’roll when it’s created in an environment, where there is open communication – when there is interaction between the musicians’, says Kramer, who finds it unsettling when equipment like pro tools is used to erase every single minor imperfection – when new technology makes people afraid of erring – and thus afraid of taking chances.
You need a place to fail ‘I learned a lot from experimenting, and I guess that was very important. ‘Cause you need a place to fail, and I definitely failed in some respects, and I think that’s important. That relates to today’s society. I don’t think there’s too many places where you can fail. It’s really, really critical. I mean – you think of what Jimi Hendrix had to go through and he failed many times, but he was very successful in the end by virtues like discipline and his strength. He had a lot of inner strength. Even today I know that I make mistakes. I have to build upon those mistakes,’ says Kramer and supports his line of argument with the fact that previously people weren’t afraid of bringing an Indian sitar to the studio – whether you could play it or not didn’t matter. As long as it sounded exciting, opened new doors…
He was born in South Africa himself in a musical family, and has always been into technology and music. In fact one of his earliest childhood memories was when as a 3-year-old boy, he inserted a steel rod into a plug – and was hurled across the room by the shock...
‘I grew up in a very musical environment. My father played the violin, my mother sang, my sisters and my brother…we all played instruments. And when I grew up – from a very early age – I gravitated towards the piano, that became my instrument, I studied classical music but, essentially it wasn’t only the piano that fascinated me. It was this bloody great big thing that my father had what we called a “Radiogram” – essentially it was an American am/fm radio with big speakers on the bottom and on the top it had an automatic changer for 78rpm disc’s where you could stack up eight discs so you could get he whole symphony – they would plop down on top of that. And I would stand om a little stool and conduct the orchestra.’
‘I was fascinated by this record player and I was always fiddling with it, and as I got older, I wanted to experiment.. I wanted to make it sound better. The idea of going into the back of this unit, trying to tweek the wires, try to figure out how to put an extension speaker, to convert the radiogram to play long-playing records – it was a constant thing for me’, says Kramer.
As the political climate in South Africa deteriorated, he left to go to London, where his family had already settled down. He eventually got a job in the record company Pye. At home he recorded his friends using his own microphones and tape recorder, etc.
‘I did my experimental stuff in my home – I had a tape machine, microphones, and I used to record my friends who were jazz musicians. It wasn’t very good, but I did learn, and after working with among others Pye Studios, I opened my own. I was fascinated with tape. Tape machines were “it”, I was fascinated on how you got sounds onto tape. I mean it was in the beginning of the recording industry. Where we were just trying to figure out what we were doing.’
Two weirdoes When he got himself a job in Olympic Studios, it was as if all doors had been kicked open for him: a brand new, modern studio with the most advanced equipment of the time. All the hottest artists went there. One day, one of the female employees said to him, “Kramer you’re always working on that weirdo stuff – couldn’t you deal with that Hendrix-guy??”
‘Hendrix was thought of being a weird guy – even though he was successful. You know, he’d had the ”Hey Joe”-success, but he was still thought of being on the outer edge, so I guess to the conservative British public he was considered a little weird – and I was considered a little strange because of all the crazy music that I worked on. But we hit off – we liked each other immediately. I think I understood him, and I think that he liked the fact, that I could produce sounds that he respected and liked. So it was mutual respect.’
‘There was a lot of experimentation in those days. It wasn’t only us – I mean, the Beatles kicked open a lot of doors, and we did. We took ideas from the Beatles of course – the phasing-thing we borrowed from them – we just took it one step better. We made it in stereo instead of mono, and I thing we were a little bit wilder – we were much wilder than The Beatles, but we loved what they did, because they were pretty innovative. Everybody was checking The Beatles out to see what the hell they were doing. They were pretty smart guys – together with George Martin…’
‘These were interesting times. Not only were we experimenting with our own things, we also loved the sounds that came from the States. We wanted to get that cool bass-sound that the Americans got. We (engineers and producers, ed.) were forced into being really creative, because the artists were demanding it, and we just pushed the envelope – within the confines of what we had to work with. And we didn’t have much to work with that’s for sure.
‘And then it depended on whom you worked with: You have to look at Zeppelins, and the Stones and the stuff I did with them. If you look at Beggars’ Banquet, which is my contribution I fell sonically, it had a lot to do with the producer, Jimmy Miller. The fact that he and I worked so closely together to achieve a very special sound for The Stones, which was much-grittier-in-your-face-heavy-duty-ballsy-gritty-sound’, says Kramer ever-so-slowly savouring every single one of the adjectives.
The Record Royalties – The Beatles And yes, he also got to take on the Beatles. In 1967 the Fab Four were eager to get in the studio, and EMI’s own studios were fully booked, and then they chose Olympic instead. During two different sessions “Baby, You’re A Rich Man” and “All You Need Is Love” were recorded.
‘When The Beatles came in – they were Record Royalties. And I think that that was an important session because we wanted to prove to the guys, and the EMI and the rest of the world that we were at least as good as the EMI-studios. And we were, says Kramer who was responsible for the basic track for “All You Need Is Love”: Eventually, it was overdubbed and worked on. After Kramer had cut the basic track, Beatles took it back to EMI, and then they used Kramer’s track to transmit to the rest of the world. ”Baby You’re A Rich Man” was recorded, overdubbed and mixed in one night’, something which Kramer considers a huge feat and he doesn’t try to hide it.
In April 1968 Jimi Hendrix wanted to return to the States. And Eddie Kramer came along. That was in the middle of the recordings for the “Electric Ladyland” album which they begun in London and finished in the US. Eventually, Kramer became the head of technical planning and was subsequently in charge of the creation of Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studio. It was completed in May 1970, and was like a magnet to Hendrix for the last 4 months of his life.
‘He loved that place once it was built. He was so happy to be there in the end – once it was finished. He was there every night on time, which was very unusual to see him in the studio 7 o’clock. When the actual session-folk was supposed to come in at 11 o’clock. He loved that place once it was built – that would be his home’, says Kramer, who was in charge of the Electric Lady for four years.
The Photos Kramer, however, had another passion besides the music. He took pictures. And this is the actual reason for his visit in Denmark with the photo exhibition and his lecture. From 1967 to 1972 he took pictures of the musicians he was working with.
’I joined Olympics in 66, and in 67 they moved to Barnes, which is a little suburb south of the river (Thames). Big facility – huge, huge place. Because of the fact that there were so many musicians coming in and out of the studio, the days and nights were packed with a multitude of artists coming in and out of the studio, I was very fascinated by the faces, the actual characters that I saw – really interesting people. I was fascinated by the parade of interesting characters that went in and out of the Studio. It became natural to have the camera next to me. It became the extension of my right arm’, says Kramer and continues:
‘The good thing was that the artists that I was working with were very amiable. They didn’t care if I was taking pictures. They would think “Ahhr, it’s just Kramer snapping away with his camera” So I was able to get very intimate pictures of the artists I was working with in their most unguarded moments. These guys were playing, figuring out a chord sequence or whatever.’
‘I would be very careful not to take pictures… if I was working and the artist was in the middle of a take I would never dare to take pictures. . But if they were rehearsing or just running through a song, or pretending to get something together….(laughs) that’s when I would snap a picture – in the moments between the takes. I was lucky. I was in the right place at the right time. It was intimate pictures at critical moments. It was luck. Blind stupid luck.’
‘Only with The Beatles I didn’t dare to take any pictures. Both times I had the opportunity to pull out the camera and take pictures. I knew on both occasions – The Beatles were considered Record Royalty – that if I did, I’d be dead. They’d either kill me or fire me, and I was intimidated at that time to take the camera out. You know, I probably could have asked them. But --- I don’t know…I just didn’t have the balls…I was a senior engineer mixer, but I… I chickened out.’
Pictures from 1967-1972 1973 was the end to Kramer’s music pictures. He simply lost interest – being more interested in taking pictures of his kids, and then beginning to work as an actual producer he got more responsibility. The photos stayed in a large box for almost 30 years until Kramer showed them to a few people when working on the real book on Hendrix. The publishing company which were to publish the book went bankrupt, however, before the treasure box of pictures were restored for print. Instead Kramer decided to make the site Kramer Archives from where he sells copies of his pictures – reproduced in limited numbers.
So far Kramer’s photos have been exhibited in Dubai, Rotterdam, and L.A., - before they now come to Aarhus (Galleri Pofilen 31st May- 28th June). Furthermore, they form the background for many of the talks and lectures Kramer gives at music festivals etc. as is now the case at SPOT. Here a selection of 110 pictures will be obvious points of departure, while Kramer talks about his own life as well as the historical paths and future directions of rock music.
In any case, one thing is certain: Kramer has tried a bit of everything. When he started out, there was just one track: mono. Today there are multi-tracks and infinite possibilities
‘That part of the revolution is fine. Indeed a lot of things are easier now and better for a producer.’ But the music has to be good as well. What we subconsciously were trying to do in the sixties was to break new ground, be innovative not give a damn to much about convention.
‘I think that that revolutionary idea, that concept, is missing – in society as well as in music and I would love to see that again’
‘I think that we have become complacent as a society today, and I think that there is no longer that sense of …”wait-a-minute”… The government is doing something bad, and we’re not objecting, we’re note demonstrating in the streets, whereas in the sixties we said “Hey, the Vietnam War is a bad thing, let’s go demonstrate”. Because today we are SO concerned about our Ipods, we are so concerned about our big SUV’s and our lifestyle and .. that we have become… soft in the head.’
