Saffron & Robert Smith
(photo from =Mark Plati)
10/01/01]
Sometimes the phone rings.....
Usually it's somebody I know, a friend or one of my family. Or a business call - a record company person, or manager. On occasion, it's a telemarketing weasel trying to get me to buy useful things like cat insurance or a subscription to Golf Magazine. Or, it could be a wrong number.
At very rare times - once every four years, let's say - it's Robert Smith.
I worked with The Cure on a single in 1997 called, coincidentally, 'Wrong Number'. That was a great experience, but a tough one to pull out of the hat - two other producers had been involved before me, so I had to tie up all of those loose ends in addition to working in Robert's new ideas, and about twelve guitar tracks courtesy of Reeves Gabrels. The entire process took four days, nearly every minute of a whirlwind trip to the West End of London, during which time 1) I never had to get over jet lag, 2) I nearly killed a timecode erasing assistant (twice), and 3) we completed the final overdub on the song by having Robert anonymously call a high school friend of mine in Long Island, so that we could record a female voice saying 'sorry, wrong number' over the phone in an American accent.
'Wrong Number' did decently, and it was included on 'Galore', a collection of their singles from 1987 up until then (taking up where 'Staring at the Sea' left off, for those on top of such factoids). It was all over the radio for a while, at least on the modern rock station at the time (WDRE I think....help me here, people). I saw them play a Halloween show at Irving Plaza in NYC that year, we said our hellos backstage, etc., and that was pretty much that. I didn't hear from them again until this past July, when Robert rang up out of the blue and asked me to work on a few new tracks for a greatest hits album to be released in November of 2001. To me, The Cure is one of the most original bands of our time, and Robert a true artist in every sense of that often overused word, so of course I started packing before I could hang up the phone. If I didn't, I might have to wait until 2005, after all.
Virgin Atlantic brought me, my bike, and an 18Gb hard drive loaded with software and goodies safely into Heathrow, where I was met by a van that ferried me to a lovely hotel in Chelsea. I thus began the daily bike trek down the Kings Road and over the Putney Bridge, then west into Barnes to the famous and fab Olympic Studios, where we took up residence in Studio Two. It was great to see everyone again - Roger O'Donnell (keys), Perry Bamonte (guitar) Simon Gallup (bass), Jason Cooper (drums), in addition to Robert. I got tremendously lucky, as the weather in England was incredible for the duration - the locals were complaining of a heat wave, but for a New Yorker it was absolutely perfect summer weather. The first day consisted of the bands' techies loading in case after case of gear, filling the entire studio with amps, guitars, drums, computer equipment, etc. It took a couple of days just to get all of it sorted out, as well as the hire gear I'd ordered in for tracking.
Additionally, Robert was in the process of upgrading his ProTools system, which turned into an ongoing science project. I decided to do all of our work in Logic, and there was no way his system would be able to handle recording so many tracks at once. So...a brand new G4 arrived the following day. The band only had a couple of audio interfaces, but luckily the nice people at Apogee (thank you, Shane) were able to hook us up with a few AD-8000's, so we ended up with 40 ins and outs. Roberts' purchase of an Apple Cinema Display also made life a lot easier, and got me instantly spoiled. This was also the first project where I began using virtual synths ... and I guess I'm now hooked.
We set out to track three new songs - 'Signal to Noise', 'Just Say Yes', and 'Cut Here'. Tracking directly into Logic allowed me to edit several different drum takes, among other things, and not lose anything. Jason was playing with loops, many of which he created in his MPC-2000. We were able to move things around and change the arrangements to find the optimum structure for each track. Roberts' thoughts on the songs would change daily, and with each new idea we'd go up a different avenue, sometimes for keeps, sometimes not - the glory of 'undo'. Plus, the band gave me the liberty to try out whatever I wanted.
Roberts' vocals were another issue. He's been doing this so long, and he knows what he wants, so it seemed to me the right strategy was simply to let him get on with it with minimal interference, adding my two cents when I thought he might be overlooking something here or there. While doing 'Wrong Number', the most exciting part of those sessions was when Robert did his vocal. It was such a privilege to sit behind the console and hear his voice - THAT voice, the voice of so many songs we all know - tumbling out of the speakers in the middle of a brand new Cure track as yet unheard by the world. I was most likely jumping all over the room, and I remember Robert being amused at my level of enthusiasm. It was no different this time around, though I'm sure Robert was more amused at my punk bike shorts on this occasion.
Once again we were on night hours. We'd work from 2 or 3 in the afternoon until 4 or 5 in the morning. I rode home during sunrise after most sessions. The absolute quiet of suburban London - broken only by the first flights into Heathrow - was disconcerting the first few nights, but became a welcome and familiar respite from both the constant hum of New York and the din of Olympic. Also familiar was the family of foxes I'd see every dawn in Putney Common. At first they'd scatter when I approached, but after the first week they'd simply look at me like I was insane to be riding home at 4:30 am. I'd probably agree with them.
We had Saffron from Republica come in to duet with Robert on 'Just Say Yes'. We set up two microphones in the same room, and they went for it together. I wish I had video camera, as it was truly an amazing performance.
After a couple of weeks we established a familiar routine, and lost track of the time and place. Before I knew it I was mixing upstairs in Studio Three while the band kept on working downstairs with our assistant, Keith.
I had to take my leave and come back to New York, but all was not done.......