TONE WORLD "NEWZ"
06/28/08
Guns N' Roses Tribute Report.
(Sorry folks, I forgot to post this, but lot's of good stuff's been hapening that's kept me busy.)
Back in early 2005 I was asked to produce, arrange, record and mix two Guns N’ Roses songs for a Tribute CD, and have it all done in under 2 weeks. Those sessions were previously reported (with my usual positive spin) on this site back in 2005. Truth be told, those sessions, and the resulting aftermath was one of the biggest pains in the neck i’ve had to deal with. The sessions were rushed, the infantile drama was over the top at times, people slept through their alarms and sessions were missed... You get the picture. While the performances of the musicians involved was great, the recordings were horrible. The drums sounded especially bad, but when you work so many hours on a constant basis, your ears get a little numb, and it doesn’t help if the engineer’s ears were already numb to begun with. Well, it was what it was and we all made the best of the situation.
Fast forward to a few months later. We had to go back and remix the songs because the label cringed when they heard them. Adding enough digital technology to fly the Space Shuttle to some of the tracks made them sound somewhat better and acceptable for use. A few weeks later we recorded a killer version of “Just A Gigolo/I Aint Got Nobody” with phenomenal sounds and performances for a DLR CD. That was our "safety net" to save face so that no matter how bad the GN’R stuff sounded, “Gigolo” made up for it.
“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry” Part One:
Versailles Records changed their release schedule around and the DLR CD with “Just A Gigolo” came out before the GN’R CD. We got great reviews and a nice bit of radio airplay with “Just A Gigolo” and David Lee Roth himself said it was the best track on the album. Then the GN’R CD came out...
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Fast forward a bit and we’re now in a new studio (Prime Time Studios) working with a new engineer and co-produce (Tarik Solongi) and some new folks as well. The quality of work we’ve been doing has been the best of my career. We’ve gotten nothing but positive feedback with everything we’ve released since the GN’R CD and have topped “Gigolo” by leaps and bounds with our resent releases of “You Really Got Me” and “Detroit Rock City”.
I spent the last 36 months praying Versailles wouldn’t release the 2nd GN’R tune, ever. But then early this year I was informed that part two of that GN’R tribute would be coming out this summer. “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!”
I’ve done the best work I’ve ever done over the last 2 years and didn’t want that three year old albatross representing me in any way, shape, or form. (Yea, the sound quality was that bad.)
By the grace of god and threats of violence on the entire staff of the label I was allowed to go back into the studio with the master tracks to fix the bad stuff and re-record some of the parts as well.
“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry” Part Two:
My original plan was to rerecord the drums and guitar. Unfortunately not only were those sessions recorded badly, they were saved badly too. Three different studios tried to open the disc unsuccessfully and all came to the same conclusion that either a bad disc was used and the files had become corrupt, or whoever saved the sessions saved them wrong, Finally a fourth studio (Troy Hightower of Hightower Productions) was able to extract the files and reconstruct the song, kinda. The theory of a the bad disc was solidified as some of the tracks had digital glitches and / or were missing entirely. The irony of life was that the only tracks that were totally intact were the drums and guitars that I was planning to replace... We were going to have to rerecording the entire song, but in a very backwards way. (What else is new?)
I decided that out of respect to the previously featured act on the original 2005 version, this was NOT going to be credited to The Slashtones”, only to the individual musicians that would perform on this version. I was under obligation to the label to deliver a version of this song, regardless of who was on it. I also decided to make this and all “in-house” project and only use musicians that record at Tarik Solongi and Steve “Budgie” Werner’s “Prime Time Studios” in Yonkers, NY.
Guitars would be assigned to one of Prime Time's residents, “This Day Reborn” producer Artie Dillon, who also plays guitar for “Lazarus” and “Carmine Appice’s SLAM”. I wanted to use Steve “Budgie” Werner on drums again, but Budgie couldn’t rerecord his drums right away and we only had a small window of opportunity to totally redo this song before the deadline. Budgie’s original drum performance on the song was great, even though it wasn’t well recorded, so we decided to use his original drum tracks as a guide to move forward until Budgie was available.
Felix Hanemann, (who co-produced the song), gets the “MVP Award” on this project. Felix came up with a walking baseline, piano and keyboard parts that made this GN’R tune sound like The Doors. From then on the original 2005 arrangement on the tune went out the window and a new approach was taken, minimalism.
On the 2005 version, Arno Hecht did his one man horn section thing and multi-tracked baritone, tenor, and soprano saxophone parts. That approach wasn’t needed and what we did, (what others didn’t want me to do originally), was have Arno do a “Stones-like” saxophone solo in-place of the guitar solo. Now normally you’d record a sax solo after the guitar tracks are done, but Artie Dillon was on the road so guitars had to be skipped. I wouldn’t by lying if I said this is one of the best sax solos I’ve heard in Rock N’ Roll in resent years.
Next up was vocals. (At this point any producer reading this is probably screaming at us that this is not how you are supposed to record a song.) All the original vocal tracks including Joe Lynn Turner’s parts were the victims of the digital noise problem we were experiencing on the 2005 data disk. (Did I mention that I was also under obligation to have former Deep Purple and Rainbow lead vocalist Joe Lynn Turner on this song?)
I owe a big thank you to Joe Lynn Turner for coming back inbetween tours of Europe and South America to redo his vocals. Now while Joe Lynn could have sang the whole track, we all liked the dual lead vocal trade off from the original 2005 version. It was sugested that Tony Moore or I do the other vocal parts, but Tony wasn’t available and the key the song is in is out of my half octave vocal range so Tarik brought in Charlie Sabin, (formerly of Hindenberg), who’s been recording his new band “Attention Deficit Society” at the studio. We decided to have all the members of “Kiss Alive!” make an appearance on this song and record the backing vocals. Charlie did a phenomenal job matching up to Joe Lynn and the “Kiss Alive!” guys proved they could form an accapello “Do-Wop” tribute band if they wanted to.
So finally we get to guitars and drums. Artie Dillon ignored the original GN’R version and worked his guitar parts around “The Doors meets The Stones” vibe we had happening, and Budgie played to his original drum track and BOOM, we’re done. Very few sessions with absolutly no drama, and perhaps the best thing we’ve done to date.
(I should have titled this article: “How to turn chicken shit into chicken salad.”)
The album hits the stores in early August.
Regards,
Harry /
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| Tarik Solongi and Arno Hecht | Charlie Sabin and Kiss Alive! |
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