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"String gauge plays a part in the tone. I play a wound G so my pitch is a little better and I get a fatter tone." |
DANIEL LANOIS - FINDING TRUE HEART AND SOUL IN MODERN MUSIC
Called "the most important record producer to emerge in the Eighties" by Rolling Stone, Daniel Lanois has drawn kudos for his work with U2, Peter Gabriel, and Bob Dylan. Like his sometime collaborator Brian Eno, Lanois has shown a flair for delicate, atmospheric touches, both in producing material for other musicians and in his own projects as a composer and recording artist. Stressing emotional vibrancy over the technical aspects of making albums, Lanois has recorded in such unlikely settings as castles and dairy barns in his efforts to elicit honest, spontaneous performances. The results of this visceral approach have ranged from the soaring intensity of his Grammy-winning co production (with Eno) of U2's The Joshua Tree to the moody, understated passion of Lanois' solo efforts.
Lanois' break came in 1979 when Eno, who was beginning to break ground with his starkly dreamy "ambient music," did some recording at his studio. The chemistry between Eno and Lanois in their instrumental experiments came to commercial fruition when Eno was tapped to produce an album for U2. For that effort, 1984's The Unforgettable Fire, Eno enlisted Lanois as coproducer. The results impressed another pop star, Peter Gabriel, who asked Lanois to coproduce his soundtrack to the 1984 film Birdy. Gabriel and Lanois again shared production credit for 1986's So and 1992's Us, Gabriel's most successful albums. Lanois continued to work with U2 as well, coproducing 1987's The Joshua Tree with Eno and serving as principle producer for 1991's Achtung Baby, which earned him another Grammy. In addition, Lanois earned praise for coproducing with Robbie Robertson the singer's eponymous solo debut in 1987 and, in 1989, for his work at the boards on Bob Dylan's Oh Mercy and the Neville Brothers' Yellow Moon.
Please read on for an exclusive FPE interview with Daniel. Then check out his video clip by clicking here:
FPE: Tell us a bit about your upcoming solo CD. We've heard that it is an instrumental affair?
Daniel Lanois: "My new cd is in fact instrumental. I'm just going thru the process of choosing content right now, as I have an excess of material. Some of it features my pedal steel guitar, some of it is more adventurous sonics, pushing the psychedelic envelope. I hope in all that we find heart and soul because that's the ultimate great quality that gives music a long lasting appeal. That's the gist of it, it's kind of a continuation of some of that great work that I did with Brian Eno in the early 80s and I'll try to make a cd that's going to break some kind of ground sonically for adventurous listeners."
FPE: You play guitar with your thumb and not a pick correct? Do you achieve a different tone by using this method?
DL: "By not using a pick I get the flesh on steel sound. It's something that I went into maybe 15 years ago, I kind of gave up the pick sound 'cause I wanted to get a more full-bodied tone. I like a pick ok. I've always been a fairly aggressive player with my right hand, putting a lot of muscle into the playing and I'm thinking of straying away from that a little bit in my future playing. I might introduce a flat pick again, but I'm pretty good with finger picks. I learned finger picking as a kid, so it's really kind of at the bottom of all my playing."
 FPE: Who are your guitar influences? Who did you listen to during your development stage?
DL: "My guitar influence would be Jimi Hendrix mostly, but I've really enjoyed Neil Young's guitar playing live, especially his solo playing. He's got one of the great contemporary tones. There's a guitar player from Toronto that was an influence for me when I was growing up, his name is Ed Bickert. He always played a tele but had the most beautiful, mellow sound. Ed played a lot of small chords, like 3 note chords, his melodies would always be accompanied by two other notes, and it's kind of the way that I play my steel guitar now. my melodies are always accompanied by a harmony."
FPE: As a general rule, do you prefer to record electric guitars with small amps and if so why please?
DL: "I've had good luck with small amps in the studio. We call them our small amp sessions where, we put, let's say, some Fender champs pretty close to the players and we just play acoustic volume. So if you were to sing along with that kind of guitar volume your guitar wouldn't drown out the vocals. That's the spirit of it and that can be really great. It's always kind of trouble free, small amps just have one speaker so you just stick a dynamic mic right in the speaker and it's almost like you can't miss. But, I don't do that exclusively, sometimes there's no substitute for a vox ac-30, the warmth and the power."
FPE: What is your favorite piece of recording gear?
DL: "I guess the microphones are probably the most important link in the chain for recording. For example, if I'm recording a piano an rca 77, an antique American mic, works out really great. I recently did a piano recording in Toronto where I AB'd an rca 77 against a sennheiser 409, both great mics, and the 77 sounded so different and so much better, I just had to go with it."
FPE: We suppose that you have access to a large amount of gear. Have you found that two of the same model amps made at the same time, in the same factory can sound completely different?
DL: "Well, in the last few years I've been favoring Fender tweed amps from the late 50s, and I find that, the Deluxe for example, they vary considerably. Some amps will be darker and some will be brighter."
FPE: How important is the recording gear (board, outboard gear, signal chain) you use at any given time to the overall shaping of the sound or mood of your work?
DL: "I think what's happening on the floor, in regards of your instruments, your amplifiers, how loud the singers are, how close people are standing together when they record, I think all that probably plays a bigger role in the personality of a recording than the preamps themselves. So I think the set-up and what's happening acoustically in the room is probably most important to the end result."
FPE: Have you discovered that even instrument and speaker cables can have an affect on your recorded tones?
DL: "I don't know if cables have that much to do with tone, but I'll tell you what they have to do with - one brand of cable may give you a certain kind of interference that another cable won't. I just went through this in Toronto where I had an RF problem with one cable. I the switched to a cheaper cable which didn't have the problem at all. then I switched to a different cable and it had another RF problem all together. so on one cable you'll get Mexican radio, the next one you'll get a buzz, and the other one you'll get a communications tower. it never gets talked about, interference and radio frequency, but definitely one cable will be different than the next. FPE: Have you ever had a case of gear meltdown that hampered a critical moment during one of your sessions? And if so we are sorry but tell us what happened please?
DL: "Probably the biggest heartbreak is getting a broken cable sort of distortion on a recording, and you never know when they're going to come, especially if you use old microphones, they're pretty temperamental, and it does happen where you'll have a great performance and maybe a microphone will be on the fritz for whatever reason. So the only guard against that is to have extra microphones. Always record a few extra mics, especially around a drum kit because you don't want to waste a performance."
FPE: You have recorded and played with drummers such as Brian Blade, Victor Indrizzo, and Larry Mullen. What qualities do you feel are most important for drummers to possess?
DL: "Drummers need to feel confidence. If they believe in what they're doing and you egg them on and they feel that they're really part of the equation and that they're doing good work, then they'll play better. I think that's probably the case with all musicians really, you need to egg them on and give the encouragement."
FPE: Strings are the guitar accessory that seem to get most overlooked. With all of today's modern sound equipment in the path of a string's vibrations, how truly important is the musicality of the string?
DL: "Well, without any doubt the string plays a big part in the tone. I have guitars that have had the same set of strings on them for years. I know if I put on brand new strings I wouldn't get that same dark tone and then of course a round wound string versus a flat wound will sound different, as is very evident on a bass guitar. I've got some flat wound strings on an old P bass and I turn the tone knob all the way down and I get that nice deep reggae sound. It kind of depends what you're after. The gauge of the string also plays a part in the tone. I play a slightly heavier gauge than most people. I play a wound G. and that means that my pitch is a little better and I get a fatter tone."
FPE: We are sure you receive many requests for your skills, how do you decide which artists you will work with?
DL: I've always responded to invitations regarding production work. I usually wait for an invitation and say yes or no, but one thing does seem to lead to the next. I did a body of work with Brian Eno some years back and that evolved into U2 records and some of that sound made it's way into the U2 world. So you get this kind of snowball or ping pong effect, especially if you're working with great people. The lessons that you learn, what you're excited about in that chapter will definitely bleed into the next."
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