I didn't think there was any trust violated. I'm convinced that so much more of our time should be spent arranging,ĭo we enter into sort of a doctor/patient thing when we're in there making a record with someone? After writing a book about it years later, did you feel there were any points where you were putting too much out there? You're playing perfectly and you guys work together." Sometimes, with these new guitar players, it's like, "Are you going to continue to play all the way through?" Don't they know if you play all the way through that the human ear, just like a buzz, will just notch it out? "They're not going to hear you at all. It's like English language putting in the commas, the periods, and being a traffic cop. Things they might not hear because they're focused on their own parts. Can one of you play up and the other down a little bit?" They said, "Yeah, sure.
Next time I said, "Hey, I think you guys are stepping on each others' toes. If I can't get all of the sounds to come up and be a good mix, it's like, "What's wrong?" If the sounds aren't the problem, then what is the problem? A couple of takes later I said to Christine, "Well, I was really having trouble hearing you and Lindsey, because it seemed like I couldn't tell your parts apart." She said, "Oh, Lindsey, why don't you play up a third and I'll play down a third." So I memorized that.
They basically wanted me to learn to be a producer, like, "Here's how you do it."ĭid you start to listen to the takes as they were going down carefully enough to have that information? We want you to be our eyes and ears." We'd just done two takes, so it was questions like, "Which tempo did you like better? Which take did you like better? Were any of us stepping on each others' toes?" They wanted to make sure they were playing well, and that you could hear everything. You have to participate and listen to what's going on. On the second or third day in the studio they said, "You can't just sit there, turning knobs. They went, "Sure." So I was intent on doing that, but then they threw me a curve. I told them on the third day that we were going to get a Grammy for this record. When they hired me to do Fleetwood Mac, all I had to do was just be myself. I did the strings for Wings' Venus and Mars Paul McCartney came up to me and said it was one of the best string sounds. By the time I got to Rumours I had done a number of live albums - Joni Mitchell was the most notable. I had learned a lot from watching engineers, some of them really great, and I memorized everything. I was a little quiet, probably, but I was very confident in my abilities. Back then, if we're talking about Rumours and the '70s, I was a young guy and I was pretty determined. What do you think it is about your own personal make-up that brings that into play? It seems people really like you and that opened doors for you in the business, beyond simply engineering. He currently has a suite (Studio E) at the famous Village Recorders building (a former Masonic Temple!), where 35 years ago he helped design the studio where sessions for Fleetwood Mac's Tusk took place. In recent years he's produced four successful records for his daughter, Colbie Caillat.
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Ken also worked on Mac's Tusk, Live and Mirage albums, plus many other sessions by the likes of Paul McCartney, Herbie Hancock, Warren Zevon, Pink Floyd, and Joni Mitchell.
Producer and engineer Ken Caillat added "author" to his list of accomplishments last year when he recalled his time spent recording Fleetwood Mac's album Rumours in his book, Making Rumours.