jacobpaulnielsen

[jacobpaulnielsen]

Interview with Oz Fritz on working with Tom Waits and the making of 1999′s Mule Variations

Jacob Nielsen: Do you have phases with bands?

Oz Fritz: I listen to the music I grew up with all the time when I'm driving. I make mix CDs, so I have about 50 mix CDs and Dylan is definitely fairly prominent. When I first heard "Like A Rolling Stone" I had a religious experience. I kinda stopped following him when he did the Frank Sinatra songs. I didn't get that. Some of the bootlegs, the production sounds better to me than the actual album because the songs are not overly produced. A lot of his albums have terrible production. That's one thing.

JN: What do you mean?

OF: It could mean kind of a number of different things, but just that there's no excitement in the track or it obviously sounds like a drum machine. There's no real qualifier I could say that makes it sound "not good" to me. For Dylan's whole style - if you've read about how he records, he likes to record really fast and sometimes that doesn't translate. Some of his other, later stuff, is produced really well. Like "Love and Theft" and the one after that.

JN: Was it Time Out of Mind? 

OF: Time Out of Mind is a classic. Although, that one gets to sound a bit dated at times. But yeah, that's a very good production. Actually, getting back to Tom Waits...that [album] very much inspired Tom Waits. And from what I've heard, and what I'm told, Dylan was inspired by Tom Waits. 

JN: Those are two big personalities.

OF: And then there was the fact that right around then, when Dylan was touring he always had a bullet mic. A bullet mic is a kind of a green, specialty mic made by Shure that's specifically for harmonica. Plugging a mic like that directly into an amp gets that distorted sound. Tom kind of used it as part of his lo-fi aesthetic. That was a mic he would sing into to get a lo-fi version of a vocal. And so Dylan toured with that. Besides a regular mic, he had this bullet mic which, according to Tom, he never used but it was there. 

I know Tom was influenced by Time Out of Mind because the next record we did was a record Tom produced from John Hammond Jr. called Wicked Grin and he hired the same keyboard player that had been on Time Out of Mind. His name is Augie Meyers. He's an old veteran musician from Texas. Tom put together the whole band for that album and Augie Meyers was included because of his work on Time Out of Mind. 

When I was working with Tom [beginning with Mule Variations], he was constantly telling me influences and things like that. There was a constant flow of information. I know that Time Out of Mind wasn't on his radar at that point. 

JN: What were the reference tracks like for Mule Variations. Would Tom say, you know, I want "Hold On" to sound like this Rod Stewart song?

OF: No he wouldn't be that specific. Before we started, he wanted me to listen to the Radiohead album that had just come out. He wouldn't say why or what specifically about it I should hear. Just a general aesthetic I guess. 

JN: Bands like Radiohead don't seem very "on brand" for a guy like Tom Waits.

OF: Oh man. He stays really on top of what is happening. He told me about The White Stripes before anyone had ever heard of 'em. I think another one might have been The Strokes. He stays pretty involved. 

At some point near the end [of the Mule Variations sessions] he and Kathleen went to a Bjork concert. He was extremely impressed by her turntablist, who wasn’t just scratching but playing samples from records. That caused Tom to find a DJ and bring him in and have him throw some stuff down. 

JN: Right. There are samples on ‘Big In Japan’, right? What was that like in the studio?

OF: He’s constantly recording stuff. Back then, it was on cassette. I was just given a loop. Primus was doing the music for that and so he just played the loop and they played the song. It was longer, too. He edited some of the lyrics out. It got to be a little bit long, he decided. 

JN: Mule Variations is 16 songs, but it was meant to be 25. So that’s a double album. What songs were cut from the album? 

OF: There’s one called “Lost at the Bottom of the World,” which is on Orphans, and there’s one that’s never made it anywhere and it’s actually one of my favorite songs of his. It’s called “Always Keep a Diamond in Your Mind”. We recorded [Always Keep a Diamond in Your Mind] for Mule Variations and we recorded a different version for Alice. It did find life. Solomon Burke put it on one of his records. I didn’t think he did justice to the song. I love Tom’s versions way more. Those are the only ones I remember off hand. 

JN: Years ago, you had told me that the album was called Mule Variations because of all the different versions of “Get Behind the Mule”. 

OF: That’s right.

JN: Was that similar for songs like “Always Keep a Diamond in Your Mind”? Did he record that song a bunch of different ways, too? 

OF: No we only had one...or maybe two different versions. I don’t remember. He worked on it. It was definitely a song in contention [for the record]. He obviously loved the song enough to put it down again on the next albums [Alice and Blood Money]. I don’t know what went in his process on not putting it on the record. That is something he has in common with Dylan that I’ve found. Some of Dylan’s best songs, he’s not put on record. There’s one called Blind Willie McTell. Some consider it one of his best songs. 

Marc Ribot once told me (and this is just people’s theories and opinions) that Tom is wary of power. If something sounds too powerful, it turns him off.

JN: I wonder about his definition of power. I hear a song like “Come On Up to the House” or “Anywhere I Lay My Head” and I’m like holy shit. Tom has this amazing ability to sound like someone who is just totally broken. To me that’s very powerful. 

OF: Well, Marc could have been coming from the point of view of his guitar playing. We did a whole week of Ribot doing overdubs, and I love his guitar playing. At the end of it I told him that and Marc’s comment was “well...we’ll see how much of it is used.” So I think Marc might have found stuff that was really powerful in his guitar playing and it didn’t make it on to the records. 

JN: What can you recall about some of the equipment that was used on the album?

OF: So the first record that Tom did at Prairie Sun was Bone Machine. At that point, there was no “Waits Room,” there was nothing done in those lower rooms. There was only the tracking room - Studio B - and then there was the mixing room - Studio A. Studio B, the live room, sounded good but it was very generic sounding. So they started this record [Bone Machine] and they had him all set up. After one playback, Tom just hated it. He hated the sound. It lacked character, for him. So he wasn’t going to do the record there. He then had the idea to do it at his house. He rented a whole bunch of mics and mic-pres, took it to his house with engineers, but apparently it also didn’t work there. So he came back to Prairie Sun and they were just walking down that driveway. Tom was trying to think of what to do and he looked over and saw that building that has the Waits Room in it. He went in. It was a storage room and he said “well, what would this room be like if we took all the junk out of it?” So they did and it sounded amazing. So the Waits Room was actually born during the making of Bone Machine. 

So for Mule Variations, which was now eight years later, he came back and he wanted to do it in that same room. This time he took over that whole floor. At that point there was no mixing board there. No control room either. It wasn’t its own studio. The control room was upstairs in Studio B. There were lines that ran from the basement [Studio C] to the upstairs [Studio B]. It was really physically hard. To adjust a mic, I’d have to run down the hill, adjust the mic, and run up the hill. We set up playback down there so they could listen back without having to come up to the control room. That whole floor was utilized for the recording. There were two rooms: the Waits Room and the Corn Room. The Corn Room is a much bigger room. [We tracked] between those two spaces, but sometimes we used the middle part of the studio. 

So Tom would be playing in the Waits Room, he’d either be playing a guitar or piano, and he would be singing. This was basically his modus operandi for almost all of the songs, or maybe all of them: he would record his basic part first and then add stuff on. A lot of the songs, like Get Behind the Mule, would just be him, another piano/rhythm guitar, Larry Taylor (an upright bass player), and then a guy usually doing hand percussion. Occasionally, like for Filipino Box Spring Hog, drums would be set up outside the Waits Room. The door would be open so they would all have sight line and feel like they were in the same room.

As far as the equipment, he’s still all analog and analog approach. The recorder was a suitor 880 and all the mic pres were on that Neve desk upstairs [in Studio B]. This was in ‘98 or ‘99, I think maybe ‘98. Pro Tools had just come out, and Tom likes to check out new technology. Like I said, he likes to stay on top of things. 

There’s a long story about how Jacquire King got involved. I went and interviewed with Tom to do the record and then Tom kept delaying the start time. I had a bunch of dates already booked with Bill Laswell to do live sound in the summer, which I wasn’t going to give up because he’s a long term client and friend of mine. So I told Tom when they finally got the start date “there’s gonna be some days I’m not gonna be here because I’ve got to go overseas.” Tom said “Well, you know I don’t want to keep switching engineers. You know, I really love your vibe. We’ll probably do something in the future, but I want to have one engineer for the whole thing.” So, cool. Whatever. He went looking for another engineer and he’d heard about Jacquire King. They brought him up to Prairie Sun for the interview. Tom’s interview consists of a session. He doesn’t tell you when you’re going for the interview. When you get there he says, “Okay, let’s do some recording.” They did that for Jacquire and Jacquire was not experienced with analog recording at the time. They didn’t like his recording. They tried a thing in the Waits room and it just didn’t work out. So I got a call the next week from Tom, saying that he and Kathleen both like Jacquire but they realized he didn’t really have his chops up yet on analog recording. So...would I be willing to be the chief recording engineer? [I’d] set the parameters, meet with Jacquire, and show him how I do analog recording. The thing Tom liked about Jacquire was he was a Pro Tools engineer. So Jacquire became more than just a substitute for me. He brought out Pro Tools and they used it on FIlipino Box Spring Hog. Lowside of the Road might have been mixed [on Pro Tools] too. 

JN: What is the difference in mixing on Pro Tools vs. Analog?

OF: At that point, I don’t think they were using Pro Tools in the box, which means to completely mix something in the computer, strictly digital. It doesn't go to a mixing desk or any other gear outside the computer. They were using Pro Tools as the source instead of a tape machine. The reason they were using Pro Tools was because he was kind of cutting and pasting stuff and moving stuff around. Which is a lot harder to do with tape. 

I would say the whole record is maybe 80 or 90 percent analog. Even the Pro Tools stuff wasn’t mixed in Pro Tools. It went out, back through the Neve and then mixed to analog tape. 

JN: On a song like Lowside of the Road, the beginning sounds like a man snoring. Is that a vibraslap making that sound?

OF: That song had its genesis somewhere else. It came from an 8 track tape that he had. I think he recorded it at his house. That’s where the basic tracks were. They brought that into Prairie Sun and they overdubbed on top of that. I’m not sure how it started. 

JN: On Mule Variations there are a lot of these images that are “painted” with sound. Was that sort of stuff a directive to you? Did Tom say “Oz, I want this to sound like a guy snoring.”?

OF: Nothing was ever that specific. But the visuals, when you say “painted,” that’s very accurate. He wouldn’t say “make it sound like a guy’s snoring,” but when I was mixing or overdubbing Cold Water, he said he wanted more brown in the mix. Which I knew. I could relate that to a particular range or frequencies. 

When we were mixing Alice, he’d give these real abstract images. He said, “Oz. Picture yourself in a dollhouse. You’re in a dollhouse. You’re in a room in a dollhouse and a regular size person comes in and sticks their face into the dollhouse. That’s how I want my vocal to sound.”

JN: That seems pretty on brand for Tom Waits. Is that pretty unique in comparison to other artists you’ve worked with?

OF: It’s totally unique. No one else has come close to being like that in terms of direction. Bill Laswell once told me when we were working on a dub record and he told me I should reference a book called Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. That’s the only thing that comes close. 

There was a more traditional reference that came from Tom too. There’s a drummer named Andrew Borger, who’s on the record. He had made a tape, a cassette, of him playing drums. It was like an audition tape. And it was slightly overloaded. It had a particular sound, which Tom loved. He brought me that cassette tape and told me to emulate that sound. Man, it was really hard. I got a great sound, I thought. It’s the drum sound for Filipino Box Spring Hog. It’s much different than the cassette tape but that was my attempt to get that reference. 

JN: Tom is someone who’s very famous for his different voices. Songs like Pony and Cold Water are great examples of his range. Tell me about recording his different voices.

OF: They were all the same microphone, those two particular songs. There wasn’t a lot of variation on microphones. There was a lot of processing done in the mixing to try to sculpt the vocal sound. In Get Behind the Mule, he’s singing through a PVC pipe. That was the same microphone, but obviously it sounds way different because he’s singing through a pipe. That was completely his decision to do that. 

There was one time though, there was a session on the Blood Money album, where he was trying to get this song and he just couldn’t get it. I suggested to him to try a real lo-fi mic. He did and that’s how he got the vocal. That was a bit of an exception. Generally, it was always kind of the same mic that he sang into. 

Tom wanted to record Chocolate Jesus outside. He set everyone up in front of those white doors that are in front of the Waits Room. Jacquire mic’d everything up. When Tom heard it he thought it sounded too nice. Too high fidelity. So Jacquire went back. He took down all his close mics, put up a pair of shotgun mics, and recorded the whole ensemble just with these shotgun mics. I technically mixed that song but there wasn’t much to do because there were only two channels. 

JN: That’s another song that really paints a picture with sound. That recording feels like a hot summer day in the Deep South. Tom sounds exhausted, almost like a sharecropper. 

OF: Right.

JN: You don’t seek out a production credit on albums you work on, do you?

OF: Right. There’s no producer. There’s a reducer. 

JN: It sounds to me like Tom seeks out people that will help him shape the sounds that he has, not vice versa. 

OF: Yeah. You’ve got to sort of realize your place though, too. He never told me this, I was trained this way in New York...the artist is the boss. I’m doing their record. I’m not doing my record. The only creative stuff I felt free to do was on the technical side. Nowadays you have a lot of musicians who do their own engineering, so they’ll start giving you engineering suggestions. Stuff like what mics to use or even how to place them. Which is fine, but Tom never went near that at all. One time he wanted me to hear the sound of a whip on a cassette in the back of his SUV that was cranked incredibly fucking loud [laughs]. He would just try to give you references to try to go for. 

[In Listen Up!] there’s a chapter about working with Tom Waits. He talks about giving these ideas to Tom and Kathleen. He’d come up with these sounds or whatever, you know, “check this out, let’s use it!” type of thing. At one point he talks about how Tom called him up at the hotel, and if you read the book you’ll get a lot of very colorful imagery of Tom basically saying “back the fuck off,” but he says it much more politely. 

Some other input I got was, Tom was very influenced by this turntable DJ that Bjork had, and so he brought a guy in [to do that]. He was also very interested in samples. I had a sound effects library and I brought that in and we used some of the effects off of that. 

My sound effects library was on these things called DATs (Digital Audio Tapes). They were the same quality as recordable CDs. During the 90s, I was living sort of bi-costally. All of my work was back in New York and most of my work was with Bill Laswell at his Greenpoint studio in Brooklyn. Above his studio, I had converted it into an art gallery and I used to stay above the studio. I had a lot of time. I basically dubbed all of Bill’s CD sound effects and put them on DATs. [During Mule Variations], I’d bring the whole thing in. We put an auctioneer on Eyeball Kid. Tom would just come up with ideas and we would just go through [my DATs] and choose one. 

JN: The first track that comes to mind with something like your library is “What’s He Building?” Did you rely on your sound effects library when you were tracking that song?

OF: Well, that was a pretty unique recording. He did three or four takes of that song, but there was no overdubs added afterwards. Everything was completely live. It’s that big room, The Corn Room, at Prairie Sun. Tom brought any musical instrument that he had at his house, he brought to Prairie Sun. That whole floor was just tons of instruments. He had all this home-made percussion. The kind that Harry Parch would make. So there was all kinds of instruments like that in the Corn Room and he just started doing the vocal, the spoken word on a handheld mic. An SM7 or something like that. Then Kathleen and the assistant engineer at the time, Jeff Sloan (who was also a percussionist), made the background sounds. All the background sounds are them hitting stuff just kind of randomly while Tom’s doing the spoken word. Some of the sounds are from the harp of a piano just being hit. That was all done live, but he edited some of it out. There were a lot more verses.

JN: Really?

OF: Oh yeah. The guy was definitely building something in there. 

JN: This album was recorded at the peak of the CD boom in the music industry. A lot of people, at least at Tom Waits’ calibur, were recording digitally. Is there any insight as to why Tom kind of insisted on doing things analog?

OF: At Prairie Sun back then, there were no Pro Tools and that was how you recorded there. At my interview with Tom, I told him I had been listening to Bone Machine and I really liked the sound of it. 

He said “No, don’t use that as a reference. You should be listening to Rain Dogs. That’s the one I want to use as a reference for my recordings.” 

It just so happened that I knew the difference in the recording between Bone Machine and Rain Dogs. [Robert Musso], who recorded Rain Dogs, was one of my engineer teachers in New York. I knew that they did it by the New York standard, which is 30 inches per second for the tape speed, no noise reduction. I knew that Bone Machine had been recorded in California at 15 ips, half the speed and using noise reduction. The difference in those techniques is that, when you use noise reduction, you can’t slam the tape. You can’t hit the tape hard. Part of the whole New York aesthetic was...record at 30 ips, hit the tape as hard as you can without blowing things up and you get a thing called tape compression. That’s partly what makes things sound that punchy. That’s part of why Mule Variations has a bigger, more open sound. Whereas, with Bone Machine - which I love the sound of [and] I think Tchad Blake did a really excellent job mixing it - sounds a little tighter or closed.

JN: What do you mean when you say “hit the tape”?

OF: Record at a hot level, so your drums [for example] are hitting your VU meters. They’re slamming it. When people say they love the sound of tape, a lot of that is recording it to its maximum headroom. You don’t get quite the same effect when you’re doing it at 15 ips and using noise reduction. Noise reduction is severely processing the sound. Partly, the reason why records from the 50s and 60s and 70s sound bigger was the whole philosophy was using as little electronics as possible. To go as much as you could directly from the mic to the tape recorder and have as few electronics in between as possible. So that was kind of the aesthetic brought to Mule Variations. As much as possible, direct to the tape machine. With Dolby noise reduction, it’s encoding the sound when it goes into the tape machine and then decoding the sound when it comes out. That’s how it’s taking out the noise, but it’s being processed. [The sound] doesn’t go through that stage if you’re not using noise reduction. If you’re not using noise reduction, you’re almost obliged to record at a loud level because when you record at a louder level, you’re not going to get as much noise.

JN: Did Tom know that you had studied under Robert Musso?

OF: No. I told him at the interview, but he hadn’t known that prior. He did check me out a little bit. When he called me the very first time and he asked for a sample of my mixes, he called them “hyper real.” They were too big, or maybe too powerful for him. I think part of it was that he needed a professional engineer that was in the area. I’d been recommended to him by Brain, the drummer for Primus. I knew Brain from New York. The thing that Tom was super impressed with was, I sent him a tape of my ambient recording. Stuff that I had done out on the street. Interesting things. Just sounds. He liked that more than my actual mix reel. 

JN: How do you approach miking a room like the Corn Room?

OF: Well, I always had room mics. I had two U87s up in the corners of the Waits room along with all the close mics. It’s just a matter of putting up extra mics, having ambient mics. For a drum track, I use four sets of ambient mics. Two for the whole room, to get the biggest room [sound] as possible. Two that I call boom mics. They’re not close mics, but they’re not real distant so they’re like if a person was just standing in front of a drum kit.

This was an educational experience for me too. I never worked on anything like Tom Waits. I’m writing a book - my memoir about the music industry. Part of what I say in there is, when I was in New York, I learned how to make things sound as big and powerful as possible. We went to extra lengths to push the boundaries. Coming out and working with Tom Waits, that was a whole different aesthetic. He didn’t want it to sound as big, beautiful, and shiny as possible. [His] whole lo-fi aesthetic was a huge educational part of my recording career. 

Years ago, you told me that the initial mix of Hold On had these beautiful guitar arpeggios. Then Tom comes to you and says “Oz, some guy like Rod Stewart is going to come along and cover this song,” and so he didn’t want it to sound too pretty. How many other times did he come back and say “it sounds too good”?

That was really the only time. Mixing was challenging, definitely. We finished tracking and we moved from the tracking room at Prairie Sun to the mix room, which had a different board and was configured differently back then. We spent a week there, mixing. He would always love the sound of it when he was hearing it in the control room. We’d make a cassette for him but he’d listen at home and he wasn’t digging the mixes at all. It was getting to be every single day that was happening. So I was getting kind of nervous. Like, at what point am I going to get fired? 

We decided that what he didn’t really like was the sound of that board. It was a Trident board. It did have a much different sound than the Neve board. We were constantly making rough mixes. He really dug the sound of the rough mixes done in the Neve room [Studio B]. So the whole thing was…”Okay, after this week we’re going back into Studio B to mix on the Neve.” But there was one day, a Friday, when we mixed Big in Japan [on the Trident board]. At that point it had been four or five days of not really hearing anything he liked when he got home. He said “okay, give me a cassette.” He wasn’t even that thrilled with what was happening. I made him a cassette of Big in Japan and he brought it home and he just loved it. He loved the mix. All he said was he wanted the edits put back in. The tape that had been edited out was on the floor, so I had to go and dig through all these pieces of tape, find the right piece and put it back into the song. That was the mix. 

In terms of the mixing...it was a long process. He had me and Jacquire each do our own versions of mixes. I think Jacquire has three on there, or two of ‘em, from Pro Tools and then I have the rest. Most of the mixes I did, that he accepted, four or five of them were done in one night. He gets into this thing where he likes to work really fast. He doesn’t want people thinking too much. Just working on instinct. I think it was the night of Hold On that we were on a roll and did four or five songs. Eyeball Kid was mixed that night, then Come On Up to the House. 

Alice was done the same way too. He always worked Monday to Friday and took weekends off. On a Friday he walks in and says “Okay, Oz. Let’s do some mixing.” I started mixing some songs and I think we mixed three or four, just knocked them off. He loved it. He said “Well Oz, we’re on a roll. Can you stay over and work tomorrow?” Okay, sure. I worked on Saturday and I think we mixed maybe 90% of the album in those two days. That’s after trying mixes, you know, regular. Spending a whole day on a song.

JN: How many other people work like that?

OF: Well...no one. Bill Laswell to some extent, also works really fast. People have that recognition when something is happening, and they know when to stop and not to take it too far. Tom’s like that. He’s always trying to keep it alive and fresh and not too overly worked. 

[Working on Mule Variations], you didn’t know exactly what you were going to do every day. You might be thinking, okay, we’ve got all the songs done. We’re going to do overdubs today. And then he’d say, “I’ve got a new song.” It was always very Zen in the sense of...you had to pay attention to what was going on. 

JN: What new songs did he come in with?

OF: There’s one on Orphans. Rain On Me, I think it’s called. That was one where, I think we were mixing and he’s like “okay, I’ve got a new song. I want to record this.”

On Blood Money and Alice, three of the mixes were just complete rough mixes. Two of them were from [when] we recorded everything live and then the band would come in for a playback. I would run the playback into a DAT, which was CD quality. Just to hear the monitor mix. Two of those mixes were the first time anybody had ever heard it on tape, including myself. That’s just my balance going to the recorder. 

JN: What songs were those?

OF: I’m bad with titles. Something about King Edward’s Brother. I don’t remember the other one, but the very first song on Blood Money is the rough mix. 

That’s a very interesting story, too. 9/11 happened while we had some time off. The first session that we had was about a week after it happened. Tom said he was thinking about cancelling it, but if he did he would just be sitting in front of the TV getting more depressed, so we did the session. The mood was...you just feel his mood. He just projects it. Not that he’s intentionally being negative or whatever, but if he’s not in a good mood, you kind of just feel it. He came in, the mood was really heavy and says “I want to put a hand drum on Misery’s the River of the World and then I want you to give it a good rough mix.” Meaning I got to spend more than 15 minutes getting a balance. I spent two or three hours getting a decent rough mix. When it came time to mix those records, he was very concerned that those two albums were going to sound the same because they were all done in the same studio with the same musicians and the same production team. So he brought this other engineer up from LA to mix Blood Money. They did about three or four mixes of Misery is the River of the World, but he always went back and he ended up using that rough mix. I think it’s not because it’s such a brilliant mix but because there was something about the mood in the studio at the time. If you listen to the song, it’s kind of appropriate for a 9/11 aftermoment. 

JN: What do you remember about the album’s release? 

OF: Even though CDs were prevalent, everything inside the studio was an analog world. Like, I didn’t know how to use Pro Tools. It wasn’t a common thing. From what I remember, everyone always did both. Major releases still pressed to vinyl and CD. 

Tom loved all the songs that we had but there were too many of them. He had hoped to make it a double album, but the record company was shy about that because it was his first record on Epitaph. They felt like it was much harder to market a double album. Some of the songs that were chosen were at the mastering session. It went up to that last minute. I really loved Lowside of the Road, which I was less involved with. I really lobbied hard for that to be on the record. It came close to not being on the record. 

[jacobpaulnielsen]

Orion

Prompt 

Write a 500 word account of the track you focused on, working from your technical, factual, descriptive, and emotional responses to describe and discuss what it lends to its overall sound and impact.

Intro

Listening to Orion at this point in my life feels like talking to an old friend. I must have started listening to Master of Puppets when I was 4 or 5 years old. No joke. That makes 25 years that this song has been a part of my life. Time has shown me that this song is so much more than a deep cut on a heavy metal record - it’s a genre-bending masterpiece. 

The starry middle section, the part from which the song gets its name, helped me to appreciate post-rock music in my teenage years. Reading that Cliff based a lot of his harmonies off of Thin Lizzy made me check out bands like them. Eventually I got to Motorhead, and then on to punk rock. I think if I really sat down and drew it out, I could draw a parallel between Orion and any other music I’ve been passionate about before. (Probably not but you get the idea.)

With this prompt, I tried my best to write a fitting tribute for one of my oldest friends. I owed it to the song. I got most of my information on how symphonies are structured from an article on New York Public Radio’s website and the book Metallica put out in celebration of the Master of Puppets 30th anniversary called Back to the Front. It was cool to read the WQXR article and fit all the pieces together. I honestly got really excited when I found a way explain how Cliff applied his influence of classical music to this song. Also, I haven’t read anything like this about this song before, so it was cool to feel like I was exploring some uncharted territory. 

I tried my best to meet the 500 word requirement, and I think I came a lot closer than I did on my last entry. It was really tough. Maybe if I had chosen a different song it would have been easier to meet the word limit. But there are just too many good things to say about this song, you know?

Orion

Save for guys like Les Claypool, the bass is a background instrument. John Deacon wrote some of Queen’s most popular riffs, but he’s nowhere near the household name of Freddie Mercury and Brian May. In metal, a genre of music that’s known less for its grooves and more for thunderous drums and crushing guitars, it’s remarkable that Cliff Burton became such a renowned and respected voice. Burton’s voice is perhaps heard the loudest on his magnum opus, his symphony, Orion, the instrumental track from Master of Puppets. 

Section I - The Fast Movement (Allegro)

There are two themes to start off this piece. The first, a synth bass, made to sound like a chorus of bowed double basses. The second, a heavy, classic Metallica groove on a Em/D/Ebm riff. The development showcases Cliff’s inventive use of effects over an A/E/C/C/E/A progression. When James comes in and doubles Cliff’s bass part - Cliff takes a backseat, stepping away from his pedals to lock in with Lars’ kick drum.

II. The Slow Movement (Andante, Adagio)

The song really comes into its own in Movement II. It’s a heartbreaking F#m/A/Bm/Em progression of somber chords arpeggiated by Cliff himself. The swelling guitar harmonies pull the listener into a moment of complete despair. It’s that moment when grief overcomes you and all you can do is succumb to its weight and let it run its course. 

It’s hard to look at this song as anything besides a lament for Cliff. The very name of the song evokes feelings of someone looking down from the heavens. At moments like this, it’s almost as if the song actually foreshadows his death, like the lilies in Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance. Obviously, that wasn’t Cliff’s intention. This isn’t a posthumus recording. He died - tragically - in a bus accident promoting this album. However, and perhaps inarguably, his death gave this song a new meaning.  

III. The Dance Number (Scherzo, Minuet)

Of The Dance Number, Ray Burton (Cliff’s father) said, 

“Cliff came home and played his mother, Jan, and I ‘Orion’ - the part with all the dubbed harmonies, which was in three quarter time…[I joked] that it would be a great tune for Jan and I to waltz to!”

True to form, this waltz gives way to a trio in which James, Cliff, and Kirk have a conversation with their instruments. For Cliff, any by proxy, the listener, the whole song builds to his solo, which is another testament to his voice as a player. The emotion, the soul in Cliff’s fingers rival that of David Gilmore. Arguably, there’s no other bass solo on record that sounds so utterly desperate and alone.  

IV. A Fast Movement. Again. But Even More Impressive.

The last movement is a celebration. It’s a reprieve of the second theme from the first movement, but instead of hitting the snare on the 1 and 3, Lars hits the snare on every downbeat with a 16th note double kick pattern. This beat blows the roof off the end of the song and opens it up to the trademark Metallica jam that the band perfected on Load and Reload. An additional couple of rhythm guitar tracks add to the overall feel and if you listen closely, you can hear Cliff grooving with the song, improvising fills high on the fretboard.

To echo the sentiments of many, there’s definitely no telling what musical territories the band would have explored had it not been for his death. In all likelihood, “Orion” was Cliff Burton making the most of the unique position Metallica was in at the time. They were with Q Prime management and signed to a major label. Radio wouldn’t touch the band, so no there was no pressure to write a hit single. The band really had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted - the perfect storm for a musician like Cliff.

[jacobpaulnielsen]

The Black Parade

Prompt: Write a 1,000-word album review of a record you’ve never heard in a genre you’re not familiar with.

I’ve always really, really hated emo music. The huge guitars and undeniable hooks are the same things that made me love a lot of bands, so I’m not entirely sure why I have such a distaste for it. The genre is famous for songs about depression, self-loathing, and heartbreak. None of these topics are out of place on a Neil Young, Smashing Pumpkins, or Radiohead record; all people that have been important to me at one time or another. And yet, something about this genre has always rubbed me the wrong way. I can't really put my finger on it. So for this assignment, I decided to challenge myself and do a deep dive into The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance.

Initially, my reaction to the album was less than stellar. I tore the album apart. I actually wrote, "On The Black Parade, My Chemical Romance tried their best to strike the right balance of music just edgy enough to appeal to suburban teens but not rebellious enough to actually provoke forward movement." Bold words coming from someone that's never sold a record, let alone written a song.

I wanted to do some research on the band before I really started writing the review in earnest, and it seemed like Life on the Murder Scene, the 2006 documentary on the band was a great place to start. I’m glad that I did. The film really changed my perception of the band and the album. I came to find out that MCR has the same narrative as the bands that were subjects of VH1's Behind the Music series. Like their predecessors, the band was plagued with the pressures of fame and drug addiction. It’s a Classic Rock story. It’s Rocket Man and Almost Famous and all of those other legends that follow the same classic rock mythos that inspired us to want to take over the world when we were kids.

So on this review, I challenged myself to find out how The Black Parade fits into the mythical schema of what's been dubbed "classic rock," because - like it or not - it does.

With 2006’s The Black Parade, My Chemical Romance created a Classic Rock masterpiece. Considering that Classic Rock as a genre mostly stopped progressing in the early to mid-80s, this might be a strange concept. However, the elements that make Classic Rock so pervasive in American music are all found on this record, too. It’s not a stretch to say that My Chemical Romance is the natural evolution of established and accepted Classic Rock artists like Kiss or Alice Cooper. MCR fans would probably shudder at the idea of their favorite band being lumped into the same category as bands that their parents listened to, but the similarities are striking: mythical lyrics, dramatic stage shows, power ballads, and - most importantly - mystery. Their image of a goth band gone punk evokes the same feelings that captivated teenagers when Kiss released Destroyer in 1976. And the image worked - their major-label debut was certified platinum just a year after its release. In his book Twilight of the Gods, Steven Hyden defines classic rock as “a particular era of music signified by bands who may or may not be shitty”. This definition is important if we’re going to consider The Black Parade for Classic Rock canon. There is a definitive line that can be drawn between Classic Rock as a genre and a classic rock album. The Velvet Underground & Nico is a classic rock album, whereas Bad Company is a Classic Rock album. Furthermore, there are recurring themes within the Classic Rock genre that appear throughout all of the essential Classic Rock albums. Let’s take a look at three of those essential elements of Classic Rock and see how The Black Parade measures up.

Grandiose Lyrics About Heartbreak, Love, Death, and Youth

“Carry on my wayward son There'll be peace when you are done Lay your weary head to rest Don't you cry no more”

Kansas. The band responsible for hits such as “Point of Know Return,” and “Dust in the Wind,” are one of several bands that came to embody Classic Rock. Given this definition and the ambiguous use of their music in Will Farrell movies, Kansas could very well be the defining Classic Rock band. Despite how “shitty” (as Hyden so lovingly puts it) Kansas is, we love them to this day. According to Louder Than Sound, Carry on Wayward Son was the number one song on classic rock radio in 1997. Since then it’s logged more than two million downloads.

But why?

These aren’t politically conscious lyrics. There’s no hidden meaning here. There’s no call for peace or change. These are just lyrics that, quite simply, feel good to sing out loud at a concert with fellow fans. The words just create this feeling of belonging. The same is true for the (almost) title track of The Black Parade. This is a song that was made to be played in front of a crowd.

One of the great things about Classic Rock is that the lyrics really seem to be made for the fans. They’re the right words sang in the right cadence. That’s it. These are words that just sing well. As a result, it’s really the fans that interpret the lyrics and ultimately take ownership of them. So when you take these lyrics from “Welcome to the Black Parade,” it’s obvious that Gerard Way didn’t actually have this conversation with his dad at a parade. Real people don’t talk like that. But damn those lyrics do make you feel some kind of way, don’t they?

Call to Arms

The Call to Arms is a song that asks the fans to get together and stand for something. It’s a song that says “let’s go take over the world.” A true Call to Arms, as it relates to the Classic Rock genre isn’t a zeitgeist, but the opaque lyrics do have a sense of urgency about them. More than any other song, these are the ones that give the fans a sense of identity and community. It’s a war cry. It’s a song that you would put on your workout playlist or you’d hear at a hockey game. It’s Immigrant Song, Seven Nation Army, and We Will Rock You. In the case of MCR, it’s Teenagers.

Teenagers, it’s probably the best example of a straightforward Classic Rock song on the album. Guitarist Ray Toro begins the song with a typical E minor blues riff before the whole band locks in with Bob Bryar’s classic beat and the song erupts. On the Live in Mexico DVD, their touring keyboardist even accompanies them with a very Stones-y piano part. And is that a cowbell Bob is playing during the breakdown? It’s a testament to the band’s bravery that they wrote a song like this in the first place. It’s a testament to their talent that it actually worked; it’s a staple in their set fourteen years later.

The Concept Album

It started in 1967 with Sgt. Pepper and it still continues to this day. It’s not surprising, given Gerard Way’s love of comic books and horror films, that he was drawn to the idea of a concept album. Originally titled The Rise and Fall of My Chemical Romance, this record opened up a whole world of possibilities for MCR. Given how the concept album lends itself to a particularly theatrical nature (see The Wall), it suddenly made sense for My Chemical Romance to integrate theatrics into the live performances supporting the album. Donned in black marching band uniforms and makeup for the tour, the live performances of songs from this album were like a marriage between David Bowie and Alice Cooper.

True Classic Rock artists are not merely people. They are Greek Gods. I’m finishing this post on the heels on Neil Peart’s death, of which Taylor Hawkins wrote “Neil Peart had the hands of God. End of Story.” Peart isn’t the first Classic Rocker to be compared to God, nor will he be the last. The genre is absolutely drenched in mystique, folklore, and larger than life stories of how the Gods came to be and the creations they made. Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil. Paul McCartney died and the Beatles told us about it. Led Zeppelin recorded their legendary fourth album in a haunted mansion. Not unlike their heroes, My Chemical Romance has draped all that they do in as much mystique as the 21st century can allow. Not unlike The Spiders from Mars, My Chemical Romance often performed under the name The Black Parade. And not unlike Kiss, the band performed in costume. The cryptic announcements surrounding MCR’s reunion shows and the impending new album has caused hysteria among their fans. It can’t be more clear that their vast and devoted fanbase considers them absolute superheroes - and that’s really the whole of what truly makes a band a Classic Rock band. If classic rock was what you were looking for in 2006, you could find it alive and well with My Chemical Romance.

[jacobpaulnielsen]

12.28.19

My name’s Jake. 

Most people call me Jake. I’ve never really felt too connected to my name though. I don’t know why. When I think of a “Jake,” I don’t picture myself at all. I’m a 6th-grade teacher with Pink Floyd tattoos and a sizable library of music in my classroom. Maybe part of the reason I’m starting this blog is to feel more connected to my name. 

Years ago, I managed a band called Jack and the Bear. Christina, the remarkable woman that ended up being my wife was (still is) in the band. Her brothers were (still are) in it, too. At the time when I was the most heavily involved, the band was this profoundly beautiful thing. (No, not just because I was involved...) Everyone in the band was all-in. In 2013, Christina and I put all our things in storage, took out an extra student loan, and toured the country with the band. We threw everything we had into a band that we loved. Our goal was to make it to Prairie Sun Studios, record an album, and play shows along the way. I booked the shows, helped the band set up/tear down, got the band paid, and drove.

Christina at Prairie Sun. This path lead from the studio to the guest house. March 2013.

In the live room at Prairie Sun. Jack and the Bear tracked much of "Dreams" together in this room. March 2013.

We had all the things you’d think a bunch of naive kids in a band should have: wanderlust, brotherhood, and a 1994 Chevrolet short bus that ran on diesel fuel. We named him BUS-E. He had no airconditioning, no heat, and no radio. It broke down on us once when we were on our way to California to record Jack and the Bear’s first album, unironically titled Dreams Get You Nowhere.

I remember the day the band drove the bus home. We immediately took out all of the school bus seats and just...placed old van seats in there. No bolts. No straps. Nothing. We just set two three-seater van seats and an old futon in there and called it good. If the driver hit the breaks too hard, the seats would tip like a beam on a fulcrum and send the passengers sailing forward. It’s a damn miracle no one was killed.

As you can imagine, our beloved 1994 bus quickly became a huge money pit. Two years after Jack and the Bear’s big exploration of the western frontier, the band sold the bus. We sold it without a title (because we couldn’t find it) for cash to a guy with only one arm. A fitting end for BUS-E.

Our not-so-trusty steed, BUS-E. Somewhere in Utah. 2013.

Right now, I teach a bunch of middle schoolers about math, reading, and writing. Without a doubt, I love my job. What excites me most about my job though, is teaching my students about music. About once a week, I teach guitar to a couple of kids after school. Last year, I had one student that was way into Nirvana so I coordinated an interview with him and Ron Stone, their former manager. During my first year of teaching, I took the kids to see Third Man Pressing in Detroit. The list goes on. You can see more of that sort of stuff if you follow my Instagram account.

To paraphrase Bob Pollard, when you spend 40 hours a week with 11 and 12-year-olds...you’re basically that age too. He’s really right. Bob used to be a 4th-grade teacher, so it was his job to be imaginative and goofy and creative. (You can hear all that in those early GBV records.) In my free time, I’m still thinking about the stuff that really excited me in middle school; new bands, old bands that are new to me, guitar, the music business, and dreaming of being a rock star. I’ll talk about this stuff to anyone that will listen until they change the subject. Probably the main purpose of this blog is to channel that energy. Maybe that’s what I meant when I said this blog could help me feel more connected to my name.

About a month ago, I stumbled upon this book called How to Write About Music by Marc Woodworth. There’s a lot of prompts in there that I think are a good outlet for someone in my position. So this blog will mostly be me responding to the prompts in the book, but maybe I’ll throw in some anecdotes about my valiant efforts to get paid to talk about music. 

Take care,

Jake