Episode 592 - John Agnello / Maz Jobrani
Guest:Alright, let's do this.
Guest:How are you, what the fuckers?
Guest:What the fuck buddies?
Guest:What the fuckineers?
Guest:What the fuck sticks?
Guest:What the fucksicles?
Guest:What the fuckadelics?
Guest:What the fucksters?
Marc:Alright, how are you?
Marc:Mark Maron here.
Marc:WTF is the name of the show.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:I'm in your head.
Marc:I'm in your head right now.
Marc:I'm plowing in.
Marc:Tonight, as you listen to this, I'm on my way to Washington, D.C.
Marc:I'm playing at the Warner Theater.
Marc:If you are listening to this in D.C.
Marc:and somehow or another you fucking didn't know that I was playing in D.C.
Marc:and you're like, oh shit, I wonder if I can go to that.
Marc:Yes, you can.
Marc:There's some tickets left.
Marc:Sold a good number of tickets.
Marc:It's a big, big place for me.
Marc:Like 1,600 or so.
Marc:There's a few left.
Marc:I'll just leave it at a few.
Marc:That's vague.
Marc:John Agnello is on the show.
Marc:John Agnello is an amazing record producer, music producer.
Marc:Done a lot of stuff.
Marc:From Cyndi Lauper to Dinosaur Jr., my friends.
Marc:Kurt Weill.
Marc:A lot of stuff.
Marc:Friend of a friend hooked us up.
Marc:Good guy.
Marc:I'm excited about this.
Marc:My buddy Maz Jabroni stopped by.
Marc:He's got a book out.
Marc:I'm not a terrorist, but I played one on TV.
Marc:It's available wherever you get books.
Marc:He's also on WTF way back on episode 118.
Marc:You can get the app, get the free app, upgrade to premium for a few bucks to hear the original Maz chap before he became the guy who writes a book.
Marc:So Maz is coming up.
Marc:Another thing I wanted to hip you to,
Marc:I don't know if you're a Robert Williams fan.
Marc:He's a painter.
Marc:He's a great painter.
Marc:He's a mind-blowing painter.
Marc:He's a punch-you-in-the-face kind of painter.
Marc:Changed my brain, Robert Williams.
Marc:Well, there's an amazing show.
Marc:The show is here in Los Angeles down at the Barnesville Park.
Marc:That's right over in Los Feliz, man.
Marc:It's in the gallery over there.
Marc:You can go to lamag.org.
Marc:To get the info, it's Robert Williams' slang aesthetics.
Marc:And it's also got 20 years under the influence of Juxtapose, which is also in the gallery.
Marc:It's 20 years of Juxtapose magazine, which Mr. Williams created, helped create.
Marc:The cover for Appetite for Destruction by Guns N' Roses, that's a Robert Williams painting.
Marc:But this is certainly the most of his work, sculptures, paintings, drawings, amassed under one roof ever.
Marc:And I just wanted to give you a heads up if you're in the L.A.
Marc:area, because it just runs through April 19th.
Marc:And it's worth seeing.
Marc:OK, it's over there at the the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Barnesdale Park.
Marc:So check that out.
Marc:I had some time to talk to Robert Williams.
Marc:I will be sharing that conversation with you soon.
Marc:But right now.
Marc:Let's talk to Maz.
Marc:Maz Jabrani.
Guest:I actually remember having a conversation with you one of the first times I met you in New York.
Guest:And I'd been working the store.
Guest:And somehow the store came up.
Guest:And you hadn't been going there for a while.
Guest:And I was telling you, I was like, it's great.
Guest:You've got to come back, man.
Guest:And I remember telling you that.
Guest:And you were like, really?
Guest:You think so?
Guest:I was like, yeah.
Guest:I was like, trust me, Mark.
Guest:It's gotten better.
Guest:Because when I first started, it was probably on the back end of what you had experienced.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:The crashing wave of- Oh, my God.
Guest:She used to make people regulars based on them reminding her of a famous comedian.
Guest:So she had a guy that reminded her of Jim Carrey.
Guest:There was a guy who reminded her of Richard Pryor.
Guest:There was a guy- So these people weren't good themselves.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They just kind of looked like that guy.
Guest:So she was losing it.
Guest:Dude, it was crazy.
Guest:I think, I don't know, for whatever reason, it wasn't so much she was losing.
Guest:I think she was just like thinking, this guy's got something.
Guest:He's got to find his Jim Carrey, his inner end Jim.
Guest:But he would never find it.
Guest:And it was one of these things where you would sit in the back of the room watching the guy and you're like,
Marc:god this is uncomfortable and you would see the audience kind of looking at each other going like what is this is this performance art or well i think what's happening now too is that like you know it's just um we're excited to work there like it used to be like sort of like we're just doing our sets you know and they're trying to get some work done yeah but now because whoever got that twitter thing going it's like we're sort of like yeah we're gonna be at the comedy store and now we're seeing people are like i'm gonna go the comedy store yeah like that never happened before whoever got active on the twitter yeah it is brenton i think is doing it yeah
Marc:He's diligent about it.
Marc:And now all of a sudden you're like, yeah, I'll tell people.
Marc:Like, you didn't even fucking tell people.
Marc:Would you ever tell people you were going to be at the comedy store?
Marc:Not really, no.
Marc:Right, why?
Marc:It's like, I just want to hide out there and kind of do some work.
Marc:It's kind of a weird place.
Marc:But now you're like, yeah, I'm going to be there.
Marc:And people are like, I'm fucking going to the comedy store.
Guest:Yeah, and it's funny.
Guest:The Twitter thing, you're right.
Guest:Whenever I go home, I go to see what people are saying.
Guest:And they do a great job.
Guest:Those pictures are great.
Guest:Yeah, I don't even know who takes them.
Guest:Yeah, I'm like, those are very frameable.
Marc:I go, I look cool up there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I think that whole branding and just making it sort of accessible for like a new generation of people just to know that it's there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And functional.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Do you know, like, I just think a lot of people are like that place.
Marc:And I'm like, yeah, come check out the weirdness.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, but still, like last night, I was like, it's got that creepy, weird, electric vibe, like out back.
Marc:On busy nights, you're like, oh, what's going on out here?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Something weird's going to happen.
Guest:Well, the other thing is that at any given time at the conversation, you could be in a conversation with somebody you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And some weirdo will just come and stand.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Some guy with half a head of hair or some kind of weird outfit.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Some weird energy like, what's up?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:What?
Guest:And you don't know who they are.
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:I was there.
Guest:I brought this guy who's a friend and he brought his dad.
Guest:And the dad's, you know, they're English.
Guest:So, the dad was visiting from England.
Guest:He had no idea who was who.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, comics would come up and I'd be like, oh, this is, you know, this is Al Madrigal.
Guest:This is whatever.
Guest:This is Steve Byrne.
Guest:And then this weird dude just came up and started hanging out.
Guest:So, the dad assumed he's one of my friends.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Next thing I know, this guy is basically taking the dad hostage in the conversation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Just getting into it.
Guest:And the dad was like, oh, that's great.
Guest:You're doing it.
Guest:And the guy's like, yeah, whatever.
Guest:And then at one point, I tried to get him out of it.
Guest:I go, hey, let's go.
Guest:You guys, we got to go watch.
Guest:My buddy, Chris Spencer, was like, hey, let's go watch Chris Spencer.
Guest:And I took the dad and my friend.
Guest:And then this dude came with us.
Guest:Oh, God.
Marc:And he's just hanging out.
Marc:How many times have we had that moment at the comedy store?
Marc:It's like, I don't know that guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:That guy.
Marc:I just don't know who that guy is.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay, so is the book out, buddy?
Marc:I'm not a terrorist, but I played one on TV.
Marc:Memoirs of a Middle Eastern Funny Man.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:I'm excited and intimidated.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because, first of all, you know how it is.
Guest:It used to be if you went on one TV show and you said, I'm going to be such and such, the whole world sees it.
Guest:Right, no.
Guest:Now I feel like I'm advertising.
Guest:I got billboards.
Guest:I got all kinds.
Guest:Calling people.
Guest:Calling people.
Guest:Can we tell everybody at the place to come?
Guest:Dude, yeah.
Guest:And what's crazy is because the Persians, a lot of them are like in Beverly Hills, that area.
Guest:So the best advertising is when I go into like, I go to like Beverly Drive to like go to like Pete's Coffee.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I run into Persians there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're like, when are you going to be performing?
Guest:And I'm like, I'm going to be at the Wiltern.
Guest:And here's what's funny is I don't think Persians go east of maybe La Brea.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Where?
Guest:I know.
Guest:I go, the Wiltern.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where?
Guest:I swear to God, I've had this so many.
Guest:They go, wait a minute.
Guest:Western?
Guest:I'm like, you know Wilshire Bullets?
Guest:Yes, I know Wilshire.
Guest:Of course you know Wilshire.
Guest:That runs into Westwood.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then they go, but you got to keep going East.
Guest:And then they're like, okay, I figured it out.
Guest:It's the funniest thing, dude.
Marc:But is that the same in San Francisco, too, that there's Persian communities?
Guest:San Francisco, it's more probably just a liberal mix.
Guest:It's Persians, there's Arabs, and there's white liberals.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I've been doing this NPR show called Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And that's listened to by a lot of like- No, I know that.
Guest:So you do that regularly?
Guest:Yeah, I'm a panelist on it.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Has that made a big change in the-
Guest:It's interesting.
Guest:I've had, you know how it is, man.
Guest:I mean, we all have fans from different places.
Guest:So when I'm at a show, depending on who approaches me, I kind of know.
Guest:Try to figure out which world.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, older white couple, I'm like, oh, here comes NPR.
Guest:You know, the Persians of the Persians.
Marc:Oh, then it's overdraft.
Guest:yeah overdressed every night is you know the opera yeah uh and then mink mink why i thought mink coats were gone yeah in la yeah yeah yeah and uh and uh and then i've got like my black audience from the movie i did friday after next which is the ice cube movie right so i got that they come they come they come uh-huh and i it's so funny i could tell like if it's like some someone who's like either black or distinct difference very different wow wait wait don't tell me that's interesting how long you been doing that
Guest:You know, I started, I think my son was one and a half, so about four or five years ago.
Guest:What is that, like three or four times a year?
Guest:How does that happen?
Guest:Maybe like now I'm doing it like 10 times a year.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:It's great.
Guest:You fly into Chicago.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I like that guy, Peter Sagal.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:He's a good guy.
Guest:You'd be great if you're ever interested.
Marc:I've been a guest on the show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, the first time I did it, they had me as a call-in guest.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's funny because I used to listen to it once in a while driving back.
Guest:I used to play soccer on Saturdays driving back.
Guest:I remember I heard Sarah Silverman on there as the call-in guest.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, God, I'd love to get in on this.
Guest:And then I just didn't think about it.
Guest:And then I think that they started reaching out to get more comedians.
Guest:They heard your thought.
Guest:They heard my thought, exactly.
Guest:No, but they brought, I think Alonzo Bowden started doing it.
Guest:I started doing it.
Guest:So they were looking for other panelists.
Marc:Yeah, because they were kind of maybe using the same people for a long time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, that's cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So now the book is really, where does it start?
Guest:So the book starts, the title, first of all, it's funny because the title, I'm not a terrorist, but I've played one on TV.
Guest:And then I put this picture of myself holding like an Acme.
Marc:Old style fuse bomb.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you have a keffiyeh.
Guest:Yeah, the keffia, the whole thing, and a look of like, what the hell, how'd I end up here, right?
Guest:And the whole point being, how did I end up playing this part?
Guest:Because actually, I played a terrorist in a Chuck Norris movie of the week.
Guest:And that's the story right there, because it starts with, when I was first starting out, I was working in an ad agency, that was my day job, and I was looking for a way to get out.
Guest:I was like, if I get a gig that pays me enough
Guest:that I could just get out of this day job, then I could be a full-time actor, comedian.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I got this thing to play a Chuck Norris movie, an Afghan terrorist who was in a Chuck Norris movie of the week who's going to blow up a building in Chicago.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he's working for an Osama bin Laden type.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And this was in 2001.
Guest:Who played the Osama bin Laden type?
Guest:Some white dude.
Guest:Some white dude with a beard.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was funny because it was earlier in 2001 before September 11th hit.
Guest:So I thought to myself, I go, you know what?
Guest:As much as I don't necessarily want to do this part, I go, listen, if I take this part, it's whatever it was, like $6,000, $7,000.
Guest:That helps.
Guest:Because I was an assistant of the ad agency making nothing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I go, that'll go towards getting me out of here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, maybe I can show through my acting why this guy's doing what he's doing.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Bring a different element to it.
Guest:The humanity.
Guest:The humanity.
Guest:I'm going to go deep with this guy with the bomb.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And because the thing is, I'm sure a lot of times actors write the backstory.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's not in the script, but here's my backstory.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So my backstory was like, okay, the reason this guy wants to blow up a building in Chicago is because when he was a kid in Afghanistan, his parents were killed by bombs provided by the U.S.
Guest:which right there the story's messed up anyway because the Russians were in Afghanistan so it's a messed up you know anyway I go down to Dallas to film this is where they were filming it I show up and the lady's like here's your shirt here's your pants and here's your turban and I was like oh I go no you know actually Afghans in America don't wear turbans and I go I want to get this right and she's like well no they want you to wear a turban
Guest:I was like, no, but listen, we should really do this.
Guest:And quickly I'm realizing, you idiot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You asshole.
Guest:You're a cartoon character.
Guest:You're a cartoon character.
Guest:This is Chuck Norris movie.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:And I get in an argument with the wardrobe lady and I go, listen, do me a favor.
Guest:You tell the producers, I've done my research.
Guest:We want to get this right.
Yeah.
Guest:I'm like, let's get this right.
Guest:I'm like, I don't think I should wear a turban.
Guest:And it's so funny.
Guest:She goes, okay, I'll talk to the producers.
Guest:So the next day I come in the trailer and there's a shirt, there's a pants, and there's a scarf.
Guest:And I'm like, oh, cool.
Guest:I'll wear a scarf.
Guest:She's like, no, that's not a scarf.
Guest:That's a turban.
Guest:You got to actually wrap it around your head.
Guest:They'd unwrap the turban and just hung it there for me.
Guest:I was like, are you serious?
Guest:I go, what happened?
Guest:She goes, I talked to them and they want the turban.
Guest:And so I put this stupid turban on.
Guest:And I felt like an asshole.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I go on set.
Guest:I swear I got everyone.
Guest:First of all, Chuck Norris' son, Eric Norris, was the director.
Guest:And he was younger.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So after we rehearsed with the turban, I go, hey, can I talk to you for a second?
Guest:He's like, yeah.
Guest:I go, listen, I shouldn't be wearing a turban.
Guest:He goes, listen, man, I agree with you.
Guest:And he goes, the problem is my uncle, who's the exec producer, Aaron Norris, he wants the turban.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So they were old school, the uncle and the dad.
Guest:They were old school racists.
Guest:Old school racists.
Guest:Old school like, listen, our audience needs to have you wear turbans.
Guest:They need to know the bad guy.
Guest:They need to know who the bad guy is.
Guest:So that was that story.
Guest:And here's the irony of it is that, so I've put this on the cover.
Guest:Did you wear the turban?
Marc:I wore the turban.
Marc:It was stupid.
Marc:I wore the turban.
Marc:Did you get any feedback for that?
Marc:Were there any Afghanis that were like, you know, not that we support what you were doing there, but we don't wear turbans.
Guest:Yeah, no, it wasn't even that.
Guest:It was, first of all, this was in 2001, right?
Guest:So I actually got, it took a weird twist because, first of all, there was supposed to be a fight scene.
Guest:So I thought maybe I could get the fight, Chuck, and there was no fight.
Guest:They cut that out.
Guest:He's like, I'll just shoot you.
Guest:I was like, all right.
Guest:And the funny thing was when it came to the shooting thing, they had a guy on set looking like me in my outfit, head shaved.
Guest:They brought a stuntman in to take the fall.
Guest:And there was all these stuntmen there.
Guest:It was like total testosterone set.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But right before they're about to shoot my scene, they come over, they go, hey, we got a stuntman, but you want to do it yourself?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They kind of put the pressure on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I couldn't be a pussy.
Guest:Come on, little man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I couldn't be a pussy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I was like, yeah, I'll do it.
Guest:What's it take?
Guest:I'll fall.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then they go, okay, no problem.
Guest:They go, this is what it is.
Guest:And there was a guy, one of the stunt dudes had been a Mossad agent or something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:These guys were all military karate.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So he's like, okay, he goes, listen, when somebody gets shot on screen, an actor's instinct before you fall back, a lot of times actors, their instinct is to go forward before going back.
Guest:He goes, don't go forward.
Guest:Just go back.
Guest:I go, I got it.
Guest:He goes, no, you get it?
Guest:I go, yeah.
Guest:So he starts punching me in the shoulder to go back.
Guest:He's like, just like that.
Guest:I'm like, okay, ow.
Guest:I'm like, take it easy.
Guest:He's like, let's do this.
Guest:I'm like, let's do this.
Guest:And they go, okay.
Guest:They go, listen, by the way, we're going to have a pad, a pad behind you, a little pad.
Guest:You just fall on that.
Guest:You'll be fine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Cool.
Guest:They line up the shot, and then the DP goes, the pad's in the shot.
Guest:They go, okay, get rid of the pad.
Guest:I'm like, what?
Guest:Now it's getting dangerous.
Guest:They go, you can fall on the ground.
Guest:I'm like, what are you talking about?
Guest:They go, but you got to make it look natural.
Guest:I'm like, okay.
Guest:And they go, bring in the pads.
Guest:So they give me elbow pads.
Guest:Under your shirt?
Guest:Under the shirt.
Guest:Elbow pads, like a little back pad.
Guest:And they go, listen, what you want to do, when you go down, you're going to go tuck your head in.
Guest:I go, okay, wait a minute.
Okay.
Guest:So I'm running up.
Guest:Chuck's going to take a gun, shoot me.
Guest:I got to tuck my head, fall backwards.
Guest:I go, I think I got it.
Guest:And they go, make sure you tuck because if you don't tuck your head in, you're going to hit your head back and you could crack your head.
Guest:I'm like, oh, Jesus.
Guest:I go, okay.
Guest:And then they give me like this fake machine gun.
Guest:And they go, you're going to be holding this gun.
Guest:They go, listen, this is a heavy gun.
Guest:Whatever you do, make sure it doesn't land on your hand or you could break the bones in the back of your hand.
Guest:I'm like, what the fuck?
Guest:Get the stunt guy in here.
Guest:I'll be a pussy.
Guest:Yeah, they started, they really reeled you in.
Guest:It started so much easier.
Guest:And now you're on the clock.
Guest:Did they make you sign a release?
Guest:I don't know what they made me do.
Guest:Actually, I think afterwards I told my agents, they were like, we were supposed to get you a bump.
Guest:You're not supposed to do that.
Guest:You're supposed to get paid more.
Guest:I was like, but I was being a man.
Guest:You know, it was horrible.
Guest:So did you take the fall?
Guest:I took the fall.
Guest:I took my head in.
Guest:I did the thing.
Guest:I fall.
Guest:I'm like, oh, this is going to look fucking great.
Guest:The thing comes out.
Guest:It's like less than a second.
Guest:Like if you blink, you wouldn't have known it was me.
Guest:It was some stupid shit.
Guest:Like they told me, like I come running in and I go, hello Akbar.
Guest:And he goes, I'm like, oh, and I die.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:And here's the crazy turn of everything.
Guest:So we filmed this in early 2001.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Before it comes out, September 11th happens.
Guest:So then I'm like, okay, these guys are not going to release this stupid movie.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because if you remember, people were shooting Indian Sikhs.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:And I go, the last thing I need is for someone to see this, forget that they saw this and see me on the streets and be like, that's that fucking guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I wrote a letter to Chuck Norris' company, to Chuck Norris, as well as Les Moonves, because it was a CBS movie of the week.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I said, guys, it's a heated time.
Guest:Please, whatever you do, don't release this movie.
Guest:For my safety.
Guest:For my safety, the safety of all the other terrorists in your movie.
Guest:And it was funny, because then Chuck Norris came out in the variety going like, I'm trying to, this movie has to come out because the terrorists get what they deserve.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'm like, no fucking way.
Guest:So then-
Guest:I was freaking out.
Guest:I really was.
Guest:You were paranoid.
Guest:I was paranoid.
Guest:I was like, someone's going to do something.
Guest:So I sat down to watch the thing.
Guest:Mark, it was the worst movie ever made.
Guest:Literally, if I weren't in it, I wouldn't have waited until my scene.
Guest:And I was like, no one's going to.
Guest:And jokingly, I said, someone should shoot me not for being a terrorist, but for being in that movie.
Guest:And so that was that.
Guest:But what's funny about the cover now is,
Guest:I've put this picture on the cover, clearly kind of going like, how did I end up here?
Guest:And I've had a few Persians and a few Arabs criticize me.
Guest:The racism comes out.
Guest:Some Persians go, why are you wearing Arab headgear?
Guest:We're not Arabs.
Guest:This is not right.
Guest:And one lady was like, you've been writing this terrorist thing for a long time for your career.
Guest:And I go, what are you talking about?
Guest:She goes, we're not terrorists.
Guest:And I go...
Guest:And I first tried not to engage on Facebook.
Guest:I'm not going to engage.
Guest:Then she started arguing with one of my fans.
Guest:She was like, you're not getting it.
Guest:And then she's like, no, you're not.
Guest:And I go, let me get into this.
Guest:So I go, listen, I'm making fun of the thing.
Guest:And by the way, you're saying we're not terrorists.
Guest:I agree we're not terrorists.
Guest:That's the whole point.
Guest:But I go, Americans, unfortunately, see us all as brown.
Guest:And they do see us as terrorists.
Guest:She goes, well, we're not.
Guest:I go...
Guest:uh we had a hostage situation remember the hostage i go that was that was that was an act of terrorism i go we took americans hostage and she's like that's water under the bridge i'm like what are you talking about argo won the best best academy award two years ago yeah what are you talking about yeah and she was like whatever and i and then i finally i go by the way i just want you to know the more you write uh the more you write back the more material you're giving me for my stand-up right and she just came back with you're welcome
Marc:Oh, yeah, of course.
Marc:And it ended.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, from those days, from 2001, I mean, a lot has changed for you as a performer and as an actor as well?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you go through the whole arc.
Marc:I mean, so, like, obviously, the perception of Persians or just lumping Persians in with brown people in general, some of that has changed.
Marc:I imagine not a tremendous amount across the culture, but there is sort of a respect and a differentiation...
Marc:A little bit.
Marc:You know, I always say it's like two steps forward, one step back, right?
Marc:Well, with the Persian thing, you got the double whammy of like, are you Iranian?
Marc:No?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I used to do a joke about that, about how we don't say we're Iranian.
Guest:We say we're Persian because it sounds nicer and friendlier.
Guest:And I think a lot of people, in all honesty, used it during the hostage crisis to just differentiate themselves.
Guest:Separate themselves, yeah.
Guest:To just confuse people and get away from the hate.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But what happened career-wise, I did that.
Guest:Then I came back and I told my agents, I said, no more terrorist parts.
Guest:I really started feeling bad doing it.
Guest:And then 24, the TV show 24, they go, we have a terrorist.
Guest:And I go, no.
Guest:And they go, well, he changes his mind halfway through the mission.
Guest:I was like, oh, the ambivalent terrorist.
Guest:I go, that's kind of interesting.
Guest:So I did that as well.
Guest:And then after that, I said no more.
Guest:I stopped doing it.
Guest:And it's interesting, though, throughout these years, I've played cab drivers.
Guest:I don't mind playing cab drivers.
Guest:I don't mind playing deli shop owners.
Guest:I don't mind all those parts.
Guest:I even just recently signed on, and I played Jafar from Aladdin.
Guest:Disney is doing something called Descendants, which is about the kids of the Disney villains.
Guest:And I played Jafar in that.
Guest:I don't mind playing Jafar in that.
Guest:This terrorist thing is what really bothers me.
Guest:And the problem is because we both know like 99.9999% of Middle East sinners and Muslims and Arabs and people from that part of the world are not terrorists.
Guest:And yet we constantly see those parts and it's constantly in the news because that's the shit that's going down.
Marc:And they constantly make people afraid of you people.
Marc:Constantly.
Marc:You people.
Guest:Constantly.
Marc:I mean, when I see- No, and there's regular white people like, there's one of them.
Marc:Absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, listen, Mark, it's funny because two things.
Guest:First of all, when I see Bill Maher go like after the Charlie Hebdo shootings and he's saying like something, he says something like, probably he's like, 100 million Muslims supported that, like the killing.
Guest:And I go, what are you talking about?
Guest:Because he looks at these statistics that say-
Guest:Like 100 million Muslims have said that they would be offended by, or it's okay to kill someone who offends the Prophet Muhammad or whatever.
Guest:Somebody broke it down for me.
Guest:They go, a lot of this research that was done was research where they went and asked people who associate themselves as being radicals or fundamentalists.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then they go out of those people, like 80% of those people have said, yes, it's okay to kill someone who offends the Prophet Muhammad.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that's like going to the Christian right, like the extremists, and going like, is it okay to kill gays?
Guest:And they go, yeah, I think so.
Guest:So when you do the research like that, then it's easy to go, oh, they're all like that.
Guest:But I've been to the Middle East.
Guest:I just talked to a guy who lived in Egypt for four years.
Guest:He's like, an American dude.
Guest:He's like, I was there for four years.
Guest:He goes, I didn't find a single jihadi.
Guest:He goes, people were cool doing their thing.
Guest:And it's funny because sometimes I think maybe I'm being paranoid.
Guest:Maybe these people don't exist.
Guest:But this happened to me over the holidays.
Guest:Our neighbor's black dad, white wife, my kids are half Indian, half Iranian.
Guest:My wife's Indian.
Guest:And the neighbor had his cousin come, little six-year-old boy, came to visit hanging out from Wisconsin, full white from Wisconsin.
Guest:And I guess he probably doesn't have as much diversity around him.
Guest:I took them to go see a movie.
Guest:And we're all in the bathroom washing our hands.
Guest:An Indian Sikh walks in with a turban, washes his hands, walks out.
Guest:The six-year-old turns to me.
Guest:His jaw drops.
Guest:He goes, that guy was ISIS.
Yeah.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:I go, what?
Guest:He goes, the guy was ISIS.
Guest:I go, what are you talking about?
Guest:I go, the guy with the turban?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I go, no.
Guest:I go, that guy, he's Indian.
Guest:This Indian Sikh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I go, Dara, my boy is half Indian.
Guest:And it's funny because my boy was confused.
Guest:He's like, that's right.
Guest:I was born in India.
Guest:I go, you weren't born in India.
Guest:Your mother's Indian.
Guest:And I go, he's, I go, that guy's Indian.
Guest:And the whole movie, this Indian Sikh was sitting behind us.
Guest:And every time we'd get up to go to the bathroom, this white kid from Wisconsin, he would turn and like his eyes would just go wide.
Yeah.
Guest:I was like, oh my God.
Guest:This kid, whatever happened, I'm not saying that his parents- He saw part of a video.
Marc:He saw part of a video.
Marc:Those videos are scary.
Marc:They are scary.
Marc:It's like Headgear's Headgear.
Marc:Headgear's Headgear.
Marc:He's only six.
Marc:I know.
Marc:That's terrible.
Marc:It's crazy.
Marc:But I mean, it's somewhat forgivable in a six-year-old.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:Because it's just like, all he's seeing is the headgear.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Or like the thing that happened after the whole Charlie Hebdo thing, Fox had some analysts on doing some thing, and they were like, it's so funny because one of these guys goes,
Guest:Yeah, there's no-go zones in certain parts of England and in France where even the police are afraid to go in because it's Muslim and Sharia law and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:And the prime minister of England, he said there was a quote or a tweet where he goes, I saw this and he goes, I spit my porridge out.
Guest:Because he was like, what are you talking about?
Guest:There's no no-go zones.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:But suddenly everyone on Fox is going like, see, Sharia law is happening.
Guest:There's places where even English people will not go because it's so scary.
Guest:It's like gang warfare.
Guest:There's none of that shit.
Guest:But people start believing that stuff.
Guest:And then the next thing you know, so that's why I really have a hard time now even going on audition.
Guest:I don't even accept auditions for terrorist parts.
Guest:But those parts continue to be written.
Marc:But how do you feel in terms of when you go out on the road and outside of Persians getting mad at you?
Marc:Because I imagine their argument is not only is it not Persian headgear, it's Arab headgear, but you're sort of like Uncle Tomming it somehow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's the point though.
Guest:The point is, first of all, if they look at the material, they see the act.
Marc:Right.
Guest:It's very different.
Guest:And secondly, this book is trying to ... It's a play on ... You get it.
Guest:A lot of people don't get it.
Guest:It's a play on the I'm not a doctor, but I've played one on TV.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I think the story, there's a lot of self-deprecation in there.
Guest:There's a lot of like, I made this mistake of playing these parts.
Guest:So I told, actually I told a few of these people, I said, you're literally judging a book by its cover.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You haven't even looked at it.
Marc:And then also I think like, I think the important thing is it's just even for someone like me to acknowledge that, you know, there's a Persian community.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there's a huge Persian community and that like another thing that happens in America is that we're all very separate.
Marc:We know we're all living here.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it's like, well, the Armenians are over in Glendale.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's Armenian land.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's not racist, but it's just, you know, there's part of the things like, I'm not welcome there, really.
Marc:I mean, we go.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, where did the Persian community hang out?
Marc:But I think that because, you know, you have this ability to sort of cross over and disarm a lot of that, I think it's great.
Marc:I think it's, like, it's good for...
Marc:to get out of the Persian community even.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:Like, you know, because that's another thing that happens is when a culture or an ethnicity settles here, they insulate themselves.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they create their neighborhoods and their stores.
Marc:And it's just like the Hasidic Jews.
Marc:It's like, where do those guys work?
Marc:I don't know where they work.
Guest:Yeah, and I don't want to be.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:I run into those people.
Guest:I ran into a guy like that yesterday.
Guest:Very nice guy.
Guest:At the Laugh Factory.
Guest:Came to the show.
Guest:Persian guy?
Guest:Persian guy.
Guest:And after the show, he's like, if I wanted you to do a private show, can you do that?
Guest:I go, yeah.
Guest:I mean, to get in touch with my agent.
Guest:And he's like, can you do it in Farsi?
Guest:And I go, no, I don't do it in Farsi.
Guest:He's like, you should do jokes in Farsi.
Guest:I'm like, I don't want to do jokes in Farsi.
Guest:I go, my audiences are mixed.
Guest:I grew up in America.
Guest:There's a rhythm to it.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:The way I explain it to people, I go, it's like somebody who's a jazz musician.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you're saying, play classical.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:I can do it, but it's going to sound shitty.
Guest:You don't have the timing right.
Guest:The timing isn't right.
Guest:Listen, Persians tell jokes.
Guest:There's a lot of regional jokes.
Guest:Whereas we have the Polacks are dumb.
Guest:So for Persians, the guys from the north, they're called Turkish.
Guest:They're Turks.
Guest:They're dumb.
Guest:And these people, their wives cheat on them.
Marc:So they have their own little racist, horrible jokes.
Guest:All this stuff.
Guest:But it's like, so this guy and that guy and his wife said this.
Guest:It's jokes.
Guest:And I love hearing them.
Guest:But I'm not a joke teller.
Guest:I'm a stand-up comedian.
Guest:And I got to talk about my life.
Guest:And in talking about my life, there's a lot of- You don't think in Farsi.
Guest:I don't think in Farsi, yeah.
Guest:But no, but it's interesting because it's like, first of all, irony is not big in the community.
Guest:So if you say- It's all very broad.
Guest:Very broad, but it's also very literal as well.
Guest:So whereas if you're watching a stand-up comedian who goes,
Guest:Yeah, so I was at the bar, and it was 2 a.m., and the lights came on, and the only person ... By that point, it was just me and this little Asian boy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, I'm banging the Asian boy, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You get that he's not banging the Asian boy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You do that in Farsi, they're like, he fucked an Asian boy?
Guest:They're like, what?
Marc:Right.
Marc:The weird, dark twist.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Does not read.
Marc:It doesn't read.
Marc:It's just the next part of the story.
Marc:What is he ...
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That doesn't exist in the culture.
Marc:Oh, that's interesting.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it's probably better off, actually.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You don't do any questionable jokes along those lines.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't want to do a punchline in Farsi.
Guest:I've seen young guys do that.
Marc:Or roll your eyes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I've seen young guys do that.
Guest:I go, listen, dude.
Guest:I'll tell them.
Guest:I go, listen, you just isolated.
Guest:Because they'll do it at the regular clubs.
Guest:I go, you just isolated.
Marc:But I think it's really weird.
Marc:It's a very organic way of like...
Marc:because i think it does make a big difference to to somebody to do not you know just to to see a persian person or uh you know even if you identify as iranian that you know it's like for a white guy from the middle midwest who might never never see a persian guy right like that guy's just a guy absolutely it's a big difference and that's why like with my act i try as much as i can um
Guest:First of all, whenever I talk about Iranians or my own background, my parents, I throw in the word immigrant parents.
Guest:Because right there, I think a lot of people at the shows- They're immigrant here.
Guest:They're immigrant here.
Guest:So I think a lot of people that had parents that are immigrants or grandparents, they associate.
Guest:So whether you're Russian or you're- Right, the experience is the same.
Marc:It's very similar.
Marc:You constantly have to separate yourself from the terrorist.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:That's the whole agenda now.
Guest:Yeah, but the idea is, though, it's like, look, we had the same experiences.
Guest:Your parents didn't get it the same way my parents didn't get it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I like to do material like that, and I reference it as immigrant.
Guest:And then the other stuff I've been doing, because I got kids, I do a lot of kid material.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So ultimately, like you said, if some guy comes from the Midwest and has never seen an Iranian, I think they can walk out going like, oh, yeah, I know what he's talking about with the kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah, whatever.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, whether it's like black comedians or Latino comedians or whatever, you don't want to isolate so much where that guy from the Midwest feels alienated.
Guest:Yeah, feels alienated.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, good, man.
Marc:I wish you best of luck with the book.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:Good to see you, man.
Marc:Good to see you.
Marc:Thanks for having me.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Marc:All right, Mark.
Marc:Maz.
Marc:Very nice fellow.
Marc:Straight up dude.
Marc:Funny guy.
Marc:So I wanted to talk to somebody, another person.
Marc:I haven't really talked to too many music producers.
Marc:John Agnello comes highly recommended as one of the sweetest and most talented guys working in that area.
Marc:I tweeted that he was going to be on the show tomorrow.
Marc:Fucking Jason Isbell just said good guy and retweeted that shit.
Marc:Musicians love this dude, and that's saying a lot for a guy on the other side of the business.
Marc:So let's talk now to John Agnello.
Marc:well you've done a fucking million records i've never talked to a to a hands-on kind of producer guy right you're the first guy like uh that i talked to like um i talked to john kale right but uh but you know i don't know where did you start with that guy you know he and then when i asked him about you know the big records like this dude he's like yeah they were all set i didn't have to do anything i'm like
Guest:I mean, a lot of those guys are just big picture guys.
Guest:They're vibe guys.
Guest:They're there just to inspire.
Marc:To add to the vibe?
Marc:So him sitting there in a cape with a cat or whatever the hell he did in his Dracula outfit, that was like to create ambiance for the fellas?
Guest:No, I'm sure he added to it, but the point is there's probably another guy in the room who's really doing a lot of the work also.
Guest:I've been the engineer for a lot of producers who are musicians, and
Guest:It sometimes ends up being more collaborative anyway.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, where'd you start, man?
Marc:Let's go back because you've got sort of a rich history in music.
Marc:You grew up where?
Marc:I grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Before Brooklyn was hip.
Guest:Bensonhurst was never hip.
Guest:Bensonhurst was literally the land of Saturday Night Fever.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So you grew up in that.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I grew up a hippie in an immigrant Italian family.
Guest:And me and my hippie friends were the fastest hippies in the world because we spent all our teenage years being chased by guidos.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like we got shit kickings all the time.
Guest:Like how old are you?
Guest:I'm 55.
Marc:So I grew up in the 70s.
Marc:Yeah, a little older than me, but we miss the 60s.
Marc:So it's sort of like the crashing wave of the 60s and the fashion was there and the music was left.
Marc:But it wasn't, we weren't 69.
Marc:Well, I have an older brother who's 10 years older than me.
Guest:That helped.
Guest:And he, when he hears this, he'll be annoyed that I say, but he was literally a hippie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he was wonderful, a smart guy, went to CCNY and was an electrical engineer.
Guest:And I could probably say that the reason, one of the main reasons I got into music was because of him.
Guest:And definitely one of the reasons I got into recording was because of him.
Marc:Isn't that amazing?
Marc:The older brother power.
Marc:You need that guy, that guy to sort of like, this is what's good.
Marc:And what did he lay down on you?
Guest:Well, he worked for a company called Eventide that made recording gear for studios.
Guest:And now they do pedals and they do a bunch of stuff.
Guest:And he's come full circle.
Guest:Now he runs the company.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So he's been there that long?
Guest:Well, he left to start his own company and he was away for like 10 years.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then he basically got out of the company and then went back to Eventide and continued.
Guest:And because he had long tenure, when the owner retired, he took over the company.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He's really, he's the best.
Guest:But so when I was a kid in high school...
Guest:My summer job was working at Eventide, and I put together delay lines and flangers and all kinds of cool shit.
Guest:Flangers!
Guest:Yay!
Guest:Back when they were like single rack mount and big, and everything was big back then.
Guest:Nothing was small.
Guest:So I did that summer job, and as a 16-year-old working all summer, I made enough money to buy my own kick-ass stereo.
Guest:So I was the only kid on my block.
Marc:Do you remember what it was?
Guest:Pioneer 737 was the receiver.
Guest:And I had two AR speakers.
Guest:But anyway, point being, so I'm a kid now.
Guest:I'm a hippie kid with a really bitching stereo, like blowing up my neighbors in Brooklyn and in the world of Saturday Night Fever.
Guest:And, you know, kind of working at Eventide.
Guest:Eventide has a recording studio above it called Sound Exchange.
Guest:So every now and then I peek up there and look at sessions and be like, wow, this is cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:uh end up going to college and who were in those sessions anybody it was nobody it was not like a famous studio it was just a you know and what music were you listening to what was your brother listening to um well you know he ushered me through the beatles the stones and a lot of garage rock yeah um and then i have a middle brother who ushered me into alice cooper and a lot of that stuff and then i got full training
Guest:Yeah, it was crazy.
Marc:But were you going into the city to see bands and shit with your brother?
Guest:My older brother, the first concert he took me to was the Joni Mitchell Court and Spark Tour, which was pretty... I know.
Guest:But they were hip.
Guest:That was cool.
Marc:No, I know.
Marc:I respect Joni Mitchell.
Marc:I think she's amazing.
Marc:Can't listen to it, really.
Marc:I try.
Marc:I mean, I listened recently because I saw this rough cut of a Jaco Pastorius documentary.
Marc:Well, okay.
Marc:And I was like, I'm going to go check that shit out again.
Marc:I couldn't get... Still, I couldn't do it.
Marc:Couldn't do the whole thing.
Marc:Love her, though.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No disrespect.
Guest:Not a huge fan of the later jazz days so much.
Guest:But, you know, in that time, and I still go back and listen to Blue and For the Roses, and they're just beautiful records.
Guest:I mean, they are what they are, but it's certainly beautiful.
Guest:So you go see Joni.
Guest:Yeah, but then I go see the Kinks with them, and then I go see Sparks with them.
Guest:Sparks.
Marc:I don't know about them.
Marc:Are they great?
Guest:They're great.
Guest:They're really wacky pop, but super wacky.
Guest:They're kind of a cross between a pop man and queen.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:They ushered me, and then I just became a show rat.
Guest:I mean, I went to every show.
Guest:The summer, we'd go to shows every night.
Guest:What years were this?
Guest:I would say 77 through 80.
Guest:76 through 80.
Guest:So punk's over.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I missed the whole punk thing.
Guest:No tats, no piercings.
Guest:No CBGBs?
Guest:I went to CBGBs to see certain shows.
Guest:I saw Patti Smith there, but I wasn't a punk.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I just wasn't.
Guest:I was actually a prog rock kid, which they hated anyway, so I was better off not going there.
Guest:I was like Pink Floyd, Genesis, yes.
Guest:Really into Todd Rundgren, really into Gentle Giant to get really more obscure.
Guest:Nectar, which was really obscure.
Marc:You like that math rock, huh?
Guest:My thing is I think everybody has a bunch of music they listen to as a kid that when they reflect on it, it's like, oof.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, eesh.
Marc:I guess I have some of that, but some of it I still listen to.
Marc:I went back and replaced a lot of it.
Marc:I mean, I got all the Skynyrd records.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's just growing up in America.
Marc:Like a townie rock, that was part of my past.
Marc:I can't really do Bob Seger.
Marc:I wouldn't go out of my way.
Marc:I couldn't do like Foreigner.
Marc:That came out when I was in high school.
Marc:I don't need it.
Marc:I don't need to pick that stuff back up again.
Guest:That's one of the things that I go back and go, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I can't do it.
Marc:And some of the mixes on that stuff was just, you know, it was like that one, the big production keyboards I don't love.
Marc:Synthesizers, if not done well, I don't.
Marc:I'm more pro-synth than I used to be, but not generally speaking.
Guest:So you're not a big fan of the synth saxophone dueling solo?
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:That just put me to sleep.
Marc:I just went to sleep for like three seconds in the middle of you saying synth saxophone dueling solo.
Marc:I took a nap.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, all right, so when do you start getting involved with being a guy behind the board there?
Guest:Well, I mean, I guess it was, I ended up going to Brooklyn College for two years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sociology, anthropology, start aiming that way my second year.
Marc:So aimlessly aiming your way into anthropology and sociology.
Marc:No, into music, basically.
Guest:That's what I was doing.
Guest:But by my second year, my grade point average had dropped from 3.7 to 2.6.
Guest:And I just wasn't into it.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So my brother got me an interview at a studio and I was still working at Eventide, you know, on off hours and sometimes building whatever they sold.
Guest:But literally my brother got me an interview at the record plant studios in New York.
Guest:The famous record plant.
Guest:The famous record plant.
Guest:And the studio manager was like, you know, if you're anything like your brother, you'll be fine.
Guest:And they hired me on the spot.
Marc:No, they didn't ask you, like, do you know what this knob is?
Guest:No, I didn't know shit.
Guest:It was crazy.
Guest:It was also back in the day where there weren't recording schools.
Guest:So you kind of learn from the ground.
Guest:They built you up.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Who was the manager then?
Guest:Anybody that we know?
Guest:Probably not.
Guest:His name was Paul Sloman.
Marc:Now, the record plant had been around for years before.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:They opened it up in the late 60s, right?
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:And Hendrix recorded Electric Ladyland.
Guest:Well, that's the thing.
Guest:They were building Electric Ladyland, but they didn't finish it in time, so he did it at the record plant.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Yeah, because they ended up building it on 8th Street in Manhattan.
Marc:The studio.
Marc:Yeah, the studio.
Marc:Oh, so that was going to be Jimmy's studio.
Guest:That was his studio.
Marc:And they finished at the record point, but there were some other big names in there too, right?
Guest:I mean, John Lennon did a bunch of shit there.
Marc:Before you got there.
Guest:Yeah, Kiss did a bunch of shit.
Guest:That was the studio where Springsteen and Paddy wrote Because the Night Together.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, Springsteen was in B doing... Wait, Springsteen was in A doing Darkness, and Paddy was in B doing...
Guest:i want to say wave but maybe not that that's not the name of the record but bruce had the song he had the music uh he couldn't finish it he had a roadblock yeah he gave it to patty she wrote the lyrics and he said yeah just fucking take it and it became like her song it was like and if you watch the darkness yeah uh documentary which is about the year and a half it took him to make darkness on the edge of town it's actually called the promise
Guest:he talks about it, and it's really amazing.
Guest:So there was so much great shit going on there.
Guest:Do you believe in magic spaces?
Guest:I believe spaces can be magical, but I think without the right ingredients... It's just a space.
Marc:It's just a space, yeah.
Guest:I mean, the people who made the records and the artists back then, and the environment was just so off...
Guest:the map incredibly crazy, that of course you had amazing things happening.
Marc:Like how so?
Marc:What do you mean crazy?
Marc:Just because there were so many people recording there at any given time?
Guest:You know, you got Phil Spector waving his gun around.
Guest:At the record plant?
Guest:I think it was at the record plant where he did that.
Guest:But he did stuff there.
Guest:And you just basically had guys who were almost feral and unemployable in any other way of life making records.
Guest:No, producers and engineers more.
Guest:And maybe all of them.
Guest:I don't even know.
Guest:I can't.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But these guys were obviously the top-notch dudes.
Guest:Back then, if you worked at the record plant, you were a great engineer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, Jimmy Iovine came through the record plant.
Guest:He just made a fortune, didn't he?
Guest:He did pretty good for himself.
Marc:But didn't he just partner up with Dre?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, and the Beats and the Apple and all that.
Guest:But he was a producer before that, right?
Guest:He was an assistant.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He became an engineer.
Marc:Was he there when you were there?
Marc:No, no.
Guest:Oh, well, yeah, he was.
Guest:I mean, he started way before.
Guest:Right before I busted into assisting, I did this function for certain sessions called, I was a second assistant, which meant I was a glorified runner.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But I'd hang around, and when, you know, somebody needed a bottle of wine, I ran down the block and got it.
Guest:Somebody, who's somebody?
Marc:Whoever the artist or the producer.
Marc:Where'd you draw the line at what you brought back?
Guest:Oh, no, it was never like drugs.
Guest:We didn't do, like, it was all legal.
Guest:They had to bring their own drugs.
Guest:Back then they had guys.
Guest:They had a guy.
Marc:They had a guy in it.
Marc:A guy or two.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:The guy on the couch.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Our buddy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I second assisted on a meatloaf record where Jimmy was producing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was just a mix phase.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, he got to know me and he was from Brooklyn and he was Italian.
Guest:And, you know, his mom used to cook him dinner like 24-7 whenever he got home.
Guest:And I had the same thing.
Guest:And he kind of took a little bit of a liking to me because I was almost like a mini him but super fucking nervous.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was kind of a little bit of my dealing with him.
Guest:He was fucking awesome.
Guest:And, you know, he was a real...
Guest:What were his big records?
Guest:Well, I mean, the one that I remember they did partially there, you know, he did Damn the Torpedoes.
Guest:He produced that.
Guest:He produced a bunch of Stevie Nicks shit.
Guest:He did a great Motors record.
Guest:He did, you know, he worked on a bunch of Springsteen stuff.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:I mean, he engineered Darkness and Get to Town, which is amazing.
Guest:It's a great record, huh?
Guest:You know, it was amazing.
Guest:But I wasn't there for that phase.
Guest:I started 79 and was thrust into this thing of really not even getting in a control room for like two or three years.
Guest:I was like a tape librarian.
Guest:You know, back in the old days of tape, and if you see the Promise documentary, there is like a montage in the beginning.
Guest:all these different shots, and there's a shot of mountains of two-inch tape.
Guest:And I swear I saw the number 178.
Guest:And I remember how we logged them in then.
Guest:And there were at least 178 reels of tape they recorded on.
Guest:That's a lot of fucking tape.
Marc:yeah it's it's weird just the storage issue of analog oh yeah yeah profound profound yeah well what we would do is after a while when the record came out we would get the record company to take them so that okay so you're sitting there you're okay you're a kid and you're you're a tape librarian now how does one like if you're up in that number of 178 reels and like like any given song could have you know multiple reels of tape
Marc:how do you catalog what's good and what's bad, and what is the process?
Marc:I mean, I have to assume, not unlike when people had to use a typewriter, that at some point you're like, it's going to have to be that way.
Marc:There's not this infinite cutting and pasting and dubbing and everything else.
Marc:At some point you're like, I think number 80 was the one.
Guest:Is that how it worked?
Guest:Well, for me, the tape librarian, all I had to do was notate on these little cards what was on each reel.
Guest:the assistant engineer was in charge of making sure they knew what the master take was.
Guest:On the tape?
Guest:Yeah, but ultimately when you got a master take, you would take it off of reel 140 and put it on what you called a master reel.
Guest:So you would end up with like four or five master reels of takes.
Marc:So what's a master take versus whatever else is on that reel?
Guest:The master take is the take that is the one that is going to be the record.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:You know, like if Jimmy says, that's the take, and it's like take 130, the assistant would write it down, and at the end of the night, he'd pull that off onto its own reel.
Guest:So you'd know there'd be like 180 reels of outtakes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And five or six reels.
Marc:So sometimes the master take would be buried, or was it usually the last take?
Guest:You don't know.
Guest:You never know, right?
Guest:It could be the first take.
Marc:But they just keep doing it over and over again just because?
Guest:Well, you know, we're talking about Springsteen.
Guest:So, I mean, he did spend a year and a half making the record.
Guest:So, I mean, obviously they did things a lot.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:It's hard work.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, a lot of times if stuff, like for me, I like to use the headphones to like manipulate the take.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, if you're kind of not like, if you're playing like behind or ahead, I'll maybe goose the drums up and so you can hear more of the rhythm.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Because maybe it's something like that or maybe the vocal's throwing you off because it's a reference vocal and it's not really in time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So there, I mean, there are different ways of doing it, you know, just to make someone comfortable or you can have them sit in the control room.
Guest:Sometimes the control room's a little more fun because you're just sitting there listening.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So.
Marc:So you're a tape librarian for three years?
Guest:Two years.
Guest:I mean, something like that.
Marc:But you're watching, right?
Marc:You're watching the knobs.
Guest:Well, after a year, they let you in the control room.
Guest:What they do is it's a ladder.
Guest:So the assistants, eventually, if they don't get fired or have nervous breakdowns or whatever, if they get good enough, they become engineers at one point.
Guest:So then that's when a tape librarian, if he doesn't have a nervous breakdown or just run out of the building screaming,
Guest:He becomes an assistant.
Guest:And usually the guys right above you mentor you.
Guest:And what would happen is, and this is, like I said, it's way different from how things are now.
Guest:Because everybody comes out of school, a producer, an engineer.
Marc:Or they're doing it at home.
Guest:Well, they're doing it at home, right.
Guest:And I'm not saying, no judge, I'm just saying this is how the difference.
Guest:um so as i got a little more comfortable in in the place assistant engineers would then be given free time on the weekends to bring bands in and learn how to engineer they could bring their own friends in or whatever for like a day yeah for nothing and just you know and then but in turn they had to bring me as a tape librarian in to be the assistant and they had to teach me how to assist so i would work five days a week being a tape librarian and then ultimately work like every weekend and
Marc:Where an engineer would bring some of his buddies in where his big idea.
Marc:These guys are going to be big.
Guest:And then as I was an assistant, I did the same thing where I just had a bunch of friends in Brooklyn who had cool bands.
Guest:And I was like, get a free day.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then I'd have to train this fucking kid who was under me to like teach him how to edit and all this bullshit.
Guest:You know, this was the this was the record plant system.
Guest:It was.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:But it worked great.
Guest:I mean, they generated a bunch of really good people, you know, a real good group of engineers.
Guest:I mean, the list of people who come out of there are really pretty phenomenal.
Marc:So what was the first one that you were actually working on?
Guest:The first record I worked on, I assisted on, was a guy named Ellison Chase for Columbia that the record never came out.
Guest:It was just one of those things that it just didn't happen.
Guest:Didn't happen for that guy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Didn't happen for that guy.
Marc:Got right to the edge.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But the good news about that record was I got hooked up with a team of a producer and an engineer, and both guys ended up being very significant in my life.
Guest:The producer was Rick Chertoff, and the engineer was Bill Whitman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then after that, we went on to do, they went on, I was the assistant.
Guest:They went on to do the first Cyndi Lauper record.
Marc:That was huge.
Guest:That was pretty fucking crazy.
Marc:She was something, huh?
Guest:She was incredible.
Guest:She's still pretty good.
Guest:Yeah, I just saw her.
Guest:I took my kid, his full circle.
Guest:I take my kid who loves that record, who at that point was seven, to see her in some state theater in New Jersey.
Guest:And she was fucking awesome.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and she was super gracious after the show.
Guest:She like gave my kid a hug.
Guest:She signed her like tour laminate, you know, whatever.
Guest:She remember you?
Guest:Oh, dude, she was so funny.
Guest:I was like, you know, I was like 1230 and I was trying to get the kid home.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was trying to do the Irish exit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We got down the hall and I hear John.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm like, are you leaving?
Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, I had to go up and give her a hug and say, congratulations.
Guest:I got to get the kid home.
Guest:I'm going to get my ass kicked.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, she's really wonderful.
Marc:And unusual.
Marc:But what was the difference?
Marc:Because that was before CD, right?
Guest:That, I think, was right around the CD time.
Marc:Now, was that like some sort of an insane shift in the way everyone thought about things in the studio?
Marc:I mean, it was more like the production thing.
Marc:Because it was, but I guess CD didn't, I mean, the technology, digital technology was not in the studios completely yet.
Marc:You were still doing analog.
Marc:No, it was just in production, yeah.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:Because you made your records analog.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, the real shift in CDs was for the record companies because they were able to take all their back catalog and spend virtually no money remastering for CD, and then everything they made was overhead.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that caused this whole boom of just money.
Marc:But some of those first CDs were remastered poorly, right?
Guest:I mean... Some of the first CDs, and I think if I remember correctly, the Who catalog specifically caught my attention...
Guest:What happened was when they went back to do a lot of these old records, they didn't always find the right master tapes.
Guest:They'd find like safety copies, which were copies in a generation down.
Guest:But they also did these things where they used to be Dolby masters and you need to encode and decode the Dolby.
Guest:But on a lot of these early CDs, they didn't realize they had to do that.
Guest:So they just took a Dolby master and didn't put it through a Dolby machine and mastered through that.
Marc:So it sounded muffled?
Guest:It sounded muffled.
Guest:Bad, yeah, muffled and low.
Guest:I mean, it took a while for them, and that's why they ended up doing a lot of the remastering, is because a lot of people realized, this sounds like shit.
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:How'd that happen?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What the fuck is Dolby?
Guest:Dolby is this noise reduction unit that when people started getting tweaky about tape hiss, they decided, we're going to put this thing, and the same thing on cassettes and shit.
Guest:I don't know if you remember, my cassette deck had a Dolby bar.
Guest:But you had to put the fucking Dolby in.
Guest:And it was just this thing where, you know, instead of not worrying about fucking a little tape noise, you know, they... I never liked it.
Guest:Well, it took top end off.
Marc:Yeah, it took the high end off.
Guest:I mean, hiss is top end.
Guest:I mean, so it would roll off the top.
Guest:I like treble.
Guest:I like, yeah, I mean, treble, you know, Jay says treble is excitement.
Marc:Jay Mascos.
Marc:All right, so you do Cyndi Lauper, and then what's the first one you produced?
Marc:Who else did you work with?
Guest:So it was, once again, getting back to the record plant pecking order, as I was there long enough, I became the, I guess, the head assistant.
Guest:I was the most tenured guy.
Guest:So I ended up getting all the good gigs.
Guest:So, you know, I worked on the Cindy record early on, but then I worked on like Iggy Pop Party record.
Marc:You did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, that was a trip.
Guest:That's a good record.
Guest:It's a great record, but that was a trip.
Marc:Like how many people, who did he travel with?
Guest:He didn't travel with a million people.
Guest:He really was, he was just full on Iggy.
Guest:you know it was it was really amazing and um who was the band who was the band on um we did overdubs so it was overdubs and mixing so i didn't even know who was on the band at that point i think but i think ivan crowell from patty smith played guitar on it yeah so really so you just be in there with iggy singing the tape yeah yeah yeah he did this crazy thing it was so um the record was produced by two different people a staff engineer guy named tom pronunzio
Guest:A lot of Italians in this racket.
Guest:Well, the racket, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Roy Cicala, you know, Tom Pannunzio, Jimmy Iovine, Jay Messina.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's a lot of.
Guest:Jews and Italians.
Guest:Right, Jews and Italians.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But, well, I guess the non-Cuzine Italians went into recording.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:You know, the other guys went into construction.
Marc:I don't even fucking know.
Guest:I don't know how it works.
Guest:So literally, basically, the Iggy record was produced, part of it was produced by Tom, and the other part was produced by Tommy Boyce, who was half of the team that did all the Monkees records.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah, and he was like an English jolly guy, and he'd call everybody darling, and just really be very, you know, he was a very funny guy, wonderful.
Guest:As an engineer, do you have these guys on your back telling me?
Guest:Well, once again, I'm the assistant, so I have everybody on my back.
Guest:Literally at one point, and this is no exaggeration, Iggy's out there doing vocals, and that was back in the old days when the assistant would do all the headphone mixes and stuff like that.
Guest:We'd have to run the tape machine.
Guest:Assistants were very busy.
Guest:What do you mean headphone mixes?
Guest:Well, like whatever you have running through your headphones, you have to dial in certain, you know, more guitar, more bass.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Because they have to hear well to sing.
Guest:With the singing thing, yeah.
Guest:And reverb and stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So at one point I got my head down and I'm getting a headphone mix in the console and the engineer taps me on the shoulder and I'm like, wow, he points.
Guest:And I look out into the studio and there's this towel over the music stand so it doesn't reflect into the microphone because the music stands are metal.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Iggy is lit on fire.
Right.
Guest:and i'm like what and there are like sprinklers in the fucking ceiling it's a major building in fucking manhattan yeah um so i bust the move out there and i grabbed the thing burned my hand and do like this hat dance on the thing and put it out and it was just like all right let's go back to work what how did he set it on fire with a fucking lighter on purpose he just did it i don't know
Guest:I didn't want to ask him.
Guest:I'm like 22 years old.
Guest:He's Iggy Pop.
Guest:I'm going to say, what the fuck are you doing?
Guest:Why question his process?
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:I guess that's something he has to do.
Marc:What's your motivation?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, but that's what I say was kind of like a little like the Wild West back then.
Guest:Everybody was a little fucking nutty, and you just had to do it.
Guest:Did you see a lot of drugs?
Guest:Yeah, I saw a lot of fucking drugs.
Guest:Yeah, I saw enough drugs to know that like after 1984, 85, like I was like so over the drug thing and like all my friends back in Brooklyn were starting to get into the drugs and I was just like, leave me alone.
Marc:You never got fucked up though.
Guest:I mean, there were always inadvertent issues and things that happened.
Guest:Like if you made one bad decision, you would do a line of something that you thought was cocaine and it was heroin.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that was a bummer.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was a pukey bummer.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Not a lot of work after that, for that day.
Guest:There was another issue at one point where when someone offered me a pill because I was too stressed out, I probably shouldn't have taken it because I took it and woke up like six hours later laying on the bathroom floor like eight o'clock in the morning on a Monday and had to go home to my parents' house.
Guest:You don't know what it was.
Guest:It was probably a two and all, but whatever.
Guest:But apart from that, I mean, once again, we were working, so you really had to work.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:The bands partied more.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And a lot.
Guest:I mean, bands would spell their names in cocaine, and just everybody would do a letter.
Guest:Right.
Marc:the thing is like you know i did coke i haven't done anything in a long time but like you know by day two or three you're kind of you know you're fucked yeah so they do more coke yeah but it's like you must have just seen people just wear down and like i mean i can't imagine this well there are some theories about certain sounds of the uh of the 80s in production i hear that yeah you think that it was driven by coke well rocking a hard place is all symbols i mean it's when you listen to the record it's like it's crazy
Guest:It's the cocaine symbols.
Guest:And literally, some of those days were like 30 hours, and people were exhausted.
Guest:But, you know, someone would be playing on a pump organ, a part that would be the lowest thing in the mix, and they'd work on it for like five hours.
Guest:And you would just be like, you don't want to blow your brains out.
Guest:But you had to do it.
Marc:Yeah, sit on those knobs, huh?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So, all right, so, okay, so you're doing this assistant engineering, but when do you take the helm?
Guest:Well, post the Cindy record, two of the backing band were the two members of a band called the Hooters from Philadelphia.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the Cindy record went so well that my engineering mentor, Bill Whitman, became a producer himself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then Rick, who was like one of my production mentors, he needed an engineer.
Guest:And it's the same thing.
Guest:It was the latter.
Guest:I just filled into the slot to engineer for Rick.
Guest:And we did a Hooters record together.
Guest:The first one?
Guest:yeah yeah most most of the first one i was on half of the first one bill left halfway through so they kind of were big for a minute and yeah that first record did really well for them i think it probably went platinum you know that song and we danced was kind of um yeah it was a hit yeah but um but so i ended up engineering from that point which was 1983 1984 and kind of never looked back and you know or looked back a bunch but it didn't fucking matter so
Marc:So when it says, I'm looking at your website and you've got it coded, what's the difference between recorded, mixed, and yeah, what's the difference?
Guest:So recording is basically the band's playing and I'm putting it to tape or to digital, but they're literally playing.
Guest:um you're not on the knobs or you are i'm on the knobs yeah i'm on the knobs and i'm talking you know talking to them you know can you turn it up can you turn it down yeah you know the producer is probably hitting the button saying hey you know you're rushing or you know a little more feeling or a little less feeling what is that breakdown so if you're recording it that means you have an engineer
Marc:If you're just a producer... Yeah.
Guest:I want to use Jay as an example, but I... You did a lot of work with Mascos.
Marc:Yeah, okay.
Guest:So here's... Okay, I'll give you a perfect example.
Guest:So Jay produces a breeder 7-inch.
Guest:Okay?
Guest:And I'm the engineer.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:so i literally get the sounds of all the instruments yeah and he listens and he's like you know can you put more something on the snare yeah yeah and i make him happy and i put more something on the snare and you know adjust the guitar tones and then we start recording and i basically make sure everything's going to tape and sounds good um and he makes sure that he likes what they're playing and maybe he'll suggest them change a part or a drum beat or add a fill so it's he's more con he's more musical content
Guest:and I'm more like sound content.
Guest:So that's producing and recording.
Guest:And mixing, when you're done recording everything, it's like cooking, you know?
Guest:You have all these fucking ingredients, so now you've gotta make the final product, which ends up being the record that you hopefully buy.
Marc:Well, relative to what he says, like if he says more snare, more this, more that, is that once you get into mixing, you can alter that again, right?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So then, you know, you've got your master and then you're like, yeah, maybe I was wrong about the snare.
Marc:Take that back down.
Guest:My thing, maybe I wasn't specific enough, but my thing is he would probably ask me to maybe make the snare brighter or fatter or, you know, add more room to it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it's not a level thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It doesn't have to be a level.
Guest:And a lot of times what you do is you do this stuff and then you just mix section by section.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because there was so many changes you couldn't do it all.
Guest:So you'd mix a verse and a lot of the Cyndi Lauper record is mixed like that.
Guest:You mix a verse, you get it right, you listen.
Guest:All right, let's mix the chorus.
Guest:You cut that together.
Guest:That sounds great.
Guest:All right, let's do the second verse.
Guest:Let's go back to the verse settings.
Marc:Oh my God.
Guest:Yeah, no, it was a real process.
Guest:It was pretty intense.
Marc:No wonder some bands have such a hard time recreating what they do for live music.
Guest:There's no way you can do that stuff.
Guest:Also, back then, yeah.
Guest:I mean, you'd think you'd be limited by tracks, but what ends up happening is you have the drums on four tracks, so you still have room for a ton of shit.
Marc:So each drum gets its own track?
Guest:sometimes not sometimes you submix them you know maybe the drums are on six tracks you know whatever like a bass drum on one track snare on the other those are probably the most important tom's on another track and then room mics on another you know wow yeah and and it was rare that anyone played in real time in a way like a band like like oh no i think bands you know the the thing with technology for me is like
Guest:it's as technology advanced music musicianship declined like back then when you had to record on analog people really fucking played yeah you know it wasn't like today all at the same time ever yeah yeah that's how people you know i mean a lot of times you know there's no absolutes obviously you would you could do either way but you know i experienced a lot of a lot of bands playing like um i'm thinking of what records twisted sister they all played live yeah
Guest:um the cindy record no it was more layers because they were still like a lot of times they were still writing the songs in the studio which was kind of fun yeah it seems like that happens a lot it still happens a lot yeah and it's sometimes it could happen to the detriment of the song but like those guys knew what they were you know and also i think like you know once pop music redefined itself like it seemed like layers and and this sort of like
Marc:heightened production is what it became about for a while there.
Marc:It wasn't really about, you know, the performance of the musicians.
Marc:It was almost like production took precedent over, you know, the music in a way.
Marc:So, like, so you worked, like, I'm just looking at, because you've been involved with so many things, but you did a few Alice Cooper things.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But that was later, right?
Guest:Yeah, that was...
Marc:in the 90s that was the last temptation of alice uh of alice cooper um it was more like in maybe his later metal phase not even metal i shouldn't even say that it was just like a later phase and it seemed like you really came into your own with uh with the with the i guess it was a little pre-alt rock but it was like those bands yeah like uh dinosaur jr the breeders buffalo tom sonic youth
Guest:uh the guys that like you know that i was into in college that was that was a whole new thing i loved buffalo tom yeah yeah they sounded great yeah like i don't know why the fuck they weren't huge you know i i have like i live in jersey city and i have so many of my buddies who are like younger than me are just so into them and they just now yeah oh yeah they're like huge fans like they are totally when one of them found out i had produced sleepy eyed he best friends for life he loves me
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he's a bartender, which is great.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, it's a rough game, man.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Like, where you are behind the board, that's one thing.
Marc:But these guys that have their life on the line, it's like, it can get kind of sad, huh?
Marc:And it's random, you know?
Marc:It's not like... No, if it wasn't random, everybody would be making hit records.
Marc:You can't... Who the hell knows why?
Marc:You don't know.
Marc:Something happens.
Guest:That's why it's funny you do all these records in a row.
Guest:And a perfect example, you know, like, it was great when Smoke Ring, the Kurt record,
Guest:Yeah, did well.
Guest:I mean, it seemed like it was the right record at the right moment.
Guest:He's your guy, right?
Guest:I mean, I love him.
Guest:I mean, I've done the last two records with him.
Guest:Produced it and did everything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because that's a very specific sound he has.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, I don't really... My thing is more like not... I don't necessarily bring the sound.
Guest:I make the sound better.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I make it more like big and, you know, just better and more like facilitator with him.
Marc:But so, like, as a producer and as an engineer, you don't necessarily have a style?
Marc:I mean, I have a style, you know what I mean?
Marc:And what defines that?
Guest:Well, I guess how I record things and how I mix things and where I put things.
Guest:Like, I'm a very big left-right guy.
Guest:I like things on the left and different things on the right.
Guest:And some people hate that.
Guest:People get annoyed with me.
Guest:I had one guy say to me, you know, I go into a fucking store and the right speaker doesn't work and I can't hear that other guitar.
Guest:And I'm like, well, don't go in that fucking store.
Guest:I mean, you know, it's like I got to make the records, like, to be cool.
Guest:That's why they made stereo.
Guest:What do you think of mono?
Guest:I mean, I like mono too.
Guest:I think mono as an effect is really good.
Guest:Sometimes you do the drums on one side.
Guest:That's really cool.
Guest:What is mono?
Guest:Why do people like mono mixes more than stereo mixes?
Guest:Because they're not stereo.
Guest:It's like they got something different, I think.
Marc:But is there a difference in sound?
Guest:Well, everything's in the middle.
Guest:So yeah, it's just a different way of things mix.
Guest:But I mean...
Guest:The Beatles are a perfect example.
Guest:When they did those early records, they came out in mono and then when stereo started becoming a fad, they went back to remix the records in stereo, but they didn't give a shit about it so much because it was like a fad.
Guest:So there wasn't as much attention.
Guest:um but as stereo became more of a thing i mean people really got into the fact that you can place things everywhere it was just it was just a cool thing um so i think what people like now when they go back to mono is the oddity of how different it is right um i don't you know i won't qualify it being better or worse i don't you know who cares it's just different yeah but um but it that's what it is it's different
Marc:But as an engineer and as a producer, you've got to be pretty open-minded.
Marc:Yeah, of course.
Marc:I mean, what are fights that could happen?
Marc:Is there territory within that environment?
Guest:Yeah, I'll give you a specific example with a band you really like, Buffalo Tom.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So they did the Red Letter record.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They felt like maybe they had spent more time on it than they liked, and it wasn't live enough.
Guest:So they hired me to do Sleepy Eyed.
Guest:And the caveat was... They blamed the producer for that?
Guest:They didn't necessarily blame him, but they wanted to do the next record in a different direction.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You know, it wasn't like, you know, fuck those guys.
Guest:It was more like, you know, we did this record.
Guest:We want to try something different.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We want to make it a whole live record.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So we set up the band at Old Church in Woodstock.
Guest:and all live pa and doing vocals live you bring a truck up there no no it's a studio it's an old church with a control room okay but literally it's called dreamland it's a wonderful place um that's my plug the um your place no no but i may get free studio time down the road because of it um but um but the point is they're set up all live like everything it's like a show and we record the songs and
Guest:You know, a couple of the songs, I feel like Bill can sing better.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the fight is that he wants to keep them live, but I think he can sing them better, so I really want him to sing better, and that's one of the battles, you know?
Guest:And I got to get him to sing it better, because I know he can.
Guest:And you're producing that record.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you have a little juice.
Guest:As an engineer, you can't really, like... Yeah, I guess if you annoy someone enough, maybe you can still get him to try it again.
Guest:But, you know, as a producer... My thing is, as a producer, it's my responsibility that the record... When the record comes out, you know...
Guest:I don't know if tangerine has a shitty vocal on it, you know, and I hear it every time, I'm gonna be fucking miserable, like I didn't do my job.
Guest:So that's a perfect example.
Guest:And we met in the middle, you know, a lot of times, but if I really felt like I needed something, I really just had to get it, you know?
Guest:And you could even say things like, just try it again, and if it's not as good, we won't use it.
Guest:Just to get him to do it.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Guest:And then you could just, then you can have the next fight of using it or not.
Marc:Now, when you work with somebody like the Breeders, what's that like?
Marc:Because that's a pretty chaotic bunch, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I mean, how much chaos do you have to manage as an engineer or producer to kind of... I think Jay managed that pretty well.
Guest:He produced it?
Guest:Well, he did the single.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:um i guess when i went on to do what ended up being the amps where that was started as a breeder's record i was kind of alone in that but um yeah it was chaotic i mean she's a trip yeah you know i think she hates me at this point because i quit a record because i just couldn't you know i couldn't get her to folk you know yeah and she just wait what was that fight uh we got to make a record you're talking about yeah stuff doing what everything
Guest:but i'm serious i'm not you know it was like and i trust me i went in to last splash when i heard that record i fell in love with them and i fell in love with her it's a hell of a production who did the who produced it uh mark mark good goodall or some english and that's sonically weird i mean yeah well they are sonically weird yeah i mean she plays the acoustic guitar through an amp and it has its own sound yeah they do all the effects on the vocals
Guest:I mean listen I'm you know sometimes you just can't that's just it goes down you know you can't fix it you know she's got to fix it herself and you know I had to I literally had to quit because I was like you know I can't you're not this is gonna be a nightmare I'm not gonna be a part of this right you know I just can't be dragged down with it you know it's like babysitting
Guest:it's worse than babysitting it's like you know like a cellmate you know like a prison guard or something it's not like babysitting will be easy you fucking put the kid to bed and like this kid doesn't want to go to sleep i have two kids i can fucking handle the kids yeah so like when you when you turn down something like that you're looking down the line and like we got to put a whole record together that's gonna be months of my life and what do i need this for
Guest:Well, I'm looking like it can't be done.
Guest:I can't do it.
Guest:Or if it's done, it might be terrible, and I don't want to be part of a terrible record.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Right.
Marc:Who were some of the other big ones?
Marc:Oh, the Drive-By Truckers.
Marc:You did the Dirty South, which is like a fucking masterpiece.
Marc:What a great record.
Marc:I mean, that was...
Marc:But they're so different.
Marc:I mean, it's interesting as an engineer and a producer, I mean, you know, you've got to just sort of like, you've got to wrap your brain around the sound of these guys.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what they want, because they're so vastly different.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, just going from Mascus to Drive-By Truckers.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you just, what'd you do on the Dirty South?
Guest:Well, I mixed the Dirty South and the Blessing and the Curse.
Guest:So they were back-to-back.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They flew me down to Athens to mix both those records.
Guest:On whose recommendation?
Guest:Um...
Guest:They were on East-West at that point.
Guest:And there was a wonderful guy who lives here and still... I'm sorry, New West.
Guest:Anyway, his name is Peter Jesperson.
Guest:Wonderful guy.
Guest:He was kind of their A&R guy.
Guest:And I think, you know, he suggested they might want to bring a new guy in...
Guest:to to you know maybe an outside guy to maybe give it a different sound a little bit you know just a fresh perspective maybe and did you did you provide that um i think those records sound really good i don't you know like when they say that like a like a second like what what gets stuck in the mud when that suggestion is made when someone says you know a fresh set of ears or or like you know a different sort of sound
Marc:What drives that decision?
Guest:Maybe they go back and listen to the previous records and feel like they can sound bigger or more high-five.
Guest:It all depends.
Guest:Or maybe the vocals are placed, how treated.
Guest:I won't say mixing is the ultimate part of making a record, but certainly mixing could make or break your record.
Guest:I just did the last Phosphorescent record,
Guest:And I know that record sounds really, really good.
Guest:And I know that it got like a really cool sync for Spider-Man three for like a major scene song for Zulu, which is a beautiful song.
Guest:And I think, you know, at a certain point, if your record doesn't sound good, you don't get that kind of stuff, for example.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:That never gets in the movie if it doesn't sound good.
Marc:But there's no like magical menu of like what's of what makes something sound good.
Marc:It's all relative to an artist or to what's going on.
Guest:Well, I guess so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I mean, I feel like there's I come in and provide a certain thing where I make it sound better than the roughs.
Guest:I make it sound bigger and I make it people like really.
Guest:How do you do that?
Guest:I just have, you know, I use certain gear and I just have a certain ear.
Guest:It's the way I hear things.
Marc:It's not like your signature.
Guest:I mean, I like some bus compression.
Guest:I like using a lot of analog.
Guest:I use a lot of pedals to make effects.
Guest:I don't use all digital.
Guest:And I keep things kind of warmer and, I don't know, just bigger sounding.
Guest:What was the compression thing you said?
Guest:It's like when you used to listen to FM radio and it had compression on it, and that's why every song would sound the same level.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a similar thing that a lot of people do.
Guest:I think it comes from more of an English style where you have a stereo compressor on the whole song.
Guest:Not drastic, but enough to just tighten up and make more musical.
Guest:And I learned that from my Bill Whitman mentor because when I assisted for him, this certain...
Guest:called a Compex was on we listened through it every day and when I started engineering and he wasn't there I would work on records and go like ah it sounds weird and I was like oh I'm missing a Compex so I went out and bought one of those and like I've had it on I've listened through that in the studio you know for like 30 fucking years I mean I just love that thing
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, it's just the way you balance things and where you put the snare and how you EQ.
Guest:You know, it's just... Everybody does have their style.
Guest:It's subtle, maybe, but, I mean, it is a style.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, I mean, that's why the Kurt records sound like they do.
Guest:You know, I kind of...
Guest:at the risk of being too lofty you know I kind of like I would kind of like my the record I work on with whatever artist to be an improvement on the previous record right and I feel like if I'm not doing that it's not really I'm not doing my job right so um and when you hear badly produced records what's the most uh general what's the most um common complaint
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, there are two things.
Guest:If I hear... Some records, I don't like the way they're produced, but I love the band or I love the music, and I'm like, well, fuck it.
Guest:That's fine.
Guest:The music is really cool.
Guest:I do find that these days, people really like saturating sound because of digital.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Making it so that it's so loud, it hurts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they call it ear fatigue.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was that whole thing about the level wars a couple years ago with Metallica.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where...
Guest:The record was so hot, and they brought it to the mastering engineer, and he couldn't do anything with it.
Guest:It was just crushingly loud.
Guest:And people complained.
Guest:And it was just like, now that we have digital, people think louder is better.
Guest:It's this weird thing where instead of better being better, it's like louder is better.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because it's louder.
Guest:And it's like tuning vocals.
Guest:It's like, well, let's just put every note in tune.
Guest:And it's like, why?
Guest:Because then it's in tune.
Guest:Or let's put everything on the grid, the grid being like the beat.
Guest:Let's move everything on the beat.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because we can.
Guest:And it's like, well, then it's not fucking music anymore.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's math.
Guest:It's science.
Guest:And I think for a while, because you could do it, people automatically did it.
Guest:And I think now there's pullback.
Guest:A lot of pullback.
Marc:There's a lot of lo-fi stuff coming out.
Marc:There's a lot of messy stuff.
Guest:And by the way, I will say, I'm guilty of it a little bit because I got into a phase where I tried to get people to tune vocals a little bit and...
Guest:I mean, I couldn't do it with Kurt or Thurston or Farrar or Mascos.
Guest:Those guys would fucking kill me.
Guest:You know, you couldn't touch that because they're obviously like singers.
Marc:And they all have unique voices.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And why like alter their style?
Guest:But I did it for like a year maybe on records and I tried to get it done subtly.
Guest:And then I just realized at one point it's like, who gives a fuck?
Guest:Like, it's just a waste of time.
Guest:Like, you know what?
Guest:I'll punch a word in three or four times to get the guy to sing it in tune.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, just do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you work with Sonic Youth and Thurston solo?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped was 2005.
Guest:And I...
Guest:It was the kind of thing you're doing the dino records for so long.
Guest:And they were all friends.
Guest:I'd met a bunch of those guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I always was like, you know, when am I going to get a chance to do it?
Guest:You know, what about me?
Guest:Hey, how about this guy?
Guest:And eventually it fucking happened.
Guest:You know, I think I did a record with Jay, a side project called Witch.
Marc:Who, Maskis?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Thurston was really into it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And Thurston was really into it.
Guest:And then I think Jay at one point said, well, why don't you just use the witch guy?
Guest:Use John.
Guest:And he was like, yeah, okay.
Marc:I mean, to produce Sonic Youth must have been sort of a task.
Guest:It was more... Well, you know, they've made like 23 records.
Guest:I mean, they definitely don't need me to help them...
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It was more like tasking and making it sound good, but also making sure we did all the Kim vocals and got the good performances from her and Thurston.
Guest:It was more like just management.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:On a certain level, granted now I just mix the Damascus records.
Guest:So there's not even that.
Guest:But at a certain point with Dyno, it's like, you know, you don't really say to them, ah, that song needs a chorus.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He'll hit you in the head with his guitar.
Guest:It's like just that it's not necessary.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:The same thing with like Thurston.
Guest:Those guys make the kind of records they want to make.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you got to let them make it.
Guest:And then you just got to be there to make it sound good and make it go quick and make them comfortable and make sure like when Thurston picks up his fucking guitar and is ready to rock out a take, it's ready to go.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it was a lot of that.
Guest:But it was super fucking awesome.
Guest:I mean, they...
Guest:They were so into tracking and having to be like, we want it to sound like it's going to sound live.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because when we play it live, we don't want to be missing anything.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Rather Ripped had four of them, but on The Eternal, Kim went to guitar and a dude, Mark from Pavement, played bass.
Guest:So that was even more fun because it was more of a sonic...
Marc:yeah so when when you look back on everything you've done i mean like there's definitely like bands that you help define their sound like i guess i would say with with kurt vile and you know i mean you were there for big records and right and you have a partnership with him a creative partnership on some level right right do you feel like you you were a big part of that when you think about the producing or do you sort of let that be just you know
Guest:but that's a it's my job to service the artist yeah i think i think it's for me it's more important that i'm just making the records as good as i can and um i try not to get too much like that because it really is about them you know without them i'm nothing right but there are ego centric producers uh oh okay yeah i got you yeah i can't i've never been that guy so i've been i i skew to the other side right right you know thank you for letting me make your record
Guest:like uh like i define that sound right right that's it that's the uh that's my sound yeah yeah i mean once again i i do admit there is a there is a maybe a common thread with the records i work on but for example like when you listen to todd rundgren productions yeah they sound like todd rundgren records right you know what i mean they have a fucking stamp that is like jesus christ yeah uh whether it's you know xtc or or whoever are you jealous of that
Guest:no i think i mean i'm i you know i'm happy to be making records i like i mean i can't i definitely do not worry about other guys i mean i mean but what what what separates you from him in that way um maybe because he's like a super artist and just that's his thing it's maybe it's about his ego where it's got to be his he's making his record right you know i'm totally but he brings a sound to it it's like if somebody's gonna hire somebody they're like we need we need butch vig on this
Marc:right because he did that thing right right so you're are you necessarily you know in that pool like you know aside from being a good guy to work with and jay you know what i mean i mean it's different you know butch did do never mind and and you know that's one of those records where i got it on vinyl it's impossible to listen to it's like it's so loud
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Everything's pushed way forward.
Marc:It doesn't matter what format.
Guest:Yeah, it's a great sounding record.
Guest:And it's an iconic record.
Guest:So, you know, the bottom line is it's like good for him.
Guest:You know, I don't really... If I worried about everybody else making records and, you know, like my record, you know what I mean?
Guest:I would drive myself fucking nuts.
Marc:But is it... I guess also there must be that element of like if the producer sort of lucks into...
Guest:uh in a way right being the producer on a record that becomes huge right then all of a sudden the pressure's on him to probably define his sound like yeah that's what i do i you know that i can bring that to any situation right right but i mean for butch as an example is just fucking awesome so it's like i you know it's like i can't you know like george martin's fucking awesome i mean what am i you know i'm not gonna lay awake at night wondering how come i'm not as popular as he is fuck that
Guest:You know, as long as I can go to work the next day and work on a cool record.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And make some people happy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And do well.
Guest:And once again, the whole doing well thing, we talked about it before.
Guest:It's really kind of random.
Guest:I mean, I'm super fucking psyched that the Kurt records did well.
Guest:I'm super psyched that the Phosphorescent record is doing well.
Guest:And the Manchester record.
Guest:So it's like, it's good.
Guest:You know, that's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, on the other hand, I've worked on records where I really felt great about them.
Guest:And it's like...
Guest:yeah and it's yeah it's like what well i mean like you're not throwing anyone under the bus i mean the record's a record you know okay here i'll give you a perfect example i've done the last two cymbals eat guitar records yeah the previous one i fucking thought was great yeah and pitchfork gave it like a 4.2 and totally torpedoed it and they had other problems and it didn't do well which sucked and i felt bad for those kids because they really put their heart into it
Guest:Fast forward another two years.
Guest:We make this new record.
Guest:And all of a sudden, Pitchfork loves it.
Guest:And the press is great.
Guest:And they're on tour opening up for either Bob Mould or brand new.
Guest:And millions of people have seen them.
Guest:People love them.
Guest:So more power to them.
Guest:They hung in.
Guest:They hung in.
Guest:But the bottom line, the previous record was a fucking bummer.
Guest:Because it was really great.
Marc:And you can't explain it.
Guest:No.
Guest:And sometimes critics suck.
Oh.
Guest:Well, Pitchfork, I love them because, you know, if they give you the best new music, it's great for the record.
Guest:But they can really fucking hurt you, too.
Guest:And you did Jagger's solo record?
Guest:Well, we did one song back in the early, in the beginning of MTV-ish type times.
Guest:Like, they did a special version of that song.
Guest:And it was like a digital video.
Guest:It was like a groundbreaking video.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we recorded it and mixed it in one day.
Guest:And he was there.
Guest:It was pretty amazing.
Marc:You got to have some sort of awe.
Guest:Dude, fucking crazy.
Guest:So the first thing I'll say is the band's playing in the studio and he's singing.
Guest:into a mic, and when he's singing, if you solo the mic, you only hear his voice.
Guest:He's so loud and he projects so loud, and when he stops, all of a sudden the mic is full of drums.
Guest:That's how powerful he sang.
Guest:And my other favorite moment was when he came in to listen to the playback, he'd sit on the console with his arms like him, and be like, oh yeah.
Guest:And we fucking all were shitting bricks.
Guest:It was just like, holy shit, it's really fucking Mick Jagger.
Guest:And you did the Thermals record.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I like those guys.
Guest:Dude, that was a trip.
Guest:We did that record.
Guest:You know, that record's all about the end of the world, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We did that record.
Guest:Desperate Ground?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We did that record.
Guest:The last day of the record was right before Hurricane Sandy.
Guest:The studio got totally destroyed the next day.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:We ended two days early because we knew the hurricane was coming.
Guest:They were staying at the studio, and I basically told them Sunday.
Guest:The hurricane hit Monday night.
Guest:I told them on Sunday...
Guest:I think you guys should come back to my house.
Guest:Why?
Guest:This might not be so good here.
Guest:I said it could be really okay or it could be really terrible.
Guest:And sure enough, the studio took seven feet of water.
Guest:We didn't have power for like three days.
Guest:They stayed with us.
Guest:It was really amazing.
Guest:But the backdrop around that record and actually the apocalypse kind of happening was...
Guest:Fucked up.
Guest:Well, oh, the Hold Steady.
Guest:Shit, I talked to Craig Finn.
Guest:I know, yeah.
Guest:And you did that big record.
Guest:Well, we did, you know, I did the two in a row.
Guest:That kind of, you know, made them kind of... Boys and Girls in America to stay positive.
Guest:I mean, yeah, and Boys and Girls was another one of those records.
Guest:They talk about a record that was right for the time.
Guest:Like, when that came out, that was... It was great for them.
Guest:I mean, it really... They went from selling, I don't know, 10,000 records to, like, 70, you know?
Guest:And they went from playing little clubs to, like, bigger...
Marc:venues and yeah it was a really great it was just fun it was a fun time for them and but it's interesting that the the the sort of what determines whether something's a success now is so much different than it used to be yeah i mean it's unbelievable yeah like you know everybody used to talk millions of records and now like 70 000 good for them you know they found their audience
Guest:yeah well also the one thing i will say that i notice is people now are not spending a hundred thousand dollars making a record right so if you sell 50 000 records but you spend 20 000 you win you you're making some money yeah you get to make another record yeah yeah and you get the tour yeah and then if you're playing like you know webster hall or terminal five in new york yeah um you know you're doing good exactly so and then if you get a sink or two you got you know it's all it's it's a different ball game for sure
Marc:Well, all right, man.
Marc:It was great talking to you.
Marc:You too.
Marc:Thanks for having me.
Marc:Yeah, hell yeah, man.
Marc:Thanks for coming.
Marc:See that?
Marc:Did we learn?
Marc:Go listen to some of those records with the new ears.
Marc:John Agnello, good guy.
Marc:Talented guy.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Check the calendar.
Marc:JustCoffee.coop has done some relabeling.
Marc:Go pick up the WTF blend of that.
Marc:Everything.
Marc:Leave a note.
Marc:Leave a comment.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Check for the tour dates, though, man.
Marc:Come into your town.
Marc:New Orleans.
Marc:Asheville, North Carolina.
Marc:Madison, Wisconsin.
Marc:Atlanta.
Marc:Seattle.
Marc:San Francisco.
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Marc:WTFpod.com slash calendar.
Marc:All right?
All right.
Guest:Boomer Live!