Record Expenditures: Fleetwood Max (Continuedfrom page 19) Wc’vc been dealing, for the most part, in generalities. For some specifics on why it costs so much to make a rock album, we turn to a revealing article by Howard Cummings in the May, 1978 issue of Recording Engineer I Producer. Richard Dashut and Ken Caillat, who engineered Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, opened up with some behind-the-scenes glimpses. The original schedule, according to Cail lat, was to spend five weeks recording the album and another week mixing and editing, all at the Record Plant in the San Francisco suburb of Sausalito. By the time they were finished, eleven months later, here’s what they did: Spent 18 hours a day 5 s.evcn days a week, for 2Vi months in the studio writing, rehearsing, and recording. Caillat says that, as the sessions commenced, Lindsey Buckin gham, Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks each had a few ideas; nothing more. After those 2Vi months in the studio one in the $l5O/hour class the band broke for six weeks’ touring. —Upon returning from the road, the band and engineers listened to the tapes and de cided that several songs'had been recorded in the wrong key. All instruments save percus sion were erased from the master tapes and re-recorded in the new key. The Mac are fastidious about their sound. So much so that the engineers spent 18 hours getting proper miking of Mick Fleetwood’s kick drum. The rest of his kit todlc longer. After the 'initial set-up, the engineers spent 2Vi hours each day tuning and miking the drum set. The rest of the in struments, each with its own problems, took longer. Buckingham used several different guitar-amplifier combinations; Christine McVie used seven different pianos and em ployed four different piano tuners at different times. By the time mixing and editing were completed, Fleetwood Mac had rented studio time, in Sausalito, Los Angeles, and Florida. No matter how fastidious they were about their sound, by the time recording was complete the tapes had worn through enough that there was a noticeable drop in high frequency fidelity. At that point, Dashut and Caillat say 'they cancelled all dreams of win ning a .“best engineering” Grammy. They won it anyway. There were so many orders for the album that many more than the usual number of master lacquers were made enough so that for a while there were as many as 19 a day being run off the increasingly-thin master tape. Enough so that, according to the engineers, there is an even more noticeable fidelity drop between the first and second million copies of the album. And so on, down the line. The album has so far sold more than fourteen million copies worldwide, all de rived from that same tattered and torn mas ter tape. .. Angeleno Harold Bronson has produced records, including “It’s Gonna Be a Punk Rock Christmas” by The Ravers, none of which has cost $150,000. October, 1978
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