Interview with producer John Shanks about ADKOT

[Seshmeister]

On the latest Dave and Dave Unchained podcast from around 43 minutes.

http://podbay.fm/show/popout.php?id=1102231619&e=1487438010

If that link doesn't work for you then try https://www.podbean.com/podcast-deta...+Halen+podcast

[qikgts]

That was about an hour and 40 minutes of good content. He genuinely came across as a fan first and producer/musician/songwriter second. Cool perspective to get from another "fan".

[Terry]

From what I've read, the album was recorded at Henson and later mixed at 5150.

The content of the songs (basically 1/2 reworked 1970s demos and 1/2 new material) to one side, in audio terms ADKOT is a bit of a mixed bag for me.

For me, the two best sounding Van Halen records were WACF and Fair Warning. Not necessarily talking in terms of the tunes themselves, but the depth of the production tones: the bottom end had balls, the high end wasn't piercing and there was space in the sonics for the music to breathe, and all three of those components meshed in a way that wasn't always present on all the other CVH albums (and certainly wasn't often to be found once Roth left the band and Templeman stopped producing them).

By the time the 2000s hit, I began to notice that rock records being put out just plain didn't sound as good as they used to. To my ears, it's as if everything was being pushed to the front of the mix, the stringed instruments were being recorded directly into the board and the entire lot was blended into this mid-range noisy mush. And, sadly, that's what a lot of ADKOT sounded like to me. I don't know if this broad dissonance has to do with Pro-Tools/computer-assisted recording methods vs. recording musicians playing in a good sounding room through amps and using a combination of close and distance miking to capture the performances, or if there's just too much punching in and splicing of parts happening today vs. decades ago.

It's the difference between something that sounds organic vs. something that sounds electronically fabricated to a degree. And it's not just the rock genre that suffers from this: even pop top 40 stuff these days falls into these same trappings. Everything is overdubbed to the point of absurdity, autotuned into pitch perfection and pushed as far to the front of the mix as possible. Maybe that's why so many pop top 40 acts of today sound so shitty live and can't pull off concert performances without massive amounts of backing tapes. You notice it when someone like Adele comes along and doesn't need 20 backing dancers and backing tapes to project, because she can actually sing and can just stand there and sing live and crush it. Contrast that with, say, Taylor Swift or Katy Perry, neither of which can sing well...thus they both need a circus of distractions and shiny objects going on around them onstage to get through a show.

[Hardrock69]

The link is dead.

[twonabomber]

I went in through the main page

https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/7phim-414e7/Dave++Dave+Unchained+Van+Halen+podcast

[Seshmeister]

The link is dead.

It's not but may not work if you have popups disabled. You can also go via

https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/7phim-414e7/Dave++Dave+Unchained+Van+Halen+podcast

[TitanTopper]

What I took from the interview was just how fragile the bands' creative relationships and strong-willed egos played into getting that record made or almost not made. I know everyone will find that shocking...SARCASM. I have been in the camp of "something has to be happening" because it's been too quiet lately, but he certainly came across as painting a doubtful picture of them creating again. Unless of course, it's all just a decoy!! wink wink

[DavidLeeNatra]

He's tap dancing in a danger zone full of mines. Always in a kind of "will they give me shit if I say that"-mode. Nice interview but just nice...give me something I don't already know.

[Von Halen]

He's tap dancing in a danger zone full of mines. Always in a kind of "will they give me shit if I say that"-mode. Nice interview but just nice...give me something I don't already know.

Sesh and I were talking about this. At one point he says "I hope I don't get in trouble for this". Seriously? This fucking guy has been involved with albums that have sold over 40 million copies. This guy has at least one Grammy. This guy has a resume longer than your arm. Yet, he's afraid of Van Halen. How the fuck can this be? It's been 5 fucking years since he produced ADKOT. Yet, he still fears the mighty Van Halen.

People wonder why the rumors are always unsubstantiated. Everybody that does business with these guys, is afraid of them. They are like the rock and roll mafia. It's amazing and insane at the same time. Especially in this day and age.

They are old, and their thinking and way of doing things is archaic. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Those stupid motherfuckers probably think Kiss still doesn't allow themselves to be photographed without makeup.

[DavidLeeNatra]

It's fucking showbiz for chrissake...they REALLY take that shit way too important.

Gesendet von meinem SM-G850F mit Tapatalk

[moose]

Sesh and I were talking about this. At one point he says "I hope I don't get in trouble for this". Seriously? This fucking guy has been involved with albums that have sold over 40 million copies. This guy has at least one Grammy. This guy has a resume longer than your arm. Yet, he's afraid of Van Halen. How the fuck can this be? It's been 5 fucking years since he produced ADKOT. Yet, he still fears the mighty Van Halen.

People wonder why the rumors are always unsubstantiated. Everybody that does business with these guys, is afraid of them. They are like the rock and roll mafia. It's amazing and insane at the same time. Especially in this day and age.

They are old, and their thinking and way of doing things is archaic. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Those stupid motherfuckers probably think Kiss still doesn't allow themselves to be photographed without makeup.

[Terry]

Sesh and I were talking about this. At one point he says "I hope I don't get in trouble for this". Seriously? This fucking guy has been involved with albums that have sold over 40 million copies. This guy has at least one Grammy. This guy has a resume longer than your arm. Yet, he's afraid of Van Halen. How the fuck can this be? It's been 5 fucking years since he produced ADKOT. Yet, he still fears the mighty Van Halen.

People wonder why the rumors are always unsubstantiated. Everybody that does business with these guys, is afraid of them. They are like the rock and roll mafia. It's amazing and insane at the same time. Especially in this day and age.

They are old, and their thinking and way of doing things is archaic. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Those stupid motherfuckers probably think Kiss still doesn't allow themselves to be photographed without makeup.

As a commercial entity, Van Halen haven't been much of a draw in relative terms since the mid 1990s far as studio recordings go. I think ADKOT sold around a million worldwide. Shit, even Van Halen's last full-length studio album with Sammy Hagar sold about 3 million in just the US alone, and ADKOT was the first full-length studio album with Roth in DECADES.

To be sure, there are plenty of reasons for the ADKOT sales to have been fairly meager in comparison to what Van Halen used to sell in the late 1970s, 1980s and early to mid 1990s. Even so, a million units worldwide doesn't exactly re-establish the band as the 900 lb gorilla it was thirty-odd years ago.

As a concert ticket-selling entity, Van Halen are still pretty solid, although I doubt another go-around with the current lineup is going to sell out 15k + seaters the way the first two Roth reunion tours did.

The band just got old, you know? And are pretty much a bit too old to live up to the legend in a meaningful way live.

It's funny, because in 1996 EVH said he didn't want to do a nostalgia trip like KISS as a rationale for not touring with Roth. Now, Van Halen have settled into KISS reunion mode: the lineup doesn't have all the definitive members, the setlists on the last 3 tours have had far more similarities than differences in terms of song selection (although VH did throw in several deep cuts on each tour, and changed them from one tour to the next) so the band has a well-rehearsed majority core of standards they play year after year, tour after tour (just like KISS), and the interest from the ticket-buying public wanes slightly with each successive tour.

It's part of why I sat 2015 out: I'm what I would describe as a fairly hardcore fan of the band (certainly when Roth is in it), and even I didn't feel the need to see the band serve up mostly the same material as they had in 2008 and 2012.

[78/84 guy]

From what I've read, the album was recorded at Henson and later mixed at 5150.

The content of the songs (basically 1/2 reworked 1970s demos and 1/2 new material) to one side, in audio terms ADKOT is a bit of a mixed bag for me.

For me, the two best sounding Van Halen records were WACF and Fair Warning. Not necessarily talking in terms of the tunes themselves, but the depth of the production tones: the bottom end had balls, the high end wasn't piercing and there was space in the sonics for the music to breathe, and all three of those components meshed in a way that wasn't always present on all the other CVH albums (and certainly wasn't often to be found once Roth left the band and Templeman stopped producing them).

By the time the 2000s hit, I began to notice that rock records being put out just plain didn't sound as good as they used to. To my ears, it's as if everything was being pushed to the front of the mix, the stringed instruments were being recorded directly into the board and the entire lot was blended into this mid-range noisy mush. And, sadly, that's what a lot of ADKOT sounded like to me. I don't know if this broad dissonance has to do with Pro-Tools/computer-assisted recording methods vs. recording musicians playing in a good sounding room through amps and using a combination of close and distance miking to capture the performances, or if there's just too much punching in and splicing of parts happening today vs. decades ago.

It's the difference between something that sounds organic vs. something that sounds electronically fabricated to a degree. And it's not just the rock genre that suffers from this: even pop top 40 stuff these days falls into these same trappings. Everything is overdubbed to the point of absurdity, autotuned into pitch perfection and pushed as far to the front of the mix as possible. Maybe that's why so many pop top 40 acts of today sound so shitty live and can't pull off concert performances without massive amounts of backing tapes. You notice it when someone like Adele comes along and doesn't need 20 backing dancers and backing tapes to project, because she can actually sing and can just stand there and sing live and crush it. Contrast that with, say, Taylor Swift or Katy Perry, neither of which can sing well...thus they both need a circus of distractions and shiny objects going on around them onstage to get through a show.

It's too much compression plain and simple. That album sounds like it was recorded in a small garage live basically. I love it overall but this guy and whoever mastered it should get their ears checked !

[Terry]

It's too much compression plain and simple. That album sounds like it was recorded in a small garage live basically. I love it overall but this guy and whoever mastered it should get their ears checked !

It could well be too much compression. Overall, the record sounded a lot like contemporary recordings of younger rock bands, and many of those recordings sound shitty to my ears as well. Everything simultaneously pushed forward in the mix, and the muddled sound only gets worse the higher the listening volume goes. Contrast that with Fair Warning, where you can crank that mofo and lose none of the clarity or depth: when you crank ADKOT, it becomes sonic mush.

A bit of a shame, because I have to listen to ADKOT at fairly low volume levels to semi-enjoy it, and Van Halen's music deserves to be cranked.

[Seshmeister]

Is that not the fashion, I think they all do that?

Talk about old farts, how much new music do some of us listen to?

I don't hear this compression thing so much on KXM or Steel Panther for example though and I'm sure those albums were far less expensive to make.

Are there any rock DJ's here? If you are listening to old albums and then new ones even on your fruit based device, you get these volume jumps whereby newer recordings are louder because of the compression. It seems like a bit of a pointless arms race?