Ted Templeman book out April 21

[silverfish]

Finally got around to reading this. Five of 16 Chapters have VH titles and are mostly
dedicated to working with them but there is VH content in some of the others chapters
as he "criss crosses" his stories as the dates coincide. I was familiar with the Doobie
Brothers so a couple extra chapters appealed to me. Even the Van Morrison content
was pretty interesting.

I quite enjoyed the book. I had no idea as to the roles of Producer, Engineer, Mixer,
et al., and he really gets into the making of LPs quite extensively. If you have an
interest in that aspect of the business, that might make up for the limited VH material.

Thumbs up.

[Seshmeister]

If I remember the book right I think Ted may be the only person in history to encounter Van Morrison and not think he was a complete cunt of a human being.

[Kristy]

He produced the Doobie Brothers. He has zero credibility

[Von Halen]

He produced the Doobie Brothers. He has zero credibility

He produced Van Halen. He gets a free pass for life. Period.

Deal with it.

[Nitro Express]

The first band I ever saw was the Doobie Brothers. We smoked doobies watching them.

[Nitro Express]

The Doobie Brothers had a killer bass player.

[Von Halen]

The Doobie Brothers had a killer bass player.

The Doobie Brothers were good before Michael McDonald ruined them.

[Seshmeister]

He produced Van Halen. He gets a free pass for life. Period.

Deal with it.

It did occur to me that Permanent Vacation worked out pretty fucking well for Aerosmith and maybe they kind of lucked out that Ted couldn't do it.

TT admits that mistakes were made on DWM and also reading between the lines was TT entirely at the top of his game at all times and a paragon of sober virtue at that point in his career?

But yeah I agree he gets a free pass for CVH and also EEAS.

[Nitro Express]

The Doobie Brothers were good before Michael McDonald ruined them.

Ha! Ha! Yup.

[sonrisa salvaje]

It did occur to me that Permanent Vacation worked out pretty fucking well for Aerosmith and maybe they kind of lucked out that Ted couldn't do it.

I hate that record. That was the end of Aerosmith for me.

[Terry]

I hate that record. That was the end of Aerosmith for me.

These days, I'd probably sooner listen to Night In The Ruts, Rock In A Hard Place or Done With Mirrors than anything post-1985, with the possible exception of Pump which - putting The Other Side to one side (I can't stand that track) - I still think was a great album and really Aerosmith's last good overall from start-to-finish.

Permanent Vacation had warning signs with stuff like Angel, but post-Pump...the band just got too...I dunno, calculated...you could hear the corporate collaborative songwriting effort on radio-friendly stuff like Crying, Amazing, Crazy, Jaded, Don't Wanna Miss A Thing...

Post-Pump, Aerosmith continued to have massive commercial success and were still a great live act, but creatively by and large they lost their balls.

[Seshmeister]

I liked Permanent Vacation, similar to Def Leppard I seem to have fallen out of love with them 1 album later than a lot of you.

I get it that like DL and Pyromania it is the beginning of the end but there are some great stuff on there and ok Desmond Child has his finger in 2 of the big singles but there is plenty of good stuff on PV. I always really liked Simoriah.

Back in the day someone told me that there was some business estimate that the album cover of DWM lost so many million dollars. It was a Spinal Tap level of dumb to have an illegible cover back in the day of browsing through record sleeves in record shops... PV sold over 10 times as many(not that that means everything)

Looking at the tracking on PV just now I had forgotten that Dude Looks Like Lady was song #5 so they clearly didn't realize it was going to be such a huge song for them.

Wow looking at Wikki Hangman Jury was the first single?

[sonrisa salvaje]

I bought Permanent Vacation when it came out. I didn't like Dude Looks Like a Lady but the rest was okay. I just got tired of it due to constant airplay and videos on MTV. I went to see the tour (White Lion opened). The crowd was more into their new stuff. Beyond Dream On and Walk This Way, the crowd didn't seem to recognize any of their older stuff. The whole thing just pissed me off.

[sonrisa salvaje]

Back on topic, that's good info around Skyscraper. Makes me wonder if it turned out the way Dave envisioned it. The music on Skyscraper makes EEAS look like outlaw music.

[Terry]

Back on topic, that's good info around Skyscraper. Makes me wonder if it turned out the way Dave envisioned it. The music on Skyscraper makes EEAS look like outlaw music.

Skyscraper was certainly a more mannered type of rock than what was on EEAS, that's for sure.

Was never all that wild about JLP or Stand Up, myself. Title track was interesting as something sort of non-typical of what Roth had done up to that point.

Honestly, it has been quite a while - and I mean, probably well over a decade now - that I've actually had the hankering to listen to Skyscraper from start-to-finish. Some of that has to do with the way it sounds from a production standpoint, and it'd be reasonable to suggest Ted's absence had more than a little bit to do with that. Some of it has to do with the fact that I've always considered some of the Skyscraper material a bit weak. I mean, I wasn't particularly thrilled with, say, I'm Easy or That's Life on EEAS...but those tunes sort of made sense in terms of where they were placed on the album and had the benefit of being either surrounded or preceded by killer tunes. These days, the only tune on Skyscraper that REALLY knocks it out of the park for me is Damn Good: a lot of the other material on the album has become more timely than timeless for me as the years since the initial release date have passed by. And that probably also has something to do with Ted's absence as well, in terms of what material was chosen to be recorded.