Making records

«That’s an interesting thing that you just said, about like, there may be better guitar players, etcetera. That’s not what records are about, to me. Records are about that part of it, but it’s also the lyric, it’s the feel, the sound, it’s all sorts of components. Not every great musician makes great records, so to speak. Artists make records, it’s an art form, and there’s a mystery to it. And that combination, that right combination of the people, and the song, etcetera, there’s a magic that happens. It’s something that you just can’t figure out. If there was a one way to make a record, we’d all be doing it. That’s ever changing.»

Bob Rock

RIP Keith Flint

I am not going to declare myself a The Prodigy die-hard fan. The dance music – rave scene is not my natural habitat, but I do like that band, and most of all, I love their album “The Fat Of The Land”. It’s an album that comes across to me as very smartly crafted. It’s full of electronic beats but it also has raw rock elements, it has catchy melodies, mathematical and ethereal at the same time, and it engages your mind, driving away anxiety and obsessive thoughts. It has saved me countless times.

So when I yesterday read the news about Keith Flint being found dead, my instant reaction was to clap my hands over my mouth as I voiced a loud “NO!” and fought back tears. I’m still in shock, to be honest. Funny how that works. Never forget the Firestarter. RIP Keith Flint.

Good art always comes from psychic pain or hunger

“Good art always comes from psychic pain or hunger. People can be succesful but they still have the pain from the past and a lot of times they can channel that into songs that are combined with good times that have happened to them and then they even have a longer career, but most art comes from people that are tortured, in themselves, and you’re not gonna see that as much now because the development of drugs such as the SSRIs, Paxel and Zoloft and all of those drugs from the, you know, the medications that even out people, and the use Ritalin and other drugs, Adderall and those drugs in younger children, evens them out and doesn’t allow behaviour that superstars exhibited in their growing up, such as probably Steven Tyler and Steve Perry and other great frontmen, I’m sure, all the great frontmen and even frontwomen, I’m sure, Ann Wilson and whatever, I’m sure that these people were outcasts to some extent and definitely were not properly behaved in school because their brains don’t function like anybody else’s, and normalizing these kids now is one of the many reasons there’s gonna be a lot less music that’s great. And nobody… Everyone’s afraid to say that but it’s totally true.”

John Kalodner

A wall of bras and panties

“They (Aerosmith) were a great band which is why I wanted to sign them. I had seen them. I didn’t really understand what a great problem the drugs were, and when Tim Collins finally decided that he had to do something about it, and he did do something about it in the fall of 1986 and I decided I was gonna try one more time to see what I could get outta them, and I’ll never forget, going to rehearsal; it’s a blizzard with lightning in Boston, January 1987, they had gotten cleaned up, and I go in their rehearsal room, and there’s an entire wall that’s maybe 30 feet high and 40 feet wide, of bras and panties, and that’s what, y’know, this is in their rehearsal room, and I’m thinking, “what am I doing”? Like, I really appreciate bras and panties, but it’s like I, I’m not really sure that, y’know, because they played new songs which I didn’t think were good enough, so I finally say to Steven Tyler, in front of the wall of bras and panties, that I really feel that he should try to work with Desmond Child who had just done Slippery When Wet, try their focus on some of the ideas, like “Dude Looks Like A Lady”, which I heard the idea of, but not being a songwriter or musician, I couldn’t straighten it out. So anyway, they listened to me and Tim Collins got Steven and Joe to meet with Desmond, Jim Vallance and a few other people and that’s how it started to take shape then I convinced them to go to Vancouver to work with Bruce Fairbairn, who I had to convince to work with Aerosmith, because he wasn’t very convinced that that was going to be a good use of his time.“

John Kalodner, on starting to work with Aerosmith on Permanent Vacation.