Nick Launay
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Nicholas Launay is an English record producer and recording engineer.
He lives in Hollywood, USA and travels to London frequently.[1]
In 1981, as the most junior member assistant engineer, he was conscripted to work on a Public Image Ltd recording session for a single, "Home is Where the Heart is". In a PiL fansite interview, Launay recalled:
| “ | None of the other assistant engineers at the Townhouse wanted to work with PiL because of John's reputation for throwing up, walking all over the mixing console, and being verbally abusive.
The session started very slow because the engineer/producer they had chosen wasn't very familiar with the then very new, and experimental SSL mixing console. This meant I had to keep showing him which button did what. Back then an assistant engineer's place was to stay very quiet, at the back of the room, operating the analogue tape machines. John sat in a big arm chair with two crates of Red Stripe, the Jamaican Beer, one on each side, and watched with amusement at me going back and forth trying my best to help the engineer out. John wanted a triplet delay on a particular vocal line, and the engineer didn't seem to understand what he meant. I was really into Dub Reggae at the time, so I set it up and it worked well. Later the engineer got up and left the room to have a piss. John got up and locked the door behind him. When he came back he started thumping on the door shouting, "Let me in..." John told him to fuck off.[2] |
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He worked for two months as engineer on Kate Bush’s self-produced The Dreaming (1982), about which he remembers:
| “ | She had all these wild ideas. She would come in in the morning and go, in her very high voice, "Nick, can we make the drums sound like cannons?" So we would go in and try to make this drum kit sound like it was cannons going off – every kick drum, every snare. We made up these corrugated iron tunnels coming out of the drum kit, and we would mike up the tunnel.[3] | ” |
Production technique [edit]
Asked in the Mix interview for his formula for making a record, he said he usually went into rehearsals for about two weeks, experimenting with songs and arranging them in different ways, but with "strong, solid ideas" about how the songs should be arranged. After about two weeks' work, he enters the studio with the band.
| “ | I always work in studios where the whole band can be in the same room looking at each other ... The main point is to have fun and to basically capture that band at that point in their life doing the absolute best performance of that song. And if it takes 20 takes, then we'll do 20 takes. If they do two takes and the first one is just killer, then I might push them to do five just to see. And we might go back to that first take and use that.
I record on analog because it sounds the best. There's nothing in the digital area yet that sounds as good as analog. Anybody who says there is hasn't listened to analog or hasn't lined their tape machine up properly.[3] |
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References [edit]
External links [edit]
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