The Interview Series | John Wood

Only a rarified few producers and engineers in popular music can be said to have defined the sound of a genre. John Wood is one of them.

Both at his own studio, Sound Techniques, and elsewhere, Wood shaped the sound of the British folk revival in the late-‘60s and early-‘70s, producing and engineering seminal albums by Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, John Martyn, Sandy Denny, and The Incredible String Band, among others.

But like many of the artists he worked with, Wood’s work can’t be confined to one genre. Before he became associated with British folk, Wood engineered Pink Floyd’s psych-pop debut single, “Arnold Layne.” In between recording rootsy albums like Fairport’s Liege & Lief and Drake’s Pink Moon, Wood was engineering Nico’s discordant dirges on Desertshore and The End. With Richard and Linda Thompson in the ‘70s, Wood delivered a tough, melodic rock sound that prefigured Lindsay Buckingham-era Fleetwood Mac’s winning sonic formula. While he was capturing the incomparable magic of Canadian singer-songwriters Kate and Anna McGarrigle in the mid-‘70s, Wood also was coaxing John Cale to produce the most parsimonious, accessible albums of his career. By the late-‘70s, Wood was defining the sound of power pop with Squeeze. And this just scratches the surface of a career that’s spanned decades.

All in all, Wood’s varied body of work is one that’s hard to summarize — or to cover in one interview, even when the interviewee generously talks for several hours, as Wood did. In our nearly three-hour chat, I asked Wood about the making of both oft-discussed and under-appreciated albums, his thoughts on the music industry today, the virtues and pitfalls of analog versus digital, his current mixing work, and his home stereo, among other topics. But I began by asking about what sparked his interest in audio.

Josh Mound:

I read that your father’s hi-fi system got you into audio. I was wondering if you could tell me a little more about that and how he influenced your interest in audio. Obviously, at that time being a hi-fi fanatic was a niche interest. I mean, it’s still a niche interest! But it was especially so at that time.

John Wood:

Yes, I it was. Well, what can I tell you my father was eccentric to put it mildly.... Before he got into hi-fi, I think he’d inherited probably a pre-Second World War valve amplifier and a 12-inch speaker in a box and an AM tuner. It all sat with glowing valves on a desk in the corner of our living room.

Then he decided — I suppose it’d be in the ‘50s — that this wasn’t good enough. So he set out to build himself what was called a Williamson amplifier, which was in fact, the classic amplifier design that just about every valve amplifier was based on from ‘50s onwards. Quad, Leak, everybody like that basically were using pretty much this design by a man called [David Theodore Nelson] Williamson, and it was published in a magazine in those days called Wireless World, which although somewhat esoteric was a very technical magazine. So he got the circuit diagram, and he built this thing, and it sat on the desk. It took up even more room [than the previous amp], and my mother was always complaining. She said, “Arthur, you’ve got to put this thing in a box.”

So in the end, we all trooped off one day — I think I’d been about 14, I suppose — to a shop a few miles away in a suburb of London. And in those days it was quite common for hi-fi dealers to sell cabinets. You’d buy somebody’s amp, somebody’s tuner, and somebody’s turn table, and you’d put it all together. So we go off to buy a box, and my brother and I [were] sort of worrying to get a turntable in because we want to be able to play records, because we didn’t have a record player at the time. And [my dad] finally succumbs, and he buys a transcription turntable to go in the box he’s going to put the amplifier in.

Then he takes an interest in a speaker in the corner [of the shop]. It was what they call a loaded corner horn, based on a design by a man called [Paul] Voigt, and it was made by a company called Lowther. Anyway, he gets them to play some music through this, and decides to buy it! And I have to tell you I remember the price was £96, and £96 in the early ‘50s — I think this would have been ‘53 or ‘54 — you could’ve bought a car for that. I think cheapest Ford was the Ford Popular, and I think it was about 100 Quid. So, basically, for some reason or other anyway, it just took it upon him to buy [the speaker]. I think he bought two LPs, too.

And that’s really what got me started. That’s how I got interested in it. I never thought of a career in it until I was at a loss for a job after becoming disenchanted with what I started out in life as, which I was going to be a metallurgist. I got very disenchanted with it, chucked it all in, and I didn’t know quite what to do. And I thought, well, maybe I could get a job in listening to music all day and pushing buttons. So that’s the background.

Mound:

What line of work was your father in?

Wood:

He was an engineer. He ran the engineering department and maintenance department of a company that hired out mainly air compressors, large air compressors — stuff that they use [for] temporary work in refineries and stuff like that. He worked for a company that hired these large machines out, and he ran the workshop for them. Then he got fed up with that and ran his own garage for a while. One of his other interests was vintage motor cars. Vintage sports cars, I should say, really.

Mound:

You continued the engineering tradition, just in a different sense of the term?

Wood:

Yes. Yeah. I mean, I had a technical bent, although if I’d have known more, and if I’d had a bit more freedom, possibly, during my education, I might have been more interested in the art side. When I went to school in the ‘50s, your career path was almost made up for you by the time you were 14, because you had to decide whether you’re going to study art, science, history, maths, [or] physics. Your parents always decided for you. So I ended up with sort of maths/physics at school, with one saving grace — that I was allowed to do art. So I did art, as well. I sort of had a bent somewhat towards that.

Mound:

So, you’re out of school. You were initially considering metallurgy, and then I’ve read that you decided to apply to Philips, Decca, EMI’s Abbey Road, and the BBC?

Wood:

That’s absolutely, right. Yeah.

Mound:

From what I read, Decca offered you a job first, and then shortly after that Abbey Road did, too. Where did you start at Decca?

Wood:

When I arrived at Decca, they just put me in a room with a chap called Peter Attwood who’s no longer with us. It was the second stereo mastering room. They had two stereo rooms for mastering at that time. I mean, stereo was the sort of coming technology. I suppose they maybe would have been issuing stereo for about a year, maybe 18 months. So it was early days in that. In the end, I ended up running that room, and Peter Attwood went off to the other things. I spent most of my time at Decca doing that...

Decca in those days licensed London and RCA and, you know, loads of other American labels, and I was responsible for mastering all of that stuff — both classical and pop. Not that it made much difference what you were listening to, because it was all done at half speed. So it was all fairly incoherent when you’re actually working with it.

You used to have a set of monthly releases to get through, and then if I wasn’t doing that, I’d go off and I used to edit with one of the classical A&R men. So I sort of learned to edit as well.

Mound:

Have you ever thought about what your life would’ve been like had you taken the job at Abbey Road?

Wood:

Not really. I don’t think it would have been nearly as interesting. I have to say that there was a big difference between Abbey Road and Decca. I mean, I know quite a lot of people who worked at Abbey Road. Abbey Road was a much more formal setting than Decca, and EMI itself was a very differently run company.

Decca was the poor relation in the record industry, you have to remember. And so one of the things that the Decca company had to do was to fight on somewhat different terms in the market to EMI. EMI had lots of money to burn, and Decca didn’t. So, first of all, they had to really find their own USP [unique selling proposition], I suppose. And one of those was the quality of recording and sound. Decca were the first people to really make hi-fi records, and they were the first people really to start making stereo records that sounded the way that everbody’s sound now — the Decca stereo tree is the famous example of that.

And I think Decca really was not as formal [as EMI]. You were expected to look after yourself much more. There was quite a hierarchy at Abbey Road. They’d have porters to move equipment, and then brown coats and white coats. And you were expected to wear a suit and tie if you were what they called a balance engineer in those days. You look at photographs of people [at Abbey Road], it was a much more much more formal setting than Decca. I’m sure my life would have been different [at Abbey Road]. But the biggest difference that I made to life was by leaving Decca [laughing], not by missing out on Abbey Road.

Mound:

Let’s talk about that. You were at Decca for less than two years, then you moved to Levy’s Sound Studio?

Wood:

What happened is slightly different than that. What happened was [that] one of the classical A&R men I’d worked with, he moved to a record company was being run by The Rank Organisation. And they decided to start their own mastering and what was going to be post-production. Because by this time, people were working on four-track. And he said, “If you’re interested, there could be an opening here for you.” So I went and had an interview for it.... I was getting frustrated at Decca because I wanted to get on a classical crew. I was, you know, a young man in a hurry. So I got offered this job with what was called Top Rank Records, The Rank Organisation, putting together a stereo state of the art mastering system, which they bought from Neumann.

I think it was within four weeks after having assembled this lot — put it all together, got it working, cut one single, which was produced by Joe Meek — Rank announced that they were going to get out of the business. And I was made redundant after four weeks. So there I was without a job.

That’s when Levy’s, who’d also just bought a similar Neumann system and didn’t have a clue how to work it, basically offered me a job.... So that’s how I ended up at Levy’s. I certainly was not looking to go there, but I didn’t have much option at the time.

Mound:

You were at Levy’s for a few years, then left to found Sound Techniques in 1965?

Wood:

Yeah, ‘64 or ‘65. I mean, Levy’s was about the most frustrating place you can imagine to work. After two years of it, I was looking to do anything. I thought about, you know, looking at a sales job. I nearly got out of the industry. But in the meantime, I got some extra commitments in the form of a wife and child so [I was] rather stuck there.

Mound:

What was frustrating about Levy’s?

Wood:

Well, first of all, Levy’s had an associate company called Oriole Records, and the two companies were basically run by two brothers, Jacques Levy and Morris Levy. Morris was the older brother, and he ran very much the record company side of it. Jacques ran the studio, and quite honestly, A) really didn’t have a clue what he was doing, and B) It was so formal, that everybody was called “mister.” I mean, it was just nothing like I’d been used to at Decca.

But I was there, and I ended up, I suppose, running for them probably the most successful turnkey stereo mastering business in London at the time. We’re talking about ‘62 to ‘65. And at that time, there were a lot of independent labels coming up — Savoy jazz was an independent label, Riverside, Westminster, [and] all these independent labels. So I was mastering for all these independents.... Nobody imported metals, so these companies would get tapes, and I was cutting from tape. Then I ended up cutting the Reprise catalog for Pye. So it was a very successful business model.

But one of the other tasks — and I suppose this is part of the frustration — was that Jacques Levy, the younger brother who ran the studio, every two or three weeks, he would record for one of the Oriole labels, which was called Embassy, these look alike records that they sold in Woolworths. So they’d be covering generally what would be in the Top 20 normal hit parade. They’d do a cover version and sell a cheap version of it in Woolworths. I used to get the job of mastering this stuff. So I would be given the original record, which might be Phil Spector, Ronnettes, or something like that. And they’d give me their version of it, and I would make an acetate, and then I’d go and take it to Jacques Levy to play in his office, and he would say, you know, “Why doesn’t it sound like [the original]?” And, of course, the reason none of them ever sounded like anything, was because A) they never had the same lineup, [and] B) Jacques Levy didn’t really know what he was doing. So, this just went on and on, and the frustration of it was ridiculous.

But it got me interested in pop. I’d never been that interested in popular music, to tell you the truth. And it sort of got me a bit more interested in it. And then Oriole for a year... had the Motown catalog when Motown was in its early days. I think I cut two or three releases probably for Motown. Because again, they’d send the tapes and a disk, and it was always frustrating because I could never get my disk to sound like their disk. I don’t quite know what they did. But I start hearing things like, I don’t know, “Beechwood 4-5789” or whatever it’s called, Mary Wells’s “You Beat Me to the Punch, “Fingertips” by Stevie Wonder — all these records. And, of course, they’re all way up on the Billboard charts, and in the U.K. nobody’ll play them. The BBC, which was the only radio station, wouldn’t play any of it at the time.

So I just found life getting more and more frustrating, as did Geoff Frost, who is the other person involved in Sound Techniques. And he was the sort-of technical engineering leader [at Levy’s]. I suppose we were both sort of somewhat rebellious. We just thought, “Oh, God, if we couldn’t do better than this, it’d be ridiculous.” And so with that rather foolish innocence of youth, we thought, “Oh, well, we’ll start our own studio.” And we did.

Mound:

I’ve read that your goal was to have a more “live,” American-sounding studio than the typical British studios, and Geoff went to the U.S. to scout American studios to see what was different from how British studios were set up at the time?

Wood:

Yeah, so that’s true. I’m not sure how well he found that out, actually. But I was surprised when I started working in America [later] how different things were, but in a completely different way. It wasn’t so much in studio acoustics or design. We certainly did have a liver room, although I deadened it down after two years. I actually killed it down.

Mound:

Besides the sound, what was the goal of creating Sound Techniques, in terms of doing something different in the market for studios in the U.K. at the time?

Wood:

We didn’t think about the market at all. [Laughs] This is always the danger, isn’t it? We just figured we would start a studio, and we’d get what we wanted. And, basically, that’s what we did.

The funds were so limited, we had to make all our — well not all our own equipment — but most of what we had we made. Certainly, you know, the mixer. In fact, we made a mixer for somebody else before we’d finished our own. The way that Sound Techniques was that once we’d built our own mixer, I think we suddenly realized there was maybe a bit of a market in building them for other people. So we started building big mixers for other people as well. In fact, the business split. After two years, the business had split completely. For the first two years, I mean, we were still making mixers over the top of the studio. Bloody ludicrous!

You know, we were just a usual jobbing studio. Some of the things we did were bizarre. I would say it took two years before we really got things sort of worked out business-wise and before the client niche started to build. Before that leads to all sorts of bizarre things.

Mound:

By that point in time were already starting to transition, in terms of your own interests, into pop music? Or were you still thinking of yourself mainly as a classical engineer?

Wood:

No, I was just thinking of myself as an engineer, period.... Because most of the stuff you did, in fact, was popular music.... People never recorded classical music much in studios anyway. EMI used to use Studio One for classical music, but it was not regarded as a great venue for it. Great venues for classics were places like Kingsway Hall, Walthamstow Town Hall.... So, no, you’re just a jobbing engineer.

In those days, the sort of bread and butter that you were doing would be, if it was an English four-piece pop group or something, they would get three hours to cut maybe one or two titles. Or if it was a solo artist, they would come in with an orchestra or band, and, again, in a three-hour session, you’d be expected to get at least two things down. We might be doing jingles for TV ads, in which case you’d probably only have an hour’s session.

So the skill of the job was you just had to be able to get it together quickly, and just go. You’d have one thing in the morning, and something else in the afternoon, and maybe something else in the evening. Just a completely different discipline to what people have now.

Mound:

Did you feel like you had a head start in working in stereo based on your background?

Wood:

No, it never really occurred to me. When we started Sound Techniques, state of the art was four track. So we had a four track Ampex. And then we had a two track and a mono Ampex. In the main in popular music, it was still ending up in mono. You didn’t use the stereo machine nearly as much. So when you were mixing, you mixed to mono; you didn’t mix to stereo.

Although our life-saver when we started was a background music catalog, which we did for months. Thank God! It was around a 20-piece orchestra, all live straight down. And that was to stereo....

But it was unusual to find mixes that actually had panning. In fact, I can’t think of anybody at that time who would have been making mixers which had pan pots on every channel even. You know, you’d probably have about four or five channels which panned, and the others you assigned to left or right.

Mound:

Can you talk about how you got connected with Joe Boyd through Elektra and how that led to Sound Techniques being the go-to studio for British folk albums?

Mound:

We were recording albums for Elektra, which we’d got through a third party — in fact it was an engineer at Abbey Road at the time who also did a load of fixing on the side for [Elektra founder] Jac Holzman. He suggested to Jac Holzman that he might like to try us out instead of Abbey Road. So we did a couple of albums with a man called Mort Garson, which were orchestral, actually.... Mort was great. We really liked him — very talented, you know, proper, professional, arranger-conductor. We did two albums.

Joe [Boyd] was working at Elektra’s office at that time in London. I never knew quite what his function was. I think he probably was a bit sort of a gofer.... Anyway, Joe had been down [to Sound Techniques] a couple of times for that. Then we did an album, which is probably one of the more interesting things we did in the early days, which is an album of Judy Collins’s called In My Life for Electra. Judy wanted to record an album in London. And we did this album. Joe was certainly involved with helping with the getting the fixing down, paying people and stuff. And so I suppose I met him a few times then. Then he had an artist called Alasdair Clayre, I think’s his name, which was the first thing I did with Joe.... And that’s really how it started.

Joe has always been a frustrated producer, obviously. Well, not obviously, but he was.... Then he signed The Incredible String Band to Elektra, and then we did the first ISP album, at which point he left Elektra to set up on his own on the back of The Incredible String Band. It just went on from there really.

Mound:

What are your memories of working with Incredible String Band? Obviously, those first four albums — and, in particular, The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion and The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter — are considered classics of the British folk scene and also the psychedelic folk sound they embodied.

Wood:

What would be my memories of it? Well, sometimes the frustration when the girlfriends got involved — Rose and Liquorice. [ISB are] interesting in that they never ever came to a mix. We were always left alone to just get on and mix them the way we wanted.

One of the first rules of mixing that I ever came up with was because of The Incredible String Band, and that’s: If it’s out of time, put it as far away as you can in the stereo mix, and if it’s out of tune, put them as near enough together as you can in the stereo mix.

But the interesting thing about The Incredible String Band albums I find is that, to me, they don’t have the longevity of everything else I did with Joe, and that may be because a lot of the material...never really resonated with me that much. Some of them did, but not a lot.

Mound:

Their music is much more of its time, rather than transcending time, if that’s a fair way to put it.

Wood:

Yeah, I think.

Mound:

At the same time, they were hugely influential albums. I know Robert Plant has cited them as influencing Led Zeppelin’s acoustic sound.

Wood:

Well, yes, which is fair enough.

You know, I just sat them down and stuck microphones in front of them, but then that’s what I did with most people, I suppose. That’s how they were done. There’s nothing particularly magical or whatever about it. There weren’t any tricks. People these days think you must have some incredible secret techniques or something, but I don’t really think I ever did. I just did whatever seemed to be the best idea at the time, as it were.

Mound:

Let’s talk about Fairport Convention. Obviously, you had a long association with Fairport, and then Sandy Denny and Richard and Linda Thompson. I love all of those early Fairport albums, especially What We Did on Our Holidays, Unhalfbricking, and Liege & Lief. The middle of those, Unhalfbricking, is probably my favorite. What are your memories of recording them?

Wood:

Well, Unhalfbricking I would agree with you. I think it’s by far.... For me, that’s the peak of all of the work I ever did with Fairport, for various reasons.

But, well, the first time they ever came into the studio was a real struggle. Because they really were not very adept at what they were doing. [Laughs] They really were pretty hard work. And I was getting frustrated — particularly trying to get a decent bass sound. I remember a terrible time trying to get any noise at all that sounded even remotely, sort of, solid out of Ashley [Hutchings]’s bass guitar.... It was hard work. The first album, I felt, was hard work. But I remember Joe...telling me at the time that Richard, who was 16 — an angelic-looking 16 — was going to be a really great guitar player. Joe got that right! Can’t argue with him. And that’s actually one of the interesting things about Joe, he was — maybe still is — a great spotter of emerging talent. Anyway, so that that was the first album, and as I say, that was hard work.

Then the next one would be What We Did on Our Holidays.... Of course, by that time Sandy Denny had joined and Judy Dyble had gone. On both that album and on Unhalfbricking — but particular on that album — there was some tension between Sandy and Iain Matthews.... You could just feel it. [Laughs] I wouldn’t really want to go into it too much, but there were moments when things weren’t that straightforward. And then on Unhalfbricking, we started that at Sound Techniques. We did all the tracks at Sound Techniques, but we hadn’t got an eight track at the time. We were waiting to put an eight track in. So we took the four tracks and ran them up to eight at Olympic — Olympic One — and “A Sailor’s Life” was completely recorded at Olympic One in a one-r. One hit, everybody played and sang...or Sandy sang as everyone else played as a complete take. That was it. And they announced before they did it. They said, “We’re only going to do this once. We just want to do this one take.” And in some ways that should have been the pattern for Liege & Lief, but I don’t think it ever was.

Liege & Lief I struggled with. Richard was very influenced by The Band at the time. And he kept really wanting Dave Mattacks to sound, if not play, like Levon Helm, and I just had a very frustrating time. Richard [was] trying to get me to take top off the drum — take the highs out of the drum mics — which is the last thing in the world I like doing. I mean, I don’t mind doing it afterwards. [But] once it’s gone, it’s gone, as they say. So it’s not a situation I ever like getting myself into.... I don’t know.... I think it’s okay, the album, but I don’t think it holds up anything like Unhalfbricking does, but then maybe I like the songs better on Unhalfbricking as well. And I think Sandy never really ever hit that form again with her vocals.

Mound:

What are your memories of recording “Who Knows Where the Time Goes”?

Wood:

What just that it sounded fucking great! [Laughs] That’s all I can tell you. Well, you know...we might have done that all at Olympic as well.... Yes, I think that got done at Olympic.... Again, “A Sailor’s Life” was the last thing that was done for the album. And I think “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” was next-to-last, because I think it wasn’t an immediate choice to record. I have the feeling that it got sort of tagged on a bit at the end, because they’d run out of original songs.

Mound:

It’s hard to believe those two tracks were afterthoughts, considering how central they are to the album.

Wood:

Well, “Who Knows Where the Time Goes” is just such a great song. And, of course, “A Sailor’s Life,” that’s the first time [Dave] Swarbrick was involved with him, you have to realize, as well. I mean, if “A Sailor’s Life” had been earlier on in the plan then obviously Swarb might have appeared more somewhere else on the album.

Mound:

I’m also really partial their cover of “The Ballad of Easy Rider,” which was recorded at the time, but was only released later as a bonus track. That’s always been one of my favorite minor Dylan songs [it was cowritten by Roger McGuinn and Dylan], and I think their version is really good.

Wood:

Yes, it is. I don’t know why it didn’t make it to the album, maybe because nobody liked it enough at the time. It might have been Richard who put his foot down. Probably. But certainly it was around for a long time before it saw the light of day.

Mound:

Let’s talk about Sandy Denny and working with her after she leaves Fairport Convention. Speaking of music that has stood the test of time, she’s undergone a resurgence in critical reception. There was that massive 19-disc box set a couple of years ago, and most of her albums have received the deluxe reissue treatment. You worked with her on those first three albums, correct?

Wood:

Yes. Three or four? Yeah. Four I think I did…. Sandy never really made an album which was sort-of 100 percent really good material. I don’t know. Half of it would be really good, and half of it wouldn’t. I can pick out really great tracks, and as the albums go on, the great tracks get less and less. I don’t know. She was very insecure. It was never easy working with Sandy, because she did not have a high opinion of herself.

Mound:

From everything I’ve read, she really lacked self-confidence despite writing all of these great songs and having this wonderful voice.

Wood:

Yeah, that’s true. She just didn’t have much self-confidence. I’m honestly not going to talk much about Sandy. Because I think, you know, I’ve read so much nonsense [about her]. I think she had a very raw deal in life, and let’s leave it at that…. I did know her, I suppose, very well. I mean, she stayed with my wife and I a couple of times in Suffolk. And so I knew her personally, I suppose quite well.

Mound:

In particular, I really love the Sandy album. Of those early ones, to me that one holds up particularly well. Both the songs on that and the sound on that are wonderful.

Wood:

I certainly think [that]. Yeah, I think the sound on the original is really good. But, you know, I have to say I’ve always been very frustrated by the fact that they’ve never let me ever remaster anything. I’ve never had anything to do with the remastering of any of that stuff. And I know it would sound much better if I had, but there you go.

Mound:

Let’s talk about Nick Drake. One thing I’ve read is that you got along with Nick Drake much better than most people did and had a pretty close working relationship with him. I think he’s another person — even more so than Sandy Denny — whose posthumous critical reception had increased dramatically. Now he’s viewed as legendary in a way he wasn’t at time. You worked with him on all three albums. What do you remember about working with him?

Wood:

Well, what can I tell you about Nick? Nick Drake and the McGarrigle Sisters, as far as I’m concerned, are probably the artists that I’ve enjoyed and admire the most that I have ever worked with. Both, as far as I’m concerned, were great writers. I mean, let’s get down to basics if you like.... Nick not only was a great writer, but he was just totally in command of everything he did. The first time he ever turned up in the studio that I met him, he just sat down and knocked off four or five songs. And, I mean, for somebody who as far as I know had never been in that situation before, it just came across larger than life, confident, and [the songs] were great. And he was easy to work with. I mean, he knew what he wanted, and as long as nobody messed him about, he was easy to work with. I never found him difficult. Ever. People have this idea that he was sort of withdrawn and moody. It’s not really true. Later, you know, towards the end of his life, he certainly became much more withdrawn. But I never ever crossed swords with him about anything.

Mound:

Do you think part of his image is mystique creation after the fact by fans?

Wood:

Yes, I suppose a lot of it has been that. A lot of people who never really knew him seem to have strange reminiscences about him. [Laughs] I’ve been talking to a man... There is a new biography — what at last might be a sensible biography — being written about Nick, and I’ve been talking to the man who’s writing it. And it is very interesting, you know, because he’s speaking to a lot of people. And he’s doing it with the blessing of Nick’s sister. And, you know, some of the stuff he’s been told is complete garbage! But anyway, we will see. But, yes, it’s that sort of romantic sort of Byron-esque thing or whatever it is — an English literary association.... A lot of a lot of what’s been written about him is written by people who never met him.

Mound:

I’d like to ask you a little about the recording of Bryter Layter. Out of his discography, that album has the most outside people involved, and it has this all-star cast with Richard Thompson, John Cale, Dave Pegg, Mike Kowalski, and even Doris Troy doing some backing vocals. How did that come together?

Wood:

Well, the same way as Joe and I did everything. You ring them and get them for the job.... If I’m not mistaken, and I didn’t know this at the time, but I think Nick went to Little Hadham which was a village where Fairport...had a house that they rented. And I think Nick went there for a few days, and they ran through stuff. Because the idea was that it was always going to go down with the rhythm section, or most of it was going to go down with the rhythm section. And the rhythm section was going to be [Fairport’s] Dave Pegg and Dave Mattacks, which is what you’d expect. But whereas the first album the strings had been live...it was decided to overdub the strings on Bryter Layter. So it was, in fact, deliberately a more popular approach — not a pop record, but a more accessible, let’s call it, approach. I hate that term “commercial.” So, that’s how we started.... But we got to one of the [tracks] that Mike Kowalski is on now, but we were trying it with Dave Mattacks, and it wasn’t working out for Nick. And Nick said so, because if things weren’t working, he would say so. He felt he couldn’t get the sort of broken feel of the rhythm that he wanted. And that’s how Kowalski came to get involved. So, you know, we tried one or two tracks with Kowalski….

The McGregor track is interesting, because Chris McGregor, who was known to smoke dope, turned up at the studio one day thinking we were mixing one of his albums.... We weren’t, we were recording Nick. We were recording “Poor Boy.” And he wanted to play piano. So we just let him play. And that’s it. That’s how that happened.

Cale happened because we’d come back from America. I’d been in America mixing, probably Fairport. And on the back of finishing the mixing in America, we started recording an album with Nico. We brought the tracks back. We were going to mix that in London, and Cale came over for the mixing of that. Cale was very pushy. He always wanted to try to get involved in anything. And he demanded to know what we were doing, and I think we played him one of Nick’s tracks. He immediately decided he wanted to work with Nick, and we introduced him to Nick. So that’s how it came to be on “Fly” and “Northern Sky”...one of the outstanding tracks on the album.

Mound:

What are your memories of recording “Northern Sky”?

Wood:

We put it down with Nick on guitar and vocal. Then Cale hears it, and he and Nick go off and talk about it. Then I get this phone call from Joe or Cale or Joe’s office — I can’t remember — saying they wanted a Celeste and a Hammond and a harpsichord. [Laughs] So we have to hire all of this stuff in. And Cale turns up on morning — I think we did about 11 o’clock, midday, something like that — sits down and knocks it all out. I think nothing was more than one or two passes of the track each time. So it’s like, you know, he gets one or two passes for each instrument.

Mound:

Were most things with the exception of the string arrangements recorded live?

Wood:

No, all Cale stuff is an overdub. They’re all overdubs. The rhythm tracks are all live. And the vocals are all live with the rhythm tracks. Nick played and sang. Always. I mean, this is unusual. You’d be hard pushed to find many people who would even do that today. He sat, he played the guitar, and he did the vocals live. So the merit of a take basically would be Nick’s performance, and you just hoped everybody else would be up to speed and good enough for it. That would not happen today….

I can tell you, we never did more than five takes of anything with Nick.... With my sort of production hat on, for what it’s worth, which isn’t a lot, once I’ve done five takes of something if we’re not really on it within five takes, then we’d do something else and come back to it.

Mound:

You also mentioned “Poor Boy.” Was that cut live with the exception of the backing vocals?

Wood:

Yeah, that’s cut live completely with the exception of the girls. The girls were overdubbed. That was an afterthought of Joe’s because he was thinking about Leonard Cohen.... And there’s a lot of discussion about whether Nick would have liked it or not liked it. But if Nick had not liked it, it would have come off, I can tell you. He wouldn’t have put up with it.

Mound:

Was Sound Techniques on eight-track by 1971?

Wood:

Yeah, it was all done on eight track.... Years ago, I went to Abbey Road — one of the last places, I supposed, that had an eight track in those days — for the film, “A Skin Too Few.” And Paul Weller turned up, because [Drake’s arranger] Robert Kirby was working with him, and they wanted me to put up an eight track and we put up an eight track of “City Clock” or something like that. And...as I pushed up the bass track — in those days, you just recorded the bass with a microphone in front of the bass guitar amp — you can hear the drums leaking down the bass guitar. [Weller] was quite shocked that we recorded things like that in those days.

Mound:

That’s part of what gives the recording it’s organic ambiance, right? The sound is very organic, rather than overdubbed and separated. Isn’t that part of what gives it it’s enduring charm?

Wood:

Um, I don’t know really. [Laughs] All I do know is I mixed [Bryter Layter] three times. I mean, I did three, complete lots of mixing on that album. The first time we did it in Vanguard in New York, and I didn’t like it. And we came back to London, and I tried it again. And I still said to Joe, “It’s just not getting to be the way I think it should be.” And then we did it a third time, and that’s the one that came out. And I’m glad and I’m glad I did it three times.

Mound:

Did Nick provide lots of feedback on the mixes, or were you left to your own devices?

Wood:

Not really. I don’t remember Nick having a lot to do with the mixing at all. But anyway, it is the one record that both Joe and I think we probably would never change anything. Because, you know, you normally come away and the think, “I should have done so and so.”

Mound:

This is the first I’ve heard that there were two other mixes. I think there needs to be a deluxe reissue with the early mixes on it.

Wood:

If I have any luck, they’ve been bloody wiped. I don’t remember keeping any of it. I wouldn’t have wanted to keep it. I don’t believe in all this nonsense of other versions and other mixes. It’s just been rubbish.... It’s like people say, “I’d be really nice if we just put it put it out without the orchestral tracks on.” For God’s sake, the thing was conceived the way it was conceived. And that’s the way people should listen to it

Mound:

So are you generally skeptical of deluxe reissues, then? Quite a few albums you’ve worked on have had them.

Wood:

Yeah, yes. I’m not a great believer in it. I mean, if the artist had wanted it to go out at the time, it would have gone out, wouldn’t it? Why do people have to be so bothered about the process? People should just listen to the artwork as it stands, and that’s it. Otherwise the artist would have published the stuff at the time.

Mound:

I think there are two ways to look at it. Obviously, it’s record labels trying to milk more money out of things that are already in the vaults. I think on the other hand, from my perspective of being a huge music fan and music nerd, I like to hear how tracks evolved over time. Now, I wouldn’t want them to replace the actually released version. I think you get into problems when you have remixes, and you pull up Spotify (or whatever streaming service), and you can’t find the original version anymore. But I’ve always felt that if you have a reissue that has the original mix remastered well, plus bonus tracks that are alternate versions or whatever, I find that to be a welcome addition as a fan.

Wood:

I don’t know. It’s just not something that I subscribe to, I’m afraid. I mean, the one thing that really made me very cross — and this is going back quite a few years— was when Pink Moon was reissued in America by Hannibal, they put on the four or five last titles that Nick ever recorded, which include “Black Eyed Dog” and “Hanging on a Star,” etc. Now, Nick never wanted those to go out. And the only read the only way that Hannibal were able to put them out was because Joe happened to have a seven and a half IPS tape of rough mixes of those titles. But Nick had never wanted them to ever be released. And I don’t think they ever should have been.

Mound:

That’s interesting. I actually didn’t know the provenance of those.

Wood:

Well, that’s it. I mean, in the end, I did mix them properly. But initially [that’s how they were released].... But they were never, ever originally meant to come out, and Nick never wanted them out. Now, I’m sorry, but I really don’t see why you should fly in the face of what the artist wishes. After Nick died, Island did ask me if there was anything else, and I told him there wasn’t. I took the tapes, and that was it. And I had the tapes in my possession. It wasn’t until, whatever, 15 years later that I got them out and did it with full knowledge of Gabrielle [Drake, Nick’s sister] and Cally [Callomon, manager of Drake’s estate].

Mound:

I was going to say, at the point that you remixed them, the family was involved.

Wood:

Yeah, yeah. We decided that all this stuff that had been floating about, you know, because it’s [been released already], we’ve got to give it its best shot.

Mound:

That is one of the problems with reissues. Some of them don’t use the best sources, which is a disservice to the artist.

Wood:

Yeah, well, anyway. Don’t get me going about it.

Mound:

You’re more than welcome to get going about it. This is the kind of stuff I write about! It’s interesting from my perspective knowing what people who were involved in the creation of the music think about the life it has after the fact — and the commercial aspects — so I’m completely willing to hear whatever your thoughts are.

Wood:

Recorded music now is in a strange place. If you look at the history of music, I suppose, up until near...the middle of the 19th century, 1850s, you know, composers had patrons subsidize them, kept them going, and looked after them. Then at some point they had to look after themselves. By the 1960s, record companies were providing that. People like Nick and Fairport were kept going by record companies who weren’t too worried about having to see a profit from everybody. But by the ‘80s, it’s all become very commercial. If the record company can’t see an immediate profit, basically you’re not going to get signed. Since then, record companies are now, as you said, milking the back catalogue, and that’s really where the money is coming from. And they’re not particularly interested in reinvesting it as far as I can see it. Maybe they haven’t got it to reinvest. I don’t know. It makes me fear for the advancement of music very far at all, apart from people making music in their bedrooms.

Mound:

You opened your mixing studio in 2011, and I find the philosophy behind it to be innovative and interesting, in that, as you said, it’s harder and harder for people to get signed or to get money invested in their recordings. So, in one interview I read, you talked about how everyone is recording digitally, and then they’re stuck with trying to mix “in the box.” You’re trying to provide them with the opportunity to transfer everything to analogue and mix properly. Could you talk about where you got that idea and why you decided to do that? It does seem to fill a real void in the industry today, since people are doing so much recording outside of proper studious.

Wood:

I mean, I’m getting very jaded. I actually have become more digital over the last three years. But that’s partly because of personal reasons.... I had to move houses. So I’ve now got more of a hybrid system than I had before.

It’s interesting. I’ve just been working on an album with a very talented bass player. He’s a singer/songwriter...plays the guitar, piano...he can play most instruments.... And pretty much what we did was we went into a studio that I know and...he wanted some drums on a track.... And he sends the track to the drummer to do at home. And frankly, it what comes back, I can’t mix it in because it just sounds so awful. It wouldn’t work.... In the end, we went back to the studio and got another drummer, and we actually recorded drums in a studio like I would normally, and it’s fine. It sits in [the mix].

I now find that when I get this stuff that people do in their front rooms.... I can’t work with it. I can’t make it gel into anything. I just come away with a frustration that I don’t get what I consider a cohesive mix. I can go into a studio and record piece by piece and get a cohesive mix. But this stuff that people do at home.... I can’t work with it.

Mound:

It seems like that’s one of the real problems with the current financial model in the industry. It relies on not investing much money into recording, which is obviously very different from when there weren’t many options to record at home. That forced people into studios, but it also had a lot more up-front costs.

Wood:

Interestingly enough, I think there’s an even more unfortunate dimension to this. I was reading an article in I think it was The Guardian a few months ago. And they were talking to people... partly [about COVID-19] lockdown, and partly about recording at home. And all these artists liked recording at home because it was safer. And because they could spend more time [recording]. And, of course, what that’s doing is completely changing the whole idea of performance. You know, you’re just sitting there doing it [by yourself]. I’ve always thought of music as being a cooperative venture, making music. I mean, forget recording. Just music, generally, as far as I can see, requires more than one person.... The organic creation, that’s what it’s about. And all of a sudden, now it isn’t. It’s all about one person. I don’t know, I just think it’s very much to the detriment of music as I know it.

Mound:

I’d like to ask you about working with John Martyn and Beverly Martyn. You did the two John and Beverly Martyn albums, and then you did John’s solo albums, Bless the Weather and Solid Air. What was your relationship with John and Beverly like? And what was it like working with John before his addiction issues took over his life?

Wood:

Well, working with John and Beverly was never working with a marriage made in heaven, I can tell you that. The reason that Stormbringer! was made the way it was — with John and Beverly — was originally it was Beverly who Joe wanted to record, not John and Beverly.

We tried recording Beverly a couple of times in London with different lineups, and it never really worked. We didn’t have a rhythm section, didn’t have any keyboard players that really seemed to work with her songs. So Joe decided to give it a go recording her in America and approached Paul Harris, who he’d known for a while, to see if Paul would be interested. So the plan was that Beverly would go over to Woodstock where Paul lived, they would work up the songs, and then Joe and I would go to New York and record it. Meanwhile, John and Beverly get married. So it then becomes what I term a “family business.” And it’s John and Beverly. So I go to New York, we’re recording, not just Beverly, but John as well. And I have to say that there was some tension, I suppose. Because I think John, in some ways, I realized that, you know, originally it was it was going to be Beverly’s project. And Beverly did go out of her way, I think, to try and make John, you know, feel he was part of it. But it was difficult.

But we made the record, and I think it’s a very good record. It was the first time I’d worked in a New York studio — recording in a New York studio with New York musicians — and I loved it, and they were great. And it taught me again, yet again, get the right people for the job, and, you know, no amount of fiddling about in the control room is going to make it any better.

Then, we did the second [John and Beverley album, The Road to Ruin], which was done in England, but we brought over Wells Kelly to play drums on that. And Paul [Harris] played piano and keyboards. By that time, I think the animosity between Joe and John was beginning to show itself a bit more. It wasn’t a happy record to make. I don’t remember...having a great time making it. And then, of course, Joe’s production company runs into financial problems, and it all goes tits up.

Joe’s leaving present to me was to say, “Do you think you could make a solo record with John Martyn for £2,000?” And I said, “Well, I’ll give it a go.” So after Joe had gone, I made Bless the Weather, and that’s my first record with a production credit.

Mound:

What are your memories of making that record?

Wood:

Memories are that we just got on with it. We did it. I got it in in-budget, and I thought it sounded [like] quite a nice little record. John didn’t complain too much. And that was it, really. I mean, I can tell you that I was responsible for hiring most of the musicians and put the cast together, as it were. I don’t think John even had an idea of anybody wanted to work with. That’s about as much as I can remember about it. Then... 18 months later or whenever it was along came Solid Air.

Mound:

I love that album. It’s an album that I come back to a lot in my listening. I wonder what your memories of making that album — and getting the sounds on that album — are?

Wood:

Well, my first memory of it is, when I got asked to do it, John had already decided who he wanted to use as musicians. I said, “Okay, fine,” and we booked it into Sound Techniques. We started, and the musicians he had — I can’t remember if [keyboardist] “Rabbit,” that’s John Bundrick, was on the first on that session or not, but certainly the bass player and drummer were nobody I’d worked with before — I didn’t think they were very good. And I don’t know quite why John had decided to get them.... To me it didn’t gel.

And in the course of the evening, I fell down the stairs at Sound Techniques. We had a very rickety, eccentric staircase. I caught my foot about two rungs down on the bottom, came down, sprained my ankle — [it] came out like a football — and I had to postpone. I think we got three nights booked, and we had to knock the next two out because I just couldn’t work. And luckily the bass player and drummer who we’d had were not available, because we had to postpone it for three weeks or something. [We] booked it into Basing Street because Sound Techniques next was booked. And [the original bass player and drummer] weren’t available. So I said, “All right, we’ll get Danny [Thompson] and Dave Mattacks,” which is what we did. Danny had also played, of course, on Bless the Weather, and I couldn’t understand why we hadn’t got Danny [originally], anyway.

So we went into Basing Street One, which is the big room. It’s an enormous room — you could get a 60 piece orchestra in it probably. And we stuck them in the middle of the studio: [John] ‘Rabbit’ [Bundrick] on clav (I think he played clav most of the time that evening), Mattacks on drums, Danny playing double bass, and John playing guitar. That’s how we started. So, basically, if I hadn’t fallen down the stairs, and John had had his way, I expect we would have fallen out, and I’d never done the album because I don’t think I’d ever finish working with those [original] musicians.

Mound:

How many tracks did Basing Street have at that time?

Wood:

We did it on 16 tracks. Both 16 track at Sound Techniques and 16 track at Basing Street. They had 3M machines we had a Studor. So, some of the tracks were done at Basing Street; some of the tracks were done at Sound Techniques....

None of the vocals were live. John was very insecure about his singing. It took quite something to get him into doing the vocals. I remember we ended up in Basing Street 2 one night very late doing vocals. I think one of them’s even triple tracked — without getting the tapes I’d never know these days, but I’m pretty sure we did triple track one. I don’t know.

He never seemed that happy about it. He wanted the sax and the vibes. I chose the players. Tristan [Fry] played vibe. Of course, you know, he’d already done a Nick Drake track a few years before. I still use him for other stuff. He was a great player, Tristan — classically trained. I got to know him through Harry Robinson who used to use him on commercials and film scores. The sax player [Tony Coe] was just about to go to America and join a band in America.... He’d been around for a few years. But again, I mean, John didn’t know any of those people.

I think “Rabbit” made a great contribution to the album. Because, you know, the whole thing with Danny and John [working together] went on from that, really. But it’s ironic that Danny nearly didn’t get on the album. So the partnership they formed afterwards was an enduring partnership, [which] I always find a slightly amusing.

Anyway, we mixed the album at Sound Techniques. Because of my background in mastering, I never felt there was anywhere in the U.K. that was really as good as Sterling [Sound] in New York, which is where I’d mastered a few times. And Island let me go to New York to cut the lacquers. Those are the days, eh? God! So, we’d sort of fixed the dates and everything. I’d got the flight booked and all the rest of it. And we were we were mixing the night before I was getting on the plane to go [to New York]! We get to “May You Never,” and...I don’t know how versions [John] had done of it. I think maybe we’re going to use one that he’d already done. I can’t remember. All I remember was, him sort of going on and moaning about it and saying, “Oh, I’m not sure...” And in the end, I just said, “For fuck’s sake, just go and get your guitar out in the studio and go and do it.” And that’s the version that’s on the record!

Mound:

So it was recorded the night before you went to master?!

Wood:

Yeah. Well, it was the night before I got the plane. I think the plane flew out on a Saturday morning. It was a Friday night [that we recorded it]. Flew out Saturday morning, [mastered] on the Monday, and flew back on the Tuesday or Wednesday with the lacquers.

Mound:

So you were involved from start to finish on Solid Air?

Wood:

Yeah. I supervised the mastering on just about every album I ever made, if I could. I wouldn’t walk away from a job before it was committed to bloody vinyl. Or, later, to digits.

Mound:

Why were you so focused on following albums through to the mastering?

Wood:

Because it’s the last chance, you know. In those days, people really didn’t take much notice about mastering. People were only beginning to realize it, but it’s the last chance you have before it hits the public. So the last the last thing you want is some idiot to mess it up! When I was running the turnkey mastering business for Levy’s, some record companies still regarded it as a factory issue, not a studio issue. And, in fact, Philips mastering and Pye’s were both located, in those days, at their pressing factories, not at their studios. So they didn’t regard it as part of the recording/production process.

Mound:

What are your thoughts on how mastering has evolved — or devolved — over the years with the “loudness wars”?

Wood:

I don’t like any of that stuff, I have to say. If it’s not loud enough for you, turn it up! But in popular music there is now a style, which I can only describe as “in your face,” I suppose.

Mound:

I’m curious, when you talked about your distaste for some of the reissues of albums that you worked on, is part of that due to the fact that some of the reissues have come out more compressed and less dynamic than the original versions?

Wood:

Well, it depends. Sometimes. It just depends. It depends who gets hold of it. It depends what their philosophy is. Since it’s very rare that anybody ever sends me anything of mine that’s been remastered, I don’t know a lot of the time. But Solid Air and all Nick’s albums and Kate and Anna McGarrigle, I’ve actually been involved in the remastering of all those.

Mound:

Which of your albums have you been able to remaster, or overseen recent remasters?

Wood:

I think that’s it. Well, and the Incredible String Band. I think The Incredible String Band, Kate and Anna, Nick (obviously), [and] John Martyn. That’s about it. I think that’s all. The record companies are too tight fisted to let me have anything to do with it, I suppose. I have been sent a recent Richard Thompson set, but I haven’t listened to it

Mound:

The Richard and Linda Thompson set? I have that here next to me, but I haven’t listened to it yet, either.

Wood:

Yeah. I haven’t listened to it.

Mound:

Are there any engineers who’ve remastered albums you’ve worked on that you think did a particularly good job?

Wood:

Well, no, because I’ve never heard it! I’m not gonna go out and buy it, for Christ’s sake. And I’m certainly not gonna buy any vinyl. I mean, that’s the other thing, if you really want to get me going is the vinyl nonsense.

Mound:

Are you a digital person?

Wood:

I’m not a digital person. I’m an audio person.

Mound:

What I mean is, do you prefer to listen to digital audio these days?

Wood:

Yeah. I can’t be arsed with a bloody turn table! Look, when I remastered Nick’s albums, you know, if I if I get out a remastered CD of Bryter Layter, okay? It doesn’t sound any worse or better than the vinyl. But if I wanted to play a vinyl album to the same degree of faithful reproduction — getting that off the vinyl that I can get off the CD — I’d be paying for a pickup and turntable and, I don’t know, a preamp, I’d be looking at about £500 or £600. Well, that’s nonsense.

Mound:

I’m actually an all-digital person myself, and I always ask people I interview what their personal listening habits are and where they come down in the digital/vinyl divide. I’ve never gotten into vinyl because, among other things, the surface noise has always bothered me.

Wood:

Well, you see the thing about that, there is one thing: Originally when CD came out, they made a big mistake. When they decided on 16 bit, 44.1 parameters, it was not a good idea. If they’d have done the job properly, they would have had a higher sample rate and at least 24 bit. So what tended to happen — and what still happens — is that...when I mix for instance, because obviously everything I do has to end up in digits, because nobody now is going to work off tape; or a few people might, but there’s no point to it — I don’t work on interleaved files, and I work at a high sample rate. And in that format, that’s good as — that is better! — than anybody would have been able to achieve off tape 20 years ago. You might achieve a bit better off tape now, but there wouldn’t be much difference.

When people go on about vinyl, the whole process of mastering, of cutting vinyl acetates, is fraught with — [and] you are talking to somebody who did it for many years, you know — it’s fraught with bloody problems, always. That you get more distortion on the inside of a record than you get on the outside of a record because the groove velocity is different. There are limitations in a vinyl system, just as there are limitations in a digital system.

But, of course, what happened originally, when digital CDs first arrived, record companies thought, “Oh, well, we just get the tape out.” [They] regarded it as a factory job. “We get the tape out, stick the tape on, and make a make a CD master. That’s it. Just press the ‘Go’ button, make CD master, send it to the factory, and ching up on the till.” And, of course, the early ones that came out sounded terrible! And it was partly because the converters weren’t very good. And that’s why analog sounded better.

So when I now remaster for digital or master for digital, the first thing [I’ll] do is... I’ll take my digital file —

and if it’s a new project, and I’m working off digital files — I’ll take digital files that aren’t interleaved, so that there’s more information [and you have] probably the benefit of slightly better information on separate left and right files, [and] I’ll be working at a high resolution. And the first thing I’ll do is I’ll convert them back to analog. Because if I’m going to tweak them with a bit of EQ or whatever, I’ll do it all in the analog domain.

I work just about always with Simon Heyworth, and Simon will have two or three different converters.

Mound:

What kind of converters do you use?

Wood:

Well, it just depends. I was just coming to that. We’ll listen to it maybe on Meitners, Prism, DSD. And we’ll decide which converter sounds best for the material, because depending what the material is, converters will sound different. Believe it or not.

Mound:

Oh, I agree with you! There are whole websites of people insisting they sound the same. But I agree that they sound different.

Wood:

[Laughs] Right. So we’ll go with the one that we like the best. Then we’ll tweak it in analog and whatever. And then at the end of the day we’ll resample it. But then we’ll decide, “What are we going to do?... [Which of the] the three or four different algorithms [are we going to] use when we resample it?” And again, one will suit [the material], and the others won’t. So we’ll use the one we like. That’s how I remaster now...[and] I’ve always mastered in digital that way.

Mound:

What’s your monitoring setup in terms of speakers or headphones?

Wood:

Well, at home... here I’m just sitting in front of some little Dynaudio BM...something or other...[with] eight inch drivers and a tweeter, bi-amped, and a subwoofer. And I’ve got an old pair of [Acoustic Research] AR 18s, which I’ve had for years. I’ve put new surrounds put on them, [and] I ought to really change the crossovers if I knew how to get into the damn things.

I will only use headphones occasionally if I want to pinpoint something very tightly in a stereo mix. But generally I don’t like headphones. See, this is another thing: If you’re going to listen to music on headphones, you probably should do a completely different balance to if you’re going to listen on speakers.

Mound:

Why is that?

Wood:

Well, because, you know, if you’re listening on speakers, and you’re at the apex of a triangle — if you draw a triangle between the speakers and you were at the apex — you would hear thins panned... my panning wouldn’t go that hard left and right. If I put on a pair of headphones, the panning will be accentuated, which is why I put a pair of headphones on if I want to check my panning.

Mound:

That makes sense.

Wood:

But then, you know, I don’t listen on headphones ever really. I mean...my setup in my living room, I’ve got a reasonable amplifier and player and a pair of Quad L300s or something — small Quad speakers. And again, that’s what I listen to. I don’t listen to anything on headphones, ever. Well, I’ve got things stuck in my ears to do this [interview]. But normally I wouldn’t have anything in my ears to listen.

Mound:

It’s interesting to hear that you listen to music for pleasure. Talking to Ken Scott, it was surprised that he said he didn’t listen to music anymore for fun.

Wood:

Well, I have to say that I don’t listen to much of the work [in my genre]. Most of my main genre of listening now is chamber music, actually. Got into it in the last couple of years.... There isn’t much pop music — or that would be classed as popular music — that I listened to or buy, because there isn’t much that I’m attracted to. I think Mavis Staples is the last [pop] record I actually purchased.

Mound:

The one produced by Jeff Tweedy?

Wood:

Yeah. I really like it. But there’s so little now.... You know, so I can understand what Ken’s saying. I’ve always had an interest in classical music, anyway. I mean, I still go to still go to concerts, you know. Well, used to! [Laughs] Not at the moment, of course. But yeah, you know, I still enjoy orchestral [music].

But there aren’t many artists that I’ve worked with that I’ve ever enjoyed gigs of, I have to say.

I’ve only ever been to three gigs as such that I’d really rate as memorable in my life. The first time The Band played New York — saw them at the Fillmore. [Laughs] Bowled me over! Bloody extraordinary. Just wonderful. And twice Ry Cooder. Once in London with [John] Hiatt... and [Jim] Keltner — Little Village was the band, which I thought was pretty good.

But apart from that... I mean, seeing the people I worked with was generally always disappointing. I think the only time — and I didn’t actually see it because I was recording it — [was] Richard [and Linda] Thompson... at the Oxford Poly, which you may be acquainted with. That was a live gig. I never saw it because I was in the truck, but it sounded incredible.

Mound:

You saw Ry Cooder with John Hiatt?! I’ve never seen Ry Cooder — and I’d love to — but I’ve seen John Hiatt a couple of times.

Wood:

Yeah. [Laughs] Hiatt went on tour with him. This would have been about 1980 or ‘81. In London.

Mound:

Circling back to Solid Air, are there any particular tracks you have memories of?

Wood:

Well, funnily enough, I remember all of them! After we’ve made the record, I thought it was a really good record, I have to say. I thought, “Oh, this is a really nice little [record].” [But] nobody from Island ever rang up and said, “Oh, we really like it,” or anything. I never had another bloody word! You know, they got the record, it came out, and nobody ever said anything much. And John said he didn’t really like it! So... [Laughs] Make of that what you will! I’m just grateful I get my 2%. [Laughs]

Mound:

[Laughs] What are your memories of recording the title track?

Wood:

I think my memory of that — and quite a lot of the sessions — was that the John a lot of the time couldn’t quite explain what he was playing to Danny and [the others], because he played in his own tunings. And I don’t think a lot of the time he knew quite what he was playing, if you see what I mean. And my memory, particularly of “Solid Air” was Danny and “Rabbit” John Bundrick working out what John was doing so they could play along with him.

Mound:

What about recording “I’d Rather Be the Devil” and the use of the Echoplex?

Wood:

Well, I’d already come across that with John before, so that was wasn’t a problem…. That was done at Sound Techniques. That’s Dave Pegg and Dave Mattacks, isn’t it, on that one?

Mound:

Did that pose any challenge with mixing that? Because one of the creative things about the track was that his guitar pans across the sound field and creates this wraparound atmosphere.

Wood:

Does it? I don’t know. I guess. I don’t remember. [Laughs] I don’t remember any problems doing it. You know? I mean, if it does, then it would have been my idea, I guess. I mean, I would have just thought, “That’s what we’re gonna do.”

Mound:

Well, you did a good job even if you can’t remember it! [Laughs]

Wood:

Yeah, I mean, those sort of things are just things that... you do at the time. I don’t know whether it’s conscious... I suppose it’s [done] consciously, you know.... [But] I’m not quick to go for effects. If I think I can hear reason for doing it, you know, I’ll do it. I don’t know. But, yeah, I probably did that. Sometimes there are things I’m conscious of doing. There’s a repeat on the drum track on [Pink Floyd’s] “Arnold Layne.” I remember coming up with that. It was a conscious decision to try that out years ago.... I remember doing something with finger cymbals on one of the Incredible String Band songs, too.... I often resort to effects when I don’t like something. [Laughs]

Mound:

I want to ask you about working with Richard and Linda Thompson. You did all of their albums except Shoot Out the Lights, is that correct?

Wood:

Yeah, that’s correct.

Mound:

I’m a big Richard Thompson fan. He’s someone one I’ve seen in concert several times. I’d love to hear your thoughts on working with Richard and Linda, generally, but I’d also love to ask you specifically about I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. One of the things that strikes me in listening to those albums is that you get a sense of their growth across those albums you did with them, but there’s also a unity of sound. Some of the echo on Richard’s vocals or the double-tracking on Linda’s vocals comes in and out across the albums. So you get the sense that you’re listening to a body of work from an artist, even as the albums don’t wholly sound the same.

Wood:

Well that’s true. I mean...you’re absolutely right. The most different sounding one is probably Hokey Pokey, when I made a conscious effort, actually, [laughs] to make the bass and drum sound different — a bit different. I seem to remember... I premixed the bass, the bass drum, and snare and, and stuck them all through a Fairchild limiter.... That’s for Hokey Pokey, and I think the rhythm sound is slightly different.... It’s been years since I played any of this stuff.

But Bright Lights is interesting because Richard was determined. He’d already made Henry [the Human Fly, Richard’s first solo album], which he was surprised when it basically got panned by the critics. And I think it had upset him a little. [Laughs] So when we [made] Bright Lights I remember him saying he was determined that none of the songs were going to be more than three minutes, and it was going to be snappy. And so it was.

Richard, talk about numbers: You’d be lucky to get three takes out of Richard.

He was very determined that he was going to use always, if he could, Simon [Nicol] playing rhythm guitar. I can’t remember if Simon’s playing rhythm on Bright Lights or not. I honestly can’t remember.

Mound:

I think just dulcimer on a track on Bright Lights.

Wood:

Oh, right. Richard would always just turn up with his beaten-up bloody amplifier, and I’d just stick a microphone in front of it, and that will be it. And, as I say, he would never do more than that about three takes.

[Drummer] Timi Donald...he really liked Timi, and I’m sure he liked Timi because would have been the nearest thing you could get in the U.K. to Levon Helm quite honestly. Very laid back, big walloping snare, and no complicated fills. If he hit the toms three times on a fill you’d be lucky. And Pat Donaldson [was on bass]. It was a very happy record to make. Everybody had a lot of fun making it. Linda was on form. I remember [laughs] Richard spending a long time teaching her the Andrews Sisters parts on “Bright Lights.”

And I just thought the songs were great. I always thought “The Great Valerio” would have been a really good song for Judy Collins. I don’t know why I’ve never suggested it to her. I did meet her years later. I should’ve suggested it.

It’s just, you know, a record of really good songs, and they’re played well. It just went down easily and quickly. What can I tell you? I think it cost all of about £5,000. God, they’ve made some money out of that at Island or Universal.

Mound:

You had mentioned about making Sound Techniques a little drier as time went on. Do you think I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is an example of that? It sounds to me to be a little more close mic’d than some of the studio’s earlier works.

Wood:

Well... By Bryter Layter the studio acoustics had been changed.... So it’s been quite a long time [by Bright Lights].... Joe took me to Boston [in 1968] to make a record when Jeff and Maria Muldaur called Pottery Pie. And while I was doing that, I had the studio acoustics changed. I used to fly back. I’d do a week in Boston, fly back, check the studio, and then fly back to Boston. Commuted for about a month. And we changed the studio acoustics then. Because I’d always felt it was okay when we were doing stuff for background music and orchestras and things, but it was you know, was not working for tight rock and roll or whatever you want to call it.

Mound:

So is the evolution between Bryter Layter and Bright Lights about having more tracks and a different console?

Wood:

Yeah, it might have been a different console. I can’t remember. I can’t remember when we change the console. I mean, Bright Lights is 16 track, but that wouldn’t have made much difference because we probably would only used [some of them].... Number of tracks never made that much difference, I don’t think....

[But] you’ve got to remember that Bright Lights has no live vocals on it. So it’s much easier to control everything if you haven’t got a vocal mic open in the middle of the studio. But the acoustics really didn’t change after [the Pottery Pie-era change].

And I think actually the first thing that would have been done — [or] one of the first things [that was done] — after we change the acoustics would have been Bryter Layter.

Mound:

Do you have any other memories of recording Bright Lights?

Wood:

When we recorded “There’s Nothing at the End of the Rainbow,” I thought, “By god, this is this is Richard at his doomiest.” [Laughs] But... there were probably a few times I would have thought we should have maybe tried another take, but you know, Richard wouldn’t hear it.

And the other thing I always felt frustrated with on every record I made with Richard was that he would not just wail away a bit on the guitar.... That’s why in the end I suggested — I don’t know, probably, I suppose I talked him into it, because I don’t think he was that keen — that we record some live gigs with the Island Mobile.... [So] we did the stuff at Oxford Poly....

Mound:

He gets close to wailing on the studio version of “Calvary Cross.”

Wood:

Yeah but, I mean, listen to “Night Comes In” at Oxford Poly... it’s just [amazing].

Mound:

He’s probably my favorite guitar player.

Wood:

The other thing that suppose I remember really about Richard [laughing] is the Richard and Jerry Donahue problem in my life. [Fotheringay and Fairport guitarist] Jerry Donahue always accused me of favoring Richard in some way. He thought that I must record Richard differently to the way I recorded him, because Richard sounded so differently. [He] didn’t sound like that. And I could only ever point out, “I just stick the same bloody microphone in front of his amplifier, Jerry. And that’s all I do.” And Jerry would come in with all these bloody devices to try and change his sound anyway. People just don’t realize it’s in and the fingers or whatever.

Mound:

You mentioned Kate and Anna McGarrigle before, and I love those first two albums. Can you tell me what made them some of your favorite artists and any memories of recording them?

Wood:

Yeah. Well, the first Kate and Anna record was an interesting experience. I was in New York to record with Joe, a Jeff Muldaur album called [Is] Having a Wonderful Time, which is another great experience for me (but not for anybody else, maybe). Anyway, and so were doing the two albums in New York, sort of simultaneously, working in A&R Studios. They had two locations...one on 48th Street, I think, and one on Sixth Avenue. And the Sixth Avenue one is the old Columbia studio from years ago. The one down on 48th Street is the same room as I’d recorded John Martyn’s Stormbringer!. So, [for] the Jeff Muldaur sessions, we’ve got Bernard Purdie and [Gerald] Jemmott and Cornell Dupree, and at Kate and Anna’s sessions, we’ve got Steve Gadd and Tony Levin. [Laughs] I mean, it’s just extraordinary to have the chance to work with musicians like this, you know?...

Anyway, Kate and Anna... just the songs [were great]. Kate’s songs, in particular, I just find the words extraordinary. I mean, I just think she writes great songs. And we had these great musicians. The rhythm section was just astounding, you know, and as good as the one we’re using for Jeff Muldaur, which is basically Aretha’s rhythm section. So we’ve got Aretha’s rhythm section, and...at that time Gadd and Levin were doing everything. I mean, they’d done [Paul Simon’s There Goes] Rhymin’ Simon and god knows what else you....

And when those two are girls singing in harmony it just melts you. It’s just such a great sound. And, I mean, the material, again. People who can write songs like “Jigsaw Puzzle of Life,” let alone “Heart Like a Wheel,” I mean, Jesus, it melts you!

I just think they’re incredible. So talented. Interestingly enough, though, [those albums] were quite hard work. They knew what they wanted…. In the same way that Nick was not going to take any nonsense, Kate and Anna were the same. They knew what they wanted. And it’s easier to work with people like that, generally.

Mound:

Something I just discovered while researching for this interview was that you worked with John Cale on what’s actually my favorite John Cale album, Fear, as well as a couple other albums of his. What are your memories of working with him?

Wood:

Yeah, I did indeed. I remember after we’d finished Fear, when we mixed it, he made me play it with the lights out. [Laughs] Cale was one of the more interesting people I ever worked with. But it wasn’t easy, that’s for sure.

Mound:

When did you start working with Cale?

Wood:

It started with Nico.... I was engineering this record [Desertshore] for Joe with Nico, which we used to do every evening after mixing Fairport. We’d been [in New York] down on 23rd Street at Vanguard studios, staying at the Chelsea Hotel, which was next door. At six o’clock, Cale and Nico would arrive, and we’d start recording them. It was hard to get to sleep after that, I can tell you.... Then years later, by the time I was working with John [Cale], Jo Lustig for some reason or other got involved with an independent deal for Nico with Island, and that’s an album called The End. I did that with John as well with Nico. So I did two Nico albums and lived to tell the tale.

Mound:

Were those challenging albums to make?

Wood:

Um... yeah. [Laughs] Working with John Cale was always challenging in one way or another.

Mound:

What made it challenging?

Wood:

Challenging in terms of eccentricity. Eccentric behavior, think, would be the nicest way I could put it.

Mound:

Do you have any John Cale anecdotes that are shareable?

Wood:

Not really! The biggest mistake of my life maybe came about because of John. As you may know, John...produced the first Patti Smith album [Horses], and John asked me if I would go to New York and do it with him. He said, you know, “The management want to know how much you’d charge them.” And I thought, “Do I really want to be in New York with Jon Cale?” [Laughs] Because it’s hard enough him being generally out of control in London. God knows what it’s going to be like back in New York, in his home territory. So I didn’t sort of bend over backwards, shall we say? I put a figure on it, which...I can’t remember how much money I wanted, but it wasn’t peanuts. And this is before the days of budget flights. You could only get economy or first class. And I said I wanted first class round trip. [Laughs] Plus the fee, plus, accommodation. And they balked at the first class ticket, so I never went. [Laughs] Otherwise, I would have been in New York, struggling through the first Patti Smith album with Cale, which I don’t think went too well.

Mound:

So in retrospect you wish you had worked with Patti Smith?

Wood:

Well, yeah, I mean, she’s somebody I think is very interesting, and [working with her] would have been, I’m sure. And she actually did mention me in an interview — I’ve still got the cutting somewhere — that she’d liked Cale’s records and she liked the sound of them or something.

Mound:

Those are great sounding records. As I said before, when I was researching for this interview, I didn’t know you engineered them, since I always primarily associated you with British folk music.

Wood:

Well, yeah, I mean, I do get fed up with people thinking all I ever do is bloody folk music. I mean, Squeeze weren’t exactly a folk band. [Laughs]

Mound:

But I love the sound of those mid-’70s Cale records. Fear has so many amazing sounds, like the title track, “Buffalo Ballet,” and “Gun.” Sonically they’re all such diverse and interesting albums.

Wood:

Well, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve been doing it long enough, they shouldn’t be bad sounding, should they? Otherwise people wouldn’t have been hiring me. So I don’t know.

But it’s interesting, I find it quite depressing now, you know, that so... people don’t really seem to care about sound or studios, particularly anymore. You know, people don’t design studios anymore for people to sit and play in. It seems to be a something that nobody concerns themselves about anymore. It’s like everybody’s going to be stuck in a booth.

The two greatest sounding rooms that I’ve ever worked in, probably, were what used to be Olympic 1 —

before it was sold to Virgin and they fucked it up by getting some Japanese wizkid into [re]design it — and the old studio of A&R’s, which had been Columbia’s studio before that. They were just such great rooms. I mean, there’s just something about them. But they were designed as spaces to record in in a way that broadcasting studios are designed — that didn’t have to be live and make enormously stupid drum sounds that sounded like kitchen cupboard falling down stairs. You know, they were designed for things to sound the way they should sound.

There was this program the other night on television about Blue Note Records and Rudy van Gelder was on it. People like that and studios like that have all gone out of the window. Purpose-built rooms where everybody could sit and play are things of the past now, or seem to be. Abbey Road’s still like that, I suppose, but very few [are] left.

Mound:

What are your memories of working with Squeeze?

Wood:

Oh, very happy ones, generally. I mean, Squeeze were great. That was through Cale, again. I mean, they were originally thought of as part of the punk scene in Britain. And so the guy who managed them, Miles Copeland, obviously thought it’d be a good idea to get Cale involved. You know? Velvets. Punk. Blah-de-blah-de-blah. So he got Cale over to produce an album with them. Cale recorded this album, pretty much finished it somewhere down in Sussex, I think, and I suddenly got a phone call from him [asking] would I like to go and mix it for him. So I said yeah. You know, why not? It’s a job, isn’t it?

So I turn up at Morgan Studios, and there they are. They haven’t finished. They’re still doing a few overdubs. And Cale is being pretty maniacal in the studio, as is his wont. Nothing is very under control — certainly not John. And we do a couple of days, and I think we might have tried to do one mix. But anyway, the whole thing’s getting out of hand.

And the next thing that happens is I turn up the third day and John doesn’t. So I just get on without him, and in the end, he never comes back.

So then we’ve mixed everything they’ve recorded, and the record company says, “Well, we haven’t got a single, you know. So Glenn [Tilbrook, Squeeze’s lead singer and guitarist] says to me, “Well, we’ve got this song, we can record, but I want a sequencer and a drum machine...” And this is 1979, I suppose. Sequencers and things like that weren’t that common in those days. I found some bloke who’s got a sequencer and knows how to use it. I don’t know how on earth I found him. And I row him in, and we get a drum machine, and we sit in the studio, and we record “Take me, I’m yours,” which is a hit.

And that’s how I came start working with Squeeze.

Mound:

That self-titled album, and the next two you produced, are now regarded as classic “power pop” albums that defined that sound.

Wood:

Well, the unique thing about their sound — and I never managed to recreate it after “Take Me I’m yours,” because [on that song] they sang in octaves between them, Chris [Difford] and Glenn, and so I sent it through an Eventide flanger; I don’t know why, but anyway, they liked it, and I liked it, but I never actually ever got it back again... [because] there weren’t many other [songs] they ever did that octave thing on —

but the extraordinary thing about Squeeze, which is just basically just Tilbrook and Difford, is that... they are very English... and Difford is a brilliant lyricist, there’s no two ways about it, but his lyrics don’t mean much in America. They’re just so English-rooted.... It’s like Ray Davis of The Kinks, same thing, you know?

Mound:

I think that’s a good comparison.

Wood:

And it’s a shame [they’re not appreciated more widely]

Mound:

Well, I still like The Kinks and Squeeze. So at least some Americans do. But it definitely involves Google sometimes to understand a reference.

Wood:

Oh, yes. Yeah, I mean, my favorite Squeeze songs is “Up the Junction,” but that wouldn’t ever mean anything much to an American. But it’s a brilliant lyric. I mean, the song is extraordinary. It doesn’t have a chorus, and it tells a whole life story in, I don’t know, four verses, five verses. I mean, it is extraordinary.

And he still has it. Chris has still got it. I did some stuff with Chris 10 years ago when he and Glenn were not talking. [Laughs]. And the lyrics are just extraordinary. Very, very talented pair. Very fond of them both.

Mound:

One random thing I wanted to ask about is that I saw you did some mixing for the recent Gene Clark No Other box set. How did that come about?

Wood:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. [It happened] purely because I knew the Sid Griffin who did the book... [or] a lot of the research on it. And I’d worked with Sid before a couple of times on projects. That’s how [No Other] came about. Interesting, very interesting. I think that whole record, you know, strikes me — having worked on the original takes before the [released version] — it’s one of those classic record company things where the record company suddenly starts dictating the way it should be and get some other bloke in and starts putting on the girl singers and everything else, you know. And suddenly it all loses its direction.

That’s a case of me shooting myself in the foot, isn’t it? [Laughs] Saying that the alternate versions may be more interesting than the later finished versions.

Mound:

I was thinking of that when you mentioned your dislike of reissues with alternate takes earlier, because that’s an example of an album where the reissue is trying to recapture what it would’ve sounded like before the record company got involved.

Wood:

Well yeah, I mean, I’ve had a few other instances of record companies screwing up projects, but there you go.

Mound:

You’ve already given me so much of your time, but is there anything else that you’d like to talk about?

Wood:

I don’t know…. Something that frustrates me now is the reliance that maybe the current generation of artists and maybe producers and engineers all put on technology.

You know, I get so many questions about, you know, “What mic preamp did you use on this? And what microphones do you use? And what did you on such and such?” And all of that stuff. And I think, “Well, fuck’s sake!” I mean, the discipline that I had to learn was to get on with what I’d got, and make it work. And maybe as you got a bit richer, you made a bit more money, you invested a bit more in equipment. But basically the way a record sounded was not because I was using a certain microphone or a certain mic camp... or whatever, it’s because that’s the way artist was. And there’s just so much reliance now put on all this [technology] that I just find it rather sad, I suppose....

When I was working in studios, tape ops couldn’t make a mistake, because if you made a mistake when you pressed the record button, you’d wipe something out forever. People don’t just think you can go on [recording] forever now. You know, “We’ll just do another track, and then we’ll cut this in, and we’ll do that.” So there’s no edge anymore.

One of my fondest memories of recording Sandy [Denny] — although I don’t like the song much — is when we recorded the song “I’m A Dreamer” on the Rendezvous album, the last album she did... We went into Basing Street...in 1979 or’ 80, or whatever it was. We had Harry [Robertson, the arranger] there. We had the string section. We had her playing the piano and singing. We had the rhythm section. And we did it all in a one-r. And the tape op had never seen that done before. It sets everybody’s adrenaline going because you know you got to get it right. And the drums sound wonderful particularly when I push the string mics up.... [The drums] come floating down the string mics. It sounds like a [Phil] Spector record. I love it. But nobody would do that these days.

Mound:

I think oftentimes the emphasis on technology is people wanting to recreate a sound that, as you said, actually doesn’t come down to the technology.

Wood:

The bloody sound of a record is the last thing you worry about. The first thing you worry about is the material, and the next thing is the performance. Sound’s way down the list. But anyway…

Mound:

Well thank you so much for talking with me. 

Wood:

I hope I don’t get upset too many people. [Laughs]

Note: The interview has been transcribed and edited from a recording of the interview for clarity with the goal of accurately conveying the meaning of each statement. Various “ums” and other unnecessary asides, from interviewer and interviewee, have been excised for clarity.

About the Author

Josh Mound has been an audiophile since age 14, when his father played Spirit's "Natures Way" through his Boston Acoustics floorstanders and told Josh to listen closely. Since then, Josh has listened to lots of music, owned lots of gear, and done lots of book learnin'. He's written about music for publications like Filter and Under the Radar and about politics for publications like New Republic, Jacobin, and Dissent. Josh is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia, where he teaches classes on modern U.S. politics and the history of popular music. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife and two cats.