01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 INTRODUCTION 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Led Zeppelin. The Rolling Stones. The Beatles. Eric Clapton. Van 21 Halen. 22 Let’s start off with a little quiz. Which one of the above doesn’t 23 belong? 24 Maybe you’re thinking Eric Clapton because he’s the only single 25 artist, not a band, on the list. Or maybe Van Halen because their 26 heyday was in the 1980s, and the others were a decade or two be- 27 fore. But you’d be wrong on both counts. The outlier in this list is 28 actually the Beatles. All the rest of the artists are linked by one per- 29 son: a man named Andy Johns. 30 Cavernous, thunderous, terrifying even, the opening bars of Led 31 Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” constitute possibly the most 32 beloved drum intro of all time. The track, and especially that intro, 33 is seminal, a sonic benchmark thousands of bands, including some 34 of the most successful acts in rock history, aimed for or were in- 35 spired by. As the music recording magazine Sound on Sound noted S36 in a piece on drum recording, it’s “one of the most sought-​­after N37 1 9781591846345_Invisibles_TX_p1-248.indd 1 03/04/14 7:55 PM 2 ▲ INVISIBLES 01 sounds in rock.” The drum loop has also been widely sampled all 02 over the musical map, from the Beastie Boys to Björk, Eminem to 03 Enigma. Even if you don’t know “When the Levee Breaks,” you’ve 04 heard these drums or their imitations. 05 Ubiquitous now, we take for granted how radical the sonics of 06 (Zeppelin drummer) John Bonham’s drums were in 1971, when the 07 band’s fourth album was released. As studio technologies were ad- 08 vancing at the time, the trend was toward more mics and more gear 09 in general. On many recordings of the era bands were using multiple 10 mics on the drum kit, usually with one near the bass drum. Also, for 11 some time a more “deadened” and close drum sound, popularized 12 by the Beatles’ later recordings, had been gaining popularity. Yet 13 Johns, as the album’s recording engineer, the person responsible for 14 getting the band’s sounds on tape, tried something counterintuitive, 15 and revolutionary in a way, to achieve such an exceptionally massive 16 sound—​­he took just two microphones and hung them over a banis- 17 ter high above a staircase that was in the room where Bonham was 18 pounding away. (The band recorded in an eighteenth-​­century coun- 19 try house rather than a traditional studio, enabling them to incorpo- 20 rate its varied acoustics, such as the stairwell, in the recordings.) He 21 also compressed the signal and ran it through an echo unit, effects 22 which, utilized together, made the overall performance sound si- 23 multaneously louder yet more distant, key to its mesmerizing quality. 24 When we think of our favorite songs, we think of the artists per- 25 forming them. Perhaps if you’re a serious music fan, you’ll know 26 who produced the tracks. But we never think of the engineer, which 27 truly is an oversight. The unusual production on “When the Levee 28 Breaks” is “arguably one of the most significant factors in its popu- 29 larity and longevity,” wrote Aaron Liu-​­Rosenbaum, now a profes- 30 sor of Music Technology at Laval University in Quebec, in the 31 Journal on the Art of Record Production. 32 Johns didn’t achieve this sound alone. Of course, Bonham’s per- 33 formance is what this all rests on, and Jimmy Page, the band’s gui- 34 tar player and producer, is widely credited, and rightfully so, as the 35 mastermind behind much of Zeppelin’s oeuvre. But it takes nothing 36S away from Page and Bonham to acknowledge Johns’s critical role. 37N He was a highly skilled craftsman, who married a deep technical 9781591846345_Invisibles_TX_p1-248.indd 2 03/04/14 7:55 PM INTRODUCTION ▲ 3 knowledge with an artistic gift for knowing how to get that sound 01 on so many recordings. Beyond Led Zeppelin IV, Johns engineered 02 nearly all of that band’s most successful records, plus the Rolling 03 Stones classics Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street, and numer- 04 ous other acclaimed albums. This man’s stamp is on some of the 05 most widely shared cultural touchstones of a generation. Yet, other 06 than a blip of recognition following his death in April 2013, he, and 07 his work, have remained invisible. 08 09 ▲ 10 11 7:30 p. m. Peter Canby shuffles a stack of marked-up article proofs, 12 flicks off his desk lamp, and finally shuts down his iMac for the day. 13 He has pored over a journalist’s notes for a particularly sensitive 14 piece, double-​­checked quotes from a “blind” source formerly in the 15 CIA, held a meeting with a writer and his magazine’s attorney over 16 concerns of libel, and instructed a new employee that she needed to 17 be versed in the vocabulary of genetic coding before attending a 18 screening of the sci-fi flick Prometheus, because its review, which 19 she later had to check, had a line about a disintegrating humanoid’s 20 “ DNA-​­laden chromosomes” sinking into water. No minutia is too 21 minute for the fact- ​­checkers Canby oversees at The New Yorker. 22 The requirements to work in his department, beyond possessing a 23 savant level of meticulousness, are stiff. More than half of the six- 24 teen fact-​­checkers are fluent in a second language, among them 25 Mandarin, Hebrew, Arabic, Urdu, and Russian, along with the 26 usual French and Spanish; the majority have advanced degrees, in- 27 cluding the expected Journalism and Comp. Lit. masters, plus an 28 LSE grad, and the errant Oxford PhD program dropout; and “many 29 stay only a few years before leaving because the pace is brutal,” says 30 Canby. 31 The fact-​­checking department’s work is an unseen anchor to the 32 celebrated writing that makes this august magazine’s reputation. 33 “We influence the way our journalists do their reporting and how 34 editors edit their pieces,” says Canby, who has led the department 35 since 1994. And yet Canby and the fact-​­checkers at The New Yorker S36 know you will not see their names in the magazine. No bylines, no N37 9781591846345_Invisibles_TX_p1-248.indd 3 03/04/14 7:55 PM 4 ▲ INVISIBLES 01 biographical sketches that the authors enjoy. They are invisible to 02 the reader. That is, unless they make a mistake. 03 Canby and his charges are by any account extremely bright, 04 hardworking people whose traits could likely bring them success in 05 myriad jobs, in journalism or elsewhere, that would gain them some 06 recognition from the reader or other end user. But Canby relishes 07 the behind-​­the-​­scenes work. “Even though our names aren’t out 08 there we take a great deal of pride in the final product, being part of 09 a process that contributes to the way people think about issues of 10 the day,” he says. “That’s our satisfaction.” 11 Understandably, we forget that there are people like Peter Canby 12 and Andy Johns making things happen for the stars out front. By 13 the nature of their work, they don’t make themselves known. And to- 14 day, by many accounts, increasingly fewer people with the means to 15 choose their career are pursuing paths like theirs, where they and 16 the results of their labor are invisible. But Canby, Johns, and others 17 like them know something that you will be surprised to learn: re- 18 ceiving outward credit for your work is overrated. 19 20 ▲ 21 22 How do you define success? If your search for prosperity is based on 23 an arms race of external rewards and tireless self- ​­promotion, of 24 one-​­upmanship, the kind where frantic parents hold their kinder- 25 garteners back a year to theoretically give them a leg up over their 26 younger peers—​­a trend known as “redshirting”—then you are free 27 to pursue this too-​­often futile course toward alpha dog status. But 28 if you come to define success, in both business and in life, as phi- 29 losophers and religions have for millennia, by the satisfaction de- 30 rived from work itself and not the degree of attention you receive for 31 it, people like Johns and Canby— ​­the Invisibles—​­offer a model you 32 would do well to follow. Ask yourself: Do I want to be on a tread- 33 mill of competition with others, or do I want to find lasting reward 34 by challenging myself? 35 I started exploring a group I’ve named the Invisibles because I 36S was fascinated by people who chose to do work that required exten- 37N sive training and expertise, that was critical to whatever enterprise 9781591846345_Invisibles_TX_p1-248.indd 4 03/04/14 7:55 PM.