HUGH PADGHAM He Helped to Defi Ne the Sound of the 1980S—And Kept Right on Innovating by Howard Massey
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JUNE 2010 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM PRODUCER Capitol Studios HUGH PADGHAM He helped to defi ne the sound of the 1980s—and kept right on innovating By Howard Massey IT WAS THE DRUM BREAK HEARD ’ROUND THE WORLD. Police. A couple of years later, the Police brought Padgham on Phil Collins’ 1981 debut solo single, “In the Air Tonight,” quietly board to co-produce their massive hit album Ghost in the Machine. simmered for a full three minutes and 40 seconds—then erupted From there, Padgham went on to helm albums by Paul McCartney, without warning into 10 thunderous notes on Collins’ tom-toms that David Bowie, Melissa Etheridge, Genesis and many other artists, air drummers have been joyously pounding out ever since. as well as several Sting solo albums. Along the way, he has won The enormous gated-reverb drum sound that would help to four Grammys in four different categories, including Producer of defi ne the sound of the 1980s was in large part the creation of the Year. Hugh Padgham (discovered while engineering Peter Gabriel’s third Padgham’s ultra-clean signature sound had a major impact album), and it loudly announced the arrival of a major production on the shift from the close-miked sounds of the ’70s to the open, talent. Padgham’s career had started at London’s Advision Studios, ambient sounds of the ’90s and beyond. “I often spend more time where he served as tea boy (the British equivalent to a runner). He pruning down than adding things,” he says. “Doing so can often moved to Lansdowne Studios in the mid-’70s and received formal require a musician to learn or evolve an altogether different part to training, quickly rising through the ranks to chief engineer. In 1978, be played, so that what was two tracks is now one track. Every song he took a job at Richard Branson’s Townhouse Studios, where he is different, of course, but I’m always looking for ways to simplify engineered albums for artists like XTC, Yes, Gabriel and Collins. and reduce.” From his West London studio, SofaSound, Padgham It was at Townhouse that Padgham fi rst met Sting, the singer, shared his unique perspective on the evolution of record-making bass player and primary songwriter for a young band called the through the past three decades. ‘For me it always comes down to one simple question: Does it sound any good?’ 4848 M mag 4.indd 48 6/15/10 11:38:24 PM JUNE 2010 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM Do you spend a lot of time in records nowadays is that the concept of preproduction? things sounding good rarely comes into it. I’ve always tried to do as little preproduction It used to be that you would run down to the as possible, because I find that whatever you record store to buy a particular new album think you’ve achieved in preproduction often because you knew it was going to be a work tends to be not what you thought it was—you of art sonically. You’d race home and put it won’t know if the drummer can or cannot on the best stereo you could find. And it really play until you get him into the studio, was an amazing experience listening to it. for example. Even though the economics Sadly, nowadays, kids grow up listening to nowadays dictate that you be as prepared everything on earbuds. It’s almost a complete as possible, preproduction doesn’t always reverse evolution, really. If you look at video work out to be the best way to accomplish With Phil Collins at the quality, things have evolved forward, from that. Unfortunately, lack of time or budget 1985 Grammy Awards VHS to DVD to high-def. But in the world of sometimes prevents you from doing a lot of audio, it seems that things have gotten worse experimenting, and that’s a problem when What do you tell them? and worse. We’ve gone from vinyl to CD— working with new artists in particular. It’s nice Well, I hope they’ll come to that conclusion and the early CDs sounded way worse than when you have a longstanding professional themselves when they hear it played back. vinyl—and now we’ve gone to MP3s, which relationship with an artist and you know Still, I always subscribe to the idea that it’s sound even worse than the earliest CDs. not my record, it’s the artist’s record; I’m Personally, I think the era of the disc is well making it for them. So all I can do is ask the and truly gone. Hopefully our file sizes will artist, “Are you really happy with that? Or get bigger—meaning better quality audio— are you going to be embarrassed when you and so too will storage capacity. I really hope ‘What lies ahead is hear that in five years’ time?” that, as memory becomes cheaper and more prevalent, we’ll be able to restore the quality exciting, and you What if the artist is happy with a part of audio. Soon there will be massive flash but you feel that it’s embarrassing? drives with high bus speeds, and hopefully can’t stay rooted I occasionally had that problem with Sting, then we’ll be able to at least store good who sometimes couldn’t be bothered, or quality uncompressed audio. People won’t in the past.’ thought what he’d done was good enough. notice files that are 10 times the size of Usually I’d just fix it when he wasn’t looking. MP3s if you actually have 10 times the space But if there’s a conflict with the artist, it’s to store them in. Or perhaps there will be what vocal chain sounds best on them for a like a conflict in any job or any aspect of new forms of compression invented that will ballad, for example. The last thing you want life. You talk it through and either you come preserve the full quality audio. Or maybe we’ll is for them to have sung their best while you to a compromise or one person wins and all just be wired into a central server. The were busy fiddling with a compressor and so gets their way. People usually get over it, problem with that is, what happens when you the level was moving up and down. though. If I have a really strong feeling about lose service? There will be caching schemes, something that the artist disagrees with, I’ll When is a recording complete? say, “Look, it’s your record, not mine; if you For me it always comes down to one simple really want it to be like that, that’s fine … as question: “Does it sound any good?” long as it’s not embarrassing.” (laughs) Sometimes you run into situations when you suddenly think, “I’m not so sure this sounds How do you feel the role of the producer good anymore.” That’s when you realize that has changed during your career? the last thing you added didn’t need to be The main role used to be quality control, but there. “Less is more” sounds like a cliché, but one of the worrying things about making it often is true, and it often takes a lot of effort to have less rather than more. I have one criteria which is probably my bottom line: Is it embarrassing or not? If somebody is singing and it’s really out of tune, that to me would sound really embarrassing if you put it out on a record. A guitar part could be the kind of thing you’d play when you were in your first band in school, when you were 13 or 14 and playing a lot of crap. Something that goes back to the days when the guitar player was focusing so hard on getting the chord shape or string bend right that he couldn’t put any feeling into it. Those moments are tough for me, because I find myself thinking, “Oh my God, what am I going to tell them?” At work during the mid-1990s With Sting in the 1980s 49 M mag 4.indd 49 6/15/10 11:38:48 PM JUNE 2010 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM PRODUCER With the Bee Gees In the studio in the mid-1990s in the ’90s I’m sure, and hopefully they will improve all proper musical background. They’re much was complaining. The people associated with the time as well. What lies ahead is exciting, more into trends rather than something being them were making good money—nowhere and you can’t stay rooted in the past. good. If something is on the front page of near the huge amounts of money the record the newspapers, they want to sign it, and labels were making, but good money—so you Another contributing factor to a decline then all the other labels want to sign the put up with it, just as you put up with the in quality is shrinking budgets. same thing. In fact, very often, labels sign fact that you weren’t going to get paid That’s true, and, as a producer, I fi nd that artists just to stop other labels from getting anything from certain foreign territories very frustrating. These days, the budgets are them, not because they really believe because of bootlegging. You were just so small that the only way you can make an in them.