Intro CHRISTIAN: Hello. You’re listening to A2er The Session. My name is Chris;an Cummings, and this is Season 0, Episode 5 with my good pal, produCer/engineer/mixer David Cole. You know David’s work with The Steve Miller Band, CAKE, Melissa Etheridge, huge hits with Bob Seger, RiChard Marx; he also worked with Tina Turner. He also worked on some of Christopher Guest’s projeCts – “A Mighty Wind,” “Best in Show,” “Wai;ng for Guffman.” He was a staff engineer at Capitol, among other things, and has had a very storied Career. I’ve known David Cole – or DC, as a lot of people Call him – for several years, and I Can’t say enough great things about the guy. First off, he donated his ;me to be my guinea pig as the first-ever guest on this podCast. What you’re about to hear is the first aZempt I ever made at doing this podCast, and he graciously sat down to let me piCk his brain about his Career, and he didn’t need to do it. So I really, really appreCiate his ;me and energy and effort. The dude is very talented and has a lot of valuable informa;on to share with all of us. In fact, I should men;on that A2er The Session – the name of this podCast, yep – I owe Credit to David Cole for that name. He Came up with it a2er a Conversa;on prior to the podCast, and it stuCk. If you guys have been enjoying he shows up to this point, do me a huge favor and rate us in iTunes and share the podCast with your friends. That’s really how we’re going to find an audienCe, is via soCial media by you guys sharing if you like it. So definitely, if you like it, let people know. I hate to ask, it’s kind of CliChé and all that jazz, but I guess it’s sort of par for the Course. Having said that, let’s move forward. I’m going to play three or four snippets of musiC from David Cole’s disCography. Here you go: A2er The Session, Season 0, Episode 5, with produCer/engineer/mixer David Cole. Interview CHRISTIAN: WelCome to the first-ever A2er The Session podCast. You’re David Cole. Thank you for being on the podCast; I really appreCiate it. DAVID: Thanks. Pleasure to be here. CHRISTIAN: As I men;oned earlier, I appreCiate you helping me hash this out, figure it out. DAVID: It’s all good. I think there’s a lot of informa;on out there that people might be interested in, and if I Can help you seed this projeCt, then I’m all for it. CHRISTIAN: Yeah, it’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s the first step on a big journey for me. DAVID: Right on. CHRISTIAN: Do you mind talking a liZle bit about yourself and where you Came from? DAVID: Do the elevator speeCh? CHRISTIAN: Yeah. DAVID: I got my start playing in bands in high sChool. I played guitar and sang. But I figured out when I was about 18 that it wasn’t going to be a Career. I enjoyed musiC, I loved musiC, I grew up listening to tons and tons of musiC; my parents had a turntable, I would listen on headphones and was just engrossed in how musiC was made and how it was put together. But I didn’t think I Could be a traveling musiCian. That didn’t appeal to me. I was on this track to be a photographer and was this Close to going to photography sChool when I made the mistake of reCording with one of my bands. We went in this Crappy liZle outside and reCorded stuff, and I looked in the booth and I saw this guy – the Wizard of Oz with all the Cool gear. He was direC;ng us in how to sing and perform and whiCh way to address the miCrophone. I thought, “This is the Coolest thing ever! How is this a Career?” Well, I did some researCh, I knoCked on every door in Hollywood, I got thrown out of a bunCh of studios, and finally got some adviCe whiCh I thought was preZy brilliant: go get an EleCtroniCs degree, beCause there’s lots of signal flow and impedanCe and frequenCies and numbery stuff that you need to know. So I went to sChool and I got an EleCtroniCs degree. CHRISTIAN: And they were right. DAVID: Yeah, they were totally right. I got enough experienCe under my belt that when I did go back around a2er gradua;ng, I got my foot in the door at Capitol ReCords. It was to make tape Copies, so not a very glamorous job, but I was in the round building, and that was MeCCa for me. CHRISTIAN: Capitol ReCords, if you don’t know what it is and you’re listening, Capitol ReCords is the big round building in Los Angeles proper. DAVID: That’s the one that always Collapses in every disaster movie. It’s the first thing to go. CHRISTIAN: Gets destroyed or blown up, yeah. DAVID: The UFOs aim for that, and the Hollywood sign is next. CHRISTIAN: There’s Corporate offiCes in there – I don’t really know what the layout is in there Currently, but there’s a big reCording studio in there, obviously. DAVID: Yeah, the first two floors are all reCording studios, edi;ng rooms, mixing rooms, mastering rooms. It was my post-graduate work there. I got to learn how to do disC mastering. I was a part of some ClassiCal reCording sessions; lots of roCk, pop, R&B stuff Came through there. It was a great place for me to grow up, really. CHRISTIAN: Who were some of your mentors at Capitol when you first got there? Also, if you’re not aware of Capitol, it’s got a really elaborate history. It’s been there for a very long ;me. DAVID: The building itself was 1955, I believe. Before that they were at Radio ReCorders down on Melrose. One of their first reCords was the Bozo the Clown reCord. CHRISTIAN: [laughs] Really? How about that. DAVID: Certainly Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, The Beatles, The Beach Boys. I mean, Come on, it was… CHRISTIAN: All that happened at Capitol. DAVID: All that happened through Capitol ReCords, though I don’t think The Beatles ever set foot in the building as a group, per se. But you asked me about mentors, and the guy who took the ;me to interview me as a young, wannabe up-and-Comer was a guy named John Kraus. He was an engineer at Capitol; he was managing the studios at the ;me, and was kind of on that end of the Curve of his Career. He got a Couple of Grammys for engineering the Stan Freberg reCords. Stan Freberg was kind of the early Weird Al/poli;Cal humorist, and those were done at Capitol as well, Stan Kenton and lots of other stuff. But John spent the ;me with me and saw something in me that validated him hiring me, the idea that I was going to be an engineer someday. He saw something and gave me a shot. CHRISTIAN: An intangible X factor he saw in you. DAVID: Yeah, whiCh was Cool. They had staff produCers back then who would Come into the studio and use the studio. They’d want to Cut demos and stuff to see if they wanted to sign an ar;st. So every now and then a produCer would Come downstairs – they didn’t have a budget for an outside engineer; they just used the staff guy, and that was me lots of ;mes. So I got to do a lot of projeCts with a guy named John Carter, who everybody just Called “Carter.” Carter signed The Motels back in the day, he did Sammy Hagar. He signed Sammy to the label, Co-wrote and produCed a bunCh of those hits by Sammy, and years later he would manage Sammy during the ChiCkenfoot era. But Carter and I did Tina Turner together. I did a bunCh of demos with him and Tina to try and get her signed. People didn’t want to sign her. CHRISTIAN: Yeah, let me ask you about that. What was the story with Tina Turner? Can you give me an approximate ;meframe here? When was this happening? DAVID: Oh jeez. “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” It’s that album, so whenever that is. CHRISTIAN: I don’t know. So this is around that ;me period? DAVID: Yeah, the Private DanCer album, the breakout single was “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” She was post-Ike & Tina and was doing hotel gigs or whatever to just make ends meet. Everybody thought she was on the other side of her suCCess Curve, but Carter was nuts about her and had an idea and a vision. In order to get people to even submit songs for her to reCord, we had to go in-studio and show people, “this is the kind of stuff we’re looking for.” CHRISTIAN: Wow. DAVID: We did Covers of a bunCh of songs. They all ended up being B-sides for singles and stuff, so they got released eventually. But Tina was a real trooper. She was the real deal. CHRISTIAN: It goes without ques;on that she Can sing.