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ALAN SANDERSON IS A MAN WITH STORIES TO TELL. His smooth, Beatles-esque English accent fades in and out without warning as he speaks. At times it’s hard to tell if he’s from Liverpool or Leucadia. Having moved to the US from the UK as a kid in the 80’s, he’s had plenty of time to adapt. But before landing again in San Diego three years ago, he made sacrifice to the recording industry gods in LA.
We’ve all heard rumors of record industry fairytales, the kind in which some 20-year-old kid lands a bottom-level job cleaning toilets at one of Hollywood’s most prestigious recording studios, and then, two years later, he’s engineering a session for the Rolling Stones. Well, Alan was one of those kids. Years ago, when he was actually cleaning toilets at Ocean Way Studios, possibly the best studios in LA at the time, he took it in stride, fully aware that such an opportunity should be coveted by any 20-year-old. To even be able to set foot in such a building warrants fierce competition amongst the plethora of music-industry-hungry youths that flock to Los Angeles to make it big in one of the music exclusive and illustrious businesses in the world. If there was ever a
business in which you truly have to work your way to the top,
it’s the recording industry. Competition is cutthroat for even the lowliest of jobs, since they come with the unspoken premium of providing that opportunity to get a foot in the door.
“Yea, I’ve paid my dues, absolutely. When I was up in LA I started out at the bottom just trying to get a studio gig as an intern. I sent out like 400 resumes to every studio in town, and I got a call back from the two biggest studios in the city, The Record Plant and Ocean Way. So I went down to The Record Plant and it was this really amazing place, it was a big time studio and Guns N’ Roses were in there. I’m just this twenty-year-old kid, and I was totally stoked! I went in and this lady took me upstairs and she was kind of firm with me, ‘Hey, this is The Record Plant. You’re gonna start out by parking cars, you’re gonna feel lucky to work here.’ And I was kind of digging it; I was ready to do anything. And then I went over to Ocean Way, which was a bit more deluxe – you walk in and there are gold records, platinum records everywhere. They interviewed me and they gave me the gig. I can tell you, Ocean Way gave me the gig because I kept calling them back. And they got me down there the first day and I was cleaning toilets, you know. I was cleaning up people’s messes and getting sandwiches for people for a couple of years. Finally, the Counting Crows came in and they threw me into the session because I was the next guy on the totem pole, I’d been there for two years, and I pulled it off. And then they gave me an engineering job. It was kid of…’if you don’t pull off this gig, you’re done,’ after two years of getting sandwiches and cleaning toilets. And I really didn’t know what I was doing.â€
It was sink or swim for Alan, and he tread water. But he learned quickly not to assume his place in the studio ranks when he inquired as to what his next engineering project would be. “Well I need you to go out to the studio in the Valley and clean up the leaves in the back,†the studio manager replied. Alan quickly realized that one gig with the Counting Crows does not an engineer make. After he paid a homeless guy $10 to sweep up the leaves, he stormed back to the studio ready to quit. But a fellow intern stopped him short, “Just give it a little more time, you’re almost there.†He was right. Alan’s next call was for an assistant engineer for Fleetwood Mac. “It’s gonna be like a year to two years, this gig,†the producer informed him. “You’ll be my right-hand guy.â€
“So the next thing you know I’m in the studio with Fleetwood Mac hanging out,†Alan fondly recalls. “Christine McVie was doing keyboard overdubs, and Mick Fleetwood’s kinda hangin’ out, being a goofball, telling stories, and I’m just this kid running the tape sheet, keepin’ my mouth shut.†And the rest is history. “Two years later, I’d learned so much about making records. Then I just started getting all these great gigs. I did this Rolling Stones Bridges to Babylon for six months. It was an incredible experience. It started March 1, 1997 and went until August. I got out of the studio in August at like six o’clock in the morning and was like, ‘What the f*ck just happened?’ The whole summer of ’97 didn’t even exist. I started out as the tape op on the session, and the main engineer ended up quitting after a month… and Keith brought in one of his buddies to engineer, some yes-man that he hooked up with. He didn’t know the first thing about engineering, so I ended up doing a lot of stuff.
Jagger would come in at like one o’clock in the afternoon and then work ‘til like six in the evening and leave, and then Keith and Ronnie and everybody else in LA would come down to the session and it would be a big party until like four or five in the morning. And I was just this guy trying to record all this stuff and make it happen. Just to give you an idea, most albums are like 30 or 40 reels of tape, this album was like 800-something reels. I was the guy [who had to go through and listen to them all], I would keep track of very single reel. Six months of that. It was difficult; all kinds of characters would come down all the time, you know, they’d have celebrities hanging out. One day B.B.King came down to the studio and he was recording with the Stones in the live room and I was like frantic… I turn around and screamed at these two guys standing in front of the tape, ‘Get out of the way!’ I turned around and did a double-take and it was Dan Aykroyd and John Landis… In retrospect it was a great experience, but during the whole thing, I thought I was gonna die.â€
As we climb the stairs to Alan’s San Diego Studio, framed gold records of Elton John’s Songs from the West Coast, and the Rolling Stones’ Bridges to Babylon, and Weezer’s Green Album stand out against the off-white wall at the top of the stairwell. Against the right wall, the hefty console is crowned by a flat-screen television-turned-monitor whose display is that of a dozen or so jagged, rainbow-colored audio tracks. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Alan is a Protools guy. “Protools has changed the recording industry. Gone are the days of analog recording, in my opinion. It’s so much easier to make an album now with digital technology. I mean, back n the day you’d have to go and buy reel tape, and that was $250 for one reel, which was
16.5 minutes. By the time you were done with your album you’d gone through 30, 40 reels of tape, and that’s pretty expensive. Most of the independent artists I’m working with here in San Diego don’t have that kind of budget unless [they’ve] got a major label deal. Having hard disk to record to is free, you don’t have to spend any more money on recording mediums. And you can be so much more creative with digital recording. You can do things that you couldn’t even do with tape. When I first started out in LA I was cutting tape with razor blades, having to stick things together… it’s so difficult! Sure, they did that for years making albums, and there’s an art form to it, but being able to use Protools, or whatever it is that you’re using to make records with digital technology, is so creative. You can adjust people’s pitch, you can adjust people’s time, and you can adjust people’s feel. Gone are the days of doing 20 takes until you get it right. You give me one take, and I’ll make it right.†While Alan will admit that tape recordings do have a certain distinguishable quality, “Protools, in my opinion, can sound just like tape.â€
Protools, and programs like Garage Band and Digital Performer, are revolutionizing the recording industry because, as Alan reiterates, “It’s so much easier to make an album now.†These new tools of the trade are allowing for makeshift recording studios to sprout up in bedrooms and basements everywhere and are subsequently providing the opportunity for bands to record albums for little or no money. What’s great for smaller, up-and-coming bands isn’t necessarily ideal for the recording industry in general though. Protools is putting a lot of studios out of business. But what does keep clients coming back to
the professionals is that hard-earned experience that some of the bigger-name producers can claim to possess. “Any Tom, Dick, or Harry can go out and buy a computer, stick a 57 up and record an album. But it’s the experience that is going to make it work, and the production too.’†Essentially, the producer can be the voice of reason among all the creative suggestion.
As for all those LA stories Alan keeps on the tip of his tongue, the ones about Rivers Cuomo’s anal perfectionism (“He would keep us in the control room, and the guitars had to stay in tune, so he had to keep the temperature really hot so that the tune wouldn’t slip.â€) or Cher’s request for softer toilet paper in the studio bathroom, I’ll need to come back another day with another couple hours worth of tape to recount them. Alan assures me that I shouldn’t hesitate to ask about anyone he’s worked with; he’s eager to share his experiences with whoever has the patience to listen. And with that, my tape runs out. But before I go, I must sample a bit of Alan’s work. He has just put the finishing touches on Tristeza’s new album A Colores, due out next month on Better Looking Records. He presses a few buttons, and suddenly a beautiful sound comes pouring forth from the expensive speakers. I sit quietly in awe of this glimpse of perfection. Rarely does one get the chance to listen to music in as true a form as it exits coming from the soundboard in the studio in which it was mixed. Alan leans back in his chair and breathes in the satisfaction of his completed work. It’s the first time he’s been silent all afternoon.
~By Mary Smedes Pike * Music Matters Magazine
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