Deconstructing Double Platinum pt. 2

As promised it’s time to have a second installment about Double Platinum where we focus on the songs from a specific studio album, this time Rock And Roll Over. Since I covered a lot of ground in the last post I suggest going back there and re-freshing your memory about various technical issues surrounding remixing, the two main ways of mixing drums, and the setup Sean Delaney had to work with at trident Studios. Following the basic outline of the previous post I will refer to a number of details regarding the actual recording of the original album before moving on to the song version comparisons but there will a lot of minor detours into interesting details along the way. I will, on occasion, refer to specific dates and most of the time I do that these dates come from Corky Stasiak’s diary. My information about this is second-hand and comes from Alex Bergdahl’s excellent podcast episode covering the Rock And Roll Over era (unfortunately only available in Swedish). Other sources will be referenced in the usual manner.

Kramer has been asked about his work with KISS innumerable times but for the most part the questions have been relatively non-specific. This is perfectly understandable: interviewers or publications interested in KISS rarely ask about the actual technical setup or the recording practices, the myth is more important; and more in-depth publications that deal with recorded sound have—quite understandably—had a tendency to focus on Kramer’s work with Jimi Hendrix (including designing and building Electric Ladyland). I’ve tried to dig up as many 70s sources as I could but not too many people in the recording business were very interested in KISS at the time. I’ve also tried to avail myself of various later audio interviews with Kramer on podcasts and the like but we can be assured that I’ve missed some.

My listening in preparing for this has, once again, been the 1997 CD Remaster issues with some forays into both original pressings (of Rock And Roll Over), 80s Dutch vinyl pressings (for both albums), and the 2014 Back to Black vinyl Remasters when I felt I had to check something. Remastering can sometimes create audio artifacts and I wanted to make sure that some things I heard weren’t only on the 1997 CD Remasters. As noted before the reader would be wise to stay away from the Spotify version of Double Platinum since the songs presented there are only partially from that album, some are taken from the original studio albums. For readers who might not have Double Platinum (”for shame!”) I once again recommend the version at 24/7 Dynamite Songs. Lastly, a word of warning. This is going to take a while so pour a cup of coffee and we’ll get started.

Rock And Roll Original

To be able to talk about Rock And Roll Over we need to put the album in the context of its time. You all know the basic outlines of the story up to that point: Alive! had made the band stars and Destroyer was supposed to take the band an extra step and build on their new-found success. (Since the band had started working with Ezrin before their live effort had started flying off the shelves the story obviously isn’t quite that simple but for our purposes here it will suffice.) Destroyer didn’t sell as well as the band, management, and record label had hoped for and was ”rescued” by the unlikely hit Beth. But long before Beth caught on at radio there had been an about-face from the band as to their latest effort. While they were still recording the album, there were high spirits all around. When speaking to Circus in January Paul felt that ”This album is no different from any of our others, except that it’s ten times better”. (Circus no. 130 75-04-08, p. 29) A few months later he sang a slightly different tune: ”We loved ‘Destroyer’, but that’s not the direction Kiss wants to go in any longer. It was a sidetrack.” (Circus no. 141 76-10-12, p. 56)

Bill Aucoin knew that the fans were the ones that mattered and he and the band decided early on that Ezrin wouldn’t get to man the helm for the next release. ”The Ezrin album wasn’t exactly a total success in my eyes, only because we were trying to take them to the next level and I think we went too far in that direction. […] We might’ve done a little too much production on the last album”. (Record World 76-08-14, p. 80) As early as July, Ezrin told Record World that he had elected not to do more than a single album with KISS, but to hear Aucoin tell it it was a joint decision based on fan feedback: ”the fans are so strong in back of Kiss that I think a lot of them wondered why we went that far out. […] Also, we got tremendous feedback that a lot of the fans felt that ‘Destroyer’ was too close to Cooper. That it was a Bob Ezrin and not a Kiss album”. (Record World 76-07-10, p. 36; Record World 76-08-14, p. 80)

Lest we think this was just in the mind’s of the fans, reviewers knew it too, something had changed. Some thought it was a good thing: ”Coupled with Alice Cooper’s producer, Bob Ezrin, Kiss have made their best record. It has all the old Cooper ingredients—harmless outrage, well-structured guitar riffs, an aimless but steady beat, anthemic vocal chants. ‘Flamin Youth’ is a song, in fact, that Cooper might well use on his next attempt.” (Dave Marsh for Rolling Stone syndicated in Courier News of Blythville, AR 76-04-22, p. 22) Others agreed with the band and felt that the Ezrin influence had changed the band’s sound for the worse: ”This is the first Kiss album I have disliked and I blame it all on producer Bob Ezrin (Alice Cooper). The only menace left in the group is in the lyrics, while the music has become more of a circus, what with angelic choruses, strings and truck sounds.” (Tom Von Malder in The Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, IL 76-07-07, Section 2 p. 2)

Re-enter Eddie Kramer, stage left. In the aformentioned Record World interview, Aucoin confirmed that Kramer was the producer for the next release and there is a small but tantalizing mention in a later issue that ”Kiss is recording with Eddie Kramer while they are in town for their Anaheim gig”. (Record World 76-08-28, p. 59) This could obviously be a misinterpretation since Kramer was present at Anaheim Stadium to record the show, but it’s an interesting thing to consider. Did the the work on what was to become Rock And Roll Over start in August? In mid-September Lisa Robinson’s syndicated column Rock Talk reported that ”Producer Eddie Kramer is looking for an empty New York theater for Kiss to record their next album. Even though there won’t be an audience, he thinks he can get a ‘live sound’ this way”. (The Ottawa Citizen of Ottawa, ON, Canada 79-09-16, p. 81) As always the newspapers and magazine were a bit behind the times. A document called Kiss Recording Sessions Schedule—a document that is, sadly, un-dated—has the work at Nanuet Theater Go Round starting on Saturday, September 18 so the location must have been found by early September at the very latest.

Recording at the Star Theatre

Talking to Recording magazine in December 1976, when his memory of the events were obviously still very fresh, Eddie would recall that ”We were down to the wire trying to find a place to record in and through a friend of a friend we heard about it”. (Recording vol. 7 no. 6 December 1976, p. 25) The schedule laid out in the Kiss Recording Sessions Schedule document was fairly tight. The crew would come up at 10 am on Saturday, September 18, and Kramer would arrive at noon. By Monday, September 20 the band was expected to arrive for sessions—7 days a week from 2:00 pm to midnight—lasting until Monday, October 11. Alas, recording for the album wouldn’t begin as planned. According to Corky Stasiak’s notes from the session the crew ultimately came up a week later than planned, on September 25, and recording began on September 28. Why the delay? ”We had to go in, and get the place cleaned up—I mean there was mold growing on the carpets—had to have the whole place fumigated and the air conditioning turned on. We organized a total recording environment in two days! We had the control room built—took the Record Plant truck, took all the equipment out of it—and built a control room in one of the dressing rooms in on day… one day.” (Ibid.) I would also suggest that the band might have balked at the idea of playing the last show on the Spirit of ’76 Tour on September 12 and then having to report for recording sessions on September 20. That’s not a lot of time off.

Quick aside. We should clear up something about recording dates. In Behind the Mask Stasiak is quoted saying ”We started recording Rock And Roll Over on September 30, 1976, and finished on October 16″. (Leaf & Sharp 2003 KISS: Behind the Mask—The Official Authorized Biography, p.272) So why am I writing that recording began on Septemer 28? The dates above, initiating the setup on September 25 and starting recording on the 28th, come from Stasiak’s diary notes. These also specify what titles were worked on for each specific date and September 30 is the first date where actual song titles are noted (Mr. Speed and Queen for a Day). September 28-29 were probably used to run through the songs the band had to see what they had brought to the session and to work a little on fine-tuning the overall sound and setup. On that same page in KISS: Behind the Mask Kramer is quoted saying ”In those days I didn’t get demos. We ran the song down, I listened to it and figured out where the song should go”. (Ibid.) That’s probably why Stasiak can say that the actual recording of basic tracks started on September 30 even if the tape had ben rolling for the previous two days.

Since I wrote extensively about the equipment used during the sessions for the first album I think it’s only fair to run through what was part of the Record Plant truck that ended up being the studio used for the basic tracks recorded in Nanuet. The board was a 26 input 24 output Auditronics which ran through Pultec equalizers and Urei compressors/limiters. The tape recorder was a 24/16-track 3M. (Billboard International Directory of Recording Studios June 1975, p. RS-11) Since this information is from 1975 rather than 1976 it’s probably not 100% accurate and we can see that in the speakers. The Record Plant truck came with JBL 4311’s but these were supplemented: ”We had Big Reds (Altec) on the bottom and 4311’s on top, run in tandem together for the bass-mid-high end combination”. (Recording vol. 7 no. 6 December 1976, p. 25) This setup can be seen in the control room photo in KISS Alive Forever—The Complete Touring History. Microphones used included ”some AGK C451’s [sic.], those little pencil cardioids on rooms and cymbals, an old U47 on the center of the drums, 87’s, 67’s, Sennheiser 421’s, and Beyer M160’s on the guitar amps”. (Ibid.)

Since I like my sources as close the the actual event as possible, let’s stay with that interview from 1976. Here’s how Kramer described the recording setup shortly after the actual work had been done: ”The drums were set up right in the middle of the stage and the amps were set up in the orchestra pit. Then there’s a tunnel which runs from the dressing rooms to the stage, and I faced the bass amp into the tunnel and miked it about 10 feet away to get that nice echo-y feel. I had another drum kit in another room, a sort of big dressing room which is all concrete and plaster walls. Guitar amps were sometimes in different rooms—everything’s bright, really ”live” sounding.” (Recording vol. 7 no. 6 December 1976, p. 25) In an interview with Pam Turbov the magazine Rock that was conducted on October 19 during the Creem magazine christmas/snow photo shoot, Gene also mentions parts of this setup: ”There were all kinds of hall mikes. There was a tunnel where the artists used to come through. That provided a facility for setting up a mike with a natural echo. We did a live quality studio album”. (Rock, unknown issue number p. 34)

Another (partially) funny aside. In Behind the Mask Corky Stasiak mentions that his name was left off of the initial pressings but that this was later fixed. This is verifiably true, just check any post-1976 pressing, and in the interview with Rock Gene actually mentions this. ”You could do me a favor; the assistant engineer didn’t get credit on the album and we want to get his name in. Corky Stasiak. […] The whole thing was an oversight.” (Rock, same unknown issue, unknown page number) There’s no way Gene could have known that unless he had seen the printing proofs for the album artwork or been alerted about the issue by the design team or the band’s management. The interview took place well before the final days of mixing—October 23-24 according to Stasiak’s diary notes—and almost two weeks before the album was actually hitting the presses. This obviously opens up the possibility that the completely non-sensical track order on the album back cover is an early track listing that was discarded along the way. (After making that same mistake again on Love Gun, the design team and management obviously decided not to take any chances for the next two albums—Dynasty and Unmasked—where the songs were just listed alphabetically.)

As far as the actual recording setup goes that’s pretty much all we know. When asked about his work with KISS during a slightly later interview, Kramer was reluctant to go into specifics: ”We’re getting into a tricky area here, where I’m bordering on giving away trade secrets. […] Every producer /engineer has a distinctive style. I have my own particular style the same way other individuals do. […] If you want to know how to get my sound you’re going to have to pay for it. That’s what they pay me for.” (Modern Recording vol. 5 no. 4 January 1980, p. 53) So, for the actual process we have to turn to later sources of which there are few. In 1998 the now-defunct website Marsmusic.com had a Q&A session with Kramer and in response to a direct question as to how ”live” the recordings for Rock And Roll Over really were he responded thus: ”The way we recorded Rock ‘n’ Roll Over was essentially live, and any mistakes were corrected later. There was some tape editing to put together the best performances.” (Even if Marsmusic.com is long gone the still awesome resource that is KISS Asylum has a page with all the KISS-related stuff from these Q&A sessions.) This is basically the same information conveyed by the various quotes in Behind the Mask.

Alright, enough about the recording setup, let’s get into the songs themselves. I’ll continue with the terminology I established in the first installment and use a bit of shorthand. Instead of Rock And Roll Over and Double Platinum I’ll refer to these as Kramer and Delaney. In an ongoing effort to make my writing less confusing—so far a losing battle—I will use the word song to mean stereo master as heard on either album and the word track for individually recorded instrument channels in the recording/mix.

I Want You

• Rock And Roll Over: 3:05
• Double Platinum: 3:04

The order this time will be, well, no order. I’ll ”breeze through” two tracks quickly because, lo and behold, they haven’t really changed. The Delaney I Want You is marginally shorter but that’s actually just a difference in the coding of the Remaster CDs. Comparing the running time from the vinyl center rings both versions clock in at 3:02. I’ve listened to theses two versions back-to-back more times than I care to remember and to my ears this sounds more like a remaster than an actual remix. (If there is any confusion as to these terms please refer to my previous post on Double Platinum mixes.) The acoustic guitars have a little bit more high-end ”shimmer”, the overdriven guitars have a bit more bite, and the bass has some added ”weight”, but there are no panning changes or alternate takes brought to the fore. This in itself might surprise some readers considering what I wrote about the lack of mix automation in the late 70s but Kramer was old-school and believed in making decisions early in the mix. When he was interviewed for the book The Recording Engineer’s Handbook (excerpt here) he mentioned that he EQ:d during recording and printed effects. ”If I hear a sound that I like then it immediately goes to tape. If it’s a guitar, then I’ll print the reverb as well on a separate track so the sound is there and locked in. I usually have an idea of what it’s going to sound like in the final analysis so the EQ and compression is done right then and there”. That said, printing effects like that really only relates to the actual effects, most engineers/producers won’t print panning or fader moves—since that would require printing to stereo tracks—so the fact that everything sounds the same suggests that Delaney probably worked from the stereo master on this. I don’t think he pulled out the multitrack masters for I Want You. (But more on printing effects and panning later on.)

But even if there aren’t any interesting or, to most people, noticeable changes here, listening that intently to any song will make you focus on details that went un-noticed before. As always I’ll issue a fair warning here, I’m going to point out some things that can’t be un-heard once you’ve heard them. (Reader interest piqued…) So, warning issued, if you don’t want to listen to these things for the rest of your life, hop on down to the section on Makin’ Love. Alright… As far as individual performances go, this could very well be the sloppiest KISS song ever recorded. There’s a cymbal crash at 0:39 that’s slightly late and right after, just after the guitars have moved to the A5, the guitar on the right cuts out. When I first noticed it my brain though ”tape splice!” but after listening intentely it’s simply a bad take that’s been left in. That guitar in the right channel then comes in a tad late again for the G5 around 1:08. (Based on the general panning throughout KISS’s career and based on which guitar plays the majority of the parts, I have to think it’s Ace.) Personally I can understand the slightly late cymbal crash being left in. This was probably the best take by Peter (or a combination of two good takes) as evidenced by the really good tom fills at 1:22 so I understand that they kept the drums. I can’t quite understand why they chose not to go back and touch up those mistakes in the rhythm parts on the right.

I Want You – sloppy crash and flubbed rhythm guitar. Be sure to note the panning of the crahes…

It could just be that they were really pressed for time. According to the document Kiss Recording Sessions Schedule the sessions were originally scheduled to run from September 20 to October 11. Now, it’s hard to say whether or not this included the time that would later be spent at the Record Plant for vocals and some overdubs—October 12 to 17 according to Corky Stasiak—but either way the schedule at the Star Theatre had been condensed by the preparatory work that had to be done. Losing 8, or possibly 10, days relative to the originally propsed schedule meant that the work almost certainly had a rushed feel to it. We should also keep in mind that the most recent extension to the band’s contract with Casablanca, the second of three, was set to expire on October 31, 1976, and the band needed to fulfil the terms of that contract by delivering a second album before that time. (In a fairly standard clause an ”album” was specified as a 12-inch 33-1/3 rpm recording having playing time of not less than 25 times nor more than 50 minutes.) The work simply had to be fast. There are actually some other contractual wrinkles regarding extensions of the then-current agreement should the band have failed to deliver that second album on time, and the negotiations that were under way on an amended record contract that Glickman/Marks had suggested on June 21, but we have to leave those aside for now.

Added to the time-constraints would be the fact that the band were working out the arrangements to these songs in the studio. There is a three-song tape that was recorded at the Star Theatre, probably during those first two days of recording, where we get a slightly different version of Take Me and the Gene vocal version of Baby Driver; the latter an obvious instructive ”this is how we have arranged the song” take for Peter’s benefit. We can also hear the rushed work schedule in what can only be described as an extreme lack of variation in some of Peter’s playing. Mr. Speed was recorded on September 30 and Peter’s playing on that is marginally more varied than Paul’s demo. In a song that is replete with the type of syncopation that Hotter Than Hell-era Peter would have crammed full of toms fills, he plays it so straight that there’s nary a cymbal crash. (This is akin to the drum work on Room Service where Peter plays it so straight it almost boggles the mind. It isn’t until the very end when he realizes that the take is a keeper that he lets loose a few fills.) I would also suggest that there are several instances where Peter misses that the song moves to a new section or he gets there too early. Compare how he moves into the chorus on Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em, first at 0:55-1:09 and then at 1:54-2:05. For the latter he obviously starts playing the chorus quarter-note snares too early.

Anyway, back to I Want You. I can’t figure out what Kramer had in mind when he mixed these drums. Kramer doesn’t appear to have made a conscious decision to mix drums from the same perspective throughout the album, there are instances of both player and audience. That’s fine, the overall ambiance of the drums do a decent enough job of making these 10 songs sound unified and for the most part only nerds like me even notice the mixing perspective of drums. But this mix is odd. First of all the toms are pretty narrow. There’s a tom fill at 0:47 that has a clear high-to-low movement in pitch but there’s almost no movement in the stereo field. It’s as if Kramer panned everything but the floor tom(s) almost dead center. (You can hear the floor tom panning to the right at 1:26.) Rather than trying to achieve any kind of natural experience of drums from a stereo placement perspective, this whole mix seems to work with stereo width as an effect. The most obvious example of this is the rapidly panning snare fill at 1:46 but it’s actually present throughout the song. Let’s talk ride.

In most mixes the ride will have a certain place in the stereo field and that place depends on the kit and the player. Traditional multitrack recording techniques for drums work with a stereo overhang and room mics. The former are a pair of microphones placed over the kit to catch cymbals and ride and some stereo placement of the rest of the kit (the components of which, such as toms, are usually close-miced). Room mics are a pair of microphones placed at a certain distance from the kit and a certain distance apart from each other to catch the ambience of the room and convey the ”sense” of space. (As noted above Kramer used AKG C451’s for these duties.) You can hear the stereo placement of the crashes clearly right around that late crash at 0:39, they’re panned fairly hard to either side. But the ride, it’s on both sides? This little quirk should be audible to anyone who has ever donned a pair of headphones and listened to this album but to most listeners it probably won’t register. Not only have we heard the album too many times to count, the sound of it has been ”normalized” by listening to it. Heck, I’ve critically dis-assembled recordings for 20+ years and I’ve listened to this album more intently than most when transcribing the guitars and bass, and I didn’t notice until this year…

Listen to any version of I Want You using headphones and focus on how wide the ride is panned and the fact that it actually is in both channels. The ”main” ride is far to the left but there’s a ghost version on the right. (And, as noted, this is in sharp contrast to the crashes which are panned hard left and right with minimal leaking to the other side.) I’ve taken the liberty of putting together a little listening example where I’ve split the stereo file into separate files and then made a rough edit where the two channels alternate. In the example below the order goes right-left-right-left. (The perceived difference in loudness between the two comes from the fact that the bass is panned slightly to the left of center.) There’s no other way to describe this than, well, odd. It appears here and there throughout the album and once you notice it, it’s odd. (Did I mention that it was an odd choice?)

I Want You – comparison showing the ride cymbal mixing

Makin’ Love

• Rock And Roll Over: 3:14
• Double Platinum: 3:14

Unfortunately Makin’ Love is as uninteresting as our previous example. These two versions have the same running length and the changes are pretty much the same minor tweaks to the compression and EQ as on I Want You. Again, more remaster than remix. (To expand on this point, I doubt anyone would be able to identify which version is which in a”blind” listening test. The differences are so subtle that they literally amount to the same type of difference as one might find between the 1997 CD Remaster and the 2014 Back to Black Remaster.) So let’s talk about overdubs, drum overdubs.

The choruses in Makin’ Love not only have a great drum pattern, they also makes good use of some mixing tricks to accentuate the sections. We can’t escape the fact that this is the chorus because all of a sudden the mix is wider and has a different spatial feel. Or does it? To a trained studio ear this sounds like the room mics have been raised in the mix and panned wider, possibly with an added ADT delay. But then comes that looong tom fill at the end and suddenly things sound a little different. Because those toms are panned differently than almost all other tom fills on this album. I noted it in I Want You above, that there’s a distinct lack of movement in the stereo field (at 0:47). The same is true in Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em (for instance at 1:57) and in Baby Driver (at 1:13), the fills move so much in pitch that the ear would expect more movement in the stereo field. Granted, Peter seems to have had somewhere between 8 and 10 toms during these recordings (including floor toms) so four or so of the middles ones would get roughly the same stereo placing, but still… there should be more width.

And that’s why the long tom fill in Makin’ Love is most probably an overdub. First, the panning mentioned above. It is about as wide as you can get panning from far left to far right, no other drum part in the song suggests that kind of width. Second, the time-constraint. With a rushed recording schedule it doesn’t make sense to try for a full take when it’s such a front-and-center part where every little mistake will be instantly noticeable. Better to count out the space required with the foot hi-hat and overdub the fill later. (Peter was used to this. He recorded the drum break section of Love Her All I Can that way.) And here’s the kicker (pun intended), there’s probably an overdub during the chorus drum part as well. Listen to that looooong tom fill again. Start at 2:22 on either version and listen closely to the snare/tom part. Notice how it gets markedly louder after the tom fill, at 2:37? (Or listen below.) That’s because Peter continues playing the snare/tom part of the chorus but the stereo channel that part is on has been raised in volume so that the long tom fill won’t sound small and anemic. Doubling any part will increase its perceived loudness due to waveform addition, the amplitude and frequency of the sounds ”match up” which causes them to appear louder. I think that all the chorus parts on Makin’ Love are doubled this way but Kramer had to push the faders a bit to fit the long tom fill into the mix better (since it was just a single take). Leaving that fader up then caused the snare/tom parts to sound louder during the outro.

Makin’ Love – doubled snare part during the chorus

Another quick aside about Peter’s snare playing on this album. Any musician will tell you that a recorded performance is at least partially dictated by the circumstances of the recording. The ambience of the setting matters, mood lights and incense will probably bring about a different performance than cold fluorescent overhead lights and cold coffee. The same is true of the monitor sound. Any guitarist would prefer putting down his lead with some nice effects and very few vocalists want to sing their parts completely dry. In the case of a drummer the sound of the room can, and in most cases will, influence the actual playing. The standard example in the KISS ouvre is Eric Carr’s work on Creatures of the Night. That bombastic sound influenced how he played his tom fills. Go back and listen to that album again and you’ll hear it. He didn’t sound quite like that either before or after. I would suggest that the same is true of Peter’s work on Rock And Roll Over, but in his case it’s the snare work. The ambience in the Star Theatre—whether on the main stage or in the separate setup in the ”big dressing room which is all concrete and plaster walls”—was such that Peter tended to flam on the snare a lot more than he used to. (I will admit that I haven’t gone back through the discography up to that point and counted the flamming, I’m not that crazy.) There will be examples shortly.

Hard Luck Woman

• Rock And Roll Over: 3:36
• Double Platinum: 3:23

Just looking at the running time of the two versions it seems as if the Delaney version would just be an edited version. Thankfully nothing could be further from the truth. Here Delaney pulled up the multitrack tapes and decided to change, well, almost everything. You might want to top up on that cup of coffee, we’re going to be here a while. First things first, Kramer’s mix is absolutely wonderful. There’s an intimacy to it that makes you feel as if you’re in a small-ish room with a band, standing right in front of the singer and surrounded by a couple of guitar players. The acoustic guitars all sound great and the bass, even though it has a slightly exaggerated mid and lacks any real body (low end), fits in well with the drums. This is one of vanishingly few instances of Peter and Gene playing together where the bass follows the kick to any real extent, and the fact that they feel so tight makes me think that Kramer used side-chain compression on the bass. Sitting down at the mixing desk at Trident studios Delaney decided to take that intimacy and throw it out the window.

To get a feel for the main difference between these two mixes you only need to listen to the first few seconds. While Kramer’s guitars are defined and close to the listener, Delaney goes for a huge reverb. If the Kramer mix is like being with the band in a small rehearsal space, the Delaney mix is like listening to the band soundchecking the song in a massive arena. The Kramer mix pans the arppegiated Csus4 to the left but Delaney keeps it centered. And then the fun really starts. Delaney delays the introduction of the bass and drums until 0:30, allowing the first half of the first verse to be all about Peter and the guitars. This allows the guitar playing the lower register phrases to be much more present in the Delaney mix, especially during the diatonically ascending half-notes at 0:24, a part that barely registers in the Kramer mix.

Once the drums enter we notice two things. First, Kramer has chosen a player perspective but with the hihat far to the left. Delaney decides to change that up and (pretty much) goes for an audience perspective. Second, with the hihat moved to the right Delaney brings up a previously unused track of a shaker just slightly left of center. (I understand why Kramer left this part out, it drags a little during the second verse.) The snare gets a fairly un-natural reverb in the Delaney mix, a reverb that doesn’t really fit in with the one added to the guitars, and the bass gets more low end while the ”nasal” midrange that Kramer used is tamed. And then there’s Peter. The line ”it’s time I start walking but there’s so much you’ll never know” is a different take on the Delaney version. Listen to how the word ”but” is comparatively elongated on the Delaney and how the phrasing of ”never know” is different. On the Kramer version the ”never know” has a triplet feel and ”know” ends up right on the downbeat; the Delaney take draws out the ”ne-veer” which means that the ”know” ends up after the downbeat. It’s subtle but significant. Is it a better take? Not really, just different.

Hard Luck Woman – comparing alternate vocal takes during the verse

And then, the chorus. (I consider the ”Rags…” part to be the chorus, some may prefer to call it something else.) Let’s start with the backing track. I first thought that the upbeat ”chak-kha” was a track of recorded percussion but it’s actually a tempo-based delay on the snare that’s been EQ’d so that it doesn’t have any highs. You can hear it clearly at 0:53 just before the chorus section starts and throughout the chorus section. Delaney also adds a nice tambourine that doubles the snare. Those two things are nice but the meat of the change here are the backing vocals. On the Kramer version the backing vocals are more felt than audibly heard. The only time they really come through so that you can hear it as a separate part is on the line ”be a queen”. Listening with headphones you can hear how Kramer has tucked the part away, it’s placement in the stereo field is kind of down and to the left. Delaney brings that part front and center so that it sounds more like two people are crowded around, and singing into, a single microphone. It’s a nice touch, just listen to the difference.

Hard Luck Woman – comparison of the chorus showing ”added” percussion and effects as well as backing vocal mixing change

Another one of the changes Delaney made that is very obvious is the tom fill at 2:33. Kramer has a very tight sound for that fill, there’s hardly any decay to the sound, but Delaney decided to go for THUNDEROUS! It’s almost as unexpected as the iconic tom fill in Phil Collins’s In The Air Tonight. It’s a slightly unconventional move to go that bombastic in a relatively laid-back acoustic song but if nothing else it’s good for a laugh. Right after that tom fill there is a nice little diad figure that’s doubled and panned hard left and right in the Kramer mix. (And again, the guitar sounds are just lovely.) Delaney keeps just one of those, the one on the left which gets a decent amount of reverb, and replaces the other with the effects return of a flanger. (Actually, it could be that it is the guitar on the right which is the source of that effect and that Delaney chose a 100% wet signal, the end result would be the same and with 46 channels to play with Delaney had a couple to spare.) Anyway, it fades in and becomes audible at 2:44 after which the effect level is slowly increased during the relatively short fade-out. It has a fairly high rate which gives the part a slightly ”bubbly” feel.

If the reader remembers my previous look at Double Platinum remixes he might recall that Delaney revamped Peter’s vocals quite a bit on Black Diamond. For the outro to Hard Luck Woman he does the same. There were alternate takes on the multitrack tapes and Delaney availed himself. The first ”Oooh yeah” after the THUNDEROUS tom fill is different from the one in Kramer’s mix and to my ears the ”bye, bye” that follows is also different. It’s not much but there’s something about the Delaney mix that feels as if Peter’s channeling his inner John Lennon on that particular line and I don’t hear that in the Kramer mix. The rest of the way sounds like the Kramer and Delaney mixes uses the same vocal take until we get to 3:10. Right there Delaney is setting up to drop the ace in his sleeve and it results in two words getting ”spliced” together. Take a listen, Peter suddenly sings ”Yeah, mov-high”. (This is not a tape edit though, it’s just muting one channel and un-muting another during mixdown.) It’s a fun little mistake that sets up the real ace. Having gone through all this trouble creating an entirely new mix, Delaney ends by partaking in that hallowed British tradition of ”taking a piss”. Just as the Delaney mix is about to fade out we get Peter singing the immortal line ”I’m flying high”. Yes you were, Peter. Yes, you were.

Calling Dr. Love

• Rock And Roll Over: 3:47
• Double Platinum: 3:19

Once again the Double Platinum version is appreciably shorter and that’s with a new, additional intro! But rest assured that Delaney has made those 3:19 count. The work Delaney did on Black Diamond truly was his pièce de resistance on this release but Calling Dr. Love is the most impressive editing work by far. This mix is a cut-and-paste job of truly epic proportions. That said, there’s one thing about this intro that I can’t quite figure out. Delaney’s new intro starts with Gene’s low register ”Calling Doctor Love” from the second chorus. It fades in and has an added reverse reverb to make it sound a little extra sinister. It’s cool but nothing spectacular. The guitar that leads into the main riff though, that’s interesting. It’s obviously taken from one of Ace’s lead takes but with some added effects (some reverse reverb again and probably a harmonizer). But if using Gene’s vocal for a demonesque intro is relatively straight-forward, the tempo and timing isn’t changed, the part just needs to be moved and then isolated by some mixing desk trickery—that guitar ”swell” is another matter. That’s a part that would be ridiculously intricate to create by tape editing a multi-track master. It would also be very time-consuming and time was not something that Delaney and Stone had in abundance.

Problem is that there weren’t really any alternatives available at the time. The first digital sampling station, a monophonic beast called the Computer Music Melodian, had seen the light of day in 1976 so the technology was available. But it’s hard to justify Delaney (or Stone) learning to use a new piece of equipment just for this small part of an intro. And despite my best efforts I haven’t been able to find any mention of any sampling equipment at Trident Studios in the late 70s. It’s a head-scratcher. If anyone has seen any mention of this from Delaney, please share it.

OK, lets’ consider the new intro dispensed with but before we get into the many changes Delaney wrought I need to espouse a theory of mine. The intro to Calling Dr. Love on Rock And Roll Over has bothered me as long as I can remember. There’s such an obvious tape splice artifact at 0:14 that the song completely loses its momentum for a split second. I happen to enjoy the studio version more than the Alive II version but that bad edit… even thinking about it makes me cringe. Anyway, my theory is that Delaney started working on some of the songs from the 2″ master tapes—see Behind the Mask for that story—and that this song was one of the main reasons they requested the multi-track masters. Judging by his work on Double Platinum Delaney was an absolute master of tape editing and I don’t think he could abide that poor edit on the Kramer mix. Once he decided to work around that edit with his own, the flood gates were open.

After the demonesque intro Delaney doesn’t start ”at the start” of the main riff. No, he cuts out the first four measures and starts in the ”middle” as it were. Evidently hell bent on creating a very taut song structure he then cuts straight from the drum fill to the verse, bypassing another four measures of the main riff. Once we get to the verse we can start to dissect the actual mix changes. Somewhat akin to what he did for Deuce, Delaney decided to change everything. (Well, everything he could change.) Kramer really uses the ambience of the recording space on this one, you can hear it on the guitars right at the start. There’s space and depth there which probably comes from some distance mics. Delaney removes almost all of that so that the guitars are pretty dry and then he switches the guitars to the other side. (Right on Kramer becomes left on Delaney and vice versa.) The drums are also changed so that they’re more or less audience perspective compared to the player perspective on the Kramer mix. I say more or less because both mixes ”suffer” from Kramer’s handling of the stereo placing and width of the toms. Let’s compare (and apologies for pointing out that bad edit).

Calling Dr. Love – intro comparison

And while we’re talking about that stereo placement and width… As I wrote earlier Kramer seems to have worked with stereo more as an effect than as a natural phenomenon of sound and his mix of Calling Dr. Love takes this to the next level. The backing vocals, both the falsettos and Gene’s lower register part, pan rapidly between the left and right so that it sounds kind of like double-miking a rotary speaker. (It’s so even that it’s obviously an effect rather than panning in the mix.) The guitar solo is panned all over the place as is the outro guitar solo. Delaney basically said ”f**k all this stereo trickery sh*t” and went for a static mix. The first time we notice this is with the backing vocals. The falsetto parts during the first chorus are panned right in the middle which makes for a very different feel. (I won’t bet the house on this but it feels as if the guitars get a slight reverb during the chorus, there’s an added sense of space and weight and there are no additonal instrument parts that can account for that.) With the drier mix on the guitars and drums we actually get to hear Peter’s ghosting on the snare. It’s most prevalent during the return of the main riff after the first chorus (at 0:50-0:56).

And then it’s time to play addition and subtraction. In the second verse of Delaney’s version we get the addition of a new Ace fill at 1:11. It’s not much but it sets up the second half of the second verse. And in that second half Delaney subtracts one of the rhythm guitars. In the Kramer mix there is a third guitar that shows up at 1:13, it plays (among other things) diads on the B and E strings which reinforces one of the other guitars. Delaney mutes that guitar entirely choosing to just work with two rhythm guitars for the majority of the song. True to the ”no stereo trickery sh*t” idea, Ace’s bend release which leads into the second chorus is panned dead center and doesn’t move one iota. The Kramer mix moves that part around the stereo spectrum like there’s no tomorrow. Having applied a definite less-is-more philosophy thus far, Delaney apparently decided to go whole hog. On the original studio version of Calling Dr. Love there is a great tom fill by Peter at 1:41. There are a couple of tom fills on Rock And Roll Over that sound, for lack of a better word, tentative, as if Peter was winging it and didn’t quite manage to get there ”in time”. Not so for this fill. It is on time, decisive and the 16th note triplet rolls toward the end are some of the most impressive playing on the entire album.

Delaney cuts that fill and the way he does it is spec-ta-cu-lar. Remember my point about musicians playing to fit the sound? Peter flamming his way through Rock And Roll Over? Exhibit B: the chorus of Calling Dr. Love. The first chorus is all flammed snare. The second chorus has flammed snare for the first six measures and then, after the awesome tom fill, moves into a straight groove with a very persistent 8th note hi-hat. Now listen to the second chorus from Delaney’s mix. Listen closely:

Calling Dr. Love – second chorus

Did you hear that? Delaney doesn’t cut at the end of the first six measures, right before Peter’s now-discarded tom fill. No, he takes five measures from the first half of the second chorus and jumps straight to the last measure before the guitar solo. You can hear the eight note hi-hat come out of nowhere at 0:14 (that’s 1:37 on Double Platinum). There were some very impressive editing tools available at the time but there was nothing (that I’ve ever heard of) that could cut anything but straight across or at 30 or 45 degree angles. And that means that Delaney cut that section right in the middle of a vocal. And we can’t hear the edit. It is insane. Now, I’m willing to entertain the idea that Delaney, since he had two tape machines synched for 46 tracks, had most instruments on one reel and vocals, percussion, and possibly guitars solos on the other. (We know that the vocals were recorded at the Record Plant rather than at the Star Theatre so it makes sense that they’d be on a separate reel.) But that is only mildly less impressive. Because that would mean making separate edits on each reel at different places on the tapes and then have them line up when the chorus vocals return. I had never noticed this detail before and it is simply mind-boggling.

I know that this is turning into a minor book about the edits and mixing of Calling Dr. Love but bear with me, we’re almost done. I wrote earlier that it’s fairly uncommon to print fader moves to tape and that’s true. Modulation effects are usually printed so that each mixdown can have the same sound. For example, the phasing at 2:11 of I Want You was almost certainly printed to tape. Some producers prefer to print reverbs as well. But for a long time, committing two tracks to get a stereo print of effects and/or fader moves was just a waste of tracks. Seems as if Eddie Kramer did it though. Once we get to the guitar solo on the Delaney version of Calling Dr. Love things get a little weird. The sound is low in the mix and fluctuates in volume and that’s almost certainly because Kramer printed the fader moves and effects of Ace’s solo to tape. Since Delaney’s version of the solo is mixed almost entirely in the middle—it barely moves at all—I suspect that he chose just one of those printed tracks or mixed them both dead center so that they variously canceled each other out due to phase cancellation. (This would suggest that Ace’s original, unmolested solo is no longer on the multitrack masters.)

Delaney cuts a whole lot of the outro chorus and then chooses to start with just the falsetto backing vocals for the first round which come in at 2:11. Despite everything he changed up to this point Delaney apparently wasn’t content to rest on his laurels even one bit. During this first round of the outro chorus Ace’s lead guitar is very high in the mix and panned to the right. It mainly plays an E on the 7th fret that slides down but it’s noticeable in a way that it isn’t on Kramer’s original. Gene’s lead vocal returns at 2:26 and here we get a few more nuggets. For the most part the lead vocal on Calling Dr. Love is a single voice with ADT, there’s no actual doubling going on. That changes here as there are two distinct takes that do not match each other very well. Just listen to the line ”I got the cure you’re thinking of”. I wouldn’t call it a good thing but it’s definitely something new.

And we can end this with something more that was new. At 2:38 Ace’s outro lead starts and unlike the panned and efffects-laden version that Kramer put together Delaney keeps the straight tone and lets it just stay on the right. And he keeps it there so that we get a lot more Ace from 1976 than we actually got in 1976. And at 3:02—when things have already faded a while—Delaney found something cool and decided to make sure the listener could hear it. Take a listen, sudddenly Gene’s lead vocal becomes higher in the mix and gets a nice little echo to accentuate the phrase ”they call me doc-TOR”. I’ve taken the liberty of putting together a more listenable clip of that part. I’ll say it again, this is a mix and cut-and-paste job of epic proportions.

Calling Dr. Love – outro with previously un-used ad libs and guitar solo

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So yeah, that became a little too long, sorry about that. But when Delaney pulled up the multi-track tapes and got out his razor he created some impressive stuff. We get a lot of ”new” music in two of these tracks, whether it’s alternate vocal takes, some additional guitar work, or a previously discarded percussion part. It took me many years to appreciate this but even with the faults it does have—and it’s hard to call the version of Firhouse or the use of the Rock Bottom intro anything but faults—Double Platinum is a really good compilation album.