Cheap Trick

Before the holidays Marc DeSisto and I mixed some stuff for Jimmy Iovine. The Pitbull was riding high because of the Belinda hit, and we did mixes of Patti Smith's "People Have the Power" and Breathe's "Hands to Heaven" and a B side I think, but they weren't used. Jimmy said in that voice, "ehh, sounds like disco". Shelly eventually mixed the Patti Smith song with Mark McKenna over Xmas and Mark didn't help him much. If you listen close, the snare sample is triggering all over the place.

January 5 -17, 1988
After Xmas, I started with Cheap Trick on the "Lap of Luxury" mixes with Richie Zito and Phil Kaffell. They did most of the record at CanAm, and were finishing up (the hits). The first day was guitar O/D's, and I got Joe James to help setup. He was a big Trickster fan and it made his life, wicked! Rick did solo's on "The Flame" and did a one note solo on "Lot to Lose" that was pretty goofy. Man, how much beer can two Rick's Pick guys drink in a day!

We mixed "Don't be Cruel" first and "The Flame" is a story in itself.
According to Zito, in tracking it was one take, and one take only, including the vocal (the band hated it). "These guy's have been in a band for 20 years and suddenly they forget how to play fuckin' C, G, and F". The mix had everyone frozen in the headlights because it was an obvious, and no one wanted to screw it up. It stayed on the board for 7 and a half days, and I really kept it together. Richie got pretty neurotic near the end.

Anyway it was my first #1 (Don't be Cruel hit #1 also) and a claim to fame Jamo didn't let me forget for a while.

The new Studio D was well on it's way and in my downtime I worked in the shop drawing connection panels (Bob at Apollo) and pictures of outboard gear on a Mac SE30. It was a little tedious and MacDraw would crash the box a lot, but it gave me something to do. The wiring design of D was overkill to the max, and the idea was to have a second engineer be in on it because they actually plug the stuff in. Known problems in the other rooms were discussed and addressed in D. It seemed like a good idea but a lot of it was never used, at least while I was there.

January 26 - 30
Next - some songs on Toni Childs first record "Union" with Jon Potoker. Tokes was a bud from a record in Nashville and we had fun together. On the first mix, "Zimbabwe", he was having trouble and I got the mix. Tokes took it OK. We did 3 or 4 songs and I sequenced the record which came out in June 1988.

The Ballad Guy