INTRODUCTION: GOALS and GAME PLAN


It’s a hit! These are magic words to any musician, the ultimate compliment, (dare I say...) the Holy Grail. Spirits run high when you finish a good recording, and, I am proud to admit, my own group wrote some good songs, and sometimes even performed and sang them well. With luck, good timing, promotion and other factors in line, our records might have become hits. So what IS a hit? By definition, simply any record that sells hundreds of thousands or millions of copies.

But there are hits and then there are HITS. For me, a capital “HIT” is a record that goes beyond mere sales to become a signature of its time, or a landmark for its musical genre, or the first fully-realized recording or production by an artist who later achieves superstardom. Any popular record may captivate us for a while, but it only becomes a real HIT when, after a few years, we reach for it again and again. When a record reliably expresses a part of who we were and are as individuals, that’s a HIT. We are simply too close to the present to know what current popular records will stick after ten or twenty years.

In a broader sense, a genuine HIT is also a time capsule, a work of art that, like an Egyptian tomb, the Eiffel Tower, Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, or Andy Warhol’s paintings of Marilyn, tells us what it was like to be alive when it was created. It is a snapshot of what was on our collective minds, how we felt about the present, the future, society, humanity, each other. Like a musical hologram, it reconstitutes the entire look, feel, smell, taste, and -of course, the sound of the times every time we hear it.

For these reasons, most genuine HITS need little help climbing the charts when first released. They are, in record company speak, instant smashes, monsters, so charismatic and of such immediate emotional impact, almost nothing can stop them. This book is about some of the HITS that have graced our lives since 1957.

I Am You And We Are All Together

One of my central points is that real HITS are as compelling for new listeners as they were for their original audience. We all recognize and are moved by great art, regardless of when it was created. Therefore, my goal is to look inside and around various HITS and find the principle elements or ingredients that made these records work then, and continue to make them work now.

By elements I mean any part or aspect of a recording that defines its unique personality and contributes to its emotional impact. These may include the song itself (melody, chords & lyrics), the musical arrangement, lead vocal or instrumental performance (its unique sound, style, characterization), the overall sound or blend, any singular technical effects such as reverb or echoes, use of stereo, distortion, various analog and digital studio “effects,” sound effects... or the way all of these things work together in the mix... the list goes on. It may also be extended to include the hit’s market timing, the artist’s public persona, and then-current economic and social factors, i.e. what was on the public mind.

However, even in a great record, every musical element may not be of equal quality. Not every HIT is built on a great song, nor does it necessarily have a great arrangement, or even a good recording and mix, etc. In many HITS, one or two singular elements stand out above a bed of unremarkable elements and command the listener’s attention. There are even plenty of HITS where almost every element seems rather ordinary or just plain bad when we really focus on it - out of tune instruments or vocals, unsteady rhythms or tempos, poor engineering,... Yet the blend of all magically comes alive and somehow works.

Flaws can make records loveable by implying that the artist is human and imperfect, like us. The major difference is that he or she has the talent and courage to voice concerns we cannot express, or are too modest or timid to admit. In a way, a good record says “Go ahead, feel this way. It’s alright... I do.” A love song might say “Tell her or him how you feel. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” A dance record simply says “Move, and don’t worry how you look.” Heavy Metal, a genre whose artists often assert that records can only mimic the live, high-volume-with full-visuals metal experience, might say “Go ahead, stand on the seats and shriek. Someone will clean up the place later - it’s included of the ticket price.”

Some Assembly Required

I will try to keep my investigations as untechnical as possible. It would serve little purpose to explain what each piece of studio equipment does to an audio signal or waveform, or to document the lowest and highest notes of a instruments. There are plenty of good sources for readers that need such detail, On the other hand, we can’t very well dissect an artform without some knowledge of the artists’ tools and techniques. These days, audiences are fairly sophisticated about basic musical and technical terms, so I will rely on your common knowledge of many terms.

Along the way, however, I will use and briefly define a goodly number of terms that we should all understand in the same way. Musical, production and recording techniques and devices that were invented or heavily used by a particular artist, will appear in Boldface and be defined in the text where they first appear. A formal Glossary of terms used repeatedly appears before the Index. Words defined in the Glossary appear in Boldface when first used in the text. If you cannot find a specific term in the Glossary, check the Index. The page on which it is defined in the text is printed in Boldface there. These devices will help you navigate quickly.

MOVIN' RIGHT ALONG NOW ....

The Wizard in the Window

Along the way, I also hope to illuminate the roles of that most difficult to define of all participants in record-making, the Producer. In the credits for his 1985 album “Dream of the Blue Turtles,” Sting says, “Produced, whatever that means, by Pete Smith and myself.” I don’t think he was joking. Similarly, after years teaching record production at Berklee College, I can offer no simple one-sentence explanation of what a producer is or does. If you can imagine the role of “musical and budgetary shepherd,” the artist and song being the sheep, we’ll at least be on the same page.

From the label’s perspective, the producer’s bottom-line responsibilities are to turn in the kind of record the label expects, and to get it done on time, on budget. However, a lot of winking goes on in the latter areas, especially if runaway creativity sets in. Money, deadlines and great music make uneasy bedfellows. On paper, the producer will help the artist meet his, her or their contractual obligation to make a “commercially and technically acceptable” record. That reads nicely, but gives no idea of what “acceptable” means, or who will decide if the record meets spec. What’s more, the contract says precisely nothing about how a producer will assure delivery of the aforementioned good-sounding, worthy-of-spending-a-lot-of-money-to-promote, and therefore likely-to-become-a-hit, record. So much for contracts.

In reality, a producer’s role varies widely when working with different artists, sometimes even from one song to another on the same album. One project may demand a producer who can arrange and write drum fills, guitar riffs or full brass charts, while another requires a master at the recording and mixing console. As far as I can tell, the only absolute requirements on every project are that the producer, a) believe in the quality of the songs and the artist’s performing talents, b) know players, singers, engineers and others who can add to what the composer and artist have wrought, and c) maintain the same objectivity that listeners will bring to the final product when they first hear it on radio or dance floors. Conversely, the artist must acknowledge that c) is THE vital element in connecting with the audience.

Within these nebulous constraints, some producers simply let the record happen, some make it happen. Yet every record credits a producer, and most record companies pay a hefty producer’s royalty. Ergo, we may suspect that the producer is an important contributor to or co-creator of the finished HIT, regardless of what he or she does personally or leaves to other participants.

A Secret Ingredient - Inside Stories

To flesh out my own comments on various HITS, I have included numerous excerpts from artist, composer, producer and engineer interviews, many published around the time they made specific HITS, before time itself and public adulation erased memory of rough spots in the process, or in their working relationships with each other. These interviews appear as sections titled What Really Went Down, The Artist Speaks, The Producer’s View, etc. The interviews themselves are printed in a different typeface to distinguish them from the body of the book. Aside from conveying much behind the scenes data and reconstructing the historical and emotional context in which various HITS arose, the interviews provide colorful, oft-flaming portraits of the personalities who made them.

MOVIN' RIGHT ALONG NOW ....

Luck, Design or Inspiration?

“If artists and producers intended such specific analyses of their work,” a student once complained, “they would include annotations.” In the real world no artist annotates his own work, at least not verbally. Yet Picasso’s choice of rose or blue as the prevailing color of a work was clearly intended to convey a meaning, mood or emotion. Examining details, we might discover that the tilt of the subject’s head, the angle of the lighting, or the inclusion and placement of objects in the scene, all reinforce that central emotion. Or, they may convey a poignant contrast that highlights the basic emotion all the more.

Some artists consider each element in this way, deciding what to include, how to render it. Others work intuitively or instinctively, keeping the emotion and motivation for each work front and center, trusting that details will reinforce the whole as they flow from the brush. Yet the public doesn’t care if a record was planned or just happened, and this is as it should be. Critics and audiences often find much more in an artists’ work than he or she considered at the time of its creation. The Beatles, Steely Dan and others were amazed that listeners dug so deep for meaning, and were often amused or astounded at what they found. As I see it, anything we learn about how an artist works can help us appreciate the result.

Ultimately, life itself is the source material for great music. With the possible exception of baroque music, which like higher mathematics can function on a plain of pure structural perfection, most music is written as a reflection of, in reaction to, celebration of, or to help resolve conundra of, life. Examples in popular music are manifest, from James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain,” (about the sudden death of his girlfriend) to Sting’s compassionate ballad, “Russians” (who, he reminded us, love their children, too), George Harrison’s “Taxman,” John Lennon’s tender “Julia,” a hymn to his recently deceased mother, or “Vincent,” Don McLean’s paean to the tortured genius of van Gogh.

MOVIN' RIGHT ALONG NOW ....

Disclaimer and Lament

This book is not an exhaustive study of the milestones of the rock era. It is simply a personal appreciation of records that have entertained and enriched me and millions of music lovers since mid-century. After thirty-five years of making records and writing about them, the central lesson I’ve learned is that recording artists and their audiences are made of the same stuff.

If one makes records to impress other record makers, they will flop, just as most of what critics call the “best” modern art has flopped in the public’s eyes. Too much concern with technique, style and intellect has relegated meaning and emotional impact to the rear seat in current painting, sculpture, classical music, and other arts that once were magnets for public attention and interest. Perhaps it was this void that allowed rock and popular music in all its incarnations to become the most important art form of the latter twentieth century.

The one absolutely essential ingredient of every HIT, in every medium, is HEART. Nobody ever rushed down to the record store or called their favorite radio station to request a record with a great snare drum or hi-hat sound, or one recorded digitally and mixed with vintage tube equalizers. Instead, each of us has a personal roster of HITS that bring back our first love, a personal tragedy or heartbreak, or that crazy summer we danced holes in the floor. These are the records we bought on 45 vinyl, then on LP, stereo LP and finally on CD. They still work for us every time - make us laugh, cry, dance, think, remember and live deeply. They are a part of our identity, and make us glad to have been alive when they were fresh and new.

Wayne Wadhams, 4/2000