Quote:
Originally Posted by David
This is the crux. She hates being in the studio with him. In fact, she may not be all that keen about being in the studio with the rest of them, either. My view is that, from the Seventies on, none of them accorded her much respect as a musician vocalist in the studio. You can see it in their faces as she's trying to explain something (in ditzy metaphors) or tell a story (in her airheaded elliptical style). It was a self-fulfilling prophecy: The more she gave suggestions about tracks or production, the more dismissive the others were. And the more dismissive they were, the more she pulled back—and made her own fun recording her own albums, where she could be the cute college girl once again, the center of attention in her circle of friends and session players.
Case in point: The are-you-kidding-me looks and eye rolls that the others all give her in the Village Recorder footage from recording Tusk.
Another case in point: Mick's words about Stevie in the 2 on the Town segment from 1982. He implied that she lacks studio discipline, instead preferring to emote spontaneously and use that track so that she doesn't have to go back over and over and retake. John of course is like that too, but I assume that John's bass parts come down to one or two takes anyway—not like Stevie's vocals, which can require days or weeks of repetition. And John's impatience with recording wasn't compounded with a ditzy personality, which can grate on the nerves of people in close confines with Stevie for extended periods.
Wanted to add: I've recorded with good friends in a studio before. By the end of a week, we hated each other.
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I always enjoy when you weigh in, David. The last two sentences of your post might be the most important of all.
Musicians are often terrible to each other in the studio, in part because the studio resembles a bunker where otherwise creative people are held captive by the very process that will enable their music to reach millions of ears; in part because this claustrophobic natural light-free setting encourages one to use stimulants and other drugs to keep going and “stay fresh”; but also in part because the perfection required to master repetitive, seemingly-endless processes like music making takes its toll on anyone’s patience. I remember in the 90s editing, designing, and printing a small magazine with my then boyfriend out of our home. Each issue required hours and hours of attention to detail and patience, patience, patience. At times, we wanted to kill one another. We had complete creative control because we did it ourselves, but that also meant all the laborious chores were ours. Mac, who self-produced and arranged with two studio engineers, must have felt all of this. By the way, we were able to keep the magazine going for four years. 10 issues later, we rarely made deadlines without some cost to our emotional lives. We even broke up while we still lived together. Sound familiar?