Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" and L.B.
 

HI guys, I just thought of a question that I'd like to ask.
I've been learning a little bit about Phil Spector lately, and the idea of a "Wall of Sound" that he created. (For example, in the "Beatles" album "Let it Be" and "The Ronettes.") So I started wondering - - -
Is it possible that Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" style was an influence when Lindsey Buckingham was Arranging and Producing for Fleetwood Mac?
For example, on the album "Tusk?"
Obviously he would have heard of Spector and known of his style. . . .

What songs in particular are you thinking of? Some of Lindsey's tracks on Tusk are a little cluttered, but I tend to think of Lindsey's production style as almost the reverse of Spector's style. Lindsey usually likes to include a lot of "space" in the music so you can hear all of the individual instruments and voices spread out around you, as opposed to creating one big "wall" of sound.

:nod: :nod: :nod: yup

Das waar :nod:

OH-kay thanks! :nod:

Maybe he was "aware of" Spector's work and thought to himself, "OKAY HE did THIS, so I'M gonna do THIS instead!" :shrug:

Well, I doubt there was any conscious rebellion against Spector's style on Lindsey's part. It's not as though Spector's "wall of sound" was ever the norm in rock music production, especially by the end of the 70s. It's just not something that really needed to be rebelled against, as it wasn't much of an influence on music at that point. If anything directly inspired Lindsey's production techniques on Tusk, it was the stripped-down, ramshackle, dissonant aesthetic of a lot of emerging punk rock, which he wanted to emulate.

There's only an indirect link between Phil Spector's influence on Lindsey's production style. Phil was a HEAVY influence on Brian Wilson...Brian Wilson was a heavy influence on Lindsey. So, any direct comparison between Phil Spector & Lindsey Buckingham must be filtered through Brian Wilson.

The one big example of the Spector/Wilson style of production on Tusk is "That's All For Everyone".

That is especially true considering Spector was insistent on recording everything in mono, which I can't ever dream of Lindsey or FM doing.

As mentioned upthread, I don't think the Wall of Sound was even approached during the Tusk recordings because these were the days of post-punk/new wave, and Spector's "WOS" was pretty antiquated. The wall of sound involves a lot of instruments, brass and reverve that as unique as it was back in the 60's and part of the 70's - was really outdated by the late 70's early 80's.

Spector produced George Harrison's first solo album "All Things Must Pass" in 1970, and when George remastered it for the 30 year anniversary release (as mentioned in the liner notes), that he wanted to strip away some of the wall of sound to get to the germ of the song, since the big production, glossy, multi-layered feel might sound too muddy today. Yet, he felt to leave well enough alone. This was in 2000.

I've read a couple of places that every single take on Out of the Cradle was done in mono. Lindsey wanted to compress and be able to get more space on the songs. More individual instruments..

I'm sure quite a few other artists have been influenced by PS.One that springs to mind (and has absolutely nothing to do with Lindsey) is Roy Woods Wizzard (1970's)...most notably heard on "See my baby jive" "I wish it was Christmas every day" "Ball park incident" etc etc. The sound may have crossed over a little bit to ELO in the beginning as well, when they first started (I think Roy and Jeff Lynne were in it together at that point.)

Jesus & The Mary Chain utilized that famous Spector beat (boom-bo-boom-tschick) quite a lot as well!