Dashut Interview 11/2007, EQ Magazine

[David]

Originally Posted by michelej1

So Keith made me his second engineer, and I got to go into the control room and operate the tape machines. We had Ampex MM1100 and MM1200 tape machines that had to be aligned every day. I had to have the tape heads cleaned, the board cleaned, and the room cleaned and prepared. We were working 18-hour days, doing a lot of commercials—string sessions where I had to set up all the seats and headphone boxes—but, inevitably, one of the string players would plug in their crystal headset and short out the whole system. ... You could absorb so much. I had to keep myself occupied in those long sessions, so I would listen intently to the music, and think like a producer would. If someone made a mistake, would I stop the machine? What would I do? What ideas would I have? I learned that way—as well as by paying attention to what the engineers and producers were doing.

That's how one of the most brilliant music production minds in pop music -- as great in his way as Lindsey Buckingham was -- learned his trade. Amazing story!

They were living with Keith Olsen at the time, and were in a band called Fritz. Fritz had broken up, and they had gone on their own as Buckingham-Nicks. Lindsey took me into the maintenance room and played me his demos, and the first time I heard them, I fell in love with the music. “Monday Morning” was on there, as was “I’m So Afraid,” “Frozen Love”—a bunch of stuff.

So "Monday Morning" is older than I thought. According to Richard's timeline, Lindsey had both this & "I'm So Afraid" written before the 1973 Buckingham Nicks album.

I had parted with Keith Olsen, and had left Sound City by the time they started recording Fleetwood Mac.

Sounds abrupt. Why did Dashut split with Olsen?

But they were getting ready to go on the road, so Lindsey called and asked if I’d mix the live sound for the tour. Because I was young, and had a tremendous sense of adventure and curiosity at the time—and also because of the girls and the money—I decided to say “yes” [laughs].

How come the guy who mixed Mac live in 1974 (or earlier) didn't mix them in 1975? How did it come about that brand-new Lindsey Buckingham appointed the soundboard captain? Did Mick just tell him, "Go ahead"?

It was not easy. In the studio, you have everything under control, and you can spend time getting things perfect. But, on the road, you have to deal with the elements—the audience, the room acoustics, the capacity of the room. We didn’t have sophisticated equipment back then, either. You just had to work by the seat of your pants, and strictly by ear. It was great, because it taught me the basic sensibilities of layering and mixing. And when you have to get things together in a timely manner—like by the end of the first song—you get very adept at mixing on the fly.

That's one aspect about Richard that we never talk about, & probably never think about: He was an extraordinary live mixer, so different from anybody else working soundboards at the time. Anyone who saw Mac in those six or seven years can undoubtedly remember how cleanly & dryly Mick Fleetwood's powerful wallop on the kick was emphasized in those cavernous arenas, & how Lindsey's electric guitar was allowed to jag dynamically. The instruments were so cleanly delineated in the old days in concert. That's what I miss the most.

My mixing style was different. A lot of people in a live situation would just mix and hold—just get it under control, and then leave it. For me, every song was different. I was a dynamic mixer—but not a proper one. If you want to hear the absolute perfect mix, you can go home and listen to the record. To me, mixing live was an emotional thing. It was about a show—about getting an emotional response out of an audience. I would ride lead guitars and drum parts when I wanted to make a point, and then to drive home the point, I’d mix them a lot louder than most people are used to hearing them. It was a way to get people off their feet, and create an emotional experience.

Richard describes his approach here. I wish there were still someone in charge of the boards who applied these techniques for Fleetwood Mac, but that all went by the wayside starting with the Shake the Cage tour in 1987.

But mistakes often made the best mixes. For instance, at the end of “Go Your Own Way,” the kick drum was way too loud—to the point where it would start hitting the compression on the radio. If you listen to the guitar solo at the end, the compressor would pump the guitar in rhythm to the kick, and it added to the whole drive of the song. That was a lucky mistake. It wouldn’t have happened if we were using automation. The mix was half emotional/half technical, and when you got to the end of a great mix, it was like the ending of a great show.

The band have talked about this proneness to mistakes before, & about keeping the mistakes in the mix by recontextualizing them. I remember Lindsey or somebody talking about the electric piano cue at the outro of "Oh Daddy" that was essentially just a muff: Christine waiting for the track to play out, figuring the producers would fade the track well before that. But Lindsey (& probably Richard) loved the unintentional effect of it so they kept it! And there it is on "Rumours" -- you can still hear it. That's where the heart & soul of so much of studio Fleetwood Mac is, at least from those years.

I had just been on the road with the band for about a year, and we went in after the tour to do a remix at Wally Heider Studios in Los Angeles, where Ken was working. We probably smoked a joint together—who knows [laughs]. Things went so well with that remix, that when it came time to do Rumours, I asked him to come work with us.

Could that have been the remix for "Rhiannon" or even "Say You Love Me"? What else would it have been?

When we were remixing “Rhiannon,” Mick brought me out to the parking lot, and said, “Dashut. You’re co-producing the next record with us.” I was an engineer, not a producer! Who wanted to be responsible? I just wanted to get my sounds [laughs].

Does Dashut answer our question here? It was the remix for "Rhiannon" for AM radio play, completed in the very early months of 1976?

I was way over my head. But living with Lindsey was educational. We’d play Motown, the Beach Boys, The Beatles, the Stones, and other records, and he’d show me what frequencies to listen for, and how to layer instruments. We would have a session in front of the record player, and then put what we learned into practice at the studio.

Lindsey gave up on teaching Stevie anything about tracking by that time, & luckily had a much better student in Richard, who used all that knowledge to such brilliant effect on "Rumours," "Tusk," "Live," & "Mirage."

Mick had a very light foot, so we had to try especially hard to get the right kick-drum sounds. We nicknamed him “featherfoot” [laughs]. He was also known as the shuffle king, because he had one of the most amazing right hands in the business. His talent was in his right hand and snare feel, and the bass drum would follow that.
Anyway, he used his road kit on some songs—which had a very large kick drum—and it was hard to get a good, tight sound out of it.

I remember another technical article -- maybe from Modern Drummer -- around 1980 which discussed just how enormous Mick's kick drum was for concerts. They gave the dimensions but I forgot. It was huge -- bigger even than the guy in AC/DC used at the time.

Yet another advantage to Fleetwood Mac of having the guy who helped solve these sonic problems in the studio also along on the road, where he could solve the same problems in similar ways (or think of something new).

I hope Fleetwood Mac knows how lucky it was to have Richard Dashut all those years.

The guitar solos and drums on “The Chain” were played together. Other than that, I don’t think any of the instruments were actually played together. Everything was overdubbed.

That was another aspect of Fleetwood Mac's pioneering work in the studio. Most popular bands in the '70s didn't record every track separately like that. All bands overdubbed tracks to a degree, but none as big as Fleetwood Mac to the degree that Fleetwood Mac did. What's amazing is that the sound of "Rumours" is so natural & warm.

My hunch is that the piano on "Songbird" was recorded separately from the lead vocal at that auditorium in Berkeley. I guess it's possible, too, based on Richard's comment, that even the acoustic guitar was recorded separately on that one.

Great article, Michele. Thanks for sharing.