Feb 22, 2010 5:25 PM, By Barbara Schultz

A CAREER OF CLASSIC TRACKS

Ken Scott at Abbey Road, where he was one of the engineers to help The Beatles record The White Album: “The myth is that these sessions were horrible...I hate hearing that because it wasn’t like that.”

Photo: courtesy Mike Banks

The great appeal of Mix magazine’s popular “Classic Tracks” feature lies in producers’ and engineers’ curiosity about the sound of their favorite recordings. What happened in the studio, what equipment was used, what artistic decisions were made in that moment to create Booker T’s B3 sound on “Time Is Tight”? Or Patsy Cline’s vocal on “Crazy”? Or Keith Richards’ guitar riff on “Start Me Up”? Well, for anyone who eats that stuff up, who looks forward to “Classic Tracks” every month, it’s Christmas in March.

Ken Scott is the engineer/producer behind legendary recordings from The Beatles, Elton John, Mahavishnu Orchestra, America, David Bowie, Dixie Dregs, Devo, Missing Persons, Jeff Beck, Lou Reed and so many others. As a staff engineer for EMI and then Trident Studios (both in London), Scott had the opportunity to work with some of the most important artists and producers in the 1960s and ’70s, and to develop recording and mixing techniques that he still employs today. The good news for readers is he has no qualms about sharing. Scott’s latest release is A Ken Scott Collection: EpiK DrumS, a plug-in library of classic drum sounds, carefully made with the original drummers on some of Scott’s best tracks so that today’s engineers can re-create and/or manipulate Billy Cobham’s (Mahavishnu Orchestra) drum sound or Bob Siebenberg’s (Supertramp) or Rod Morgenstein’s (Dixie Dregs), etc. (See the sidebar “Ken Scott’s EpiK Drum SoundS.”)

ONLINE EXTRAS

WATCH:
Video: Ken Scott Talks About His First Sessions Engineering The Beatles

WATCH:
Video: Ken Scott Explains the Mysterious Staff Disappearance While Tracking The White Album

Scott’s desire to offer these classic sounds to the masses stemmed from a conversation he had at a re-visit to Abbey Road Studio 2, where he became re-acquainted with Brian Gibson, a maintenance engineer he’d worked with on Beatles sessions back in the day.

“We hadn’t seen each other in donkey’s years,” Scott says. “He told me had specifically asked to work that day so we could have a chat about old times. And he said, ‘Do you remember, when we started here, there were all these old timers who had the most incredible stories of the beginnings of recording? And we used to just sit there listening, fascinated by what they were saying.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’ And he said, ‘Well we’ve now become them. The next generation now wants to hear our stories.’”

Here are just a handful of Ken Scott’s stories.
—Barbara Schultz

The Beatles in 1968

The Beatles: “Helter Skelter”
(The White Album, 1968)
Scott sets the record straight about the mood in Abbey Road Studio 2 for these sessions, which took place early in his long career.

The initial attempts at “Helter Skelter” were done by Geoff Emerick, along with several other tracks on the White Album. Then Geoff quit the project, and I came in. This is one of the earliest 8-track recordings that we did there. Abbey Road wasn’t really set up properly for 8-track, so to be able to actually record anything and hear it back, we could only ever hear seven tracks at a time. We had to move things around if we were doubling something that had been already recorded. It wasn’t an easy project the way it is these days.

The sessions were a bit weird because George Martin had gone on vacation. He was having less and less to do with it on that particular album. Each individual [Beatle] was so much in control.

The myth is that these sessions were horrible. I haven’t worked on any project where there hasn’t been some tension at some point during the recording. We’re talking about a six-month project here, so there are going to be tempers flaring every now and then, but the majority of the time we had a blast. It was fun and they were so great to work with. The whole thing about how bad it was—complete myth. I hate hearing that because it really wasn’t like that.

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