Kevin Gray's "My Fun Adventures With Jeff Lynne and E.L.O."

This fascinates the heck out of me. I've known Kevin since 1982 and he's never told me this before! Talk about waiting 'til the last minute to add or change something to a mix before cutting.
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Kevin Gray:

Hi Stevo,

Here ya go. (Crank up the wayback machine!)

Hi Gang,

Steve and I were returning from lunch today and “Living Thing” by ELO
started playing on my car radio. I said to Steve, “Now that was a crazy
mastering session! Would you believe we did a vocal overdub before we cut
it?” After I told Steve the story he suggested I write it up for the forum,
so here goes.

On a Friday afternoon Dino Lapis from UA Records called Artisan Sound, where
I worked at the time, and said that ELO needed to master their new album
(New World Record) but needed to do a vocal overdub first. Artisan Sound
had just finished its second mastering room and was in the process of
building a mix-down room. But it wasn’t finished yet.
Bob MacLeod, owner of Artisan, suggested doing the overdub to two track and
splicing just the overdubbed sections back into the original master. Jeff
Lynne actually preferred this idea to re-mixing, as he was quite happy with
his original mix overall. So on Saturady morning Jeff Lynne came into
Artisan and sang the vocals for the lines in "Livin' Thing" “I’m takin’ a dive” and “I’m
takin’, I’m takin’ ” and Bob MacLeod recorded the “micro” session.

This is how it was done:

Jeff Lynne listened to his original mix with headphones.
The mix was played back through 2 line inputs,panned hard left and right,on
a portable Electrodyne mixer and a Neumann U-87 mic was plugged into a mic
input panned to center. The output of the mixer fed a second Studer A-80
two-track recorder. Jeff's voice along with original mix were fed to the
new tape. When finished, just the sections with the added vocal were spliced
back into the original mix.

Clever eh? It was a little more difficult
than it sounds. Also, getting the level of Jeff’s voice right in the mix
took a few trial passes, but if I recall correctly, I think he did the
actual take of each line in one pass. ...Two or three at most.
Bob and I both worked on the mastering. I cut all the final lacquers, and
there were lots! ...Maybe 16 sets for the US and the world.

One other
tidbit... The telephone effect on “Telephone Line” was actually done by me
in mastering. It is NOT on the master tape that way!

Jeff for some reason didn’t think about it ‘til mastering. He asked if I could do a "telephone effect".

We took a ”ton” of bass out and put a “ton” of midrange in one Sontec EQ (to
give the exaggerated telephone feel), then set a second Sontec up with the
EQ for the rest of the song. Then I did a long, slow cross-fade between the
2 Eqs in real time as I cut each lacquer. ...a little tricky. I still
remember having sweaty palms every time I cut an acetate on that side. We made a tape copy and everything of a reissue nature has been cut from that dub.

This
is why so many reissues get cut from tape copies. (Even some first
releases!) BUT not from Steve and me!

Best to all,

Kev

 

Wow, each set of lacquers for the world has a slightly different version of TELEPHONE LINE on it, all done live. That kills me!

And now we know: The World all received the lacquers from the same place using the same tape. No difference in sound quality from country to country except for maybe the telephone effect in that song, heh.

 

Back then it would have been General Telephone or The Bell System!

 

I'll never be able to hear that song again without having those little vocal additions stick out like a sore thumb. Heh. That wacky Jeff Lynne.