FROM CHAPTER 19…
Working with George Carlin had long been on my bucket list. I was grateful to be part of two of his albums: Grammy winning “Napalm & Silly Putty” (2001) and Grammy finalist “When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?” (2005). ...(For more on George Carlin, see Chapter 10)
A longtime fan of The Turtles since they hit it big back in the mid-60’s, I was excited to be involved in remixing some of their vintage tracks for the 2003 Rhino feature “My Dinner With Jimi” ¹ with Harold Bronson, the film’s producer. Re-mixing the tracks of some of The Turtles’ biggest hits was a real honor.
One of my most endearing sessions took place in 1994, when I had the honor of working with the legendary Richie Havens. Richie had been hired by Rhino/WEA to sing a new version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” from the multi-Oscar winning Tom Hanks’ film of the same name. I was brought on to handle all aspects of the sessions, from arrangements and musician selection to engineering and producing. There were a total of four recording sessions, and I would say that working with Richie on Bruce’s legendary, Oscar winning song was pure joy from beginning to end. What a double bill...Richie sings Brucie!
The project got off to a rough start. I hadn’t talked to Richie before the first session and was told by the Rhino staff that he’d be arriving to cut the track solo with his acoustic guitar and voice. However, upon arrival, Richie asked me politely where the bass player was. Bass player? I was under the impression that we would overdub bass later, but Richie said that he had requested Rhino to have a bass player record live with him. So here I was at the session panicking to try and get him a bass player at the last minute. I called Denny Croy at McCabe’s Guitar Shop, where he is Dean of Music, and asked him if he could come over right away and do the session. Unfortunately, Denny was tied up at McCabe’s, but recommended a wonderful bass player / instructor, Jim Garafalo, who might be available on very short notice. That is how I got Jim..he did a great job.
Another interesting side note is that Richie wore quite a bit of jewelry all over his body, and asked if he should take off the various arm, neck and wrist accessories for the recording. Listening to it both ways, we decided that the jewelry added extra percussive and rhythmic sparkle, so that’s just how I recorded it. We also experimented with cutting Richie’s acoustic guitar track first and then overdubbing his vocal. Not surprising to me, the live track of him singing and playing together, won hands down. Maybe not the best technical way to approach a modern recording, but it had way more spirit, which outweighed the negatives of compromising the recording’s mix potentials. Special thanks to George Emerson on piano and Hammond organ and yours truly on hand percussion and background vocals.
Link to the recording:
Richie’s “Streets of Philadelphia” was originally released in 1995 as part of a Rhino/WEA box set: “Academy Award Winning Songs (1934 – 1993).” In 1997, it showed up again - this time on “One Step Up / Two Steps Back, The Songs of Bruce Springsteen.”
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