Tony Taverner's career spans four decades and encompasses a huge list of top‑drawer credits. Christopher Holder heads to Sensible Studios, where Tony acts as manager, to extract a few pearls of wisdom.
As I take my seat in Sensible Studios' main control room, it's difficult not to be overawed. All about me is a bewildering array of knobs and buttons, plus Tony Taverner beavering away on the studio's Euphonix CS2000. When it comes to relaxing into interview mode, though, he finds the ergonomically over‑specified furniture rather more difficult to manage than the state‑of‑the‑art control surface of the Euphonix console. After a few stymied attempts to force the chair into the desired configuration, Tony resigns himself to the idea that the furnishings know who's boss.
"I can never get these chairs to work — too many things to adjust." It's like hearing Jean Luc Picard complain about the complexity of his trouser press. The irony obviously hasn't escaped Tony either: "I'm hopeless with our VCR as well. Way too complicated!"
That's the essence of Tony Taverner the producer. He's generally unimpressed with fiddly intricacies and anal attention to the inconsequential, and keener to nail the essence of a performance. He constantly impresses that this kind of work isn't a process of painting by numbers: it's a day‑by‑day proposition, and your methods for coaxing a perfomance should be as varied as the range of musical artists you work with.
A career spanning four decades and a CV as long as Mr Tickle's arm bears testament to his success. In his producer capacity, Tony has worked with East 17, Duran Duran, The Jam, The Hollies, London Beat, Gary Glitter, The Gypsy Kings and Motorhead, while as an engineer he's applied his talents to the recordings of Wham!, Bill Wyman, Sex Pistols, Robert Palmer, New York Dolls, Level 42, Nazareth and Black Sabbath.
Engineer? What's That Then?
Tony started his career in the days when you could count the number of commercial studios on the fingers of two hands.
"It was in 1969 that I landed my first job at the Marquee, the original Marquee studio, that is. I started off like everbody else, really. I wrote letters to the studios. I didn't actually know what an engineer was, but I knew I wanted to make records. I saw the title 'engineer' on a couple of album sleeves and thought, 'I'll be one of those'. We had a 4‑track studio at that time, with anold Sound Techniques desk. I stayed there for three years before moving on to a residential studio in Kent, called Escape studios. It was a great place on a farm, owned by two real characters, the Ruffi brothers. When I arrived they had a Studer 16‑track and another Sound Techniques desk, and we put it all together in a converted barn.
Back in the '70s you'd give yourself three hours to knock out a single mix.
"The great thing about Escape studios was that I was completely in control. At the Marquee I'd only engineered a few sessions, and to be dropped in the deep end like that was great. While I was there I did a lot of work with Jeff Beck, who just happened to be living in the same village, as well as with Nazareth, including their Hair of the Dog album. They came down to rehearse for a week. Two of them subsequently went to Scotland for a wedding, and I went down to the pub with the drummer and guitarist, had a drink or two, went back to the studio, decided to put a couple of mics up to see what sort of drum sound I could get, and recorded 'Love Hurts' with them, just on the drums and guitar, with overdubs later. It ended up being a million‑selling single in the States — and we were just mucking about after the pub! I left Escape in 1976, and I've been working freelance ever since.
"I say freelance, but I did spend 11 years at Maison Rouge. I even spent five of those years as studio manager. It was the same sort of arrangement I have here at Sensible Studios; it leaves me free to go elsewhere if a project comes along that I can't do here. Having a successful producer and a hit album under your belt doesn't do a studio any harm."
Careering Under Control
As Tony has already explained how he became a successful engineer, I ask how he made the transition to record production.
"Everything in my career has happened organically, a natural evolution. An artist would do a couple of songs with me as engineer, then the next time it would just be them, and me as producer. I've always tried to continue to do engineering as well — I've never gone one way or the other.
"I've always approached production with the end product in mind; the technical side of things has never interested me too much. As a musician I was probably the worst bass player that ever lived, playing in bands at school, so the playing wasn't what brought me into it. It's just being in the middle of it all that's been the main motivation."
Someone as successful as Tony is in a good position to know what makes an outstanding producer. But he doesn't think there's any special formula:
"It's simply someone who gets a good end result. The way you approach it is entirely up to you. If you don't make good records you're not a good producer, simple as that. Whether you're a brilliant musician, or a brilliant engineer, or whether you sit at the back of the room and say six words during the whole session doesn't matter — you've got to get the result. Theory doesn't count for anything if you don't have the talent or the personality to do the job. In an engineering capacity I've worked with some unbelievable producers. Sometimes I'd be thinking, 'they're not putting much in', but at the end of the day you'd sit and listen and it would be a great record. That's the skill. I consider my job to be about leading artists down the right path, whatever that might be for them. Whether it's the playing, the arranging or just day‑to‑day organisation, I'm there to keep them focused and feeling relaxed about what they're doing. With every record you make with a band, experienced or not, you have to remember that at that moment the session is the most important thing in their lives. Because it's so important it's very easy for them to become unfocused about their job.
"To me, recording is about keeping everything as simple as possible. I've never had a set of rules, or imposed a way of working on anyone. I just aim to go down the path of least resistance."
Some Kind Of Record
You might expect Tony Taverner to have strong opinions on what makes a good recording — and, indeed, he does.
"My definition of a good recording is the good performance of a great song. I've probably made a lot of records that are technically near‑perfect, but if the song is rubbish it's not a good recording. Equally there might be some fantastic performances that technically have a few glitches, but I'll let it go because you can't beat a good performance.
"I sometimes listen to one of my old records and think, 'mmm, that's a bloody good recording' but the trouble is that I don't know how I got it — I suppose that's the trouble with never working to a formula. I literally just sit down and everything will be different depending on how I approach it that day. Everything: mics, effects, processors... it's whatever I fancy at the time; there are no hard and fast rules. Sometimes I'll just pick up the nearest mic and give it a go.
"I'm a very quick worker. If I take a long time over anything in the studio, I start to think that something is wrong. Nowadays I'd probably spend one day on a mix, which to my mind is a long time. Back in the '70s you'd give yourself three hours to knock out a single.
"These days you've got more tools available to you, but they often don't speed up the process. For instance, look at how far automation has progressed, but that can actually slow you down; you can find yourself fiddling about with things you didn't really need to, simply because you can."
Rank And Phile
As Tony comments, times and technology have changed, and not always for the better, so I ask whether the situation for a young engineer is very different to what it was when he was coming up through the ranks, and whether he finds standards of training have changed for the worse.
"Not so much now, but a couple of years ago I probably would have said yes to that last question. Bands are back and hopefully always will be. A few years ago when I was going from studio to studio as a freelance, I was horrified to find these quite experienced assistants who had never even set up a microphone, except possibly in front of someone's mouth — which is quite sad, but that's how the recording business was going at that time.
"My advice to would‑be producers out there would be to enjoy it and to work hard. I've had loads of assistants over the years, and sure, no‑one really knows what the job's like until you start, but I've seen so many of these young guys get disheartened. Being a tape‑op or a tea‑boy must be one of the worst jobs in the world, but then tomorrow your luck might change: the engineer falls sick, you've only been there two months, you've never engineered a session before, but you've got to sit down and do it — that'll be your moment. It's a hackneyed old story, but it happens."
Wham! Bam Thank You Ma'Am
Tony undertook engineering duties for Wham's first album, Fantastic, and has strong memories of the experience.
"From the moment the two of them walked through the door, I thought George Michael was a genius. When he first recorded with Wham! George was, what, 19? He walked in, and it was like he was born in the studio. He knew every single thing he wanted, in every single aspect of his career. By Wham's first session he had already written 'Careless Whisper', but said that he wouldn't record it for that album, he'd save it for his first solo project. Unbelievable. In fact, a lot of that first album was written in the studio, including 'Young Guns'. Now there's one recording that I look back on quite proudly. Its sound was very much of its time but I think it was a classic pop record."