David Tickle
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David Tickle is a British record producer. He has produced, mixed and engineered albums and singles by artists including Prince, Sheryl Crow, The Police and Split Enz.
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[edit] Early career
Tickle was born on September 6, 1959 in Guildford, Surrey, the only son of a university professor father, and an artistic mother. By his own account [1] he was mixing Mahavishnu concerts at the age of 16, and mixed three singles for pop-rock quartet Liverpool Express which achieved modest success on British charts in 1976 and 1977.
Through a friend he was introduced to New Zealand band Split Enz and laid down some tracks with them in a Manchester studio in early 1978. The band was deeply impressed at his skill at producing big drum sounds and a fat rhythm track.
He was hired soon after by Terry Melcher for a job at Ringo Starr's Ringo Records, and appointed the in-house engineer for the label’s newly acquired recording facility, Startling Studios, at Tittenhurst Park, John Lennon's former house and studio near Ascot, Berkshire. Tickle helped them convert the studio from 16- to 24-track and lived on-site, later telling one interviewer: "It was a great mansion, an 82-acre house, and basically, I was the only one to live there. I lived like a lord. Cooks, maids, the whole thing."
At Startling Studios he produced a further session with Split Enz, recording I See Red, a punk-influenced single that would become a hit in Australia and New Zealand. Although the band was keen to have Tickle produce their third album, Frenzy, they were overruled by their Australian management, who wanted a more experienced producer; American Mallory Earl was drafted in for the album. The band would always regret the decision, sensing Earl’s work had failed to reach the levels of intensity and creativity their earlier sessions with Tickle and London producer Dave Cook had achieved.
[edit] Mike Chapman
In 1978 Tickle responded to an advertisement offering work for “the best engineer in England, money no object". The ad had been placed by noted producer Mike Chapman, whose run of hits in Britain was almost over and who was by now working in New York with Blondie on their breakthrough Parallel Lines album.
Tickle was hired as a trainee producer and contributed mixing and engineering duties to Chapman’s first US hits: Blondie’s Heart of Glass, The Knack’s My Sharona and Exile’s Kiss You All Over. The experience provided Tickle with even more skills as a pop/rock producer.
[edit] Split Enz
In October 1979 Tickle reconvened with Split Enz, this time in Melbourne, Australia, to record what would become their breakthrough, multi-platinum selling album, True Colours, which included the single I Got You. In the wake of their unsatisfying Frenzy album, the band was adamant their next record would be a Tickle production. As recording progressed and Tickle’s strategy became clearer -- creating more space in their sound over resolute drum tracks -- the band became convinced the album would be a turning point. In the band’s biography, Stranger Than Fiction[2], Mike Chunn wrote:
| “ | Tickle’s production had fostered a less frenetic, more layered and ordered musicality on the band; people who were new to the band or who had been unable to assimilate them previously found the space and economy much easier to digest. The hooks were now prominent, almost naked, and the sparser rhythm tracks allowed lyrics to be heard. | ” |
By mid-1980 Tickle was back in Melbourne to record a follow-up to True Colours. The band, however, were dismayed to find their wonder kid had undergone a dramatic change. Chunn explains:
| “ | This was a different situation to True Colours. The previous album was recorded by a band and producer both poised to crack their respective, mid-level reputations wide open and that is exactly what happened. And while Split Enz, then in their late twenties and quite ready for huge success, had absorbed the attention and heady acclaim in an orderly fashion, the same can’t be said for David Tickle. As the sessions kicked off, the lads quickly sensed Tickle’s shifting attitude. He was more dogmatic and less communicative; his ego seemed to have ballooned with the success of True Colours and media fixation on Tickle, the 'boy genius'. | ” |
According to Chunn, Tickle insisted on taking the tapes from the session back to England to mix them at Rupert Hine’s Farmyard Studios. Members of the band, who arrived in Britain soon after for a tour, visited Farmyard to check on the album’s progress. Chunn reported:
| “ | On walking into the gloomy control room at Farmyard, they didn’t like what they heard. Tickle was mixing in a room dwarfed by huge eight foot speakers that he drove at such a volume no one could stay in the room for longer than a minute or two. ‘Oops!’ was the general comment. Eddie (Rayner, keyboardist) and Nigel (Griggs, bassist) were particularly distressed. When they asked Tickle for cassette dubs of the songs he had mixed, he wouldn’t hand any over; when questioned, he wouldn’t discuss any of the mixes. It was obvious that Tickle had decided that mixing was totally his domain and that he would prefer the band to stay away. | ” |
According to the radio documentary Enzology [3], Tickle particularly clashed heads with Tim Finn. In an interview for the program Tickle says that in the wake of I Got You's success, Tim sought greater involvement in the engineering process. He says that in one argument Tim asked why Neil's songs always sounded better than his own; Tickle replied it was because Tim never left him alone to do his job. Additionally Tickle was of great concern to Split Enz's percussionist Noel Crombie, as due to Tickle's mixing, Crombie's percussion tracks were almost mixed out!
Tickle never worked with Split Enz again, though he did produce the Practical Jokers album for The Swingers, the band formed by Split Enz co-founder Phil Judd. The album included the major hit single Counting The Beat.
In 1981 Tickle was hired by the Stiff label to remix the single Is Vic There? by London New Wave cult band Department S. He produced a fatter, slicker pop sound to which the band took an instant dislike. In a 2003 interview [4] guitarist Mike Herbage observed of Tickle’s style:
| “ | David Tickle really didn't understand where we were coming from. He'd lived in America during the London punk explosion and really didn't understand why we didn't want massive over-production. I tried to do everything in one take, with as few over dubs as possible. David was a lover of the kitchen sink. We'd be sitting eating lunch in the community kitchen and he and the engineer would be extolling the virtues of Dark Side Of The Moon and we'd be talking about Kraftwerk and The Sex Pistols. He really didn't get it. But that said, it could have come out a lot worse. We just had to battle to keep the overdubs to a minimum. | ” |
In spite of the issues with Split Enz, Neil Finn opted to use Tickle again, this time as engineer, on the first Crowded House album. The album was to be produced by Mitchell Froom at a studio selected by Tickle, with Tickle receiving a higher payment than Froom in recognition of his experience. In his book Something So Strong, Crowded House biographer Chris Bourke relates how, on the final day of rehearsals, Tickle arrived at the studio with his lawyer to negotiate his "points", or share of royalties from the album. Bourke's account claims Neil Finn baulked at paying him more and the encounter became "extremely ugly" before Tickle "stormed out of the room", leaving the band without an engineer or studio in which to record. Their record company Capitol filled the gap by allowing them use of a studio and no fewer than five engineers were ultimately used on the album.
[edit] Current work
Tickle later built the 120-track Avalon Studios at Kauai, Hawaii, where he lives with his wife, Ann West, and their two children.
His website[5] contains an extravagant, vainglorious biography that praises him on one hand as a “musical Galahad” and the embodiment of a “classic Horatio Alger tale”; on the other hand as “soft-spoken and humble”. With a certain level of hyperbole the site claims: “Rarely has a single producer had more musical impact on the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s and now the new millennium”.
Tickle, according to his website, is furthering the development of 5.1 surround sound and is now embarking on a filmmaking career, producing an unreleased domumentary about the pyramids of Egypt.
[edit] Productions
Albums produced by David Tickle include:
- 4 Non Blondes: Bigger, Better, Faster (1992)
- Adam Ant: Wonderful (1995)
- Joan Armatrading: What’s Inside (1995)
- Barney Bentall & the Legendary Hearts: Barney Bentall & the Legendary Hearts (1988)
- Belinda Carlisle: A Man & a Woman (1996)
- Toni Childs: Union (1988)
- Joe Cocker: Night Calls (1992)
- Gowan: Strange Animal (1985), Great Dirty World (1987)
- Platinum Blonde: Standing in the Dark (1983)
- Prince: Parade (1986, co-produce)
- Red Rider: Naruda (1983)
- Split Enz: True Colours (1980), Waiata (1981)
- The Swingers: Practical Jokers (1981)
- Ann West 'En Chante' (2006)Live for Charity from The Blossoming Lotus,Kauai
[edit] References
Books
- Chris Bourke (1997). Something So Strong. Pan Macmillan. ISBN 0-7329-0886-8.
- Mike Chunn (1992). Stranger Than Fiction: The Life and Times of Split Enz. GP Publications. ISBN 1-86956-050-7. .
