Shel Talmy

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Shel Talmy (born August 11, 1937 in Chicago, Illinois, United States) is an American record producer best known for his work in 1960s London with The Who and The Kinks.

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[edit] Record producer, songwriter, arranger

An American who became the first independent record producer in England, Shel Talmy has been praised for his innovative, influential recording techniques, his abilities as an arranger, his versatility, and his extensive credits. His occasionally explosive temper and prickly perfectionism are equally well-known. His career has spanned more than 40 years, from the early 1960s to the present. During the 1960s Talmy worked with seminal English rock bands like the Kinks, the Who, Manfred Mann and the Creation, helping to fashion a sound in the studio that captured the power and energy of their live performances.

Talmy has been credited with being part of the development of several groundbreaking production techniques, including the addition of extra microphones on guitars and drums, using compression to get fat, heavy guitar sounds, and for recording guitar feedback. He is also known for his production work with artists who played softer, acoustic-based material, such as folk/rock/jazz quintet the Pentangle and pop duo Chad and Jeremy. Many of the records that Talmy arranged and produced were international hits, such as "You Really Got Me" by the Kinks, "My Generation" by the Who, and "Friday on My Mind" by the Easybeats. Talmy also worked with a number of other artists who created quality music but did not attain wide recognition, at the time, such as the Creation, who have now attained "cult band" status.

Talmy wrote or arranged a number of songs, and also played guitar or tambourine on some of his productions.

He was a "music supervisor" for the horror film Scream and Scream Again (1970).

He was the founder of Planet Records, a company that released music by the Creation and other English artists in the mid-1960s, and also held several non-musical occupations.

He is the writer of mystery novels, and owned a book publishing company, Talmy-Franklin Books, that had several best sellers before Talmy sold his share of the company.

Talmy was born in Chicago, and from an early age he was interested both in music--early rock, rhythm and blues, folk music, and country music--and technology. At 13 Talmy appeared regularly on the popular NBC television show Whiz Kids, a question-and-answer program out of Chicago. He told Chris Ambrose of Tokion, "What it did for me was that I absolutely knew that this was the business I wanted to be in."

He became a recording engineer at Conway Studios in Los Angeles for owner/engineer Phil Yeend, who trained Talmy on three-track recording equipment, and three days after starting at Conway, Talmy had his first production assignment, the record "Falling Star" by Debbie Sharon. At Conway he worked with artists like Gary Paxton, with surf bands like the Castells and the Marketts, and R&B pioneers, Rene Hall and Bumps Blackwell.

Talmy and Yeend often experimented with production techniques. They played with separation and recording levels and built baffles and platforms covered with carpet, using them to isolate vocals and instruments.

In an interview with Terri Stone in Music Producers, Talmy recalled that Yeend "would let me do whatever I wanted after our regular sessions were over, so I used to work out miking techniques for how to make drums sound better or guitars sound better .... There really weren't many precedents, so we were all doing it for the first time together. It was all totally new."

[edit] Independent in England

In 1962 Talmy went to England, and Nick (a.k.a. Nik) Venet, a good friend and producer at Capitol Records, gave him a stack of his new acetates to take along with him and use if he could, as his "own".

After arriving, Talmy went to Decca Records and landed a job as a record producer. In a meeting with Decca head Dick Rowe, he passed off two of Venet's singles--the Beach Boys' "Surfin' Safari" and Lou Rawls' "Music in the Air"--as his productions. After hearing the recordings, Rowe hired him on the spot.

Talmy asked for and received an agreement as an independent producer, one who got both royalties and a retainer.

Rowe gave Talmy a contract with Decca, with a clause that would allow him to work as a free agent. This contract was the first of its kind in England.

Talmy began working with Decca's pop performers. When he was paired with an Irish harmonica trio, the Bachelors, Talmy--a big fan of close harmony singing--decided to teach them how to sing in parts. After six weeks of rehearsals in Talmy's apartment, the Bachelors cut a country song, "Charmaine," in 15 minutes, and the song became Talmy's first hit single.

One afternoon in 1963 Talmy was in a London music publishing office when Robert Wace, the manager of a group called the Ravens, came in with a demo tape of the band. Impressed with the group's potential, Talmy agreed to find a record deal for the band, who changed their name to the Kinks. He brought the Kinks into the studio, and their second single, "You Really Got Me," became a landmark recording. Talmy worked with lead singer, songwriter/rhythm guitarist Ray Davies, and his brother, Dave, the lead guitarist on the track, that had a much fuller (and louder) bass and drum sound than most British records of the time.

According to Jon Savage, author of the Kinks official biography, "What Shel Talmy and the Kinks did with this particular record was to concoct the perfect medium for expression of the adolescent white aggression that has been at the heart of white popular music. ... 'You Really Got Me' is that rare thing: a record that cuts popular music in half."

Talmy had many more hits with the group, including All Day and All of the Night", "Tired of Waiting for You", "Dedicated Follower of Fashion", "Sunny Afternoon", and "Waterloo Sunset".

[edit] This Is "My Generation"

Peter Townshend, the guitarist for the mod band High Numbers, liked "You Really Got Me" so much that he wrote a similar number, "I Can't Explain," so that Talmy would produce his group. When the song was played over the telephone to Talmy, he agreed to hear the band. Now called the Who, the group bowled Talmy over with their exciting stage act. He signed the Who to his production company, got them a contract with Decca in America and with their subsidiary Brunswick in Britain, and produced recordings that he modeled on their live performance.

The intentional feedback on the band's second single, "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere," caused Decca executives to send back the recording, thinking that they had received a faulty pressing.

Talmy and the Who created a historic recording, with the group's third release, "My Generation." An explosive youth anthem that contained the line "Hope I die before I get old," the song featured Townshend on guitar, John Entwistle on bass, Roger Daltrey on vocals, and Keith Moon on drums. Entertainment Weekly called "My Generation" the "quintessential rock single."

Talmy produced other notable singles for the Who before producing their first album, My Generation, a collection of original songs and R&B covers. However, tensions arose between Talmy and one of the band's managers, Kit Lambert. Lambert "fired" Talmy, but Talmy sued for breach of contract and won. One of the by-products of the episode was a B-side single from The Graham Bond Organization entitled "Waltz for a Pig," an apparent reference to the departed producer.[1]

Talmy owned the tapes to My Generation, but a re-release was held up for years because of the ongoing dispute. This prevented a proper re-release of the LP until 2002, when the dispute was finally settled in Talmy's favor. My Generation was remixed by Talmy and issued on compact disc with bonus tracks. In his book Before I Get Old, Dave Marsh commented that the records that Talmy made with the Who "are technically among the best that the group ever did, and they have a distinct, original sound."

[edit] "Making Time"--and Taking Some Off

Talmy continued to work with other distinguished British performers throughout the 1960s, including singer/songwriter Davey Jones. He also produced "Friday on My Mind" for the Easybeats, an Australian band that had relocated to England. Writing in the Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Colin Larkin described the song as "one of the all-time great beat group singles of the 60s." Bowie later covered "Friday on My Mind" on his album Pin Ups. Talmy has said that he did some of his most essential work with the Creation. A mod/psychedelic band that often used pop-art imagery, they were well-known as the creators of "Making Time," a song that appeared on the soundtrack to Wes Anderson's film Rushmore (1998).

In 2003 a tribute to Talmy was aired on the radio program Little Steven's Underground Garage.

Talmy is married and lives in Los Angeles, and is retired. He is the brother of noted American linguist Leonard Talmy, and has two children from a prior marriage.

[edit] Selected Discography

[edit] The Kinks

[edit] The Who

[edit] The Creation

  • "Making Time"/"Try and Stop Me," Planet Records (U.K.), 1966
  • "Painter Man"/"Biff Bang Pow," Planet Records (U.K.), 1966

[edit] The Easybeats

"Friday on My Mind"/"Made My Bed, Gonna Lie in It," United Artists, 1966.

Good Friday, United Artists, 1967.

[edit] The Pentangle

Sweet Child, Transatlantic (UK), 1968, Reprise (U.S.), 1968.

Basket of Light, Transatlantic (UK), 1969, Reprise (U.S.), 1969.

[edit] Nancy Boy

Promosexual, Equator (UK), 1995.

Nancy Boy, Elektra/Sire, 1996.

[edit] Various Artists

The Best of Planet Records, RPM (UK), 2000.

[edit] Selected writings

Whadda We Do Now, Butch?, Pan Books Ltd., 1978.

Hunter Killer, Pan Books Ltd., 1981.

The Web, Dell, 1981.

[edit] References

  1. ^ (Pattingale, 2002)

[edit] External links