reprinted without permission from Music Connection Vol. X No. 21 October 13-October 26, 1986
Producer Profile
Davitt Sigerson - Thinking Man's Record-Maker
by Bud Scoppa
Davitt Sigerson operates on a variation of the Cartesian Syllogism: "I think; therefore, I keep thinking." But lest you assume this English-educated New Yorker whiles away the time pondering abstractions on his erudite duff, we're here to tell you that Sigerson is one active thinker. At 29, this highly articulate fellow has already demonstrated great ability in five highly competitive professions: sportswriting (he covered football for the London Times), music journalism (he's written for Rolling Stone and other biggies), songsmithing (he wrote five songs on the last Loverboy LP), performing (his most recent LP was 1984's Falling in Love Again, on Ze/lsland) and record producing (presently his area of major concentration). Sigerson's production of Boomtown, David & David's dazzling debut disc (it's a dark-horse contender for Album of the Year honors) has him fielding offers left and right at the moment. The dude is red hot.
If all that isn't enough to set him far from the madding crowd of poseurs and wanna-be's, fancy this: Sigerson considers pop's high water mark to be the early Seventies. Now that ain't hip, according to the current edition of the Rock Rules. But then he gives his well-considered rationale (Davitt's rationale is always well-considered): That period saw the creation of such works as Sly's There's a Riot Goin' On, Marvin's two . .0n masterpieces, the Stones' Exile on Main Street, Al Green's early classics, and The Spinners; and verily, it was the Golden Age of Philly SouL Hey, maybe Davitt's got a point.
Actually, he's got lots of points, and he's happy to make them, one after another, as we discovered recently. This verbal-Ouzi aspect of Sigerson became abundantly evident immediately after we asked him the seemingly innocent question, "Hey, Davitt, what's your approach to record production?" From that point on, the only thing we felt it necessary to say was, ' 'Uh-huh." Take it away, Davitt...
On Striving for Invisibility
"I don't think you ever want the listener ever to notice production, and I think one of the great faults of record production in recent years is that people do [notice]. I feel differently about [modern black music] in some ways, though, because I have a love for so many of those devices. I've never wanted to make a record where people would go, 'God, what a great snare!' I've always wanted to make records where the backbeat did what I wanted the backbeat to do. And I judge the records I make not by hearing them, but the way a comedy writer judges his script, which is, you watch the audience—you see how it plays. And I always play my records to people as I'm working on them—not people in the business, you are gonna say, 'Boy, what reverb did you use on that?' but to people who don't know about stuff like that. Watch their faces; see when they bob and move, when they look disturbed, when they seem stimulated or excited or a smile crosses their faces. I know when I want those things to happen; I know when I think the music should be up-lifting or where the little pockets of rest for the listener are. It's very important in lyric writing, too—you have to set up the punch.
"In terms of the aspects of production that are a little less tied to the basic musical values of the piece, I think that's quite cerebral. In something like the David & David record, for instance, where the lyrics were so evocative, I thought it was very important to support that mood without trying to illustrate it in any way. And it was a very interesting part of the record-making to decide—almost with each guitar sound that we came up with, with each feature part, with each bit of coloration—where we were getting the line so that it was sitting just under the level of recognition for most of the time and then maybe bursting through with something that was gonna take your attention away from the vocal and the story, but at precisely the right moment—at the moment when the vocal cedes that authority, and you want something to come and take you away. The rest of the time [you want] something that's going to enhance the story and the mood rather than compete for centerstage in the describing of it."
On Negative Space
"I've always had a preference for what a few well-chosen voices could do, especially if you change the colors and never let anything over-stay its welcome. I've never been a fan of the Roy Thomas Baker school—I don't know if it's still his school, but when he was making those absolutely brilliant records with tons and tons of overdubs. He was great at that, but it wasn't to my personal taste. I always thought you could build just as good a record on essentially three or four pieces, and there's always the truism that the ear can only hear a certain number of things at any given time. There's times when that approach works; I wouldn't be the man to execute that, though; I don't feel an affinity for it. But then, I've never been a big fan of Phil Spector's. I admire [his work], but he's not one of my gods. Ray Charles is one of my gods of record production; Tom Dowd is one of my gods. I like things where you can hear enough spaces so that you can see where the bits connect. Those Al Green records, for instance, every piece is just locked into place, and it just rocks you like a baby. On the other hand, I don't know where to put Marvin Gaye, who was probably the greatest record producer of all time. His approach probably veers more toward the Spectoresque in terms of the amount of layering that he was willing to use. But then again, I think that he was just a remarkable genius in so many ways that it's very hard to make comparisons. I think Sly's a good example. If you listen to There's a Riot Goin' On, which is my favorite album of all time, you can hear how a few well-chosen parts are really all you need."
On the Symbiotic Nature of David & David & Davitt
"John Carter [ex-A&M A&R man who recently moved to Chrysalis] has been a very good friend and mentor to me, and I've always been around and aware of things that he's been doing. I met Aaron Jacoves [who signed D&D] through Carter and got played a lot of tapes of the Daves before they were even signed. I was a huge fan right from the beginning and was jumping on people's desks and saying, 'How could you possibly have time to make any Sting or Bryan Adams records this year when you've got a David & David record to be made?' I was very biased, and what I thought was, 'God, I want to get this record—this is definitely gonna be on my ten-best list for next year.' 'Cause if you hear the demos, really a lot of what they have I think is there in the demos. A lot of [the distinctiveness of the album] is Ricketts—that's the way he hears music. He's fantastic, and I know that he will have a long career in and out of the Davids doing that sort of thing—also for movies and other stuff. Just as Baerwald has far more lyrics and stories than would ever fit onto all the David & David records. [The pairing] is absolutely perfect. I've never seen two guys who really do more to potentiate each other. Because I think that there's a fire and a focus in the... not only in the lyrics and the vocals but also a respect for the folk roots of American music in Baerwald that brings focus to Ricketts' arrangements. And there is that cinematic, Roxy-ish thing about Ricketts, an understanding of bass lines and things like that, that make Baerwald's songs far more evocative. So I think that the two of them are just a great match for each other. And that was all there on the demos.
"All I felt that the demos needed was a kind of expanding, sonically and a little bit around the edges. Because the thing about their portastudio demos is that, when you talk about the few elements that the songs hang on, those were all there. And Ricketts is a great believer—as I think more people ought to be—in refining a groove.. .I mean for months sometimes, playing with a note here or a beat there to get it absolutely right and balanced. You hear those months of work, you hear something that, to my ears at least, has a real rightness about it. And I wasn't gonna mess with that at all'. '
On the Brotherhood of the Portastudio
"I think part of what enabled me to understand what they were after was that I have a real affinity for their music. Being a member of the portastudio brotherhood myself, I understand that a lot of the things people do on demos are forms of shorthand. And when you're putting them down, you're not necessarily expecting them to be interpreted as the sounds that are on tape but as an indication of a direction. Doing that myself, I was hearing their demos not entirely as they were but also hearing the shorthand, so that my expansions tended to be.. .I think portastudio people will know what I'm talking about. [Iaughs]
"That wonderful kind of wizened guitar solo on 'Boomtown - the calling-of-the-faithful guitar—that was played through a Rockman with a bunch of really cheap compressors and overdrives and stuff, which make it cut in and out in a very crude sort of fashion. We spent about five or six hours in the studio trying to get it to sound like it sounded on the demo, 'cause it was perfect on the demo. We weren't getting it, and finally I said, 'You know what's doing it? It's the goddamn portastudio.' Because you put the sound in there and there's something about the preamps and that portastudio EQ...it kinda squashes everything. I mean they're the best for LinnDrums, 'cause LinnDrums sound small everywhere else, but the portastudio's such a small format that it has to squash it to get it on. And that's what you're always lookin' for with drums to get that rock & roll feeling is that they're poppin' out of the track. So we put that guitar through the portastudio; we didn't record it on the portastudio but we plugged it in and put it through the preamps and EQ'd it on the front of the portastudio. And sure as hell, it sounded just like the demo, which is what we wanted for that, 'cause that was one of those perfect sounds. It was also one of those sounds that, had it been different, everyone would've been disappointed —because there was a serious case of demo love going on there, and rightfully so. And the one thing that I was determined [about] was that no one was gonna have to learn to like this record. I mean, if I had to bump the demos up to 24-track and put my name on it, I didn't care..."
On Producing Music, Not Records
"I played the stuff for one producer friend and he said, 'Wow, I love this. This isn't a record, this is music.' And that absolutely sums up my view of what I like and what I want to do. I don't think the early Velvets or Exile on Main Street or Highway 61 or There's a Riot Goin' On.. much as those were all absolutely records in the sense that they were not some primitivist expression of people who didn't know better but very finely tuned work by people who understood the studio, what you carry away from them is that they're music, not records—not Snare of the Month Club. It's not trying to think ahead to what radio format it's gonna be suited to. It's not trying to achieve certain virtues that will make it sound like a grown-up, respectable, professional piece of music; it's got a confidence level that goes beyond that."
On the Intuitive Creation of Singles
"From the time I started the project to the time we were mixing, I don't think the word 'single' was ever even mentioned, which is the highest praise that I can pay A&M Records. They knew that the way to be commercial about this group was to let them make the record and then figure out what to do with it. When we were making the record, I think that in our minds we were figuring that probably 'Swallowed by the Cracks' was the first single, and I could see it going to either 'Being Alone Together' or 'Ain't So Easy.' I didn't hear any of them as being singles, but I think you can sell an awful lot of records if you have a song that's memorable, and that it can get airplay without necessarily being a hit single I thought that if we could get something that was a mid-chart record in terms of airplay, that it would probably translate into sales and interest far greater than most of the other records around it because it's different. I've seen that again and again; like with Sade: She sold albums way out of proportion to the success of her singles because people heard the sound and they were thirsty for it. It cut through all the crap. I don't think you'll ever go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, but I also can't say that I've seen that many quality products that haven't in some way or other been rewarded for having good taste.. .well, maybe that's the optimism I need to survive."
On the Great Hoax Perpetrated by Producers
"One of my virtues as a producer—or certainly one of the things I make no bones about —is that I don't have a huge amount of admiration for the job of record producer. I come at it as a songwriter; I think that songs are important, songs should be the focus. And I think that records are about songs and performances. And when I've been confronted with situations where those weren't as strong as they could be, I felt my job as a record producer was to strengthen them or to pass. Not to say, 'Well, a snare drum here and a Fairlight there and we'll have you fine by the morning.' So I don't think there's a lot of mystery or glamor to the job. And I think that a lot of producers are very into being producers and think that it's a very important thing, and come on with the line of all the great things they're gonna do for you. I was never interested in that when I heard it on the other side, and I'm not interested in telling people that. I don't think it's a mysterious function. As far as I'm concerned, between the invention of the chromatic tuner, clocking devices, and digital reverb, there's just no excuse for a record to be out of tune, out of time, or to sound bad. I'm sure you're hearing far fewer records than even five years ago that are actually bad-sounding records. What it's done is to throw the attention all the more onto the lasting virtues: songs and performances. So I can tell people, 'Sure, I'll produce a good record for you—you could do that for yourself, probably, if you've got a Rockman and an SPX 90 and a LinnDrum. Big deal—that's not what it's about. To me, all that technology was invented to free people from having to think about it, not in order to make you have to focus in on it.
"So I think I deserve very little credit for [the success of the record] and the Daves deserve all the credit; I don't want to jump on anything that's not due me. But then again, I think the most important thing that a producer has to know how to do is say the words 'yes' and 'no.' And I think that I'll be a world-class producer and everyone will idolize me if I just say yes to geniuses and no to people who are average.
"Y 'know, I don't really have a philosophy of production or something I wanna say about it, because I don't think that's the job of production. I think the job of production is to facilitate the communication of other people's philosophies. To me, the fun of doing it is the problem-solving, and it wouldn't be fun if the same solution worked for everything."
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