by Tim Stegall
It’s
weird,” says Paul
Leary between sips of beer and drags on his cigarette. “I had an article in
Mix Magazine under “Producer’s Desk,” and I just thought, `That’s weird!
I’m not really a producer! I’m still a punk rock guitar player!'”
Leary delivers the last byte with a laugh. He laughs easily and often, an evil
glint crossing the eyes, which Meat Puppet Cris Kirkwood describes in a recent
issue of Guitar World as “naturally psychedelicized… the eyeball and
iris are all black, like he’s one big stalk of lysergia.” Then again, in a
phase of the Butthole Surfers’ 15-year history that has seen all three band
members get real jobs (drummer King Coffey oversees his Trance Syndicate label
empire while singer Gibby Haynes has become a late-night deejay), guitarist
Leary’s real job might give him license to laugh loudest, since he’s almost
accidentally (by his account) become an in-demand record producer. In the past
several years, Leary has helmed records by the Bad Livers (“By default,” jokes
Leary, “I could afford to front some studio money, so I got the job”), Daniel
Johnston, the Meat Puppets, the Supersuckers, and the forthcoming Euripides
Pants debut LP. Somehow, though, it seems doubtful it’s those Sandozed eyeballs
that have spawned his success. It probably has more to do with Leary’s
attention to sonic detail, his ability to extract a good performance from his
clients, a willingness to go for the unorthodox in order to arrive at an
exciting sound.
“Sometimes,” muses Leary, “the coolest-sounding thing in the world isn’t
necessarily the technically best-sounding thing in the world. Sometimes, you
have to fuck it up to get it right.” Pressed for a for instance, he offers;
“Most engineers tend to record everything. If there’s little talkback mikes
stuck in the drum room for people to talk back to the control room, then you
put that to tape, and sometimes that’ll make the difference for your drumkit,
to have that in your mix.”
Leary says he learned all his insights into the producer’s art the hard way,
through having to record 10-12 years’ worth of Butthole Surfers records either
on the sly or something close to it, simply out of necessity. Translation:
Recording budget? What’s that?!
“Gibby and I had the Butthole Surfers,” he recites practically by rote. “We
added a drummer and a bass player. We went out to California, did some
recording with Spot, and our drummer and bass player couldn’t take it and they
quit. When we came back to Texas, Gibby and I started making our first record
by ourselves. King came along about the last third of the record… We kinda
stayed in the tool shed behind this 16-track demo studio in San Antonio that
doesn’t even exist anymore. When everybody would leave, we would go in there
and try to figure that shit out. We kinda learned some off of that.
“After some touring, we went to live in Winterville, Georgia, just outside of
Athens. We managed to get our hands on an ancient tube Ampex 8-track. You’d
just plug a microphone straight into the back of it. That was really fun. We
ended up leaving it in the house, and the house got bulldozed,” he laughs.
“Easy come, easy go.
“[You’re] always learning how to do it. The only producer I’d ever worked with
was John Paul Jones [who produced the Butthole Surfers’ major label debut,
Independent Worm Saloon], and he’s really an old rock star. Other than
that, it would have been nice to have worked with producers, to know what the
job’s really supposed to be. I went in to do the Meat Puppets a couple of
years, and all of a sudden there’s a record label wanting this, that, and the
other, and I didn’t know how to react to that shit at all, y’know!
They’d come into the studio and wanna hear something, so I’d put on Marty
Robbins and fire up a big fat reefer and make ’em listen to that for 45
minutes. And they’re like, `No! No! We meant the band!’ `Fuck you! Get
outta here!’ `Turn the high hat down, Paul.’ `Okay, Stuart, turn the high hat
Up!'” he laughs. “I didn’t know how to deal with it at all.
“It’s not always easy,” continues Leary. “Some bands have managers that want
things, labels that want things, the band wants something, and it’s not always
easy getting something out of it for everyone, much less yourself, which is the
only person I really give a damn about. Why make a record if I’m not gonna
enjoy it? Sometimes, you’re lucky and it works out, and everyone is smiling.”
Among those smiling? Call Curt Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets, whose
Leary-produced Too High to Die LP went gold — a first for the
Texas-born/Arizona-dwelling band (Leary also did their brand-new No
Joke!). “He’s got a good ear, definitely,” says Kirkwood. “He has his
ideals, what he thinks is cool and so on. But he doesn’t try to mess with the
artist’s intent so much. He helps out a lot on the vocals. That’s what we wind
up pretty much trying to get the coolest stuff on. The other stuff comes pretty
easy.
“He just likes being in the recording studio, I know that for a fact. He told
me it’s the only place where he has control over his life. It’s not that he’s
that wild or anything. I guess he just feels like he’s at the mercy of the
fates, most of the time.”
Rick Sims, the ex-Didjit drafted into Supersuckers to replace guitarist Ron
Heathman two weeks prior to recording their new Sacrilicious LP with
Leary at Arlyn Studios, calls the Butthole’s guitarist “very enthusiastic” — a
quality which often comes in handy in the studio. “When you get all these
fuckin’ people in there for 12 hours a day, every day for three-and-a-half
weeks, it’s a bitch!,” says Sims. “The fun wears off, and it becomes work,
especially when you’re trying to nail something that you just can’t seem to
get. I’m getting frustrated just trying to nail a part, and it’s just due to
the fact that I’ve been there for so fucking long. We had our good days, we had
our bad days, and that’s just the way it goes. Then you realize all the hard
work and all the frustration paid off in the long run to make a really good
record. As Paul would say, `It covered all the spectrums of emotions.'”
“Oh, that was a fun one!” says Leary of Sacrilicious. “Rock & roll
with a lotta Marshalls, plenty of guitars. You gotta love that! Shit, I just
love that band! I wish I could’ve done a better job for them. They deserve the
best.”
In talking to Leary about his productions, you come to find that he recites
those last two sentences like a mantra, especially when it comes to the Bad
Livers: “That was such an early job that I wish I could go back and do it all
over again.” The one production he concedes to liking is his most recent,
Euripides Pants, which he deems “probably the best-sounding recording I’ve
worked on.”
“Those guys are remarkably good,” says Leary of Austin’s swinging lounge band.
“They really surprised me in the studio, how good they were and how painless
most of the stuff was. Especially when you’ve got a perfectionist like Rey
Washam in the band, and he can shit a diamond and get bummed out about it,” he
laughs. “He keeps talking about his mistakes, and I was saying, `Goddamn! Sell
me some of those mistakes!’ There just wasn’t that much Band-Aid work
needed.”
Leary says local engineer Stuart Sullivan, who’s worked on many a Leary
production, deserves a round of credit. “He’s done a lot more for me than
anybody, because he’s a really good engineer and a fuckin’ lotta fun to work
with.” Asked what he’s learned from Sullivan, Leary replies, “Leave him alone
and let him do his job. `What’s that reverb, Stuart? Turn it off!’ It took me a
while. It seems like the more I do, the less I do. The best thing is usually to
get outta the room and let people do their job.”
What did he learn from John Paul Jones?
Leary takes a long pause. “Well, when we worked with him, here we are, we
didn’t have a drum tech or a guitar tech. `Gee, wouldn’t that have been a smart
thing to have? Drums that sound good, guitars that are in tune?’ After that,
it’s: `Keep the whiskey hidden!’ He doesn’t drink anymore, though. He stopped
drinking after our last record. Capitol Records gets a bill for $4,000 worth of
whiskey. And they still didn’t drop us!”
The interview’s winding down. The obvious thing to ask this gentleman with the
stringy hair and lysergic eyeballs, who still can’t bring himself to wear the
mantle “record producer” with any sort of comfort, who wishes he could
re-record about two-thirds of all the records he’s done, is: What advice have
you for aspiring young producers?
“Don’t wait for somebody to give you the job,” says Leary. “Look at that
record Ween made on their 4-track recorder! Jesus! It’s a great record! It
kinda depends on what you want. You can’t always count on somebody sharing the
vision with you. You’ve gotta do it yourself. Not to talk shit on producers,
but they’re a luxury.”
Less money you have to pay on the recording, right?
“Oh, yeah! Producers aren’t cheap, and thank god!” he laughs.
Maybe we shouldn’t be printing this, Paul! You might be out of work, soon!
“Ah, I don’t care! I need a vacation!”
It’s doubtful you’ll see one of those for a while.
“You never know,” he smirks. “It’s like ice cream: people get sick of you
really quick!” n
This article appears in November 3 • 1995 and November 3 • 1995 (Cover).