Defend The Indefensible: Steve Lillywhite

MegaDud for the Kirsty MacColl albums inparticular.

I see Lillywhite as this commendable journeyman, the rock equivalent of a William Wyler or Henry Hathaway, who, helming albums good, bad, and indifferent, evinces no personality.

Search: the third Peter Gabriel album, the first two Psychedelic Furs albums, the Rolling Stones' fantastic Dirty Work.

Destroy: Dave Matthews.

this is a very wrong thing to say.

But I don't think we'll live to see it, holmes :-(

Travis sounded rough was a bad idea, and it was a good thing they left it behind already on "The Man Who", hopefully never to return to the thought.

I won't have anything negative said about Lillywhite though, sorry.

U2 are at their best when sounding old and pretentious.

Greatest producers of all time: George Martin, Ken Scott, Nick Launay
Greatest producers of the 80s: Hugh Padgham, Steve Lillywhite, Nick Launay

Both trinities are of almost equal standing

All great producers. Actually, I realise I misnamed the second trinity..
I can't properly describe that trinity, other than I always think of the
three together, they all worked together at various times, and Nick Launay
nicked his mixing style from Lillywhite and his engineering style from
Padgham. They basically laid the foundation of 80s production style (along
with Martin Hannett).

You know I have said before I'd put Prince, Cocteau Twins, Kraftwerk, Nick Launay
and New Order at the top of the tree for the 80s. Trevor Horn I adore, but he is too
classically perfect (and thereby somewhat sterile) for me to put him at the absolute
pinnacle.

Lillywhite: clean, spacious mixing style, gives a lot of body to the
sounds while still retaining separation and clarity of the instruments.

I must admit I think Lillywhite turned a bit of a corner at a certain point in his
production, around 1980, so that it became a lot more interesting from
then till the early 90s. He seemed to be fairly straight down the line
with, for instance, the Ultravox stuff. Somewhere around 1980 he
discovered how to mix really well, so that he opened up all this space
in his mix. The work on War is perhaps the most obvious in this. On
War, he has this odd combination of very down and dirty recording of
things like Bono's vocals with some fantastic ethereal mixing of certain
key instruments (e.g. the violin on Sunday Bloody Sunday). It's very
hard to explain that track, and in some ways there's something almost
corny in the violin, because it seems to play to a cliché of the
yearning epic in rock music. But the sound is so merely beautiful in
itself, and it rolls throughout that ethereal space, and it contrasts so
much with the rest of the song, that it's hard to pigeonhole it like
that. The drums are also fascinating, and I have very little facility
to adequately explain them. They start the song with this - god knows
how he does it - mix of size and dryness. There's a kind of "gated
reverb" (if that's the right term) quality to the drums at the start,
but this is combined with also a dry quality, a close to the drumskin
quality which also has some fullness to it. I can only illustrate it by
comparing it with that really thin dry "padding" grunge drum sound that
was all the vogue for years, particularly in that heavy metal/grunge
style (sorry to be so inexact - I have paid such little attention to
music since 1990 I can't even tell you who epitomises this style) - I've
said before it evokes an effeteness which in the end I find somewhat
lame.

Mind you, the drums in Sunday Bloody Sunday don't retain that complete
sense of size all the way through the song, and as I relisten to it, I
realise this is largely to do with both the position of the drums in the
mix later on, as well as what you hear of the drums later in the track.
It's very interesting - the opening to the song has this key punch of
the bass drum, midst all the other drums being played, which has some
solid size to it, which seems to influence how you hear all the other
drums, even though that bass drum seems to disappear for the rest of the
intro, and basically for the rest of the song. He makes the whole song
inhabit this odd crinkly expanse from the dry and effete to the ethereal
and mysterious - there's this great point half way through the song
where one particular "lead" guitar which has generally been fairly dry
and close suddenly grabs this space and reverb. It's both corny and
also quite powerful - it seems to just drag the authority of that
closeness out, seems to dissipate it, but also seems to raise it beyond
a matter of fact political statement (by that I mean a political
statement of the Realness and Earnestness of the sentiments expressed in
the lyrics [as an explanation, the dryness of the much of the vocals and
the guitars, and some of the drums, seems, to me, to be coded to
emphasise the Seriousness and Earnestness of the content of the lyrics -
believe us, it seems to say, because we Really Really mean it, there is
no ornamentation in what we say; and this is not the last word on this
dry production, too, but this is what seems to me to be represented by
it in the first instance]).

In the main, Lillywhite seems to use the violin, and the reverb
associated with it, as a kind of thread through the album, as a way of
articulating this sense of something more than just the merely
political, that there are twists and turns and aspects of what is being
expressed that stretches beyond the merely political. And I also want
to say that by using "merely", I don't do so because I think the less of
what Bono is saying; I like the sentiments in War; I mean it in the
sense that there seems to be an attempt to express that the political is
only one dimension in which we live, large as this dimension may be.

A great way to understand his style in comparison with others is to buy
Achtung Baby, which has mixing by him and mixing by others (I think maybe
Flood and Lanois). The difference is palpable (at least to me) - even
though all the songs are meant to sound ethereal, spacious and clear,
Lillywhite's style is by far the more refined, clear, and alive. The tracks he mixes
(Even Better Than The Real Thing, Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, Trying To Throw Your Arms
Around The World) just leap up with space and resonance. Zoo Station (a
Flood production) seems to be fairly obvious and tight - the shapes and
spaces created are all well under control, every place that a track
finds itself by comparison with the others, whether or not some large
space is intended to be created, seems to be well studied, and studied
over and over. By comparison, Even Better Than The Real Thing, for
instance, just seems to leap up with space, just seems to rise up and
drift into space, takes on its own life, there is energy just beyond the
reach of the tracks. It's odd to hear me say this, I guess, but on Zoo
Station there's all this manipulation, like the metallic echoey drums,
and the distorted vocals, which all sound so interesting and complex,
and it is, indeed, interesting; but it lacks the simple life of Even
Better... Lillywhite seems to be so effortless - his sound just takes
flight with barely anything noticeable to propel it. Even more so with
the fact that the way Even Better... has been recorded is fairly
straight down the line, nice rocky production, but he makes it inhabit a
space beyond this. The echoey resonance in Zoo Station, for instance,
is lovely, but it's fairly predictable, fairly open prairie Real, which
I find reasonably corny. On Even Better, Lillwhite takes the spacey
production of the opening and just spreads it, it goes and goes. He
sits Bono's vocals in that odd space in relation to it, somewhat
unobvious - they're quite clear, open, a bit plain, a bit echoey - they
sit forward of the rest of the song, not in it, yet also somehow
representative of the other tracks.

Lillywhite, Launay and Padgham all mix similarly
(though Lillywhite and Launay share more than with Padgham in this
regard), and I guess the criticism I have of Lillywhite in this regard
is that Launay's attention to detail with the individual tracks and how
they bounce off each other is superior to Lillywhite. Lillywhite has a
great feel for contrast and the creation of energy from the relation of
the tracks, but he doesn't seem to consistently be able to bounce tracks
off each other like Launay does (e.g. on I Send A Message), so that that
the individual track gains its own energy both in itself and in relation
with the rest of the mix. I should be playing their music on the stereo
to adequately hear this and thus convey it to you in words (I’m only
playing tracks on the computer).

Lillywhite, as you well know, is also one of the main purveyors of the
Big Drum Sound (I suppose via gated reverb). His biggest drums are on
that Simple Minds album (Sparkle in the Rain?), with Waterfront and Up
on the Catwalk. I guess, from glancing references by you and my brief
look at those threads you've sent links to, this sound gets criticised
by a lot of people. I must admit I feel somewhat defensive when I sense
that; but I think I have good reason for liking the Big Drum Sound, and
for thinking that it is one of the most interesting aspects of 80s
production. I won't say everything I've said about it before, but one
thing I love about it is that it gives an abstraction to drums which had
never really been heard before (other than, perhaps, in Ken Scott's
unique drum sound, which is probably the antithesis of the Big Drum
Sound). The drums take up a position that had never been heard before
in pop music - they have a voice and an impact in the mix that was
unprecedented. They say something about themselves, about pop music,
and about the "Age" that hadn't been heard before. And by being so big,
there is also scope for a lot to be conveyed in them. For instance, as
I've said above, Lillywhite seems to be able to coil in a fair bit in
the drums on Sunday Bloody Sunday, that isn't just about making a big
noise.

The B Side of the King Trigger
single is fantastic, and in typical post-1980 Lillywhite style, has this
capacity to draw the song out of the intense performative aspect of the
music into a space that kind of burns outside the Real. It is very hard
to describe. He seems to love the performative, but has this great
ability to draw out of it something more than just drumsticks hitting
drumskins and fingers plucking guitar strings. The drums on Push or
Slide seem to burn off into the night; it has this incredible intense
frustration, yearning and despair. In contrast to today's rock, if for
no other reason, I love this style because it takes frustration out of
the mundane, out of the egotistical, out of the "look at me, I'm
frustrated, and you gotta be pained for me".

Just checked the web - forgot that he did "Ask" by The Smiths, Big
Country (how could I forget?), 2 XTC albums (and how could I forget that
as well??) and others. Of course, the Big Country stuff is awesome - on
In A Big Country, he just handles this completely shifting soundspace
with a facility that is hard to beat by anyone. There are so many
producers that deliberate to reach such a space these days, that work
hard to fit together these bits and pieces, but Lillywhite had this
genius for letting it break apart but mix in such a way that it pulls
together against itself, and this is what he does on In A Big Country.
It has that great start, where there are bits that just accumulate, bits
that, if done by somebody else, would just falter (e.g. the intro to She
Works Hard For the Money). In A Big Country seems to jerk together,
powered by the singer's voice, like he's almost calling everything
together in the mix. To be incredibly corny about it, that to me is the
sign of a great producer - being prepared to let stuff sit awkwardly in
the mix, and to be able to draw it all together still so that both the
act of drawing together and pulling apart create energy. This is my
complaint with most R&B production - there is so much overt effort, so
much straining and so much overexertion to get a sound pushed out up
front in the speakers, to get this complex thick full-on sound, layered
and folded and pounding, that the energy seems to get sucked out as a
result.

This is simultaneously batshit and interesting:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/arts/music/steve-lillywhite-kfc-sell-cds-indonesia.html

Uh, when the fuck was Lillywhite ever indefensible?

Okay, just clicked on the link and... whut

Exactly.

Plenty in the story makes sense in terms of business currents, conclusions, differing markets, etc. Hell, it's fascinating to learn what exactly KFC's cultural cachet in Indonesia is relative to here. And at the same time, you get:

“I loved the food, the people and the way they saw music as an experience. My synapses were overloading,” he added. “I imagined I would stay a year. I had nothing planned — I just thought I’d investigate the music.”

Mr. Lillywhite moved from Hollywood to Jakarta in 2014, and produced albums for artists like Iwan Fals, whose music he describes as “a mix of Springsteen and Dylan.”

When selecting music for KFC, Mr. Lillywhite draws on what he has learned “makes people’s emotions go wild.” He explained: “They love ballads, they love smooth jazz and they love to cry...."

I'd love to see him try and convince U2 to go that route.

"So music and chicken have become intertwined."

has there ever been a more aptly named musical figure?

yes, a few:

- Bob Clearmountain
- Stevie Wonder's drummer Ray Pounds
- Frank Beard (only works in context, obv)

Yeah, Paul McCartney signing with Starbucks was one thing, but this is something else entirely. Last time I read an interview with Lillywhite, he was trying to become a judge on American Idol, now he's doing this... he's come a long way since working on the first Ultravox! LP ...

Has Morrissey been approached for comment?

*checks date of article*

the music he produced was finger lickin good

Indefensible?! Feh!

yeah, wtf, Lillywhite rules.

(Pretty sure she and Lillywhite were no longer married when she died.)