Byline: BLAIR JACKSON
For many years, Ontario-born Malcolm Burn has been joined at the hip (so to speak) with fellow Canadian producer/musician Daniel Lanois. He played on, engineered or mixed (or all of the above) some of Lanois' greatest productions, including Bob Dylan's Oh Mercy, Peter Gabriel's Us, the Neville Brothers' Yellow Moon, Emmylou Harris' Wrecking Ball and Lanois' own masterful debut album, Acadie. In turn, Lanois has appeared on a host of albums produced by Burn, including the Nevilles' Brother's Keeper, Chris Whitley's Living With the Law and Harris' recent masterpiece, Stumble Into Grace. The two share a love for great songwriting and adventurous sonics, including the wonderfully musical atmospherics, creatively employed effects and unusual instrumental colors that give their productions a distinct feeling and sound.
On his own, Burn has also helmed releases by the likes of Lisa Germano (Happiness), John Mellencamp (Human Wheels), Iggy Pop (American Caesar), Shawn Colvin (Sunny Came Home), Midnight Oil (Breathe), Patti Smith (Gone Again) and many others. When we caught up with Burn at his Ulster County, N.Y., home, he'd just finished a project in England with a British rock band called Grand Drive and was working with Luthea Salom, a talented singer/songwriter. This summer, he's cutting another album with Whitley, this time in Dresden, Germany. And long-term, Burn is working on a second solo album. Though he's happy to talk about production, Burn notes, "I want to stress that I am a musician and a songwriter myself, even though I produce and engineer records. To me, that's part of being an artist, and I consider the recording studio sort of a workshop for sonic creativity first and foremost." Duly noted.
How and when did you and Daniel Lanois become fellow travelers? Obviously, you guys share a certain aesthetic or something.
It must be in the water, eh? [Laughs] In the early '80s, I had this band in Toronto called Boys Brigade, which was sort of post-punk. This was the New Romantic era - Duran Duran and all that. U2 was another big influence at that time. I was also really interested in these records that were coming out by this group called Material, with Bill Laswell and Michael Bienhorn. They were combining funk with African influences and pure kick-ass rock 'n' roll guitar. So that was a major influence on me.
Another guy I really liked a lot was Brian Eno. I'd been listening to him for a while and was just really struck by his creative approach. I remember I used to read these keyboard magazines, and one month, it would be Rick Wakeman [of Yes] on the cover and the next it would be Keith Emerson [of E.L.P.]; all the prog rock guys, which I really couldn't stand. Anyway, one month they had a story on Brian Eno and they asked him about what keyboards he uses, and he said, "Well, I've only got two, and one is this Elka or something that tends to forget the programs and rewrites them, and every time I turn it on, I've got a bunch of new sounds, but for me, that's really interesting." That was one of the things that made me take a keen interest in what motivated people to do what they do and express themselves in their own way instead of just emulating others.
At some point, I heard that Eno was hanging around in Hamilton with Dan [Lanois] at Dan's studio - which he and his brother Bob had - called Grant Avenue. So I became quite keen to work with Dan because of the Eno connection. When my band started to get popular down in Toronto, Dan's girlfriend brought him to see us. Unfortunately, it was a terrible gig, just awful; one of those nights when nothing worked. But I guess Dan liked it enough that he then requested a meeting with the band. So we met with him and he was really quiet. Then one of the guys in the band and our so-called manager at the time went down to see Dan's studio. They came back and said, "Oh, this Lanois guy's not goin' anywhere. It's kind of a Mickey Mouse studio. Who wants to make a record down there? They don't have that much equipment. We want to work with someone famous." I was young and believed that bands were democracies and the decision was made to work with Geddy Lee [of Rush] instead. Geddy was a great guy and he worked really hard and made a good record for us. It was all part of the business situation.
So a few years passed. Dan, instead of making our record, worked with a band called the Parachute Club and made a pretty successful record for them. I think it was a Top 10 record [in Canada]. He also worked with Martha & The Muffins and did well with that. Years later, as it turned out, I was dating Dan's sister Jocelyn and he came to pick me up at the bus station. I hadn't seen him for five or six years at this point. In the meantime, he'd worked with U2 and done Peter Gabriel's record So. He was doing pretty well. And he shows up and the first thing he said to me is, "So, you never called me back." "Yeah, I know." "You f***ed up." And we both laughed. He said, "Rodney Dangerfield should have produced your record. At least you would have had a few laughs." So that's how we became re-acquainted.
How did you start actually working with him?
I had been recording a bunch of stuff in my bedroom on a little TEAC 4-track Portastudio. My attitude is if you can make a good cassette copy, you can make a great record because that's where it all starts: that idea of having a pretty limited format and making the most of it. And I really made so much of it. I would record back-and-forth on three tracks [of the Portastudio] and keep submixing and submixing and then eventually I'd do a stereo premix to a 2-track reel-to-reel that I had and then I'd bounce back to two tracks. While I was bouncing it, I'd do some more overdubs. I got pretty good at it.
Hey, it worked for The Beatles.
Right. And I didn't realize that what I was doing was the exact same thing Les Paul had done. [Laughs] He would record the instruments that required the least fidelity first, so in the degenerative process, you had a bass sound that still sounded like bass, whereas if you needed an acoustic guitar or a vocal that needed more fidelity, you did those last.
Anyway, I was using fairly primitive stuff to record with, and one day I said to Dan, "Look, I've been working on this stuff and I think it sounds really good, but I'd love to hear what you think." I didn't tell him I'd recorded it in my bedroom or anything. So he listened to it and he said, "That's a great sound! We've been trying to get a guitar sound like that for The Edge [guitarist of U2] and we haven't been able to. What are you doing up there?" So I said, "Well, I'm using my little Tom Scholtz Rockman and my Stratocaster up in my bedroom." He was pretty impressed. And we started working together shortly after that. We worked on Acadie and some other things.
It always struck me as being a pretty casual division of labor on the projects you did together. You both play, you both know the equipment. What was it like on Dylan's Oh Mercy, for instance?
Dan wanted somebody in there who wasn't just a knob-turner. He wanted somebody who could set everything up, but could also grab an instrument and play along and have a more musical picture rather than some technocratic operative. In terms of that record, there was a good balance between Dan and Bob [Dylan] and myself. Bob and Dan were kind of equal on a certain level, and I was a more neutral third party to sort of balance things out.
Were you awed by Dylan?
A little, as a songwriter, of course. We caught him at a very good time. He had sort of been rejuvenated by the success of the Traveling Wilburys record. I think that made him feel like he was still relevant and had some things to say. And I'll tell you what - he's a damn hard worker. There are few people I've worked with in the studio who work as hard at their craft as he does.
Even though he's sort of famous for being Mr. First Take?
That's not necessarily true. What he does - or at least on that particular record and on the Time Out of Mind record, as well - is he'll keep searching for the arrangement he likes: faster, slower or 4/4. Should there be piano or guitar; this key or that key? And you're trying to follow him. But by the time he's decided all that, it goes pretty quickly because he's satisfied.
I've got some really interesting recordings of him - which I'll never divulge - sitting there playing the song "Most of the Time" and saying, "I can do this song this way or this way or this way," and each time he plays it, it's like a completely different song. He does a sort of 'Bob at the Newport Folk Festival' way, then he does a grungy electric version and then he does a blues version. The lyrics probably aren't going to change much, but everything else is negotiable.
