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Interview by Shane Richmond for Livewire
945.
Venue: The Waterfront, Norwich.
Participants: Shane Richmond, Willie and Pete.
SR: Where would you like Honeycrack to be in a year's time?
Willie: Preston.
SR: So, definite plans for the year remain at one more single before the album?
Willie: Apparently. But then at the beginning of the year the album was February, now there's another single.
Pete: There'll be 'Go Away' on February twelfth and another single at the end of March apparently.
SR: Do you decide what that is? Or is that decided for you?
Willie: Not really, it's the usual thing, you struggle your way on the corporate ladder and for every rung that they give you, you have to give something away. Every time we achieve something we can have a little bit more, now that's not necessarily money, that's artistic control, that sort of thing. For example they were very happy to let me produce this album, now that's unheard of, record companies don't do that. They don't as a rule let the artist produce the first album, not unless they're massive artists of course. What they're more inclined to do, particularly in our area, guitar bands, is get a name producer in because name producers, particularly in America, sell records, they get taken more seriously.
I was very keen to produce the record, I knew exactly how I wanted it and I know my way around the studio. What they actually said to me, after some debate, was that they would let me do that if we could come to an agreement on mixing and getting another mixer in to hear it. Now this is a good idea, when you're working on something it's all very well constructing the work you wanted to but you get conditioned to hearing the thing in one particular way. That's a good idea, my proviso then being that I can sit in the room with the guy so that what comes out doesn't sound fucking terrible to my ears - I don't want the parts that we put onto tape lost somewhere, I need them audible. So it's all about compromise.
Gradually, through a system of give and take you reach a conclusion that you can both live with. Where picking records are concerned, if we felt absolutely adamantly that there should not be a third single, and I'm speaking out of turn here, I might be wrong, they might overrule us, we haven't actually had a clash of those proportions. What they do know is that we'd much rather have the album out now, but on this occasion we're saying "this is your judgement, this is your area, this is what you know about." Now if the next album sells a million records we may feel more strongly about production, what goes on the front cover of the album, what the release dates are and we may want to stamp our foot a little louder and we will, in their eyes, have qualified for making those kinds of judgements. It's all fucking economics.
Pete: The only thing that is certain is that whatever has been decided today will change tomorrow.
Willie: Bear in mind we're fucking lucky because we're a priority act, they treat us very well, other poor fucking bands.... The hell they must have to go through.
SR: So you have very little control over the album cover or something like that?
Willie: Well as I say, if we felt very strongly that "this is wrong," then I dare say they would go "right, fair enough." As it is we actually like what they've been doing art work wise. It was from an original suggestion by us, it was from a shot by a woman called Ann Arber. It was a beautiful shot of a woman naked in her home environment, it wasn't sexual at all, that was the whole point of 'Sitting at Home' it was autonomy, it was control. Truly feeling comfortable was not about wearing this year's fashion, not about having the Fujitsu wide screen or whatever, it was actually about being comfortable with your own environment and if nakedness isn't being comfortable with yourself.... If you are truly comfortable naked then you are one comfortable person. Who was it who said that the only time that you're truly, truly individual and honest and autonomous is when you're sat on the lavatory with the door locked? Whatever, that rings true to me somehow - it's all role plays to one degree or another.
Anyway that's what 'Sitting at Home' was about. We couldn't get the Ann Arber shot we wanted so the record company said "we like the shot as well, we'll get a company to restructure the shot" and basically rip it off. Because we couldn't get permission to use the original.
Pete: Allegedly rip it off.
Willie: No we ripped it off.
Pete: Almost. Almost ripped it off.
Willie: She's dead so if the estate wants to come to me my phone number is....
Pete: It's not that close. Honest.
Willie: Anyway, the upshot of that was that the sleeve went down so well for 'Sitting at Home' that the record company marketing people came to us and said "well look, that's kind of identified as the Honeycrack thing now, people remember that sleeve. What about, for your next single, bearing in mind that you're not a big band"... and that we sold 25,000 copies of 'Sitting at Home,' assuming that 15,000 ofthose were casual buys, some one heard the song on the radio and went into the shop one time - doesn't know anything about the band, just liked the song. The likelihood is that those same people, when wandering through, the week of release will see something that looks very similar, taken from the same session will go "ah, that's must be that Honeycrack band." There's a few differences, but just enough similarities to ring true. That's marketing, once again economics, and that makes sense to us and we go "yes alright, the shot's okay, go with it." Had we felt very strongly that we shouldn't have done it, I think they would have agreed but we'd have had to give something away somewhere else. It's a question of using your shots tactfully and skilfully at the best times.
SR: It's just fighting the battles that you really care about.
Willie: Yes, prioritise, that's the important thing. The mixes were key, to me and I had to really battle there because that was my main priority and there were a couple of mixes that I felt very strongly about, a couple of mixes that I didn't like and those mixes were being fronted for the album. Now I battled for that one and I knew that when they conceded, if they conceded, that sooner or later I'd have to give something away somewhere else, just as a thank you gesture. It's all about compromise, we've got to get on here, they're working for us, we're working for them.
SR: If you got this name producer in and got your version of the album and his, how different would they be?
Willie: Very.
SR: In what ways?
Willie: It would depend on the name producer you were talking about. Production, for me, has become part of the songwriting process. A good song works on an acoustic guitar or a piano, I accept that and it's something I feel strongly about as well. But then, when one envisages it in the concept of a five piece band with harmonies going out and so on, you start to think in terms of part, like an orchestral arrangement. You know what your brass line's doing and you think "what are the strings going to do to complement that?" Now that, to me, is part and parcel of the production process because not only do you go "right, whilst that guitar's doing this, and we've got this nice little singy-songy line going over that, that line sounds like it needs to be placed down the bottom of a well - it needs that particular type of reverb on it." Now that's how I hear the song, this is over a period of years and you hear them complete to one degree or another in your head, but it becomes a more finite process, well it has for me anyway. Whereas I'm always open to suggestions from the other members of the group, such as "well, that line works okay, but what if I do this?" I think that's terrific because it does bring on board the idea of everybody contributing something to it. Getting an outside producer in can very often mean that the original vision of the song is lost somewhere completely as they whittle it down to what they think the record company wants to hear.... a great hook chorus, as early on in the song as they can, to get it on radio, no guitar solo because Radio One DJs don't play guitar solos.... and this is how a lot of producers think. This is being incredibly unfair to producers but that's my of reading of most producers that I have in worked with a session capacity or who have produced previous things that I've been involved in. For me to work with most producers, and there is no mild way to put this, it's as egocentric as it sounds, I have to know that that producer can do something that I can't. In musical terms specifically, I know my way around a studio, but I'm not a top, world class engineer and I like to have a very good engineer with me, but in terms of actually constructing the songs, unless that producer has got some sort of musical ability that I don't have there's not a lot of point in him being there. Even the two records we did make with an outside producer [Gil Norton - Terrorvision, Del Amitri], at the request of the record company, I spent fucking hours having to explain to them why harmony construction worked the way it did, hours of studio time wasted. Bear in mind these guys get paid a lot of money and three days to record the track, two days to mix it whereas we're having to rush it through - a day and a half to record and mix it. So I'm ploughing through and these guys are sitting there while I'm going "Look I'm sorry but the reason you're not understanding why my line jumps up there is because this is the point where CJ comes in with the underneath vocal harmony and if that sounds weird to you that's because it's in eleventh and without that fourth coming in underneath it...." Straight away I'm into musical terminology and unless they understand that you've got the long, complicated process of going through it. And you've got to win the confidence of people as well, it takes a long twenty four hours before people think "hang on, this band actually knows what it's fucking doing."
All of that is dreadfully cruel because the people that have worked on our record I really, as people, love dearly, Gil Norton is a very nice guy, Tim Palmer is very nice. I've just wasted a good twenty minutes of your tape there going into the intricacies of the recording process, which will be very, very dull, I'm sure, for most people, but that's the only way that I can answer the question about producers. A good producer does infinitely more than just twist knobs, that's what your engineer does, he gets the sounds, the producer gets the performance out of the artist, settles on things like arrangement, settles on things like how many guitars are playing at once, the drum pattern that the drummer is playing, that sort of thing and these things, to me, have become integral to the song process. If I want a single kick drum going through it's for a very specific reason and for a producer to just come in and change it for the sake of changing it defeats the object of the song, for me. It's there for a reason, I don't do things at random.
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