Well, this old console has a channel strip at one end that used to be hooked up to a tape transport but was no longer active. It had 4 big square buttons and two knobs on it. When it came time to mix, the 1st Engineer sat the "Producer" down in front of that strip and told him "Whenever you hear something you don't like or would like to change, just adjust the sound using these two "Producer's knobs" and it will "fix" the mix one way of the other. No matter WHAT we do, these two knobs will override the final mix." So, every time the guy wasn't satisfied or needed to "earn his money" he just leaned over the console and tweaked one of those knobs, then leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms with a satisfied smile on his face. At one point he even had us stop tape so he could push one of the disconnected buttons and said, "Okay, go ahead. I got it". It took ALL of our composure for the rest of the session not to let the cat out of the bag.
We never told him.
Well, for the uninitiated, the reverb room is a 12 X 20 empty room with the walls covered in foil, a 12" speaker at one end up at the ceiling, and a microphone on the floor at the other. This was long before the age of digital reverbs. Well, the two of them go into that room and shut the door. While still doing the overdub session, the 1st directs me to load up a reel of tape on the mono machine and routes the reverb room mic send to the R-T-R and we continue on with the session. About 30 minutes later the two of them come back out into the control room looking disheveled and pulling at their clothes. The guitarist leans down by me as they exit and whispers "Wow! Man, that was a WILD EXPERIENCE!"
Now I ask you, how could you NOT go back after the session and listen to that tape?
To make a long story short, this guitarist had an ENORMOUS ego and upon arriving at the studio he insisted that he be allowed to engineer the session as well as produce it. In such cases like this I simply back off and let the client do what they want. After all, it IS what the studio business is all about, making money.
Well, this control freak blew his entire budget fooling around before he even had all the basic tracks done, much less overdubs. It was painfully obvious to the rest of the band that he didn't know the signal flow of my setup but he refused any suggestions on my part. I finally shrugged my shoulders and went back to the kitchen where I spent the rest of the session hanging with the rest of the band.
Every once in a while one of the guys would show up in the kitchen with a real scared look on their face and telling some horrific new tale of Mr. Ego's ill-fated journey into engineering. I wandered into the control room during mixdown and couldn't believe my ears. I had NEVER heard something SOUND SO BAD coming out of my facility. This guy had EQ'd all the guitars way off the scale! There was not ONE channel strip that did not have the EQ cranked all the way up in some fashion.
After the mixes were done I informed the guy that I would prefer the studio's name not be included anywhere on the tape box, citing that it was "his project", not mine. But I felt so sorry for the rest of the band that I actually sat down after they left and remixed the entire project (4 songs). I sent those mixes to the other guys in the band with instructions that this was on me and not to tell Mr. Ego. I received several grateful letters of thanks from California about a week later.
........Needless to say, Mr. Ego did NOT get the record deal.
So I get a call from a woman who books an hour of studio time. She shows up on the appointed day with her husband of 25 years. They're both in their mid-50's and she tells me that they are going to re-do their marriage vows. He wants to sing a song to her during the ceremony but he's afraid he might not be able to pull it off as he might be overcome with the feeling of the moment.
So they talk about it and decide he should record the song then play the tape at the appropriate moment in the ceremony. It makes sense to me, so I prepare to bounce the music track they've brought to the multitrack so he can do his vocal track. I place the cassette in the drive and wait for the music to start so I can set levels to tape and LO you guess what the song is......?
Well, I won't keep you in suspense...... it's "The Wind Beneath My Wings".
Now we ALL know how difficult that song is to sing for several reasons, not the least of which is that it was designed for a woman's voice, plus there are NO drum cues in the entire first half of the tune. As I dub the track over I am starting to get a cold chill up my spine when she casually mentions that her husband has never done this sort of thing before. Oops!
Well, I won't bore you with the gory details of how the session progressed. Suffice to say that my wife took the boys out somewhere in the car, the dog howled at the door until I let him escape as well, and the cat threw up a hairball right on my desktop. To this day I will never hear that song again without breaking out in a cold sweat.
I hope the ceremony survived the playing of that tape. I plan to be on vacation on their 50th.
One day I had had enough and decided to bring him down a peg or two. Each morning I recorded his newscast to reel-to-reel. Then I waited until the day that literally nothing had changed in the news for several hours. When the magic day finally arrived that the news was unchanged I set my devious plan into action. I called the station secretary upstairs and filled her in on her part in my little play. I cued the morning newscast up on the machine and waited. Sure enough, at 5 minutes before newstime, our hero entered the little news booth adjacent to the control room. He started cleaning up the desk, and just 20 seconds before newstime the secretary entered the booth with a "phone message". He was startled but before he could say anything the news opener erupted on his monitor.
Now, the particular Gates console we used in the control room was set up for PROGRAM or AUDITION. If you toggled the MIC (or any other) switch to the right it would route to PROGRAM. If you toggled it to the left it would be sent to AUDITION. EITHER WAY it would switch ON the "ON AIR" light to both the control room and news booth. My plan was simple enough: At just seconds before the actual news time I switched all the speaker monitors to the audition channel, then hit the NEWS OPEN cart and sent the audio to the audition channel. My hapless victim thought he was listening to the news opener, but in fact I had already started the reel-to-reel with the morning newscast over the air on the program channel. I had five minutes of free time to play!
I let him go for almost a full minute before signalling the secretary who was just standing in the news booth being very quiet. After a minute he had almost forgotten about her and was reading his news in earnest. Then...... slowly, she began to silently move toward his news desk. He began shooting nervous glances at her as she then sat on the edge of his desk. She sat there smiling at him as he read on. Another minute passed and then she slowly started rubbing her hand across his cheek. He was getting red now, and was starting to misread his news and stutter. Another thirty seconds passed before she got up and sat in his lap as he read on. Now he was really in trouble and giving me the "cut" sign to close his MIC (fortunately there was no cough switch in the news booth). Of course I pretended to not be looking at him. After reading the same line over three times in a row she bent down and kissed him on the cheek. THAT did it! He was now a babbling idiot who saw his career flash before his eyes.
Did I mention that I was recording the AUDITION channel to a second reel-to-reel for the upcoming staff Christmas Party?
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