 "Photo: Courtesy Mobilus Media")
In the course of his five-decade career, 14-time Grammy award-winning producer Phil Ramone has worked with a lot of big musical names, including Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Elton John, B.B. King, Ray Charles and Luciano Pavarotti.
Ramone was recently in Austin promoting his book, "Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music," and spoke positively about the much-debated Villa Muse project said to be constructed in rural East Austin. Ramone said the project could help turn Austin into a film and music production city on the level of Los Angeles or New York. The Austin City
Council recently voted against the ETJ (extraterritorial jurisdiction) request for Villa Muse, so the fate of the project is still uncertain.
Ramone spoke to The Daily Texan about running away from Juilliard, the effect of the Internet on the recording industry and which artists he found hardest to work with.
Daily Texan: The real question would be this: In this age of iTunes and YouTube, when it's so easy to self produce, is the role of the traditional producer coming to an end?
Phil Ramone: No, I wouldn't say that. Because here's the thing about production: Anyone can sit in the booth and say, "Play it again faster, slower, in a higher key." But that's not all a producer does. A good producer's job is to understand what the artist is trying to say and help him or her say it, even if he's saying it on a subliminal level. And that's very hard to do; you need to spend a lot of time with the artist, build up a lot of trust. You have to be objective, in a way that people who know them have a hard time being.
DT: The producer as therapist.
PR: Or gun for hire. The producer is the guy you hire to make sure the music sounds the way you, the artist, want it to. Like a speechwriter does for a politician, dragging the words out that he would say. That's it. Now, some people, like Prince, make it with self-produced albums. But before Prince could do that, he was already Prince. For an artist starting out, it's not so practical. It works about as well as a self-published book for an author.
But yeah, the Internet is changing things.
DT: How so?
PR: I would put it this way. My great-great-grandfather lived in the old country, and he made whips for carriages. If you had shown him electricity, or cars, he would have said, "What is this? This will never work."
It's the same with the record companies now. They've been fighting this Internet for years, but the Internet is an incredibly powerful, incredibly fast way to get music to people who want to hear it. It cuts costs down like you wouldn't believe, for both distribution and marketing. And man, if they had recognized the potential early, if they had created their own iTunes, they would be in much better shape now. But by fighting downloading instead of seeing its potential, they're clinging to this paradigm that's going out the window. Now, that was a very effective paradigm for 60 years, since World War II. But it's changing, and they're having a hard time changing with it.
DT: Now, you were a music prodigy; you played before Queen Elizabeth II when you were 10. But you left Julliard midway through to take a job in the recording industry. Why?
PR: I was rebellious! I had trained to be a concert violinist since I was 3; I went to the Juilliard preparatory school even before I went to the conservatory. Now, Juilliard in those days was very different from what it is now. There was this real feeling of what you should and shouldn't do, of what was right. You say you wanted to study jazz, and people look at it like you're talking about going out cruising the bars instead of practicing. Study jazz?
Well, I wanted to study jazz, as well as the popular music that was coming out at that time. So I left during my second year to take a job as a recording engineer. I won a Grammy for engineering "Girl From Ipanema," then tried my hand at producing with the soundtrack to "Midnight Cowboy." You could call that my big break.
The funny part is, you get to where I am, and they invite you back to get an honorary degree from where? The jazz department. They study that now, so things have changed.
DT: So out of all the artists you've worked with, who was the most difficult?
PR: [Laughs] I always say, man, if you can work with Frank Sinatra and Paul Simon and Barbara Streisand … you have set the bar. You can deal with anyone.
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