I’m a happy accidents kind of guy, I’m not a huge gear head. I do love gear and I have lots of cool gear, but I don’t believe that you must use this with this and this to get the best sound, because everything is up for grabs. For example, some of my favourite albums of all time are albums that my friends did on their four-track cassette decks. They just have the vibes, and the songs are great!
When it comes to gear for me everything kinda comes from the song, I mean, if you have some $20,000 microphone through a $15,000 compressor of course it’s going to sound great, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t use whatever you have to convey what you’re trying to do. Sometimes the craziest thing, or the worst piece of gear you have, is the best thing for the song.
One of my favourite records is The Damned’s first album. It sounds like absolute shit but it’s the chaos that makes the sound. I never really put it on and go ‘if only it could be recorded better’. They probably had three hours to create a record because they had no money, and [producer] Nick Lowe grabbed it, heard how they sound at a club, then went and captured that energy and vibe.
That said, Frank Sinatra’s albums are f**king amazing because they do sound incredible. So you get the spectrum. Basically, when he was doing albums they didn’t make any crappy gear.