Page 1, 2, 3, Back to Recording Notes
Seger sang into a U67, as did the three hired female background singers who come in only on the tag. The vocals were recorded virtually flat. “I’m not one for playing with EQ,” Richardson says. “I’d rather spend the time finding the right microphone and getting the right setup for the singer. In this case, I pushed Bob up a very little around the 1.6 to 1.8kHz range to accentuate the harmonics in his voice. He’s already got plenty of power in the high end. I think if you have to add more than 2 dB of EQ to anything, you’re in a salvage situation.” Drums and vocals got a touch of Teletronix LA-2A, as did the final mix. Richardson was prepared to do several tracks of lead vocals and comp them later—the sparseness of the track had left him plenty of media real estate to play with—but Seger got it on one track within five passes through the song. The mix was done that same day, spruced up with echo from EMT stereo plates and little else.
As good as “Night Moves” was—and Richardson thought it was an obvious single—the song still had to contend with the fickleness of fate. After Seger and crew left, Punch Andrews called to say that he was less than pleased with the mixes, and then phoned again weeks later to say the record company felt the same way. Richardson recalls being annoyed by the comments. Three months later, John Carter, an A&R person for Capitol in Canada, stopped by the studio. Richardson asked him how he had liked the Seger mixes. “He ducked the issue a little, but then said he thought that both tracks were pretty good—for B sides,” Richardson remembers. “And I said to him, ‘Both tracks? There were four songs! Would you like to hear the others?’ So I played him ‘Night Moves,’ and he really liked it. I made some suggestions for editing it down for a single.” The original mix had come in at over five minutes long; the single, after mastering and editing by Wally Traugott at Capitol, is three-and-change and radio-friendly, as they used to say.
Weeks later, on a break for a session producing the Brecker Brothers in New York, Richardson opened Billboard and saw “Night Moves” hit the charts at 95. He also noticed that the credits read it had been produced by Punch Andrews. He made a call to Capitol, but the next week, as the song began to rocket up the charts, the credit remained unchanged. The normally avuncular Richardson went ballistic. “I called John Carter and told him you’ve got 24 hours to get the credits right,” says Richardson. The next issue, it read “Producers: Jack Richardson and Punch Andrews.” “Punch wasn’t even at the sessions,” Richardson adds with a chuckle.
“Night Moves” hit the Top 10 (making it to Number 4) and remained there for several weeks. “Like all records, it’s a concoction of how people were feeling and thinking at a moment in time,” Richardson sums up. “And like a lot of hit records, it came together fast—the song and the record. There wasn’t a lot of time to spend screwing it up.”
(Look for a full Mix interview with Richardson in an upcoming issue.)
Reprinted with permission from
Magazine, April, 2001© 2000, Intertec Publishing, A Primedia Company All Rights Reserved
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
