OTHER TECH

It was nice to see the Grateful Dead ["Turn on Your Love Light"], since that was always a big issue. The Grateful Dead were interesting. The lights weren't exactly all that good at that point. And though it may not be their greatest performance ever, it's still fascinating to see that the band was playing pretty well. There was a negative feeling about it for so may years from the band, and I think if the band had seen it the way I had mixed it and the way it had been restored, they would have said, "Hey! This is pretty cool! We actually did play at Woodstock!"

Let's not forget Mountain ["Beside the Sea" and "Southbound Train"], and Johnny Winter ["Mean Town Blues"]. Johnny Winter was playing his ass off!

And Paul Butterfield ["Morning Sunrise"]. Yeah, the horn section was good there. I did it as fat as I could. We mixed this in LA, and we did final dubbing on Stage 12 at Warners. It's always a pleasure to work with those guys.

And Creedence ["Born on the Bayou," "I've Put a Spell on You," "Keep on Chooglin' "] was killer! Creedence was great! There was so much bad blood going back and forth, but the guys finally figured it out. And wow, what a pleasure to see that stuff.

Of the 8 hours you have left over, how much would you consider presentable? I'd say maybe 4.

Are there any other projects like Woodstock in the pipeline for you? I wish! [chuckles] There are a couple things in the works right now that I can't mention, but suffice to say that there are a couple of Hendrix live things we're working on that will come out.

Would you consider working on any studio material in 5.1? Well, it's quite a challenge, you know, and certainly when it comes to Jimi. He's not around to tell me what to do or help me make those decisions, therefore that's a decision Janie Hendrix [President and CEO of Experience Hendrix], myself, and John [McDermott, who manages the Experience Hendrix music catalog] will have to make. It's always been in the back of my mind - but whether or not that's going to happen is down to the fates and whims of the gods and whether they're going to be kind to us.

I think "1983" and other things from Electric Ladyland would lend themselves perfectly to 5.1. Well, I would say out of all of Jimi's studio albums, Electric Ladyland is the one album best suited for 5.1. But whether or not it would make economic sense, that's a whole different ballgame. Let's face it: the record industry is minuscule, and a surround audio mix would sell 10 copies. Well, maybe only 10,000.

Here's how it really makes sense. If one could make the case for Electric Ladyland as a visual thing as well as the audio, then it would really work. So if somebody would want to make a film about Electric Ladyland and what it means - and I know I've done that movie, the documentary, Making of Electric Ladyland - but if it's very visual, like a painting, then it might make sense.

Now that you've spend time working with 5.1, does it make sense to you as somebody behind the board? Oh God, yeah. 5.1 for me is the way to go. I wish I could do more of it. But like I said, it really makes sense when you have the visual to go with it. And that's what I'm trying to do more of.

Did you dabble much with quad? I did actually mix [Led Zeppelin's] The Song Remains the Same in quad, for what's its worth. and it actually sounded pretty damn good!

What's your position on vinyl? I've always loved vinyl. You can't beat it. Marvelous-sounding stuff.

I take it you're not a fan of MP3s or how a lot of records these days are being mixed and mastered too loud. If you consider the fact that virtually every rock albums is sounding the same in terms of the dynamic range - well, there is no more dynamic range. In fact, when I go to mastering now, I insist the mastering engineer pull the level back so there is room for the song to breathe. Otherwise, you might as well put all the faders up to one spot, compress it to death, and say, "Here you are, folks." It's absolute craziness, and to me it's counter-productive, counter-intuitive, and flies in the face of creativity. Every damn record sounds the same. I know a lot of mastering engineers are totally against it, and hopefully some of the up-and-coming bands will say, "You know, we need to change things here." It's something that I insist upon with records I work on - they will not be straightlined.

So, just to clarify this as we wrap things up: You would've liked to have worked on the surround mix for the main Woodstock movie itself, right? Oh, yeah, well, that's wishing, isn't it? It would be nice to think they'd want me to go back in and redo it. We'll just have to see. Perhaps they'll do something different for the 50th anniversary.

Maybe they could include some mud with that package. I've always thought they should do that - include premixed mud that you can roll around in.