Features

Todd is Still God

Why do you think some of your more experimental album work—particularly that with Utopia—has been overlooked by younger fans of today’s jamband scene?

I don’t necessarily worry about the time frame of music because I know I’ve discovered a lot of music well after the fact. Maybe it didn’t do the artist the good they would have wanted at the time by me rushing out and buying the record when it was just released but I’ve come to realize, I’ve probably had this realization for a long time. From the musician’s side, once you’ve made this thing, you’re living with it for the rest of your life. People still ask me about the early records, still go back and listen to Nazz records and stuff [laughter] and ask me questions about them. In many cases, the records have an impact on them that’s lost on me because of all the intervening time. I don’t think really good music has a time frame. The thing that does a have time frame is let’s say the audience’s ability to absorb something new. And that’s just a natural human tendency to try and get things in a routine and just stick there and no big surprises, that kind of thing. [chuckle] I figure as long as you got it down there, as long as you got it preserved, it’s there for somebody to find whenever they find it. The whole idea of music is repercussions of influences. You have an influence on someone else just like you were influenced. There’s a whole chain reaction of influence going on there. Very few musicians are actually totally original. They’re just complex combinations of influences.

Are there any musicians that you think of as totally original?

Well, as I say being a musician from the inside, I realize how hard it is to be truly original. Because first of all, to claim such a thing, is also to claim that you never really listened to anyone else’s music ever, therefore you weren’t influenced by it. But the other thing is, for the music to make it into the public ear, there are certain rules and limitations already. For instance, in the west, we have a twelve tone scale. And so if you start doing micro tonal music, a lot of people are going to say, “aren’t you playing out of tune?” [laughter] Whereas there are other parts of the world that, for instance in Thailand or Bali where they have scales that are tempered completely different. So an octave isn’t even actually an octave, [laugh] it’s just an octave in some sense. As you go up the scale, things get sharper, sharper and sharper. And say there’s some Tahitian singing style which is all vocal, all a capella with large choruses but they somehow manage in concert to create the effect as if you were slowing the record down. They do it live. They all, in complete harmony, just do this portamento thing down to a lower note and you look at the record player like it’s broke. There’s all kinds of way of doing music that sound original, that may even be traditional, they’re outside you’re cultural sphere. As musicians, we always work under limitations of our culture and the influences we experience within it.
You produced The Band’s Stage Fright album [1970] alongside engineer Glyn Johns. As the story goes, the original album mix had seven of yours cuts and three of his, though it’s been claimed that they used all of Johns’ mixes which is what the credits read. It was re-released in 1994 and featured the “alternate mix” of the album and drastically changed what all the songs sounded like. Many believe they are all your tracks and think they are considerably better than the original and much more in tune with their previous albums and feel. Can you lend some clarity to the situation?

Well there is a lot of confusion there. As a matter of fact, no one gets producer credits on The Band’s albums because no one is actually the titular producer. They were, in my experience, done in a completely democratic manner involving, first, all the members of The Band themselves and whoever else was participating might also make a contribution. But in that sense, there was no singular person that guided the process; it was more or less done by consensus. That’s an interesting process. It resulted in a third set, well I’m having trouble keeping track of them. Here’s what actually happened.

They had made an agreement with Glyn Johns to have him mix the album. Since I had recorded the whole album, they figured I should have a shot at mixing the album as well. So they sent me, with the tapes, to London and put me in one studio and I would mix. I gave half the reels to Glyn and he was mixing half the reels while I was mixing the other half of the reels and then we swapped reels and completed our mixes. Then I came back with two versions of the record. As it turned out, they weren’t completely happy with either one so we went into the studio and did a whole other series of remixes while The Band was there. So those were essentially The Band’s own remixes.
With you and Glyn both there?

No, no. Just me. Glyn Johns was too busy to leave England. So we went back to Bearsville Studios and essentially went through a very long, torturous remix process again because it was five guys. We spent all day mixing a tune and then they would take the references back and come back the next with all new ideas or sometimes start the mix all over again. So it took a terrifically long time because you had to satisfy five guys. So in the end, I have no idea actually which ones went on the original record or which ones might be on the reissue of the record [laughter] because in the end they made decisions about which ones would go one. I’m pretty sure that on the original release, it was a combination of the three. That they’re might have been one or two mixes I did, a couple that Glyn Johns did, but also many that we done in the third mix session with The Band all there. So the album that was re-released, I haven’t gone back and listened to it. I probably couldn’t tell you anyway which one was which. I felt a little uncomfortable in my own mixing situation because I was sent into a strange place with speakers I had never worked with before and so I was just kind of trying to make my way through it and hoped that I was getting it right. Just kind of following my instincts.

Fans and my boss want to know: will there ever be a Utopia reunion?

We can say, with absolute certitude, that there never will. [laughter] I know this is disappointing news to some people but they should stop dreaming about it because it ain’t going to happen. [more laughter]

You seem to have always done what you’ve wanted- no kowtowing to record companies or soul-less moves for popularity and yet you’ve been the star and the underground favorite. Is there anything that’s eluded you as an artist though?

No. I think people often think that our career is the most important thing in your life. And though it is a hugely important thing in my life, I had other goals for as long as I can remember and one of them I knew was to have a family. The fact that I’ve survived that [big laugh], to me, is the greatest achievement for me. The fact that I’ve had fairly, substantially happy family life and had the kids I wanted to have and watched them grow up. As pedestrian as that sounds, you have to cover the basics in life. That’s what life is about. You have to try and do a good job on the same things that everyone else has to do, like having kids and raising a family, before you can start bragging about your other accomplishments.

If you could see one person get hit in the nuts with a hockey puck, who would it be?

[laughter] There’s so many to choose from. I’m trying to think of the biggest jerk. Bill O’Reilly is certainly a big jerk every time I accidentally stop on Fox News. [big laugh] Runaway, runaway. Who most deserves it? I have to say I don’t have a lot of personal grudges in my life. The person who probably screwed me the worst was Albert Grossman and he died. [laughter]. So I could zing a hockey puck off his grave perhaps, but I would have a tough time finding his nuts at this point. [laughter]