Producers: UB40
Band: UB40
Track: I Got You Babe

One of UB40's first major tours was as support with The Pretenders, and it was as far back as that the seeds of cooperation were sewn. Last year UB40's Ali Campbell and Pretender Chrissie Hynde finally talked seriously about being a little more specific in their association to the tune of an old tune by 60's sweethearts Sonny and Cher, I Got You Babe. It was recorded at UB40's own studio in Birmingham. One of the house engineers on the session, Alan Caze, talked about how it went to tape.

"There were actually three engineers on that session, John Shaw, who's the other house engineer here, Ray Falconer the band's live sound engineer and me. It was a very loose series of sessions because we had another band in at the time, and so we had to fit in around them, pinching a day here and a day there. The whole band really produced the record and as far the engineering goes we all three did a little bit of everything; one of my main contributions was being old enough to remember all the words!

"It was never a big heavy session, we never approached it as if we were recording 'the big single' or anything. It started off like virtually all UB40 sessions, by putting down a rough rhythm with the Oberheim DMX drum machine triggered by SMPTE time code, which is also recorded to the multitrack so that the pattern could be reprogrammed and changed around latter still maintaining perfect timing. Then Earl put down his bass line. When I first started working with the band that took me a bit of getting used to — the idea of putting the bass line down before any other instruments, but Earl is such a strong player that he actually sets the way in which a song's going to go; once the bass is down everyone takes their leads from that. In that way he's the inspiration behind most of these songs. Sometimes they'll put a rough guide keyboard down as well, but quite often the bass will be recorded just to the drums.

"It's very seldom that the band record altogether in the studio, all the different parts tend to go down separately as overdubs. In fact it's very difficult to get the whole of the band in the studio at one time. They all live in Birmingham, but they're generally a bit busy doing various other things, so when one of them walks through the door you just have to grab them to do their bit.

"We were very happy with the bass sound on that track. It was simply a Stromberg bass — Earl plays with his fingers — DI'd straight into the desk with a little compression from a UREI LA4. I don't know what the settings were, I think it was about a 4:1 ratio but I tend to just use my ears and the meter and twiddle the knobs until it sounds right. Earl's a very constant player, and on the first take it's a matter of letting him get his ideas down on tape quickly and easily without getting in his way. You know he's always going to do it again at some point in the session anyway, and so it's not that crucial. The second time around he generally plays more or less the same line, but it'll be a bit tighter and we'll have had more time to get the sound right. We're using an Otari 24-track with an Amek Angela mixer which is a great board and gives a lot of control, especially over the bottom end: I think that has a good deal to do with the bass sound. Also, we have some 18" Cerwin Vega sub-woofers which can apparently go down to 14Hz. They take over the Tannoy Buckinghams at 300Hz and so really help us hear the bass accurately. They're virtually indestructible; you can even plug them into the mains and you'll get 50Hz!

"So anyway, then we put down a rough vocal and basic piano track — nothing serious, just a reference, and that was followed by the DX-7 brass lines which were mixed in with the real brass that John (Shaw) recorded afterwards. As well as close miking the brass he also put up a single mike to pick up the room ambience, again to give it some space. He also recorded the 'bonk bonk' track which was actually a Pearl Syncussion unit.

"At some point we decided to replace the DMX snare with a real one. We sampled the real snare into an AMS and then I triggered it from the separate drum machine snare track. When I record the kit I often leave a couple of tracks empty with it in mind to trigger another sound onto one of them from one of the original sounds. In this case I left tracks five and six, and as you can see I never got round to using the track six and so it stayed empty. We also redid the hi hat at a different tempo, still using the DMX, and that was recorded onto track seven.

"A few days after that Chrissie Hynde came in, with her baby, and she and Ali put the vocals down together, facing each other. She was so professional, they both did four straight take from start to finish and then we chose different verses and choruses from each to make the final finished vocal. There was no need to do any drop-ins, or to cut individual lines in and out from the different takes. It was really very easy. I used an AKG 'Tube' valve mike for Chrissie with just a little touch of compression, and Ali used his favourite AKG C535; he's actually got his own particular model with his name inscribed on it. He always has to do something with his hands when he's singing, and so he always holds the mike moving it in and out to maintain a constant level; I hardly ever have to use any compression.

"As with the other tracks such as Red Red Wine, we were very careful not to overproduce I Got You Babe. You can go so far and then if it doesn't need anymore, it's pointless overproducing it. Bands often want to put too much in, they want to double track all the synth parts, from then on it's a struggle to get anything to come through in the mix. With Reggae especially, it's very open and there has to be plenty of room to hear things. The UB's spend a lot of time on how things are played and getting the right sounds rather than just piling a load of things in.

"The mix was very quick, in fact the whole project was done in less than three days, which is the way we like to work. There were no fancy effects used, it was mostly just the Lexicon 224 and AMS RMX-16 digital reverbs, the AMS digital delay for a little echo on the voice and a Roland Dimension D on the brass. There's no one really in charge as far as producing goes, it changes with every recording, and in fact if often ends up to be simply whoever can be around from the band while the mix is going on. John engineered that particular mix and it was all done very quickly and easily — and it was a hit."