TRACK: A Woman's Story
ARTIST: Marc Almond
LABEL: Virgin
PRODUCER: Mike Hedges
ENGINEER: Mike Hedges/Dick Beetham
STUDIO: Marcus

Mike Hedges started his career in the late Seventies as a trainee at Morgan Studios (now Power Plant and Battery). After graduating to tape-op he engineered The Cure's first album 'because I was the newest engineer and therefore the cheapest'.

Afterwards he co-produced The Cure's follow-up album (with the band) and produced the debut LP by The Associates.

Having co-owned The Playground 24 track studio in Camden Town, North London for a brief spell, Hedges has since produced for a variety of artists including; The Creatures, Siouxsie And The Banshees, Wah, Everything But The Girl, Steve Strange and latterly Marc Almond, whose latest single, the old Cher hit A Woman's Story, has been fashioned very much in the Phil Spector mould.

'We didn't do a lot of pre-production on the song — we basically listened to the Cher track the morning we were due to record, and it was a spur of the moment thing really. Marc likes recording some of his own favourite oldies, songs that he enjoys singing and that's quite a sensible attitude.

'It was in fact so unplanned that we originally had the drum kit miked up in stereo, then on a whim decided to do it in its original style, changed all of the mics and switched the kit to mono.

'Marc had mentioned to me beforehand that the song was Spector-style, and so I was very keen on that because I just love that kind of stuff. It's quite a simple way of recording; you have the steady verse and then as soon as you hit the chorus everything just goes bang!

'Everything plays the same chord as soon as the chorus comes in. Obviously this doesn't apply to every song, but he certainly layers up all that he can.

'The easiest way to get things sounding big is to do it all in octaves rather than harmonies. Harmonies sound great, but I found that if you want a big string sound and you don't have a lot of strings, stick to two or three octaves and you'll get what you want. With harmonies obviously you're just breaking it up.

'The main thing to remember about Spector's production is that he would push the artists until he got the ultimate take, and he was the only one who knew what he was looking for.

'The first things we recorded were drums, bass, piano, guitar and vocal — all at Studio One at Marcus. The drums were in the live room at the back, and originally we had Neumann U40s on the bass drum and overheads, SM57s on the snare, and generally quite a lot of ambience on the kit. I tend to record drums natural.

'We eventually switched from the normal stereo overheads to just one close overhead and one high overhead, mainly to get away from the modern style of the drums, the toms, going in stereo from left to right. The drums stayed central, to add to the bigness of the sound rather than have the splash of cymbals left and right. Everything was dead straight down the centre, not in mono as such, — because obviously the reverbs are stereo. I went for depth rather than width.

'There is a classic old drum-booth at Marcus, and it was in there that the bass was set up and recorded with a Neumann U47.

'The guitar was set up in the bass-booth, which is next to the control room and facing out onto the studio. It was recorded with a SM57 and a Sessionette amp — I think the guitar was a Yamaha — and the sound was similar to that of the original Cher recording.

'The piano was then recorded in another side-booth with a Neumann U47. It wasn't that close miked as I was generally going for separation as well as ambience on the overall backing. This is usually quite difficult in most studios, but Marcus Studio One has so many separate booths and other little nooks and crannies that it's ideal. You can individually get ambience on things. For instance we had the piano quite live and yet didn't have any drum spill on it at all. Because of the style of recording I didn't gate anything, but just used a lot of compression.

'After the backing track we recorded Marc's vocal right in the centre of the main studio with an STC mic. The speed and feel of the track was really directed by his singing. I used single tape repeat on his voice — 15ips on an A80 — and a touch of plate.

'Marc likes his vocals quite unadulterated in his headphones. While we do tracks like that I monitor the headphone balance in the control room rather than have a monitor balance. I do that whilst listening to vocals rather than an overall finished effect. I tend to listen to the headphones simply because I can adjust things as the vocal's going. If the guitar is too loud I can turn it down while he's singing and thus fully appreciate what he is hearing.

'Working with headphones, as any musician will tell you, is just crap. Not only can he not hear if he's in tune, but it's also simply a situation of 'them and us' — between the studio and the control room. It happens particularly with overdubs. You record a part of the track, stop, start winding the tape back and ask the control room "well, what did you think of that?" Quite often the musicians are waiting to find out what's happening. That's the one thing I don't like about studio communications generally; the screening off between people which you have to have.

'Some people do have the voice coming back through live monitors. I tried it myself by recording in the control room with the vocal coming back through the control room monitors, but it's very difficult to control the feedback. If you do take the voice out of the monitors you then get the backing track spilling through the vocal mic as well, so it's not an ideal situation and headphones are the best of a bad choice.

'One joy of working with Marc, however, is that he is a good natural vocalist. Generally he does an entire take. He doesn't drop it, and he goes for the overall feel rather than saying "let's get the first verse pristine", which I think is really worthwhile with a vocal such as the one on A Woman's Story. It makes the track. It is the loudest single mix obviously, and the way he's done it is great. Marc is very easy to work with as a singer, probably the easiest.

'When it comes to the mix he will advise me to what effects he wants on the voice but soundwise he leaves it all to me as he knows that's my territory.

'Next we did the brass and strings. The four-piece brass consisted of trumpet, trombone, bass trombone and tenor sax. These were recorded in the centre of the room with the same mic (the STC) as we used on the vocal, along with the kit overhead in the live booth at the back of the room mixed in with the close mic instead of using reverb.

'Strings left and right were actually done in two parts. It wasn't a stereo recording as we did one track and then double tracked it.

'To get the balance on the brass I just moved the musicians backwards and forwards rather than rely on individual miking. This worked fine, because as the trumpet player moved back he got more room and the bass trombone player would just step in for his little part in the middle section and then step back. So it was basically a case of getting their own balance. We ran through it once and recorded it on the second time.

'The congas, shaker and tambourine were added at around the same time as brass and strings, as were the backing vocals. The backing vocals were done by just one girl. We did three tracks and then to get the size we mixed with a lot of tape-spin and a lot of tape repeat so that it sounds as if it is almost swamping itself, and then put it through the Vocoder just to bulk it out. When we hit a chorus we did the spin so that it was as big as possible without actually feeding back on itself. This gave a larger sound than possible with just reverb.

'I use tape-repeat more than any other reverb on vocals, particularly backing vocals. The same applies, for example, to guitars. I find it gives a better position on the track and a bigger sound as well. One of the problems with spin is that you tend to get a lot of sibilance, especially on the vocals, so on the repeat to the spin I am inclined to cut everything below 300 cycles and everything above about 5k. This means you don't get any boom from the bottom end and you don't get any sibilance from the top end. Only the middle frequencies are repeated.

'Jane West was doing the backing vocals on the STC mic in the centre of the room, and we really did push her! When it came to the chorus we said "right, go on, scream!" She did, and this adds to the size of the sound.

'The only other thing was the Vocoder pad which was done instead of organ. You can hear it in the verses, and it was voicey rather than organish just to add to the atmosphere.

'The whole song was recorded in about six hours spread over a whole day, and the mix was done a couple of days later. At the time it wasn't intended as a single, it was just another track, but everyone was so pleased with it, — particularly Marc — that we thought otherwise.

'Overall it couldn't have been simpler. There was a really live feel to the whole recording, and the mix took about half an hour. Literally half an hour, possibly a touch less! This was simply because we did it on the SSL with the master-channel flip, and recorded the mixdown at the end of the evening when we had done all of the overdubs.

'Obviously when you are working during the day you get a good balance on the track to listen to it when overdubbing. So we recorded that balance, and when it came to mixing we got it back and that was it! We weren't going for awards for the sound or anything like that. It was just an overall track, and it was very refreshing to work in that way!