[ U2's "Pride" plays ]
-I never thought of myself as a record producer.
Somebody else named me that.
I was just a guy who was making records
and was good at helping people.
-♪ One man come in the name of love ♪
♪ One man come and go
-When you're at the front end of a medium,
you get this adrenaline rush,
or you think, "Oh, my goodness, I think we've touched
on something here that's never been heard before.
[ David Bowie's "Fame" plays ]
-♪ Fame
♪ Makes a man take things over
-When it comes to making a hit record,
one of the biggest mysteries is the role of the producer.
-I've heard of Phil Spector. I heard of Andrew Loog Oldham.
I heard of Jimmy Miller with the Stones.
I didn't know what they did.
-♪ Fame, fame
-When I would see old footage of George Martin,
I knew that guy was the important guy to watch.
Nobody wants his autograph, but he's the guy in charge.
-♪ Fame
-Producers were people who understood how recording worked.
-♪ Fame -They were the people who said,
"Here's this whole new set of possibilities.
We're gonna find out what they can do."
-♪ Fame, fame, fame, fame
-The digital wave of music gave us a whole orchestra
of instrumentation in front of our hands.
[ Johnny Cash's "One" plays ]
-But technical skill is only part of the job.
The real challenge is to bring out the best in a performer.
-♪ Is it getting better
♪ Or do you feel the same?
-There's a connection you have to make in producing,
and it's gotta be love and respect.
-♪ You got someone to blame
-I think the most important thing a producer can do
is to create a vibe of safety in the room,
like, it's okay to go out on a limb.
-♪ In the night
-That it's cool to go to a very vulnerable space
where, if it doesn't work right, it could be embarrassing.
-♪ Carry each other, one
-Don't be afraid to fail.
♪♪
-Okay, then. Okay.
-It'll be an F for you.
-Here we go.
Just one more time.
-Right after I say, "Are you sure?"
Da da da -- yeah.
-Oh.
-Hal, here's how I want to do it. Takes like this.
-All right, it's fun time. Fun time.
-Here we go.
-Oh, really? -17, take one.
-This will be the keeper. -[Laughs]
♪♪
-Here we go.
One time, everybody, please.
[ The Rolling Stones's "Start Me Up" plays ]
-My first meeting with the Rolling Stones
was I ended up on a sofa with Mick Jagger sitting here
and Keith sitting here,
and they were both talking at the same time.
-♪ If you start me up
♪ If you start me up, I'll never stop ♪
-Mick was suggesting things
that a producer could do for the Stones
and Keith was telling me why he didn't need a producer.
And Keith said, "You sure you want to be the meat
in this sandwich?"
[ Laughs ]
-The producer has got to be able to say
to somebody like Mick Jagger,
"Can you just do that again, right?"
-He should have tact. He should have diplomacy.
He should know how to handle an artist.
-Even if it means saying that song's not as good as that one.
This melody needs to be better.
-And it's hard, man, 'cause it'svery intimate, you know.
Very, very intimate.
And you're going straight from your heart,
and you're saying, "We're not there yet."
Or "That's a perfect, perfect take. One more time." [ Laughs ]
-Plenty of great songs have gotten lost in bad production,
so, you have to appreciate when you have those pairings
of a Michael Jackson and a Quincy Jones,
when you have a great songwriter and a great producer.
-The two of you together are making music
completely from scratch,
and it's your job to try and help find the right sounds
that makes everybody's hair stand on end.
[ Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'" plays ]
-It might take many weeks
of just sitting and playing with nothing happening.
And then one day, something happens.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪ She's a good girl
♪ Loves her mama
♪ Loves Jesus
♪ And America, too
I sat down and played a lick, like...
[ Hums melody ]
and Jeff Lynne,
who's one of the greatest record makers ever, I think,
went, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
don't put that bit on the end there."
What? What do you mean?
"Just go..."
[ Hums "Free Fallin'" chord changes ]
"And start the phrase again, but don't put that other bit in."
And I hadn't even really thought it was a song, you know,
but he was excited by it.
♪ She's a good girl
♪ Loves her mama
The first two verses were adlibbed, you know --
♪ She's a good girl, loves her mama ♪
♪ loves Jesus, and America, too ♪
I was just kind of tryin' to make Jeff smile.
He goes, [English accent] "Free Falling."
That's all he said, you know.
♪ And I'm free
♪ I'm free fallin'
♪ And I'm free
♪ I'm free fallin'
-That's the whole point of having someone
that will sit in the booth, hearing something
that you might play, that you would just discard,
and he'll say, "Hang on a minute, that was really good.
Go back to that."
-Ultimately, what being a producer is
is having a point of view.
It's easy to make sound. Really, anybody can make sound.
But not everybody can make music.
[ Up-tempo rock-'n'-roll music plays ]
-Well, hello and welcome to the cradle of rock 'n' roll.
♪♪
-Sam Phillips was 3 days short of 27
when he opened the doors to the Memphis recording service.
He started the label Sun 3 years later.
-So many earlier producers, like Sam Phillips,
they're basically operating in an A&R capacity,
looking for promising talent, bringing them into the studio,
and crafting a unique sound for them.
-From Sam Phillips's point of view, if you weren't doing
something different, you weren't doing anything.
He was looking for individualism in the extreme, as he would say.
-When I wanted to open up my recording studio,
I didn't tell too many people about what I had in mind
because I didn't know whether I'd be able to pull it off.
I didn't have enough money
to buy the equipment that I wanted
and I didn't know whether I could pay the rent,
but I knew that I was gonna get me some black folks
in that studio, one way or the other.
I recorded Roscoe Gordon, BB King,
the Howlin' Wolf, Little Junior Parker.
♪♪
-Memphis in the mid-'50s was a "black cats" town.
It was about soul.
Nashville didn't rock.
Memphis did.
[ Up-tempo rock-'n'-roll music plays ]
-Sam Phillips was so smitten
with the sound of black music and black blues,
but he knew that he'd need a white guy to put it out there.
And he found a guy called Elvis Presley, ha.
-♪ Evenin' shadows
♪ make me blue
♪ When each weary day
♪ is through
-With Elvis, I knew when he walked in the door, baby.
If anybody can do this,
I believe this is the person who can do it.
-♪ My happiness
-It was something that he heard in this kid,
something that was unique about him.
-But, as the session begins,
Elvis starts singing all these country songs and pop standards.
And Sam realizes, "Hey, this is not gonna work."
He has a wonderful voice, but it's so insecure.
-♪ Just as long as I'm with you ♪
♪ My happiness
-So I went in and talked to him and said,
"Hey, we still are not where I believe we should be,
and I think we all agree on this," and so I turned around,
went back in the control room, and, next thing I know,
Elvis cut out on "That's All Right Mama."
♪♪
-♪ Well, that's all right, mama ♪
♪ That's all right for you
♪ That's all right now, mama
♪ Just any way you do
♪ That's all right
-And, man, the minute I heard that thing,
I said, "Lord, hey, if we aren't gonna make it on that, honey,
there was nothing I could do, ever."
-♪ Do
-I used to hear Elvis and they would be singing and playing,
and they sounded good, but they was playing white music.
♪ That's all right, mama, that's all right for you ♪
When he did that, I said, "Ohhh, wait a minute.
[laughs] This is this is all right."
How do you categorize "That's All right"?
It's just a magic moment,
and it's truly original in that it doesn't sound
like anything else in the marketplace.
-♪ I'm leavin' town, baby
♪ I'm leavin' town for sure
♪ Well, then you won't be bothered ♪
♪ With me hangin' 'round your door ♪
♪ But that's all right
♪ That's all right
♪ That's all right, now, mama ♪
♪ Any way you do
-To Sam Phillips, it was always about freeing --
freeing the soul of his singers.
Most of these people who came to him,
like Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins,
Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison --
they all shared this enormous insecurity.
His magic was to pull it out
of whatever it was that they had inside.
-♪ I believe you're doin' me wrong, and now I know ♪
♪ I believe you're doin' me wrong, and now I know ♪
-The qualities that Sam Phillips first saw in him,
he continued to show till the end of his career.
-♪ Well
♪ I said shake, rattle, and roll ♪
-When you know that you have been able to give these people
the inspiration to display their God-given talent
and to be proud of it,
I think that is the essence of Sun records.
-♪ I don't care if I die
♪ I said flip, flop, and fly
♪ I don't care if I die
♪ Don't ever leave me
♪ Don't ever say goodbye
[ Cheers and applause ]
-We formally present The Beatles!
♪♪
-I didn't realize when I signed the Beatles
that they'd already been to every record company
in the country and they'd been turned down
by every record company in the country.
-♪ Some other guy now
♪ Has taken my love away from me now ♪
-When we first met George,
we loved him because he took a chance on us.
No one else would take a chance.
With a name like that, you come from Liverpool --
not a chance in hell.
♪♪
-I think it was really a gut feeling I had about them.
I think it was their charisma.
-Does the continuous living and working together
impose any temperamental stress upon you?
-You know, we all have been mates for quite a long time,
so we don't get on each other's nerves as much as we could.
-Argh!
Bloody hell, yes. [Laughter]
-We're quite friendly.
-So I see.
♪♪
-When I first met them, The Beatles knew nothing
about a recording studio.
Their experience had been performing in front of people
at the Cavern in Hamburg and that kind of thing.
-George had done no rock 'n' roll when we met him,
and we'd never been in a studio,
so we did a lot of learning together.
-I think The Beatles would have made it as great musicians
whether I was there or not.
I think the fact that Iwas there helped out.
I think they probably got there more quickly.
-♪ Last night I said these words to my girl ♪
♪ I know you never even try, girl ♪
-♪ Come on -♪ Come on
-♪ Please please me, oh, yeah, like I please you ♪
[ Screaming ]
-What happens with George Martin's work
with The Beatles is that he added himself into the picture.
He was an arranger, he was a musician,
he had some technical knowledge
that he could use to augment what they were doing,
and took control of the overall sonic picture.
-I kept seeing George Martin's name on the records
and then, when I saw a picture of him, I thought,
"My God, he's about twice their age," you know.
He looked like he was a director in a bank, you know.
He had a suit and tie all the time.
His hair was swept back.
It was like "Wow! These people work together?
That's crazy."
-He was older and wiser and he brought a deep musicality.
They had it intuitively and he had it intellectually,
so he could help them execute ideas
that a less skilled producer could not do.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-It wasn't until a couple of years later
that they started doing more sophisticated songwriting.
Wrote the most touching material.
-Okay, then. Okay.
-It'll be an F for you.
♪ Yesterday
-Keep playing it.
-I'm in G. But it'll be an F.
It goes [strum] E minor to A7 to D minor.
Ready. -Here we go. Here we go.
-When Paul first wrote "Yesterday,"
he came to me and said, "Have you heard this one before?
Because I dreamt about it last night,
and I'm sure in my subconscious I'm pinching it from someone."
I said, "No, I'm sure it's an original piece of music.
Stick to it, it's great."
-Okay, man.
♪♪
♪ Yesterday
♪ All my troubles seemed so far away ♪
♪ Now it looks as though they're here to stay ♪
-He said, "What do you think, man?"
I said, "Well, there's nothing we can do to put on top of this
and make it more beautiful, except perhaps some strings."
-♪ There's a shadow hanging over me ♪
-With my dad being the posh bloke in the studio,
as the classically trained musician,
there was an initial reluctance from Paul
to have a string quartet on "Yesterday."
-I was always frightened of classical music,
and I never wanted to listen to it
because it was Beethoven and Tchaikovsky
and sort of big words like that, and Schoenberg.
You know, I always thought, you know,
"It's high-class, that. It's very highbrow.
-I was rehearsing musicians when he walked into the studio
and he saw the score that I had written
and he came up to me and said, "What's this?"
I said, "It's all the music that the musicians are playing.
He said, "You haven't got my name on it."
I said, "I'm sorry. Here's a pencil.
Put your name on it." So he wrote on it,
"Yesterday by Paul McCartney John Lennon..."
Looked at me -- "George Martin Esq",
and then giggled and put down "and Mozart".
-♪ Yesterday
♪ Love was such an easy game to play ♪
♪ Now I need a place to hide away ♪
♪ Oh, I believe in yesterday
-"Yesterday" showed Paul how a string quartet
could be quite effective on a really good song.
And then he came to me with "Eleanor Rigby,"
which cried out for strings --
not the smooth, legato stuff of "Yesterday,"
but something that's very biting,
very rhythmic, very edgy.
[ Suspenseful string music plays ]
It suggested to me the stuff that Bernard Herrmann
had been writing for "Psycho," for example.
♪♪
-"Eleanor Rigby" is the first time that The Beatles
weren't playing any instruments on one of their records.
It is just a string octet.
The octet was recorded onto 4-track.
On track 1 here...
[ Violins play ]
...you have the first violins.
♪♪
And here are the second violins.
♪♪
You can hear bleed 'cause
they're all in the same room together.
♪♪
-Oh, my gosh, I played that
over and over and over and over again.
It was just so smart.
George Martin obviously knew this stuff
and he knew how to put it on a Beatles record.
That's the trick.
[ "Eleanor Rigby" plays ]
For the first time you're hearing a string octet
and you're tapping your foot.
-George Martin made strings cool, you know.
He used strings in a way that was so innovative.
I don't think anyone had thought of before.
In that way, The Beatles educated all of us.
-♪ Ah, look at all the lonely people ♪
♪ Ah, look at all the lonely people ♪
♪ Eleanor Rigby
Until then, I thought, "I can be a rock star.
I want to be a rock star. I want to be onstage.
I want to have the girls screaming at me.
I want all that stuff. I want a limo, everything."
[laughs] But now I wanted to be George Martin.
That was more important.
To be in the studio, to do that kind of stuff,
to be able to experiment that way
and to make great works of art that only exist on tape.
That's very important, you know.
It's a very different art from performing live.
That's what I wanted to be -- I wanted to be George Martin.
-♪ All the lonely people
♪ Do they all belong?
-George Martin -- his influence was so mighty,
but he wasn't there to puthis stamp on it.
Someone like a Phil Spector kind of --
He was the opposite of that.
I don't know if he said it himself,
but, you know, he was the artist on the record.
[ "Be My Baby" plays ]
-♪ The night we met
♪ I knew I
♪ needed you so
-The enormous orchestra he got on "Be My Baby,"
there was nothing before Phil Spector
that was ever done on such a level,
except maybe a symphonic recording --
you know, Beethoven's 9th or something like that.
-♪ Oh oh oh -Boom, boom-boom, bang!
Boom, boom-boom, bang!
Those are huge, big, noisy, rock 'n' roll --
♪ Be my, be my little baby
-♪ Be my darling
-♪ Be my, be my baby
-♪ Be my baby now
♪ Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh
-What one really hears in Phil Spector's work
is the possibility of production.
A unique way of building the sound of his recordings.
It's now known as the Wall of Sound.
-He was the first rock-star producer.
And if you wanted to be a record producer,
he was somebody you had to study or just know a lot about.
[ Applause ]
-♪ To know, know, know him
♪ Is to love, love, love him
-It's easy to forget how young Phil Spector was
when he started.
The Teddy Bears was his first band
and it was just him and his schoolmates,
the three of them doing this very mournful harmony record.
-♪ Is to love, love, love him
-My older sister's boyfriend
was the other guy in the Teddy Bears.
They'd rehearse in my living room,
so I heard "Wonderful Lovable You"
and "Don't You Worry My Little Pet"
and "To Know Him is To Love Him."
-♪ Love, love, love him
-It's a magical little teen record.
That was the first record he ever made.
He emerged fully formed.
-♪ And I do
[ Whistling and applause ]
[ Drumbeat ]
-Well, from the beginning, Phil Spector was
into the sound of records and not just songwriting.
And he was very ambitious and he started his own record label.
At that point, what you think of
as the Phil Spector Wall of Sound really starts.
[ Whirring ]
-♪ You never close your eyes
♪ Anymore when I kiss your lips ♪
♪ And there's no tenderness
-When you're a teenager, your emotions are really heightened.
Phil Spector's records really encapsulated that.
You listen to something like
"You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" and it just sounds
like, you know, it sounds like the end of the world,
more than the end of a love affair. It's incredible.
-♪ But, baby
♪ Baby, I know it
♪ You've lost that lovin' feeling ♪
♪ Whoa, that lovin' feeling
♪ You've lost that lovin' feeling ♪
♪ Now it's gone, gone, gone
♪ Whoa-oh, oh, oh
-Phil Spector used 3 keyboard players, 2 drummers...
-3 bass players, 3 organ players...
-5 keyboard players, 3 guitar players...
-3 woodwinds, 3 saxes.
-The Los Angeles Choir.
-He was like, "How can I make these 4 tracks sound bigger?
Well, I'll hire double the musicians
and have them all play exactly the same thing at the same time.
-Phil Spector intuitively understood
that a rock 'n' roll ensemble or a pop group
is no different than an orchestra.
There's absolutely a reason why you have
16 or 18 or 20 first violins in an orchestra.
It's because one violin sounds like [bleep], you know.
And if you get -- and even 8 sound crappy.
But when they're all playing together,
suddenly it homogenizes
and it creates that extraordinary sound.
-♪ Bring back that lovin' feeling ♪
♪ Whoa, that lovin' feeling
-After the track was laid, and you go back in the control room,
you could listen to the playback,
you couldn't believe what you was hearing.
You didn't even believe that you just played that.
To listen to the track, the way he just
stacked those sounds together.
He knew what he was doing.
-So he had this huge hit with the Righteous Brothers
and then he followed it up not that much later
with "River Deep Mountain High."
-Okay, here we go, from the top.
Take 3.
-1, 2. 1, 2, 3.
♪♪
Jack, you don't have a more substantial tambourine
out there, do ya? Take 11.
-It was just once in a while
that we do 29, 30, 31 takes on a song.
And maybe he would go back to take 4.
But, that's the way it was with Phil.
-Take 15.
-♪ Do I love you?
♪ My, oh, my
♪ Yeah, river deep, mountain high ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah
-Hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it.
It was a little fast. You were ahead.
-He abused the technology.
He abused the musicians.
-The day that we did the session,
the room was full of people.
Eons of musicians
and he was a little bitty something out there,
screaming, "I want this! I...!" You know?
I mean he's very persistent in what he wants.
And the result is fantastic, but, he's very,
very, very strong personality to sort of work for.
I wouldn't say he's easy at all. [ Laughs ]
♪♪
♪ When I was a little girl
♪ I had a ragdoll
-And I don't know who gave it that title, Wall of Sound,
but it was a brilliant title
and they just put it on everything.
-Every rock 'n' roll or any serious recordmaker
wanted to grab on to a bit of that sound.
-♪ And do I love you?
♪ My, oh, my
♪ Yeah, river deep, mountain high ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah!
-A lot of people don't want to credit Phil
because he's too crazy, he had too much of a reputation.
But from my point of view,
I was working with Phil Spector, man.
I knew it was gonna be good.
♪♪
-♪ Up at 8:00
♪ You can't be late
♪ For Matthew and son
♪ He won't wait
[ Horns play ]
I was actually making very, very brassy,
very fully arranged pop records
back in the early '60s or late '60s.
♪♪
♪ Matthew and son, the work's never done ♪
♪ There's always something new
I wanted to have a hit.
But most of the times, I was not in control of my songs.
♪ ...never, ever blue
And everybody was writing these notes for me
and they were recording them and I was always
rather intimidated by the studio and, you know,
there's all these, like, engineers, and they all knew
what the buttons meant and where the wires were going.
I couldn't understand what that was. It was a spaceship.
♪♪
And I didn't quite recognize my music when it came out.
I just wanted to get shod of the record industry
being, you know, the boss of everybody
and telling everybody what to do.
And I wanted to get control of my sound.
[ Intro to "Father and Son" plays ]
♪ It's not time to make a change ♪
♪ Just relax, take it easy
♪ You're still young, that's your fault ♪
♪ There's so much you have to know ♪
♪ Find a girl, settle down
♪ If you want, you can marry
♪ Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy ♪
And so you'll hear from my first records
to my later records, there's a change.
And the big change was when I said, "You know what?
My little demos on my little Grundig, you know, tape recorder
sound better than what I finally ended up with.
All that brass and all those strings.
♪ Think of everything you've got ♪
♪ For you will still be here tomorrow ♪
♪ but your dreams may not
♪ How can I try to explain?
♪ 'Cause when I do he turns away again ♪
♪ It's always been the same
♪ same old story
And so when we finally started making those records --
You know, "Tea for the Tillerman" --
it was stripping everything down,
and I looked for a new producer
who could capture that raw kind of song that was within me
in the purest way without interfering.
♪ All the times that I've cried ♪
♪ Keeping all the things I knew inside ♪
♪ It's hard, but it's harder to ignore it ♪
♪ If they were right, I'd agree ♪
♪ But it's them, they know, not me ♪
♪ Now there's a way
♪ And I know that I have to go away ♪
♪ I know I have to go
♪♪
-The essence of the singer/songwriter movement,
one of its tenets was, you were trying to really make sure
the song told a story, and that's why we tried
to keep it simple, was because the songs and the lyrics were
among the most important stars on the record.
[ "California" plays ]
Joni's always made her own records.
She has a very clear idea of what she wants.
Joni is an inventor, you know,
she invents guitar tunings the way she invents songs.
♪♪
And I don't think producing her is realistically possible.
-♪ Sitting in a park in Paris, France ♪
♪ Reading the news, and it's all bad ♪
♪ They won't give peace a chance ♪
♪ That was just a dream some of us had ♪
♪ Still a lot of lands to see
♪ But I wouldn't want to stay here ♪
♪ It's too old and cold and settled in its ways here ♪
♪ Oh, but California
♪ California
♪ I'm coming home
♪ I'm gonna see the folks I dig ♪
♪ I'll even kiss a sunset pig
♪ California, when I get home ♪
Most of the men at that time
were very resistant to taking instruction from a woman.
They were very pompous, overlording.
I thought, "If I have to subordinate myself to this,
you know, person, it'll kill my love of music."
So I had to put in my contract
that I never had to have a producer.
♪ And I might have stayed on with him there ♪
♪ But my heart cried out for you ♪
-Geniuses, they're stubborn and they're hell-bent
on executing their vision the way that they see fit.
-♪ Oh, make me feel good, rock 'n' roll band ♪
♪ I'm your biggest fan
♪ California, I'm coming home
-You know, talent is one thing, but you have to have
the drive and the will to make people see your vision.
[ Intro to "Everyday People" plays ]
-♪ Sometimes I'm right and I can be wrong ♪
♪ My own beliefs are in my song ♪
♪ The butcher, the banker, the drummer, and then ♪
♪ Makes no difference what group I'm in ♪
♪ I-I-I am everyday people, yeah yeah ♪
-Just as the rise of female singer/songwriters in the 1970s
meant that people like Joni Mitchell
were able to produce their own vision of who they were
in the recording studio, you also have the rise
of African American artists, who start to empower themselves
and start to use the recording studio
in a way that's incredibly creative
and very different than the past.
People like Stevie Wonder,
Marvin Gaye, and Curtis Mayfield;
and particularly, I think, Sly from Sly and the Family Stone.
These artists became the producers themselves.
-♪ We got to live together
♪ I am no better and neither are you ♪
♪ We are the same, whatever we do ♪
-He was taking a stand politically, musically.
He was his own boss.
You couldn't think of anyone
telling Sly what to do in the studio.
♪ I-I-I am everyday people
-I can talk about Sly and the Family Stone
for a very long time.
-Okay, play it.
[ Vocalizing ]
[ Funk plays ]
-Sly Stone brought in a song craftsmanship to funk
that wasn't there.
He put his own spin on it
and out came something really unique and bold and just fresh.
♪♪
-Because of the ongoing conflicts
between Sly and his Family Stone,
he wound up doing his 5th record,
"There's a Riot Goin' On," by himself.
♪♪
-♪ It's a family affair
♪ It's a family affair
-Sly Stone was such a huge musical experimenter.
He would try playing with things
that most other people hadn't thought about.
-He did it at like what now we'd call a home studio.
That's Sly playing bass, it's Sly playing guitar,
Sly playing keyboards.
-Of course he's programming, drum programming on there,
which is like early kind of hip hop.
Some uptight producer would go, "No, I don't want that.
That doesn't sound like real drums."
That was the point -- it didn't --
but it was something funkier.
-♪ Ahhhhh! H-H-Hey! ♪
-What he did in 1971 will be the gold standard
for how musicians will create their music 10 years later.
♪♪
-The significance of the black musician,
songwriter, singer, producer, whatever --
to me it all boils down
to communicating the liveswe live.
♪♪
♪ Unemployment at a record high ♪
♪ People coming, people going, people born to die (ha ha) ♪
♪ Don't ask me because I don't know why ♪
-♪ But it's like that -♪ What?
-♪ And that's the way it is
♪ Wha, wha, wha, wha
-It's a generation of people who don't have access
to musical instruments.
-Scratch it out. Scratch, scratch it -- scratch it.
-Who don't have musical training.
They're using music to create new music.
-We took what was available and we created hip hop.
-♪ Why you search
-♪ Take the train to the plane
♪ Drive to school or the church ♪
♪ It's like that -♪ And that's the way it is
-With hip hop, the role of the producer changes completely.
You have producers sampling and using drum machines.
-The best producers, they have this ability to create
a signature tapestry that makes all of these bits and pieces
actually sound like an original composition.
[ Siren wails ]
-You are now about to witness
the strength of street knowledge.
♪ Yeah, oh!
-♪ Straight outta Compton
♪ Crazy mother... named Ice Cube ♪
♪ From the gang called Niggaz Wit' Attitudes ♪
-In the early 1990s,
Dr. Dre basically put West Coast hip hop on the map.
He was notorious for having this sound
that was unlike anything else.
-♪ But when I come back, boy
♪ I'm coming straight outta Compton ♪
♪ Compton, Compton, Compton -♪ No!
[ Turntable scratches ]
-Gangsta rap, that music took on a life of its own
and it gave the West Coast and L.A. scene its own voice.
♪ [Whistle blowing]
-I remember the shift when NWA and Dre came into the scene.
Sonically, it was polished, but at the same time,
it was like this superhard West Coast sound.
-♪ I'm dropping flavor, my behavior is hereditary ♪
♪ But my technique is very necessary ♪
♪ Blame it on Ice Cube
♪ Because he said it gets funky ♪
♪ When you got a subject and a predicate ♪
And you felt Dre's presence as one of the greatest
hip-hop producers of all time, if not the greatest.
-♪ Well, express yourself
♪ Do it, yeah
-When we started Interscope,
I didn't know anything about running a business,
and I knew even less about hip hop.
So this fellow, John McClain, who was an A&R guy, he brought
this tape in and he said, "We have to sign these guys."
I said, "Who is he?" He goes, "It's Dr. Dre.
It's his solo record. He used to be in NWA."
I said, "Okay." I said, "I don't really know a lot about it,
but, you know, play it for me."
-♪ One, two, three, and to the fo' ♪
♪ Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre is at the do' ♪
♪ Ready to make an entrance, so back on up ♪
♪ 'Cause you know we're about to rip...up ♪
♪ Gimme the microphone first so I can bust like a bubble ♪
♪ Compton and Long Beach together ♪
♪ Now you know you in trouble
♪ Ain't nothing but a G thang, baby ♪
♪ Two loc'ed out niggas, so we're crazy ♪
-And I didn't know a lot about it.
I didn't understand the music, but I understood the sound.
-♪ Dre, creep to the mic like a phantom ♪
-♪ Well, I'm peepin' and I'm creepin' and I'm creepin' ♪
-So Dre comes in.
I said, "Dre, who recorded this record?
He said, "I did." I said, "No no no no.
Not who produced it. Who engineered it?
He said, "I did."
I said, "Wow, this guy's on to something.
-♪ With a producer who can rap and control the maestro ♪
♪ At the same time with the dope rhyme that I kick ♪
♪ You know and I know, I flow some old funky... ♪
Everybody has to have their own sound, you know what I'm saying?
That's what makes it different, you know?
And I'm a perfectionist.
Because no matter how hard you work in the studio,
no matter what you do,
you don't know if people are gonna dig it.
♪ It's like that, and, uh, it's like this ♪
♪ And who gives a... about those? ♪
It's very easy to make a hip-hop record.
It's not easy to make a good hip-hop record.
-When Dre came in with "The Chronic,"
he was using live musicians and recording it very sparse.
-We was finding samples that we all overlooked,
pulling from funk and G-funk.
You know, you listen to the sample on "G Thang" --
[ Humming ]
-♪ It's like this and like that and like this and, uh ♪
♪ It's like that and like this and like that and, uh ♪
-He's hearing things
that the average ear would never encounter in a song.
And then when he hears it, he'll pull it out.
He will pull it out.
♪♪
-I'll admit something to you.
I was one of the initial naysayers
of Dr. Dre's "The Chronic."
It was like everything I didn't want hip hop to be.
It was clean, louder, bigger.
I wanted my hip hop dirty.
This DIY approach, this very low-budget,
lo-fi approach to making music --
That's what I felt hip hop should and always be.
-♪ Creeping down the back street on D's ♪
-It took me 10 years to really understand
where Dr. Dre was going and now that I make records,
now I understand why this album is so important.
-What he did for hip hop and for sampling
is that he proved that you can make a record
of the highest quality as a hip-hop producer.
-♪ When they hear me beating up the street ♪
♪ "Is it Dre? Is it Dre?" That's what they say ♪
-A lot of people scorned hip-hop producers
for not being real musicians.
-♪ What all the niggas sayin'?
-Today, playing around with sampling technology,
it's become completely accepted.
This is the way that most people make records.
-The digital wave of music,
that gave us a whole orchestra of instrumentation
in front of our hands, you know what I mean?
That's one of the greatest things that we could have.
If Mozart had this, imagine.
-The ability to re-record something 10 times, comp it.
The ability to have so many tracks
where you can sort of do crazy layers, you know,
more than Phil Spector did, you know.
You can have 300 tracks on something now.
-You can set up in your room
and just have a microphone and your laptop,
and you can make something as formidable and dope
and that rocks. Like, you can.
That's just where the technology is.
But all technology does is provide you with paints.
A producer is somebody who can take the color and make it.
-You didn't have to have a drop.
Just felt like it was staying exciting, and then...
-I think everyone benefits from having a producer,
just because it really helps having a sort of
an impartial jury to make sense of it all.
But there's no right or wrong way to do this.
It's like any way you find the inspiration works.
♪ That's so def, so def, it's a Def Jam ♪
-"Jam" means "record."
"Def" is short for "definitive."
Definitely the best record you could buy today.
-♪ Brass monkey
♪ That funky monkey
-When we first met Rick Rubin,
I didn't know anything about production.
I didn't think about production.
I didn't know that it even existed.
Rick definitely was into that.
Luckily, he was good at it. You know what I mean?
He could've sucked, and that would've been the end of it...
for all of us.
-♪ Come on, y'all, it's time to get nice ♪
♪ Coolin' by the lockers, gettin' kind of funky ♪
-Rick Rubin started Def Jam,
the massive multimillion- dollar enterprise,
in his dorm room at NYU.
And he went on to produce Run-DMC,
Beastie Boys, Metallica, and Slayer.
He's produced The Red Hot Chili Peppers,
The Dixie Chicks.
He's an incredibly diverse and wide-ranging producer.
-The reason that the artists might not all fit into one genre
is it's not really the way I listen to music.
I just like good music,
and I try not to categorize it too much.
-In the early 1990s,
Rick Rubin started a new record label, Def American,
and he was really interested in testing himself as a producer.
-By that time, most of the artists I'd worked with
were new and young artists
and it felt like it would be a really interesting challenge
to find a great older artist who'd been through a lot
and maybe wasn't doing their best work at the time
and the first person I thought of was Johnny Cash.
[ Guitar plays ]
He'd been dropped by 2 labels.
He'd already had a comeback,
and that was probably 25 years earlier.
-He thought people didn't care about his work anymore.
He didn't feel the support from the label.
He was floundering a bit.
♪♪
-Country music would have nothing to do with him.
In the '80s, when I was in his band,
we recorded album after album after album
and nothing happened.
-Somebody stole all the magic,
like in the '70s, some of the '80s.
The magic for the music was gone.
And I was just doing it because I do it.
I was just doing it 'cause that's what I do.
And I hate that.
♪♪
-A friend of mine set up a meeting for us.
He was playing at a dinner theater in Orange County.
It didn't feel like a place that was appropriate
for someone of his importance to be playing.
It just was sad.
My contract was runnin' out with the other record company
and Rick Rubin came down to see me
and I liked the way he talked, you know.
He talked like -- He reminded me of Sam Phillips.
♪♪
And I said, "What would you do with me
that everybody else has tried to do, you know, and couldn't?"
And he said, "Well, what would you like to do?
♪♪
-We always started in my living room,
just with a guitar and talking about songs.
-♪ Back about 18 and 25
♪ I left Tennessee very much alive ♪
-And I would have him sing me songs from his childhood.
-♪ Through the Arkansas mud
-He played me songs that they would sing on the cotton fields
when he used to pick cotton.
-♪ The Tennessee stud was long and lean ♪
♪ The color of the sun, and his eyes were green ♪
-He really gave me a tremendous education in this lost music
that I didn't know anything about, and I loved it.
-♪ Purty little baby on the cabin floor ♪
♪ Li'l hoss colt playing 'round the door ♪
-From the first time that we met, we recorded everything,
just had the machine going all the time.
-♪ Tennessee mare -It becomes second nature.
People forget they're recording and just sort of be themselves
and that's the goal -- to get to that point.
♪♪
That was great.
The first album we made was mostly solo acoustic.
And then came time to do the next one, and he had
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as the backing band.
♪♪
-♪ I never picked cotton
-Rick's idea was to set John free
and let that artist live.
-♪ And my daddy died young
♪ Workin' in a coal mine
-John would start to sing and we'd get kind of a feel
for how the arrangement might go, and then, woof!
Everybody'd jump onto their respective instruments.
-♪ And it was fast cars and whiskey ♪
♪ Long-legged girls and fun
-I mean, it was raw, and at times it wasn't musical,
but it was so real and so heartfelt
that it almost brought me to tears.
But then Rick would really try to push Johnny
to do things that he would never think of doing.
-I played Johnny Cash the Soundgarden song "Rusty Cage,"
which is a heavy-metal song
with Chris Cornell singing in a very high-pitched scream.
-♪ I'm gonna break my rusty cage ♪
And Johnny listened to it and just shook his head
and just like, "I don't really know what you're thinkin'."
Like, "I can't imagine myself doing that."
And then I made an acoustic demo of it.
[ Acoustic guitar plays "Rusty Cage" ]
And bit by bit, Rick guided us through the arrangement,
and there it was, you know.
-♪ You wired me awake
♪ And hit me with a hand of broken nails ♪
-Johnny was really happy, and he said,
"I love this. This is great."
He goes, "This is gonna piss off so many people.
-♪ I'm gonna break
♪ I'm gonna break my
♪ Gonna break my rusty cage
♪ And run
♪ 1, 2, 1
♪ It don't hurt anymore
-A lot of the job is that of being a therapist,
of being there and really hearing the artist
and hearing what their vision is
and really setting up a place where they feel they're safe
and can be vulnerable and show themselves completely.
-♪ And at last I am free
-The infusion he gave my dad of the old confidence and passion,
it was so powerful.
I mean, Rick was like an angel that came in saying,
"Remember, this is who you are."
I mean, it was as simple as that.
Remember.
-♪ And it's wonderful now
♪ I don't hurt anymore
♪♪
-"Soundbreaking" is available on DVD.
The companion book is also available.
To order, visit shopPBS.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
♪♪