Today, TOM DOODY, Lead Vocalist of The Cryan' Shames,
shares some of his memories with our readers, of this VERY Special Summer of
Love when The Cryan' Shames ruled the charts here in Chicago.
Thanks, Kent, for the kind words about "It Could Be We're In Love." I am still amazed to receive emails and notes from around the country and actually from around the world, from people who have recently discovered this song. It is humbling and at the same time very satisfying, to see the effect this song continues to have.
Columbia told us we needed to release
another single. Our last single, "Mr. Unreliable," didn't do as good as our two
previous singles, "Sugar And Spice" and "I Want To Meet You." I remember Jim
Golden talking to James Fairs and telling him that it was really important that
he come up with something that would be, in his words, "a smash
hit."
With that in mind, James took a couple of weeks off and went down to Florida to recharge himself. Now I know he can talk about the inspiration of this much better than I can, but the idea for the song came to him during an evening walk on the beach.
James came back to town and said, "I want
to show you guys something that I've been working on." We used to rehearse at
the Blue Village in Westmont. The way we went about learning songs was to first
construct and then deconstruct the instrumental track, and working on this track
took a couple of days. Now it wasn't because it was that difficult to track, but
it was because we were all throwing out different ideas and trying them out.
At the end of the second day, we pretty much had the instrumental portion of the song the way we wanted it. It just so happen this is a day that Jim Golden and Bob Monaco came to visit to hear what we had and to impress upon us the importance of the hit record. We played them the instrumental portion of the song and they both flipped out. They thought this was going to be a big hit if we had the vocals to match it. With that in mind, and not yet hearing the vocals, they booked a recording session for us with Columbia Records in New York City for a few weeks from that day. We were now committed.
James Fairs sat down on the edge of the
stage at the Blue Village with me next to him. He showed me the lead vocal part
to "It Could Be We're In Love". This took a little bit of time, as James always
afforded me the opportunity to adjust the lead vocal where I felt it necessary.
We would then listen to it again the way that I was singing it and see if it
retained what he was trying to express. When we had that done we started working
on the background singing.
We must have tried 50 to 60 different background harmony parts and enunciation of the words in the background before we had something that we wanted to do a run through with. This took probably 6 to 8 hours of hard, hard work. After the first run through, we would deconstruct it and run through it again. I believe that the background parts finally came together after two days of work. Then we ran them through and only at this point did we play the instruments with the backgrounds. I think this took us another full day of work until we had the instruments and the vocals exactly the way that we wanted. I just want to point out this was not because the instrumentalists were incapable or the vocalists were incapable. On the contrary, we had superb musicians and vocalists in the group. It was just that we were perfectionists. We would not like to let anything be done by this group unless it sounded amazing. And sounding amazing was a group consensus that everybody had to buy into the finished product.
Now we had a couple of jobs to play before
we went to New York. We thought this would be a great way to break this song in
and to showcase it before a live audience. The first night I believe we played
at Brother Rice, which had a big auditorium and usually had a pretty good crowd
of anywhere from 800 to 1000 people. The crowds of 800 to 1000 were about what
we were drawing at that time. It had been seven or eight months since we had a
record that had charted at a reasonable level. We were still getting these
types of crowds because we were a very, very, very good band live.
I remember introducing "It Could Be We're
In Love" and then we started the song. I remember seeing the faces of the people
in the crowd ... they became more and more interested as the song progressed.
When the song ended ... and it ended with a great cascade of vocals ... you
could hear a pin drop ... then a long and sustained applause. We all looked at
each other and kind of nodded. We got this thing.
I guess logically I should talk next about
the recording session at Columbia Records in New York. It was amazing and loaded with
insights. The session for "It Could Be We're In
Love" was actually the second session that we had done at Columbia in New York.
The first session was for "Mr. Unreliable."
Let me tell you about Columbia. It was downtown New
York and it was massive. It was a four-story building and it held two large
recording facilities, a couple of radio studios and an entire floor for mixing
the final product.
When I say massive recording studio, Studio B is where we did a lot of our work. In the studio was room for all of our musicians, a drum set and our amplifiers. About 20 feet behind where we set up was a huge velvet curtain. It was probably 80 feet wide by 40 feet high. Behind this curtain were nine Steinway concert grand pianos, a couple of sets of timpanis, numerous sets of xylophones, and three Hammond B3 organs with accompanying Leslie speakers. The reason I mention this is because we were just a bunch of kids from the Midwest ... and we were used to recording in a 40 x 40 studio in Chicago. This, of course, was Sound Studios with their great recording engineer, Stu Black. We had done our entire "Sugar and Spice" album in the studio in a period of about 15 hours total. At Columbia, we were given this time or more per single recording. At Sound Studios, we did all of our recording on a mono three track recorder. At Columbia, we were going to use an eight track stereo recorder. This was gonna be a lot of fun.
We were very, very lucky to get Fred Catero as our
studio engineer. Not only was he brilliant in his engineering ability, but he
was also a great, great guy. He was very encouraging, and you could tell that
he legitimately liked the music that we did. Fred recorded everybody, from Sly
Stone to Janis Joplin to Tony Bennett to Santana to Moby Grape to the
Buckinghams to Chicago, etc. etc. etc. I think you get the point ... he was one
of the best.
Day One
We arrived at Columbia Records at about 6 o'clock in
the evening. We felt we were at the top of our game musically later on in the
day. We would usually record from six in the evening till around four the next
morning, and then we would come back and do that again the next night. The way
we recorded is this:
We would set down the instrumental tracks first. These
would be the basic tracks. These tracks would be embellished later with lead
guitar parts and any other instrumental parts that we wanted to make important
to the record. Believe it or not, it took quite a few hours to do this. Again,
it wasn't because the guys weren't capable of doing it in one take ... it's just
that we wanted things to sound a certain way. That meant we would go over and
over just getting the drum sounds. Then we would get just the bass sounds. And
then we would get the guitar sounds. When it came to doing the takes, it seems
that we would likely run through 15 to 20 of them before we picked out the one
that we wanted to use.
This is the process we used to record "It Could Be
We're In Love." I can remember being in the studio itself for part of the
initial recording and then wandering around the Columbia Records building for a
few hours. During this time I met Sly Stone. I got to hear Simon and Garfunkel
record a few songs for their next album. I got to see the first moog synthesizer
being used in one of these recordings. I got to spend some time talking to Laura
Nyro as we were riding up and down the elevator. And, interestingly, I met Mitch
Miller, who was in charge of A&R for Columbia Records. (By the way, he hated
rock 'n roll.) He thought all of the rock 'n roll acts that were signed to
Columbia at that time were going to lead to the label's demise. But he was a
very gracious conversationalist.
He asked me if I was in one of the rock 'n roll groups and I told him yes, I was ... I was with the Cryan' Shames.
He asked me what I did with the group and I told him I was the lead singer.
He told me that he had listened to some of our stuff and that he thought I had a very "bubbly voice" and that it recorded well. That was the first and only conversation I ever had with Mitch. It's funny the things you remember.
Now back to "It Could Be We're In Love."
It was about 2:30 or 3 o'clock in the morning when they had finally selected the basic track they wanted to use. At this time, they wanted me to sing and to see if we could get a good vocal that evening. Now in selecting the track, James Fairs had an awful lot to do with it. He was given a lot of leeway in producing. This made a lot of sense because he was the one that wrote the song. Jim Golden, who was listed as a producer, had an enormous amount of input on the final track also. In addition to this, Fred Catera would strongly voice his opinions, which we listened to diligently and with a great deal of respect.
A single Mic was put in the middle of the recording
studio. The lights were dimmed and I stood in front of the mic, getting ready to
sing. Now Fred told me that what he liked to do with all singers was to run
through the song three or four times before he started recording. This was a
great idea because I didn't warm up or vocalize before I was to sing. I just
went into the studio cold and began working on the song. After two or three
times, I had the feel for what I wanted to do. My pitch was right where it
needed to be, my dynamics were where they needed to be and, most importantly, my
confidence was right where it needed to be. I believe it was the fourth time
through that Fred said we were going to record. The red light went on and I sang
the vocal to "It Could Be We're In Love." At the end of that Fred said, "I want
to keep that, but I would like you to try it a few more times to see if we could
an even get a better feel." I believe we kept another four or five vocal tracks
and I don't know if we picked the first one, but I think we did, as the keeper.
The next step was to do a "mult" of the original. This was a technique that was
used a lot at that time. It basically meant that you would double up on the
vocal by putting one on one track and then another one on another track and then
combine those two tracks to achieve a fuller vocal sound. Doing mults came
naturally for me. I was blessed with a natural vibrato, which duplicated itself
over and over. We had the lead vocal completed. All we needed now was to put on
the backgrounds and lead instrumental tracks.
Day Two
That first day of recording lasted until about two or
three in the morning and we were exhausted. We decided to come back the next day
to do background vocals, additional percussion and lead instrumentals. Now
background singing is definitely an art form. Not only do you have to be able to
sing well and in tune, but you had to be able to listen to what everyone else
was doing. This way, the vocals could be blended to make it sound like a unified
whole.
It is really fortunate that we rehearsed as much as we did because everybody knew their parts cold. I don't think I can stress how great all of the band members were at singing and working on singing together. It was magic the way we were able to perform harmonies. We used the same process with the background vocals as we did with the lead vocal. If I'm not mistaken, we used three mics to record the backgrounds. There would be two of us on each mic. Working on a balance in the studio definitely took more time than just finding the balance on the lead vocal. I was fortunate on this record in that I also sang background vocals as well as the leads I think it gave us a unique blend.
I remember recording the backgrounds and listening back to them on the big JBL speakers that were in the studio. It sounded really good, but listening back we thought maybe we could change it up a little bit and have Lenny sing this part and Isaac sing another part and the two Jims sing another part and me sing another part. We went through changing who sang what at least 10 or 15 times until we had the sound and the blend the way we wanted it. I think it might've taken a total of 15 to 20 takes to get our first background recorded and then another 3 to 5 takes to get the mult recorded. I remember listening back to the lead vocal and the backgrounds separated from the instruments and played through those huge JBL speakers. To be honest, it was mesmerizing. I can remember Fred and Jim saying "I think we captured some magic here." The only thing left to do was to put on the additional instruments. I was not a musician ... I was only a singer ... but James wanted me to play on the song, so he had me play claves as an additional percussion. I can remember being in an isolation booth and going through 15 to 20 takes before I got it right. Singing was much easier for me.
Here we were, two days later, with a finished
product that all of us were very excited about. It was gonna be about two weeks
before Columbia was ready to release this song. We were all thoroughly convinced
that in two weeks our destiny would be changed forever. Just as an aside. I
found out later that Columbia Studios was originally a townhouse for the
Vanderbilt family.
I just wanted to touch on the effect that this record had immediately after its release. Our crowds started to get to be huge. When I say huge, we were playing to 800 to 1000 before and now we were playing to 2500 to 4000. And this happened almost overnight. Our fans really thought we were on to something ... and so did we.
There's much more I can say about the crowd's reaction regarding the recording of the song, but I think I'll leave that for another time. One thing I do want to say is that if this is the only thing that we were ever remembered by, I am forever proud of what this group of individuals did ... and I am forever blessed to of been part of it.
Toad
Thanks, Tom ... I hope
you WILL share more memories with our readers as this series moves forward!
(kk)
