Schmitt produced four albums for the Airplane, starting with their third, ‘67’s After Bathing at Baxter’s. Crown Of Creation followed in ‘68; the exceptional live album Bless its Pointed Little Head came in ‘69, as did the group’s last great album, Volunteers.
Balin and Kantner’s title track for Volunteers is band’s best rocker ever; Kantner’s “We Can Be Together” is a wistful last rallying cry for the disappearing ideals of the ‘60s; Slick’s “Hey Frederick” begins quietly before building into an 8-minute jam highlighted by Kaukonen’s guitar rampage; and the Airplane’s fine version of “Wooden Ships” is more organic and evocative than CSN’s.
Schmitt took the Airplane’s craziness in stride. “That was my first experience with doing complicated multitrack recording, with songs taking a week to record instead of a few hours. On top of that the band was bringing motorcycles and a tank of nitrous oxide into the studio. It was a little bit frustrating because I was used to people being prepared, on time, and in the right frame of mind, but I also learned an awful lot from them about spontaneity,” he says. “We would start at 8 pm and go all night. I’d go home, get a few hours sleep, and then go back to the studio to record Eddie Fisher in the morning.
“One night I got a call from Jack at 8, and he asked if we were working that night. I said, ‘Yes, right now.’ He said, ‘We’ll be right down.’ He was calling from San Francisco; we started at 11,” Schmitt laughs.
Schmitt became an independent producer in ‘67. “My salary at RCA was $17,500, plus I could earn up to $5,000 more in bonuses for the year if my records did well. That was it. There was no point structure. The producer was on a salary. The companies were making an awful lot of money in those days. Nowadays, a top producer can get 5 points [percent] on a record; back then the artist was getting that. Producers make a lot more money now. But on the other hand, money can be a drawback: records cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make these days, which puts a lot of pressure on everyone, and most of the labels are run by accountants, not creative people,” he says.
While Schmitt was producing in the ‘60s, he couldn’t engineer the same project due to union restrictions. He returned to engineering in the ‘70s and became a Grammy machine, picking up the engineering award for George Benson's Breezin' in ‘76 (“of the eight songs on the album, six were recorded on the first take”); Steely Dan’s Aja (considered by many one of the finest engineered albums ever) in ‘77, and “FM (No Static At All)” in ‘78.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
poor Al, ignored even as he is recognized!