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Shel Talmy

 
Artist: Shel Talmy
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Pop Artists

Similar Artists:

Mickie Most

Worked With:

Peter Quaife, Mick Avory, Ray Davies, Dave Davies

Formal Connection With:

Nicky Hopkins, The Creation, The Eyes, The Who
  • Active: '60s, '70s
  • Genres: Rock
  • Instrument: Producer

Biography

For his work on the early Kinks and Who records alone, producer Shel Talmy was an important figure in the British Invasion, cutting sessions that had a harder and more distorted guitar sound than anything else that had been heard before the mid-'60s. Talmy's other credits with '60s acts are extensive, ranging from cult band the Creation and early singles by David Bowie to folk-rock with the Pentangle and pop with the Bachelors and Chad & Jeremy. After the 1960s he was only sporadically active in the studio, although he was still doing projects here and there into the '90s. Born in Chicago, Talmy cut his teeth in the record business as an engineer in L.A. in the early '60s. In 1962, he turned a European vacation into a job in Britain when he played acetates of Beach Boys and Lou Rawls songs to Dick Rowe of Decca Records, claiming them as his own productions (although they weren't). Rowe hired him for Decca and double-checked Talmy's credentials with friends of his who were in high places and only too happy to confirm that Talmy had done everything he'd claimed he had. By the time it became apparent Talmy was bluffing, he had already started to have hits for Decca, who were content to keep him on. Talmy started out working with pop singers in the U.K., including the Bachelors. Very soon after he arrived in Britain, however, the British Invasion started to take off. Talmy was soon working primarily as an independent producer rather than as a label employee, and was keen to get in on the "Beat Boom," as it was called in Britain, with guitar-oriented groups. Perhaps because of his American background, Talmy was more inclined to keep a raw edge on the performances and record distorted guitars at high volumes than more established producers of the time would have. Talmy has recalled that he unsuccessfully tried to interest Decca in Manfred Mann and Georgie Fame, but got his first notable success with R&B-influenced rock with the Kinks. Talmy produced most of their records between 1964 and 1967, including the discs that did so much to popularize the slashing power chords and fuzzy textures that soon become a big part of guitar rock, "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night" especially. It should be noted that Talmy was also there for the sessions that saw Kinks songwriter Ray Davies' more sophisticated and music hall-influenced side flower, like "Sunday Afternoon" and "Dedicated Follower of Fashion." Talmy's other big success story in the mid-'60s was the Who. He produced their first three singles, "I Can't Explain," "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere," and "My Generation," as well as their debut The Who Sing My Generation album -- everything, in short, that they did in 1965. These were records that brought an unprecedented fury to rock on disc, particularly in Pete Townshend's feedback-ridden guitar flights and Keith Moon's hurricane-force drumming. It's even been reported that Decca Records' American branch initially declined to press "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere," believing that the feedback on the guitar solo was the result of a mastering defect. Talmy did not produce any Who records after 1965, in spite of his fairly spectacular initial track record with the band, owing to a dispute between him and the group's managers that was eventually settled with an agreement that gave him a percentage of the Who's record royalties for years to come. As he was doing the Who's 1965 sessions as an independent producer, Talmy retained control of the master tapes. This is a reason why The Who Sing My Generation, as well as songs that appeared on their 1965 singles, have yet to appear on compact discs that have been remastered from the best possible original source tapes. Talmy also recorded other notable guitar-heavy discs with groups of lesser renown in the 1960s. Certainly with the Creation, the cult group featuring guitarist Eddie Phillips, he explored the kind of the inventive guitar textures he had mapped out with the Kinks and the Who, particularly feedback and the distorted sounds produced by playing the strings with a violin bow. To this day Talmy extols the talents of the Creation, believing that they would have been a phenomenally successful group had they had better luck and been able to stay together longer. Although his tenure with Australian stars the Easybeats was brief in 1966-1967, it did include their biggest international hit, "Friday on My Mind." He was at the helm of some flop singles with David Bowie (then known as David Jones) in 1964-1965, which sometimes employed a backing reminiscent of the early Who. He also made some fine, raucous singles with obscure groups like the First Gear, the Untamed, the Rockin' Vicars, and the Zephyrs, which would not reach an international audience (and then a very small, specialized one) until these sides were included on various collector-oriented reissues of obscure British Invasion music in the '80s and '90s. Talmy briefly founded his own label, Planet, whose most notable artists were the Creation, but the company folded after a deal with Phonogram for distribution did not work out according to his wishes. Talmy did not just do hard guitar rock in the '60s. He also produced, at various points in their careers, Chad & Jeremy, the Nashville Teens, the Fortunes, Amen Corner (Andy Fairweather-Low's first group), obscure American psychedelic band the Mandrake Memorial (a session Talmy walked out on), and the post-Paul Jones Manfred Mann. It is not well-known that Talmy was also an extremely capable folk producer who enjoyed working with acoustic guitars as well as electric ones. His most notable achievement in this regard is his production of early Pentangle albums, as well as material by Roy Harper and Pentangle guitarist Bert Jansch. It should be noted that some of the famous artists that worked with Talmy were not totally enamored with the producer. Kinks biographies have claimed, for instance, that they had to recut some of their famous hits behind his back to get the sound they wanted. The Who and the Easybeats also do not have wholly pleasant memories of their associations with Talmy, although in each of those cases this may have something to do with legal matters that were complicating the progress of their careers at the time they worked with (or ended their relationships with) Talmy. For his part, Talmy has said that he doesn't remember serious problems with the band members, and feels that disputes between him and the artists' managers were the cause of most of the tensions, particularly when his association with the Who ended (and the Who's managers took over as the group's producers). Whatever problems may have existed, it's undeniable that Talmy produced some of the best and most innovative work of the Who, the Kinks, the Easybeats, and others, results which are unlikely to have been achieved by sheer chance. Talmy became less active in the studio in the 1970s, although he produced albums by little-known acts such as Fumble and Rumpelstiltskin. At the end of the '70s he returned to the United States, and has occasionally dabbled in production for low-profile acts since, such as Jon & the Nightriders, the Sorrows (not the mid-'60s British Invasion group of that name), and Nancy Boy. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide
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Shel Talmy (born August 11, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois, United States) is an American record producer, songwriter, arranger best known for his work in London with The Who and The Kinks in the 1960s, with a role in many other English bands including Cat Stevens. Talmy arranged and produced hits such as "You Really Got Me" by The Kinks, "My Generation" by The Who, and "Friday on My Mind" by the Easybeats. He also played guitar or tambourine on some of his productions.

Contents

Early career

Talmy was born in Chicago, and from an early age he was interested both in music—early rock, rhythm and blues, folk music, and country music as well as technology. At 13 Talmy appeared regularly on the popular NBC-TV television show Quiz Kids, a question-and-answer program out of Chicago. He told Chris Ambrose of Tokion Magazine, "What it did for me was that I absolutely knew that this was the business I wanted to be in."

He became a recording engineer at Conway Studios in Los Angeles for owner/engineer Phil Yeend, who trained Talmy on three-track recording equipment, and three days after starting at Conway, Talmy had his first production assignment, the record "Falling Star" by Debbie Sharon. At Conway, he worked with artists like Gary Paxton, with surf bands like The Castells and The Marketts, and R&B pioneers, Rene Hall and Bumps Blackwell.

Talmy and Yeend often experimented with production techniques. They played with separation and recording levels and built baffles and platforms covered with carpet, using them to isolate vocals and instruments. In an interview with Terri Stone in Music Producers, Talmy recalled that Yeend "would let me do whatever I wanted after our regular sessions were over, so I used to work out miking techniques for how to make drums sound better or guitars sound better .... There really weren't many precedents, so we were all doing it for the first time together. It was all totally new."

British career

In 1962 Talmy went to England, and Nick (a.k.a. Nik Venet), a good friend and producer at Capitol Records, gave him a stack of his new acetates to take along with him and use if he could, as his "own".

Talmy joined Decca Records as a record producer working with Decca's pop performers, such as Irish harmonica trio The Bachelors, leading to the release of the hit single "Charmaine". In 1963, Talmy met Robert Wace, the manager of a group called The Ravens, who later changed their name to The Kinks. He brought the Kinks into the studio, and their third single, "You Really Got Me," became a landmark recording.

According to Jon Savage, author of The Kinks' official biography, "What Shel Talmy and the Kinks did with this particular record was to concoct the perfect medium for expression of the adolescent white aggression that has been at the heart of white popular music. ... 'You Really Got Me' is that rare thing: a record that cuts popular music in half."

Talmy had many more hits with the group, including "All Day and All of the Night", "Tired of Waiting for You", "Dedicated Follower of Fashion", "Sunny Afternoon", and "Waterloo Sunset".

The Who Sings My Generation

Pete Townshend, the guitarist for the mod band High Numbers, liked "You Really Got Me" so much that he wrote a similar number, "I Can't Explain", so that Talmy would produce his group. When the song was played over the telephone to Talmy, he agreed to hear the band. Now called The Who, he signed them to his production company, got them a contract with Decca in America and with their subsidiary Brunswick in Britain, and produced recordings modeled on their live performances.

The intentional feedback on the band's second single, "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" caused Decca executives to send back the recording, thinking that they had received a faulty pressing. Talmy and The Who created a historic recording, "My Generation", the group's third release. Entertainment Weekly called "My Generation" the "quintessential rock single."

Talmy produced other notable singles for The Who before producing their first album, My Generation, a collection of original songs and R&B covers. However, tensions arose between Talmy and one of the band's managers, Kit Lambert. Lambert "fired" Talmy, but Talmy sued for breach of contract and won. One of the by-products of the episode was a B-side single from The Graham Bond Organization entitled "Waltz for a Pig," an apparent reference to the departed producer.[1]

Talmy owned the tapes to My Generation, but a re-release was held up for years because of the ongoing dispute. This prevented a proper re-release of the LP until 2002, when the dispute was finally settled in Talmy's favor. My Generation was remixed by Talmy and issued on compact disc with bonus tracks. In his book Before I Get Old, Dave Marsh commented that the records that Talmy made with The Who "are technically among the best that the group ever did, and they have a distinct, original sound."

Work with other artists

Talmy continued to work with other distinguished British performers throughout the 1960s, including singer/songwriter Davy Jones (later known as David Bowie. He also produced "Friday on My Mind" for the Easybeats, an Australian band that had relocated to England. Writing in the Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Colin Larkin described the song as "one of the all-time great beat group singles of the 60s." Bowie later covered "Friday on My Mind" on his album Pin Ups. Talmy has said that he did some of his most essential work with the Creation. A mod/psychedelic band that often used pop-art imagery, they were well-known as the creators of "Making Time", a song that appeared on the soundtrack to Wes Anderson's film Rushmore (1998).

In 2003 a tribute to Talmy was aired on the radio program Little Steven's Underground Garage.

Personal life

Shel Talmy is nearly blind from retinitis pigmentosa, which also affects his mother and brother. Having qjicljjGetting in at the birth of the computer age, Talmy is highly functional through use of mega high tech voice activated computer equipment and programs. Talmy has an IQ of approximately 180 and is a member of Mensa.

Talmy is married and lives in the Los Angeles area. He is the brother of noted American linguist Leonard Talmy.[2]

He was the founder of Planet Records, a company that released music by the Creation and other English artists in the mid-1960s, and has also held several non-musical occupations.

Talmy is referenced in the autobiography "Black White and Jewish" by Rebecca Walker, as an "almost blind record producer who has worked with The Who and The Kinks."

Selected discography

The Kinks

Singles

Albums

Dave Davies

The Who

Singles

Films

Selected writings

  • Whadda We Do Now, Butch?, Pan Books Ltd., 1978
  • Hunter Killer, Pan Books Ltd., 1981
  • The Web, Dell, 1981

References

  1. ^ (Pattingale, 2002)
  2. ^ Chris Hunt | Shel Talmy interview

External links


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

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