by Bob Rose

Fairfield, Iowa in October-December 1979 was a long way from the sunny California beaches. Some days reached a wind chill of -70 at Maharishi International University (formerly Parsons College, a place where rich kids went to get out of going to Vietnam until it was closed down in the '70s after one too many drug busts). But the Beach Boys, family, entourage and myself stayed warm in the $3 million refurbished frat house centered around a million-dollar state-of-the-art automated 24-track studio, all paid for by the Beach Boys according to their agreement with the Maharishi. We were making two albums, one for Warner to finish their agreement with the group and the other for Jim Guercio's new Caribou Columbia label with which the guys were getting $7 million for signing with him.

The point of Iowa was that the guys couldn't get out in the middle of blizzards and had to work together without the distractions that would plague them in L.A. When I first got the call to go there they requested me to study Transcendental Meditation, as the guys were all heavily into it and wanted their people to be into it too. So I got my mantra and began to record their vocals­ which is why they brought me there: to be another ear and put the vocals on tape the best they could sound. They could have had anyone in the world ­but there I was.

Beach Boys Recording Techniques

They worked off one mic, as this was the best way to record background vocals. It's harder to try and rebalance individual tracks and keep them balanced during mixing.

I coached their positioning to the mic until we got a good blend over the control-room monitors. They were quick studies, as they had plenty of experience. I put it on tape while Jim Guercio (Chicago's producer) listened and advised on the songs as we rolled along. Almost every take was a master and there was little room for mistakes on that level.

To get that great pop sound, the vocals were fairly heavily compressed with the highs boosted then run through a desser before they hit tape. So it had to be right going onto tape as this stuff would have caused too much noise coming off tape from the noise inherent to audio tape even at 30 IPS with noise reduction. Still, the faders had to be ridden to linearize the volume.

The guys always doubled their vocals (stereo pairs) and did overlapping parts on additional tracks. We used up to 14 tracks of vocals in any given song, kind of like a Beach Boys choir (5 x 14 = 70 voices) at various times in the song!

When we mixed we used Neuman Gold Foil Reverbs and old plate units that sounded as good as any live hall. Also, a little Lexicon electronic chamber spread the ambience as well.

Lessons from the Pros

Between Brian Wilson and Jim Guercio I learned a lot of production secrets as well as bringing a little of my own expertise to the albums. More than that, I derived an attitude and a philosophy about the discipline of making vocal records: Recording vocals is an art unto itself and the product, good or bad, is written in stone (or tape, to be exact). Recording makes you aware of details and permanence. It's a good training device and should be done on a regular basis, no matter what the quality level, as it will let you know exactly what you are doing and hone in on your skills and musical technique. Good producers and vocal coaches will help immensely on recordings. Remember ­once you've put it out you can't take it back or publish a statement about the limitations you worked under: ("It would have been better if ...").