The Man Who Didn't Talk

I was briefed before our visit to Los Angeles that Tonya’s childhood friend’s husband didn’t really talk much.  If I thought her friend’s husband who fought in Vietnam was weird, this guy is supposed to be on par or even up the ante a bit.

“How is he weird?” I asked. “He doesn’t talk.  He sits there” Tonya had simply replied.

I soon found out differently.

On our first night, the women went out to smoke and I am left with the fabled guy who does not speak.  Amazingly, he immediately asks me if I was interested in going to the Los Angeles car show on Wednesday with him and his Finnish friend.  I politely declined because I had a pre-arranged meeting taking place already.  We then talked about our feelings towards Mexico, and I was quite amused by the way he said “Metsico”.   I thought it was a one off, but no-he says “Metsico” every time he refers to the land south of the border.  I also found out that we share a lot of the same views, even though his wife is from Mexico.

While out shopping today, I was speaking with his wife about records.  She informed me that her husband used to work for a printing company in Los Angeles that made album covers.  I thought this was fantastic.  I was sitting in the passenger seat as we drove to dinner later that night, and I thought it was a perfect time to try to make to man who didn’t talk to talk again.  “I heard you used to print album covers” I said.  It was the key that unlocked the ensuing conversation.  He nodded his head, “Ooooh yeah.  I printed lots of album covers, almost anyone you can think of.  I did loads of stuff for Atlantic Records and A&M” he said.

I thought of those labels, and the first band that came to mind on Atlantic was Led Zeppelin, so I thought it was worth a shot, “Yeah, so-did you do led Zeppelin’s ‘Houses of the Holy?”.  He stared ahead at the road and then simply said, “Nah, didn’t do any Led Zeppelin.  I don’t recall that album”

He tells me that he kept prints of all the jackets he had worked on and only recently finally disposed of them.  He then suddenly recalls a few favorites; “There was this one album Tom Scott did, where we had this train coming out of a guy’s zipper.  Thought that was pretty cool.  Someone at the label decided it was too risqué, so we had to switch that up a bit.  I kept it though, because I always thought that if one of these covers would be worth something, it would be that one”   he looks like a guy who would have done something like this.  He’s older, in his 60’s and has long white hair that he pulls back into a ponytail.  He’s got a goatee, and is indigenous, as he says, “One of the few people in LA that was actually born here”   For a very long time he kept the proof for Cher’s ‘Take Me Home’ album. “You know that one where she only had on this gold stuff over her chest…”

“Yeah, yeah, with the big gold headdress on?”

‘Yeah, that’s the one.  Well, I thought it looked great, but what you see is not what it was.  We had to retouch it all up because the label thought you could see too much…but that was a good one too!”

I am enjoying this.  He is really letting go, and letting the tales roll.  For the most part, it was like a question and answer type thing.  However, certain questions would really get a lot of info.  Sometimes a question would get a simple, “Nah, I didn’t do any of them”.  He was quite a specialist in actuality.  In the heyday of music, he worked for the most renowned color house in Los Angeles.  He tells that there were about 7 or 8 places that did this kind of work, but the one he worked for was known for their attention to detail, and thus, they were expensive.  He went on quite a while describing what the job entails and how much he hates Photoshop, and how computers killed the industry.  He spent many long hours hovered over album artwork with a magnifying glass and an X-acto knife, scraping dots off film.  He looks at the taillights of the car in front of us as we sit in traffic, “See…say someone wanted that red.  I’d say it’d be about 20% magenta, with about a 60% yellow dialed in just about 2% black” I was impressed.  His specialty was retouching and color matching.  He loved his work.  I asked if he got to meet any of the artists from the album jackets he had worked on; it turns out, only a few.

“There was this record we did of Olivia Newton-John, where she is coming up out of the water and all the water is dripping off her.  Anyway, she came in one day and wanted to meet me.  She was thrilled that I done such a good job and making her look good, getting rid of all her pimples and stuff in the photograph”

“I did a lot of Elton John stuff, but never met him.  I did meet Bernie Taupin though.  You know he used to be a printer before he was a lyricist.  Because he had experience, he was always sent over to proof everything and he hated it. Yeah, so I dealt with him a few times’.  This is all so fascinating to me, but I am curious about how big of a music fan he was.  I ask him who his favorites were.  He spends some time thinking about it and says a few names, “The Eagles.  I always like the Eagles.  We did all of their albums.  They always had good artwork. Creedence Clearwater Revival too, I liked them” I tell him a story of a childhood memory I have of Creedence and their ‘Cosmo’s Factory’ album.  IN return, he shakes his head slightly, “Nah, don’t know that one.  When their lead singer did his solo album, I did that one though” He smiles a huge smile and stares off over the traffic ahead of us, “Man.  Linda Ronstadt.  I used to love Linda Ronstadt.  My kids tell me that when they go on long trips in the car that it just doesn’t seem right unless they hear some old corny Linda Ronstadt tune.  Yeah, I really liked Linda…”

“You know, I did that Neil Diamond album ‘Hot August Night’.  I never met him, but I was at one of those shows at The Greek Theater where they recorded the concerts.  He was great…” he says as he reminisces, ‘You know, but after you listen to five or six of his albums, you realize they are all the same’ he says as he laughs.  You should have seen my record collection.  It wasn’t any good.  I had all these records given to me from bands no one would listen to.  Black Oak Arkansas...” he starts laughing and shaking his head again, “…never liked them and had all their albums.  They would always give me their albums!”

According to what I was being told, the real money in album art was when an artist hit it big.  It was then that they would have to send film of the artwork to whatever country would then want to print the LP.  He was also responsible of doing all the ad work too.  The company figured that whoever did the artwork for the album would be the very same guy responsible for making sure all the film, colors and resolution was correct for every place the ad would run-whether it was magazine, newspapers, poster etc.  It turns out that one of the biggies was The Who’s ‘Tommy’.  “Remember that one?   Man, I hated Tommy!  Every day I went to work there was another ad campaign running somewhere and more artwork to be done.  It was ‘Tommy’ everyday for months and months.  I hated that record”

“Remember that guy from England…man, what was his name?  His big breakthrough record…he was wearing a red satin suit on it.  Man, the company was so busy with that guy…what was his name?”  He tries to remember.  I ask if he was rock, pop, soul, anything to jar his memory, but he still can’t recall. “Anyway, he was supposed to be a really big deal, but after that one album, he was never heard of again.”  He keeps commenting on the guy’s satin suit, and how hard it was to retouch the photograph.  I can’t recall any early 70’s album of a guy from England in a red satin suit that was a huge hit, but I do recall one with a guy in pink satin, “Was it Peter Frampton?”

“Yeah man! That was him!  Peter Frampton!” he says out loud and starts laughing. ‘I’ll never forget that record.  We had just hired a new printer.  He was actually the driver for the company, but he had gotten pulled in to start helping out because we were so busy.  He had no clue about anything, absolutely no experience.  The boss comes over to check the artwork and calls the new kid over to look it over too, ‘What do you think?’ the boss asks the kid.  I sat there watching them both, wondering what this kid could possibly have to say.  He looked for a minute or so and then looked to the boss, ‘I’d do him!’  Man!  We laughed so hard-that was great, ‘I’d do him’”

My mind is racing, trying to match up artists I knew from Atlantic and A&M. “well, working for A&M, you had to have done some Herb Alpert, right?” he did, but he tells the story of how they only did the re-issues because the Tijuana Brass didn’t originally record for A&M.  He did think that Alpert and Moss had a stellar label though. I rattle off more to see what big records he’d done.  Turns out he has done loads, all of Yes, The Cars, Fleetwood Mac, Blondie, and more.  He tells of different labels and how they used to work. MCA would only send over ‘big’ artists.  All of their jazz roster and country stars would get the cheap treatment.  The talk of country reminds him of Eddie Rabbit. “I got bitched out by Eddie Rabbit once.  I don’t remember what album it was, but I worked really hard on it to get rid of all his acne scars.  Eddie Rabbit was really pock marked.  Anyway, when he saw the final proof he was so angry that he came to the office and wanted to know who did the retouching.  He bitched me out saying that I had cleaned him up so much that it didn’t even look like him.  That was the first time I had to go back and add in acne and rough someone up a bit”

“Remember that album of Carly Simon’s where she was on her knees…?’ Yes.  I know that one very well.  ‘Playing Possum’ has got to be one of those albums whose image is burned deep into your brain as a young teenage male.  How could any guy look at that record and not have 1,000 fantasies started immediately.  I let him know that I know exactly which one he is speaking about. “That’s the one.  You know, that was actually a full color thing.  We played around with it and decided to shift the colors so that the image was sort of this sepia toned thing. Man. That went over huge.  Do you realize how many people wanted to use that effect for their album after we’d done that one?”

Our trip to dinner takes almost an hour.  One of the freeways here is closed, so traffic is horrendous.  He had said it would be.  Personally, I am grateful.  I am thrilled to have sat and heard so much about some of these albums and artists I loved, and to be riding shotgun with the dude who had his hand in these famous records.  I understand why he hates computers and Photoshop.  Hearing him go into the minutest details of what was involved and how they did this and that was fascinating and sad at the same time.  Album artwork was an art form; there is no doubt about it.  That is one of the things that is missing from music these days.  He worked in the printing business for over 45 years, and was in the think of it in music’s heyday.  He tells stories of how the other color houses in Los Angeles tried to lure him away.  He says he misses the prima donna aspect of his work.  He was good, and knows it.  He shakes his head as he tells how art departments now do everything half-assed, that artwork for music is a disgrace now.  He’d go back to work in a split second if he could, but admits that that type of handiwork is long gone.  Everything is computerized now and the real talent and technical aspect of retouching, adjusting color and manipulation is long gone.

“You know what I really like?  Fats Waller.  I had gotten an old 78 from my parents of a Fats Waller album.  It was like 7 discs in a box, with one song on each side. Man…he was great.  He did this one song called ‘Your Big Feets”.  I love that song” and he starts in to singing this song he is so fond of.

I sat and watched and smiled. This is the best ride to dinner I have ever had.