Interview No. V
Gordon Raphael
Interview by Sophie Abeles
Photos by Daniel Arnabar
On an unreasonably hot October day, I crossed Avenue A to enter Tompkins Square Park. I was in search of a lanky man with shoulder-length black hair. Although I had only met him once before via FaceTime, I recognized Gordon Raphael, legendary producer and friend to many-a-New-York-rock-band as soon as I saw him. He was wearing a top hat, two watches on the same wrist, and a Monster High, hot pink backpack. I felt like I had failed to adhere to some undeclared dress code, silently cursing my run-of-the-mill outfit choice of ripped jeans and a black tank top. Gordon had been recording bands all over New York during his month-long visit to the city and told me with a grin that he was happy to speak with friends “old and new” during his downtime.
Our 45-minute conversation spans decades of rock and music industry evolution. His stories are as mystical and zany as they are precise and detailed. A native New Yorker originally from the Bronx, Gordon has traveled the world by wowing rock bands with an uncanny ability to create niche in-studio effects that become the defining sounds of their careers.
Without further ado, I give you: Gordon Raphael.
What are some of your favorite places around Tompkins?
They were Cafe Orlin…which is now some other cafe on St Marks and 2nd…Trash & Vaudeville, which moved around the corner, so it’s no longer in its historic location.
Is that a bar?
It’s a Rock and Roll clothing store. I bought two shirts for my grandkids there today. And what else… the Gem Spa, which was this weird magazine, candy, and cig shop on the corner of St Marks. Every punk rock band and every band from the 70’s and 80’s always stood in front of their big sign. It was a historic musical destination.
Wow, I didn’t know that! I’ve never heard of Gem Spa. And how long has it been since you’ve been back in New York?
Probably 4 to 5 years. I haven’t been coming very regularly.
Well, you’re far away now!
People from all over the world call me very regularly to work…Argentina, Brazil, you name it — Seattle, California — but New York City…there were very few jobs for 20 years. This is the first time I’ve spent a month here since 2006. And it’s been the most glorious month. I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun.
What have you been up to?
I’ve recorded 16 bands …and social hour. From 9 to 10 AM for breakfast at Mud Cafe, I’ll chat with new friends, and then oop — gotta go to work! I’ve seen more people than I have for years in England and Berlin. It’s been super high-level.
Wait, so walk me back. When did you first move to NYC?
I was actually born in New York and then moved to Seattle…but it was well-known that if you wanted to make it in music you had to go to New York or LA. I didn’t want to go surfing or be out in the sun; I wanted to be in New York with Patti Smith and the Ramones and the real music.
Me and a bunch of people lived in a church in Seattle with a recording studio in the basement, ok — a 7-room recording studio in an old church with 10 bedrooms and a stage that could hold 100 people on old wooden pews, ok? It was built in the late 1800s and it turned into a drug-fueled, punk rock riot house with battles and trash piles and drama. Nobody had any money, and after one year when we just started getting it going it burned down.
That’s awful.
I have photos of my burnt-up keyboards and little wires going into the wall with no rubber on the outside, and burnt-up organs and synthesizers. Some friends in New York asked us if we’d move there, so my girlfriend and I left Seattle. It didn’t work so well. In 88 and 89, it was a downhill slide. I had to go to drug rehab back home and my girlfriend did too. In 98, I moved back to the city with the new band I was in, and from there it went up.
What was the band called?
I was in a band during the grunge era called Sky Cries Mary and we were really popular in Seattle… it was the first time I had a record deal. We toured all over the US and made albums. I had a twenty dollar bill in my pocket every day, I could pay my own rent, and I could go buy Thai food. When the whole grunge thing started crumbling, my friend Anne and I joined a band called Absinthee. We decided to come to New York and I got a studio. I never wanted to be a producer for other people. I was working on my own music and for our band… but people started to say, “You know how to record stuff, don’t ya?” And well, that’s the beginning of my producer life.
I guess that’s where the big bucks come from, right?
My rent in Seattle was $150 a month for a whole basement and when I came here, I rented a lady’s front room in her apartment and slept on her couch — and for that, she wanted $900. Then I got a studio down on Ludlow and Grand for $700 more dollars. So my outgoings went from about $200 to $1600 and pretty soon, I was down to this *pinches thumb and pointer finger together*
You’re like…where did all the money go?
Yeah, all my friends were showing me how to make job resumes and which supermarkets to apply to. I had a rock and roll career and it was great, but I thought, I gotta move on — I gotta take care of myself. And just at that time, a band asked me to help them record.
This was like ‘98, ‘99?
Yeah, this was ‘98, ‘99. All of ‘98 I existed on my own doing my own music. But by ‘99, I realized there was about to be 0 in the bank. I dreaded coming back to the city from Seattle that Christmas.
How did the bands find you?
One guy that I was in a band with in high school told one of his band members in San Francisco to look me up. So, this girl named Pamela Laws came to visit and asked if I could record. I showed her some of my music and she said “Great! I’ll bring my band over we can start some sessions.” And I thought oh~ just in time!
That must’ve been so great. So back then, these kinds of things were arranged by word of mouth.
Yea, word of mouth.
Wait — how did you find this studio?
My band partner Anne found it in the Village Voice. Phenomenal studio and gear. I had never used computers before to make music, but the guy who was also working there taught me how. I’d call him while he was at his other job and be like “I just erased this! How do I get it back?!”
And I found out later that The Velvet Underground recorded music for the first time in that same building, 56 Ludlow. That was 30 years prior.
That’s insane! Legendary.
It was a great initiation to being a producer in New York.
What was New York like at this time? If we were to walk around right now, what would we see?
At that time, you’d look around Tompkins and see people dressed in all kinds of crazy outfits, musicians from all over the world. Rent was cheap — $80 for an apartment. It was really dangerous and there were drugs everywhere. A lot of the buildings were falling down. Still though, New York City was the epicenter of rock and music and art. And parties — everyone was looking for a party.
By the time I actually moved here in ‘98, everything was different. They were starting to put in maître d' restaurants and building condos and selling them for quadruple the price; it was the beginning of an incredible change.
So, where do The Strokes come in?
The Strokes came in about 2 years after I became a producer, so in 2000. Back then, everyone partied on Ludlow St.
Was it at Ludlow Coffee Supply? That used to be quite a popular bar, right?
It was the Pink Pony. They didn't have music, but everybody started the night drinking there. Cool decor. Across the street was Luna Lounge where young bands played — 3 a night. Everybody would go there and see bands from Boston, Philly and New York for free. I saw The Strokes play at Luna Lounge. I had a little business card and I gave it to them and said that I had a studio nearby. I was working at a new studio by that time called Transporterraum NYC – and yea, The Strokes eventually came to check it out.
Did you and the band hit it off immediately?
Not immediately. Early on, there were good vibes and good music being made. They’re very selective about what kind of sounds are being made, especially Julian, and if somebody would be like “I’m an expert let me do this” and gave him the wrong sound, he would be very upset and just leave. When he was telling me what he wanted, he spoke in cryptic poetry, like weird metaphors. He’d say things like “Imagine you’ve taken a spaceship into the future and you discovered a band from the past that you really love. That’s kind’ve what we’d like to do.”
Did that make sense to you at the time?
No, that did not make any sense whatsoever. But then Fab said, “you know what everyone is doing in New York right now?” and I said, yea? And he said “that’s what we don’t want to do.” And that gave me a definite idea. Everyone was using ProTools and producing 60 audio tracks and tons of effects that you could automate. So I said, you know what I have 8 mics right there, go play your song and we’ll capture it that way. And they heard that, and they said that’s what we need.
So Julian’s iconic vocal effect – how he kind of sounds like he’s singing into a phone – did you come up with that together?
Well, I asked what he wanted to sound like, and Julian said I don’t know, show me something. So there was this band from Vancouver called Skinny Puppy and they distorted their vocals to hell. They had a process they called the shit-a-lizer. I put my machines on 10 and gave him what I call nuclear devastation. And he came back and he heard that and goes, “That is ugly; I hate it.” And I was like oh, shoot. As I was thinking about what to do next, he came up with another riddle. He said, “You know how your favorite jeans don’t have holes in them, but they’re not new?” and I thought …what the hell. Just tell me what you mean. But then I had an idea of going sort of in-between somewhere. Like intelligible but still stressed. So I showed him that effect and everyone started jumping up and down and they were like that’s it. And that was the sound for the 3 records we made.
And did you hang out with the band outside of recording?
I did go follow them on their first tour around the UK and in Mallorca – I wanted to see how the world was going to take the music, because that also was going to determine how my career went.
And did you know immediately that it was going to take off?
Oh I mean, they had been playing venues like Arlene’s Grocery in New York. They’d never played anywhere bigger! And then they got the Europe tour were headlining festivals.
Did they blow up first in Europe?
First in England. No one in New York knew about them. We made a little demo and their manager sent it to an independent record label in London called Rough Trade; those people went crazy for it. And then the band got picked for a major magazine (NME) in the UK. Also, at that time, guitar music was vastly out of style. Rock venues were closing…it was jungle, drum and bass, acid jazz, baseball hats and gold chains…so if you went to any record label in New York and they heard a guitar, it was a frisbee right into the trash. So yeah, The Strokes caught on in England and then suddenly, when they came back to play Bowery Ballroom, there were limos around the block of big record labels with giant contracts saying, “Sign with us, sign with us!” That was a big turning point.
That feels like a forgotten era…the time of scouts coming to shows and labels standing outside of clubs with record deals waiting.
So, when you’re recording with bands, what do you listen for?
I’m listening to everything. Because everything has to sound unusually amazing. It’s like brush strokes with a painter. Each stroke has meaning and beauty and power.
Have you seen your style of recording evolve over time?
I don’t know. I learned how to record by working on my own songs for the first two decades. Making my own weird sounds, whispering poetry, using echoes and synthesizers and drum machines or recording my band. So in that formative time, I just discovered infinite ways to make cool sounds. What I wanted to do as a producer was give the people working with me the benefit of having sounds they could be proud of, not just the standard recording. The more I did it, the more confident I became.
So what’s the story with Regina Spektor?
I met her at TMF Studio on 13th and Broadway, which is where I recorded Room on Fire. A friend of mine had really wanted me to work with her, but I didn’t want to work because I had just gotten back to the city from London. I was in New York to party. My friend was like “There’s this girl, she’s 23, Russian, plays the piano real well.” When I met her, she was very charming. She was wearing an old ripped-up grey sweater with a weird scarf, her hair was orange and super thick and curly, and she had giant eyes and a big smile. So I said, “What do ya do?” and she said, “Can I show you?” She pulled out this drumstick, moved a chair over, sat at the piano and started playing like Beethoven-meets-rock piano and started beating the chair with her drumstick. And she was singing these lyrics that were so crazy —reminiscent of the Moldy Peaches. As soon as I heard her song I was like “Oh my god, the world is gonna love this.” When she finished, I asked my friend if the studio was available and told him I needed 9 microphones. I put one by her mouth, one on the drumstick hitting the chair, two on the piano, one hanging in the air to get all the chaos together, and then ran that mic into a guitar amp down the hall where I had a reverb and a weird distorted radio sound and then put two more mics on that. I thought, if I’m going to record a girl singing and playing the piano, she’s gonna sound different than any other female vocalist playing the piano. It’d be a punk rock record with classical music.
Those songs also have this beautiful hollowness and simplicity to them.
Yeah, and it’s only her. She did everything live on the album.
Did you record anything else with her?
No, that’s it. But I did play Regina’s music for Julian and he loved it. So she went on tour with The Strokes and Kings of Leon, opening for them at big arenas around the U.S. When The Strokes were in Seattle on tour, I asked for two free days to work with them at Bear Creek Studio. They brought Regina along and announced that they were doing a duet. Have you ever heard that song?
I don’t think so!
You’d remember it if you had.
What’s it called?
Let’s see, “Modern Girls & Old Fashioned Men.” That was the b-side of Reptilia on the CD package back in the day.
Switching gears – I heard you saw a band recently that had a robot as their lead singer.
Friends of mine from Seattle were traveling all around the U.S. to A.I. conventions and they had a robot who, with these great musicians, recited A.I.-generated poetry. So she didn’t even sing.
How do you feel about the state of music today and the bands you work with? The industry has changed a lot.
There are a lot of young bands rocking the hell out. It’s a joy to see. What’s changed is that different styles have emerged. Genres and sub-genres. You can record music using a laptop and it still sounds amazing…also people from all over the world can hear all the music that has ever been recorded and the brand new stuff that just got released from someone’s basement. It was never like that before. You always had to go into a record shop and they had to have stuff stocked. People from Brazil didn’t know the music from Texas and people from Texas didn’t know the music from Brazil. Now, there’s more accessibility than ever before. That’s a beautiful thing. Also, people from the 60s wouldn’t listen to music from 10 years before – they’d say “That’s the square music of our parents, man, that’s got nothing to do with our new rock n roll sound. We’re revolutionary and cutting new territory…we’re not listening to that old crap from before.” People now are listening to Led Zeppelin and The Beatles – all kinds of music is being listened to and accepted like never before.
We also didn’t have School of Rock and all of these places showing kids how to set up their instruments for gigs. The young kids are highly educated, well-versed and gifted on their instruments.
It’s great to hear that you’re optimistic about the future of music. What’s your new book about?
My new book is called The World is Going to Love This (Up From the Basement with the Strokes) because I had a basement studio and after The Strokes recorded with me, they went up from the basement and around the world, and I had an opportunity to kinda go with them on their journey. I talk about growing up in Seattle, and the incredible bands that were around pre-grunge and during the grunge period, and I briefly discuss my tragic life of drug addiction in the first year I lived in the East Village. A lot of stories of music and creativity.
When you think about it, what was your first love in music? Was it an instrument?
Making my own songs was my first love. I have about 1000 songs written, 700 of which I have recorded and mastered, and I keep putting them on the internet and taking them down.
Why?!
Well, because if no one wants to play with my toys, I’m taking them away, haha! So yeah, I’m slowly putting them back up. I also have a special instrument I love called the ARP Odyssey. It’s a little analog synthesizer from the 70s that makes an infinite number of sounds. It has really opened my mind and imagination.
It’s a gift to be able to master not only an instrument but also ways of putting instruments together to make them sound amazing.
When I was 10 and I heard music for the first time, I was like, this sounds extremely important and I better pay attention. It was revolutionary.
So, you were sold on the music thing from a pretty young age?
Yea. When I was 13, I was in bands, and when I was 18, I started writing my own songs after I went through a few breakthroughs. It took me a while to get my first one done, but after that, the doors opened and I never looked back. Growing up, there were only a couple of good TV shows, so you didn’t have much else to do other than hang with friends and well, play music.
What songs for you encapsulate what love feels like?
Wow, that’s hard. Either “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” by B.J. Thomas or “Love and Confusion” by Jimi Hendrix.