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Recording Approach
The best way I
think to get a sense of what the studio experience is like with Flood is to
hear about it from someone has first-hand knowledge. In an interview with the
Guitar Center newsletter Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins talks about
his experience working with Flood. After years of listening to Flood’s work
with some of my favorite bands and their best work partly due to his
contribution, I found Corgan’s comments extremely illuminating especially for
me as a Flood fan.
In “Capturing the Truth,” Corgan says:
“He
[Flood, the producer] would really kind of push us to say there’s another vibe
here that you can get to…you can see that when he’s worked with U2...he kind of
pushed them to get to a little bit of a tougher vibe…he really pushed us to
make it darker and prettier and more atmospheric…and more nighttime-ish. The
song was the same. He didn’t change anything about the song. He really pushed
us to a higher level with the way that we thought about our music…What I mean
by that is, people fix the atmospheric or emotional problems in a song with
production. Flood wouldn’t save the song with production. He would force us to
save the song with our playing and then we would produce it. Essentially…if you
don’t have the right emotional base in a song, you can never produce it right.
And THAT’S what he really taught us, was spend the time getting that exact
right feeling so that, even when you play it on acoustic guitar, that feeling
comes through…Once you have that feeling in your body, then you know what to
do. Then the production is easy.”
Mainstream commercial success
Flood's
first mainstream commercial break came in 1987 when he engineered U2's The
Joshua Tree alongside Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Shortly thereafter he
co-produced Nine Inch Nails on debut Pretty Hate Machine. He also worked
with Depeche Mode on their most commercially successful album to date, Violator.
In 1991 he returned to work again with U2 on Achtung Baby along with
Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite. The following year, he also
returned to work with Depeche Mode to record the album Songs of Faith and
Devotion and co-produced three tracks of Nine Inch Nails' Broken EP.
To gain
a small view into his work with Depeche Mode, one of my favorite bands, here he
demonstrates the making of the song “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode from
their Violator album. He begins with
the drum sequence and fills in his talk with some of the dialogue that went on
between him and the band about what should go on the next track for the piece.
Eventually, after trying many effects, the decision was made to add a guitar
and then you begin to see how all the pieces start coming together.
“Suddenly, everybody’s engaged.”
In
1993, Flood shifted from engineering U2's albums to producing them, sharing
duties with Brian Eno on Zooropa. In 1994, he worked again with Nine Inch
Nails, this time on The Downward Spiral. In 1995, Flood co-produced The
Smashing Pumpkins' album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness with
longtime collaborator Alan Moulder, and also PJ Harvey's album To Bring You
My Love. In 1996, Flood teamed up with U2 once again to produce Pop,
released the next year. The following year, he assisted Billy Corgan and Brad
Wood on The Smashing Pumpkins's 1998 album Adore and co-produced PJ
Harvey's album Is This Desire?
All
of these bands and their albums from this short period of time have been
extremely influential on my work and even on my decision to begin and persist
as a musician and composer.
To learn more about Flood biographical information, click here.
Incidently,
Ellis got the name “Flood” from the time he was a runner at Morgan Studios.
Apparently, he was responsible for responding to numerous requests from the
recording artists and staff for tea and bacon sandwiches. Ellis kept up with
the numerous requests for tea while the other runner remained largely
unavailable, leading to the nicknames "Flood" and "Drought” for
each runner.
Video Interviews
Now for
those of you who may be Flood fans, but have never even known it, or who know
it, but who have never really seen him live. Here are two rare interviews with
Flood I thought you would enjoy. In each interview he talks about his
production style, some of the work he’s done with particular bands, why he uses
analog and digital equipment to produce, and much more.
Marc
