Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / [HIGHLIGHT] Black Sabbath’s Live Evil: The Mixing War That Split the Band - From EP 384

Transcript

[HIGHLIGHT] Black Sabbath’s Live Evil: The Mixing War That Split the Band - From EP 384 · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Here's a clip from our latest episode of book Don
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Rock Chris Sutton. He's back this time. He has got
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: a brand new book called Black Sabbath. The Deal years,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: every album, every song part of Sonic Bond's on Track
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: series Let's Get to the Now, an album that's become
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: one of the most debated albums in Sabbath history. Nineteen
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: eighty three is Live Evil and a lot of the
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: debate is surrounding well, there's a lot of tensions surrounding
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: the mix. So after researching it, what's your perspective on
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: what really happened?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: My perspective is it's a six to one and a
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: half a dozen in the other and a lot of
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: old nonsense.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Quite frankly, what happened? What's the story here?
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: The story is is that, well, Ronnie James deal. I
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: think he's generally very believable about most of what he says.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: He's saying that they had times to come in to
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  Speaker 2: sit down and do the mix, so they turn up
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: him and Vinnie and Geezer and Tony wouldn't be there
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: and would come in later, so they would start work
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: with the engineer and doing the mix and sorting stuff
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: out and whatever. And what have you, and then Tony
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: and Geezer would come in later and work on it,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: and then their work would be changed the following morning
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: by Byronni, who says he just wouldn't do that, And
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: actually I don't think he did. I think there's a
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: lot of personal stuff going on, and in any case,
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: it's a pretty dreadful mix. Anyway, it wasn't the greatest
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: mix at all, and it's now been thanks to Win Davies,
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: who came out with this colossally incredible mix. You know
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: you say times. I nearly fell off my chair. Well,
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: I got to review the remix of Live Evil, and
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: I felt sure that these were completely different shows or something.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: And Win Davis is one of the first I talked
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: to for this book, and I said, people are saying
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: that you're not using the same sources and someone that
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: were on Live Evil, he doesn't sound the same, and
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: he says, I absolutely am using the same I can
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: guarantee it. I'm sitting looking at the file now. I
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: did not use any different versions or anything.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: That tells you what a difference a mix can make.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Have you heard the two mixes?
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I have not.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Oh, oh, Eric, if you do one thing. When you
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: go away from this, get Wyn Davis's remixes alive evil,
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: and you will be astounded. They are, literally I would
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: say that the best remixes I've ever heard, and I've
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: heard so many. It's like he's varnished it, buffed it
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: up and cleaned it and it's just become this incredible recording.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Was it taken from two shows, Seattle and Dallas?
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Two or three shows? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I've got the
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: shows listed in the book. And then there were overdubs. Now,
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: whether he had all the overdubs as well to play with,
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure, but he used all the original sources
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: and there were some guitar overdubs and a bit of bass,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: and as there always is on live albums. Whatever anyone
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: says it actually came from four shows has no Seattle,
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Dallas and San Antonio. I mean, some of the things
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: he had to do. He was using pro tools and
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: swinging back between the old and the new mixes to
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: make sure that he got things synced up and in
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: the right places. He said he took a lot of time,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: an awful lot of time, and a lot of feedback
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: to actually get it right. He says he had tried
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: using different versions. Originally, that was the obvious way to go,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: was to not bother trying to remix Live Evil, just
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: do a remaster of it and then put out another
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: version if you like, by using completely different recordings. And
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: what they could have easily done that because the four
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: venues that I mentioned just earlier, they've got the recordings
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: from every song from those shows, so he could have
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: just picked different versions.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it was like a handful of shows,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: not two shows. It was like.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: And he could have just picked different songs from those
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: shows who had an alternative version of Live Evil, but
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: they didn't. I find that that's what the band wanted,
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: was to actually improve of it, and it is absolutely phenomenal.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.