IN THE STUDIO WITH… ARTHUR BAKER

The studio legend behind the legends talks classic records, tech tips and more

By his own admission, Boston native Arthur Baker wasn’t a born DJ. More interested in the means behind the music, he took an engineering course at Intermedia Studios and began releasing disco hits under various pseudonyms with some success. After several false starts and setbacks, Baker relocated to New York and began producing for Tom Silverman at Tommy Boy Records, where he played a key role in seminal ’80s tracks by pioneers Afrika Bambaataa ( Planet Rock) and New Order ( Blue Monday/Confusion).

Within a few short years, Baker was hot property. His studio project, Rockers Revenge, hit No.1 on the US dance chart with Walking on Sunshine, while remixes followed for the likes of Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac. Entering the ’90s and beyond, Baker has continued to stay ahead of the production curve while keeping the electro flame burning through documentaries like 808. Currently working on new material and a movie with former post-disco pals Rockers Revenge, he’s never short on anecdotes.

You were initially a DJ, yet you didn’t always respond well to the reaction you got…

“I wasn’t really a great DJ technically and was fairly impatient as a kid. If I played a track that I knew was good and it didn’t get a reaction, I’d chuck it onto the dancefloor, smash it or throw it into the crowd. The club I mostly did that in was called Rasheed’s in Northampton, which was a college town. But this was around ’75 or ’76, when it wasn’t even legal for me to be playing at a club.”

Sounds like an expensive hobby?

“Back then there were 45s and albums but there weren’t any 12” records yet, so I had to stop doing that when I realised I had to go home and replace them. The first 12” that was released was Double Exposure’s Ten Percent. Before that, record labels were putting out these 45-sized mini-disco discs.”

Should DJs adapt to their audience or should audiences be informed about the event?

“Nowadays, big DJs don’t adapt to their audience, they’re booked because of what they play. Early on, everyone played somewhat similar tracks because from 1973-75 there was a limited amount of dance records coming out. A few years later, the whole disco explosion happened and within two years everyone was doing disco mixes. There would be a combination of commercial DJs and underground DJs, and obscure records and a lot of European stuff started to make its way over to America.”

You witnessed the ‘death of disco’ as it was known. What was your opinion of that whole movement at the time?

“I think it was the end of the first wave of disco, when there was one at every shopping centre. Rasheed’s was interesting because the guy who owned it was Egyptian and it was pretty much a den of iniquity. By the time I moved back to Boston, literally every restaurant had a disco. There was a lot of shit obviously, but there was great music too and a lot of people still sample those ’70s disco records today. Without disco there would be no house music for sure, and it pretty much gave birth to hip-hop because a lot of those records had disco breaks. It’s where beats and breaks came from, through DJs like Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash and Herc.”

At what point did you feel that you wanted to be involved in the recording process rather than simply playing out tracks?

“Immediately. When I was a kid, I was always really interested in production, from the sound of the record to the arrangement. The people that most influenced me were Norman Whitfield who wrote

PapaWasARollingStone in 1972 and all the Philly stuff like The O’Jays and The Blue Notes. After college, I went back to Boston, took an engineering course and started meeting musicians and trying to make my own music. There was no programming, so you needed to hire musicians and an arranger to write out the parts – you couldn’t just jam them. The fact I thought I could do all that was pretty arrogant, but most of the records I made got released. One came out as TJM and those tracks were sampled and played forever. Tracks like The

Music were sampled and became big hits, but I didn’t even know about that when they came out.”

Some of your early tracks were appropriated and released without your knowledge. Was that harsh introduction perversely beneficial?

“Everyone gets burned in the music business; you can’t make it through without getting ripped off in some way. There are a lot of sharks out there and the music schools don’t teach you anything about that, so that was my education. It’s too bad I didn’t know more. The album [ TJM] came out and I got attention for it, I just didn’t get the full credit, which has left a bad taste in my mouth for 40 years.”

Did that experience partially explain why you moved away from writing towards production and remixing?

“Not really. Being credited as a producer would have given me a head start, but within three years I did Planet Rock. I’d known Tom Silverman for a while and he was starting Tommy Boy records, so when I moved to New York he gave me a shot. The first track I did was a remake of FunkySensation called

JazzySensation with The Jazzy 5, who were part of Bambaataa’s crew. That record really blew up, but it was still all played live – there was no sampling yet and only basic drum machines. Bambaataa’s next group was Soulsonic and that’s when we got into using more of the electronic stuff.”

Where would you source the technology from?

“When I was in college we had an electronic music

studio – it was the first one in America for sure. A few guys in the class ended up opening Intergalactic; that’s how I had that connection. They had one of the early ARPs and a Minimoog, which we would use for hand claps, white noise and basslines, but I don’t remember them having a proper drum machine. We had a Clap Track, which was like a click track with white noise, so drummers could play to that. The Moog wasn’t polyphonic so we would try and do brass and horn lines and double or triple-layer the sound to get different notes, which was how Prince would do it. Back then, Stevie Wonder and Prince were way ahead of their time. The first synth that I bought was called The Kitten. I remember going to Brooklyn and buying that and a GLI mixer.”

What technology did you specifically use on Planet Rock?

“Both JazzySensation and PlanetRock were made at Intergalactic and they had proper equipment, including an amazing Neve board with an incredible EQ, Studer tape machines, loads of reverbs and The Fairlight CMI synth, which we used on Jazzy

Sensation for the car horn [laughs]. On PlanetRock, we used the Fairlight’s orchestra hits. Obviously we were influenced by Kraftwerk, but we didn’t have a drum machine. We saw an ad in the VillageVoice that said ‘man with drum machine $5’. He had a Roland 808, so we checked it out and I had him play a bass note with the kick drum, which worked really well. We actually recorded a lot more music than we used, but tried to keep it minimal.”

People romanticise about the gear back then, but you didn’t even have MIDI so was it more difficult than people imagine?

“There was no MIDI so the drums went down first and everything else was played live. Total fun though. We’d slow the tape way down, use delays to create rhythms and have to tune parts to lock things in. A lot of the arpeggiator sounds and cow bell rides on Planet Rock were made using an MXR delay unit and a PCM41 with a tight regeneration for electronic vocoded sounds. We had to use what we had, but although it was a super creative time, we had limitations. We’d book eight hours in the studio, so you couldn’t just sit around all night.”

Do you think those time limitations helped you?

“When we started doing electronic music, the reason it sounded how it did was down to lack of money and musicianship. People would get cheap equipment and use it to copy disco records – that’s what created house and techno. House music was like disco on a tight budget. Frankie Knuckles said house music was disco’s revenge. Basically, all this creativity came from people who couldn’t afford to hire recording studios.”

Machines like the 808 practically created genres. Do you believe that’s possible now?

“Not in music. Obviously, you have the internet and all those technology innovations, but as far as creating a musical instrument that could change things – that’s happened and I don’t see it happening again. When the 808 came out, the sounds were so different and weird, and the records too. Nowadays you have everything at your fingertips and everyone’s got every sound. An artist could come along and do something inspiring, but I don’t think you could create a new genre of music. If you can name me one I’d like to know.”

It seems that a lot of the innovation that once came from new sounds now comes from finding new ways to edit sound…

“That’s true. Guys like Kendrick Lamar are really cool, but he’s not doing anything new – he’s maybe taking something old and giving it new life. If someone created a new instrument, it would be thought of as a gimmick. When MIDI came about, we could combine sounds to make a new sound, but usually it sounded like a mess.”

Were there any European artists from the ’80s that you’d have loved to produce or remix but didn’t get the chance to?

“I never really limited myself to one type of music. I always loved rock and soul, so when I started doing remixes it made sense to do Springsteen or Bob Dylan. I enjoyed the Brit funk scene in the UK and did get to do a couple of tracks with Imagination. I

“When MIDI came, we could make new sounds, but usually it sounded like a mess”

worked with New Order of course, and Freeez, but I would have loved to have made a record with Alison Moyet. I also really liked Erasure and Depeche Mode; I consider Vince Clarke to be one of electronic music’s revolutionaries.”

When you worked on remixes for the likes of Cyndi Lauper and Bruce Springsteen did you have carte blanche to stamp your own style on them or was there label interference?

“Not at all. I got to do remixes after I’d already proven myself as a producer, and I got the big remixes after I did PlanetRock, the Freeez track

I.O.U. and New Order’s Confusion. The labels thought I was creative and would give them a dance sound, so I never had a remix turned down or sent back. Sometimes the bands might question things. When I did a mix for Fleetwood Mac’s BigLove, Lindsey Buckingham didn’t get the change to the bassline, but he let it go. With The Stones’ TooMuch

Blood I took Bill Wyman off and replaced him with Brian Rock – a reggae bass player, but didn’t get much kickback. The people I was dealing with didn’t know the market at all, so they trusted me.”

Did you ever get knocked back?

“The first time I had a kickback was from someone who knew a little bit. In England, some labels would have these dance department guys and I did a remix for a label guy called Pete Edge, who’s had an incredible career. I heard the song and thought it would be a hit, so I went on a TV show called The

Tube with Paula Yates and said I was doing this remix and it’s going to be a huge hit. The record was

LivingInABox by Living In A Box, which did great, but I put on a new bassline and dropped the drums out. Edge said you have to put the drums back in because people can’t dance without a kick drum. I said, no man, go to Paradise Garage and watch Larry Levan play a track with no kick drum and see how people love that – but he made me take it out.”

What’s your approach to remixing these days?

“All the best records I made always had live musicians on top of the programming, which is something I’m going back to now. Even if you chop and move stuff around, there’s something special about having live musicians on your tracks. But these days you have to dump a lot of music because that’s what people want – you have to take risks. Right now I’m limiting myself. I did a really old-school, dirty house record recently and it’s only got seven things in it. If you listen to the old house records, people used to love that minimalism. Production is always a learning process. As long as I’ve been doing it, you can always learn from listening to what people are playing or watching a crowd; and you can relearn things that you knew but forgot about.”

The ’80s was obviously a prolific period for you, but you seemed to change tangent after that?

“In the ’90s, I moved to London and did a lot of records with Brit Pop acts and some mixes for New Order. I was music supervisor on the documentary

ListenUp:TheLivesOf QuincyJones and did the

FriedGreenTomatoes soundtrack. Then I started DJing again and had an XFM show called Baker’s Dozen. I did some recording for Perfecto and worked with Utah Saints, Rennie Pilgrem and breakbeat stuff.”

What about now?

“The last six or seven years I’ve been producing documentaries. One called FindingTheFunk for VH-1 and the five-year 808 project because I wanted to document the music I was involved with. I think that’s important and it was important to me. I didn’t do it as an ego thing; I just wanted to document all the other guys from back in the day that did interesting things but didn’t get the attention; people like Strafe, Man Parrish and Hank Shocklee.”

You’re also back with Rockers Revenge now?

“The last few years I’ve been making a lot of records and collaborating with people like Steve Lawler and The Martinez Brothers, but right now I’m doing this record with Rockers Revenge and a movie about them. Through that, I’ve reconnected with a lot of the people I worked with back in the ’80s. For years I’ve been sitting at my laptop making my own music. I’ve taught myself programming and use Logic, but getting back together with Rockers Revenge – a group of friends I hadn’t seen for 30 years – was crazy. It’s like we were never apart. Not only are we making new music, but the documentary is much more of a human interest story. If I get it right, it’s going to be very special.”

At what point did you possess your own studio and use that for your production/remix work?

“I got my studio around 1983 I think. I went from having no money and no studio to literally having an SSL desk. It was called Shakedown Sound, and for three years everyone worked there from Rick Rubin and David Morales to the Latin Rascals. First I had an MCI reel-to-reel tape recorder, then a Studer tape machine, then the SLL E-Series console. I had all the synthesisers. In 1985, I did the Hall & Oates album, BigBamBoom and they gave me their Synclavier, which we actually didn’t use much. I had Akai delay units, MXR delays and a rack of PCM42s and Neve EQs – there was a lot of AMS stuff too.”

Didn’t you have an Emulator at one point?

“For sure, the Emulator was relatively inexpensive compared to the Fairlight. I had my own studio but also worked at Unique Studios. The guy that owned it was called Bobby Nathan, and he literally bought every piece of gear that came out. He had the E-MU Emulator 1 and would sample James Brown shouts. He was actually the first guy to sample in that way; going through records and sampling shouts and comedy bits. When I did I.O.U. by Freeez, we used his Emulator to sample the vocals. It was an important piece of gear, as was the AMS delay unit, because you could grab a snare sample and trigger it off of tape.”

Would you listen to other innovative records and try to find out what gear they were using?

“I started using the Oberheim DMX because I liked some of the records that Trevor Horn was doing. That was a drum machine that sounded like real drums, whereas the 808 sounded nothing like real drums. The Rockers Revenge track WalkingOn

Sunshine was all DMX drum machine. I remember when Bobby Nathan came back from NAMM and told me that Roland had discontinued the 808 and made a better one called the 909. But it wasn’t really successful at the time; by 1986 it was already cheap.”

What did you think of Roland’s 808 reissues?

“The latest 808 that Roland did – after the horrible one with all the fucking lights and shit – was pretty damn close to the original. The only bizarre thing is how they quarter-tuned the cow bells down. If I have a gig just round the corner, I’ll take the old 808, but if I’m taking a flight I’ll take the little one.”

Did you embrace digital technology when that started to come out?

“I had an analogue SSL desk and moved that shit a couple of times, which is nuts. I moved it to one studio, but the guy I partnered with was a nightmare. Then I bought a loft in Jersey City and put my studio in there. I really wanted to get Larry Blackman of Cameo in the studio and knew an engineer that worked with him. He told Larry that I’d used a Sony 32-track digital recorder, so they rented one and got it up the elevator. Unfortunately, I had a doorway in my studio and it wouldn’t make it through, so I went out, got a sledgehammer and knocked the fucking frame off it to get it in. Larry worked on it there for a couple of hours; then he said ‘I’m not sure about this, I’ve lost the vibe’.”

What about softsynths?

“Yeah, of course man! To be honest, I never got my head around things like Reason. I tried and had all those things for sure, but when I first started making records with software I used ACID Music Studio. I made some amazing things with that, but it wasn’t for Mac so I had to buy a PC. To me, ACID was revolutionary, it was the predecessor to Ableton Live I guess; it was easy to loop but had no MIDI. At Shakedown we got into Logic, and I’ve stuck with that the whole time – I never got into Pro Tools.”

A lot of artists are going back to having hardware setups, perhaps as a reaction to software. Do you empathise with that?

“When I see people with studios that have 30 synths, I always think they must have a lot of time on their hands. Listen, I kept a lot of my synths – I never sold one. The only ones I got rid of were the ones that got stolen. It’s really cool if you have the synths and the time to use them, but what’s more worthwhile, in my opinion, is having a really good player. I recently used a Juno-60 again, which is great. The string sounds on that are just like the The Pet Shop Boys. You don’t have to work much with them to get those great sounds!”

want to know more?

For the latest info on Arthur Baker’s new Rockers Revenge project, follow him on Twitter @arthurhbaker