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Behind the scene: recording and producing Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares 2 U http://www.soundonsound.c...s-0212.htm
The interesting bits (it's a long article):
Towards the end of the award‑winning video that was shot to promote her 1990 international hit single ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, tears run down each of Sinéad O’Connor’s cheeks as she sings, “All the flowers that you planted, Mama, in the back yard, all died when you went away.” These, she’d later explain on VH1’s 100 Greatest Songs of the ’90s, were prompted by thoughts of the complicated relationship that she had shared with her late mother. Not that O’Connor had written this number about longing for a lost love. Instead, Prince had composed it for the Family, a band signed to his Paisley Park label, inspired by a member who had recently split up with his girlfriend and recorded by the funk outfit for their eponymous 1985 album. Identifying with the lyrics, O’Connor imbued the song with a strikingly authentic, heartfelt intensity.. At the time, there were rumours that O’Connor was dating Prince. That was, when another possible suitor wasn’t paying her daily visits. “Every day, this guy in sunglasses used to come into the studio and sit at the back of the control room,” Birkett recalls. “He never introduced himself and I wondered who the hell he was, until I finally asked his name and he responded, ‘Peter Gabriel’. He and Sinéad appeared to be spending a lot of time together, so who knows? I still think she was crying about Fachtna O’Ceallaigh, but maybe she was crying about Peter Gabriel or she could even have been crying about Prince. Whoever it was, she was upset about someone and that’s why she put everything into the song as well as into the video. “I had a meeting with Fachtna O’Ceallaigh in a car parked outside a studio and he played me the song,” Birkett recalls. “Nellee Hooper had been involved for two days until he and Sinéad had a bust-up and she walked out. At that point, there was a drum loop, some strings and backing vocals, and I thought the song was really good, but it needed rearranging, so that’s what we set about doing.”
The man who was largely responsible for the backing track was drummer and Japanese acid jazz virtuoso Gota Yashiki. Previously he had played with the Tokyo-based reggae/dub outfit Mute Beat and, together with fellow band member Kazufumi Kodama, formed the duo Kodama & Gota. During the late-’80s, before drumming on Simply Red’s 1991 Stars album and the group’s subsequent world tour, Yashiki worked in London with artists that included Soul II Soul, Seal and Sinéad O’Connor, and it was his programmed string arrangement on ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ that now prompts Chris Birkett to describe him as “a genius”.
“He was so talented and creative,” he says. “He understood things really, really quickly — a totally intuitive musician.”
“I had worked with Nellee Hooper on Soul II Soul’s record, arranging, programming and also playing the drums,” Gota Yashiki remarks. “That project went really well, so when Nellee started working with Sinéad O’Connor on ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, he asked me to join them and again do the arranging and programming. The engineer was a female named Arabella Rodriguez, who had also recorded and mixed Soul II Soul.
“At first, we did pre-production at Nellee’s house, where I did most of my work using an Atari with Notator software and an Akai S1100 sampler. Then we began recording at Pink Floyd’s studio, Britannia Row, where I did some overdubs — a little drums and playing keyboards for a cello part. The track was really slow, and the bass drum and snare drum sounded great, but the programmed hi-hat just wasn’t working. So I asked if a hi-hat and cymbals could be hired, and I played those live. Then the cello part still wasn’t gelling together, so I overdubbed that at Britannia Row using the Akai sampler with a keyboard.
“I wanted to be really sure that everything felt right, and this meant the strings had to sound natural, which I think they do. I played all of the parts, we finished the backing track and Sinéad was working on the vocal when something went wrong between her and Nellee. They had an argument — I don’t know what it was about — and suddenly he quit the project.
“A few weeks later, she was in a mix session at another studio and coincidentally I was next door. When she found out I was there, she knocked on the door and said, ‘Gota, can you check out the track? We’ve just finished mixing it.’ So that’s what I did, and it sounded like all of the work I had done on the track was still there.”
For some reason, Sinéad hated compression, and when I’d come in each morning there would be a piece of white A4 paper on the console saying ‘NO F***ING COMPRESSORS!’ The problem was, she had a reverse mic technique. When most people sing loud, they back off the mic, but she used to do the opposite — she would stand away from the mic when singing quietly and then scream right into it. That was probably her idea of getting a more powerful vocal, but I can tell you it was bloody hell to record and mix that without a compressor, a limiter or anything that touched the signal. “Some of it was distorted because she was yelling into the mic when the gain was up to try to capture her quiet vocals, and so I spent hours and hours using the SSL’s automation on every single syllable to make it audible, and I also had to ride the EQ during the mix to take out the high-mids because the mic was overloading and sounding awful. It’s not like now when I’m working with Pro Tools and Logic and can automate anything — it’s fantastic. Back then, I had to do it in real time, riding the EQ by hand when I was running the final mix, and that was tricky. “With Sinéad and most other artists, I use an AKG C 414B-ULS for vocals. It’s one of my favourite mics because it can take a lot of dynamics, whereas if I used a Neumann her vocal would have been distorted all the way through, thanks to her terrible mic technique. Neumanns break up very easily, but the 414 can take a lot of punishment and still be clear with practically no background noise. I’ve used it on Alison Moyet, Buffy Saint-Marie and virtually everyone else I’ve worked with.” Meanwhile, for Chris Birkett, the vocal nightmare continued throughout the six‑week-long sessions for the I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got album which also took place at Eden and his own CB Sound studios. “Sinéad wouldn’t allow any form of automatic level control,” he confirms. “When I asked her why, she said she thought it was fake. She wanted her vocal to be more natural. And that would have been fine had she not used that reverse mic technique. She’d probably picked that up on-stage, trying to project, but it was the complete opposite of what most people do.
Unfortunately for Birkett, this giving, easy-going attitude wasn’t exactly reciprocated.
“At that stage, not having a manager to take care of me, I was doing a lot of work that I didn’t get the proper credit for,” he says. “So the secretary at Ensign Records pushed for me to have a co-production contract for ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ as well as for the album, and I earned royalties on that basis. Yet Sinéad had this thing in her head about being credited as the sole producer, and although it was crazy, that’s what happened.”
Ditto Gota Yashiki. The only people credited for the string arrangements on I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got were conductor Nick Ingman, who conducted live orchestral sessions at London’s Lansdowne Studios... and Sinéad O’Connor.
[Edited 8/20/13 11:13am] Is everybody wet? | |
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Interesting stuff, thanks for posting. | |
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Pleasure Is everybody wet? | |
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I don't think she's crying about Prince, though lol.The video only shows her face. What you don't see is that big bag of onions that she's peeling... | |
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Indeed interesting, specially the part about the compressors grazie for sharing.
"People think I covered this song"
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I would not want to work for her! My art book: http://www.lulu.com/spotl...ecomicskid
VIDEO WORK: http://sharadkantpatel.com MUSIC: https://soundcloud.com/ufoclub1977 |
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I thought I was thee only 1 who disliked compressors. | |
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Added the Gota Yashiki bits. Absurd to learn that his work in the song is uncredited considering how significant his role was -- the guy basically played/programmed all instruments and did the arrangement in that song. [Edited 8/20/13 11:21am] Is everybody wet? | |
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Understandably Is everybody wet? | |
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Moving to associated artists 
Ohh purple joy oh purple bliss oh purple rapture! REAL MUSIC by REAL MUSICIANS - Prince "I kind of wish there was a reason for Prince to make the site crash more" ~~ Ben |
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Maybe it was filmed right after he beat her up...... allegedly!! | |
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Is everybody wet? | |
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This was interesting. Thanks for posting! | |
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