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Just wanted to get orgers' opinions on this....

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I used to wonder why of all Stevie's albums, I kept coming back to Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Inner Visions, and Fulfillingness' First Finale. Like most die-hard Stevie Fans, I knew about Cecil and Margouleff, and The T.O.N.T.O. (The Original New Timbral Orchestra) bank of synthesizers that they utilized for Stevie's records, but I also used to think it was curious that in album liner notes, they were listed as "engineers".

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I was just reading another Steve Wonder biography, Signed Sealed, Delivered, and also checking out videos like the ones below, on Malcom Cecil, and Robert Margouleff, and it's evident that they did more than just 'twiddle the knobs' for Stevie.

I get the sense that they should have at least been credited as co- producers and collaborators...the bio and the doc also help shed some light on why they were gone by the time Songs in the Key of Life was released....

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Stevie is certainly a genius, as musician, composer, and performer, etc.... But IMO, those two were as crucial to helping shape the sound of those four classic albums as Sir George Martin was to The Beatles' albums....the overall sound and feel of those albums, in retrospect, seems more of a collaborative effort....

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[Edited 2/7/14 14:33pm]

I confess I didn't know Cecil and Margouleff until I read the Stevie's biography written by Mark Ribowsky (which may be the one you're talking about). A great part of Ribowsky's argumentation is precisely that Cecil and Margouleff were essential to Stevie's sound. I must say I was mostly convinced with the argument. Also, he interviews one of the two, I don't remember whom, and he says they felt underappreciated by Stevie, and that he didn't treat them very well...

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It seems that, apart from the significance of the synths, they also contributed to Stevie's focusing on the music, they didn't let him get distracted and made them work hard with a clear notion in mind. I've also read Steve Lodder's book, and he claims that Cecil and Margouleff made Stevie be precise, that is, not to be too self-indulgent, like he was, according to the author, on the two double albums he released after splitting with his "engineers". Being precise could certainly be a virtue, but the way Stevie's talent runs free on Songs In The Key Of Life and, especially, The Secret Life Of Plants is just fantastic to my ears. If I were forced to choose my two favourite Stevie albums, I'd probably go with these two, as much as I appreciate the early seventies records. So, in this case, the precision Cecil and Margouleff allegedly brought to Stevie's music can be a virtue, but the lack of precision and the excessive sounds of the next albums can also be a virtue, can't it?

[Edited 2/4/14 14:45pm]

Javi said:

Being precise could certainly be a virtue, but the way Stevie's talent runs free on Songs In The Key Of Life and, especially, The Secret Life Of Plants is just fantastic to my ears. If I were forced to choose my two favourite Stevie albums, I'd probably go with these two, as much as I appreciate the early seventies records. So, in this case, the precision Cecil and Margouleff allegedly brought to Stevie's music can be a virtue, but the lack of precision and the excessive sounds of the next albums can also be a virtue, can't it?

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Oh, definitely! It doesn't take anything away from Stevie on his own....It's just that IMO, they deserve more credit than they got for collaborating with him to create that early 70's sound and feel...the three of them basically block-booked themselves into Electric Lady Studios in '72, and came up with the basis for what would become the next four albums....

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paligap said:

Javi said:

Being precise could certainly be a virtue, but the way Stevie's talent runs free on Songs In The Key Of Life and, especially, The Secret Life Of Plants is just fantastic to my ears. If I were forced to choose my two favourite Stevie albums, I'd probably go with these two, as much as I appreciate the early seventies records. So, in this case, the precision Cecil and Margouleff allegedly brought to Stevie's music can be a virtue, but the lack of precision and the excessive sounds of the next albums can also be a virtue, can't it?

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Oh, definitely! It doesn't take anything away from Stevie on his own....It's just that IMO, they deserve more credit than they got for collaborating with him to create that early 70's sound and feel...the three of them basically block-booked themselves into Electric Lady Studios in '72, and came up with the basis for what would become the next four albums....

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I agree, they deserve more recognition. Lately, when I've seen comments about their albums with Stevie in good magazines, I've usually seen their names mentioned. But the fact is that to the general public they don't exist, even to people who know Stevie's music well. Like you say, they see them in the credits as mere "engineers" and then they think all the synth brilliance is due only to Stevie, which isn't true. I myself have known Stevie's albums for twenty years and I only learned about the relevance of Cecil and Margouleff four years ago, when reading the book I mentioned. But that can be due to me being a bit dumbass too!

[Edited 2/4/14 23:49pm]

I would never leave that room. I would live there forever.

Javi said:

But the fact is that to the general public they don't exist, even to people who know Stevie's music well.

I don't think the average person cares about who produces or writes songs or other types of music credits. Like they used to say on American Bandstand, "It has a good beat and I can dance to it". Just like at a movie theater, most people leave as soon as the movie is over. They don't sit and watch the credits.

novabrkr said:

I would never leave that room. I would live there forever.

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Man, I would love to at least be in the same room with the whole console...

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MickyDolenz said:

Javi said:

But the fact is that to the general public they don't exist, even to people who know Stevie's music well.

I don't think the average person cares about who produces or writes songs or other types of music credits. Like they used to say on American Bandstand, "It has a good beat and I can dance to it". Just like at a movie theater, most people leave as soon as the movie is over. They don't sit and watch the credits.

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True...although I do think they should at least have gotten more industry recognition than they did. They were a few people in the know at the time...the TONTO was used on records by the Isley Brothers, Billy Preston, Gil Scott Heron, and the Stairsteps, among others...but they're still relatively unknown, even among industry insiders.....

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[Edited 2/5/14 10:53am]

It might be that Stevie didn't really need them anymore after he started using the Yamaha GX-1 and CS-80 synthesizers. He could program the sounds on them himself as the controls were laid out in front of him just like they would be on electronic organs (sliders instead of knobs must be his preference in that regard, so he can feel the positions they're at). The big deal about the TONTO system was that it was polyphonic and not too many synths before the Yamaha polyphonics were that (there was the Polymoog, but that didn't sound too hot).

For skilled keyboard players, polyphony is a must. In a sense, the modular synths like TONTO were just a bunch of monosynth modules linked together and the reason why they could do polyphony was just that they were so damn big. The guys must have needed to set all the oscillator modules to sound the same for each voice. For example, if it was a "synth string" or "synth brass" patch and Stevie would have wanted to play chords they would have needed to set the controls for each oscillator module in identical positions (most likely they would have needed to do that for the filter, ADSR etc. modules as well).

There was no way Stevie could have done that stuff himself and it must have been really time-consuming to do that with a modular system anyway. The Yamaha synths made it all a lot easier. They even had presets,

novabrkr said:

It might be that Stevie didn't really need them anymore after he started using the Yamaha GX-1 and CS-80 synthesizers. He could program the sounds on them himself as the controls were laid out in front of him just like they would be on electronic organs (sliders instead of knobs must be his preference in that regard, so he can feel the positions they're at). The big deal about the TONTO system was that it was polyphonic and not too many synths before the Yamaha polyphonics were that (there was the Polymoog, but that didn't sound too hot).

For skilled keyboard players, polyphony is a must. In a sense, the modular synths like TONTO were just a bunch of monosynth modules linked together and the reason why they could do polyphony was just that they were so damn big. The guys must have needed to set all the oscillator modules to sound the same for each voice. For example, if it was a "synth string" or "synth brass" patch and Stevie would have wanted to play chords they would have needed to set the controls for each oscillator module in identical positions (most likely they would have needed to do that for the filter, ADSR etc. modules as well).

There was no way Stevie could have done that stuff himself and it must have been really time-consuming to do that with a modular system anyway. The Yamaha synths made it all a lot easier. They even had presets,

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Well, technically that is the way things were going. And as Cecil pointed out, back in the day, some of the TONTO's many functions had nothing to do with music per se, but also involved getting an array of Moog, Arp, and other monosynths to work with each other, which they certainly weren't originally built to do....

However on the personal side, they had a falling out. In Signed, Sealed Delivered, Malcom Cecil noted that there had been years of decreasing appreciation, and denial of promised royalties, especially from the people managing Stevie. At the same time, more and more friends and hangers on began hanging out in the control room while they were recording Fullfillingness. In years past, they usually mixed with just Stevie, the two of them and an engineer in the studio.

Apparently, it came to a head during an overdubbing session at Crystal Sound, and Cecil said that at one point, there must have been close to thirty people in the studio, making a huge noise. Cecil said that he was trying to feed Stevie his lines at the time, and told the crowd, "Excuse me, can we have a little bit of quiet in here? We're trying to work."

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Stevie replied through the headset, "Hey, Man", don't talk to my friends like that!

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Finally, Cecil retorted, "Well, maybe your friends can finish the overdub!" and walked out.

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When it became apparent that they really weren't going to get promised royalties the two decided to part company with Stevie. however, since they left him with more than 200 songs in the can, their sound collaborations appeared on two more albums...

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[Edited 2/5/14 16:14pm]

Maybe the fact that their contribution was acknowledged only as "engineers" had to do with Motown promoting Stevie as a kind of self-sufficient genius. Hey, this was the child of "Fingertips" and the young man of "Uptight", who even wrote a hit for the hitmaker Smokey Robinson himself! So Motown projected the image of Stevie as the "composed, performed and produced only by", which, by the way, Prince later adopted.

MickyDolenz said:

Javi said:

But the fact is that to the general public they don't exist, even to people who know Stevie's music well.

I don't think the average person cares about who produces or writes songs or other types of music credits. Like they used to say on American Bandstand, "It has a good beat and I can dance to it". Just like at a movie theater, most people leave as soon as the movie is over. They don't sit and watch the credits.

Yes, you're right. But it's also true that, as paligap said, other people "in the shadows", like George Martin, have a far greater recognition. Nobody doubts Martin's relevance in The Beatles' music, just like nobody doubts Mick Ronson's, Tony Visconty's or Brian Eno's in Bowie's music. Fans of The Beatles or Bowie learn about it soon, but there are fans of Stevie (myself included for some time, like I posted before) who ignore the huge relevance of Cecil and Margouleff to Stevie's music.

[Edited 2/5/14 23:12pm]

[Edited 2/5/14 23:12pm]

MickyDolenz said:

Javi said:

But the fact is that to the general public they don't exist, even to people who know Stevie's music well.

I don't think the average person cares about who produces or writes songs or other types of music credits. Like they used to say on American Bandstand, "It has a good beat and I can dance to it". Just like at a movie theater, most people leave as soon as the movie is over. They don't sit and watch the credits.

I stay for the film credits, damn it!

Staying on topic, Cecil/Margouleff were not simply studio engineers, they were synth programmers. Whatever types of sound that Stevie was looking & hearing for, it was Cecil/Margouleff that knew how to program those synths to get those sounds.

Javi said:

Maybe the fact that their contribution was acknowledged only as "engineers" had to do with Motown promoting Stevie as a kind of self-sufficient genius. Hey, this was the child of "Fingertips" and the young man of "Uptight", who even wrote a hit for the hitmaker Smokey Robinson himself! So Motown projected the image of Stevie as the "composed, performed and produced only by", which, by the way, Prince later adopted.

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Yeah, I think that had a lot to do with it--helping to build the mystique--the 'he does it all by himself' thing.....

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Was TONTO featured in Phantom Of The Paradise??

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Yep, that's it!!!

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[Edited 2/7/14 14:18pm]

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As noted in the third video above, Calgary's National Music Centre has just aquired the TONTO from Malcom Cecil, and he's working with the Centre to ensure that it will not only be appreciated, but actually used by current and future musicians who want to utilize the sounds....

I'm glad that it will survive for future generations. On the other hand, taking it to Canada just made it that much harder for me to ever get to see the thing, LOL!!!

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[Edited 2/7/14 14:41pm]