Ivan Julian: Let’s Try It

Were you paying a lot of attention to the recording part of making records when you first started?

I’ve always been fascinated with that from my days as a pre-teen. I’d hear records and hear sounds, like the drum sound on [the Rolling Stones’] “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction.” I’d think, “How do they do this? Why is it affecting me like this?” I’ve always been fascinated. Was I paying attention in the studio back then? Yes. I was constantly being told, “No, you can’t do that.” I thought a lot of the engineers were more technicians than they were musical. I thought I wanted to eventually have a place where I could record the way I wanted. People can come in and I’ll allow them to do anything, within reason. If it’s an idea, let’s try it. I accumulated pieces over the years, and that’s how it all happened. It used to be in a house I rented. The drummer would be in the stairwell, the violins would be down in the basement, and I’d run XLRs all over the place. It was pretty wild. I had a situation where my landlord was gone nine months of the year, and he lived downstairs.

Who were you working with back then?

Oh god, just local people. I didn’t really start working with people who had record deals until I was at NY HED over on Ludlow Street. Then I started working with Hunx and His Punx, The Fleshtones, and people like that.

The Fleshtones were around during the same era as The Voidoids.

It’s funny, but we never crossed paths. It was like that with some people. There were so many bands. Some people we’d met and hung out with, and others we just didn’t. I didn’t meet Keith [Streng, of The Fleshtones] until much later on. He heard that I had a studio, and I played him some music I was working on. He said, “We’re doing our next record with you,” and that turned into three records.

They’ve got a real loose, garage-y aesthetic.

There’s something about them. There’s a record I did with [The Fleshtones] called Take a Good Look. I loved working with them because basically all I had to do was press record. They came in, they were so well-rehearsed, and everything was just there as it was. Simple rock ‘n’ roll, but it’s good simple rock ‘n’ roll. The feel was there, the dynamics were there, and it was amazing.

Have you found that a lot of other work has come to you because of your past history?

Yeah, there are bands from South America, Spain, and France that come to me based on the Voidoids’ legacy. Also, word of mouth. People leave here happy. That’s my goal. Make the record and make it sound good.

I love the sound of the Richard Hell & The Voidoids records. They were so immediate.

When we were making the EP [Another World], the predecessor to our debut album, I would ask for acetates every day and they’d give them to me. I have this pile of acetates from that session. This phenomenal stuff that you can only play once. We recorded that at Bell Sound [Studios], which was a place where The Shangri-Las and a bunch of people worked up in midtown [Manhattan, NY]. The board didn’t even have faders; it had giant RCA knobs.

What was it like in the studio making The Voidoids’ Blank Generation with Richard Gottehrer producing?

We had rehearsed for a long time. We might have done one or two gigs before that record came out. We spent most of our time rehearsing. We had our parts down and we knew what we were going to play. But we recorded that record twice. It was once done at Electric Lady [Studios] and once at Plaza Sound [Studios]. I always thought it was Gottehrer who wanted to re-record it, but Richard recently told me he wanted to re-record it, because he didn’t like how bombastic it sounded. It did, because we were using these giant Marshall amps with four and eight speakers, and the whole thing sounded like two bumblebees rolling down a hill. Then we went to Plaza. Bob [Quine, guitar] and I were walking into Plaza, up in the Radio City Music Hall complex. It was designed to record symphony orchestras, so the room was gigantic. We looked across the room, and we saw two tiny Fender Champ amps. We’re like, “What? No way!” Then we both recorded the record like that, and it did sound better!

You can put a higher quality mic on a quieter, smaller amp and capture a wider sound spectrum.

I always do that. I read that Jimi Hendrix used to record a lot through small amps. You do get a bigger sound, because you’re getting less air and more actual sine waves. It just sounds better. I totally believe in that. I always tell everyone that the microphone is the lens. It can color it a little bit, but it sees what is put in front of it. I find a lot of people hear the sound on a record and they want to use distortion, but they don’t understand that less is more when it comes to distortion. Otherwise, you get this one frequency that goes through the whole thing, and there’s no guitar sound. If you really listen to a record, they’re not fuzzing it out or distorting it as much as you think.

Are you suggesting amp combos when you’re working with people? It looks like you have a lot at the studio.

I love suggesting amp combos and different mic setups. I do have a lot. I have a [Montgomery Ward] Airline [amp] right over there that I got out in L.A. for $100 because somebody had chopped the power cable off. If someone comes in and says, “Oh, I want this kind of sound,” I say, “That’s why we have a lot of amplifiers!”

In The Voidoids, you played guitar alongside the late Robert Quine.

Even though I was the youngest, I was the only one who had been touring in a band before. When I met Bob, we kind of had this truce. We had this model where the band would be like The Yardbirds. There would be no real lead or rhythm player, and we would take things off and on. Most importantly, we’d never play in the same part of the neck, so it would have this great sound. We fed off each other in that way. We were great bookends, him and I. Having said that, when I first went to the audition, or maybe it was the second time I played with him, I did look over and go, “What the fuck is he doing?” He was an amazing guitar player. He based a lot of his parts off Ornette Coleman and people like that. As a college student, he would go see Chuck Berry. Bob loved music. He was constantly making tapes for people. Sometimes he would make me a tape; I’d be at his house, and he’d put it on and get really upset if anyone talked at any point during it!

How did you build up your electronics skills?

I was on the road in Atlanta, Georgia, and my Fender Twin amp was acting really weird. I took it to this guy, we went to pick it up, and I played it and said, “Oh, it sounds great.” He said, “Yeah, it does. That’ll be $280.” I said, “What did you do?” He said, “I cleaned it.” I thought, “This is the last time this is going to happen to me!” I got more and more into the whole thing. The LA-2A clone started because I was on the road with Matthew Sweet, and I was trying to stay out of trouble and behave. I came across a schematic, and I thought, “Wait, I could do that.” The schematic is easy; it’s finding the parts that is difficult. While everybody else would go out to clubs, I would go to the electronic vintage supply store to find screws and knobs. Later, I took what you might call a hiatus from the road and touring and all that because my son was becoming a teenager, and I thought I should be in town. I started building these LA-2A knockoffs called the Lumpstar Compressor. I went to Bobby Nathan’s place, Unique Recording Studios. I was trying to sell him these, and he said, “No.” He took me into a room, and he had a whole wall of real LA-2As. He said, “Why don’t you come work for me and fix stuff?” I thought, “Okay, I have almost enough knowledge to do that.” So, I did that for a while. All this gear is so expensive to maintain. He had a room with two Studer A800s linked together, and those would constantly go down and we’d have to change the cards. 

Are you still building audio gear?

No, things that break here keep me busy enough to put that hat on. I’m backed up as it is. I stopped doing it because I built 12 of these. I built four for Dave Sardy [Tape Op #33], and I built some for a couple of studios around. One day I looked at my floor; it was all metal shards and resistors. I thought, “Wait a minute! I’m not a factory.” Also, other people began doing it about this time.

How did the NY HED Studio era start?

That too started as a technical connection, because they needed someone to wire up the studio. Then that turned into me being a partner at the studio.

How long did you work there?

Until 2016.

That was pretty analog-focused, right?

Yeah, it was. That’s what Matt [Verta-Ray, Tape Op #25] and I shared, which made it easy to work together. We both loved those Ampex 350 preamps. He’s the only person who I ever met who had one. We both love analog tape, and even Trident mixing boards.

Some good stuff!

Yeah, definitely.

When did SuperGiraffeSound open?

I got ill and I was laid up for a while. All my gear was in the basement of a house, because I brought it all there. I didn’t know what was going to happen.

Yeah, you had some scary stuff happen.

Very scary. I started to get better, and I thought, “Wait, I don’t have a mixing board,” because that was Matt’s. I searched around, flew down to Charlotte, North Carolina, and found this Sony board that’s here now. I found the stereo EMT 140 plate reverb James Brown sang “Papa's Got a Brand New Bag” through. I thought, “I have to have this. I don’t care if I get the board or not.” [laughter] The price was right. The plan was to put it in a U-Haul and drive it back to New York. On the way back I was thinking, “There is no way this is going to fit in my house. I don’t know what I’m going to do.” I was calling around to all my friends, and I found a guy here in Brooklyn. I’d shot a video here once. I said, “Listen. I’m here in this truck and I have a mixing board and a reverb plate. Can I leave it there for a couple of weeks?” He goes, “Yeah sure. You can leave it here while you work on it and make sure it works.” Then he came to me and said, “Well, where is it going from here?” I said, “I still don’t know.” He said, “Let’s work out a deal.” That was eight years ago.

Wow. That’s a pretty good-sized place for the New York area.

Every day I knock on wood and kiss the floor. Especially in Williamsburg. People kill for parking spaces here, much less apartments. The live room is huge. We can fit a lot of people in there. I recorded a couple of jazz bands, and they like to play all in one room, not isolated. I’ll just put up a couple of mics and it sounds great. It’s like the whole room is breathing along with the music, and it’s a great sound. I love it.

Are you doing sessions on tape? How do you approach it these days?

I try to convince people to record on tape. It’s not like I’m making more money on it; it’s the same studio rate. They either have to find the tape or rent it from me. Most people go straight to Pro Tools. That’s what they want. They don’t want to take the extra time. People sometimes get scared of the rewind and fast-forward time. I got a Sony APR-24 [24-track tape deck]. I like them mainly because of the punch in. You can punch in between a hair on this thing. Pretty much everything I do unfortunately goes to Pro Tools. Then again, I don’t have a 1/4-inch machine, so it has to go to Pro Tools at some point.

My first 2-inch tape deck had no tape counter. It was a nightmare.

You probably didn’t feel that way at the time, but that’s a great learning process. “You know, I used to have to deal with all that and now I don’t.”

I remember a client asking, “Why are we paying for this?” [laughter]

Yeah. I think in every recordist’s life somebody asks you that at one point. If you don’t admit to it, you’re lying. At some point somebody asks, “Why are we paying for this?”

Will Croxton also works at SuperGiraffe?

Yeah, he’s my partner now. He puts out a lot of music.

You guys are divvying up the time?

We work on a Google Calendar, and if he has something he brings it in and vice-versa. Also, the owner of the building, who allows us to be here, records here as well. That helps.

It’s nice when the landlord understands what you’re doing in the space.

Yeah, it’s true. It’s difficult to be creative in this country, the way things are set up. I tell my French friends, “Your government encourages you to create and to make things. Our government is trying to discourage us.”