When we interviewed him at 86 years old, Shel Talmy had no intention of retiring. He had continued to look to produce new artists that excited him. In December 2024, Shel passed away, leaving behind a groundbreaking history of record making. As an American in Britain during the early ‘60s, Shel set a whole new bar for the explosive rock sound coming out of London. With his work with bands such as The Who and The Kinks, Talmy was free to experiment with recordings while still staying within the accepted margins of public taste. He also worked with other illustrious bands, such as Small Faces, Manfred Mann, and on David Bowie’s early tracks. So, the next time you hear songs like “I Can’t Explain” and “You Really Got Me,” listen to the production as revolutionary compared to the normal “too polite” standards of the time. You can thank Shel Talmy for that great accomplishment!
How did you get involved in the music industry?
After graduating high school, I went to work for ABC television in Los Angeles but I quit after a year and half because it was very political. Fortunately, the next day my friend introduced me to Phil Yeend, owner/engineer of Conway [Recording] Studios. Phil was a nice guy, and he asked me what I’d been up to. Then he said, “Would you like to learn how to become a recording engineer?” I said, “Absolutely! Let’s do it!” So, that’s how I got into it. It’s almost unbelievable, but I started the next day. Three days later, Phil turned me out to do my first session on my own. It was a jazz group that I recorded. They wanted an edit, which I did not expect, and I had never done before. Especially the way Phil did, because he did it by hand instead of an edit block, which I don’t even think existed at that point. So, I sweated about three or four pounds off but I got the edit done! [laughter] I stayed there for a year or so until Phil, who was English, told me how great London was. I had not been out of the country. I thought I’d go for four or five weeks and see Paris and all that, but that didn’t happen. It was 1962 when I got to London, and I bullshitted myself into a job at Decca Records. I had a hit and stayed for 17 years. But before leaving [for England] I had a producer friend at Capitol Records, Nick Venet, who knew I was going to London. He gave me some of his acetates, which happened to be The Beach Boys and Lou Rawls. When I got to London, I had an appointment with Dick Rowe, the head of A&R at Decca Records, and after listening to the acetates he said, “You start today.” However, they then were testing me. They gave me three harmonica players called The Bachelors, and I had to teach them how sing. The first thing we did was a song called "Charmaine," which was a big hit. I had a number of hits with them, and I expanded from there. I always said from the get-go, “I am an independent producer,” which almost didn’t really exist in London back then. When I left Decca, I opened a little office. In fact, the woman who was working for me told me that there was a band called The Who that wanted me to come down to listen to them. I did – they were playing at a church hall and, about eight bars in, I said, “Fine. I’ll sign you. You’re the best band I’ve heard since I’ve been here!” Same thing with The Kinks. I was walking around to publishers looking for songs, and one of the managers for The Kinks came in with an acetate and said, “Anybody here like to listen?” I said, “I will.” I loved what I heard. I got them a deal with Pye Records, and I stayed on for years having done over a hundred tracks with The Kinks.
What were your recording techniques at the time?
I started out as a recording engineer in Los Angeles. So, a lot of what I did in England was use techniques I'd worked out before I got there. When I got there, I realized that nobody was using them. I was being told at the time that my sound was very different. In England during 1962, engineers were only recording with three or four mics on the drums and one on the guitar amp; it was pretty simplistic. They were not able to capture the drive and raunchiness that rock was supposed to have, or what I thought rock was supposed to have. The English styles of recording were too polite, and I wasn’t going to be polite!
How did you record The Who?
When recording them, the first thing I did was use about a dozen mics on Moonie [Keith Moon]. At the time, this was a new idea that no one was doing in England. People said I couldn’t use multiple mics because they would phase each other out. I just replied that we’d have to wait and see. [laughter] Ironically, about a month later everyone was using 12 mics to record drums. For guitar, I used a lot of isolation to try to capture feedback. So, on [Pete] Townshend’s guitar, I used three different mics – one long distance, one close, and one ambient – and combined them all, because we were only working with 3-track [tape decks] of course, and what came out, came out. As far as mics I used on the guitar, it was so long ago I don’t remember, but it was probably Neumanns. In 1964, when I recorded The Who, I was at IBC Recording Studios in England and used what they had as far as microphones. I never believed in recording tracks one instrument at a time – you lose everything to do with feel. In any event, everybody was doing it live, which was a totally different mindset to what would happen later. We were limited with tracks at the time and bouncing down tracks – losing a generation – would make a difference. Dolby [noise reduction] was coming into existence, but I don’t think anyone had them until another year later.
What type of recording consoles did you use at IBC?
Everybody built their own; there were no preconstructed consoles available at the time. Each studio would start out with something and add their own components. IBC was certainly an innovator, in terms of consoles. They had anywhere from 24 to 36 inputs. Because there were only 3-track recorders, they felt that it was enough because premixing had to go on before recording. I spent a lot of time on baffling the instruments, because I thought isolation was one of the major problems that was going on in the industry. In L.A. I’d worked on different types of isolation and baffling, which was knowledge I brought to the English studios. Where we recorded The Who was an old Georgian building that had a preservation order on it. They had elaborate ceilings that I couldn’t touch, so we had to put acoustical treatment around them. We put the drums in one corner, I isolated them with screens, and then we would find a good spot for the amps. For acoustic guitars I used two [Neumann] U 87s, one pointing at the sound hole and the other at the fretboard, and then I would combine them. I also would use a [Urie] 1176 [compressor] with a little EQ, which would give more apparent level to the acoustic. I did this with The Pentangle record [The Pentangle], and I was pleased with the guitar sounds.
Did you both produce and engineer for The Kinks and The Who?
I mainly engineered the mixes in the beginning, and once I decided I was comfortable with it I moved on to producing. I truly believe that you can’t [both] engineer and produce accurately, because they are at either ends of the scale. Today it is a little easier, but you can’t do an A1 job on both jobs at the same time. So, I moved strictly to producing. The reason I used IBC and Olympic Studios was because they were far ahead of everyone else for recording equipment, in the way they maintained and the way they continually looked to improve it. The studios themselves, which in those days were all tube, built a lot of the limiters, compressors, and mic preamps. The trick was then to record everything as good as you could get it, so the next step in mixing would go together easily. Because with 3-tracks, once it’s recorded, there is not a whole lot we could do. I would be tweaking, combining, and EQ'ing when I had to. As far as editing was concerned, I started editing freehand before editing blocks came on the scene. I tried to keep editing at a minimum and track to get a perfect take. At the time, it was a singles market. The format was 1/2-inch, 3-track, and we mixed it down to 1/4-inch, 2-track. To get the job done, we were constantly bouncing. For example, I recorded “You Really Got Me” with The Kinks in a specific way because the head of Pye Records at the time, Louie Benjamin, decided he was going to charge me for the studio time. So, I recorded it in mono, because it was cheaper than multitrack. But when the single was a smash hit, things changed, and I wasn’t going to be charged studio time if we did it on multitrack.
How did the sessions evolve? Who were your go-to studio musicians?
I generally tried to use the band until I realized a particular musician or two weren’t good enough. I’d tell them from the get-go, “I’m looking to do the best recording I can do. I will be using the best musicians I can, and I hope you will live up to it.” But in some cases, they didn’t. If you know musicians, they damn well know how good they are. The ones I replaced knew that the ones I got to replace them were better than they were. I always believed the bands had to be well-rehearsed to about 90 percent, so I’d leave the 10 percent for spontaneity in the studio. We never did more than nine or ten takes. When I first started using Jimmy Page, he was 17 and couldn’t read music. During breaks and in between sessions he would be studying how to read music, which I found amusing. Of course, he did learn pretty quickly with his natural talent. Somebody turned me on to [pianist] Nicky Hopkins, and once I found Nicky he was my go-to keyboard player forever. The Who didn’t have a keyboardist, so I brought Nicky Hopkins in to play, as well as with The Kinks. I brought Jimmy Page in on the first Kinks record as a rhythm guitarist, because Ray Davies didn’t want to sing and play guitar at the same time. There is no question that Jimmy didn’t play lead guitar on the album; that was all Dave Davies. Dave is a very underrated guitarist in his own right. I also brought in [keyboardist] Jon Lord from Deep Purple on those sessions. I brought in Bobby Graham for The Kinks’ sessions because they didn’t have a drummer at the time.
You mentioned rehearsing earlier.
I always rehearsed everyone before we went into the studio, because I don’t like surprises, and I wasn’t sure what the hell was going to come out the other end. I am a hands-on producer. I was always there, from day one to the last day. I helped arrange and organize everything. Ray Davies from The Kinks would come in with a dozen songs, sit down at the piano, and I would say, “Yes, that’s great,” or, “That needs more work,” or, “Let’s put that one aside.” The song “Sunny Afternoon” is a good example. He played me eight bars of it on the piano, and I said, “That’s our next single!” The song “Tired of Waiting” I pulled off the LP and released it as a single, and it went to number one.
How did you discover David Bowie when he was Davy Jones?
A friend of mine on the fringes of the music biz called and said, “I found this kid who’s only 17,” and asked if I would like to hear him. I said, “Absolutely!” He brought him into my office, and we got along great. I heard his music, and I said, “I will sign you.” Unfortunately, we were ahead of where the public was, and it wasn’t until about five or six years later that he recorded “Space Oddity.” We had some good tracks that did well, but not nearly as good as “Space Oddity.” We worked together for about four years, but we weren’t making any ground with the public.
How do you feel about the new digital age, with so many options at our fingertips?
Oh, I love Pro Tools. It evolved into something extremely special. It’s a pleasure recording with Pro Tools these days, because there are so many options and hundreds of ways to do things. We can take bits and pieces of one track and combine them with another. This was all a distant dream back then. When Pro Tools started, there was a distinct difference; but there is no difference from analog today, except to an extreme expert, and I’m not even sure they could even tell. When digital first came they weren’t capturing any of the atmosphere; it was all flat and bland. As digital started to progress, it began to capture all of the overtones. I just finished mixing a CD for a band on Pro Tools, and it was an absolute pleasure doing it because you can’t even tell it wasn’t done analog. I did it at a studio where they have a lot of analog gear [Urei] 1176s, [Teletronix] LA-2As, and stuff like that. It’s a pleasure not to have to deal with the tape hiss. To be able to go back to where you need to go in the track without having to wait for rollback on a tape machine is great. What I really hated was waiting while the tape was rolling back to the point where we had to be – it drove me crazy. Today there is no waiting; you are there instantly. It’s very important for the band, so as not to lose momentum! 
