What Does ILM Think of Daniel Lanois?

No, that's not Blade (in the last video that Josh posted)

Touring commitments compromised Pop from the start.

Also, the band saved their worst, most conventional songs rejected from AB andZooropa ("Wake Up Dead Man") for Pop.

Yeah, don't know who that drummer is, but it's not Blade.

With U2, I seem to recall a claim their tours didn't really generate huge profits until after Pop, and for as long as they've been rock stars, I don't think it's been until the All That You Can't Leave Behind album and beyond that their tours have really started raking in the big bucks. Clearly their accountants took a lay of the land and the band took whatever advice they got to heart.

Ok the drummer is Kyle Crane, whose claim to fame is being the drum double in Whiplash (ie any time it cuts to the hands and actually looks like the hands of a good drummer)

My bad, I was thinking of his Tiny Desk concert.

(Willie Nelson sounds like a guest on his own Teatro)

heh this might be my second favorite Willie record since his Outlaw heyday came to a close (Spirit is better)
but tbf he's released a LOT in the last 40 years and I've heard very few.

(Willie Nelson sounds like a guest on his own Teatro)

I didn't see this (I need to start reading thread starters). LMAO. This sounds like a common complaint with Lanois albums - as much as I like Emmylou Harris's Wrecking Ball, it could've been credited as a Daniel Lanois album with guest vocalist Emmylou Harris, and I wouldn't have questioned it. With Willie, he's made a ton of albums loaded with guest stars and a ton that's basically shared with someone else, so Teatro kind of fits into that tradition except this time he's sharing top-billing with a producer rather than a performer.

Willie's output since the whole IRS thing has been impressive as hell. Right after he settled his tax problems, he recorded one last album for Columbia before they dropped him, and on of that he turned 60, yet he's been ridiculously prolific. I have a real soft spot for that last Columbia album, Across the Borderline. Even if it seems fairly calculated, who cares? He still hits every target. Spirit is easily my favorite, hands down his greatest album since his '70s classics. Even his last few albums have been consistently good too. Teatro is a commendable album, and Lanois's production certainly distinguishes it, but it's not one of my favorites from either Willie or Lanois.

*on top of that he turned 60

yeah i can't say i've knowingly heard Across the Borderline but it looks like it could be interesting.

I gave a listen to Band of Brother(i think that's what it's called?) a while back, which as i understand it all new self-penned compositions, maybe his first like that this century? it was pleasant enough but I can't remember much sticking with me

I think Teatro is an album that on paper seems like it would be a good fit for Lanois, but really isn't. Emmylou I disagree with, though. She specifically approached it as a reinvention of sorts, and all of her solo albums since then have hewed closer to it than to any of her formative works, Lanois or no. Plus, I think the setting and band suits her super well, from song selection to sonics. I don't think she ever sounds less than the star and central focus. Even if it often feels collaborative, I also consider it a perfect pairing of performer and producer. A case in point could be "Where Will I Be," which is a beautiful (Lanois) song sung perfectly by Emmy, vs. "The Maker," another beautiful Lanois song, which is not done justice by Willie on his record.

I did get to see Willie and Lanois doing stuff from that album at Farm Aid in 1998 though! Which also featured the Neil Young/Phish collaboration no one ever asked for. Oh, and a good Brian Wilson performance, iirc!

I love Teatro. Agree Spirit is excellent but don’t hear a thing in Teatro worth complaining about. Willie’s playing is so loose, the roomy sound of the drums is perfect.

I checked Teatro out of the library two weeks ago and gave up after a few plays.

Agree with the praise for Spirit.

but I dig a few Willie shlock-a-rama albums from the mid '80s, so ymmmv

Didn’t know Lanois was there with Nelson at Farm Aid 1998. I was there too!

Yeah, I think he had the two Cuban drummers from the album with him, too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jh5_4o0TCs

There was a sense with Teatro—what with moderately esoteric song choices, the Wim Wenders documentary, and the ramshackle recording setting—that Lanois and Willie were both kind of treading water a bit. It’s fine – but as Josh alludes to, there’s nothing about his version of “The Maker” that the original doesn’t do better. Which is saying something because Willie is arguably one of the dozen or so best singers of the 20th century.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Wrecking Ball no matter how much I try. There are a ton of surface pleasures for me with this record, the material with Neil Young, Larry Mullen on drums. “Goin’ Back to Harlan” is pretty much perfection and “Sweet Old World” is almost as good. But it has this air of pretension that kind of leaves me cold and it marks the beginning of Emmylou’s transformation from transcendent country harmonist to creaky alt country emoter.

It's heretical, I guess, but when Harris sings solo she bores me; she's a genius on backup.

There's a track Lanois did on Syd Straw's debut album that epitomizes a producer applying their signature sound in the most rote, unimaginative way possible (not that the song would have been very notable with a better approach).

I think the last track, "Golden Dreams," is the only one actually produced by Lanois. For Eno completists like me, it features, well, Eno. Incredible number of amazing musicians on that album, though. Everyone from Pino Palladino and Jim Keltner to Marc Ribot and Michael Stipe. Probably leftover connections and goodwill from her Golden Palominos experience.

A good example of what a different producer can do is that first Ron Sexsmith album, which is mostly produced by Froom but which features one song twice, the second time produced by Lanois. Here's the Froom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsEZPvipd2U

And here's the Lanois:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxxulc82lN4

Froom was a better match, at least imo.

The first Chris Whitley album (produced by Malcolm Burn at Lanois's studio) is a good example of Lanois, once-removed. Similarly, maybe, is "Fuse" by Joe Henry, which sounds super cool and was produced by T Bone Burnett but I think mixed by Lanois. (Incidentally, Lanois used to be managed by Melanie Ciccone, Henry's wife and Madonna's sister.)

I looked at the credits on the Syd Straw album, which I have, but never realized the Lanois/Eno involvement. They produced that last track together, he was involved in the production of another, and mixed a third.

"Golden Dreams" is perfectly wonderful. Nothing rote about it.

This is an amusing comparison because Froom is absolutely another producer who increasingly brought a bag of tricks to most of the artists he produced. And usually that bag was carrying a trash can lid and a Chamberlain.

I actually thought of "There's a Rhythm" as another example of Lanois-by-numbers when I made my post.

Honestly, I find the whole Syd Straw album overly fussy except for "Future Forties".

I think the Syd Straw album is kind of fussy and underdeveloped at the same time, but it's been a while. The Sexsmith, I agree that is *totally* Lanois by numbers. I posted it because I think Ron made the right choice by going with the trashcan lid guy.

It's funny, one of the most famous Lanois (solo) productions is "So," but that album lacks many if not most of the characteristics that he's famous for. As opposed to "Us," which is a lot more airy and muddy.

Got distracted just now and finally followed up on this vague credit he gets for working on the "Last of the Mohicans" soundtrack. I never realized even that was subject to Michael Mann's whims.

Director Michael Mann initially asked Trevor Jones to provide an electronic score for the film, but late in production, it was decided an orchestral score would be more appropriate for this historic epic. Jones hurried to re-fashion the score for orchestra in the limited time left, while the constant re-cutting of the film meant music cues sometimes had to be rewritten several times to keep up with the new timings. Finally, with the release date looming, composer Randy Edelman was called in to score some minor scenes which Jones did not have time to do. Jones and Edelman received co-credit on the film (thus making the score ineligible for Oscar consideration). The main theme of the movie is "Promontory", an orchestration of the tune "The Gael" by Scottish singer-songwriter Dougie MacLean from his 1990 album The Search. The score was re-recorded and re-released in 2000 to address some perceived problems with its original incarnation. The tracks were reordered into their onscreen chronology (the original album separated the Jones material from that composed by Edelman), some additional cues were added, and Clannad's "I Will Find You" was no longer included.

Anyway, that was a secondary distraction, because there is the matter of Lanois. It looks like he gets writing credit for this pretty soundtrack gem, which originated as an as a Lanois track called "Orchestral Mohicans":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cM1aVESfYk

I forgot he also produced the soundtrack to Red Dead Redemption 2, including songs with Willie, D'Angelo and this sentimental ballad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2Rhe5BrYpI

Interesting process talk here:

How different was working on Red Dead from working on, say, a movie soundtrack?

The person playing the game is directing the character, either to walk into a saloon or walk down by the riverbed, let’s say—and depending on the choice you make, you’ll hear a certain part of a given song. We call that a stem. So I have to mix the melodic stem separately from the rest of the song. It makes me put all my mixing energy into those few components at that moment. When I listened back to these stems—these little sub-mixes—they really had a lot of vibe to them, because I was devoting all of my skills to one small aspect of a bigger production. Then we’d move on to the bassline, and then the drums and percussion. So maybe there’d be six or seven choices gotten to by moving the character in the game. And then at some point all those sounds come together.

I thought that was fascinating. It reminded me a little bit of this multiple-speaker thing that I had going with Eno for a while. We’d have maybe a dozen different speakers spread all over the studio, or around the house, and we’d send different sounds through different speakers. I thought that was just fabulous, because you were walking through a forest of sounds that changed largely by distance. Moving into this mixing for the game touched on that nerve—something that I had already fallen in love with a long time ago.

Goodbye to Language is soooooooo good

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, January 22, 2021 9:27 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Speaking of D'Angelo, I bet Lanois was knocked on his butt when he heard "Voodoo."

I'm so sad that the new album is not a follow-up to Goodbye to Language. Not into any of this.

New interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c92R9rAANeA

His brother Bob died today:

https://www.ajournalofmusicalthings.com/bob-lanois-the-producer-studio-owner-brother-of-daniel-has-died/

Among many other things, Bob Lanois produced the sessions that became Simply Saucer's Cyborgs Revisited. According to the story Bob told me when I was writing my book, Dan came home late while the recording was happening in their mom's basement and plugged his ears. R.I.P. https://t.co/Fl4QhdN3So

— Jesse Locke (@wipeoutbeat) April 20, 2021

Aw.

Proper obit here:

Bob Lanois patiently taught me how to run a mixing board at Grant Avenue when I was teenager. This skill helped guide my future in radio. He also showed me how to "listen" to sounds...musical and all sounds. #RIPBobLanois. You were a sweet soul. https://t.co/pWGRmn0gsy

— Peggy Chapman (@PeggyChapman16) April 20, 2021

Good take on a posthumous release, imo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs8nUCLQTgw

Long interview on Beato's channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxP9kKzbCFA

Which is how I learned of this, the group Lanois worked with that brought him to Eno's attention:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOJDelGsWlw