23doves (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} 23doves) wrote,@ 2008-03-10 13:02:00 |
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Norman "Hurricane" Smith
I'm still exhausted from the conference I attended and had no intention of doing a journal update today at all, but then I received the rather sad news that the producer Norman Smith died over the weekend. This probably means very little to most of you, and that's actually a huge shame - besides engineering a large bulk of The Beatles output in the sixties, he also has Pink Floyd's first two albums on his production CV, and equally notably the Pretty Things "SF Sorrow is Born" which is one of the finer albums of the period.
Norman Smith was nicknamed "Normal Smith" by John Lennon, largely due to his rather straight, middle aged attitudes and appearance. In the sixties the Abbey Road studios contingent were still quite conservative, technically minded chaps in white lab coats or smart suits, doing their best to understand and bring out the best from wave upon wave of new musical trends (and to get some idea about the advances in technology and styles, think about how far rock music jumped from the earliest Merseybeat pop bands in 62/63 to the approaching rumbles of hard rock and heavy metal in 69 - such enormous changes would be almost unthinkable in one decade now). Some of the sound boffins coped, others didn't, but all the evidence shows that Norman Smith handled change far better than most, and certainly far better than his appearances would suggest. Pink Floyd were doubtful that Smith "understood" the way they worked during the recording of "Saucerful of Secrets", but the Pretty Things "SF Sorrow" just shows how much he learned and how many of the stylings were quite definably his, and how much he had to offer - so much so that The Pretty Things named him as almost being an honorary member at that point. Also, in total fairness to the man, for all Saucerful's strengths I doubt the Floyd really knew what they wanted in the period immediately following Syd Barrett's expulsion, let alone how to communicate it to a producer.
In a further odd twist, Norman Smith went on to have a couple of hit singles himself in the seventies. He originally wrote "Don't Let It Die" as a songwriter's demo, and found EMI were keen enough to issue his version, which promptly got to number two in the British charts. Hence he's probably one of the very few people who first tasted chart success in his own right by the time he was in his fifties. It's a rather sugary, Saltwatery, Lennon-esque piece of work, but quite likeable, and I include it as a download here just to commemorate him. If you really want to get a measure of his finest achievements, though, I'd recommend rushing out to get copies of "SF Sorrow" or "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" now though, if you haven't already got them.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JFM71L
I'm still exhausted from the conference I attended and had no intention of doing a journal update today at all, but then I received the rather sad news that the producer Norman Smith died over the weekend. This probably means very little to most of you, and that's actually a huge shame - besides engineering a large bulk of The Beatles output in the sixties, he also has Pink Floyd's first two albums on his production CV, and equally notably the Pretty Things "SF Sorrow is Born" which is one of the finer albums of the period.
Norman Smith was nicknamed "Normal Smith" by John Lennon, largely due to his rather straight, middle aged attitudes and appearance. In the sixties the Abbey Road studios contingent were still quite conservative, technically minded chaps in white lab coats or smart suits, doing their best to understand and bring out the best from wave upon wave of new musical trends (and to get some idea about the advances in technology and styles, think about how far rock music jumped from the earliest Merseybeat pop bands in 62/63 to the approaching rumbles of hard rock and heavy metal in 69 - such enormous changes would be almost unthinkable in one decade now). Some of the sound boffins coped, others didn't, but all the evidence shows that Norman Smith handled change far better than most, and certainly far better than his appearances would suggest. Pink Floyd were doubtful that Smith "understood" the way they worked during the recording of "Saucerful of Secrets", but the Pretty Things "SF Sorrow" just shows how much he learned and how many of the stylings were quite definably his, and how much he had to offer - so much so that The Pretty Things named him as almost being an honorary member at that point. Also, in total fairness to the man, for all Saucerful's strengths I doubt the Floyd really knew what they wanted in the period immediately following Syd Barrett's expulsion, let alone how to communicate it to a producer.
In a further odd twist, Norman Smith went on to have a couple of hit singles himself in the seventies. He originally wrote "Don't Let It Die" as a songwriter's demo, and found EMI were keen enough to issue his version, which promptly got to number two in the British charts. Hence he's probably one of the very few people who first tasted chart success in his own right by the time he was in his fifties. It's a rather sugary, Saltwatery, Lennon-esque piece of work, but quite likeable, and I include it as a download here just to commemorate him. If you really want to get a measure of his finest achievements, though, I'd recommend rushing out to get copies of "SF Sorrow" or "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" now though, if you haven't already got them.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JFM71L
