“I always like working with musicians who play well on good instruments so that you don’t have to twiddle millions of knobs to manufacture a sound. So for Eleanor McEvoy’s new album, Love Must Be Tough, we used a band put together by our co-producer Peter Beckett, who is himself a fine keyboard player and arranger. This band can hold its own against The Wrecking Crew or any other studio band I’ve heard. We also wanted to get a band feel throughout the album and free Eleanor to sing, whereas on her previous album Out There she did most of the playing and singing herself.”
Eleanor McEvoy is one of the few Irish artists releasing albums not only on CD but on Super Audio CD and vinyl. Did this pose technical problems for Mick O’Gorman in the way he produced her new album? “Not really,” he responds, “Eleanor has always made records to the highest quality soundwise, and Super Audio CD has enhanced audio beyond the capability of the CD. The SACD version has two bonus tracks, but all the mixes are the same for all the album formats. We got Ruadhri Cushnan, who was heavily involved in the production of George Michael’s Patience album, to remix ‘Old New Borrowed And Blue’ for the single release, bearing in mind the importance of radio play in today’s market, where you have to compete with hot rap music productions.”
Love Must Be Tough was recorded in Dublin’s Cauldron studios with Ciaran Byrne as engineer. Why that studio? “Several reasons. Ciaran did a fine job mixing Eleanor’s albums Out There and Early Hours, and Cauldron has a valve-mixing console which I really like and that fitted into how I wanted the finished album to sound. The studio’s located in what I believe is the most exciting part of central Dublin, with a multi-ethnic feel to it, so Cauldron has attractions both internal and external. We knew we’d enjoy working there, and we were confident we could achieve the sonic results we were looking for,” he says.
Beckett did some demoing of the arrangements before any of the recording started, so this was not a case of the band showing up on the day and piecing the album together as they went along.
But as O’Gorman emphasises: “We weren’t so locked in that we couldn’t allow for some spontaneity during the recording, but on day one we had a clear idea as to 11 of the songs we wanted to record and the instrumentation for each one. Peter knows the musicians and they know what he expects. The musicians had been sent CD demos of the arrangements Peter had put together, and there was then some dialogue between all concerned to clarify any issues that came up. We ended up recording 14 tracks, with Eleanor herself coming up with the idea of recording the old Sly and The Family Stone number ‘If You Want Me To Stay’.”
Most of the tracks were recorded live using bass, drums, keyboards and guitar, with McEvoy putting down her vocals live with the band. “That helped keep a band feel to the tracks. Some producers like to build a track layer by layer, and that often works, but you can also lose some of the feel doing it that way. So we opted to do as much live as possible, except for the brass, which we added later. Some tracks have an overdubbed second guitar, and a little nip and tuck here or there. Sometimes you have to tidy up a track where somebody bangs against something. But we kept all that to a minimum. We were trying to recapture a retro band sound, a sort of ’70s feel applied to modern recording values, so guitarist Jimmy Smith was pivotal to how it finally turned out. Drummer Des Lacey did some extraordinary work adjusting his style to suit each track, so we didn’t have to do anything with his work at all. It just came out right. Equally, some of the work by Jim Farrelly on several brass instruments was amazing,” O’Gorman enthuses.
The songs themselves had a loose connection, in that some of them were McEvoy collaborations with male writers like Johnny Rivers and Dave Rotheray, formerly of Beautiful South, but O’Gorman stresses that the non-originals were approached as interpretations rather than covers, and they all have a male connection.
“We had a notion of making an album that had a female point of view but dealt with work by men. The original Rolling Stones’ version of ‘Mother’s Little Helper’, is sung by Jagger as if he’s almost sneering at this woman who needs pills to get her through the day. Eleanor sings it with a sympathetic understanding of the woman’s experience, and Peter conjured this astonishing arrangement for it out of nowhere. Similarly, Nick Lowe’s ‘I Knew The Bride (When She Used to Rock ‘n’ Roll)’ becomes something else when it’s sung by a woman. As a producer you have to be conscious of these subtleties and help them come through in the finished sound, and because there was a loose connection between the songs it was logical to have a consistency that enhanced the link.”
Practical issues also played a part in the process. “Using session musicians brought a positive discipline to our work and made budgeting more predictable. The fact that the band was based in Dublin made it sensible to record there too,” he admits. In a world where some producers take three months to get the hi-hat right, O’Gorman seems quite proud of the fact that three takes were usually enough to capture most tracks.
“We generally knew exactly where we were going with each track. There were one or two surprises, as when Eleanor came up with the idea of recording ‘If You Want Me To Stay’ with a bodhran! Given that this was a soul classic from the ‘70s, that was a seriously creative move. But it really worked, so Peter then worked to enhance that track with arrangements for lots of percussion and it turned out superb.”
Becket had also come up with an ersatz wedding march for ‘Old New Borrowed And Blue’. As O’Gorman explains, “I thought it was too much like a cheesy send-up, so I suggested that he make it more musical, and it worked better for the track that way. Overall, Love Must Be Tough not only fulfilled all our initial expectations but it’s also a fitting addition to Eleanor McEvoy’s catalogue of quality albums, songs and performances.”