Manifesto
The first half of the landmark Tonto Savalas album, Manifesto, is now available for listening or downloading. So we asked producer Jeff Archer to tell us a little about the making of the album:
I started the mixing and organizing of the "Manifesto" album in the fall of 1998. I can't remember exactly how it came to be that I produced this album but I'm pretty sure that it boiled down to Scott just not wanting to do it. He probably asked me if I wanted to do it and I said yes.
"Manifesto" as an album was put together from a variety of 4-track tapes from different sources. As I recall I was given a large bag of cassettes with the instructions to figure it all out. I'm sure I had some suggestions from the others as far as certain songs that they wanted on the album but I assembled most of it by myself. This way of working on the album was really liberating for me but as a result I placed some songs on the album which were never intended to be heard by their writers. A good example was the song "Feel So Screwed". When I heard the 4-track master tapes I thought it was one of the best things Mick had ever done. I mixed it and thought it was great but when Mick heard it he was fairly annoyed.
I had mixed the first 17 songs of the album and put them together on a master cassette that I was adding to as I went along. They were great mixes but I lost the tape soon after that so I had to remix the 17 songs over again and they weren't half as good. When the original cassette version of "Manifesto" came out it consisted of those inferior re-mixes. About 2 years later I found the original master cassette containing the first mixes and those were substituted on the compact disc version of the album.
Most of the songs for "Manifesto" were recorded at Mick and Rob's house on Kingsville in Detroit which really was the groups "clubhouse" at the time. At some point in the production of the album Mick gave me a cassette tape of tracks that he and Rob had recorded for me to overdub onto. I recorded these additional tracks at my home in St. Clair Shores. "Josephine" and "Otis Chasing Dots" came from this tape. "Nico's Dead, Nico's Dead" and "Children Of The Dark" were songs that I had written during the sessions. "Bastille Day" dated back to the "Close The Kitchen" days.
I think when we recorded this batch of songs and the ones that made up the following album "The Heart Of San Antonio" it was the last time that the group shared the strong bond that we had in those days. We pretty much saw each other constantly as we had for years before that and it showed in our music. We knew each other musically very well and we were as tight as we would ever be.
I have great memories of the actual sessions for "Manifesto". Scott Lozon locking himself in Mick and Rob's basement cellar to record his vocals on "Frenchy Lloyd". The famous upstairs session that resulted in "Corporate America" and "Run Johnny Run". The ass kicking basement session that produced "Back In January", "Revival", and "If I Had A Penny".
The title for the album came from Rob Armitage. I didn't like that title at the time but in retrospect I think it is very fitting of the music contained on this album. It was a very "organic" musical statement coming from 4 people who were basically living together (Mick and Rob really were) and creating music almost daily with each other. It was a manifesto or proclamation of where we were at at that point in our lives.
Overall it didn't win a Grammy but I dug it.
So there you have it straight from the man who did it. This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no messin' around, this is Rock and Roll, Tonto style. If you can't ride on this train get the hell outta here. As a side note, the album was originally supposed to be produced by Jeff and Rob, but somewhere along the way Rob relinquished his duties to Jeff. Enough talk, go and listen to it.
I started the mixing and organizing of the "Manifesto" album in the fall of 1998. I can't remember exactly how it came to be that I produced this album but I'm pretty sure that it boiled down to Scott just not wanting to do it. He probably asked me if I wanted to do it and I said yes.
"Manifesto" as an album was put together from a variety of 4-track tapes from different sources. As I recall I was given a large bag of cassettes with the instructions to figure it all out. I'm sure I had some suggestions from the others as far as certain songs that they wanted on the album but I assembled most of it by myself. This way of working on the album was really liberating for me but as a result I placed some songs on the album which were never intended to be heard by their writers. A good example was the song "Feel So Screwed". When I heard the 4-track master tapes I thought it was one of the best things Mick had ever done. I mixed it and thought it was great but when Mick heard it he was fairly annoyed.
I had mixed the first 17 songs of the album and put them together on a master cassette that I was adding to as I went along. They were great mixes but I lost the tape soon after that so I had to remix the 17 songs over again and they weren't half as good. When the original cassette version of "Manifesto" came out it consisted of those inferior re-mixes. About 2 years later I found the original master cassette containing the first mixes and those were substituted on the compact disc version of the album.
Most of the songs for "Manifesto" were recorded at Mick and Rob's house on Kingsville in Detroit which really was the groups "clubhouse" at the time. At some point in the production of the album Mick gave me a cassette tape of tracks that he and Rob had recorded for me to overdub onto. I recorded these additional tracks at my home in St. Clair Shores. "Josephine" and "Otis Chasing Dots" came from this tape. "Nico's Dead, Nico's Dead" and "Children Of The Dark" were songs that I had written during the sessions. "Bastille Day" dated back to the "Close The Kitchen" days.
I think when we recorded this batch of songs and the ones that made up the following album "The Heart Of San Antonio" it was the last time that the group shared the strong bond that we had in those days. We pretty much saw each other constantly as we had for years before that and it showed in our music. We knew each other musically very well and we were as tight as we would ever be.
I have great memories of the actual sessions for "Manifesto". Scott Lozon locking himself in Mick and Rob's basement cellar to record his vocals on "Frenchy Lloyd". The famous upstairs session that resulted in "Corporate America" and "Run Johnny Run". The ass kicking basement session that produced "Back In January", "Revival", and "If I Had A Penny".
The title for the album came from Rob Armitage. I didn't like that title at the time but in retrospect I think it is very fitting of the music contained on this album. It was a very "organic" musical statement coming from 4 people who were basically living together (Mick and Rob really were) and creating music almost daily with each other. It was a manifesto or proclamation of where we were at at that point in our lives.
Overall it didn't win a Grammy but I dug it.
So there you have it straight from the man who did it. This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no messin' around, this is Rock and Roll, Tonto style. If you can't ride on this train get the hell outta here. As a side note, the album was originally supposed to be produced by Jeff and Rob, but somewhere along the way Rob relinquished his duties to Jeff. Enough talk, go and listen to it.
posted by TontoSavalas at 12:40 PM
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