Murphy, Ronan Chris (February 2002)

Interview With Ronan Chris Murphy

Muzikman: How did you get your start as a musician and then eventually gravitate towards the other aspects of the music industry such as production, engineering, and writing articles? Do you enjoy the diversity? Or can it be real hectic and stressful at times?

Ronan Chris Murphy: Well I started gigging somewhat professionally, when I was about 15. This was in the early 80s in the Washington DC punk scene. It was certainly not a living but when you are 15 and in a little punk rock band and some one gives the band 30 dollars to split, it sure makes you feel like a rock star. I started as a singer and picked up guitar and did a lot of playing and touring in the early alternative rock scene with my bands playing with artists like Dinosaur Jr., The Flaming Lips, Henry Rollins, All, GWAR.

I was in a band called Pumphouse and when our bass player quit in the late 80s (later to join LaBradford) I had some down time and I started diving into production and composition, recording. I really fell in love with it and never looked back. It completely took over my life. I think I started getting asked to write articles and lecture because I have had such an insanely diverse eclectic career up to this point that I, perhaps, have a unique perspective to offer on things.

My life is certainly hectic and getting more so. Aside from all of my work producing and mixing records I have also launched a new publishing company. I am working on an album of my own material which will be released under the name "Lives Of The Saints" and I have also started a band with an amazing singer from Seattle named Mary Shokes, and I am part of a songwriting team with a writer from Sweden. A lot of times it can get stressful, especially because I travel and work overseas so much. The little things in life can really start to pile up. I think anyone can tell you though that if you really do music with your whole heart, you will pay the price with the other parts of your life. But all the stress and hectic stuff aside I wake up every day and make music. That is such a great gift.

MM: What was it like working with a musical genius like Robert Fripp? You must have learned so much!

RCM: I loved working with Robert, we had a lot of fun together and I consider him a good friend. Having worked with him for most of two years, it was really much more a matter of "lets knuckle down and get the work done," but the interesting thing about working with Fripp is that he has a tendency to impose rules onto a project, like embracing a certain technology or not allowing certain musical elements or perspectives. I certainly did not always agree with him, but those scenarios forced me to reassess how I approached the work and made me think more outside of my own particular box.

I did learn a lot from him, and I work with a lot of people who are considered music geniuses and I always learn new things, but I gotta tell you that I learn tons from so many of the artists I work with that do not have "genius" reputations. Sometimes the amazing revelations I have about my work will come from working with a young punk rock band or a folk singer that can't play guitar very well, but has a unique perspective on approaching music, or a commercial artist that can teach me a lot about the craft of pop. I am just finishing up a record with a guy named Jamie Walters. Jamie has sold a couple million records and had a couple number one hits as a pop singer, and we are working on what is more of a rock album. I am learning so much from him as a writer and about how he has brought those pop sensibilities into this rock project. I learn so much every time I walk into a studio with an artist. I think when I stop learning I will quit and find something else to do.

MM: What is the secret to getting everyone's "sound" just right?

RCM: This may sound a little fluffy and esoteric, but the secret is to really listen to the music. I don't mean the particular notes, but try to listen to the heart of the music and the secret is always there. The piece of music will tell you how it wants to be and every musician will have a unique voice and something special to offer. People often ask me if I have my own sound as a producer, and I think that if I can ever answer, "yes" to that question I will have failed in my job. There are several producers, some of which have made records I love that have a "sound", and when a record comes out you sort of know what it will sound like, or what the perspective will be even before you play the music. Some times that sound is a good match with the artists or the songs, other times it is not. I think it is impossible for a producer to really have his or her own sound and to simultaneously honor the music, the artist and the moment of creation.

MM: I have always wondered about one thing ... all those control knobs on the control board in the studio, how in the hell do you know what each one is for?

RCM: If I tell you this, I will get thrown out of the magician's guild!! Actually it's really daunting at first, but then it all starts to make sense. I work in studios all over the world on lots of different consoles and to tell you the truth there are times when I do not know what every knob does, but I know the ones I need to know. And another thing is that there is actually a lot of repetition. So you may have 50 of the same knob (one for each channel or track) so it's not as tough as it looks, once you understand the logic behind it all.

MM: What solo artist and what group presented the biggest challenge to you as a producer? What was your most rewarding project?

RCM: I think the most challenging solo artist stories are best left untold. I did work with one unnamed artist that was so nervous about doing her vocals that the only way to get the record done was to sit next to her holding her hand during all the vocal takes.

As a group I think the record I did with Terry Bozzio, Tony Levin and Steve Stevens was a really big challenge. They are of course all amazing players and cool guys, but it was a difficult to find a way to marry what is so cool about Steve Stevens being a hurricane force guitar player and the subtle things that make Terry Bozzio such an amazing artist. That was also one of the most rewarding.

I have been so lucky in my career to have so many truly rewarding projects both from an artistic and personal perspective. I, of course, like it when records I do succeed commercially, but it's really the ones where the process of working together was a joy that I treasure the most and some of those are the most obscure. Recent Artists like Satovan, Hypnoise, and Yellow Fever were great, and this new Jamie Walters thing is really amazing. All of the King Crimson stuff was really great because there are so many cool people in that organization and living the English countryside while working on the stuff was a really beautiful experience.

MM: Who are some of the more humble and nicer people that you have had the pleasure to know? Was there anyone that you were absolutely thrilled to meet?

RCM: I am so lucky that I have been blessed with a career of working with amazing people who are also great artists, but I think it would be tough to beat Steve Morse on the nice guy / great artist meter. Tony Levin and Pat Mastelotto are also there. Some of my dearest friends are people I have met working on recording projects, but I am always so amazed by artists that get so many accolades from the press and their fans and are still grounded and generous people.

She may not seem like an obvious one, but of everyone I have ever worked with, the one I was most thrilled to meet was Joan LaBarabara. She was the vocalist for the Philip Glass Ensemble when they recorded many of their seminal works in the late 60s and early 70s. This was the woman that sang on Philip Glass' Music In 12 Parts!! She sang on records that turned my life upside down and now I am supposed to "produce" her? It's the only time I have started a project wondering if I was worthy to be a part of it. I have not worked with Ozzy or Mark Eitzel yet, so you can ask me again if I ever get to do a record with either of them.

MM: What are your thoughts on the ever-changing media convergence spurned by the Internet? What changes do you think are ahead for artists concerning distributing their music?

RCM: This is a big question, which I wish I had a more optimistic outlook on. I have stopped trying to fight what's happening, and started trying to find ways that it can be a good thing for artists, but I have no problem with talking about what I really feel.

I think that the current trend in music as a result of the Internet is devastating and will be a terrible thing for music and the lives of musicians over all. I am not saying that the old label model is perfect in any way, but we do not have a good replacement for it. There are two major problems here:

The first is the whole Napster/ file "sharing" thing has created a mindset that intellectual property has no intrinsic value that creators should not be able to control or be compensated for. There has been a shift in the way people think, that music and recorded works should not really belong to anyone. It was staggering to me to see the way that people where attacking Metallica for trying to control the distribution of what they own. I don't really care if Lars has enough money to only buy 3 instead of 4 mansions in Malibu, but I really care about developing artists. Whenever people try to justify stealing music over the Internet they always talk about rich rock stars and greedy record companies, but the people who are really getting fucked here are developing artists. This is happening in a number of ways. Anyone who has ever been a struggling artist on tour knows that it's the ability to sell a few CDs and some T-shirts at the gig that buys you gas money to the next town and breakfast. If your fans already have your CD for free over the internet they are not going to buy it again, especially with the expansion of broadband people will soon be trading perfect hi resolution clones of albums with complete artwork. I have lived in a van traveling around on tour and I know that the ability to sell just a few extra records at a gig made it possible for us to get the next gig. On the ground level it will erode the artist's ability to get by on the road. I am not pretending to be a saint here and say that I have never copied an album for a friend, or to pass judgment on other people, but the scale at which this is happening and will happen on the net and will alter the musical landscape forever, and I fear for the worst.

On a larger level, record companies, even hip Indies make money off their bigger acts and this makes it possible to make investments into developing acts. If a Madonna album that might normally sell 4 million records now will only sell 2 million because of internet piracy, there is going to be less money to make investments into developing artists, and less incentive to take risks because the pay off will be much lower. There is lots of talk these days about secure distribution, but that will never really exist. As soon as a new watermarking scheme or copy protection comes out there will be some kid that defeats it.

I don't want to sound like a right wing capitalist here, but if you take out the ability to make money in the music "business," you take away a lot of opportunities for developing artists. Even a more developed fringe artist can survive and keep making records by selling 10,000 copies of a record. If only a couple thousand of those are now pirated via file sharing, these artists cannot continue making records.

Look at some of the countries around the world were piracy accounts for the majority of records. Many labels cannot even do business in these countries because of the piracy lost revenues.

The second point is that the ability of everyone to record music and make it available to the world on the net is good in theory, but it makes it much more difficult for serious artists to be noticed. There is an idea that if you post your music on the net it will help you get discovered. The problem is that there is just so much stuff out there that it's impossible to even begin looking. Even if it was my full time job to look for new talent on MP3.com I could not even begin to get through just the rock or dance category. I would like to be proven wrong, but there really are no big Internet success stories at this point that do [not] involve the majors. The artist Fisher gets thrown around as an Internet success story, but Fisher was an artist that had a song on a major label soundtrack from a big Hollywood movie. Then they got a lot of people listening to their music on the net without paying for it, then Fisher got signed to a major label and the album was a commercial failure.

My concern about the great oceans of music out there is that there is no way to sift through it all. People like me and my music-obsessed friends will actually spend lots of time looking for cool new music, but your average person will not. Most normal people spend their time raising children or playing baseball, studying or working at a bakery. These people are the ones that really matter, and they do not have the time or energy to spend weeks pouring over music on the net to discover what is out. The more complex the music search gets, the more people are going to turn to "experts" to filter the music for them. Eventually even the net will be like top 40 radio where people plug into what they are told is current and good by a "brand" they trust. And those Brands will be the ones with the most marketing power. It sounds a lot like the majors to me. Of course there will still be fringe internet sites, but they will have no way to make money.

On a last small personal note about it, I think it's sad that people are embracing formats like MP3 or Windows Media Player that are steps backwards from CDs when there are opportunities to go forward. I know that may seem like a small thing and that great songs are great on any format, but as a guy whose entire life seems to revolve around loving and trying to create great beautiful albums, it's a little sad to see people excited about formats that present the music with lower quality.

Interview reproduced with permission of Ronan Chris Murphy. Interview conducted 02/13/02 by Keith "MuzikMan" Hannaleck.

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