Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey
Bach, Beethoven-those guys will edge them out over the long haul, but will any musician ever have a more explosive short term impact on the world than the Beatles did during their great run that ended with the release of Abbey Road in 1969? After the super group super splintered and each band member was left to his own devices, it came as no surprise that Paul-whose cherubic smile masked a flinty resolve was first out of the gate. McCartney, released in 1970, yielded the hit “Maybe I’m Amazed” and remained on the charts for nearly a year.
Always a work horse, McCartney began writing material for his next album, Ram, while McCartney was sailing through the charts. Although some critics fault Ram, which was released on May 17, 1971, as a saccharine effort that began a slide into camp posturing from which McCartney has never fully recovered, Paul’s hauntingly beautiful touch can be heard throughout the album, and is particularly evident in “Back Seat of My Car” and “Ram On.” Ram also produced the smash single “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey.”
Rhythm tracks on Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey were cut in Studio B at CBS Studios on East 52nd in Manhattan, with CBS staff engineer Tim Geelan at the desk. Now semi-retired and living in a house he built in the side of a mountain in Virgiania, Geelan cut 22 tracks with McCartney over a six week period.
“Working on “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” was one of the highlights of my career,” says Geelan. “Paul was a great producer-thorough, businesslike, and loose at the same time. They were very comfortable sessions that followed a pattern.
“We’d start working at nine or ten in the morning. Paul would show Denny Seiwell, the drummer (who would later become an original member of WINGS), and David Spinozza and Hugh McCracken, the guitar players who split the date, the song we’d be tracking that day. After rehearsing for several hours we’d cut a version of the tune, then have a lunch break. After lunch we’d listen to what we had and then record another couple of takes if it was necessary.
“We had a 3M MM1000 16 track recorder and a home made console at CBS. Studio B was a big room, about 40 or 50 feet long and 50 feet wide with a 40 foot high ceiling. We didn’t worry about bleeding at all. The set up was real tight, and everyone had head sets. Paul was absolutely the best. I was impressed with his musicianship and command of the studio.”
Dixon Van Winkle remembers the Ram sessions well. A young staff member at A&R Recording in New York City, Dixon had been on the job for about six months when Paul and Linda showed up after scheduling conflicts forced them out of CBS. “I was a set up man in those days,” says Van Winkle. “Phil Ramone was the king of large orchestral recordings in New York at the time. He didn’t have that many guys around who had gone to music school and could read scores, which I was able to do. Phil was making a lot of records with Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick. Man, she was a pleasure to work with.
“Most of those sessions were large orchestral dates. An engineer wants to be able to come in at the last minute, sit down at the console and know that everything is under his fingertips. I understood that when we worked in Studio A1 trumpets needed to play into an 87 with the pad engaged, and that the fader they came up on in our old Altec console would have to be set to one o’clock with another pad pushed in. So, I had some value to Phil, who asked me to work with him on the Ram sessions.”
A&R had four studios in Manhattan. McCartney booked A1, located in the penthouse at 799 7th Ave. “A1 was one of those magical New York rooms-arguably the best of them all. Originally a CBS studio, it was large enough to handle a full orchestra, and it sounded great. We had a warm, fat, vacuum tube Altec console that had been custom built with hand made sidecars, and four Altec 604E speakers across the front room, each powered by a 75 watt Macintosh tube amplifier.”
Still in his pre-Wings phase, McCartney had come to New York to hold auditions for the new album. Ram featured David Spinozza and Hugh McCracken on guitars, Denny Seiwell on drums, and McCartney on bass and keyboards. “Paul came over to A&R to track the orchestra, vocals and some other overdubs with Phil. But he had a scheduling conflict one day and Paul asked me to take over. Things went well, and Paul asked me if I’d finish the record with him.
“Security was tight, and each day Paul and Linda would come up the back elevator with their kids and a playpen, which we set up in the front of the control room. I was a part time nanny, since Mary would often be crawling around the console and sitting on my lap! The interplay between Paul and Linda was sweet, especially when they were on mic. Linda actually came up with some parts on her own the entire backing vocals on “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” consists of the two of them-but when she needed a hand Paul was great with her. We used a combination of U87’s-if we were working on something smooth, and Shure SM57’s for the rockier stuff-throughout the album. Paul didn’t care what mic you put on him, although he did like the U87. He’s such a great singer. I know that the vocals they cut over at CBS are Paul singing live right off the floor with the rhythm section into an Electro Voice RE20, which was a relatively new mic at the time. They recorded the telephone section over at CBS as well. That character voice was also Paul, with a simple high pass filter engaged to give the telephone effect.”
Van Winkle, who did not record the guitar parts that Hugh McCracken contributed to “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” remembers the guitarist well. “Everybody wanted Hugh on their sessions. He wasn’t the best reader in town, but the parts he came up with were fantastic. I’ve heard lots of great guitar players over the years, and I’d say Hugh was in the top five.” An active player in 2004 who can be heard on the current Alicia Keyes record and other tracks, McCracken has distinct memories of working with McCartney.
My answering service got a call asking me if I’d like to audition for Ram, but I was in Florida working on an Aretha Franklin record and didn’t pick up the message until I got back into town,” says McCracken. “I was disappointed, but happy that David had gotten the job.” Spinozza, who has gone on to enjoy a long and successful career in the music production business and in Broadway pits, is now in the Hairspray orchestra. After working on 3 Legs and several other Ram songs Spinozza and McCartney parted ways. As McCracken recalls it, his phone rang one afternoon and Linda McCartney was on the line.
“Linda asked me to hang on while she put Paul on the phone. Paul simply asked me if I could be in the studio the following morning at nine o’clock. I cancelled the sessions I had and made the date.” After recording several tracks under Paul’s direct supervision, it came time to lay down basics for “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey.” This song represented a breakthrough in our musical relationship. Paul is a genius. He sees and hears everything he wants, and would give specific instructions to me and the drummer. But he didn’t know what he wanted the guitar part to be like on this song. I asked him to trust me, and he did. After I came up with the parts he was very pleased. For the rest of the record Paul let me try things out before making any suggestions.”
McCracken worked in the studio with all of the Beatles, and considers himself fortunate to have had the experience, even though his work with John Lennon brought him face to face with tragedy. “I first worked with John on “And So This Is Christmas.” Like Paul, he was extremely intelligent and aware of what he wanted in the studio. But you’d never find two more diametrically opposed personalities. I was working on Double Fantasy at the time of his death. How long did it take me to recover from that night? I still haven’t recovered.”
“Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” stems from the British musical theater and has the feel of an overture, with multiple sections that are independent of each other. “That’s right,” says Dixon Van Winkle, “and there were some issues we had to deal with as a result. For example, if you listen carefully you’ll hear Paul gurgling right before the telephone voice comes in. That sound was his imitation of a British telephone ring. He was supposed to give the engineer a cue when he wanted the low pass filter dropped in for the Admiral Halsey character. The engineer made the switch too early, and the filter came in on one of the gurgles! Paul didn’t care, though. To him it was all about the feel of the music.”
The chart, written by George Martin, also posed some engineering challenges. “Everybody knows that George Martin loved experimenting as much as any of the Beatles did. If you listen carefully to the trumpet solo that leads into the “hands across the water” section-which Marvin Stamm, who’s still an active player in town, played-you’ll hear Paul whistling. Underneath there’s a sound effect, written out by George Martin, for four French horns; it’s a flutter tongue, fast fingering atonal little thing in the horns’ low range.
“Our usual way of recording horns at A&R was to put a pair of mics either in the front or distant rear of the players. That was traditional at the time, based on the fact that the French horn is a reflective instrument, and you want to capture it with some space. But that’s not what Paul was used to. He wanted us to stick mics right up in the bell. Although the U87 was the mic we used on horns back then, it would have been too big, so we probably used AKGC60’s instead. At any rate, none of us could figure out the purpose of the chart at that section, but when the mix was completed it all worked perfectly.
“We did have a little problem mixing some of the horn pads in other sections of the song because they often sat directly in the vocal range. We pulled them down and processed them, as I remember, and you can hardly tell what they are at some points.”
Recording the rain and thunder effects that help glue the first two sections together today would be easy, but it was no small feat in 1971. “I remember Paul telling me that Armon Steiner went out to the edge of a cliff to record that storm, and that it was Paul’s idea to add the effect at that point in the track.”
Very few artists in 1971-or today-would have the clout to release a single that consists of 12 discrete sections, but McCartney’s artistic vision was so solidly commercial that no record execs would cross him. Still, Dixon Van Winkle was unprepared for the success of “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey.”“Despite Paul’s charm and ability pull off anything, I was surprised when the record went so big.”
The first single from the Ram sessions, “Another Day,” never made it onto the album. It was Dixon Van Winkle who decided that “Another Day” should be the first release. “We were sitting in Studio A2 one day listening to the takes and Paul asked me to pick the single. I had definite feelings about the record and was in love with “Another Day.” Paul said ‘Ok, “Another Day” it is.’ I mixed the track, and David Crawford cut about 100 copies of it in a back room at A&R for the radio stations. The next day, when I heard it on the air I realized it was a disaster! We got carried away with the bass part, and when it hit the radio station compressor it pumped like crazy! I learned that lesson real quick! But we never remixed the song, and Paul never said anything about it.”
Based on the success of Ram and the relationship they had developed, McCartney asked Dixon Van Winkle to work with him on Red Rose Speedway, which was also recorded at A&R. Currently active as a free lance engineer, Dixon lives in New York City with his wife Jan.
