Interview with Paul Gomersall by Mark Cunningham

Originally published by Sound on Sound, 1997

With years of record label legal wrangles finally behind him, George Michael set about making an album to put him back at the top of the charts and consolidate his status as serious artist/producer. Working the desk on the Older sessions at SARM West was engineer Paul Gomersall, who tells Mark Cunningham about the making of the album.

Twelve years ago this summer George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley as Wham! were bouncing around in their white shorts, singing ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ to a worshipful Top Of The Pops audience. Back then, there was little to suggest that Michael would make it big, then bigger still as one of Britain’s premier pop songwriters and solo performers.

The emotional ballad ‘Careless Whisper’, from that same summer, was the first sign that Michael had ambitions above Wham!‘s apparent disposability, and his debut solo album, Faith, displayed clear indications of a burgeoning maturity. But it was in 1990, with Listen Without Prejudice (Volume One) and quality songs such as ‘Praying For Time’, ‘Soul Free’ and the beautifully-textured ‘Cowboys And Angels’, that critics began to favourably compare Michael’s writing skills with those of Elton John.

Owing to well-publicised legal fisticuffs with his former label, Sony, Michael was unable to release new product for six years, but the public never lost interest, and the response to his recent dance hit, ‘Fast Love’, and its new parent album, Older, has been little short of ecstatic.

The Reunion at SARM West

The recording of Older, largely in SARM West’s Studio Two, occasioned a reunion with engineer Paul Gomersall, who assisted producer Chris Porter on several Wham! records, as well as engineering sessions in Denmark’s PUK studios for Faith, back in 1987. Not only did Older herald the launch of Michael’s new regime following his split with Sony, which sees the formation with cousin Andros Georgiou of his own North London-based record label, AEGEAN, it was also notable for the artist’s first use of a hard disk recording system, namely the Otari RADAR.

Gomersall saw little of Michael during his withdrawal from the public eye in the early ’90s and was pleasantly surprised to receive a call to start work on Older. He says:

“George likes to keep a regular team together and, having done so much with him over the years, it was great to be back in the frame. Porter made the decision to move strictly into production with people like Gary Barlow, so he quit the project and it created the space for me to work in.

“Compared with what I experienced on the Faith sessions at PUK in Denmark, it was very different this time around, with George a lot more in control, and playing most of the keyboards and bass guitar. We’ve used a lot more computers and synths on this album than George was previously accustomed to, and now that the technology has improved so much, along with his grasp of it, he’s doing a lot more himself, as opposed to bringing in a lot of musicians.

"On Faith, the musicians were around all day, every day — Deon Estus on bass, Chris Cameron on keyboards and Hugh Burns on guitar. But he has always appreciated that his listening audience wants to hear George Michael, so he now tends to do most of the work himself. So the programmer, Steve McNichol, got the sounds up for him on the keyboards and helped to streamline a creative environment."

The Creative Process

Chris Cameron was called in occasionally if George got stuck on certain chord progressions and he played a few takes into the computer, so that we could cut, paste or copy the sections George liked best. Steve Sidwell also came in to do some horn tracks but apart from a few other contributors, the album consists mostly of George’s performances.

The sessions for Older took almost a year to complete, in fits and starts, and, unlike many artists conscious of the high costs involved in block-booking a studio of SARM's stature, Michael did not demo his songs in advance. Gomersall observes:

“He arrived with the songs in his head, and whenever he was ready to lay something down, he would call the guys into the studio and spend a few hours getting a basic backing track on tape, and then they’d leave.”

The Move to RADAR

The recording of Michael’s new album began on his own Mitsubishi X850 32-track digital machine which, due to its reliance on regular servicing and tendency to emit strange noises, was beginning to wear the patience of the studio team. It was clearly time for a change and when good reports were received of Chris Porter’s purchase of the Otari RADAR hard disk recorder, the team were keen to try out a system.

Gomersall: “Stirling Audio lent us one 24-track RADAR for three weeks and we slaved it to the 32-track machine. We found that there were certain aspects of the system that proved invaluable and, compared to the Mitsubishi’s somewhat harsh sound, the RADAR’s playback response is very faithful to what is recorded. So when it came to the end of the loan period, I said to George that it would be great if we could have one. He replied that we should have two! So that was when we stopped using the Mitsubishi, and we transferred everything onto the two RADARS.”

Michael’s favourite room in London, SARM’s Studio Two, features an SSL E-Series 48 channel console, and in addition to the Yamaha NS10 and Auratone monitoring, his own Dynaudio monitors were installed for occasional beefier playbacks.

Vocals and Effects

George’s favoured vocal mic is a Neumann U49; we got it from PUK Studios when we did ‘One More Try’ for Faith. He liked the sound of the mic so much that when we left, Chris Porter asked if we could buy it from them. He now takes it to every session.

Despite the fact that parts of Older display some rare, dry-sounding vocals, the production of Michael’s voice on torch ballads such as ‘Jesus To A Child’ has been traditionally notable for the use of long, lush reverbs. Debate over the processing used on that track in particular continues on the pro audio sectors of the Internet, but Gomersall provides the definitive answer.

“It used to be the old EMT plate on the Wham! records, but we don’t even plug it in any more. It hums too much. So we now put his vocals through a range of Lexicon gear — the 224X, 480 and PCM80. I prefer the 224X to the 480 because it sounds a little warmer, and the PCM80 is from the same family. I give him the mix output of the desk in his headphones. The headphone mix is very important to anyone. That’s what they are listening to in the studio so that’s what they want to hear in the headphones.”

Reverb: “The way he sings the consonants, it gives a bit of excitement to his vocal sound. It’s being used as another instrument."

The RADAR Remote

The sessions also saw Michael engineering his own vocal drop-ins on around half of the tracks. Says Gomersall:

“An artist can get terribly frustrated when he is trying to direct someone in the control room about places in a track where he wants to replace a vocal. So I’ve often asked ‘which line?’ And when an artist is cooking, he wants to act now. But having the RADAR, we were able to set up the remote controller on a speaker stand in the studio just by the microphone and George used it to literally drop himself in and out.”

An Evolutionary Mix

Almost from the word go, the desk was in mix mode because George writes his lyrics and melodies as he is recording the song. In the past, he has sung a line and then asked me to drop him in on one of the words in that line that I’ve only just heard for the first time!

“After working alongside a producer and an artist on many occasions, I find it very refreshing to work on a purely one-to-one basis, as I have done with George. The artist is effectively producing and I have a direct line to him. I generally set up two, three or four reverbs that I think will suit the track as it’s coming together and take it from there, and George will pick what he wants.

“The mix is an evolutionary thing. Virtually every song we do we work through to the mix. You never get a stage where everything is finished and you start mixing. It evolves, and somewhere along the line he’ll want to do a vocal ride so we’ll switch the mix computer on, then we’ll switch it off again and add some more things and continue like that. I know we’re finished when he says ‘let’s put one down’. He’ll take a mix home and come back the next day and probably continue working on it.

"The programming diminishes as the work carries on and we get more involved in riding levels of things, EQ and other bits and pieces. And then suddenly it’s there. It’s finished. The rough mixes are really important because sometimes George will ask to refer to something we’ve done before and then carry on from there. So we keep all the mixes we’ve done in case one of them had something that was really good.”

It’s always healthy for an artist in George’s position to listen and react to a second artistic opinion, and I do offer such words of wisdom, but because he has always known exactly what he wants, especially in terms of vocal and musical phrasing, he generally ignores me! I think most people would agree that his track record more than suggests George is his own best producer.

George Michael's Home Studio

Gomersall comments: “George realises the benefits of leaving your house every day to go to another place to do your work. So Niall Flynn has been getting the studio up and running, and ready for George to start work on his next projects.”

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

The following equipment was used in the making of Older, with much of the same processing hardware installed in George’s writing studio (maintained by Niall Flynn).

RECORDING

• Console: SSL E-Series 48 channel (SARM) / Mackie 32:8:2 8-buss *
• Recorders: Otari RADAR 24-track hard disk recorders (x2)
• Monitors: Yamaha NS10, Auratone, Dynaudio Acoustics M1, AKG LSM50 cubes
• Outboard: Lexicon PCM 80, Lexicon LXP15, Aphex Expressor compressor
• Digital: Tascam DA20 DAT, Akai S3000i samplers (x2), Akai S3200 sampler *

SOUNDS / SYNTHS

• Emu Procussion / Vintage Keys Plus / Ultra Proteus
• Korg Prophecy / Korg Trinity Plus
• Kurzweil K2000 sampler/synth
• Roland JV1080 / Roland Juno 106 / Roland Vintage Synth (MVS 1)
• Yamaha TG500 / Yamaha SY77 *
• Studio Electronics SE1 synth module *

MISC

• Opcode Studio 4 MIDI interface (x2)
• DAC hard drive / Powermaster drive *

* Denotes items in George’s home studio not used in the making of Older.