Eric "ET" Thorngren: Throwing Out Reality

Recording and mixing much of the Talking Heads catalog would be one achievement, but then throw in tracking some of the earliest hip-hop at Sugar Hill, mixing Robert Palmer's 'Addicted To Love', and re-mixing songs for Bob Marley's 'Legend' album, and you have a pretty interesting career in audio.

Eric "ET" Thorngren, who received a Grammy nomination in 1986 for his work on Robert Palmer's Riptide album, died on May 6, 2024. These are excerpts from an interview he gave for the February 2023 issue of Top Op Recording Magazine.

Record engineer, producer and mixer Eric "ET" Thorngren

How did your career begin?

I started out as a musician. I'd be begging and pleading to get studio time. "Yeah, I'll come in at two o' clock in the morning." That's not the case anymore. People have a studio in their house. They don't know how to use it, but they have it. (laughter)

How did you end up working at Sugar Hill and who were your recording mentors?

My mentor was a magazine: Modern Recording. I read that like mad. I was doing a bunch of demos on a 4-track. I had fooled around on multitrack, but I didn't have any mentors. I knew a guy who was working at a record company in New Jersey, called All Platinum Records. He hated engineering and wanted to be a folk singer. I said, "When you quit, would you call me up and tell me?" I was living on 81st and First Avenue in Manhattan. I got a call from him. "I just quit." I called them up and I talked to Joe Robinson. I said, "I understand you need an engineer." He goes, "Yeah, could you work tonight?" I took a bus to the subway and a bus across the George Washington Bridge; it took me an hour and a half to go 12 miles. I got there, I got the job, and I started working there. Sylvia Robinson and Joe Robinson owned the place. Sylvia had been in Mickey & Sylvia, with the song Love Is Strange. Soon after I arrived, they changed the name, All Platinum Records, to Sugar Hill Records, which is a neighborhood in Harlem. When I first got there, there was a guy doing some recording and playing back on the console. On every channel, the bass was turned full blast.  He had it at 100 Hz and were all wide-open. They certainly needed an engineer to work there that time. They were happy to have me in there doing anything I wanted to do in the studio. They gave me the keys, and I would go in there and experiment. There was an engineer there, Steve Jerome, and his claim to fame was "Walk Away Renée."

Did you end-up working on some early hip-hop there?

I recorded the first record scratching on The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel. I learned about beauty from the Crash Crew. We cut a song for them, with horns and the whole full production. They came into the studio, and they said, "Shut that off." I said, "Really? Okay." Then they said, "And shut that off." They're muting all these tracks, and it comes down to be this simple thing that was just earthy. I was like, "Wow!" The fact that they shut off a bunch of overdubs really opened my eyes to being able to mute tracks. A couple years later, we recorded a song with Grandmaster Flash, and Dizzie Gillepsie came in and played a trumpet solo. At the end, to me it didn't work in the song, so I muted him.

Oof.

That was what they liked at the record company. After I had got away from Sugar Hill, and mixed Bob Marley's Legend, I was in the Bahamas and met Robert Palmer. We were talking about working together, and I said, "Just remember this. I've muted bigger names than you!" We had a good laugh about that. He was great.

How did you end up working with Talking Heads?

When I went to the Bahamas and met Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth (drums and bass of Talking Heads), they had the Tom Tom Club. They were familiar with my work. They had just finished Stop Making Sense, and nobody liked the mixes for the record. They said, "Would you like to try to mix it?" I went and got the gig, which was wonderful. The first song I heard from them was Once In A Lifetime. I said to Chris, "This is a rap band. It's right up my alley." There was a thing David (Byrne) would do on that song. His voice would disappear. I was trying to figure it out, and eventually, when I saw the movie, (I realized) he was doing this (slaps hand to forehead) with his head!

Oh, yeah! Did you have to do automation rides to keep vocals in place?

Yeah, exactly. Especially with all that bopping his head out of the way. That was the first song. I hadn't seen the film until long after I'd done the record.

The Talking Heads records you worked on were produced by the band, with you engineering.

Right.

Was it ever contentious or difficult? I know the band had eras where it was fraught between them and David.

Right. I would always stay with the music and not get involved with any of it. They would take their issues to the lounge while I was working, and I never got involved in that. That's always been my style. I'm all about the music. Whatever else is going on, that's about those guys. That's the only way to deal with it.

Were they good at making consensus decisions in the studio?

Oh, yeah, really good at that. Before I worked with Talking Heads, I was never happy with the sounds they were getting on their records, so I didn't give them much of a chance. After I did Stop Making Sense, I heard the quality of the lyrics. David Byrne, even though he doesn't seem to have a singers' voice, he never would sing a note out of tune. He's one of the best rhythm guitar players I've ever worked with. When I got into Pro Tools and was doing the surrounds mixes, he was right on the beat. It was amazing. With Chris Frantz I would turn up the bass drum; he'd be playing quarter notes, and it would still swing without the rest of the drums. It was like, "How does that guy do that?" When we were doing Little Creatures, I said, "How about doing a drum fill here?" Chris said, "Ah, no. The drum fill's already been played." Does that mean there are no more drum fills, ever?

That's severe economy.

Right, exactly. His timing was so great. Tina was the same way. She could lock right in there like a machine. Amazing.

Thorngren (left) with David Byrne and Jerry Harrison from Talking Heads

You've mixed some iconic works. Your mixes in the eighties were really hyping up the drums.

Yeah. I always say that drummers love me, except if they can't play. I always say that any bad records I ever made are the drummer's fault. That's the whole root of it. There are two rules to me: "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing", and "everything changes when there's money."

You mixed Robert Palmer's Addicted To Love. The drums sound wild on that. Jason Corsaro tracked that, right?

He recorded it, yep.

How did you get roped into mixing that record?

They had done some mixes of the songs, and then Chris Blackwell (Island Records) came to me and asked if I would be interested in mixing it. Chris didn't think Robert's vocal was as good as it could be, so we re-recorded the lead vocal. Like I explained it to Robert, "This is like a cartoon mix." In other words, when I went and did it again, I threw out everything about reality. Because a drum can't sound like that in a room! I harmonized the room sound down a bit and ran that with the room sound. That song was (originally) a duet with Chaka Khan. I said, "Robert, as soon as you open your mouth, it sounds like you're this big (makes tiny hand gesture)." I said, "She's outta here." I muted her, and he went in and sang that B-section.

She's a strong singer.

She's just a monster! As good as Robert was, you don't want to have someone come in like that to reckon with.

Is there an alternate mix of that out there?

No. I have the rough mix, but it's not out there. After Addicted To Love, people would come to me and say they wanted me to make that drum sound. But I already did that. Why would I want to do that again? (...)

Thorngren also mixed Palmer's 'Heavy Nova' album

(Top Op Magazine - Feb. 2023)