Songs would evolve, and he wanted to have control until the last minute of what the feel was going to be. So even when “Photograph” was about to be mixed, Mutt decided to change the chorus. It was experimental we were using a Fairlight, trying to sync that whole thing up and work like that, and we hadn’t figured out ‘til the end how we were going to do the drums. I’m surprised we ever got it finished, because the tape literally fell to pieces. It became clear from the intensity of working on a record like that, going over and over and over, blocking out backgrounds, changing arrangements, and all that. By the time it came to mixing, the tape was peeling off in 2-inch pieces. We were recording Pyromania on 24-track, and we spent a lot of months on that record. What kind of role did it play as you got near the end of tracking? The Fairlight seems like it basically became like another member of the band. It was pretty unnatural, but that was kind of the point. We experimented, EQ’d, and mangled the sound up a little bit to come up with the drum sound. The toms were primarily Simmons toms back then, which were electronic. When we were sampling in the sounds, we used KM 84s and we used 58s. We ended up with something that Mutt liked that we could detune a little bit. We sampled Black Beauty snares, other snares, and all kinds of bass drums. We’d sample them in at half-speed, thinking that we’d get a better sound, because that’s when Fairlight was at 8 bits – you had to get around that part of it. We had all kinds of drums in there, and I sampled them into the Fairlight and detuned them. The cymbals are played, but the bass drum, snare, and toms are all machine. Like all the other songs on the record, the song’s drums were all samples from the Fairlight. It was on the cutting edge, but somehow we managed to put it all together. We had to figure out how to sync that up. He would keep changing the arrangements, so therefore the drum parts would need to keep changing. ![]() On Pyromania Mutt wanted to be experimental and leave the drums to the very end. The previous Def Leppard record, High ‘n’ Dry, was recorded with real drums. You and Mutt were trying something truly revolutionary, compared to the way rock drums were being recorded at that time. Here are some excerpts from the interview: Shipley worked with Def Leppard from High n’ Dry to Pyromania to Hysteria to Adrenalize. He also worked with bands like the Sex Pistols, Maroon 5, Barenaked Ladies, 5 Seconds to Mars, Nickelback, Green Day, RATT, Cheap Trick and countless others, but he will most likely always be remembered more for working alongside producer Mutt Lange and Def Leppard. In 2012, he won a Grammy for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical category for his joint work on Paper Airplane, by Alison Krauss and Union Station. ![]() The interview was conducted several years ago as Shipley passed away in 2013, but his work will continue to inspire for generations. Here’s a great interview with engineer / producer Mike Shipley that is in this month’s issue of Tape Op.
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