Arthur Baker Talks Recording and Mixing the "Very 80s" Empire Burlesque

The Empire Burlesque Interviews #2

Flagging Down the Double E’s is an email newsletter exploring Bob Dylan concerts throughout history. Some installments are free, some are for paid subscribers only. Sign up here:

Arthur Baker and Bob Dylan. Photo from Rolling Stone.

Today, we continue our weeklong celebration of Empire Burlesque’s 40th birthday with an interview with the man responsible for the album’s distinctive sound (well, as much as anyone not named Bob Dylan): Arthur Baker. He’s officially listed as the album’s mixer, but in a lot of ways he served at the album’s de facto producer after he came in near the end of the sessions. That’s how Bob Dylan refers to him in Chronicles: “Producer.”

Baker was a rising star in 1985. His mixes and productions helped pioneer the early hip-hop sound (he co-wrote and produced Afrika Bambaataa’s influential “Planet Rock” in 1982) and he soon got work doing 12-inch dance mixes for mainstream artists like Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper, and New Order. All of which led him to Bob Dylan, at at time when Dylan was making a rare effort to sound more like current hits on pop radio and MTV. In 1985, that meant synthesizers and gated drums. I’m a fan of the '80s sound of Empire Burlesque more than most—and more than, perhaps, Baker himself. He is quick to note that, if he had worked on this album a few years later, it would have sounded quite different. But it’s worth pointing out that the least '80s-sounding song, and many fans’ favorite—“Dark Eyes”—also wouldn’t exist without Baker.

Below, Baker talks me through how he got the gig, what he brought to the Empire Burlesque sessions and sound, Dylan playing a Madonna song in the studio, and a lost 12-inch dub mix of “When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky.”

---

Tell me how you got involved.

[A Columbia exec] called me up about, if I was interested in meeting with Dylan. I had done remixes for Cyndi Lauper and for Springsteen. After I did the Cyndi thing and I did the Bruce thing, I guess they felt comfortable in having me at least talk to Bob.

We had a meeting at the Exeter Hotel. When I first walked into the hotel room, there was no Bob. There’s lots of carts of eaten food. Obviously room service hadn’t been there for a while. It was pretty funny, sort of navigating through those carts.

Then we sat down. He had a table of cassettes, like 20 or 30 cassettes on a table, and he started playing me tracks. “What would you do with that?”

These cassettes are the songs he’s recorded already out in LA?

Yeah. Like one of them was “Danville Girl,” which we ended up not recording, but he played me that, he played me a few others. Because he had actually been working on this album for quite a while. You know, I sort of missed actually having met and been in the studio with all those amazing musicians. Because there were some incredible musicians on those tapes. I didn’t really meet any of them.

I mean [my job] was basically going in and finishing up tracks he had started. The only ones that we actually fully recorded were “When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky” and “Dark Eyes.” Those were songs I actually helped cut.

Was this hotel meeting like your audition?

I guess. Whatever I said, it was enough that he was like “Okay, sure.”

Soon he invited me over to Power Station. Power Station was the studio that I was comfortable at. I had been there a few times for other sessions. I had done the “Dancing in the Dark” remix there. I walk in and it’s Steve Van Zandt and Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan. He was using Springsteen’s band.

They did a version of [“When the Night”]. After they left, he said, “What do you think? Does it sound too much like Springsteen?” I go, “Well, yeah! You’re using his band. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

We recut it with Sly and Robbie, and I worked on it a bit and put percussion on it.

I mean, the bottom line is, it was the '80s. Looking back, even if it had been five years later, I would have done it totally differently. But I was known for adding a certain polish and arranging it with a rockier edge, with the big snare sound and stuff. There are many things I would have done differently.

So there’s two components to your work, from what I understand: The sessions at the Power Station and then the mixing. Are these all going on at the same time, or are these two separate things?

Two separate things. We moved over to Right Track, and we did a lot of the mixing there.

Is it you and Bob together, or are you going off and doing the mix on your own?

It wasn’t him like, “Here, you do it” and then leave. He did want to be part of it. He would come by, hang out.

He was very impatient. He said, “We mixed Blonde on Blonde in four days.” I tried to explain to him that was like an eight-track recording. There was less you could do in the mix. It was already pre-mixed.

One session in particular, he was just really impatient. I said, “Why don’t you go see a movie or something?” He went to see Mask, the Cher movie. He came back, and he was so impressed with that film, just talking about how great Cher was in it. “I didn’t think they make movies like that anymore,” he said. “I don’t think they ever made a movie like that!”

He would have a guitar. One time when we were mixing at Right Track, he was sitting on a coach in front of the desk. I’m mixing and I hear something really weird. I’m like, “God, is that in the mix?” I turn the volume on the mix down, and it’s Bob playing “Like a Virgin” on acoustic guitar. Then he was like, “Hey, Arthur, can’t we do a song like Madonna or Prince?”

The famous moment everyone brings up with Empire Burlesque, him wanting to sound more like Prince.

He was very funny. It wasn’t heavy. I mean, I felt under pressure, but he never gave me any shit. He was pretty mellow.

At the time, I was doing a lot of cocaine. Two years later, I got clean. So I was doing that, and he was drinking a lot of rum, which I didn’t realize. He was hiding the rum, and I was hiding the coke. In my book, my Dylan chapter is called “Rum and Coke.”

Always in these projects, towards the end is when you really figure out what it should be. I said to him, “Bob, we’re doing all this sort of glossy music. What we should do is end the album with like an acoustic song, just you and harmonica.” So the next day he came in with this song, we cut it in two takes. It was “Dark Eyes.”

I thought it was one of his songs he had for years and years. I didn’t know until I read Chronicles how he actually went back to his hotel that night and wrote that song. For me, basically. When I read Chronicles and I saw that, that was incredibly special to me, that I actually had something to do with him writing what I think is a great song.

You mentioned you were under pressure. Was it a time pressure? Was it just the stress of working with someone like Dylan?

Well, come on, you’re working with Bob Dylan! When I was in high school, I wrote my final paper on the poetry of Bob Dylan. That would have been '73. Then 11 years later, I’m in the studio working with him. It was definitely surreal to have that opportunity to work with one of your idols.

Actually working on the album in the studio, it wasn’t difficult, but there was a time element to it. It wasn’t like it could go on forever. It was, “Let’s finish this record.” And we did.

We did press together. He was pretty cool with me. He did want me to do the next album, and then something happened which I’m going to leave for my book.

You got arrested, right? [On his drive to meet with Dylan about producing Knocked Out Loaded, he turned the wrong way down a one-way street and, after an altercation with the cops, spent the night in jail.]

I guess I have mentioned it. Yeah, I got arrested. Basically, I [was driving with] a friend of mine, Stu Kimball, who actually had played on Empire Burlesque. I sent him to the meeting to tell Bob that I had been arrested and that’s why I couldn’t come to see him. He didn’t believe me. From what Stu told me, Bob said, “Couldn’t he come up with a better story than that?”

Footnote to the story, years later Bob’s looking for a guitarist. I think Peter Wolf, who was friends with Stu, got Stu an audition. Stu got the gig and he ended up playing with Dylan for like 15 years. So that was the guy who told Dylan I was in jail. I don’t even know if Dylan realized that was the same guy.

Talk to me about what instruments you added during the mixing.

I added horns, percussion, strings, all the keyboard stuff. There was one moment I walk into Power Station and Mark Knopfler is in the room. He had obviously produced a Dylan album [Infidels], and I was a big fan of Dire Straits. He was like, “I hear a guitar part for this song. But you need to put some chords in there to give me something to play to.” Because there were no chords; it was just a rhythm thing. So he had his keyboard player from Dire Straits come in.

Do you remember what song?

Fuck. I don’t. It was definitely something I didn’t record. [Likely “Never Gonna Be the Same Again”] But he had his player came in, bring his keyboard, and he had to tune to the track. It took him like an hour, hour and a half. Then he just played this pad, like two notes or something, all the way through the track. Then Knopfler comes in, listens a few times, and goes, “Yeah, this doesn’t need a guitar part,” and walks out.

Bob looks at me when Knopfler left, and he goes, “Can you imagine working with this guy on a whole album?”

You mentioned five years later, you would have changed things. What would you have changed?

Well, it was in the midst of very polished stuff. They wanted me to make it sound ‘80s. A few years later, it would have been closer to '90s. You know, I’m not embarrassed by it, but I really think I could have done things differently.

How much of that '80s sound is in the recording, like Sly playing the syndrums or something, versus in how you’re mixing it afterwards?

I’d say 50-50. The recording is 50% with the parts I put on, you know, keyboard strings and French horn sounds. Sort of making it a bigger arrangement because I figured that’s what they wanted, you know?

That was your calling card at that point?

Yeah, it was what I had done with “Dancing in the Dark,” adding a lot of stuff. It sounded unfinished to me, the version that he did. I added more arrangement stuff, which is what I did with Bob. So I did add music. That was sort of what I was expected to do. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.

But then in the mix process, I was putting reverb on the snare drums and big sounds like that, which was very '80s.

Like the Phil Collins thing?

Yeah. I mean, that sound was what was happening in mainstream rock. I think they wanted to make it sound bigger and that it would fit into that world. But strangely enough, the best stuff is stuff like “Dark Eyes” and maybe “I’ll Remember You” and “Trust Yourself.”

It came out and the response to it, at one point, it was pretty good. Then, I mean, it’s gone through so many phases. There’s been times when people really like it. Sometimes they really hate it. The thing is, the songs are really good though. Songs that were covered very quickly after. I mean, when the O’Jays did “Emotionally Yours,” I was like, wow, this totally proves my point about that song, ‘cause I thought that song was amazing. And also “I’ll Remember You” I did for the Fried Green Tomatoes movie, which did really well. Bob actually, he got back in touch with me when that came out. I hadn’t heard from him for a few years. He reached out to me, we met up, and he told me how much he liked the re-recording. I added like a gospel thing to it, a whole new chorus.

Those were my favorites because they weren’t trying to be rock. They were just these great songs, and the arrangement didn’t get in the way. When we did Empire Burlesque, he was sort of into—it wasn’t full-on gospel, but songs like “Trust Yourself,” to me, that sounded like a Staples Singer song. And he had a lot of R&B elements in there.

So if you’re listening to it for songs, and you’re not that focused on the production, I think that you’d have to love it, because there are great songs. And they’re songs that haven’t been overplayed, songs that you can discover and not have heard them a million times. I think that it’s sort of like this unknown pleasure.

I was looking at record company ads for the album, and you’re listed as producer. In fact, in Chronicles, Bob calls you “producer.” But your official credit is “mixer.” What’s the difference? A lot of what you’re describing sounds producer-ish.

It was production. Of course it was. But the bottom line is, he was listed as producer and he didn’t want to give me points. Producers get points. But I got paid 50 grand, which was fair for the amount of time I spent. I thought it was a good day’s work.

Also it sounds like you sort of were the producer when you came in, but a lot of the sessions had happened before.

Exactly, a lot of it was done before. So I wouldn’t insinuate that I was the producer. The credit should have been “Additional production.” I got a lot of that kind of credit: “Additional production and mix.”

I feel like some of the reputation of Empire Burlesque and that era comes from the music videos—

Which were so shit! Dave Stewart came in and just sold Bob a bill of goods. They were really cheesy.

You know, he wanted to get on MTV, right? That was the whole thing. You had to do a video to be on MTV.

In a way, it ties in with what you were tasked to do, just in terms of this aging ‘60s guy—how do they become relevant? How do they get younger people listening?

Yeah. But people wanted the real thing, you know? Like when Rick [Rubin] did Johnny Cash, that was years later, and you could do something cool and more underground, or more indie. And I guess that’s what Dylan did later on, too. Sort of deconstructed it again.

Would Bob have known about your background in hop-hop, with Afrika Bambaataa and “Planet Rock”?

No. [laughs] He would have referenced the Springsteen stuff. And Bruce got to me by way of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” So it all goes back to that.

Speaking of Bruce, I read a story about you demonstrating all your synth gear for him. It made me wonder if Bob was at all interested in the new gear, the new technology.

Not particularly. He would come in and he’d get like three or four hours with me. He would always order food from Sylvia’s, because of all the Black women background singers. I think one of them was a woman who was became his wife. It was fun, because I’m really comfortable with background singers, having used a lot of the girls in New York on my records. And I brought in my own musicians, and I knew Sly and Robbie.

How much of this all with the singers and everything is happening live in the room all together and how much is overdubs on a track?

A lot of it was him on the mic with them. I tried to explain to him that he should actually not be on the same mic because if one of them makes a mistake, it’s going to ruin your lead.

They’re all literally on one microphone, you mean?

Yeah. Then we convinced him to get two mics and put them really close together, but directional mics so that it wouldn’t leak as much.

The other thing that was really interesting is he was changing lyrics as he recorded the vocals. He was literally writing the lyrics there. And some of those songs had 20 verses, you know? The shit would go on and on. There was one song that had a Jersey cow on it, I forget which. He was getting rid of the Jersey cow verse, and we were all sort of voting to keep it in. But he finally killed the cow.

Speaking of your Bruce work, was there any talk of going all the way and doing a similar 12-inch remix for Bob?

“When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky” was meant to be a 12-inch. As a matter of fact, I found a reel of dub passes of “When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky.” I actually cut together a dub, like a 12-inch version.

So this dub mix was made, but not released? Was this just something you were doing on your own for fun?

No, no. They wanted me to do it 12-inch. They thought it would be a single.

What happened? Why didn’t they release it?

Fuck knows. I have no idea.

I saw a photo of you at a party at the Whitney for Bob. What was the story there?

It was a party for Biograph, the compilation. That was a great party. Come on, look who was there. Bob invited me to come and he was very attentive to me. He had me right next to him a lot of the night. Bob was like, “Come here, Arthur.” You know, he’s fixing my tie.

Photo via @arthurhbaker

Did you stay in touch much after? Other than the Fried Green Tomatoes thing.

The Bobfest thing, I went to that. Afterwards he had a little party at a pub with the Irish bands. I was hanging out with him there. After that, no.

When he did Live Aid, I was in touch with Bob then. I think that was just after we cut the album. He called me up and said, “I’m going to do something with Keith and Ronnie. I want to rehearse. Can I use your studio?” I said sure. He never showed up.

Given how that performance went, they probably should have showed up and rehearsed at your studio.

Yeah, the set was pretty disastrous. After the gig, I saw him. He had done that talk about the farmers, which became Farm Aid. When he came off stage, he went to me and said, “You think they understood what I was saying?”

---

Thanks Arthur! His memoir ‘Looking for the Perfect Beat: Remixing and Reshaping Hip-Hop, Rock and Rhythms’ comes out this fall. Pre-order it here.

Tomorrow: “It was almost like guerrilla recording.”