Saturday, 13th June 2015
Mutt Lange 1989/Screenshot by dltourhistory
Def Leppard's ex producer Robert John 'Mutt' Lange has produced the new Muse album Drones and they talked about him in a new interview with BBC 6 Music.
Singer Matt Bellamy and drummer Dom Howard talked to host Steve Lamacq about working with Mutt. They give an insight into what working with Mutt is like now compared to when he worked with Def Leppard as producer from 1981 to 1987.
The album 'Drones' was released earlier this week. The seventh studio album by the band which is headed for the Number One position in the UK and US album charts and many other countries around the world.
Listen to the full interview (UK only) via the link which took place on 4th June. Steve briefly mentions Lep at the start.
Joe Elliott told That Metal Show in February he thought the mix of Muse/Mutt was "weird".
Watch a teaser video of Mutt/Muse in the studio posted back in February.
- Buy Drones CD @ - Amazon.com
- Buy Drones MP3 @ - Amazon.com
- Buy Drones CD @ - Amazon.co.uk
- Buy Drones MP3 @ - Amazon.co.uk
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- Buy Drones MP3 (UK) @ -
BBC 6 Music - Matt Bellamy/Dom Howard Interview Quotes
AC/DC's Back In Black of course was produced by - do you use the full name? Robert John "Mutt" Lange.
Matt Bellamy - "Mutt, we go Mutt."
Dominic Howard - "Just Mutt."
Mutt who also produced the new Muse album Drones. What's he like? Why? Why did you choose him?.
Matt - "He's...mental! In a good way."
"How old is he?"
Matt - "He must be 60's. Early 60s yeah."
Dom - "Something like that, 50s I don't know."
"Why did you choose him?."
Matt - "Yeah - we were in Switzerland and we got invited to go and meet him in his studio just to say Hi. That was like February last year. And we didn't really intend to work with him but we thought it was a nice invitation to go and say hello to a legend you know so we met him in his studio."
Really is that what you can do I suppose as a band in your position. You can just go and say hi to people.
Dom - "Well we were actually - he lives in Switzerland - we were actually Snowboarding. Just - yeah we were on a little skiing trip together and then he just like lives down the road so we thought OK let's go down and say hi. But yeah it was just a little Hi, how you doing and you know a potential - a chat about potentially working in the future."
Matt - "And he's just a really interesting guy. You know he really is - he lives outside the realms of civilisation. And society in general. I mean he's the most sort of environmental guy I've ever known. He walks the walk you know. He spends all of his money on like forests and tress all over the world. Like millions of acres in New Zealand and he flies economy class everywhere. He's like a total ecology guy and got some interesting philosophies and stuff. But the main thing that stood out from the meeting was that you know we went there expecting him to be interested to talk to us about making like Hits you know. And that's not what he was interested in at all he wanted to make a concept album you know. And that was a really surprising moment in the meeting. So we thought actually maybe this could work you know."
What that where the first of the light bulbs went off then.
Matt - "Well, it was kind of what we were thinking anyway but when he said that it was like well we can work with a producer on this."
We are made for each other! - I checked actually. I looked back - I mean I knew he'd done certain things. You know classic bands, Def Leppard and he'd worked with Graham Parker and the Rumour who were one of my favourite bands when I was a kid. I went through this list so he's done Leppard, Graham Parker and the Rumour and he's also done Billy Ocean. So you're in good company!.
Matt - "Totally. And of course Shania Twain and who else?. I thought he did some good stuff with The Cars way back. Yeah he did that song - he did that album Heartbeat - what's it called? Heartbeat umm City is it?."
Dom - "Something like that. That big track Drive."
What happens on your first day in the studio?.
Matt - "Well, Mutt's in the background - checking his emails. No, totally the opposite basically. He was all over us."
Dom's got three people setting his drum kit up. You've got four doing your amps.
Matt - "Yeah, once that's all done we all rock in and start playing and you know we just start playing the songs. Over and over and over and over and over again. I mean I can't tell you how many times we played these songs."
But they're sort of written. You've rehearsed them through?.
Matt - "Yeah I thought we were ready. I mean I thought Take 2 sounded great. You know Take 3 was brilliant but you know Mutt wanted Take 36. Yeah so it was really - it was only about two or three songs that we did that many but..."
36!.
Matt - "36 takes of one song yeah across days you know. It was pretty exhausting ."
How long is a days work?.
Matt - "I guess we'll get in at midday and finish about ten or something like that. And then we'll eat on the fly. But he was - he really wanted us to get really comfortable with the songs and you know - I don't really know what he was thinking but we were doing so many - so much. This album was recorded live - almost entirely. Obviously I did the vocals afterwards. But almost all the guitars, bass and drums were recorded live. So that's probably one of the reasons we did so many takes because on previous albums you'd record bass and drums and then maybe add lots of layers you know. On this one we just captured that three piece feel. So that's probably one of the reasons why he wanted to get it over and over again you know."
Matt - "I originally wrote it not with a narrative structure. I originally wrote it just using the words Drones as a constant center point to everything I was thinking about. But just the metaphorical usage of the word mainly. And so I wrote all the songs with that - it was actually Mutt who put forward the idea of putting it in a bit more of a narrative order. You know for me the album had a different order when I had in mind..."
Matt - "Mutt actually did push the band obviously as performers very but also he definitely pushed me lyric wise and to think a bit more clearly. You know to actually - he actually wanted me to simplify things a little bit."
Dom - "As Matt said once we got to Vancouver Mutt was SO focused on like trying to keep us on track with the concept, which was great."
Matt - "Yeah and I think that's the one thing that working with a producer helped because he kept us on track as Dom said."
- News Source - bbc.co.uk
- Related Link - muse.mu
- Previous News - 11th May 2015