Listen Up! Recording Music with Bob Dylan, Neil Young, U2, REM, the Tragically Hip, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Waits

Canadian producer and recording engineer Howard, writing with his brother Chris, entertains with this collection of anecdotes of making albums with a host of A-list musicians. Working for producer and musician Daniel Lanois in the late 1980s, Howard converted a lavish five-story apartment building in New Orleans into a studio, in which he recorded songs for the Neville Brothers’ 1987 Yellow Moon album (Howard, who considered himself a rebel, had the Confederate flag hanging in his garage with his Harley motorcycle, and Cyril Neville lectured him on the flag’s racist history; Howard immediately threw it out). Howard describes the details of recording Willie Nelson’s album Teatro at the Teatro Studio in L.A., in which he got the sound from the group by setting them up in a big circle with Nelson in the middle. Neil Young would only record in the three days leading up to a full moon, and, in their first sessions together, Howard captured Young’s sound by trapping “his guitar sound and throwing [the recording] back at him and he would play on top of it.” Howard’s insider music history will be of equal interest to music fans and those who sit behind the mixing board. [em](May) [/em]