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The Product of Madness, Part 2 Super-Producer Alan Winstanley Coming into producing Madness in 1979, Alan Winstanley was definitely the more experienced of the famed Clanger/Winstanley team, having worked successfully as a sound engineer in a multitude of studios and as a proven producer of the ground-breaking New Wave band The Stranglers. A master of the mixing board, Alan brought a much needed discerning ear to Madness' "One Step Beyond..." sessions, perfectly complementing the musician's sensibilities of partner Clive Langer. It was this winning formula, born thirty years ago in London with our Nutty Boys, that led them to the cornucopia of chart hits for artists like Dexy's Midnight Runners, David Bowie, Morrissey and Republica. In this interview, part two of "The Product of Madness", we had a chance to catch up with Alan some ten years after interviewing him the first time while Clive and he were in studio with Madness last during the "Wonderful" sessions. That happened to be Madness' 20th anniversary, and this year sees them finishing off Madness' "The Liberty of Norton Folgate" album for their 30th anniversary. And if you're keeping score, this is also Clive and Alan's 30th anniversary as a production team. The symmetry is a beautiful thing. Warm and charming, witty and disarming, speaking with Alan Winstanley for the better part of an hour about the labours and loves of being such an integral part of the pop music landscape for the last three decades was like sitting around the campfire listening to your favourite uncle telling tales of family and war, bringing a tangibility to the conversation the way only a favourite uncle could. Grab a perch on that fallen log and let Uncle Alan spin you a story of Madness... and more. Interview by Steve Bringe Transcript by Lee Buckley |
 Producer Alan Winstanley (foreground) with partner Clive Langer |
If you've clicked on the audio player above, you soon discovered that the audio recording of the interview was completely out of synch and unusable as an interviewer/interviewee streaming file. Fortunately, we were able to salvage Alan's channel of the interview for your listeninng pleasure. So, please listen along while reading the text transcript below to put Alan's jovial and charming spoken word into context.
Madness Central: Hi is this Alan Winstanley?
Alan Winstanley: Yes is that Steve?
MC: Yes this is Steve Bringe. How are you?
AW: Good thanks, how are you?
MC: Not too bad. I understand you're in the States?
AW: Yeah I'm in Florida.
MC: What are you doing over here?
AW: I've got a home here so I come here as much as I can really.
MC: Oh cool.
AW: As much as your Government will allow me to come into this country which without a Visa is not very long so I'm only here for two and a half weeks. We normally come for six to eight weeks at a time.
MC: So whereabouts in Florida without giving away too much?
AW: It's not far from Orlando, near Disneyworld really. I bought the house eleven years ago as an investment to rent out, not that it's a great investment at the moment, not too many people are going on vacation at the moment I don't think anyway we bought it here just because it's down the road from Disneyworld.
MC: Yeah it's not too bad around there. It gets a bit muggy in the summer though.
AW: Yeah we don't normally come in the summer. You know, I'll be here at Christmas, November, December, January, February time is normally quite good. This is probably as close to the summer as I normally get, you know May time is about it or it does get too muggy as you say.
MC: Good. So how are you doing today?
AW: Good thanks, how are you?
MC: Not bad. Actually, I talked to you and Clive about ten years ago, in fact exactly ten years ago.
AW: Yeah I was just gonna say, I was gonna say it was a few years ago, has it been as long as that? As long as ten years ago? God time flies.
MC: Yeah it was when you guys were still working on Wonderful, you were still at Westside.
AW: Oh wow....okay that long ago?
MC: Yeah it was the twentieth anniversary for Madness and twentieth anniversary for you and Clive.
AW: Yeah and the thirtieth this year.
MC: Yeah it goes quickly doesn't it.
AW: It does.
MC: Well I've got about twenty questions for you, do you have time for that or is that a little bit too much?
AW: Sure, no that's fine.
MC: Okay great. Well like we were saying it's now the thirtieth anniversary of Madness, so that means it's the thirtieth anniversary for you and Clive as a production team. Did you ever think you'd make it three decades working with Clive when you first produced One Step Beyond?
AW: Erm, I wasn't sure it would last three weeks when we recorded the first album, you know I had no idea then really. I had no idea that album would be so successful and set us off on our big career really.
MC: Right. When did you start realising it was gonna be a long-term project for you and Clive?
AW: Erm, I dunno, we kind of got a funny feeling making that record although it was only three weeks. It was done really quick, but I remember Clive actually turning round to me in the middle of the album saying 'This has got a really good feel hasn't it? It feels like something might be happening here.' And he actually asked me if I had the same kind of feeling when I was doing the first Stranglers album and I said 'yeah'. I know we definitely had a feeling that something could be happening. I didn't know that Clive and I would go on for thirty years, I didn't even know Madness would go on for thirty years at that point, but I just thought that maybe that first album had something about it but that's about it really.
MC: You mentioned The Stranglers, is that where you got your first start in the production industry?
AW: Okay. Well I started before that. I started in a tiny little studio in an area in London called Fulham, a studio called TW and I started there at the end of 1970, it was a little four-track studio and I'd never worked in a studio before that so it was great training for me and I worked my way up and the studio became quite successful so they bought another building next door and built an eight-track then it came to sixteen. We did the first Stranglers' album in '77, that was on a sixteen-track. The producer at the time, Martin Rushen and we ended up becoming partners in a recording studio not long after that but at that time he went to the owners of the studio and said that they wouldn't record the second album unless they used a 24-track so the owners thought it was a wise move and bought a 24-track machine. I started off doing 4-track demoes and then eventually proper records. One of the first hits I engineered which was a big hit in England and here in America as well was a girl called Amii Stewart 'Knock on Wood' which was her cover version of the song. Do you remember that song - it was kind of mid-Seventies?
MC: I do.
AW: Yeah it was in that kind of disco-era of the Seventies, so I recorded that and then TW studios did the first Stranglers' album and then we started to get a lot of punk bands, you know, we did The Buzzcocks, 999, Generation X, Billy Idol so that was what I was doing for basically eight years until the end of '88 I left which I think that was when I declared I was now 'a producer' and I just started doing little bits of production work. Sorry, going back to around '79, I was doing little bits of work and then the first big production I did was probably that third Stranglers' album which was the first album I produced without Martin Rushen, you know he'd produced the first two and I'd engineered the first two and I then produced the third and it was during the making of that album actually that I got the call asking if I would like to work with this new band that Stiff had just signed called Madness with Clive. I already knew Clive before that because I'd done some Deaf School stuff in TW, so I knew Clive and I'd also done some work for Stiff Records so it kind of worked out really well that Dave Robinson and Stiff wanted me involved. Clive had already worked with the band over at Pathway doing The Prince on 2-Tone so Stiff wanted him involved and then it all worked out really well because we both fitted in and worked together so it became obvious that we should do the album together.
MC: And that's history, very significant part of history. Anyway, so Clive got the same question a couple of weeks ago, you and Clive are definitely a team but who does what?
AW: Okay. Well although I played guitar in a band early on, my background is studio work, you know, engineering and Clive's is definitely from the musician's side of things and songwriting. So he mainly gets involved with arrangements, he'll go into the rehearsal studios first, with the band, on his own and knock songs into shape and rearrange them and then I'll come in towards the end just before they go into the studio and maybe make a few suggestions, then we go in the studio and I'm more involved in the sound and the recording of the stuff whereas Clive is more involved in arranging and musical ideas really. It does cross over although Clive doesn't get involved on the desk, I don't think he's pushed a 'fade' or twiddled a knob on the console ever but yeah that's basically how it works.
MC: Well it works! It does work, all the hits you guys have had in the last thirty years, it definitely works.
AW: Yeah.
MC: You mentioned that you mess with the sound, you're the sound man in all of this, is there a particular sound to Madness, is there anything you can say between the band and the producer that is quintessentially Madness?
AW: Well I suppose, Mike's piano and Lee's sax sound, for different reasons, I mean the piano sound, you know, I remember listening to early Beatles' records and you know the pianos and arpeggio guitars really rang and I kind of wondered how the hell they did that and I don't know if this is how they did it but I kind of thought that maybe they could double-track the instruments and obviously harmonised as well and vary the speed of the machine slightly slower or faster and that's what we did with Mike's piano quite a bit. We would lay one take down and then we would just get him to play it again but I'd speed the machine up slightly so the second piano would come back slightly flat and then it would give that kind of honky-tonk ringing piano sound so I think that's quite quintessentially the Madness sound. And Lee's sax which is mainly because he didn't play the instrument in the right key really, you know, he didn't realise it was a B-flat instrument, he didn't have the mouthpiece in the right place so it was slightly out of tune so even though we weren't trying to put it into tune because in those days you couldn't, you know, we had a harmoniser but you couldn't put it into tune. You could kind of cover it up, so we would use the harmoniser on his sax just to try and cover up the fact he was slightly out of tune and that became part of his sound and then after the first album, he learnt how to play the sax and realised it was a B-flat instrument and he tuned it properly but we carried on using a harmoniser really just to give it that Lee Thompson sound. So I think they're the two things that for me define the sound.
MC: You know, I was talking with Chris Foreman earlier this year and he went back and re-mixed some of the stuff from Norton Folgate because he said the guitar wasn't loud enough on it. Do you ever run into that problem with the band where they're not real happy with the mix or they want to change what you had done?
AW: Well, the first album, as I said earlier, was three weeks and we wanted to rush it out but they were quite happy with all the mixes but he said he went back and re-mixed it? It was Clive and I who went back and put all the guitars up as well so I don't know whether he went back in and turned them up even more but you know. I have to agree that he was right because the guitars were a little quiet on our original mixes and he pointed it out and we went back in and turned them up. Not on everything because sometimes we thought maybe they didn't need to be as loud as he wanted them to be but for most of the tracks we did turn the guitars up but I didn't realise he'd gone back in.
MC: He made it sound like he was pirating it.
AW: Well we did go back in and change it.
MC: The album turned out great, I mean I always thought that Keep Moving was your best production work with Madness but I'm starting to lean towards Norton Folgate, you guys did quite a job with this album.
AW: Oh good well yeah, I like it, it is a good album.
MC: Speaking of the Langer/Winstanley sound is there any particular thing you could point at which is kind of quintessentially a Langer/Winstanley sound?
AW: Erm, no I don't know really, I mean I've had people tell me who've listened to our records say that it really sounds like a Langer/Winstanley drum sound, I mean I suppose it doesn't matter who it might be, it could be someone drumming with David Bowie or Woody drumming with Madness, you know, there's certain things I do with the drum kit that are the same whatever. Some things I might change the mic technique a little bit, you know, different echoes but some people have said to me that they can tell a Langer/Winstanley drum sound, I don't know. I suppose I have a certain sound, yeah, if I'm going in and recording guitars with Bush or with Dexys Midnight Runners, not that they're anything alike but maybe there's something in the sound that I do.
MC: Well back in the Eighties, you were responsible for all of those great 12" remixes that we had of Madness, which are essentially just extended remixes, do you dabble in any of the modern sense of the remix or do you leave the messing up of the Madness songs to the likes of Paul Gotel?
AW: Yeah I leave that to other people now. I enjoyed those ones in the Eighties, I mean it was fun, you know, obviously a different way of mixing then to the way it is now you know, we didn't have hard drives and Pro-Tools and stuff like that to edit it on. I would actually cut up bits of tape, I might spend three hours splicing up bits of tape for something that would end up lasting three seconds but it was fun, I really enjoyed doing it.
MC: Well you told me back in '99 that you did these remixes on an SSL console, are you still using this console or have you moved on to different equipment?
AW: No, I'm still an SSL man for mixing, if I can, sometimes it's a bit difficult these days with budgets, but if possible I like recording on Neve consoles but I've never been great at mixing on Neves, in fact I don't even like moving faders, I don't even use ultimation on SSL, I just use the normal ultimation. I'm not a J series 9000 fan, I like G series ultimation, bit of an old-fashioned, bit long in the tooth I suppose.
MC: Also back in 99' you were just about talking about Pro-Tools at the time, have you embraced the digital end of things a little bit or are you still using the acoustic analogue sound.
AW: No we do everything on Pro-Tools now, although I have an engineer operate all that stuff, in fact it's a guy that did the new Madness album, a guy called Finn Isles(?), he's fantastic, really good, really quick, I mean I could never operate Pro-Tools as quick as him, in fact if it was me I'd probably still be recording the album now. Yeah we record everything on Pro-Tools but I leave it up to someone who knows what they are doing. I don't actually physically get hands-on with the Pro-Tools at all, I'm a bit slow at it.
MC: I asked Clive this question, is there anybody you wanted to work with but didn't get the job?
AW: Well it's a bit late now but The Beatles would have been nice, we worked with Bowie, not that we did a lot with him you know just a few tracks there and that was fantastic. In fact after we did that first Bush album, we nearly worked with The Foo Fighters, yeah we met Dave Grohl in New York and then a week later we met him again with the rest of the band in Los Angeles and yeah I really wanted to do that because I really liked their first album but it just didn't work out so we didn't do it but that was something I wished we'd have done.
MC: Interestingly that was what Clive said as well that the Foo Fighters gig and that you guys were kind of bummed out you didn't get that one. You guys are of the same mind on that one.
AW: Oh really? Oh that's interesting.
MC: Conversely, on the other hand, is there anybody that was such a pain that you wish you hadn't gotten the gig? Now saying that, you and Clive both mentioned this last time around, ten years ago, Kevin Rowland and Morrissey. So, er take it away.
AW: Oh did we? Well, the Kevin Rowland thing, I can't knock it too much I mean we did the Too-Rye-Ay album, Clive and I and you know that was good, it sold a lot of records, you know Come On Eileen and it was a great record. The next album, the follow-up to that it just went on and on and on, I spent nearly a year of my life on that album but the memory has kind of faded a bit. I didn't dislike working with him, you know I think he's very talented actually and it's a damn shame he's not doing too much at the moment. The Morrissey thing....did I say he was a pain before? Well, he was difficult, I don't think he was a pain, he was difficult which is alright, that's fine I mean you know, again very talented. That was a funny way of working, we'd record the tracks with Morrissey and most of the time he wasn't even in there because we did it at our studio that we had out in the country, a residential studio about 50 miles outside London and Morrissey would be in his room writing lyrics and stuff while we were in the studio recording so he wouldn't actually be around too much. We would record the track and then send him a cassette I think it was in those days of a rough mix of the track we'd just recorded and send that up to his room and then he'd write the lyrics and then later on, maybe a couple of days later he'd come down to the studio and record. It was quite interesting really because he'd sing a chorus and you'd think 'wow', you know because when we recorded it as a track we thought something else was the chorus, another part of the song was the chorus and suddenly he's using that as the verse and what we thought was the verse he's singing the chorus over so it was quite an interesting way of working. He wasn't that difficult, I enjoyed working with him.
We've had a couple of, dare I say it? American bands that maybe we shouldn't have worked with, there was a band we worked with at Bearsville studios in New York.
MC: Who was that band?
AW: We actually didn't finish it, we parted company before we actually finished the record, it was that bad. They were called Darlahood.
MC: I've never heard of them actually.
AW: Good because it would have been terrible if we'd got kicked off that one and then they had a massive hit. Yeah it just didn't work out really I mean their manager, oh God I don't even want to go there. No I'm gonna pass on that one before I get myself into trouble.
MC: Okay, do you and Clive ever disagree in the studio?
AW: Sure, yeah.
MC: On what types of things, are you kind of the same mind most of the time, you know on the same wavelength or are there times when you're at completely different ends?
AW: Yeah I mean we're mainly on the same wavelength, you know we might do something and Clive loves it and I don't and vice versa and we'd argue about it and then there might be a few disagreements with the mix, you know Clive might come in and listen to the mix and think I've got the guitar too loud or the piano too quiet and sometimes I'll give it a go and I'll put the piano up and the guitar down and I'll think 'you're right' but most of the time it'll be 'no you're wrong' and then we'll argue it out. Sometimes we end up doing two alternative mixes and let the record company decide or the band, you know, whatever.
MC: I wouldn't have imagined you guys would have lasted this long if you argued too much.
AW: Most of the time it's fine, it's just occasionally. It's just like being an old married couple really, you know we've been married for thirty years!
MC: Going back to Madness really quickly, are there any particular albums or songs that stand out above the others as your finest work with Madness?
AW: Erm, well I really liked Absolutely because it's got the freshness of the first album I mean we did spend a little bit more time on it, I think we spent five weeks on the second album and I love Embarrassment, I think that's a fantastic song, that's one of my favourites. Rise and Fall, Keep Moving, which album is Our House on?
MC: Rise and Fall.
AW: Yeah Rise and Fall, I should know shouldn't I? Yeah because I think Our House is one of their really good sounding records, so yeah Rise and Fall is a favourite. Which one is It Must Be Love on?
MC: Erm, that was kind of a float around single.
AW: Oh yes of course, well there's a pretty good story about that one because we recorded that as a one-off. Dave Robinson called me up one day and said 'I went to see Madness in Liverpool last night' because they were on tour at the time and 'they do It Must Be Love as an encore, and I think they should record it and put it out as a single but I wanna do it now. So in three days time they got a day off in Newcastle, will you and Clive fly up to Newcastle and record it?' So we did, we went up there but not realising there's not really many recording studios in Newcastle, or Durham, it was some town near Newcastle and we ended up in this home studio in some guy's living room and we recorded it but because we did it like that it ended up being a really good demo so we then recorded it properly when their tour was over, a couple of weeks later, you know and we'd been working at Air studios at that time in London and we went in there to re-record it but because we'd gone to Newcastle and recorded it once, it really helped I think to get it to sound really good when we did it the second time so I think that's one of my favourites. Oh and the new album, I love the new album.
MC: Oh really well this kind of follows into the new album, you said at the time of Wonderful that it was a way to celebrate twenty years, how does Norton Folgate stack up then, is it a celebration of thirty years or is it just kind of a project, how do you feel about Norton Folgate and the lexicon of Madness?
AW: I think it's a celebration of thirty years, it's a really good sounding album, I mean it was hard work, you know, we've never recorded a 23- track album before, I think the most we'd ever done before that was probably about 15 or something so it was hard work but well worth it. The only track for me that I would have put on the actual proper album that wasn't on there is Hunchback of Torriano which is only on the box set.
MC: I am so glad that you said that.
AW: Why do you like that one as well yeah?
MC: Yep. Wasn't that song recorded for Wonderful as part of the demoes?
AW: Clive and I didn't record it, I think it was demoed and submitted for that album, I don't remember it but that's what I've been told, yeah that's when it was written but you know I love that track and I would have liked to have seen that on the main album but having said that there isn't anything on that main album that we should take off, I think it's really strong.
MC: Yeah Hunchback I could see that as a single, that was a great song, it is a great song, the Wonderful version of it has got Lee on lead vocals so it's done without Suggs.
AW: What on the demo?
MC: Yeah, it's pretty cool, I like it quite a bit, it's a different sound with Lee on vocals.
AW: Really? I'll have to try and listen to that.
MC: Okay well let's talk about Norton Folgate a little bit. Many of the songs on Folgate have been in the works for several years now, did it help when you did it in the studio with a sizeable section of the songs already written?
AW: Well it helps, but as I said just now it was hard work because we said we were gonna record 15 songs, let's work it down and we ended up recording all 23 but it was well worth it as I say but it was really hard.
MC: Is that pretty typical then, I mean do you have 20 or 30 songs that you have to whittle down to make an album?
AW: Well, not 20 or 30, I think you may have around 18 and about 14 or 15 of them that you want to record and normally it's quite easy really because you can go 'well that one's crap so we'll have that one' but in this case it was pretty difficult because they were all really strong.
MC: Well did you try anything radically different with Norton Folgate that you might not have tried on the earlier albums?
AW: Again I suppose because of Pro-Tools, there are certain things you can do with that that we weren't able to do in the old analogue days, but not really because they all play real instruments so we recorded them as normal, pretty much, you know we used strings and brass all the normal old stuff that we've always done. I can't think of anything radically different that we might have tried.
MC: Okay, how about Dust Devil, what do you think of that as the choice for lead single of the album, would this be your choice or is there another song you feel...?
AW: Well it wasn't my choice, I mean I like it, but it's just a bit weird having the first single about a vibrator...
MC: Yeah well it's no different from House of Fun really. What would you have chosen for the first single?
AW: Well, yeah there you go, that's true. Erm Forever Young, Sugar and Spice maybe, actually I like We Are London as well or On The Town, yeah maybe not for a first single. I think for a first single either Forever Young or Sugar and Spice.
MC: There's a remix of Forever Young that I've heard, were you behind that?
AW: Yeah, we did that about two months ago, yeah it's just a slightly different version, a bit faster.
MC: Was that with the thought of Forever Young being released as a single then?
AW: Yeah that was the idea, the record company thought it was a good choice for a single, they just thought that the original version we'd done was a bit sluggish maybe so they got these other couple of guys in to do this new version and then Clive and I went back in again and worked on this version you know, overdubbed on top of that. I must admit at first I wasn't keen, but I've got to quite like it now but I don't know if it's any better than the original to be honest but I like it, it's different. I didn't like it at first but I think it could be an improvement on the original. I'd have to go and listen to it again, but I'm not sure what's gonna happen, I think the band are split on it, some of them like it and some of them don't. I'm not sure if it's gonna see the light of day.
MC: What do you see as the main responsibility of the successful music producer?
AW: Good question! Well I suppose as well as keeping the band happy you've got to keep the record company happy as well and you want to be able to keep your own integrity in check. I don't know, it's difficult, you know I want to make the best sounding record I can but at the same time there's obviously going to be commercial enough to make it worthwhile the record company investing their money in it and you want the band or the artist to be happy as well. Does that answer the question?
MC: Yeah that answers the question perfectly. You actually had more to say on it than Clive did so Congratulations! I asked you this before and you were remarkably humble the first time around so let's see if you're more forthcoming this time. Amongst Madness fans, you and Clive are perceived as eighth and ninth members of Madness, how do you feel about that particular accolade?
AW: Well it's obviously very flattering but I've never thought of it, I've never seen myself as that, you know I just go into the studio and record them and mix them, you know I don't go on tour or do all that stuff so no I've never thought of it like that. I suppose it's like George Martin being the fifth member of The Beatles.
MC: Yep, you're being humble again, yeah well it's okay, we fans will think of you that way so that way you don't have to. Okay, you've had hits with scores of bands over the last thirty years, Madness and Dexys to start out with, Bush, Republica, Elvis Costello, Morrissey, David Bowie, have you learnt anything from this or are you any wiser for the experience?
AW: Yeah sure, I think you learn something every time you go in the studio and you then take it onto another project, I might learn something working with David Bowie as you would because I think the guy's a great producer in his own right anyway and then you take that away and use that in someone else's record so yeah I think you learn from these people all the time.
MC: Okay, how about the rest of 2009, do you have any big plans now that you're done with Norton Folgate do you have anything else planned for the rest of the year?
AW: No, not at the moment, I'm waiting for my manager to tell me he's got some work (laughs) no it's very quiet at the moment especially for the music industry, it's just a bit of a quiet period. Not much money about.
MC: What do you think of the state of the music industry now that record sales are plummeting, illegal downloads all of that, what do you think of that?
AW: Well I think that the record companies probably didn't embrace it early enough, the download thing I'm talking about, I mean when kids started downloading initially, I dunno about here in America, but in England they were threatening to sue thirteen-year-old kids for downloading which is a ridiculous thing to do. They should have embraced it and got into the downloading thing a lot earlier than they did and maybe they'd be in a better financial state now.
MC: Do you see that affecting the types of jobs you get now or are there fewer albums being produced?
AW: Oh yeah definitely. I have less money to spend so records now are much lower budgets.
(Audio is completely naff at this point. Sorry!)
You can find Alan Winstanley at his official site: www.langerwinstanley.com
April 22, 2009
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