James Harvey: Where we left off last time was the beginning of the 1M1 label.
Philip Powers: That’s right. I remember. I was talking about the jobs that led to my first recording producer credit of an album. I’d been producing recording sessions of film scores, but this was my first credit on an album. I think the first credit was The Wild Duck and Frog Dreaming. However… and this is strange…
There’s a different story from Bruce Smeaton, which is kind of weird, because I know I didn’t have anything to do with John Lasher’s album of A Town Like Alice. And yet, Smeaton tells me that he loved the edit I did of the music of A Town Like Alice. I told him I didn’t do it. He tells me that I did.
JH: So, he’s wrong or you’re wrong.
PP: Well, if there’s anyone’s recollection of any event I would put my faith in, it is of Bruce Smeaton. There’s never – in my experience – been a clearer memory of what happened in life, than his. There are some people who tell a story about something that happened when you were there, and it’s not at all what you remember. Not with Smeaton. His version is the same as what my version would be. I’ve argued with him about this memory, because I know I never worked with John Lasher before 1987 and the CD of A Town Like Alice is 1986.
When I recently – because of this interview – listened to the CD and the edits, I know that I would never have left those pauses in there as they are. It’s so clumsy. I’d never have made everything so unrelated.
JH: And so your explanation is?
PP: If I had anything to do with it, then it dates back to 1985 when my girlfriend, Kathy, and I visited Melbourne and Bruce invited us to stay with him and Polly and Barney and Mary in Carrum, Melbourne. He gave me, like, ten or twelve cassettes of ten different scores of his music. Over the next 12 months, I transferred the cassettes to quarter-inch, then cut cues together and made suites of the scores, discarding some pieces, and re-ordering some cues. I probably sent a rough compilation of my edit to Smeaton – which had my own re-ordered cues, with some very precise edits of very small tracks, and large gaps between other – different – meldings. Definitely not something I would have released for a CD for the public to buy.
Recently, having listened to the compilation of the CD I know that I would never have allowed those long silences in between cues. I’ve always tried to bring unrelated pieces together and match them and integrate them. This soundtrack album is just a horrid vomit of cues without any thought to knit them or show how they relate to each other.
And the reverb on the instruments is awful. The piano is so full of reverb that it’s a caricature of how a piano should sound.
JH: So, lets move on to your first album as producer, The Wild Duck.
PP: I listened to that CD before this second interview and I hear everything that I would always do, Knit pieces together where they fit. Then at 5m30s I left a longer pause because they didn’t flow. Then at 6m45s I left a pause. Then we start again. 7m40s, was a difficult edit, because it was a short cue but I wanted to include it because it was a virtuoso display of orchestration and the theme.
Everything that was wrong about the CD of A Town Like Alice, compared with the dovetailing of ideas, emotions and thematic material in The Wild Duck, illustrates my attempt to tie everything together as much as possible.
JH: And the other score, Frog Dreaming?
PP: Before we get on to that, I want to say, that although I would tighten the edits in The Wild Duck, rather than give them more space, I still love the concept of the edit at 15:50. It’s a hard juxtaposition balancing cues that rise to a climax and how soon to start the next cue. It’s a brilliant marriage of a climax and cutting to a developing climax from another cue. Then again at 19.09. I’d do a crossfade now, but it was all hard edits in 1987. Seriously, listening to it 31 years later I’d only finesse the edits.
JH: You’re passionate when you speak about Simon. Can you tell me more about your working relationship?
PP: I’d prefer to move on to whatever the next question is. That’s a whole other tale.