> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081128.FRASER28/TP...

> Meet AC/DC's 'go-to guy'
> The Vancouver sound mixer provided the push the band needed to make Black
> Ice
> FIONA MORROW

> November 28, 2008

> VANCOUVER -- Mike Fraser takes credit for the latest AC/DC album, Black
> Ice, making it to disc - and not just because he's responsible for the
> sound mix.

> He had been keeping a booking window available in his Vancouver studio
> since the rock band released Stiff Upper Lip in 2000 - just in case.

> "I just moved it along in three-month blocks," he says. For eight years?
> "Yes," he shrugs. "I wanted to be ready."

> It may sound a little overeager, but 48-year-old Fraser is practically
> AC/DC family, having worked with them since 1990's The Razor's Edge.
> Impatient to get things moving, he called the band last year, suggesting
> that if they had any mind to start putting an album together, they should
> buy up a pile of a particular brand of recording tape he'd heard was about
> to be discontinued. Then, a couple of months later, he dropped in on them
> in London.

> "They'd been writing," he explains. "They were having a good time doing
> their own thing, and hadn't got around to pulling it all together. I think
> my contacting them twice in a short space of time just made them realize
> it was time to get on with it."
> Like so many of the best partnerships, this one started out by accident.
> The Razor's Edge was originally to be recorded in Ireland by George Young
> (brother of band members Angus and Malcolm Young), until a family
> emergency meant he had to leave the album half done.

> The band turned to Vancouver-based producer Bruce Fairburn and headed to
> Little Mountain Sound Studio, where Fraser had been working since he was a
> teenager (he started out as the janitor - the only job going at the time).

> "We were recording the vocals," recalls Fraser. "And on one track, the
> song was the wrong key for Brian [Johnson - the lead singer], so we had to
> rerecord all the instruments from scratch."

> The band liked the sound produced by the new recording so much better than
> the original, they opted to do the whole album again from scratch - and
> Fraser mixed it.

> The band was amazed at how easily he understood what they were after. "I
> was like, 'Yeah, well - I've been a huge fan for the past 20 years.'"

> Now, he says, he's their "go-to guy." He has mixed every album since The
> Razor's Edge, remastered the rockers' back catalogue and worked on
> everything else - from their DVDs to their Rock Band Track Pack video
> game. Black Ice was mixed in eight weeks between March and May this year.
> The only kink was the weather: It rained every day, putting paid to
> Johnson's golfing plans.

> The album has been topping charts around the world, much to Fraser's
> delight: "I think after so many years, people were just frothing for a new
> AC/DC album."

> Pressed hard to dish some dirt about badly behaved rock stars, he is
> seemingly incapable of uttering anything negative about anyone - he even
> has good things to say about Russell Crowe (he mixed two albums by the
> star's band 30 Odd Foot of Grunts).

> For such a genuinely nice guy, the decor in his mixing studio (at Bryan
> Adams's Warehouse Studios in Gastown) is a little odd: The walls are
> festooned with flags featuring skulls, while the mixing desk has neat rows
> of miniatures lined up along it, right up to a full-size death-head.

> Fraser may have mixed a lot of metal - Metallica, The Cult, Motley Crue,
> Led Zeppelin - but he says the skeletal paraphernalia was another
> accident. Years ago he exiled a particularly annoying band from the mixing
> room, pinning up a flag that said "Death Zone, No Prisoners" around a
> skull and cross bones, and they just multiplied.

> "I guess I like skulls now," he laughs. "They're all happy and grinning -
> and it beats having porn all over the place, which lots of bands like to
> put up."

> Though he made his name with hard rock, Fraser has been branching out
> recently, working with a bunch of artists including Elvis Costello, Norah
> Jones and Kelly Rowland. He also mixed eight tracks on the forthcoming
> Franz Ferdinand album after getting friendly with Alex Kapranos when the
> singer was at Warehouse producing British indie band, the Cribs.

> Tonight, though, when AC/DC plays Vancouver's GM Place, he isn't working -
> he gets to just be a fan. "It doesn't matter how many times I see them
> live, I always want more," he says. "They are brilliant. Malcolm [Young]
> always says that if you can't stomp your foot to it, then it's not worth
> playing."