Mike Fraser Interview
PAEOAM
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081128.FRASER28/TPStory/Entertainment
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."
spellbou...@yahoo.com
I'd also love to get a listen to those TRE tracks recorded with George
Young. That would be interesting stuff.
TV
airplane ticket or two?
TV
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