Only In Your Dreams

In recent years he has repeatedly been a guest lecturer at Southern Institute of Technology in Invercargill; teaching as part of the Bachelor of Audio Production programme. He has given the SIT students a unique look into his life as a respected producer, sharing his knowledge of top end equipment and techniques; mentoring NZ’s future engineers, producers and musicians. Brockmann understands what it takes to be successful in this ever-changing industry and despite all the recent upheaval, believes there is still a foolproof formula to making great music.

His enthusiasm is real and contagious; it is obvious his passion still burns strong as he reminisces about old collaborations, lucky breaks and working in New York when the music industry was at its pre-Torrent peak. With thoughts of making a permanent life in New Zealand (he has children living here), I talked with Bassy Bob to find out what makes him tick, what he thinks of the NZ music industry and where to from here.

What is it that you are doing at SIT?

“I have an ongoing relationship with SIT, I do guest teaching when I am here, which I love doing. If I felt like I had the opportunity to turn some creative people down at SIT into the next big superstar producers, just help them out in their creative process, that would be the greatest thing in the world.

“SIT has a very different philosophically to most other programmes. Most courses are just about getting people in and out. They show you how to boot up Pro Tools, how to use a console, what a fader looks like. As opposed to what do you do and what did the masters do? What did the reggae masters do? What did Jeff Emerick do? What did Eddie Kramer do, on a Neve with Jimi Hendrix at Electric Lady? It’s esoteric information that’s been passed down through the mentoring process. I think for many years engineers were zip-lip about it; they thought it would threaten their job if they shared the information with young people. I feel like all the information’s out there anyway, so why not provide contextual information that’s really going to help. The real essential stuff like using a summing bus, using a mix bus compressor, getting out of Pro Tools and regaining headroom.”

How did you get your start as a producer?

After finishing college and moving to New York, Brockmann says he sent out 175 letters to studios all over the city, one landing him an assistant position at Ralston recording studio where he met the likes of Slick Rick and Grandmaster Flash.

“I started out doing tape editing. I had rhythm and I knew how to divide things into eighths and sixteenths. I would figure out what the tempo was, mark it with a grease pencil and cut it. Ron Banks gave me a start. It’s that kind of mentorship relationship that I think is really important.”

In the early 1980s Brockman continued to make connections; impressing producer Randy Muller with his bass playing skills – enough to earn him the tag ‘Bassy Bob’.

“The big breaks they were always unexpected though – in 1986 my room mate Graham had started doing some Linn Drum programming –he was one of the only guys in New York that had a Linn 9000 which was this amazing drum machine. He started working for producer Fred Zarr, who was the keyboard player for Madonna. So I started working in the weekends for free with Fred – and most of the stuff we worked on was awful – I remember he had this girlfriend from high school who was a terrible singer and we would work on her song weekend after weekend for months. I guess he was in love with her and he wanted it to happen so bad.

I remember concluding nothing would ever happen with Fred. About six months after I had been working with him he called me up and he said he’d just met this 14-year-old girl with perfect pitch, 500 songs and a development deal on Atlantic. He asked could I come over and mix this song for $50 – the song was Only In My Dreams.”

Brockman heard nothing more about it until one day the song came on the jukebox at his local eatery.

“I recognised the gated clap I’d put through an SPX90 with a pan on it and I'm listening to it and I'm quite sure it’s my mix! The 12 inch had been working its way up the charts and at that point it was a race against time to get a 7” mix on the street; they must have found mine in the Atlantic vault. It went gold! It got me work instantly and I went from a $50 week assistant to a $2000 a day freelance mixer.”

What were some of the lessons you learnt early on?

“Always be in Record, all the time. When I was 23 I did one of my first tracking sessions for Aretha (Franklin) at United Studios in Detroit. Aretha got on the mic and began singing and after a minute and half she asked to hear it back. A cold chill went down my back as I realised I should have been recording. I’ve relived that experience hundreds of times in the studio where I’ve walked into the room and the artist is noodling. I hit Record and sure enough they’re writing or singing amazing stuff – or they’re writing on the spot. A lot of hip hop artists such as Mary J Blige and Busta Rhymes, they’re always free-styling.”

“Each artist is different – Biggie [Smalls] would sit in the control room for 12 hours and write, listening to the track, looping back and forward, until at 2am in the morning he would be ready and lay out the whole story. He didn’t use pads – neither does Jay Z – he creates the whole story in his head, then goes to the mic and lays out all the parts, the ad-libs, every sound from his head. That’s why when Biggie died there was no legacy, because he didn’t have notepads. The point is that it’s always important to capture freshness – so make sure you’re always recording.”

You have been diagnosed as bi-polar, which went undiagnosed for 25 years. Was it difficult to manage in the early days?

“I’ve struggled with it my whole life. I went through a burn and crash cycle throughout most of my career as a mixer where I would be up in the middle of the night mixing and having all of these incredible visions of what I could do with the music. I could work very fast when I was in a manic phase and then I would crash and sleep for two days. This job on anybody has huge physical toll but maybe the small advantage that I had was that during my manic phases I could literally go for three days without sleeping. For a producer or label that’s looking to get things done fast and efficiently it was beneficial for them. Nobody knew what was going on except my assistants, who would cover for me.