Youve Got to Run Run Like the Wind to Be Free Again

Archetype Track: "Ride Like the Air current," Christopher Cross

"Ride Like the Wind," and Christopher Cross's Grammy history-making debut album, might non accept happened if Cantankerous hadn't discovered in fourth dimension that Michael Omartian had played on Steely Dan's records.

"Ride Like the Wind," and Christopher Cross'due south Grammy history-making debut anthology, might not have happened if Cross hadn't discovered in fourth dimension that Michael Omartian had played on Steely Dan's records.

At the meeting when Omartian told Cantankerous that he would exist producing him, Cross was less than enthusiastic. Omartian was fairly new at Warner Bros., and he guesses in hindsight that Cross had envisioned someone similar Ted Templeman or Lenny Waronker taking the reins. When Cantankerous left his office, Omartian told his assistant he just didn't know what to make of Cross's reaction, and she told him to blow him off.

"About a half hour later on, I hear a knock on my door," Omartian recalls. "It'southward Chris. He says, 'Oh, man, you're going to have to produce my record.' I said, 'What happened?' He said, 'I found out you played on all the Steely Dan stuff, and that'due south all I needed to know.'"

Omartian had first encountered Cross'southward music at a Wednesday morning time A&R meeting, where all the Warner Bros. producers sat around a table, listened and handpicked their adjacent projects. He says that every bit they got hungrier and it got closer to lunch, maybe the cassette tapes didn't audio as good.

But that twenty-four hours his tummy wasn't growling when he heard the tape Christopher Cross sent in that had "Ride Similar the Wind," "Sailing" and a couple of other tunes, and he asked the table of guys—including Templeman and Waronker—if the music moved them, because it had moved him.

"They said, 'Well, if yous want to exercise it, exercise it, because this guy's been bugging us for two years," Omartian recalls.

The demo was rudimentary, cut with Cross's Austin, Texas band, and Omartian says "Ride Like the Wind" reminded him of a Western.

"I was always a guy who felt that if information technology sounds good in its almost elemental class, and then you've got something," Omartian says.

For well-nigh six months they recorded in both studios A and B of Burbank's Amigo Studios (which, after a while, became referred to every bit Warner Bros. Studios), where the finished product changed quite a bit from the original demo, thanks to a lot of teamwork between Omartian and Cross.

"Someone in one case told me, 'Never fall in dear with your own ideas.' I've always kept that as my mantra," Omartian says. "Unless it's something that's gotta be. But I don't even contend. If the artist says, 'Nah, I don't experience it,' I become, 'Okay, let'south move on.' I ever work in tandem with an artist because you're producing their tape. Information technology'due south non your record."

"Ride Like the Wind" was the first rails they recorded, and Omartian says using Cross's Austin band—Tommy Taylor on drums, Andy Salman on bass, Rob Meurer on synth—was what helped create the magic, even though it took longer for them to adjust in the studio. "These guys were tight with him," Omartian says.

Information technology took nigh two to 3 days to become the track to feel correct, Omartian says because the ring wasn't accustomed to a studio. "They were great musicians, but a little nervous," he says. "I remember thinking later on the first day when I went dwelling, 'Oh my goodness, tin this ring do this?'" When all was said and done, Omartian says, he regrets not continuing to employ the band beyond the debut album.

"Every bit soon as the album took off, Chris got infatuated with the best studio players in town, and I recollect telling him, 'Dude, you've got such a sound with these guys.' He insisted on it. Information technology was actually kind of the band sound to me, and Chet Himes, the engineer and mixer from Austin, who did a bang-up task."

Ane of the first things that dictated the vocal was a change in the drums. Omartian recalls that on the original demo, at that place was a very straight stone trounce.

"As we were doing it, someone, and I don't call up who, said, 'Permit's just propose iv on the floor with the bass pulsate so information technology hit every vanquish,'" Omartian says. "That gave it a bulldoze that made the affair hop from the beginning."

Omartian was impressed with Cantankerous's guitar playing, too, and he received accolades for his solo on "Ride Like the Wind." "He always wanted someone else to play a solo, and I'd say 'no'," Omartian says. "I'd say, 'Dude, play the solo,' and he'd simply fire information technology up. After we were washed with the record, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen both wanted him to play guitar on 1 of their records, and he was so intimidated, afraid to practise it, and he never did."

The producer says Cross was much more confident about his vocals, and justly and so.

"I e'er like to go the vocal on pretty quickly after the bones track and then you're not loading stuff up that competes also much with the vocal," Omartian says, adding that they used an AKG 414 on his leads: "We got the lead right away. We probably went to four or five tracks and and so comped the vocal parts. Chris'due south pitch was ridiculous and he was very stylized, then when you lot went from ane affair to another, he was exactly the same. If at that place was an impulse to do something like a scat or some kind of a riff, he had idea about it so every single rail possessed that same riff. He wrote his vocals as they were to be, menses. You could depend on all v tracks to be the same. You merely took the best."

The basic tracks had gone on start, which was the bones chord line played by four instruments playing the Identical function. Cantankerous wanted Omartian to play on the record, so Omartian played acoustic piano and Rhodes on summit; Cantankerous played guitar, and another audio-visual guitar.

On the original demo, Cross sang the respond vocal, simply Omartian said it really should exist a unlike voice and suggested Michael McDonald. Omartian says that when McDonald came into the studio soon after that, Cantankerous was like a niggling kid in a processed store. They recorded the answers and and then harmonies in the release section.

Victor Feldman came in to do some percussion, Lenny Castro played the signature conga part, and then strings and horns were the concluding piece of the track.

The horns played by Lew McCreary (trombone), Jackie Kelso (saxophone), Don Roberts (saxophone) and Chuck Findley (trumpet) were voiced exactly the same as the vocals on the release section so they blended together, Omartian says.

Violinist Assa Drori was called in to head up what Omartian recalls as a 28-piece string department, and the horns and strings completed what Omartian describes as a runway with everything "only the kitchen sink."

Omartian reminds the states that it was 1979 and his memory is hazy, only he recalls the console was a Harrison 48-channel board, and there were two Ampex 1200 24-track machines. "When you had those tracks bachelor, yous tended to employ them," Omartian says. "Information technology was '79, so the automation would take been pretty rudimentary."

At the end, Himes and Cross had what Omartian calls a "Clint Eastwood moment" and thought of adding the current of air sound near the opening of the track.

"It could have ended up beingness dopey, only nosotros didn't button the volume up on the audio outcome to make it accept over what was going on," he says. "It seemed to add to the cinematic season of the song."

It came from a sample, but in those days they weren't digital. "You went to a library of sound effects and you pulled out a record or a slice of record, and all you did was put information technology upwardly where you lot wanted it onto the 24-track. In that location was no slick way of doing information technology. It was only trial and mistake."

And at the end, what had started off as shaky in his part, resulted in a wonderful ongoing partnership between Omartian and Cantankerous. Omartian says he learned to exist patient with Cross's belittling ways.

"Just to give you an idea, whenever you presented an idea that was new to Chris, he really needed time to remember about it," Omartian says. "When we were doing 'Sailing,' there was no pianoforte solo on the demo, just some chords. It took him about four hours to warm upward to the idea of the solo. I did it in one have and his ring said, 'That's it, that's it,' and he said, 'I don't know, I don't know.' The night guy who cleans the studio walked in while we were in there and Chris said, 'Would y'all mind to something for me?' He listened to the solo and Chris said, 'What do yous retrieve?' He said, 'I think it'southward really skilful.' And Chris said, 'Okay.'"

Ultimately, the album was stalled.

"It was an era where Debbie Harry and the Cars and punk music was huge and we were in the studio making something anything but," Omartian says. "But when you lot're lost in that earth, you're not thinking well-nigh what'due south going on outside until you're fix to nowadays information technology. When we were finished, the caput of promotion, Russ Thyret, came down to my office and said, 'I know you did a groovy job, but nobody'due south playing these kind of records.' He said, 'I similar the record, only I don't call up radio would want it, so nosotros're going to filibuster the release for vi months.'"

Omartian and Cantankerous felt disheartened, but when the record took off, Omartian got a very different call. Thyret said, "Lest you think nosotros had anything to exercise with this, forget information technology. We just put it out and it went nuts."

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Source: https://www.mixonline.com/recording/classic-track-ride-wind-christopher-cross-425710

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