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Shel Talmy
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Shel Talmy (born August 11, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois, United States) is an American record producer, songwriter, arranger best known for his work in London with The Who and The Kinks in the 1960s.
Talmy arranged and produced hits such as "You Really Got Me" by The Kinks, "My Generation" by The Who, and "Friday on My Mind" by the Easybeats.He also played guitar or tambourine on some of his productions.
Early Career
Talmy was born in Chicago, and from an early age he was interested both in music--early rock, rhythm and blues, folk music, and country music--and technology.
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Encyclopedia
Shel Talmy (born August 11, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois, United States) is an American record producer, songwriter, arranger best known for his work in London with The Who and The Kinks in the 1960s.
Talmy arranged and produced hits such as "You Really Got Me" by The Kinks, "My Generation" by The Who, and "Friday on My Mind" by the Easybeats.He also played guitar or tambourine on some of his productions.
Early Career
Talmy was born in Chicago, and from an early age he was interested both in music--early rock, rhythm and blues, folk music, and country music--and technology. At 13 Talmy appeared regularly on the popular NBC television show Quiz Kids, a question-and-answer program out of Chicago. He told Chris Ambrose of Tokion, "What it did for me was that I absolutely knew that this was the business I wanted to be in."
He became a recording engineer at Conway Studios in Los Angeles for owner/engineer Phil Yeend, who trained Talmy on three-track recording equipment, and three days after starting at Conway, Talmy had his first production assignment, the record "Falling Star" by Debbie Sharon. At Conway he worked with artists like Gary Paxton, with surf bands like the Castells and the Marketts, and R&B pioneers, Rene Hall and Bumps Blackwell.
Talmy and Yeend often experimented with production techniques. They played with separation and recording levels and built baffles and platforms covered with carpet, using them to isolate vocals and instruments. In an interview with Terri Stone in Music Producers, Talmy recalled that Yeend "would let me do whatever I wanted after our regular sessions were over, so I used to work out miking techniques for how to make drums sound better or guitars sound better .... There really weren't many precedents, so we were all doing it for the first time together. It was all totally new."
British Career
In 1962 Talmy went to England, and Nick (a.k.a. Nik) Venet, a good friend and producer at Capitol Records, gave him a stack of his new acetates to take along with him and use if he could, as his "own".
Talmy joined Decca Records as a record producer working with Decca's pop performers, such as Irish harmonica trio The Bachelors, leading to the release of the hit single "Charmaine". In 1963, Talmy met Robert Wace, the manager of a group called The Ravens, who later changed their name to The Kinks. He brought the Kinks into the studio, and their third single, "You Really Got Me," became a landmark recording.
According to Jon Savage, author of The Kinks' official biography, "What Shel Talmy and the Kinks did with this particular record was to concoct the perfect medium for expression of the adolescent white aggression that has been at the heart of white popular music. ... 'You Really Got Me' is that rare thing: a record that cuts popular music in half."
Talmy had many more hits with the group, including "All Day and All of the Night", "Tired of Waiting for You", "Dedicated Follower of Fashion", "Sunny Afternoon", and "Waterloo Sunset".
The Who Sings My Generation
Peter Townshend, the guitarist for the mod band High Numbers, liked "You Really Got Me" so much that he wrote a similar number, "I Can't Explain," so that Talmy would produce his group. When the song was played over the telephone to Talmy, he agreed to hear the band. Now called The Who , he signed them to his production company, got them a contract with Decca in America and with their subsidiary Brunswick in Britain, and produced recordings modeled on their live performances.
The intentional feedback on the band's second single, "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere," caused Decca executives to send back the recording, thinking that they had received a faulty pressing. Talmy and The Who created a historic recording, "My Generation", the group's third release. Entertainment Weekly called "My Generation" the "quintessential rock single."
Talmy produced other notable singles for The Who before producing their first album, My Generation, a collection of original songs and R&B covers. However, tensions arose between Talmy and one of the band's managers, Kit Lambert. Lambert "fired" Talmy, but Talmy sued for breach of contract and won. One of the by-products of the episode was a B-side single from The Graham Bond Organization entitled "Waltz for a Pig," an apparent reference to the departed producer.
Talmy owned the tapes to My Generation, but a re-release was held up for years because of the ongoing dispute. This prevented a proper re-release of the LP until 2002, when the dispute was finally settled in Talmy's favor. My Generation was remixed by Talmy and issued on compact disc with bonus tracks. In his book Before I Get Old, Dave Marsh commented that the records that Talmy made with The Who "are technically among the best that the group ever did, and they have a distinct, original sound."
Work With Other Artists
Talmy continued to work with other distinguished British performers throughout the 1960s, including singer/songwriter Davy Jones (later known as David Bowie. He also produced "Friday on My Mind" for the Easybeats, an Australian band that had relocated to England. Writing in the Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Colin Larkin described the song as "one of the all-time great beat group singles of the 60s." Bowie later covered "Friday on My Mind" on his album Pin Ups. Talmy has said that he did some of his most essential work with the Creation. A mod/psychedelic band that often used pop-art imagery, they were well-known as the creators of "Making Time", a song that appeared on the soundtrack to Wes Anderson's film Rushmore (1998).
In 2003 a tribute to Talmy was aired on the radio program Little Steven's Underground Garage.
Personal Life
Shel Talmy is nearly blind from retinitis pigmentosa, which also affects his mother and brother. Getting in at the birth of the computer age, Talmy is highly functional through use of mega high tech voice activated computer equipment and programs. Talmy has an IQ of approximately 180 and is a member of Mensa.
Talmy is married and lives in the Los Angeles area. He is the brother of noted American linguist Leonard Talmy.
He was the founder of Planet Records, a company that released music by the Creation and other English artists in the mid-1960s, and has also held several non-musical occupations.
Talmy is referenced in the autobiography "Black White and Jewish" by Rebecca Walker, as an "almost blind record producer who has worked with The Who and The Kinks."
Selected Discography
The Kinks
Singles
Albums
- The Kinks, Pye, 1964, as You Really Got Me, Reprise (U.S.), 1964
- Kinks-Size, Reprise, 1965
- Kinda Kinks, Pye (UK) 1965, Reprise (U.S.), 1965
- The Kink Kontroversy, Pye (UK) 1965, Reprise (U.S.), 1966
- Kinkdom, Reprise (U.S.) 1965
- Face to Face, Pye (UK) 1966, Reprise (U.S.) 1966
- Something Else by The Kinks, Pye (UK) 1967, Reprise (U.S.) 1968
Dave Davies
The Who
Singles
- "I Can't Explain" b/w "Bald Headed Woman," Brunswick (UK), Decca (U.S.), 1965
- "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" b/w "Daddy Rolling Stone," Brunswick (UK), 1965, Decca (U.S.), 1965
- "My Generation" b/w "Shout and Shimmy," Brunswick (UK), 1965, Decca (U.S.), 1965
- "A Legal Matter" b/w "Instant Party"
- "The Kids Are Alright" b/w "A Legal Matter"
Films
Selected writings
- Whadda We Do Now, Butch?, Pan Books Ltd., 1978
- Hunter Killer, Pan Books Ltd., 1981
External links
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