With the
line, “It’s got to be Mack, gonna get me on the track”, Queen immortalised
Reinhold Mack in their song Dragon Attack. Even before he met the band
in 1979, Mack had made a name for himself as a sound engineer at Musicland
Studios. Thus he sat at the mixing desk on albums by Deep Purple, the Rolling
Stones, Led Zeppelin and the Electric Light Orchestra. With his effective work
method and creative impulses as co-producer, the now 77-year-old ushered in a new
era in Queen’s career. Jörg Sädler spoke with Mack about his friendship with
Freddie Mercury and the latter’s relationship with Munich.
Reinhold,
how did the collaboration with Queen come about?
Reinhold
Mack: Through strange coincidences. I was in Los Angeles at the time, working
with Gary Moore. There I encountered Giorgio Moroder. He asked me why I wasn’t in
Munich – Queen were in the Musicland Studio just then. So I rang there but
nobody knew anything about it. A few days later I bumped into Giorgio once more
and he asked me again why I was still in California. Then I thought he probably
knew something that wasn’t supposed to be public. On the spur of the moment I
bought a flight ticket and, once in Munich, went directly from the airport to
the studio. And in fact there was a huge amount of equipment there! A roadie
told me that Queen were just coming from Japan and had to spend two more weeks
abroad for tax reasons. So I set up a
few things and prepared the sound.
Specific
recordings weren’t yet planned, however?
No. But a little
later Freddie Mercury showed up and asked me amiably what I was doing there. I
said I’d heard that there was something for me to do here. Freddie wasn’t at
all taken with that at first. But as the weather was fine we just decided to go
to a beer garden.
Your
first meeting then led directly to a hit.
Back in the
studio, Roger Taylor and John Deacon were there too by then. Freddie suggested trying
out an idea which he'd had at the hotel. The three of them then did two takes
of the song, and I simply recorded them. At first they didn’t want to listen to
it again, but I persisted until they did. They liked it, and they decided to finish
off working on the track. That was Crazy Little Thing Called Love. You
couldn’t have a better debut, really.
So the song
was created without Brian May?
He wasn’t
there yet, and Freddie said, “Let’s do it quickly – otherwise Brian’ll have his
ideas and everything will go on for ages”. When he came, he was to play a solo
for it. I suggested that he didn’t use his Red Special, but Roger’s old Fender
Telecaster. It seemed the right thing for this happy-go-lucky rock ‘n’ roll
number. That’s what he did, breaking in his solo about ten to twelve times. I
kept recording it on the same track though. The last recording can therefore be
heard on the final version. But it’s good too (laughs). Later he complained at
great length in an article in Melody Maker that I’d more or less forced him to
play on a Telecaster and that the solo would have sounded just as good on his
guitar. I think he still holds that against me to this day.
The
Game was
your first collaboration together. As with the four following albums, you were shown
not only as sound engineer, but also as co-producer. What’s behind that?
The Game
arose over a long
period of time, during which there were repeated breaks. So the production
credit simply developed because of that. There wasn’t a big plan, but, in
principle, our two worlds came together. Deacy (John Deacon) had said in an
interview shortly beforehand that Queen didn’t need a producer anymore because
they now understood how to work in the studio. But they were still rather used
to classical methods and, as my approach was totally different, the band were
really taken aback. For example, whenever there was a mistake on the production
of a backing track or it was desired that it be put together from various
recordings, you used to have to cut the two-inch tape with a razor blade and
glue the takes together. That was laborious, and something of a nightmare – you
weren’t allowed to make a mistake there. I was more direct – for example, I worked
with punch-in technology, whereby the recording on to tape continued and then I
started the new recording live as well. Then a backing track was finished much
more quickly.
In
general, the effectiveness of your method of working seems to have impressed
the band.
Freddie, in
particular, was always enthusiastic about new things. Above all he was
impressed by the speed with which a lot of things now happened. It wasn’t the
old English way where you had to smoke a joint first in order to get something
done. Or that you beat around on the snare drum for two hours in search of the
perfect sound, or kept swapping round the microphones, or tried out guitar
sounds for ages. I think that’s nonsense anyway, because the normal ear – and I
include my hearing here too – can’t make out those subtle nuances.
Before
Queen you were also the sound engineer on several albums by the Electric Light
Orchestra. What that something of a preparation for the work with Queen?
That was
really a totally different job. Every day started around eleven o’clock late
morning and then often went on until after midnight; in some instances for months
on end. But I also learned a lot and kept improving. Jeff Lynne was very
demanding and if he wasn’t quite sure what should happen next with something,
he gave me a lot of time to try things out: strange microphone arrangements, effects,
broken sounds and so on. We inspired each other a lot.
Along
with your technical know-how, you also contributed new musical input to Queen. Another
One Bites the Dust is a good example.
Deacy had
this bass riff and asked me my opinion on it. My answer was that he might get
into legal trouble with Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers because it sounded
somewhat like Chic’s Good Times. But we did it all the same. I put
together a drum loop. Admittedly, Roger, as a drummer, wasn’t enthusiastic at
the beginning, but then did play a few fills and stops over it.
The idiosyncratic
sound effects are quite striking.
The piece
was initially still very fragmentary. There was only the bass and the loop
running through. At that time there was no digital production where you could
directly see on a monitor where you just were in the track. In order to
orientate yourself, you thus had to count along to the beats; and in order to
have clues so you could know where changes took place or what the structure was
like, I inserted these backward-running piano notes, which I additionally sent
through a delay – a Marshall Time Modulator. Gradually the track developed out
of that. It was a little laborious, but worth it: after Bohemian Rhapsody,
Another One Bites the Dust is Queen’s greatest hit.
While it
was always stressed on the first Queen albums that no synthesisers were used,
on the cover of The Game it says the opposite: “This album includes the
first appearance of a synthesizer (an Oberheim OBX) on a Queen album”. Was it
your idea to work with that?
Well, there
was an OBX in the studio. There was a Fairlight too, but nobody was able to
operate it correctly. I simply suggested the insertion of a swoosh or some
other sound now and again. Or to use the synthesizer to support the vocals or
individual instruments.
Synthesizers
were more present on the subsequent Queen albums, and particularly evident on Hot
Space, which was stylistically out of the ordinary.
That was
already way ahead in technical terms – the sounds, the programming. You hear a
lot of things there which weren’t around before. In order to keep on
developing, you have to move forward and also allow for something new. Only
Freddie thought it was good, though – the other three weren’t so enthusiastic. And
the album came out too early, if you like – six months later there was the ‘Aerobics Wave‘. Leg warmers and Spandex were in vogue and
songs appeared in the charts with frequent mentions of “body” and “muscle”. A
song like Body Language would have fitted in well there.
As co-producer,
were you able have a direct influence on the formation of the tracks?
Of course I
could make suggestions, but otherwise there was no chance with this band. You
really had to adopt a psychological approach. My wife’s a psychologist and
during her studies I often accompanied her to lectures because it was of
interest to me as well. What I want to say is – it’s bad, of course, to tell
someone directly that he’s messing things up – but rather you try to come in
from the angle of buoying him up and saying how great it is. Then you can say that
it would perhaps be even better if a track is left off here or something
else is added there. You simply have to sell the idea in such a way that the
person believes it was his.
Were
there arguments in the studio?
When I
started working with Queen, I met their ex-producer Roy Thomas Baker for lunch.
I asked him what they were like. ”Difficult at the best of times!” was the
response. There were really big clashes amongst the four of them, and I believe
I’m one of the few people who was allowed to be there for those. Normally
everyone was sent out whenever they did some straight talking. I remember, for
instance, that Freddie once said to Brian “Go with the times at last and get your
hair cut!” And then sparks really flew. Such things as that. There were often
angry words, even in the creative context.
But because the band’s structure was a democracy in the sense that the
writer of the song called the shots as to how and whether something was done,
the others would grumpily fall into line, more or less.
You got
to know the band in close proximity. How would you characterise the four of
them?
Freddie had
the great gift of being able to create something brilliant within half an hour.
The finer points, like finding a beginning, a shift, or an end for a song,
would then take somewhat longer. But the basic idea, the heart of a song, he
would get straightened out very quickly. And as a singer he was, of course,
simply magnificent. He could’ve sung the news and it would’ve been great. As a
showman he always did his thing for the public and the press, but otherwise he
said of himself that in private he was the most boring person in the world.
And the
other three?
Brian’s
star sign is Cancer: likelier to be slow and very much bound to his ideas. He’s
a perfectionist, who might still, even now, brood over some notes that he
thinks he hasn’t played perfectly. He still gets worried and pretty much clings
to the ideas he has. Roger was always around when there were the greatest prospects
for success. If Freddie did something that he thought was good, then he was
right behind him and supported him to the hilt. He did exactly the same thing
with Brian. By that I don’t mean that he was spineless – he was just a
pragmatist in this regard. And Deacy often had a fixed view of things, which he
sometimes expressed, but sometimes not, in which case he would just go along
with things. He’s a really nice guy - rather on the reserved side - he didn’t like to be in the line of fire.
Then
again, you and your family formed ties with Freddie in a friendship that lasted
many years, right up to his death.
That just
developed through our collaboration. Freddie was always a person who paid
attention to the having the right social framework – when we finished in the
studio, we often went off to eat. He asked everyone who was there if they
wanted to come along; my wife was to come with us too. So, over time, it became
a friendship. I stayed at his place when I had work to do in London – sometimes
my family was with me. That was completely normal. We never wanted anything
from him, and on that basis a real relationship of trust developed between us. That
was certainly unusual. Unique.
He also
had a close relationship with your three sons, didn’t he?
Yes, even
today they still have good memories of him. He was often at our place and
played table tennis or football with the children. And he certainly couldn’t be
beaten at table tennis (laughs). It was very familial. My kids called him Uncle
Freddie. And when our son Freddie was born in 1982, he and John Deacon became
his godfathers.
Freddie
felt so at ease in Munich that he had an apartment there for a long time. What
made the town so attractive to him?
He thought
it was great that he could just simply go out here and nobody paid any
particular attention to him. He could go to Beck’s with my wife and buy track
suits and t-shirts and eat a croissant on the street at Dallmayr’s without it
being of great interest to anyone. And of course he found the Munich gay scene
very captivating. Here he could go into bars without causing a stir, which wasn’t
possible in London. Not far from his house in Kensington there was also a
well-known gay club, the Tropicana, but he couldn’t go in there because
photographers were constantly lying in wait.
Did you
accompany him on his nightlife forays?
Of course.
I was certainly one of the few straight men who ever went to Mineshaft (laughs).
Freddie had a bodyguard who was two metres five tall and just as broad. He told
him, “Wolli, look after Mack!” So I was able to move everywhere with no
problems and look around. Wolli always stood behind me. In this way I saw a few
things that I definitely shouldn’t have. But that was okay really.
You
worked together on recording Freddie’s only solo album, Mr Bad Guy. He’d
had the idea for it for a long time. Was your friendship the catalyst for his
finally setting about it?
At that
time the band was running on the back burner. Nobody really knew where things
should be heading. I suggested that he used the opportunity to do his own stuff
at last. And so we just got started on it. It developed little by little and it
was one and a half years before the album was finished. I always worked hard on
it; as for him, not always. I often went to his apartment and had to motivate
him: “Come on now, get into the studio. Work!”
With the
disco and synthiepop influences the album took a different direction from the
things Freddie did with the band.
On no
account did he want to do a kind of Queen offshoot. For that reason the things
became totally different musically speaking. It certainly reverberated from his
expeditions through the clubs.
You also
participated on solo records by Brian May and Roger Taylor. How was that
different from working with Freddie?
That was
totally different. I’ll say it like this: if something was considered a good
idea at the start, but then established that it didn’t work so well after all,
Freddie would always say immediately, “Away with it!” The gift of being able to
handle that or accept an alteration was less strongly pronounced in the two of
them.
Queen’s
twelfth album A Kind of Magic was your last collaboration. Here you were
only involved in part of it.
Only in
half of it. Some of the songs were initially created for the film Highlander.
But they weren’t enough for a whole album. I didn’t have any more time, though,
because I was already dealing with a Meatloaf record. So Brian and Roger
continued working in Montreux with David Richards as sound engineer and
co-producer. There was a release date and the album had to be finished.
Did you
stay in touch with the band afterwards?
With
Freddie always. With Deacy less and less over time. He was also a father of six
children by then. If we met on some occasion or other, everything was always peace,
joy and sweetness. But we weren’t chatting regularly on the phone about
anything and everything anymore.
Did your
contact with Freddie change as his illness became ever more apparent?
We were at
his place a few more times. And at some point it was clear that he was in a bad
way. As it came towards the end, we still talked to each other on the phone,
but if we wanted to visit him, he would pull back. He didn’t want us to see him
in that state. Phoebe – his Personal Assistant Peter Freestone – recounted that
he weighed less than 40 kilos at the end and had lost his sight as well.
Freddie just didn’t want the children or us to be faced with that. He wanted to
be remembered as full of life and fit. That was really a noble-minded gesture.
