Few producers and engineers have had as much impact on rock ’n’ roll history as Eddie Kramer. His sonic fingerprints can be heard on career-defining records such as Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin II, Kiss’s Alive!, and Anthrax’s Among the Living.
Yet it’s perhaps his close collaboration with Jimi Hendrix that most pushed the envelope of the craft itself, including pioneering techniques such as stereo phasing/flanging, which created the characteristic whooshing psychedelic sound that’s quintessentially Hendrix.
“Experimenting with stereo, which I really, really got into on Axis: [Bold as Love, released in 1967] showed the next expanse of Jimi’s sound: phasing,” Kramer tells Rick Beato when reflecting on Hendrix’s ever-expanding palette of guitar sounds.
“I was very fortunate to have worked with the Beatles on two occasions. I did All You Need is Love and Baby, You’re a Rich Man. I think it was on the All You Need Is Love session. We asked – now he's dearly departed – George Chkiantz, a fantastic engineer, and we said, ‘George, how did you get that phasing sound for the Beatles?’”
Chkiantz was far from keen to spill his secrets. “He says, ‘Well, chaps, you know, if you look in the BBC Radiophonic Handbook, you’ll actually find it there.’ And we said, ‘Fuck you, George.’ I mean, come on, we’re just asking!”
Kramer knew that the Beatles had managed to get it in mono, and, spurred by the nonchalant reply, was determined to go one step further – and teamed up with Chkiantz himself to do so.
“George, God bless him, locked himself away in one of the small studios in the back with about four tape machines, and a week later he came out and said, ‘Eddie, I got it. I got the stereo phasing.’ ‘Great! Let’s try it with Hendrix.’”
That’s exactly what they did, testing it first on the coda of the freshly recorded Bold as Love.
“On the appointed day, we're putting the final touches to the mix. ‘Jimi, come in. We want to play you something.’”
As Kramer relates, the tape machines were rolling, and right as Mitch Mitchell launches into that massive, thundering drum break, the phasing kicks in – created by slightly delaying one signal against another – forever defining Hendrix’s psychedelic-infused sonic universe.
“Jimi's sitting behind me on the couch, and he hears this, and he loses his shit completely,” Kramer recalls.
“He falls on the floor in a fetal position and puts his hands on his ears. ‘Oh my god, oh my god, I can’t believe [it]! What is that? That was something in my dream. How did you do that? Play it again!’ So we play it again. Oh, he’s going crazy! [He says], ‘I want that shit on everything, man.’
“True story!” the producer concludes with a laugh. Watch the full interview above, or subscribe to Rick Beato’s channel for more.
Kramer spilled the beans on what went into working with Hendrix in a recent Guitar World interview, where he also detailed how they managed to achieve the “backwards guitar” on Are You Experienced.
