Shel Talmy

IT IS A SPECIAL MOMENT for those in our line when one encounters a true legend of the music industry, let alone get to work closely with them for a full decade and spend so many memorable hours together filled with conversation and laughter. For this lowly but historically-minded rock’n’roll aficionado, knowing Shel Talmy has been one of the principal highlights of my time in the back catalogue business. It’s all the more mind-boggling when I realise that many, many years on from a primordial music memory as a six-year old in Crouch End braying along with the “la la la la”s of ‘(If Paradise Is) Half As Nice’ on the kitchen radio, I would become friends with the unique individual who had actually produced the record.

That Amen Corner classic was Talmy’s last chart topper in early 1969: before it came a litany of discs that not only constitute a major slice of the soundtrack of the 1960s, but also include several that essentially transformed the landscape of rock and pop music forever. The Kinks and The Who brought the songs and the sound, but it was Shel Talmy who harnessed them to vinyl, and in spectacular fashion. Up to that point, with the exception of a handful of vintage rock’n’roll discs from the likes of Little Richard, there had rarely been a record as purely visceral as ‘You Really Got Me’, or as coruscating in both sonics and attitude as ‘My Generation’.

For those bedrock moments alone, Talmy’s name is necessarily enshrined within rock lore, and the muscular, full-blooded and power-packed sound is one with which he is most closely associated. But Shel was a full-service, and remarkably omnivorous, record man, and there were very few genres he did not dabble in. For as much as he is now known for the raucous sound of UK beat and mod, there was an equal smattering of folk, orchestral instrumental and all-out pop in his resume. Talmy was unabashed that commercial success was his goal, and even named one of his publishing companies “Hitmaker”. And he had plenty of it, starting with The Bachelors’ ‘Charmaine’ in early 1963; an unlistenable fossil to most modern ears, but as Shel would often say, you have to start somewhere. Just a cursory perusal of his many chart entries from the mid-1960s reveal discs both beloved and influential: ‘Sunny Afternoon’, ‘Light Flight’, ‘Semi-Detached Suburban Mr James’, ‘I Can’t Explain’, ‘Summer Song’, ‘Caroline’ and many more. Discounting the producers’ exemplary catalogue with the Who and Kinks, there is at least one other bona fide pop music anthem he was the steward of, in The Easybeats’ ‘Friday On My Mind’, an accolade made all the more meaningful because he was also its engineer.

Shel Talmy was an interesting individual, to be sure; ambitious and restless from an early age, he was smart, and he knew it. As a pre-teen in Chicago he breezed through a syndicated children’s game show and arrived in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s determined to enter showbusiness, his eye on becoming a film director. Unfortunately, it was indeed his eyes that disavowed this pursuit, as a life-long battle with poor vision had already begun. Instead, Talmy moved into sound engineering at Conway Recorders, an apprenticeship which gave him the necessary technical prowess, people skills and contacts to stand him in good stead when he made that fateful journey to London in the summer of 1962 and blagged his way into Decca Records looking for a summer job as producer.

Shel has often recalled to me his mild shock upon arrival in the UK, coming as it did on the precipice of the socio-cultural tumult that he would soon be a part of. While the staid local record industry itself might have required the recalibration that indie producers like Talmy, Mickie Most, and Joe Meek would give it, Shel was taken aback by the open-minded and progressive attitude of the movers and shakers he encountered, and vowed to remain put, especially when he proved to Decca that he could indeed deliver them hits.

While it made his name, working for Decca proved a source of frustration for an increasingly grounded and confident Talmy, and he soon struck out on his own, emboldened by The Kinks’ third single and his first number one, ‘You Really Got Me’. The next two years would be a blur of recording sessions, artist signings, record deals, business investments and the foundation of his own small but significant empire. Not everything worked out, of course, including the disappointingly short-lived label, Planet Records. But Shel Talmy was in demand, and he made the most of it, with his legacy of that period enshrined in dozens of sought-after and much cherished records, from the sublime (the diamond tones of Pentangle, or anything by Shel’s beloved Creation) to the unjustly obscure (Perpetual Langley, Wild Silk).

Though he never considered it a regret, the nine months working with the future David Bowie in 1965 might had led to something more, given that Shel had recognized the young man’s fledgling songwriting acumen ahead of anyone else in the business. One of his frequently repeated mantras was that he rarely had trouble with artists or musicians, only with management, and such was the case with Bowie, The Who and a handful of other acts. He certainly got to work with a brace of eccentrics, including Roy Harper, Lee Hazlewood and Tim Rose, and each case made records that were at the very least worthy, and in Harper’s case, quite beautiful. Shel’s love of folk extended not just to Pentangle but to less visible artists such as Jon-Mark Burchell, Dave Helling and Mable Hillery, and he cheerfully admitted the best-known of the handful of self-penned Talmy copyrights, ‘Bald Headed Woman’, was a steal from one of his favourites, Odetta.

Outside of many hours in the studio, Shel made sure he got to enjoy the fruits of his labours. Fully in the eye of the hurricane of Swinging London, he unashamedly lived the life, frequenting all the “in” niteries and gallivanting around in a Cadillac or white Rolls, all whilst hanging with the likes of Sammy Davis Jr, and dating a Miss World or two. The regular parties at his Kensington flat, attended by the likes of Christine Keeler and Michael Caine, are the stuff of legend. His social standing remined high even as any chart success tailed off towards the mid-1970s, and he invested in other arenas, including recording studios, film ventures, book publishing (the pot-boiling rock fantasy “All Night Stand” and his own pulp, “Whadda We Do Now, Butch?”) and of course an attempt to purchase a Greek island, pre-requisite for rock’s nouveau niche back then.

By his own account, even with regular producer gigs and a new production entity, Hush, Shel got bored with the UK music business and, despite his production of The Damned, surprisingly had little interest in the return of rama lama rock’n’roll via the local punk and new wave movements. He returned to Los Angeles in 1979, met and married his delightful, endlessly supportive wife second Jan (whilst maintaining close ties with his first, Jennifer), and delved into the world of computers. Nevertheless, music was never far from his mind, and Shel’s immense reputation saw him regularly sought out as a producer throughout the next forty years, although few of the records he supervised – which varied from the cod-Britpop of Nancy Boy to several albums of Irish traditional music and a live recording by comedian Rich Little – did anything.

Having virtually memorized the vast majority of his 1960s productions over the years, I finally got to meet Shel when I sent a note to his website to inquire about licensing a couple of masters for “Kinked!”, a compilation of vintage Ray Davies material for Ace. I’d given my phone number and also mentioned that I was friends with one of his earliest clients at Conway, Gary Paxton. I got a call from him less than fifteen minutes later, and we hit it off immediately, and I remember laughter right from that first chat. Shel was always polite but would also say exactly what he thought, without the usual obsequious sugar-coating, which I actually appreciated. He equally appeared to enjoy my genuine enthusiasm for his work, as well as the fact that, as a Brit, I was also familiar with some of the more obscure characters from his time in the UK.

We developed a good working relationship, which commenced with a deep delve into his catalogue for several more Ace collections devoted to his masters, including what was to my mind a long overdue career anthology, “Making Time: A Shel Talmy Production.” As I sifted through the vast trove of tapes, acetates and paperwork within an archive that reached back to his very first productions upon arrival in Britain, I was truly taken aback by his workload in those years. Every trip to Los Angeles would mean hitting the town at least once or twice with Shel, and I cherish the memory of our endless tête-à-têtes in the hostelries of Beverly Hills and the Valley. Early on in our activities, he had wondered aloud, “know anyone that wants to be produced?” Need I say more - my own humble project Strangers In A Strange Land is one of the last to proudly sport the byline, A Shel Talmy Production. The recording process let me observe hands-on how he worked, and thus gain further insights into what had made Shel Talmy a titan in his field.

An aspect of Shel’s life that appears to be little-discussed was the extent of his disability. He had been diagnosed at a young age with the genetic eye disease Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), which ensured that he would slowly but surely lose his eyesight. In the 1960s, this only meant he might have occasionally bumped into a table at restaurant or nightclub, but by the time he returned to the United States, his vision was extremely poor and getting worse. Despite an understandable frustration, Shel never dwelled upon the issue, and in truth it had little effect on his skills as a producer or an A&R man and in fact, combined with his high intelligence, no doubt his other faculties were attenuated further. It was remarkable for me to sit in an almost pitch-black mastering room and hear him nonchalantly toss sophisticated eq notches or limiting ratios off the top of his head.

Shortly before the pandemic hit, Shel had volunteered at one of our various get-togethers that he would like to “re-invent” himself and have a presence on social media. After a few false starts, we settled into a routine whereby he would write a short story, or “vignette” as he called them, devoted to a record or artist he had worked with, which I would then post to Facebook. This evolved into a twice-weekly schedule, and I would speak with Shel every day to advise him of each post’s response, which was invariably and overwhelmingly positive. Through this routine, along with my digitization of his deeper catalogue, much of which he had either not heard for decades or had completely forgotten about, I’d like to think that Shel could enjoy a final, satisfying review of his life’s work, as well as recognize its importance to the world.

The end came far too quickly. It was only a little over a month ago that I was sitting in a booth with Shel at one of our favourite watering holes, The Smokehouse in Burbank, with more stories, more plans and as always, more laughter. But he admitted he felt like he had been “hit by a truck”, and the last call I had with him just over a week ago found him out of breath and obviously very tired. I told him to rest up and get well, and his final words were “thank you, Alec”. It felt like a goodbye, and that is exactly what it turned out to be.

I can’t think of greater honour than having been considered a colleague by the man whose work impacted all of us. Thank you, Shel.