Licensed
to Ills inner liner notes credit Steve Ett
as the albums head engineer, and if you are a fan
of the Def Jam golden era you have likely seen his name
credited repeatedly along side of Rick
Rubins. From 1985 to 1986, Rubin learned to engineer
by watching Ett work the boards. Prior to having been hired
by Rick Rubin, Steve Ett spent a decade working on Steely
Dan and Ricky Lee Jones albums while fine tuning his craft.
In addition to being a studio engineer, Ett is also a talented
drummer. Steves duel abilities turned to be key elements
in Def Jams first records. Rubins early successes
like LL Cool Js album
Radio were fueled by minimalist songs that consisted
primarily of a hard-hitting vocal track and room shaking
beats.
In a November 4th 1986 Village Voice feature on
Rick Rubin, Steve Ett said the following about working on
Def Jam recordings at his Chung King studio in New York.
Rick knows right away when something doesnt
sound right. If I play him a tape, within the first thirty
seconds, hell love it or hate it. Maybe hell
help write the beat. Or if someone has a rap written and
a particular lyric doesnt work, Rick will come up
with a different way of saying what they wanted to say.
But mostly he lets the artist have his own way. Reports
say that Rubin and Ett spent almost a year on Licensed
to Ill, which at the time was unheard of. Due to small
budgets, prior hip-hop albums were processed quickly to
keep expensive studio rental fees down. However when it
came to Licensed to Ill each piece was assembled
with painstaking precision.
Village Voice writer Barry Walters articulately
described the process. The Beastie song that Rubin
is working on now, Its the New Style,
is one of the few without a chanted chorus, but the song
has peaks and breaks of tension created by the way Rubin
and Ett work the mixing board. Each of the boards
24 tracks contains a separately recorded percussion element,
which repeats a phase a dozens of times. Rubin and Ett press
buttons to make each cowbell, high hat, snare, and bass
drum track pop in and out at the precise moment. The mixing
board itself acts as a polymorphic drum set, which allows
an enormous about of freedom to alter a song. The
overwhelming commercial success of Def Jams 1986 release
Licensed to Ill was the ultimate pay off for all
of those late nights they spent in the studio, often finishing
around three in the morning.
From Biohazard to Mary J. Blige, Steve Ett continued to
engineer throughout the 1990s. However the one Rubin- Ett
project that Beastie fans are dying to hear, Def Jams
White House album (1989) still remains in limbo somewhere
between myth and reality. Rumored to have constructed from
unreleased material left over from the Licensed to Ill
sessions, the White House album (if it does exist
in any kind of finished form) would have provided serious
sales competition to Pauls
Boutique had they been released simultaneously.
Yet due to litigation, Capitol Records and the Beastie Boys
were able to block Def Jam from releasing the White House
LP. Therefore, this last collaboration between Rubin and
Ett has continued to escalate into something of an urban
legend.
|