Igor Sandler spoke about his meeting with the American Senator

How often do we get to meet and communicate with great people? I don’t know if it’s luck or a reward for hard work, but over the course of my life I’ve managed to meet, communicate and make friends with many such people. I have many stories in my arsenal that I share with you! And today I want to talk about a meeting with Jimmy Douglas, an American producer and mix engineer, winner of four Grammy Awards, also known as the Senator. Our meeting took place at our production center on Chistye Prudy.

How often do we get to meet and communicate with great people? I don’t know if it’s luck or a reward for hard work, but over the course of my life I’ve managed to meet, communicate and make friends with many such people. I have many stories in my arsenal that I share with you! And today I want to talk about a meeting with Jimmy Douglas, an American producer and mix engineer, winner of four Grammy Awards, also known as the Senator. Our meeting took place at our production center on Chistye Prudy.

Jimmy’s career spans over 50 years. In the early 1970s, at Atlantic Records in New York, he began his journey as a part-time assistant while attending school. Jimmy learned to operate a custom 16-channel console while learning from incredible engineers and producers including Tom Dowd, Arif Mardin, Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun. It’s hard to imagine a more stellar line-up of musicians than the one Jimmy has worked with over the past 50 years: Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Odyssey, Roxy Music, Foreigner, Justin Timberlake and others.

Jimmy came to visit us, we organized a big press conference for him, and then, in a casual conversation over a glass of tea, I, of course, asked him a few questions. Our conversation turned out to be sincere and very interesting. I was also interested in how Jimmy felt about the fact that electronic music is gradually replacing live sound. He answered with a laugh: “We used to cry from music because it was so passionately good, but now because it is very bad. But seriously, I worked a lot back then and I loved what I did. My job has always been to convey the message that the artist puts into his song.”

Jimmy was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but his parents were from the south, and in America, according to him, there is a big difference between the southern and northern states – different upbringing, different traditions, different culture. According to his stories, at home he listened to big band music. He grew up in the 1950s, when classic rock and roll was heard in America, but they did not hear this music in their black community. At this time he was listening to the Rockets.

At age 11, he moved to New York and realized that it was a completely different city. They have one of the strongest Jewish communities in America, and they were playing a completely different kind of music—the new rock and roll. Jimmy, with his already existing tastes, encountered this music. “At that age I was very receptive to music. What I heard was forever imprinted in my memory. And in the same way today’s youth – they have their own music, it touches them just as the music of our youth touched us. We can’t tell them that their music is wrong, but that music is!” — Douglas shared with me.

We talked a lot about styles and their development. “Music is the language of communication, and every musician has the right to convey his message in his own language. This is what I think about every day when I start work. I like soul, R&B, but now there is EDM (electronic dance music) dance music. I don’t like it, but I forced myself to understand it, learned to choose the best compositions. I wanted to be part of this movement, and I succeeded. Although every morning I wake up with the thought that I don’t like this music. Thank God, it’s slowly fading away,” the “sound guru” noted, half-jokingly, half-seriously, adding: “Very often I come across the fact that people argue about what is more important: emotions or melody in a song.” It seems this topic is eternal, and everyone has their own truth about this.” In his opinion, “the melody is the soul that leads you to the song, and the words are your message to the listener. Arrangement is the clothing in which you package your message. Songs from the 1960s wore a tuxedo, but today’s songs call for modern attire. Look at the clothes now: lowered jeans, loose sweatshirts. What we do is dress up the melody and the message in the right clothes. As for emotions, we cannot get into the performer’s head; the emotions of a song are ultimately determined by the emotions of the performer. Today, a song must have rhythm, otherwise people won’t understand you.”

I think every person, even those not from the music world, has a dream – to meet an idol or someone who inspires. I myself am a producer and musician in one person, I was able to work with many creative people. So Jimmy was interested to know which celebrities he would still like to work with and whether he could single out anyone in general. His answer certainly made me laugh! He said he would like to work with himself! Here I agree: who wouldn’t want to work with themselves?.. Taking a serious turn, Jimmy noted that he likes Justin Timberlake – he comes to the studio and knows how and what works, is easy to communicate and at the same time is absolutely immersed in process. “Everyone I work with is good people, but they are difficult people,” Douglas said.

We couldn’t help but talk about the future of rock music, after all, this is our element. As a producer, I was interested to know his opinion and whether rock music still brings commercial success. Jimmy said this: “You won’t hear rock music on American radio anymore. You have to flick the switch for a long time to find a station with this music. And if you find it, it will be the same 100 songs that were there a few years ago. It’s even strange that in the country where rock music was born, it now doesn’t exist. Pop music makes it possible to earn tens of millions of dollars, but rock music does not bring commercial success. I think this is because people have switched to other styles. Indie teams come to me from the very bottom. They try to record, but nothing comes of it.”

We talked for a long time, shared life stories and our experiences. Such meetings always leave a mark on life. I’m glad we were able to have such a heartfelt conversation and asked Jimmy to give advice to those interested in sound engineering. “Don’t do this!” – he exclaimed three times and laughed heartily, but then switched to a serious manner, noting: “There is nothing particularly complicated about this. Firstly, now there is the Internet, in which there is a huge amount of knowledge open to everyone. Secondly, today there are many schools where you can learn something more. When I was a teenager, there was nothing like this. I taught myself to play the guitar and the keys. We played in school bands and didn’t think anything of it. They turned on the radio, listened to music and did not know how this business worked. And when I got to work at Atlantic Records, I had nothing to do with recording music, I just copied records from tape to tape. I had to learn what sound recording was, not because I wanted to be a great sound engineer, but because it was a job that would pay for college. There was one very famous sound engineer there who allowed me to be present while he worked. I sat and silently watched, did not ask any questions. Every day I understood more and more what was what, and then I myself began to record the groups that came to the studio. He mixed the music himself. Then I sent the recording to the studio, and it turned out that no one liked either the music or the words of the songs, but everyone liked how the music was mixed! And I was offered to become a mix engineer. This is what a dream turns into…”

I hope that the meeting that I spoke about today will help many on their chosen path not to give up and believe in their dreams!