I was much more inclined to take chances. His playing was so different and unusual and had so much depth that it encouraged me to see what interesting things I could do with it: “Let's see how far out we can take this.” We experimented with phasing and EQ and compression and reverb, and he was up for it all. He loved that phasing; wanted it on everything. [Laughs]

Did Sgt. Pepper affect you the way it affected so many other engineers?

I'm not sure it affected me other than it was obviously a brilliant record. I was so involved with the next session that I didn't really have time to digest it from a technical standpoint, or think too much about how it was done.

One thing that did influence a lot of us in England, though, was the sound of the bass on so many American records in the mid- and late '60s. We would study records by Dylan and some of the R&B and pop artists and we'd hear this bass and wonder, “Damn, how the hell did they get that sound?” I know this for a fact because I came to America in 1968 and figured out how to do it.

And the answer was….?

It was Pultecs and LA-2As and all of the American preamps that engendered that sound. Of course, a lot of it was the playing, too.

It's funny, because while I was trying to figure that out, all of the American engineers would ask me, “How did you get that sound on Hendrix?” So there was a great cross-pollenization of ideas. Plus, you had the great English bands coming over to the States being influenced by the Americans, and vice versa. I think at the time, we had the better consoles in England: the Helios and such. But we didn't have 8-track yet, and we were very jealous of the Americans for that. When I came to the States in April of 1968, I jumped from 4-track to 12-track when I went to work at the Record Plant, and that was quite a challenge.

Once you were here in the States, you still worked with Hendrix on Electric Ladyland, and then you also worked on Led Zeppelin's second album. What was it like working with Zeppelin?

I very much enjoyed working with the Zeps. Obviously, they were a great, great band, and by the time I recorded them, they were already quite a success in both the U.S. and in Europe. I mixed that second album in just two days at A&R Studios on a small, 8-channel board with two pan pots! With Zeppelin, you always knew who was the boss: Jimmy Page. He always had very specific ideas of what it should sound like, what the solos should be, how the vocal fits in with the overall sound. He was very, very much in charge at all times, and very talented.

You got to work with the best rock guitarists of that generation: Clapton, Hendrix, Page. Then later, you worked with bands who had been influenced by those players and were clearly more derivative than they were original, such as Kiss. Was that at all strange?

Not at all. I really liked working with Kiss. You have to look at Kiss in a different light, because they are such a different animal. Gene [Simmons] had this concept about making a rock 'n' roll band with makeup and each member having his own identity. And they played this hard rock that was pretty good, but with them, it was the whole thing: the music and the image. Ace [Frehley] was certainly influenced by Clapton and Henrdrix and Page and all of the great guitar players, and you can hear it, but at the same time, he combined those influences in some interesting ways. I think he's a greatly underrated guitar player. Also, I liked their rawness and directness. Kiss is an anomaly. They're really an entertainment band, like a traveling rock 'n' roll circus. It's theater, kabuki, rock 'n' roll on steroids. It's made for fun.

I remember going in the studio and cutting their demo: a 4-track at Electric Lady. I still have the original quarter-inch. They went off and did their touring and got their record deal. I didn't actually do an album with them until the live album [Kiss Alive]. When I got the phone call from Neil Bogart, who was the head of Casablanca, asking if I wanted to do the live record with Kiss, I had a tape on my desk from Tom Scholz and Boston and I listened to it, and I thought it was tremendous. I called Tom back and I said, “Tom, this record is great, man, put it out the way it is. I can't add anything to it.” So I did the Kiss record. I wanted the challenge of working with a band that was leaping around, bombs exploding. How do you make that sound good? They're out of tune, they're out of time…

It's interesting that you were doing that at the same time you were working on Physical Graffiti with Led Zeppelin, which is a really bold and sophisticated album through and through.

That's true. I was very fortunate. I went to England and recorded a whole bunch of tracks for them using the Rolling Stones mobile. Again, Jimmy knew what he wanted. I will say this, though: The unsung hero of that band was John Paul Jones. He was very, very bright and knew a lot about arranging and had many good ideas.

Led Zeppelin was one of those groups that went through that interesting progression of becoming really, really huge and having a scene around them that got progressively weirder and druggier. As an engineer, were you affected by those kinds of changes?

Sure, you couldn't help it. With Zeppelin, it became a battle, because they started to come into studio with such an attitude. At one point, they came into Electric Lady to mix one of their albums, the one with “Stairway to Heaven.” We started and then one night, the band ordered some Indian food and a whole bunch of it spilled on the floor and I asked the roadies to please clean it up. The studio was brand-new and I had a lot of pride in it. And suddenly, they're yelling, “You don't tell our roadies what to do!” And they pulled out; they left, and I didn't speak to them for about a year! Then later, they called back and asked me to record them again as if nothing had happened. [Laughs]