Pretty much. After that, it was, “Let's get that guy Kramer.” I did Derek & The Dominos, Peter Frampton, Humble Pie.

What's the key to recording live? You'd never been a front-of-house engineer, right?

No, I hated that. I would never do that. It's a question of keeping the band happy and comfortable. The key is their performance. Really, it's a question of capturing that performance and not getting in the way at all. Even if I have to put a mic in a place where I normally wouldn't, so be it, if it makes the band more comfortable. The most important thing is to get the performance.

When you made Frampton Comes Alive, did you have any sense that it would be so popular?

How could one? It was the same thing with Kiss: “Ah, we've got a good record here. It would be nice if it sold a couple of hundred thousand.” And it took off like a bloody rocket, sold 3 or 4 million. With Peter, we knew he had a fan base, but we couldn't have possibly predicted it would sell 14 million records. Who the hell knew?

When you work with young engineers, as you invariably must, do they all defer to you because of your track record? I mean, you're Eddie Kramer!

[Laughs] Well, I suppose some of them are a bit intimidated at first, but you know, I like working with young engineers because they have a different perspective and they have some cool ideas of their own. It's not like I know everything. I'm still learning. I'm open to new ideas.

That said, there is a certain way I like to record: I have my own methods of doing drum and guitars and my EQ'ing. I suppose I am slightly old-fashioned — I hate to use that term — in the sense that my method of recording is getting sounds now. I believe in committing to the bloody thing. Get the compression right; get it sounding cool now. Otherwise, you're just prolonging the agony. Later on, you're going to have to twist knobs for three hours, trying to figure out how the hell you want to make the guitar sound. I like to get the sound then and there, and everybody's happy. Then, when I get to mixing, it's a much easier job.

As one who was so good at recording bands live — both in the studio and onstage — did you ever go through a phase in the '70s or '80s when you would record every element separately one at a time, agonizing over sonics? Spend five hours getting a snare drum sound?

I never did that. I made a very strict rule: I walk in the studio and if in 20 minutes I don't have a drum sound, I go home.

I tell [students] that when I lecture at Full Sail or Berklee or the University of Miami, and they're always shocked because they think you're supposed to agonize over it, like you say. But I'm serious. This is not f***ing rocket science. Yes, there is a bit of science to it. There are some technical things you have to know. But, basically, it's about the song, the song, the song, the song. And then the performance. And then the sound. Of course, your technique has to be as good as the song and the performance. All of those elements have to come together. But don't belabor it!

One of the unfortunate things about today's music is that everyone has become so perfection-oriented. I have to blame that to a certain extent on Pro Tools and the ability to make things perfect. Don't get me wrong: Pro Tools is a wonderful device. It's a great editing tool. But I know from bitter experience that you give certain people Pro Tools and they'll sit there for months dicking around trying to make it perfect. The whole idea of rock 'n' roll music, to me, is going in there and playing like a band and trying to get out some emotion. Not making the vocals perfect and the guitar parts perfect. Rock 'n' roll should have some hair on it, if you know what I mean. Now, even hard-rock bands are working that way: They'll play a small section and then they'll time-stretch it and fart around with it, fix notes and all this. C'mon! Let's play this stuff for real! It really pisses me off.

I use Pro Tools myself. It used to be that I'd record on analog and dump it into Pro Tools and work with it. Now with HD, you can record directly to Pro Tools and it sounds pretty good. It's still not as good as analog. If you want that crunch in rock 'n' roll, you still want some analog equipment in the chain. I think the two worlds can coexist very happily together. But don't abuse the digital world or become a slave to those computers! It drives me nuts.

Where do you like to work?

In L.A., I work at NRG a lot. It's a nice amalgam of high-tech 2003 digital recording and vintage analog. In New York, there are a bunch of studios I use. The obvious choices are the Hit Factory and Right Track, and Avatar's very nice, too. But there's a very nice studio called Clinton that I really like a lot. I used to go to Electric Lady, of course, but haven't been back there for quite a while.

You worked with a third generation of rockers in the '80s, bands like Anthrax. You did all these hardcore heavy-metal bands.

I sure did. [Laughs]

How's your hearing, Eddie?

Whaaaat? [Laughs] Seriously, I think the idea is to minimize your hearing loss by using small speakers where possible. Initially, when I'm tracking, I'll use the big speakers to make sure that the relationship between the bass drum and the bass guitar is what I think it should be, even though the big speakers can be horrible; it seems like in a lot of studios they are, which is unfortunate. I like Dynaudio speakers. I can use Genelecs; I think they're okay. Just keep the volume down. You don't have to crank it all the time. If you have it up loud for an hour, you're going to have hearing loss, period. So keep the bloody volume down. I think you get better perspective, too.