Alan Moulder

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Published in SOS January 2013

People + Opinion : Artists / Engineers / Producers / Programmers


The film of Led Zeppelin’s reunion concert was five years in the making — yet Alan Moulder had only three weeks to mix the entire soundtrack!
Paul Tingen
Alan Moulder at Assault & Battery Studio in London, where Celebration Day was mixed partly in Pro Tools and partly on the SSL desk.
Alan Moulder at Assault & Battery Studio in London, where Celebration Day was mixed partly in Pro Tools and partly on the SSL desk.
Photo: Paul Tingen
On December 10, 2007, the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin, aided by drummer Jason Bonham, performed a one-off reunion show at London’s O2 Arena. A staggering 20 million people applied for tickets, and 19,000 were there to see Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones pay tribute to Ahmet Ertegun, the legendary founder of Atlantic Records. And until recently, the only crumbs of compensation for those that weren’t there were the numerous bootlegs doing the rounds. According to one estimate, as many as 14,000 people used their mobile phone to record parts of the show, and there was no shortage of professional recording gear in the audience either — one bootleg, the dual-layer A Work In Progress DVD, was professionally edited from 15 camera angles and has PCM sound. However, it wasn’t until September 2012 that an official DVD/CD release was announced.
Celebration Day was premièred in cinemas around the world on October 17th, while DVD, Blu-Ray and CD versions were released on November 19, and a triple vinyl LP on December 10, exactly five years after the concert. Reports vary as to why it took so long, but the story goes that a release was not originally planned — the cameras were there to provide visuals for the stage backdrop, but in 2009, director Dick Carruthers presented the band with a rough cut of the visuals, and they were surprised by how great they looked and sounded.
Led Zeppelin were the only act to play a full set at the tribute concert, and the 124-minute long DVD/CD includes many of their best-loved songs: ‘Black Dog’, ‘Dazed And Confused’, ‘No Quarter’, ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’, ‘The Song Remains The Same’, ‘Whole Lotta Love’, ‘Kashmir’ and, of course, ‘Stairway To Heaven’. Musically, many of the band’s ’70s excesses are curtailed, and the songs are shorter and tighter, while Plant gives an intense but dignified performance that does away with the eardrum-piercing shrieks of old, and Page adopts a more textural approach to playing the guitar, with fewer long solos, perhaps because he broke the little finger on his left hand a month before the concert.
Rapid Remix
Carruthers reportedly spent a whopping 18 months editing Celebration Day, using footage from 16 cameras. This stands in stark contrast to the eleventh-hour, three-week rush to perfect the sound. As was described in SOS’s late sister title Performing Musician (www.performing-musician.com/pm/jun08/articles/ledzeppelin.htm), the live sound had been mixed and recorded by ‘Big Mick’ Hughes and Roy Williams, Plant’s regular FOH engineer, who took care of Plant’s vocals at the O2.
Principal FOH mixer for the concert was ‘Big Mick’ Hughes.
Principal FOH mixer for the concert was ‘Big Mick’ Hughes.
A decent-quality stereo mix had been used during the picture editing, but was not deemed good enough by Jimmy Page, who produced the Celebration Day project. During the Summer of 2012, therefore, a last-minute decision was taken to ask a big-name mixer to remix the audio in stereo and 5.1.
Alan Moulder is known for his work with Nine Inch Nails, Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode, Smashing Pumpkins, My Bloody Valentine and the Killers, and he had previously worked with John Paul Jones when he recorded and mixed Them Crooked Vultures’ self-titled debut album (2009). But even for this dyed-in-the-wool professional, the call from Page came as a shock. “You could say that it made me leap in the air!” Moulder recalls. “The first contact had been made by Jimmy’s management, to make sure I was up for doing it. They also manage Foal and the Big Pink, who I have both worked with, so that may have been why my name came up. As a teenager I had been obsessed with Led Zeppelin, they were my band, so obviously when Jimmy called to say hello, it was a big moment!”
Moulder works from Assault & Battery studios in north-west London, which he co-owns with legendary engineer and producer Flood (U2, New Order, Nine Inch Nails, PJ Harvey), and he conducted the mix sessions for Celebration Day in the studio’s mix room, Studio 1. Page regularly visited the studio during the mixing process, though his very first visit didn’t exactly go as Moulder would have liked. He recalls, “My assistant, John Catlin, and I had started mixing the opening track of the concert, ‘Good Times, Bad Times’, at 11am, and Jimmy dropped by at around four that afternoon. When he listened to what we had done, we could tell that he was completely underwhelmed. That really spurred us into action, and it got very late that night! When he came back in the next day, he smiled and said, ‘Yes, that’s much better!’ Jimmy continued to come in every day to listen to what we had done, and he would give his comments, which never were what you would expect. But they were always great comments. He steered the ship. Nobody knows better than he how Led Zeppelin should sound. He immediately knows whether it’s right or not, and this could be regarding various aspects, from levels to tone. He really was on top of it.”
Keeping It Together
The 2007 Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert saw the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin play a unique reunion show. From left: Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page; on drums is Jason Bonham, son of the band’s legendary drummer John.
The 2007 Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert saw the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin play a unique reunion show. From left: Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page; on drums is Jason Bonham, son of the band’s legendary drummer John.
Photo: Kevin Westenberg
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Published in SOS January 2013

 

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In this article:
Rapid Remix
Keeping It Together
Track Escalation
A Modern Approach
Better Is Better
Rough Cuts
Surround & Around
Crowd Sourcing
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