How I Got That Sound: Ed Stasium

Since starting out in the early ’70s, American producer, engineer and mixer Ed Stasium has worked with a Who’s Who of the music world, from the Ramones, Talking Heads and Mick Jagger to Soul Asylum, Julian Cope, Motörhead and many, many others. From this stellar discography, Ed nominates the drum sound on Living Colour’s ‘Love Rears Its Ugly Head’ as a particular favourite.

“I absolutely love the drum sound we achieved on this track because of its natural ambience, with no outboard reverb whatsoever. Being self‑taught with no proper training, everything I developed was through my own experimentation and experience. When I started out, my personal observation was that the drum sounds that were being recorded in studios all sounded dead. In November of ’75 I was hired as a staff engineer at Le Studio Morin Heights in Quebec, Canada.

“One of the first projects that I worked on was Pilot’s Morin Heights LP with producer Roy Thomas Baker. Before the band and Roy arrived, as it was popular in the day, my engineering partner the late great Nick Blagona and I set up the drums in the existing drum booth. When Roy and the band entered the studio for the first day...