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" Reaching For Platinum (Again!)" Recording Engineer Don Casale excerpts from Perpetual Toxins article by Bob Brennan Centaur927@aol.com No account of the rich musical history of Long Island (or America, for that matter) would be complete without mention of Westbury-based recording engineer Don Casale. A listing of artists who have laid down tracks to Don's cue over the past five decades could easily be misconstrued for a hall of fame roster, and many of the era's defining and colorful musical moments are associated with sessions Don has engineered over the years. ...Ironically, it is a session for which Don was not even credited on the album that is one of his, and one of rock's, most defining moments: Iron Butterfly's monumental In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Butterfly drummer Ron Bushy recalls Don's part in the historic session at UltraSonic Studios on May 27, 1968: "We were setting up in the studio and Don said, 'Why don't you run through a song, so I can get some levels'. We started "Vida" and did not stop until the end, 17:05 later! Then, he called us into the control room. We had no idea that he had pushed the record button". "I told them to play a little", Don says, "as I was making adjustments, setting levels and doing sound checks. They began playing a longer rendition of Vida and I just let it run because I heard something good happening". In an era of three-minute pop songs, the 17-minute Vida recorded by Don proved a watershed moment in rock history. Coincidental with the arrival of FM radio's new, freer format, the psychedelic hit opened the floodgates for extended recordings by Cream, Mountain, Pink Floyd, the Allman Brothers and countless others. Vida became the top-selling album in the world to that point, spending an amazing 140 weeks on the charts, including 81 in the Top 10. The platinum designation was created for it. "Our so-called producer [Jim Hilton] was not even there", says Bushy. "He called and said œI'm stuck in traffic from New York City and by the time he had arrived, Vida was done". "The whole album took four days to record, and Hilton wasn't there at all", Don recalls, "except for the first day when he introduced himself and the band to me. Then he left. Traffic? Even Long Island doesn't have four-day traffic jams". When Hilton found out that the band wanted to take up a whole side of an LP with just one 17-minute song, he protested strongly, but the band insisted. Hilton mixed the album at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood and was credited as its only recording engineer, as well as its producer. Atlantic later gave Don a gold record, but to this day, it seems like a well-kept secret that his name is associated with the mammoth success of the recording that he was largely, if inadvertently, responsible for. "After that", Don hastens to add, "Atlantic credited me for everything, even a tambourine overdub on someone's record". ...One Rascals session is particularly memorable. "I was doing a mix with the Rascals one night, and in walked Phil Spector", Don recalls, "and he stood over my shoulder all night, telling me to mix it in mono, not stereo. Do it in mono, not stereo. Do it in mono. Do it in mono, over and over again. Finally, I turned around, forgetting for the moment I was only twenty-three and addressing the guru of the recording industry, and said œListen, Phil, if we were meant to listen in mono, we'd all have one ear where our nose is". ...Don can be reached via email at doncasale@excite.com.

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