Analyzing "Angels" and Its Production

Now we're going to look at "Angels" and the production for this song.

Initial Track Creation

We started this track with a band playing in a room:

• Me on piano
• Chris Sharrock on drums
• Phil Eisler on bass

Basically, it was Robbie's band. We all got into the studio together.

If you were to isolate just the piano, drums, guitar, and bass, it would have sounded quite pretty. From the second verse, it would have sounded pretty much like this.

Back then, the first three, actually, the first four or five, Robbie records had most of the tracks started live with a band playing in a room. Typically, there were four or five musicians. After laying down the core track, we would layer it up. We rehearsed before going into the studio, knowing exactly what we were doing. I didn't want to waste studio time, mainly because we were so busy performing on tour and weren't allowed much studio time.

The Click Track and Additional Layers

This recording was done to a click track. After that, we started adding other elements.

Would you like to play the acoustic guitars? Perhaps start from the beginning.

• Guitars:
  • There's some slide guitar.
  • There are guitars that might surprise you; you probably never heard them before.
  • They're not very loud in the final mix but add a bit of edge to the track, ensuring it isn't too sleepy.

Then you have the famous guitar solo coming up, it sounds quite funny on its own. I actually asked George Harrison to do the solo on this track, but he said he was too busy gardening or whatever. So, I got the next best thing, Andre Barrow.

He played George Harrison in the Bootleg Beatles, which is the best tribute Beatles band. I thought that was quite funny at the time, and he was actually a friend of mine, so it worked out fine, second-best to George Harrison himself!

The Orchestral Elements

Now, let's look at the orchestra, as there's quite a lot of orchestral arrangement on this track.

• I arranged the orchestra myself.
• Can you hear at the beginning? Let me play that again.
  • There's a harp, strings, and sleigh bells.

We incorporated sleigh bells, which are traditionally a Christmas thing, but you'll also find sleigh bells on Beach Boys records. For some reason, I thought that was a cool idea.

This was all done at Angel Studios, which is now sadly shut down.

The Dynamics of Strings

Now, skipping to the middle eight:

One of the wonderful things about strings is their incredible dynamics, they can go from being very smooth to dramatically high.

• There are also French horns, trombones, and trumpets in this arrangement.
• The French horn sounds provide colors that you might have listened to but never actually heard distinctly.
• These elements create incredible drama and gravitas to the track, ensuring that each section remains unique.

There's no copy and pasting on this record, each section is different, which I really like. I think people copy and paste way too much these days; it's a bit lazy.

Final Touches

What else is there we haven't looked at?

I'm a big fan of the timpani, I love the drama it brings.

The vocal for this song was recorded on the very last day of the recording session. We had done everything else on the album, every single overdub. All that was left was this vocal.

After recording the vocal, he got into a Mini and went straight to rehab. I remember waving to him as he sat in the back seat, forlornly waving back at me and Steve Powell, my co-producer. Then off he went to rehab, and we didn't see him again for another three weeks.

Conclusion

So, that's the story of "Angels" and its production.