Tim McPhate | KissFAQ
KissFAQ has conducted an interview Australia-based producer/engineer Mark Opitz regarding his role as the producer/chief mixer on KISS’ 2003 project “KISS Symphony.”
In the first of a two-part interview, Opitz discusses the challenges of capturing KISS alongside a symphony orchestra, some of the technical demands inherent to the project, the project’s post-production schedule, and working with KISS’ Tommy Thayer and conductor David Campbell, among other topics.
The following are excerpts from Opitz’s interview with KissFAQ’s Tim McPhate:
KissFAQ: Mark, let’s start with the obvious question. How did you come to be involved with KISS on “KISS Symphony”?
Mark Opitz: Doc McGhee, the manager, asked a friend of mine, Michael Gudinski in Australia, for the names of three people he thought could get involved. And at this stage it was only [at] the mix level. Michael Gudinski said there was only one [person], and it was me. But once I got involved and I started to speak to a few people, I realized it was a lot bigger. I was living in Sydney at the time, so I flew myself and two of my crew down to oversee the operation of the recording aspect of the whole thing.
KF: Mark, live albums present a multitude of challenges. And even then, “KISS Symphony” isn’t your typical live album. What were the main challenges in capturing KISS alongside a symphony orchestra?
MO: The challenges were the fact that KISS are a very active band onstage, and not only active in the way they play but in the audio aspect. I mean you have things like Paul flying off the stage to the middle of the audience at one point. You have Peter Criss going 50 feet up in the air on a drum riser. And not only that, you have massive fireworks going off all the time. Those present a lot of challenges, not just for me but for David Campbell, in particular, when he can’t see the drummer. It’s very hard to keep time as an orchestra, and particularly because I think they had a lot of problems with their headphones early on with the orchestra people. And then when you add to that we had to have 64 microphones on the orchestra as well as everything that we would normally have on KISS. Then I had to design an audience microphone situation where we could make sure [we] didn’t get that latency with the audience. Because the sound hits the audience later than the band plays. So there was a lot of those issues to overcome which, in post-production, we were able to overcome.
Two days after the show, I was in the studio in Melbourne listening to everything and mixing everything and trying to make sense of it all. And it was very funny because I was [saying], “How can I do this? You know, it’s just a mess at the minute.” Then I got “Lick It Up” up, straight, without any vocals, and I just did a mix of that. And I was working and I got it to sound really, really good without any vocals, just bass, drums [and] guitar. And in the control room, in front of me there’s glass as you can imagine, and in the glass I can see standing behind me were four tall figures. The band had snuck in and I had my back to them but I could see their reflections in the glass.
KF: A little nerve-wracking? (laughs)
MO: (laughs) Yeah, I said, “Uh oh. This is gonna be interesting.” But I just turned around and they said, “That sounds fucking great. Fucking great.” And we really got on really well from that point. The whole band and I got on really well, and my team with them. And then I went back to Sydney to do a lot of the “putting together” but the big problem I had was a lot of the orchestral stuff was slightly out of time, here or there, with the band because of the headphone problems and things like that, and the fireworks were going off. I spent a few weeks with my team in Sydney, putting stuff together. Then I flew to L.A. and I stayed in L.A., myself and my main assistant Tony Wall. We were at A&M, it’s now called Henson, and we were there for 52 days.
KF: Mark, original KISS guitarist Ace Frehley chose not to participate in “KISS Symphony.” The lineup for the concert may have been hashed out prior to your involvement, but do you remember talk about Ace coming onboard?
MO: No, Ace wasn’t involved in anything. Obviously Peter Criss was involved. And you gotta remember that Peter had carpal tunnel syndrome at the time so he wasn’t in what I call the best condition, but we helped him out as much as possible. But Tommy was actually more my point guy because Tommy had been the tour manager before Ace had left and also Tommy’s one hell of a guy. They’re all nice people but Tommy had sort of come up through the firm, so to speak, and was the main go-to guy for any questions in terms of what I might need, and particularly in post-production.
KF: KISS have quite the legacy in terms of live albums. That said, their live albums are well-known to have been touched up in the studio. Mark, in terms of the band, how much sweetening was done on “KISS Symphony”?
MO: Only technically. Only stuff that if I left it on there, it would have been a real technical failure and it would have been ripping off the fans. That’s why I said at every stage I had someone from the KISS Army, let alone KISS, listening to what I was doing. In Melbourne, for example, when I was working I’d play stuff to them every night. I’d have them come in about midnight and play stuff back to them to say, “Well, what do you reckon?” And they’re going, “Sounds great. Sounds great!” I had vision as well, so I was playing it against [the visual] and doing all that at the same time. And it’s a similar thing when we did, what was it shortly after, we did another KISS thing?
Full Mark Opitz interview, part one: