Hit-Bound With Black Crowes Producer George Drakoulias By Bud Scoppa The walls of George Drakoulias' house in the Hollywood Hills are rattling ominously. But this isn't another of the tremblers that frequently threaten to rearrange the topography of Southern California. Drakoulias is just blasting his stereo again, loudly enough to annoy the neighbors. It's a good thing the only other residents of this otherwise barren bluff are lizards, raccoons and coyotes. We're a mere five minutes from the Sunset Strip, but up here the nearby urban sprawl seems like a distant memory. The house is a veritable shrine to American pop culture. Books on rock history, movies and photography line one wall, shelves along the hallway are crammed with CDs of vintage rock and soul music, photos of jazz and blues legends are hung in another hallway and pasted to the door of the refrigerator, whose virtual emptiness confirms that this is the home of a bachelor. A stereo sits on the floor at the far end of the rectangular structure; behind the sound system, a floor-to-ceiling glass wall frames a pool that extends the rectangle another 30 feet. Drakoulias, his lineman's body draped in baggy shorts and shirt, a shapeless hat pulled over his curly brown hair, crouches in front of the stereo to cue the DAT he's been listening to. It contains two mixes of John Lennon's "How Do You Sleep?" as rattily reinterpreted by Stone Temple Pilots' Scott Weiland for an upcoming Lennon tribute album. Drakoulias produced the track, working with engineer Pat McCarthy, and he's trying to decide which of McCarthy's mixes he prefers, the by-the-numbers version or what he refers to as the "incorrect" mix. Sitting on the couch facing the stereo, I tell George that the high end on the latter mix just about took off the top of my head. "That's what the kids today are going for," he quips. Drakoulias picks up the phone and tells McCarthy to go with the incorrect version, which turns out to be the engineer's choice as well. They'll meet up tomorrow to oversee mastering, after which George, who just turned 30, once again will be able to immerse himself in his records, his books, his pool. Drakoulias's career began spontaneously a little more than a decade ago in classmate Rick Rubin's NYU dorm room, which doubled as the headquarters of Def Jam Records, the brainchild of Rubin and partner Russell Simmons. Drakoulias, a combined music and business major, found himself in the right place at the right time, gaining firsthand experience in the making and marketing of records as the fledgling rap label scored with singles by Public Enemy, L.L. Cool J, the Beastie Boys and others. In the process, he learned far more about both music and business than he did in the classroom. As Def Jam evolved into Def American, now known as American Recordings, Drakoulias grew into the dual roles of staff producer and A&R executive, signing and producing the Black Crowes, the Jayhawks and the Freewheelers, as well as working on such outside projects as Do Right Man by Dan Penn (the legendary Memphis songwriter and soul singer best known for co-writing such classics as "Do Right Woman Do Right Man," "Dark End of the Street" and "I'm Your Puppet") and Tom Petty's Wildflowers. I met George earlier this year at Master Control in Burbank, where he'd come to add percussion to a couple of tracks on the debut album by Neal Casal, my final A&R project for Zoo Entertainment. The Casal record was being produced, engineered and mixed by Jim Scott, who'd mixed the upcoming Freewheelers album for Drakoulias. I'd heard that George had bristled at my description of his in-studio pace as "glacial" in my ATN rave review of the Jayhawks' Tomorrow the Green Grass. But he turned out to be a good-humored, self-effacing guy. When I called him recently to ask if he'd be willing to submit to an interview for ATN, he not only agreed but promised to play me all 27 previously unreleased tracks that will appear in the upcoming six-CD Tom Petty box set, on which Drakoulias served as executive producer. Working with Petty and Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell, Drakoulias and Scott had mixed 22 of the 27 tracks, an ambitious labor of love that involved the recording of some additional instrumental and backing vocal tracks, including a guest appearance by Lenny Kravitz, who laid down bass and guitar parts on a song called "You Come Through." With the Weil and mix decision out of the way, George makes good on his promise, providing concise and enthusiastic commentary in the gaps between songs. I'm blown away by the overall quality of this stuff, which dates back to the original Mudcrutch demo and confirms Petty's status as a repository of American roots idioms. That done, we repair to a pair of poolside lounges, light up humongous cigars and begin our conversation. We start with the Freewheelers, whose aptly titled Waitin' for George (scheduled for a Feb. '96 release) is the producer's latest project for American. Addicted To Noise: The Freewheelers album is impeccably done. It's an authentic blue-eyed soul record. It's a stylistic extension of the album you produced last year with Dan Penn, but in this case working with a much younger guy with a natural affinity for vintage rock and soul. I think what Luther [Russell, Freewheelers writer-singer] doesn't have yet is the ability to convey pathos or poignancy. George Drakoulias: Right. The Freewheelers are all playing everything they can do at any given time. They're young, that's what it is. The decision we made was that Luther was going to have to yell on every song because that's the way the band plays­­ the band is playing against it, they really are fighting musically. So I think he'll mature, but I think right now it's really a knucklehead kind of bam, bam, bam ­­everything's at 11. It's like, if you let up, you're a pussy. ATN: I'm not saying he's going for something that he doesn't get­­he absolutely pulls off what he's going for. But he's dealing with a narrow palate. Drakoulias: It's one joke. It's one thing and it's done for 45 minutes. It kind of gives me a headache at times. I find it exhausting to listen to it. It's really youthful, very high-energy. But I think he'll grow. I heard a couple of new songs that sounded a little more sophisticated. I think he'll start singing a little differently after he plays for a while. You can't be at 11 the whole time. Once they have to start playing three or four shows in a week, he'll realize that he's got to tone this thing down ­­at least down to a 7 [laughs]. All the tracks are live, and like I said, it was a decision of whether or not to try overdubbing to make more space. I decided they wouldn't be able to do it. It's not where they're at . You just turn them on and let it go. ATN: You were tracking live with a fairly inexperienced band, although they cut an earlier record. Drakoulias: Yeah, it was a lot of, "Okay, rolling," and they'd do a count-off, play a bar and stop. "What happened?" "Oh, were we rolling?" Or, "Oh my cymbal fell off" [laughs]. Or they'd stop in the middle and start a conversation. "Hey, we're rolling!" "Oh, OK." It took a while to get past that point. But we tracked pretty fast, in about two weeks for the live stuff. ATN: It seemed like Jim [Scott] was in there forever mixing it. Why was it such an elongated process? Drakoulias: We didn't work on the weekends. Still I think we only mixed for 14 or 15 days and we mixed 16 songs, so we did about a song a day. But Jim was in there overdubbing. The singing we took a long time with, only because it took a while with Luther ­­being away from the band was a little weird for him, singing by himself. He'd be a little behind or ahead and it was hard to find that place for him, so he did a lot of singing. Then we did all of the background girls, which took awhile. That whole part of the record took a while. That's when Jim came on, to do some overdubs in the summer. ATN: On Wildflowers, you're credited as "consultant on anything really important." What was your specific role in the making of that record? Drakoulias: I'd go down to the studio and just offer my opinion up. It was a pretty casual thing. I'd go down maybe two or three times a week and hang out for a couple of hours and see what they were doing. I can't think of any major production contribution. It became this thing where I would just show up and expound ­­whether they wanted to hear it or not. ATN: But something must have clicked for Tom and Mike, because they asked you to work on the box set. Drakoulias: I think we have the same sensibility. ATN: You didn't know Petty until preproduction for the Wildflowers sessions, but it seems as if the two of you have something in common, this pervasive understanding of musical history and roots. Drakoulias: Totally. I love his songwriting. When I was a kid in bands, we used to play his songs. I was never the songwriter in the groups, but I'd use him as an example to the guy who was supposed to be writing the songs. Like "Hey, this is what a bridge is. See how exciting it is?" Especially when Damn the Torpedoes came out; it was such a perfect record in every way. I always hold it up as a milestone of something to strive for. Everything was really thought-out, everything really made sense and happened for a reason. It was inspirational, that record. ATN: How did you pick up this musical understanding? Drakoulias: My parents listened to a lot of Greek music, because I'm Greek. But then my mother used to buy all of the Dick Clark repackaged oldies records, and they were great. She used to play them in the house, and she used to sing "Earth Angel" to me. That's really what I listened to when I was very young. That, or Simon & Garfunkel, the stuff of the times. ATN: What instrument did you play in the teenage bands you were in? Drakoulias: I started playing drums and then I played bass, because there were no bass players in junior high. There were a lot of drummers but no one knew what a bass was. It was kind of a weird instrument. My parents got me a bass for Christmas when I was in seventh or eighth grade, and it was a very strange thing. Nobody who had bands at the time had bass players, but they all knew you needed one, and no one knew what it did. I didn't really get too good until later on. I was kind of playing it like a guitar for a long time­­ pretending it was a guitar and making a lot of bad noises. ATN: When you enrolled at NYU, you'd already been in bands, and you were a combined music and business major­­a savvy move for a 17-year-old kid. Drakoulias: [Laughs] It was the only way I could go to NYU. My parents didn't want me to go there. They wanted me to go to either Syracuse, where my brother had studied business, or to a state school like Albany. I knew I wanted to be in Manhattan and I wanted to do music, and the only way I could do that was if I said I was going to do this program, music/business. ATN: Did you want to be a musician at that point? Drakoulias: I wanted to be in a band more than anything else, but I didn't get into a band until the second year I was there. The first year I just kind of went out. It was really different in the city. It was a great place to be a teenager and experience that time. I remember the first day I moved into New York City, I went to this used-clothing store, and I heard this guy say, "What do you think of this one, Ma?," and she said, "I don't know, Joey. Why don't you try this one?" It was the ugliest tuxedo jacket I had ever seen, and it turned out to be Joey Ramone with his mom. And that was my first day in the city. That was 82 ­­new wave was happening. I went through this club thing and started hanging out. You had the rock/new wave thing, and then you had the dance stuff. It was really cool and interesting. Addicted To Noise: It was rap music that first got you into a recording studio. How did that occur? George Drakoulias: Rick was the DJ at the dorm, and I had started dating an old girlfriend of his. She introduced us, and I started helping him with the parties. He said he was starting this label, and I said I'd try to get an internship and get credit, and I would work with him and we'd do something. I'd been in a studio once, but a real cheap studio on Long Island, like a demo place. The place we went to was not that much better, but it looked better. It was a crazy time ­­really exciting. You'd make a record on the weekend, and you'd have it out the next week. You'd have a test pressing and you'd go to the right DJs. I remember going to WBLS and giving stuff to Frankie Crocker and this guy Butterball who used to be at KISS, I think. You knew right away: If you put the record on and people danced, it was good­­and if they didn't, you knew it wasn't going to be that great. I didn't know what I was doing and Rick didn't know much more, I don't think. He was just paying for the studio time and kind of had a vision. He would write these beats, and the studio was totally manual, so you had four or five people on the board holding things down, waiting for something to come up. "Is that coming? OK, next one." You might accidentally put the kick drum on half a beat early, but it would be okay. You always broke it down to the high-hat at one point. There were certain things you just automatically followed. There would be a guy yelling in one room and a drum machine and a lot of reverb. I really have nice memories of it. You never knew what was gonna happen. ATN: Were you knowledgeable about any black music idioms before that? Drakoulias: Just what I liked. I loved black records and R&B records and soul records from the radio, oldies stuff. Rick would have guys come and DJ, and they'd play something interesting like the Ohio Players, and we'd go get that record. Or we'd get a lot of Parliament records. That's when I started learning about that kind of stuff, more in college. Then, when they made the Def Jam deal with CBS, I became friends with this A&R guy Joe McEwen [now at Warner Bros. Records]. He turned me on to a whole new thing. He'd make tapes for me of his radio show that he had once a month in Jersey. He'd tell me about certain records, point me in a direction and I'd come back with ten of them and he'd tell me which ones were good, bad or experimental. He was a great inspiration. He's like an encyclopedia, and he taught me a lot about records. I knew the big songs, and then he would teach me about the more greasy stuff, or the real outside stuff, the weirder stuff. ATN: Getting back to your musical apprenticeship, it sounds like you happened to get on the train at this one station... Drakoulias: ...and it kept going. I'd just learn things, like, "Wow, why is that kick drum doing that?" Or I'd hear something crazy in a song, and it would inspire me to listen harder, or listen to other things to find out what other people were doing. Like I'd know about Booker T. & the MG's from "Green Onions," and then Joe would explain about Stax Records. Then that book Sweet Soul Music [by Peter Guralnick] came out ­­it was like the Bible for a while­­I read it three or four times just to get all of the information. I'd study a chapter and then find those records, and I'd learn what was going on; I'd learn the players. It was really intense. ATN: How do you apply this knowledge in specific studio situations? You were saying before about noticing a particular kick drum sound ­­that somehow it sticks with you, right? Drakoulias: And you want to use it. You make records that you want to hear, and the records I want to hear are the records that I loved. I like to break new ground, maybe not by pushing the envelope but by doing something weird and different in some way from what's going on now. I don't think you should do something just for the sake of doing something new, so you can say, "I'm different." I think you should do something new if it makes sense, if it's a good, interesting sound. I really liked the Breeders' "Cannonball" a couple of years ago. It was just crazy. It sounded like someone dropped a needle on it in the middle of the record. I really liked that. That, to me, is exciting. I can't say it's the newest thing, but it's the newest approach. And [as a producer] I try to find that kind of thing. It's hard because you know what works­­ eight bars to an intro, and then you start the vocal, or it's a drum break, then intro. It's hard not to get stuck in those patterns, because they work. But I really respect when someone has no regard for convention. I like a lot of lo-fi stuff, but I think they need to get better songs. Everything sounds really cool and weird and homemade, but you're waiting for a payoff. ATN: No matter how inventive a sound is, for it to be special it needs to be applied to a song . Otherwise it's just an aural exercise. If there's one universal, that's it. I think if A&R people would recite that as a mantra­­you've got to have songs­­they wouldn't spend so much stupid money on things that aren't going to work. Drakoulias: It's weird now. It's a much different era. In some ways it's like the one-off '60s era­­people had a couple of big singles and that was it. I don't think you can blame a record company for saying they really want to maximize a record and get whatever they can out of it, because who knows what's going to happen next year? There aren't that many career bands anymore. You used to be able to sell 300,000-500,000 records and play arenas for a year if you were a rock band. You'd have maybe a double-platinum record, and the next one might have done only platinum, but it would be OK. You'd still be able to come back next year and play the Forum. But now there are people who have three million-selling records who can't sell out a big theater, or a club, even. With things like the web sites and the Internet, people want instant things; I don't think it's going to go the other way. There will be a handful of artists who have three or four big records in a row. How many people out of the last 10 years have really had careers? There's maybe U2, R.E.M. Who has been around for four records consistently? Pearl Jam, but I think they're their own thing. ATN: Nirvana would have. Drakoulias: Right. There are just a few. ATN: I thought Crowded House would be one of those bands, but with each successive record, regardless of how good it might have been, their audience shrank further. It was as if they were in the wrong era. Not making the wrong music, but just the wrong time. Even people who seem to be perennials, like Prince in the early '80s, have fallen apart or lost their way. Drakoulias: There's Tom [Petty.] He's going on 20 years now, but I think that era is gone, almost. If Tom had come along today, he might have had the one or two big records. His songs would probably have been just as good, but it might have been a different outcome. ATN: What's the specific nature of your A&R role, as opposed to your staff producer aspect? Drakoulias: I haven't signed anything that I haven't made a record with. The reason I like to do that is that you can develop the thing at its own pace. I think you have a little more control, which can work against you also because the band usually starts to resent you faster. You're the one saying, "You're not ready to go in yet," as opposed to just being hired to produce after the label has already sat with it for a certain amount of time. That's why I don't do too many outside projects: I don't feel I have as much control over it. It's like they say, "These are the 10 songs we want to do, and we'll make these as good as we can." As opposed to, "These are the six songs you should do, and we need four more." You can do that to a degree, but after a certain point, if you're not their A&R guy, you can always say that you don't think a song is great, but it's tough to say, "See you in six months." Then they'll find someone else who'll say that these 10 songs are great; let's go now. Because someone will always say that. But you have to be honest. ATN: Most A&R people­­and in fact most record companies in terms of the way they're run from the top­­tend to take what they can get out of artists. Like saying, "OK, these are the songs you've come up with; let's talk about which ones are the strongest." And that's pretty much as far as it goes. It's rather unusual for an A&R person to pull the plug on the process, if only because there's a certain momentum that builds up during the course of the standard cycle: making a record, touring, coming off tour when the record is over. Then the cycle begins again with the songwriting process. Your approach seems more rational, but you have to be a tough guy to do that. Are you? Drakoulias: Yeah, I do wind up being the guy who says no. Who wants to do that? My big line is, "Look, I'm just a mirror, and If you don't like what you're seeing in the mirror, look in a different mirror. I'm not telling you anything that's not there. I don't make it up for my own sake. I'm not saying I'm always right, but this is what I'm feeling, and if I don't tell you, then it wouldn't be doing anybody a service." ATN: You can only do that effectively if you've earned the band's trust. Drakoulias: That's the thing. You become very friendly with them and you gain their trust. You court the band, you talk to them, you spend a lot of time with them. You discuss records you like, records they like, then you talk about the songs. So by the time you start recording, they trust you, they know where you're at. They know you're not just saying something because you have to be right about everything. Or you're not just saying it to them just to hear yourself speak, or having an opinion just to have an opinion. You're expressing an opinion because that is your opinion. I think it also helps to sign an act that nobody else wants­­bands that have never been in a bidding war, or that six labels have to have. Then you start selling yourself and say, "Hey, come with us, because those guys stink." Before I signed the Black Crowes, I called a few A&R people from other labels and told them the band was playing a show at CBGB's in New York, and why didn't they come down and check it out, see if they liked it? They came down, but they all walked out within the first three songs. I encouraged the band to talk to whoever they wanted to ­­they should talk to everybody, just make their own decisions. When no one else is interested in them it's a little tougher. Addicted To Noise: I was surprised to read that the Black Crowes weren't familiar with the Faces until you played them A Nod Is as Good as a Wink (To a Blind Horse). That turned out to be a significant piece of the puzzle, to say the least. George Drakoulias: Like I said, we started hanging out and I saw a show. A couple of their songs impressed me, but the songs they covered really impressed me. They played an Aerosmith song and a Stooges song. Some of the other original stuff just seemed like it had no point of view or direction ­­it just went on with nothing really happening. Chris [Robinson] told me that that was the stuff they had to play because they were really popular in Atlanta. I asked him what kind of stuff they listened to, and he said they liked the Stones a lot, they liked rock & roll stuff. Then I remember playing the Faces record over the phone to Chris, and him saying, "Yeah! Send me that record." So I sent it to them, and then I'd get a Humble Pie record and send that. It was just inspirational for them. So they said, "OK, now we can be this other thing." But when they became that other thing, everybody hated them. For a year I had to hear how everybody thought they sucked and no one wanted to see them anymore. They went from being a really popular band to being a hated band in Atlanta. I appreciated their situation, but I kept saying, "This is just Atlanta. Not that it's not a great city, but there's New York, there's Chicago, there's a million places in between. Atlanta's not the be-all, end-all, believe me." I said, "By the time your record comes out, people will change their minds and they'll think it's all great, or they'll be jealous and hate you." ATN: I can certainly see the difference between grafting something onto a band and recognizing an element that's lurking within them and inspiring them to come to grips with it. Drakoulias: The guy could sing a phone book. That was what attracted me. The guy really had a voice, he had a thing, and he was delivering something. ATN: You've signed the Black Crowes, the Jayhawks, the Freewheelers; what else? Drakoulias: That's it. I've done some mixing for the Jesus and Mary Chain, Love and Rockets, one-off things like that. But I don't really sign that many things, because I take a long time developing them. It's very time consuming if you do it right. I've got to learn how to step back also, because I think I do put too much into it, and I get into a situation where I take it personally and it really affects me. Part of what makes it that way is putting yourself into it, really putting your whole life into it, and living for that thing. The downside is that it's really taxing and draining if you do it that way. Any record you make, whether it sells 10 copies or 10 million copies, is the same record. It's not up to you once it's done, so you can't torture yourself about it. ATN: At least you have the advantage of not operating in a typical corporate structure. Drakoulias: Yeah, I have a lot of freedom to work. I'm always doing something. It's not like I'm swimming everyday and not doing anything else. It gives you the freedom to not have to say, "I have to make a record this week," but you find fewer and fewer people you really want to work with. ATN: Would you have been into A&Ring the Lucinda Williams project [in progress at American]? Drakoulias: Sure, if she wanted me to. I've only heard a little bit of what's been recorded, and a lot of it was pretty cool. The songs are very good. It's probably not the approach I would have taken, but I think in some ways if the song is OK and it's a good song, the rest of it doesn't matter. There are a lot of great records that sound like shit. I don't even care about sounds anymore, really. I'm over it in a way. Anybody can have a good-sounding record. Everybody's got a good-sounding record, everything sounds good on TV or on the radio. So I think you've got to have good songs, or deliver them in a certain way­­ the way you present them, as opposed to just what it sounds like. ATN: You seem to be particularly fond of the Dan Penn album you produced. Drakoulias: That was probably the best experience of my life. I learned a lot of things I didn't think I would learn. These guys were great fucking players. That record is slow ­­that record is crawling ­­but they're on it. They are thick with it! When they were tracking "Do Right Woman," it was just incredible. Being in a room and experiencing this song that's everything anybody's ever wanted to say to a woman. What an amazing song, amazing lyrics, just the whole thing of it. Here he is, 25 years later, with the kids he came up with, and they're playing this thing. It's the last night, it's the last thing we're going to cut. We did three of them and they were all great and we had to pick one. I said, "I think you got it, but I could hear the song all night." Everybody came into the control room, we were playing it loud. We listened to it 20 times. It drove everybody crazy. I called Joe [McEwen, who A&R'd the album] and put it on his answering machine. Dan sang everything live on the record; it was all was live except for the background singers and the horn parts, which were put on later. He really led the band. At first he didn't want to sing. We got there the first day and started going through a song and then he came out of the studio. I said, "What are you doing? You gotta sing ­­you gotta lead them through it. They're going to play off you, trust me." That's how it went. If he didn't sing it live, it wasn't going to be as good. So he got in this habit of singing and he started saying, "I think you're gonna like this one." From that point, because he was playing acoustic guitar and singing, it was incredible. These guys were so on it, and it was effortless. It was just all there. I go in there and one guy had a Charvel guitar and a new amp, and I'm thinking, how am I gonna get a sound out of this? It's here [taps his chest], it's not in the equipment. That's another thing I learned. Dan had it mastered in Nashville, and they just destroyed it. I always knew mastering helped. Anytime I've delivered something to the mastering lab, it has always come back better. It was like a record all of a sudden. But this came back and it was terrible. The vocals sounded bad and everything sounded bad, and I thought how could that happen? Dan said to me that he thought he might have made a mistake. He came out here and we did it again here with Stephen Marcussen at Precision, and the difference was like night and day. It was really beautiful, and a couple of tracks just went straight, with nothing ­­we didn't EQ them or anything, just ran it through his stuff, flat. Then I realized how much cooler my records could be because of mastering. Now my philosophy is I make my records in the mastering lab [laughs]. ATN: What's ironic is that Penn's album was your most gratifying experience as a producer, and yet you had less input on it than anything else you've done. Drakoulias: After I made that record, I got really spoiled. I was not wanting to make records anymore. I thought, this is the best record I'm ever going to be involved with. The parts I really contributed to I'm happy with. There's stuff on here I could never have done, it's amazing. In some ways it changed my perspective of letting things go and not being so crazy about it and so anal. ATN:: On the Jayhawks, did you see growth between Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow the Green Grass? Drakoulias: Yeah, they became more comfortable players and a little more relaxed. I think the studio was a better experience for them the second time. They were more confident in their playing ­­it wasn't as foreign. ATN: It must be disappointing to you that that the album, as great as it is, didn't break big ­­although 150,000 units ain't chopped liver. Drakoulias: I think it's still early ­­anything can happen. It's sold more than the last one. I can't say I'm disappointed. I wish they would all be massive, but I'm extremely proud of it. I don't think it's a failure by any stretch. I don't think it's over yet. We've only really worked one track up to now. We've only had a little bit of video action­­haven't really had that much support there. We've had some good radio play, and they're going to headline their own shows starting in October. They're coming from a place where they sold 7,000 copies of their Twin/Tone record [Blue Earth, soon to be issued on CD by Restless-Twin/Tone]. They were always a very hip thing and no one knew them. Now I think it's very respectable what they're doing. If it doesn't happen on this one, maybe it'll happen on the next one. ATN: The big difference between the two albums to me is the songwriting on the newer record. Drakoulias: It's a lot more progressive. The first one was kind of caught in one thing ­­a lot of mid-tempo stuff ­­but I thought they were all great songs. I think this one is more varied. The spectrum is covered a lot differently. The last one was kind of one idea all the way through, and on this one I think they stretched out. I like it. I think it's successful, the fact that it's out there. The fact that it got made I feel is a success. ATN: Do you have a wish list of people that you'd especially like to produce? Drakoulias: As far as new guys, I love Lenny Kravitz. I got to work with him on the Petty thing, which was cool. I'd like to work with him more, I really enjoy his stuff. I'd like to work with Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles ­­I love really good singers. I love soul music. There's really not much soul music now. It's OK, but I think it comes from a different place now. As far as a wish list, most of the people I'd like to work with are probably dead ­­or broken up.