You might find it a bit hard to swallow now when looking at the top Dublin producer’s stellar CV, which includes working with U2, REM, Taylor Swift, Snow Patrol, Green Day, One Direction and Robbie Williams. But Jacknife Lee was really convinced his music career was toast back in the noughties. The bitter pill involving a career change was only taken off the menu when he received a tasty offer from the hottest band on the planet.
“Up until that point I wasn’t really making any money and I was thinking about quitting and getting a job as a cook in France,” he told me from his home in LA.
“We’d just had a kid and I thought, ‘This isn’t working out for me at all. Why don’t we just move to France and start living there?’
“And then I got a phone call from my manager saying, ‘Do you like U2?’
“I said yes.
“He said, ‘Can you start on Monday?’
“It was such a relief because we were utterly broke. My experience up to that point of being in music was a little dangling carrot and then failure followed soon after it.
“I’d managed to stay afloat working in music without having to do anything else. I did TV music, children’s TV music, stuff like that as well.”
Despite having already made a big splash with remixes for the likes of Radiohead and Bjork, Jacknife Lee – who had first moved to London in 1989 to make a go of it with his band Compulsion, who were signed to Bjork’s record label One Little Indian – was absolutely convinced the work was eventually going to dry up.
“And that was the usual: where I’d get even The Bends and the remixing, all that stuff – but it eventually kinds of fizzles out,” he continued.
“I thought it would end. I’m not a pessimist. And DJ-ing, I couldn’t do that anymore. I didn’t like the travelling so much. Yeah, it [the U2 gig] was very timely.”
Garret “Jacknife” Lee punched in extra early for his first day at the office to work on U2’s 2004 album How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. He was “super eager” to hit the ground running, but soon feared he was about to fall flat on his face.
“They played a song,” he began. “Bono said, ‘What do you think of it?’
“I said, ‘I think you could do with putting a piano or something here’,” he recalled.
“And he said, ‘Ok, do it’. And I said, ‘I don’t play the piano’.
“And he said, ‘Well, what the f**k are you for then?!’
“And I thought, ‘It’s your band - you play it’.”
He can afford to laugh at it all now. “I think it was a test,” he reflected.
At first, it was all “pretty daunting” rubbing shoulders with these four music icons.
“They didn’t know I was Irish until I got there,” he said. But things soon clicked. “It’s a very democratic system in that whoever has the best idea that’s what we’re using,” he explained.
“There’s not much ego involved in the recording. They’re very open to everybody’s input. It taught me a lot. It was a pretty amazing experience.”
The U2 collaboration quickly cemented Jacknife Lee’s reputation, enabling him to forget about the idea of needing to cook to put bread on the table.
It was yet another pinch yourself moment for his two daughters when they found themselves tucking into dinner with Taylor Swift at their kitchen table.
“I got an email from Taylor’s management saying, ‘Are you around? She wants to come up’. So she came up with two big burly bodyguards,” he said.
“These two guys wanted to watch a game. I put them into the TV room and we worked on songs. The kids were back from school and we had made dinner. So Taylor came in and just sat there. I went back to work and she didn’t come back in for about two hours, just chatting with the kids. It was lovely.”
After U2 his next big break as an album producer happened when REM came a-knocking.
“Michael [Stipe] was at a party somewhere and Edge was there. They were looking for a new producer. The Edge recommended me to Michael,” he said.
“Like a lot of these things, you just get an email out of the blue saying, ‘Do you want to meet up?’ And they’re always very exciting.
“I got one like that from Rick O’Casey from The Cars. The same thing with
Neil Diamond. A nice email appears and you go, ‘Damn! What’s this?’”
And the “what’s this” on this occasion was an offer to produce REM’s 2008 critically acclaimed album Accelerate.
The Irishman would ultimately work his magic on REM’s last two albums, plus their brilliant Live at the Olympia record and also work on the new tracks put on the Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011 compilation.
Jacknife Lee first met the REM lads when their guitarist Pete Buck was in the UK gigging with one of his countless side projects.
“I was living just outside London at the time. And they said, ‘Do you want to come to the gig in Oxford and we can chat?” he recalled.
“Then Michael also flew out and they played a few songs. So I got to hear some new songs. We went for dinner which was a bit intimidating because
Thom Yorke from Radiohead decided to show up during my interview!
“Even though I’d produced a few records I really wasn’t that confident about my ability to stir a ship. Like the U2 record, there’s a lot of producers working on that. So I wasn’t the sole voice on that record. And the other records I had been making, they were smaller bands.
“So going to REM was a bit intimidating. I was a big fan. They had some best records in the rock era. So, it didn’t help that Thom Yorke showed up.
“And then they said, ‘Do you want to come out to Athens to do a demo session?’
“I went to Georgia and we had a great time and figured out how we would record Accelerate.”
What about REM’s decision to call it a day?
“I knew it was coming, but we never discussed it. I do remember the last night we recorded in Nashville. We were mixing Collapse Into Now, which is one of my favourite REM records,” he said.
“At the last mix we just went outside and just looked at the stars. It was a very quiet and beautiful moment. But that was the end of it.”
He added: “But then we did record two more songs but not together – they were all separate. Not for any particular reason, just that Peter had injured his back and he was in Portland. Michael was in Athens. So I moved around and collated the recordings.
“They are wonderful people. I’m very grateful that they gave me the chance to make those records with them. We still see each other socially all the time. We’re really close friends. I do play with Peter a lot as well.”
REM’s Live at the Olympia – following hot on the heels of their 2007 live album recorded at the old Point Depot in Dublin – is one of Jacknife Lee’s most treasured moments working with them. I love that record.
“The REM At The Olympia is one of the great live records. I know that I recorded it, but it is an amazing document of a band at their peak,” he explained.
“I know there might be people who think I’m perverse for saying ‘a band at their peak’, but it was a different band than it was with four of them with Bill [their drummer who left in 1997].
“But this band was really on fire. They were great at that period. So I’m really glad we got to record it. The energy was fantastic.
“Dublin is one of REM’s favourite places. The idea came from their manager who had seen a residency of The Waterboys at The Olympia. They feel like Dublin was their second home. So, they felt like it would be like going home for them.”
Asked if he reckons REM will ever reform he said: “No. They’re pretty determined to not do it. They do see each other a lot socially. But as REM I don’t see it happening.
“I think they’re very happy with what they’ve done and how they began and ended. It’s a wonderful story. There’s not many bands who’ve attained that level of success and continued on with such grace, and ended with such grace.
“There really isn’t a blueprint for bands to bow out well and they managed to do it. With most bands, it’s acrimonious. You see Fleetwood Mac with their fighting in public.
“They ended the way they’ve behaved for their whole career, which was with generosity and grace. It’s unusual. It’s beautiful.”
Jacknife Lee, who recorded the Accelerate album with them at Grouse Lodge studio in Co Westmeath, was not the only Dublin-born producer to work with REM.
In fact, he’s not even the only producer from Walkinstown’s Greenhills to work with them. This particular housing estate has also produced the likes of A House, Sack and A Power of Dreams. Jacknife Lee’s brother Derek is actually in Sack, who recently reformed too and just this month released a new album. One of their first albums was co-produced by Jacknife Lee.
“My first band was just myself and a drummer – and his name is Pat McCarthy. He lived up the street and he ended up producing REM before I did!” he said.
“It was wild because we were best friends for years and then he got a job in Windmill Lane, started working with U2 and The Waterboys. And then he moved to the States and started producing REM.
“And then I got a call in 2006 saying they wanted to meet me about producing. And I was wondering if they knew that I was friends with Pat.
“At the first meeting, I never mentioned it. And then they didn’t know I was Irish. It was only when we were working together that I said, ‘You know that I know Pat really well’. It’s really funny. I don’t know what the chances are of two guys who were friends from Greenhills both producing REM. But there you go,” he concluded.
