1977 · song
Why Ken Caillat took Christine McVie’s intimate piano song into Zellerbach Auditorium while making Rumours.
Songbird carries the sound of a performance room into Rumours. For Christine McVie’s piano ballad, co-producer Ken Caillat wanted the character of a recital rather than the familiar conditions of a recording studio. Zellerbach Auditorium in Berkeley supplied the space in which that idea could become a recording.
Markers identify buildings or documented location references. They do not mark an exact recording room, stage position or camera angle.
Caillat recalled hearing McVie play the new song and deciding that its personal character needed a particular setting. He first considered the Berkeley Community Theatre, where he had worked on a Joni Mitchell recording. When that venue was unavailable, the session moved to Zellerbach Auditorium. The choice brings an unusual piece of geography into the album: a song made for a studio record was shaped by the search for a concert room. Availability helped determine the location, but the desired sound guided the search. [1]
McVie played a nine-foot Steinway on the stage. Caillat described using fifteen recording tracks for the piano, with close microphones and others placed farther away. The arrangement made the room an audible participant in the session. A microphone close to an instrument and one listening from a distance preserve different relationships between a note and its surroundings. His account offers a way to hear the song through its location: the performance feels intimate, yet the recording also attends to the space around the instrument. [1]
Cal Performances identifies Zellerbach as a UC Berkeley performance venue. In the story of Songbird, its role is a recording setting chosen for the way a piano could occupy a hall. An album can conceal changes of location as one track follows another; recovering this session restores a distinct room to McVie’s performance. The auditorium belongs to the work’s making even for listeners who encounter the song only through speakers or headphones. [2] [1]
UC Berkeley campus, Berkeley
During the making of Rumours, released 1977
Christine McVie recorded Songbird on a nine-foot Steinway at Zellerbach Auditorium in Berkeley; Ken Caillat used close and distant microphones to capture the piano and the room. [1]
Zellerbach is a working university performance venue. Consult Cal Performances for public events and access arrangements. The recording session does not establish access to its stage, piano or backstage rooms.
