Mark Needham on mixing Mr Brightside in just 40 minutes!

In 2003, producer and mix engineer Mark Needham famously mixed Mr Brightside by the Killers in around 40 minutes. What was intended as a rough mix ended up as the final cut on their groundbreaking Hot Fuss album after the band members said they preferred Needham’s mix to the others that were subsequently done. We asked Mark to tell us the story behind the mix.

"I was working in Los Angeles, CA, on a Fleetwood Mac project and drove up to the San Francisco Bay Area that morning, as tracking for The Killers was starting that day.

The band had a couple of takes down for Mr. Brightside and did a few more after I arrived.

One of those takes felt great; some overdubs were done (the vocal on an SM58 in the control room), so then I took a little time alone to put the track together. I made a few arrangement changes, a few lo-fi moments at the intro and 2nd verse, and a quick reference mix.

The mix was in Pro Tools with very few plugins (as we really didn't have a lot of them on that rig) and coming back through a Neve sidecar.

I was returning to Pro Tools through an old A/D converter with a saturation setting (DRAWMER). The bass was direct, and I ran it through an old Line 6 Bass Pod on the Silver setting. The Eg amp was a Supro, and the keyboard was a Nord (I think it's been a while).

I didn't think about panning much. I just put stuff where I thought it should be, and that is pretty instinctual, although I usually do the drums from the drummer’s perspective.

I used the Neve EQ, some Pro Tools 1176's, and the Green Echo Farm delay at around 86 ms. and mixed the song in 30 to 45 minutes. It seemed to work!

I don't know that we knew it would end up being as iconic as it did, but the song has such great energy!”