Senior editor: Bob Nirkind Production manager: Bllen Greene Book and cover design: Bob Fillie, Graphiti Design Inc.
Copyright@ 1999 by Brie Olsen. Carlo Wolff, and Paul Vema First published in 1999 by Watson-Guptill Publications uu Broadway. ~ew York, NY 10036
. . Library of Congress Caialoging·fn·Publlcadon Data The encyclopedia of record producers/[edited by] Brie Olsen,
Paul Vema, Carlo Woifr. p. em.
Includes index. ISBN o-8230.7607-S
1. Sound recording executives and producers Biography Oictionanes. 2. Popular music-History and criticism. 3. Popular muSic Discography. I. Olsen, Brie, 1961- . 1~. Vema, Paul. III. Wolff, Carlo.
ML10S.BS3 1999
CIP
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or used in any form or by any means-graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems-without written permission of the publisher.
ManufactUred in the United States of America
First printing, 1999
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The editors wish to thank the following: The associate editors and connibutors (see page v)
for their diligent work beyond the call of duty and beyond the reach of pay.
The producers for their time, their thoughts, and the music that inspired this book.
The managers, publicists, assistants, et al. who set up the producer interviews and furnished us with biogra­ phies, photos, discographies, etc.: Paul Adams, Heidi Akin, jeff Alderich, Louise Allen, Wally Amos, Mark Beaven, Bert Berman, Richard Bishop, Megan Brady, Evelyn Brechtlein, David Brinker, Gerry Bron, David Brown, Paul Brown, Coral Browning, Stephen Budd, Debbie Capponetta, Scott Carlson, Graham Carpenter, Melanie Ciccone, Holly Cislo, Cathy Cohen, Seth Cohen, Larry Cohn, Brian Coleman, Gail Colson, Mike Connelly, Tom Cording, Alan Cowderoy, Carol Crab­ tree, Sue Crawford, Carole Davis, Richard Davis, John Dee, Lisa Marie DeFranco, jeffrey de Hart, Karen Devine, Marie Dixon, Michael Doneff. Paula Donner, David Dom, Ben Edmonds, Karen Elliot, Clay Farmer, Tom Farrell, Bob Fead, Maria Ferrero, Len Fico, Gloria Gabriel, Debbi Gibbs, Suzanne Gilchrist, Dan Gilliam, Diane Gilmour, Susan Green, Eileen Gregory, john Guarnieri, Gorel Hanser, Kim Hardy, Lori Hehr, Marvin Heiman, Kent Henderson, Clinton Heylin, Terri Hinte, Amanda Hon, john Hornyak, Barney Hoskyns, Bones Howe, Bob Hyde, Bob Irwin, Safta Jaffery, Nancy Jef­ freys, Dave Kaplan, Steve Karas, Bennett Kaufinan, Chris Kettle, jon Landau, Don Law Jr., Roben Leffel­ man, Mike Lembo, Gary Lemel, Lynn Lendway, Craig Leon, Bill Levenson, Arthur Levy, Steve Lewis, Michael Lippman, Leila Logan, Don Lucoff, Art Macnow, Michael Mahan, Cary Mansfield, Ruby Martin, Darcy
AcknowltdCJmtnts
ill
Mayers, Dorothy McCormick, Tim McDaniel, Frank McDonough, Ben McLane, Mickey McLaurin, Jim Merlis, Mary Milner, LeAnn Moen, joyce Moore, Ron Moss, David Nathan, Pat Nelson, Patty Nichols, john Oliver, Catherine Owens, joe Nick Patoski, Tina Pelikan, Penton Media, Randy Poe, Nik Popa, Ron Pugh, Bob Raylove, John Reid, Jason Richardson, Bob Ringe, Ira Robbins, Sandy Roberton, Melani Rogers, David Sanjek, Nita Scott, Rick Scott, Nick Shaffran, Dylan Siegler, Harry Simmons, Winston Simone, Rani Singh, Don Snowden, Debbie Sommer, Greg Spotts, David Steinberg, Sunny Sumter, jeff Tamarkin, Emily Taylor, Gill Taylor, Caroline Teeling, Bryan Thomas, Roy Trakin, Thorn Trumbo, joel Thrtle, jaan Uhelszki, Phil Walden, L. Jeff Walker, Cathy Wallis, Seven Web­ ster, Lola Weidner, Jonathan Wexler, Chris Wheat, Meryl Wheeler, and Jill Zoeller. If we inadvertently left you out, we thank you too.
David Bates, Ed Cherney, Anthony DeCurtis, Martin Folkman, Susan Nunziata, Paul Sacksman, Bob Santelli, Ken Schlager, Chris Stone, and Timothy White for their encouragement and positive vibes.
Bob Nirkind at Billboard Books for buying the book and Martha Cameron and Sylvia Warren for helping to make it happen.
David Goggin and Ben Cromer for connibuting excellent photographs from their personal collections.
Extra special thanks to our families: Ellen Dooley, Karen Sandstrom, Lylah Rose Sandstrom Wolff, Katy Nozar, Ramona, Oscar, Dawn Olsen, Kristen Olsen, Christopher Olsen, Ray Olsen, Barbara Olsen, Bruce Darling, and Leslie Darling.
-ERIC OLSEN, PAUL VERNA, AND CARLO WOLFF
\
GLOSSARY 870
TIMILIN' 872
INIIX 873
iv
Eric Olsen has written for numerous publications including Pl4yboy, Option, Billboard's Airpl4y Monitor, and AltmuJtive Press, and is ccrauthor of Networiring in the Music Industry. He lives in Aurora, Ohio, and is a well-known radio and 'IV personality in the Cleveland-Akron corridor.
Paul Vema, Pro Audio/Technology Editor and Reviews Editor at Billboard magazine in New York City, is also a freelance pro­ ducer/engineer who operates a New York-based project/ mobile recording studio, Vernacular Sound.
Clevelander Carlo WoUFs prolific career as a music reviewer began in 1971 when he covered a concert by Edgar Wmter's White Trash in Burlington, Vermont. Wolff, a regular contrib­ utor to The Boston Globe, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Goldmine, DISCoveries, and]azziz, is an associate editor at the hotel trade magazine Lodging Hospitality.
... ASSOCIAT( (DITORS Ben Cromer is president of Ben Cromer Communications, a U.S. consulting fum in the area of business communications services and telecommunications consulting, and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at Northern Vuginia Community College.
Nashville resident Deborah Evans Price writes Billboard's Higher Ground column focusing on the Christian music indus­ try and also covers the country music beat.
David john Farinella is a California-based freelance writer who covers nearly every aspect of the art of music, from song­ writing to players to studio techniques to producers. His work has appeared in BiUboard, Musician, Mix, Live!, Option, Request, and the San Francisco Chronicle.
New Yorker Larry Flick is the talent editor at Billboard.
Chuck Foster writes the Reggae Update column for Beat mag­ azine; hosts Reggae Central on KPFK in L.A.; and is author of Roots Rock Reggae: An Oral History of jamaican Music From Sica to DanceluJU, published by Billboard Books.
Daniel Levitin, Ph.D., is a lecturer in the Music Department at Stanford University and author of more than 250 articles on music technology. engineering, and production.
v
About tht Authors
Los Angeles-based Melinda Newman is BiUboard magazine's West Coast Bureau Chief.
Dawn Darling Olsen, avid music listener and professed com­ puter geek, helped develop the format for this book. the discog­ raphy database, and the www.mojavemusic.com Web site.
Anastasia Pantsios is a Cleveland-based writer and photogra­ pher whose work has appeared in dozens of periodicals and books over the last .25 years.
• .. AND CONTRIBUTORS jack Arky, a New York-based independent producer and engi­ neer, is a contributor to BiUboard's Pro Audio section.
Bradley Bambarger is a senior writer and columnist with BiU­ board. His feature writing and criticism have also appeared in Musician, EQ, Gramophone, Time Out New Yorle, and others .
Dennis Diken, a founding member and the drummer of the Smithereens, is also a record producer, composer, songwriter, author, disc jockey. and music historian.
Kevin Johnson is the pop music aitic at the St. Louis Post-Dis­ patch.
Howard Massey, former technology editor for Musician maga­ zine, is a musician, engineer, and producer who also works as a consultant and technical writer.
Scott Schinder is the author of several books about music and popular culture, including RoUing Stone's Alt-Rock-A-Rama: An Outrageous Compendium of Facts, Fiction, Trivia, and CTitiqllts on AltmuJtive Rock, and writes about music for Entertainment Weekly, Pulse, Newsday, and Time Out New York.
A Vrrgo born at the end of the Summer of Love, Philip Smith contraposits hypoxia and esoteric orrery exhibitions via research (Harry Smith and cognate improving topics), music (Lhasa Cement Plant and other grave Himalayan blunders), and the symptomatic gutter yoga of his age, when not eking out a living in the love-bead racket.
A Ptrsonal Vitw
T he only real misgiving-the constant bone-in-the­ throat kind of irritation that I live with after mak­ ing more than 100 albums in over 25 years-is that
on my passport, alongside the word "occupation," it reads: "Record Producer." Don't misunderstand me-l have enjoyed the strongest passion for, and deepest reward from, the vocation itself. It's the tide I resent.
No one outside the record business understands its meaning. Most people imagine that we are the music­ biz equivalent of ftlm producers. They assume that we fmance projects and invest in up-and-coming artists. These perceptions seem to have one thing in common: the assumption that our sole motivation must surely be to make money-worse still, to make it out of other people's talents.
This is frustratingly misleading and, to me, some­ what degrading. Of course, producers have an inherent obligation to help an artist who has raised loans with record companies to be commercially successful. It would be dangerous to describe this necessity as a mere by-product. At the same time, such a necessity should never become confused with the inspiration for the work itself. Whenever (thankfully rarely) I have worked with artists who have been primarily motivated by a commercial and market-oriented oudook to music making, the end result has inevitably been empty.
Definition But "record producer" does not accurately describe this most rewarding of occupations; "record director" would be a far more accurate term. While the produc­ er's job did include both fmancial and directorial facets at one time, today most of us are, in fact, commissioned by the real producers-the record labels.
The very word "producer" implies a product, and herein lies the problem. As much as the shareholders of major labels may address the results of our efforts as "product"-like so many beans, ball bearings, or toast­ ers-it is anathema (and downright insulting) to the cre­ ative heart to so reduce the output of the world's finest and most communicative abstract art. 'Abstract?" you say. In essence, yes, as there is no definitive reference
vi
book of ingredients or methods for musical expression. One person's sequence of chords or melody portraying confusion or resignation is as likely to parallel another's as a person is likely to fmd an identical twin outside of the family. This is what makes it so futile to define a "production absolute" or a "perfect record." The num­ ber of variables-the sheer size of the sonic palette­ ensures that musical communication is as complex as life itself.
Tht Productr's t:undion In my view, the record director has three main func­ tions: (1) to lead and direct, as in film director; (2) to observe and advise, as in consultant; and (3) to provoke and stimulate, as in catalyst. To understand these roles-and, even more important, to know when to switch from one to the other-becomes the record pro­ ducer's primary goal in the studio. Some artists will require far more of one aspect than another, but the producer should always be ready to oscillate transpar­ ently between roles if the artist is to breathe creatively with the potential for innovation and the unexpected. There are even times when it is most appropriate to sim­
ply assist the artist with enthusiasm and grace. The trick, I feel, is to be so taken by the possibilities
of what might be achieved from the suggestions and substance in the artist's demos that what can be a tight­ rope walk between giving enough creative space while creating focus becomes natural and effortless. For some, the notion that the producer can represent a provocative and catalytic role is an intriguing proposition; for others, a warmer, more sympathetic contribution will be more productive. Strictly speaking, the producer-as-catalyst is a process that needs to be renewed every time. After all, a challenge, by definition, cannot be repeated.
An krly Lnson In the '60s, when I was an artist recording my first record, I learned a very significant lesson, and made a vow. The recording, which took place at Decca's famous studios in north London, featured a 26-piece orchestra; London's hottest session guitarist of the time, jimmy
Page; and other eye-popping pressures for a 17-year-old. During our debut three-hour recording session, the
producer commanded-in a military tone-that I switch roles with my singing partner, David Mciver, from lead vocal to harmony. Despite the obvious total breakdown of confidence that David and I were by then experiencing. and the utter inappropriateness of his idea, the producer remained insensitive and resolute. Here was a truly exceptional opportunity for me to start
my life in music at the very highest level-and it was thrown away in an instant. I vowed then and there that if I ever glimpsed an opportunity to "do that job" (in effect, to do his job), I would grasp it with both hands. And I did.
Is a Productr Mandatory? The notion of self-producing artists often provokes the question, Is a record producer really necessary? Not every artist wants a producer, and certainly. not every artist needs a producer. The blockbuster artist, for exam­ ple, will always survive with a B-division engineer mas­ querading as producer, and will possibly retain more creative control, for better or worse. The instinctively experimental artist, with little to risk and everything to gain, may also make music that can take us somewhere new without the guidance of an experienced hand.
Here again we can draw the analogy to film. Self­ directing actor I writers rarely achieve the typical film team's level of artistic success, but certain outstanding exceptions seem to prove my point about the new, young experimental artist. For instance, Citizen Kane
could only have been achieved because Orson Welles was free to run with his untried ideas and instincts with­ out supervision or guidance.
As a young artist, I was "produced" for the ftrst of my 12 albums, but from my second album onward, I knew that I had to develop as a record maker mysel£ Even though my frrst priority was songwriting, I became so intoxicated with the arranging and produc­ ing skills of Brian Wilson and his Pet Sounds project that every one of my albums became a canvas that I alone could paint. Ask any painter what color or tint he'll use next, and he will probably shrug; at this level the process is intuitive, fluid, and ultimately inexplicable. After I was introduced to the many possibilities presented by the recording studio, I needed to take the reins myself and explore. Live performance paled into insignificance compared to the sound pictures it was possible to create in the studio.
The most common argument against self-produc­ tion is an artist's inability to be truly objective, to devel­ op a detached overview of his or her output. But as
artist/producer Daryl Hall commented succinctly at a producer's convention some years ago, "Fuck objectivi­ ty. just make the best subjective record you can make!"
There are deftnitely times when distance may not really be relevant. Both budding and experienced record makers may prefer to bounce their creativity off a pro­ ject partner. There are also plenty of artists who live to express themselves in song, yet have no real desire to be a part of the record-making process. For those whose first love is the concert platform or gig. time spent in the studio is a necessity. not an interest-let alone a passion! For these artists, guidance and help in the studio is essential.
vii
Tht Produm u Artist It has been said that if a record producer is truly innov­ ative and creative, sooner or later, he will have to find a way to become the artist. Having been both simultane­ ously all my adult life, I can safely say that the two occu­ pations are wonderfully complementary and naturally cross-fertilizing. The opportunity to give myself wholly to the role of artist has always been there for me, and it is often my laboratory for musical and technical research and development. At the same time, the satis­ faction of seeing the potential in someone else's raw ingredients realized in a fully blossomed work with the help of my direction or advice has been irreplaceable.
Most contemporary musical recordings can be divided, very broadly. into four categories:
• Recordings of communication-ideas, emotions, and narrative (art?)
• Recordings that may have nothing speciftc to com­ municate but are a celebration of any or all the aspects of writing. arranging, producing. and pre­ sentation (craft?)
• Recordings that appeal more to the body and feet than to the mind and heart (or when done best, to all four elements)
• Recordings that have no higher goal than to play the roulette wheel of chance with lowest-common­ denominator ingredients of familiarity coupled to advertising agency-style hooks-insignificant mon­ eymakers that keep the cash flow ... umm ... flow­ ing (radio fodder?)
But there are producers who are turned on by innova­ tion. Who want to fmd new ways of making fme music cut through mediocrity. Who know what music can achieve when that greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts moment happens as music and words come together.
Who are in love with music as an abstract medium. Who are attracted to danger (the unknown) and risk (losing or not attracting funding by presenting the unex­ plored for global consumption). Some of the world's most outstanding records, both in artistic content and commercial success, have stemmed from these roots.
Tht Produetr as Star Over the last 35 years there have been times when a par­ ticular producer or production team has reached a more marketable level and higher public profile than the artists themselves. It's true, indeed, that a handful of the world's greatest pop singles have come from the star
producer, while the artist becomes merely a face, a front end, to his talent and whim.
I am not personally interested in the hit-factory school of record making, yet I must confess that I have loved so many of the great Tamla-era singles, for exam­ ple-undeniably a factory of extraordinary records throughout the '60s. Also in the '60s, "River Deep, Mountain High" from the highly stylized and idiosyn­ cratic output of Phil Spector is there in my Top 10 sin­ gles of all time. Even Tina Thrner acknowledges that her role on that record was minimal compared with her later output in the '80s and '90s (which I was fortunate to be able to contribute to, both as songwriter and pro­ ducer). These were groundbreaking recordings-in my opinion, the exceptions that otherwise prove the rule.
The parallel with the ftlm business holds here too: historically, the director has been hugely influential both in terms of raising money for a project and setting the tone, visual style, and objectives. Interestingly, the Unit­ ed States has become one of the few exceptions in this analogous comparison; in recent years, the blockbuster production-special effects syndrome has elevated visual bravado (prohibitively expensive for any other country outside the U.S.) above content and communication, preferring a widescreen graphic gang bang to intimate, sensual, and communicative lovemaking ... if I may be so lurid!
There are certainly times when this attitude applies to the record industry too: the lust for making big artists
even bigger (the star/superstar/megastar syndrome) taking precedence over support for developing musical expression through new artists. Of course, these ten­ dencies mostly align themselves with the pendulum
viii
swing of generational reinvention. The record produc­ er's importance oscillates with these same musical cycles. Somewhat unjustly, he is often connected more with the exploitation of a given trend than the invention or discovery of it.
Hot lips I am often asked if I have garnered any ''hot tips" from recording and mixing over 100 projects. The questioner is usually seeking a response involving some kind of technical trick. For me, however, technical tips are rele­ vant only to the moment. I have always discouraged this kind of production probe. Better to redirect the route of inquiry toward goals and objectives, and anyway, by the time today's hot tip has…