Record Producers You Rate?

Bill Szymczyk. Yes. I give him a big tick.

 

Paul McCartney.

No one's picked him yet!

 

Steve Lillywhite was the first person who I ever noticed produced a lot of my favorite albums (the first three U2 albums, the third Peter Gabriel album, the La's album).

 

Good one. Bowie produced Lou Reed's "Transformer" album and I love the way that one sounds.

 

Jerry and Mark have often said that they knew exactly what they wanted the songs to sound like as they had been living with them for the previous few years and all they really wanted from a producer was someone with studio experience to hold their hands and give them a recording for the album that was faithful to what they envisaged. They were expecting to meet "Roxy Music" Eno, the eccentric person responsible for the weird sounds on the first two Roxy Music albums but what they got instead was a refined, zen and experimental producer that was anathema to what the band were trying to achieve. So yeah, when Devo were looking for this brutalist sound and Eno wanted to put atmospheric flourishes and soft sounding drum pads to "pretty" the record up, the band pushed back.

Having said that, some of Eno's additions were left in the recording such as Eno's harmonies on Uncontrollable Urge, the monkey chant during breakdown in Jocko Homo and the "cascading waterfall" synthesiser effect in Too Much Paranoias among others.

From June 1995's interview with Eno in Mojo magazine reflecting on past recording experiences. Devo in Eno's own words:

Anal is the word. They were a terrifying group of people to work with because they were so unable to experiment. When they turned up to do this record in Germany, they brought a big chest of recordings they'd already done of these same songs. We'd be sitting there working, and suddenly Mark Mothersbaugh would be in the chest to retrieve some three-year-old tape, put it on and say, "Right, we want the snare drum to sound like that". I hate that kind of work. I just do not see the point of trying to replicate such peculiar circumstances: the snare drum sounds good like that because all the other things around it are like they are, so do you really want to replicate the whole thing? "No, we want to have that snare drum, but the guitar sound we want like this" - and it was back in the chest again for another tape!


This seemed impossible, foolish and stupid. Stupid in that it was a waste of time: here we are in another situation, another time, another place, why not do something for this situation? Their picture of recording, for me, was very old-fashioned, like a Platonic Ideal of recording, that somewhere there existed the ideal state of this song, and they thought they could identify several of the ingredients, they were in the chest there somewhere, and my job as a producer was to try to re-make these ingredients and fit them back together. A nightmare.

I'd be sitting there at the desk, and there are EQs, echo sends, all those kinds of things, and my hand would sort of sneak up to put a bit of a treatment on something, and I could feel Jerry Casale bristling behind me. It was awful! He would stand behind me all the time, then lean over and say, "Why are you doing that?" As if you can know why you do something before you do it, always!

Devo have acknowledged in hindsight that they probably should've been a bit more receptive to Eno. But at the time they knew exactly what they wanted and weren't going to stray from that vision.

Bowie wanted to produce it and Devo wanted him to but the band were eager to get into the studio. Bowie kept delaying due to ongoing commitments so he recommended Eno as an alternative. Devo felt that they were missing their opportunity as all of the "new music" records by bands such as Talking Heads, Blondie and others were coming to market and they were feeling left behind. More importantly, as Devo had yet to sign with a label, Eno agreed to pay for the production of the album on the condition that he would be reimbursed once they had signed a recording deal. Bowie did show up in the studio during the recording sessions in-between his filming of Just a Gigolo and allegedly added some vocal backing tracks and other parts to the recordings that on the whole were not used.

See this thread: Recording of Bowie/Eno with Devo?

 

Alan Moulder: Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, Smashing Pumpkins...
Trevor Horn: even after the 80's, he managed to impress me (Captain)
Haruomi Hosono of YMO fame: hundreds of friends' records
Nigel Godrich: almost Radiohead's 6th member at this point
Tim Friese-Greene of Talk Talk fame
And... Brian Eno (obviously).

 

Steve Albini
George Martin
Jimmy Miller
Glyn Johns
Sam Phillips
Tom Dowd
John Hammond
Brian Wilson
Phil Spector
Andy Warhol

 

I addition to those already mentioned (or at least some of them!)
Jerry Wexler
the Ertegun brothers
the Chess brothers
Rick Hall
Jim Stewart and the rest of the Stax staff
Smokey Robinson
Thom Bell
Alfred Lion & Francis Wolf
Duke Pearson
Curtis Mayfield
Allen Toussaint
Grady Martin

Many different ways to skin this cat (ew!), some of these wrote tunes and did arrangements, some didn't. Some had engineering skills and some left that to others.

 

Gil Norton deserves to be mentioned for the Pixies' "Doolittle" and the Triffids' "Born Sandy Devotional" alone.

 

Almost forgot:

Hal Wilner
John Zorn
Lee Townsend
Bill Laswell

 

thomas dolby

 

Tom Werman with Cheap Trick. I have read they weren't satisfied with him, but all my favorite CT albums were produced by Werman. They have put out many albums since, many very good, but none touching those albums they made with TW.

 

Joe Boyd
Nick Lowe
Shel Talmy
Chris Thomas
John Leckie

In addition to the obvious big names... Brian Wilson, George Martin, Eno, etc

I think Joe Boyd in particular is way underrated - he was absolutely on fire from 1966-1973 or so, and continued producing classics into the 90s and beyond. Not necessarily in terms of ‘hits’ but he made recordings that manage to define both the artists and the genre they work within. I wish he’d been allowed to produce Piper At the Gates of Dawn - that’s one of the great missed opportunities for both artist and producer.

 

Going to second Joe Boyd!

He butchered the Kate & Anna McGarrigle re-issue/compilation "Tell my sister", which I find sort of unforgivable, but otherwise he's done a lot of good stuff for many of my favourite artists.

 

Bob Ezrin
Keith Forsey
Jack Douglas
Jimmy Miller

 

Paul produced my second album Lost Generation with Fritz Richmond engineering. Wrote all needed overdubs on a legal pad and when the page was blacked out album was finished. Told great Jim
Morrison stories when we had down time …

 

Welcome to the forum Elliott.
Appreciate any anecdotes you may want to tell us!!!!

 

Tony Visconti - he got a great sound on those late 70s Thin Lizzy albums.

 

A few favourites, off the top of my head:

Chris Thomas
Bob Crewe
Phil Spector
Hugh Jones
John Leckie

Edit: I see no one has mentioned Lenny Waronker. So I will.

 

Cosimo Matassa.

 

here are a few ...

george martin
glyn johns
andy johns
eddie kramer
jimmy miller
david briggs
ken scott
phil spector
terry brown
tony visconti


and "willy show', who was the producer in 'the daily adventures of mixerman' LMAO

yeah i'm pushing this book cuz i'm pretty sure almost everyone here would find it a fully entertaining read. ..... i followed the daily dispatches when they were blog posts on a forum ..... and of course bought the book afterwards. it is hilarious / frightening. LMAO pseudonyms for all involved !

Daily Adventures of Mixerman by Mixerman, PopMatters
The Daily Adventures of Mixerman by Mixerman

"....Mixerman is a recording engineer working with a famous producer on the debut album of an unknown band with a giant recording budget. Mixerman is supposed to be writing about recording techniques, but somehow, through that prism, he has hit upon a gripping story. Like all great narratives, Mixerman's diary has many anti-heroes for whom we, the readers, can have nothing but contempt. The band consists of the four most dislikable human beings you can imagine. The singer is vain and pretentious. The guitarist is a serious depressive. The drummer is as "dumb as cotton," and the bassist is merely mean and petty, making him the only one that Mixerman can stand. All four of them hate each other's guts, and they haven't even been on tour yet. Mixerman takes you through the recording process of a bidding war band in over their heads with a famous record producer (also in over his head). Many find Mixerman's diary entries side-splittingly funny. Some find them maddening. And a select few feel they are the most despicable accountings of record-making ever documented..."

ymmv.

 

Conny Plank
Soooooooo many amazing bands.......

 

He had his critics for other reasons but Norman Petty's work with Buddy Holly & The Crickets was top shelf

 

The Classic Albums episode covering Peter Gabriel's So is a stone-cold classic, with so many stories and so much clear respect (and tension) between the two men.

Great documentary on this guy recently, too...

 

I would go as far as saying i would happily exchange every record in my collection for those same titles that exist in the alternate universe where all records are produced by Glynn Johns. Yes even my Led Zeppelin ones.