The Music Producers Series: Phil Spector

[Mickey Brausch]

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Da Doo Ron Ron (The Crystals)
Do You Remember Rock N Roll Radio (The Ramones)
Then He Kissed Me (The Crystals)
River Deep-Mountain High (Tina Turner)
Black Pearl (Sonny Charles and the Checkmates)
You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' (The Righteous Brothers)
I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine (Ronnie Spector)
To Know Him Is To Love Him (The Teddy Bears)
Baby, I Love You (The Ronettes)
Unchained Melody (The Righteous Brothers)

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We should be linking this to the Martin Scorsese thread in OOT. The opening of Mean Streets with Be My Baby and the longing Harvey Keitel shots made the song unusable by any other director, according to Tarantino.

[private joker]

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PJ, I don't think I'm alone when I say I'm not entirely sure what music producers do. Do they just have a lot of input on the mixing and effects? Do they suggest/demand changes in song structure and hooks? What's the nature of their relationship with the artists, i.e. can one override the decisions of the other?

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All of the above.


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Yeah. To follow up on this -- first of all, it depends. Some are hands-off and let the artists do most of the creative stuff. But the real hands-on producers like Spector, Steve Albini, Rick Rubin, etc.; they have input in songwriting (suggesting everything from lyric changes to key changes to entire structural overhaul), they often determine the tempo of the song, and they DIRECT the performance in the studio. The same way a filmmaker guides his actors, a good music producer pays attention to every track and tells the artist how to hit the note, when to come down on the beat, how to express every part of the song to make it the best it can be.

You'll notice some bands sound better on some albums and like crap on another. How can this be, since it's the same 4 guys writing and performing the songs? It's because they switched producers -- being told how to play and how to shape the song can absolutely turn a band from mediocre to great.

Then you've got other tracks: producers will often suggest (and play on or at least compose) extra parts for keyboards or horns or whatever, stuff the band never dreamed of. Anything to add flavor to the song. Furthermore, they work with the engineers to record the sound the way they want -- what mics to use, where to put those mics, whether it should be clear or scuzzy, rich or simplified, gritty or glossy, mellow or loud, chaotic or easy. Mono or stereo even.

Listen to a lot of not-that-talented bands and you'll realize the reason they suck on stage is that their producers do all the heavy lifting. Compare the Killers' "When You Were Young" single to their SNL performance of it. Night and day.

Bands like OK Go are absolutely embarrassing when they play live. And Madonna and Britney became pop superstars of their day by listening to and following extremely talented producers.

[MicroBob]

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Re: future music producer series suggestions, I need to see Rick Rubin.

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And Sam Phillips FTW!!

[BretWeir]

Great post. In addition to his regular pop stuff, "A Christmas Gift to You From Phil Spector" may be the best Christmas album ever (and put to great use in the Goodfellas sountrack). Darlene Love's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" is just amazing.

[El Diablo]

pj,

Great post and thread. I'd love to see writeups on all of the following:

Rick Rubin
Steve Albini
Dr Dre
Brian Eno
Pharrell / Neptunes
Quincy Jones

Also sorta interested in

Jermaine Dupri
Timbaland
Babyface

I'm very seriously considering music producer as my next career.

[gusmahler]

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One of my music heroes is Todd Rundgren not just for his diverse musical talent but also for his huge skills as a producer. I am not on the list to start threads in this forum but I think Todd would make a great topic in this series if one of the folks who can start threads would want to go in that direction.

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I'm listening to XTC today, so maybe you can answer this: what exactly happened between XTC and Rundgren. I've seen basic writeups, but no details.

So what I know is that XTC hired Rundgren to produce Skylarking. Andy Partridge and Rundgren had a huge falling out, to the point where Partridge refused to speak to Rundgren for a long time (maybe even today). But the Skylarking album was a huge success anyway.

[gusmahler]

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But despite his lunacy, he had the best ear for music of any producer in existence. When the Beatles broke up, Spector took over for George Martin and produced their farewell Let It Be album.

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I was always under the impression that:

1) Spector didn't actually "produce" the sessions, he took the tapes recorded during the Let It Be sessions and made an album out of it. Basically, he mixed the album.

2) The Beatles (and Paul McCartney in particular) HATED what Spector did to the album. (Although I guess Harrison and Lennon must not have hated it that much, since they hired Spector for solo albums).

[Aloysius]

Some other producers that I would love to see more stuff on:

Nigel Goodrich
Trent Reznor
Kanye West
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis

-Al

[private joker]

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I was always under the impression that:

1) Spector didn't actually "produce" the sessions, he took the tapes recorded during the Let It Be sessions and made an album out of it. Basically, he mixed the album.

2) The Beatles (and Paul McCartney in particular) HATED what Spector did to the album. (Although I guess Harrison and Lennon must not have hated it that much, since they hired Spector for solo albums).

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Both of these are true. McCartney released (just a few years ago I think) his version -- something like "Let It Be...Naked."

But I love what Spector did with it. "The Long and Winding Road" is one of the best Beatles song, and "Let It Be" is their most tolerable ballad.

[Gabe]

From when I started in the business thirty years ago, everyone always had stories of how crazy he was.

The guys at A&M studios told me that when he came there to work for a weekend, he wanted them to move the restroom next to the studio. Of course this was impossible. When they came in on Monday, they found that he had been using the microphone room next to the studio as a restroom.

Several of my friends have told me stories of him pulling guns on them.

I was friends with an ex-girlfriend of his. One night, she and Leonard Cohen went to Spectors for a party. When they wanted to leave he shot out her tires so they would stay.

When that girl got shot, everyone was surprised something like that hadn't happened sooner.