The Music Producers Series: Phil Spector

[private joker]

I'm glad you saw this thread, Gabe. I'd love to get your insight on record producing in general, as well as some thoughts on Spector's artistic merits.

[Gabe]

I used to work with Barry Mann, who wrote "You've lost that Lovin' Fellin'." He says when he first heard the record of that Spector made with the Righteous Brothers he thought it was playing at the wrong speed.

[private joker]

Awesome. Yeah that agrees with the info I had heard about Spector slowing it down a lot in the studio until Bill Medley was just creaking it out. What a genius.

Barry Mann, by the way, wrote a ton of great pop songs in the '60s with his partner -- was it Cynthia Weil?

[Yeti]

pj,

Great thread man, hope you do some more.

[Fishwhenican]

I am not really sure. I haden't heard that until you mentioned it today.
Here is some stuff I just dug up quick:

From Amazon:
"The interesting thing about "Skylarking" is that it was recorded in a fractious atmosphere with Andy Partridge and producer Todd Rundgren getting on about as well as a mongoose and a snake. Perfectionist Partridge found Rundgrens more spontaneous recording methods irksome and this led to a major fall out with Colin Moulding as well . That the result is an album as musically rich and erudite as "Skylarking " suggests more bands should record their music in an environment of implacable hostility."

From an interview with Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding on WBRU, 1989

************************************************** **********
WBRU: OK. Um, now, Todd Rundgren, I know, produced "Skylarking," and you have a - (AP sucks in his breath with horror) - story behind someone who produced this album. . .

CM: Emperor Toddulus.

AP: Emperor Toddulus the First, yes, the only four foot tall producer we've ever worked with.

CM: Yes, it can be told now, listeners, that Andy Partridge did not get on with Todd Rundgren. It has to be said.

WBRU (worried): Ohh.

AP: It's OK. Too much has been made of that, actually. We should be nice to Todd today.

CM: Todd likes to do things the Todd way -

AP: In Toddio. [?]

CM: And if you don't like it, then the sparks are gonna fly, you know, but. . .

AP: Yes, suffice to say that when you work with Todd you just have to leave your ego at home in the cupboard and come and be fleshy recording fodder for his love.

WBRU: Which is what you love to do.

AP: Oh, I just love to do that, yes! I mean, I've got a reasonable-sized ego, no bigger and no smaller than anyone else's, and Todd's rather got a monster! But he wouldn't show it to me, so. . . We just didn't get on too much. But I think the LP's fine. When we initially finished it, I was a little displeased with it, but I think that was more my - the fact that I thought that doing the whole LP was going to be like a summer holiday, a summer camp or something - not really summer camp, it was more like a concentration camp! Yes, Camp Todd, Stalag Todd, as it was known, actually.

CM: Todd's got this studio up near Bearsville in upstate New York, and when the bands record at his studio, you have to stop in "The Guest House" for bands, you know, you make pals with the mice that roam the corridors and. . . it's a pretty decrepit sort of place.

AP: It's amazing, the last band that were there had such a plague of mice that they tried to poison them, and succeeded, and so there were lots of dead, rotting mice under the floorboards stewing up the house lovely by the time we got there.

WBRU: Always good for a bit of musical inspiration.

AP: Oh, it was great, you get in there and - (sniffs) - Hmm, what's that smell? Is that airline food? (sniffs)

CM: One thing that did strike us was the fact that Todd's gear that he's got in the studio all seems to be very antiquated, it really is stuck in the early 70's, technology-wise.

AP: He's got "Stalinphone" printed on the lot of it.

CM: And even more surprising that he runs his 24-inch, uh, sorry, 24-track tape recorder at 15 inches per second, which is unheard-of these days. It's supposed to be thirty inches.

WBRU: All right, well, before we get sued, maybe we should stop. (Giggles nervously)

AP: Just to round it all up, despite him being a total pain in the neck to work with, he's, uh -

CM: He is a good producer.

AP: He's a great producer, and -

WBRU: The album sounded wonderful.

AP: And a wonderful musician. And he did some very surprising, but very good things with the music. It was his idea that we do the kind of John Barry existentialist spy theme backing to "The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul," I mean, the original demo was nothing like that, it sounded more like Leonard Cohen, the original demo.

CM: But he's a rotten engineer.

AP (over intro to "Dear God"): Well, he's a rotten engineer, yeah. It's give and take, you know, he's a good producer. . .

CM: On balance, it was a good experience, I think.

AP: I wish I hadn't crapped in his wastepaper bin

[Gabe]

The philosophy for recording had always been to capture a performance. While a few people, like Les Paul, were using the recording process to actually create the performance, it was a novelty until Spector.

Spector’s Philly’s Records was certainly the template, if not the inspiration, for Gordy’s Motown.

Cynthia wrote with and was married to Barry. She wrote lyrics to “He’s So Shy,” a song I did with the Pointers.

By the way, speaking of song writers, Mike Stoller, of Lieber and Stoller, plays 20-40 Stud every Saturday at HP.

[woodguy]

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

[/ QUOTE ]

I like to see something on Don Fagenson (aka Don Was)

For a while it seemed that every album I liked was produced by him.

Regards,
Woodguy

[wet work]

[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

Another GREAT one is Tom Dowd. I mentioned him in the documentary thread as there's a movie called "Tom Dowd and The Language of Music" which is excellent BTW. His contribution to music is immeasureable.

[matt2500]

Great post. This is really cool stuff.

I, too, would like to hear more about Rick Rubin. His American Recordings albums with Johnny Cash are among my all-time favorites.

How about Jack Endino, though he's probably too fringe. But I was in college in the Seattle area in the late 80s, and was into the local music scene. But then Mudhoney came out with 'Touch Me I'm Sick.' That was the song that told me something was really up in Seattle, and Endino produced it. For a while, his name was synonymous with Seattle music, and that song is 'grunge' to me.

[wet work]

I think Daniel Lanois is worth a mention as well.