No, I’m not referring to the Gene Wilder film, or its
more recent remake with Matthew Broderick in the main role (though both films
were fine). I’m talking about the studio geniuses responsible for making rock albums sound the way they do.
It initially escaped my attention that Now What ?!,
the new Deep Purple album, had a famous producer behind the scenes, but I
certainly noticed the album’s massive improvement in quality over the prior 4
albums with Steve Morse. The
producer? Bob Ezrin, whose prior work included Kiss Destroyer, Pink
Floyd’s The Wall, and numerous Alice Cooper albums, among many
others. I don’t recall Deep Purple ever
trusting a high profile producer to handle the job: Purpendicular and Abandon,
the first two albums with Steve Morse, were “self-produced”, meaning Roger
Glover (the bassist) handled this. Bananas
and Rapture of the Deep were produced by Michael Bradford, whoever he
is. Neither of those two albums differed
appreciably from the two prior ones.
Similarly, Black Sabbath originally had Rodger Bain
produce its first three albums with Ozzy, then Tony Iommi took over. As Tony explained, the rest of the band
didn’t want to hire a producer but had no clue how to do it themselves, so he
was forced to take the job by default. Martin Birch – most often associated
with Iron Maiden - produced Heaven & Hell and The Mob Rules,
then Tony took over again. But 13
was produced by Rick Rubin. Birch can also take credit for Stormbringer
& Come Taste the Band by Deep Purple, engineering earlier DP albums
such as In Rock, Machine Head, and Made in Japan,
engineering on the earliest Wishbone Ash albums, producing Cultosaurus
Erectus and Fire of Unknown Origin by Blue Oyster Cult, and
producing the Rainbow albums with Ronnie James Dio. But in his case, he’s so thoroughly entwined
with those bands that it’s hard to notice the difference. He seems to bring out more of consistent,
solid quality, than any immensely superlative albums; but I can’t identify any
album he’s done that is less than excellent.
For anyone who doubts how important a producer can be,
consider these examples:
1. The
Beatles & George Martin. They never would have been as innovative and
influential as they were if they didn’t have a producer who understood them as
well as he did.
2. AC/DC’s
top three albums, Highway to Hell, Back In Black, and For
Those About To Rock, were all produced by John Mutt Lange; while I like Let There Be Rock and Powerage,
Vanda & Young also have Blow
Up Your Video and Fly On the Wall to answer for. High’N’Dry and Pyromania (Def
Leppard) were also Lange’s work.
Although he’s still working, unfortunately these days – after a few
years producing his (now ex-) wife Shania Twain’s material – he’s producing
such heavyweights as Nickelback and Maroon 5.
If AC/DC had any remaining brain cells they’d hire him for their next
album, which at this rate is likely to be their last. Black Ice (which Brendan O’Brien
produced) was mediocre at best.
Rubin is most closely identified with Slayer and Danzig,
though he also produced the Cult’s Electric. He has an odd, idiosyncratic style which
doesn’t always work. From what I
understand, he simply lounges on a couch in a corner of the studio and grunts approval
or disapproval of the band’s material and guides them in a very vague, non-technical,
subjective fashion. Most other producers
take a much more active role. Bob Rock
even played bass on Metallica’s self-titled Black Album, the first album for
that band where they brought in an outside producer.
Similarly, many bands wind up closely associated with
particular producers. Rush & Terry Brown (aka “Broon”); Van Halen
and Ted Templeman; Aerosmith and Jack Douglas.
I’m not aware of any material Jimmy Page has released
that he didn’t produce himself, though In Through The Out Door has more
of John Paul Jones’ stamp on it. I can
see the bands’ reluctance to allow an outsider to control the process, but as
Ian Paice noted, sometimes it comes in handy.
In addition to being able to mediate disputes between band members
(Paice said Ezrin was able to reach decisions in minutes which would take the
band days squabbling amongst themselves) he’s also able to offer a more
distant, objective perspective and give marching orders to the band member who
would otherwise be producing. Band
members often have less of an ego issue obeying commands or taking suggestions
from an outside producer than they do from fellow band members. As competent as Roger Glover seems to be – he
even presided over all the remastering of their CDs, and remixing much of the
material – Ezrin really knocked it out of the ballpark on Now What ?!. He even got Don Airey to sound like Ray
Manzarek on a few songs, pushing Airey well out of “I’m replacing Jon Lord, I’ll
just copy him” into “well, I can do whatever I want.” Ezrin was like a Gandalf, pushing the
hobbitish band members out of the Shire, off to Mordor, which they would never
have done left to their own devices, producing their own albums
themselves.
Manager-Producers. Apparently there’s something to be said for
both managing a band and producing its albums. Sandy Pearlman handled both duties for Blue Oyster Cult (except for
the above-mentioned albums); Gerry Bron
did so with Uriah Heep; and Terry Knight
handled the same double-hat duty for Grand Funk Railroad.
Artist-Producers. Although producers generally start off as
lowly studio engineers and work their way up to producer, some started as
musicians and learned enough in the studio to be able to handle it themselves
(much like actors become directors).
Roger Glover produced Sin After Sin (Judas Priest), David Gilmour
produced Astouding Sounds, Amazing Music (Hawkwind), but Todd Rundgren
is probably the best known of these producers.
Alan Parsons seems to have gone the other direction: from engineering Let It Be, Abbey
Road, and then Dark Side of the Moon to developing his own Project. Generally, though, the artist-producers are
more apt to focus on producing their own bands (e.g. Glover & Page) than
going off and producing others’.
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