The preceding six functional typologies are broadly generalized groupings of func-tionality. They are not buckets within which all producers are identical, but rather a continuum with six methodological peaks that fade in and out like six stations on a radio dial. Some producers are bifunctional or polyfunctional and can oper-ate in more than one mode. Certainly, each individual brings his or her unique combination of skills, talents, and relationships to bear on their work in the studio, in preproduction, and even in acquiring work. These six categories describe meta-functions focusing on the interpersonal, musical, technical, and (to some extent)
business relationship of the producer with the artist throughout the production process. The nature of these artist-producer relationships can and will evolve proj-ect by projproj-ect as relationships mature, and throughout the course of the producer’s career.
It is common to describe producers by their base, source, or background skills.
Arif Mardin illustrated three such categories, as he saw them:
There is the songwriter/producer—who is in control of his or her composi-tion and records the song with an artist. We are talking about Gamble and Huff, Lamont Dozier, Leiber and Stoller—songwriter/ producers. Or you have music-lover producers, like Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler, the Chess brothers, Berry Gordy. They don’t have music training, but they love music and they have a song sense, they know lyrics and things like that, they can analyze a song.
Then the other would be engineer/producer; Hugh Padgham, Tom Dowd, they sit behind the controls and help shape the sessions. 31
I pointed out to Mardin that, according to this schema, he had missed his own category, arguably the most successful one of all that he shared with Quincy Jones and George Martin—the arranger/producer. All three trained in music, arrange-ment, and orchestration, equipping them to produce diverse acts and maximize the musical and commercial potential of the material. Other common source skills for successful producers are musician, artist, and DJ (which could fi t under Mardin’s music-lover category). Especially today, many producers and aspiring producers have several highly developed skills—Dr. Luke trained at the Manhattan School of Music, played guitar in the “Saturday Night Live” band, was a DJ in New York City clubs, and co-writes the songs that he produces. Although these source skills tell us something about a producer, they do not explain how that person functions in the studio or in relation to the artist and the material. Background skills are most usefully considered as a subset of functional typologies.
For example, most would agree that George Martin is one of the most successful producers of all time, not just in commercial terms, but because of the diversity of his contributions to the various records he produced, and to the Beatles’ records in par-ticular. It is hard to imagine how differently “Eleanor Rigby” might have sounded if someone other than Martin had produced it. Despite the magnitude of his talent and contributions, Martin never took the auteur role with the artists he produced. He did not write the songs; he did not play much on the recordings; and he did not try to con-trol all parameters. From the early to the late Beatles, to America, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Jeff Beck—each production had its own sound and musical identity.
Martin represented the artists, framing them beautifully with his contributions. He fi ts best in the collaborative typology. He adapted his abilities to the artist’s needs, which enabled him to work with powerful and opinionated artists on an equal footing.
On the other hand, Quincy Jones is also an arranger; he does not usually write the songs for his artists, and he does not play a signifi cant number of parts on the recordings. He often brings in other arrangers, and he uses the best studio musicians.
Those parameters do not immediately add up to an auteur typology. Regardless, his work has a distinctive identity, characteristics of which you can trace back to albums and soundtracks he made under his own name. Listen to any of his Michael Jackson albums and then George Benson’s “Give Me the Night.” Jones controls the parameters of his recordings very tightly; he mostly works with singers rather than bands; and he uses a small pool of carefully selected writers, musicians, background singers, arrangers, and engineers who fi t his sensibility. Quincy Jones’s unmistak-able identity makes him an auteur producer.
Similarly, Phil Spector did not write “Unchained Melody,” and he always used studio musicians, but he powerfully stamped that track, like most of his work, with his unique sonic identity.
I am sure that the artists who worked with Quincy Jones and George Martin are comparably satisfi ed. There are no better or worse ways of working, just dif-ferent approaches that are most successful when matched appropriately to an act.
It is possible to repeat this exercise, comparing pairs of producers with similar background typologies who would be categorized in different functional typologies, making them ideally matched for different kinds of artists and projects.
It is worth asking why categorizing producers like this might be useful. For an artist, producer, or A&R person who has an intuitive grasp of how the artist, producer, and label are likely to fi t together, understanding the underlying theory may not seem important. Unfortunately, mismatches of producers with artists hap-pen too often and at all levels of the industry. I have been offered work with artists for whom I would not be the ideal choice. I have often heard A&R people say that a band just needs an engineer/producer to make a good-sounding record, when in fact engineers come in all six colors. One engineer will record the band as they come, capturing their sound as well as he or she can; another will deconstruct and reconstruct the music according to his or her vision rather than the group’s; and there are all shades in between.
I experienced the latter situation as an artist. In this case, it was a bait-and-switch tactic, where the A&R person agreed to a successful producer who was acceptable to us, but the album wound up being produced by his engineer who was trying to launch his own production career. The deal imperceptibly morphed from the producer we wanted, to him acting in a consultative role. As it transpired, he never did show up at the studio, and the album was produced entirely by the engineer who received the producer credit. We continued recording because the studio time was booked; we were excited to be recording for a major label; and although we were uncomfortable with the situation, we were too inexperienced to know how to resolve it.
Based on abilities, the engineer should have assumed an assistive role, allow-ing the band to be the primary producer. Instead, he was aggressively proactive in defi ning the studio methodologies, deconstructing and reconstructing our music, and divisively conquering interpersonal relationships in the band. The result was a commercial failure and an album of some of my favorite material that I still cannot listen to because of its poor production values.
As a producer gets busier and more expensive, it’s common for labels to turn to that producer’s engineer or Pro Tools operator, apparently thinking that they can get the same result for less money. It can work out well sometimes, but a positive result is not a given; there may be radically different skill sets and philosophies at work. There are producers from an engineering background who are wonderful song doctors and who have all the required interpersonal abilities, and there are others who don’t. Raising the question of subtle differences between a producer’s functionality versus the needs of the artist might be critical in making a correct creative match and achieving the desired result.
As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, there are many other subset typologies, such as success, musical genre, training, studio ownership, price, location, and methodologies. These categories can be useful as subsets of the primary func-tional typology. There is one subset typology that is signifi cant enough to point out, and that is the entrepreneurial producer. Any of the six classes can also be entrepre-neurial. An entrepreneur is someone who organizes and manages an enterprise or business, with initiative and risk. Examples of entrepreneurial producers are Moses Asch (Folkways Records), Sam Phillips (Sun Records), the Chess brothers (Chess Records), and Bruce Iglauer (Alligator Records). There are many more, but each of these has actively produced recordings while owning their own studio and record label. Moses Asch was an electronics engineer by trade, but his preference was to use a single microphone directly recorded to disc or tape with no processing and very little intervention on his part. Asch was an enablative producer; he would fi nd an artist he liked and let them record what they wanted, sometimes recording dozens of tunes in a single session with artists such as Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and Pete Seeger. Sam Phillips was more of a collaborative producer with auteur leanings, intermediating musically and technically. The Chess brothers maintained the individuality of their artists even though they were operating within a limited number of genres. Bruce Iglauer specializes in blues at his Alligator Records, which he has run for more than 40 years in Chicago. A non-musician whose respect for the artist’s identity comes through in his productions, his intermediation with regard to choice and refi nement of material and performance positions him as a collaborative producer. 32
In Summation
On a sliding scale of control from absolute to advisory, music producers actively direct the creative process of recording. My observation is that producers’ personal philosophies and beliefs about making records combined with their interpersonal skills and toolkit of methodologies—largely independent of source skills—will cause them to gravitate toward one of the six functional typologies on the con-tinuum. Their place on that continuum will have a greater and more predictable impact on their working relationship with the artist and the outcome of the produc-tion than will their source skills.