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NOVEMBER 2010 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM NOVEMBER 2010 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM PRODUCER How do your production projects chameleon-like, but I can’t help it. I was usually begin? brought up in the northeast of England, and I’ve never actually pitched myself as a what I was first exposed to was Northern producer for hire. I usually have no idea how soul and Motown. But my brother bought the I ended up working with an artist. I’ll have to first Dylan album, and my cousin in Memphis think, “Oh yeah, that’s because I was lying on was sending us records by Mississippi John the floor drunk in Joe Strummer’s house in Hurt, Big Bill Broonzy and Robert Johnson. Devon, and this person tripped over me.” Then the Beatles were on the radio. It was such a kaleidoscope of different sounds. Kori Bundi Kori How did you meet Stevie Nicks? Years ago I wrote this song called “Don’t With Stevie Nicks at Are you ever intimidated to work with Come Around Here No More.” I was writing the High Window in the people you grew up listening to? Hollywood, July 2010 it for Stevie, and then we were recording it For the first three hours or so. Especially with [producer] Jimmy Iovine. Jimmy brought when they start singing, you go, “Wow, Tom Petty down, and Tom really loved the you’ll hear maybe 10 percent of me on that’s Mick Jagger!” or “Wow, that’s Aretha song and wanted to finish the verses—I had another artist’s album. Franklin!” But they’re usually so relaxed in the chorus and the whole track. That’s when themselves about what they do that you also I first met Stevie. Years later I interviewed In the studio, what is your interaction relax. Then you see them get critical about with artists like? their thing, and you realize they’re just as Usually I’m just trying to understand what worried about executing what they’re doing they’re trying to say. “What is this song as anyone. about? Is this something about what you’re really feeling, or is it a song that you think is How do you tell someone that a quite good, but that you don’t connect with?” performance could be better? I’d rather record something that they’re really Once I get to know people really well, they connecting with, especially when you work can tell by the amount of attention, or frenzied with someone like Sinéad O’Connor. An excitement, that I’m putting off. I’m a bit of artist like that, if they don’t connect with a a vibe master, so if I start celebrating they song they can’t really sing it. I’ve worked with know it’s going really good. I’m not the kind Capitol Studios so many people that it’s a blur, and they’re of person who goes into all the technical all different. They all have different ways of reasons—“You should be singing a B-flat.” being—Sinéad has her way of being, Mick It’s nothing to do with that, it’s to do with Brian Totoro Jagger has his way of being, Bryan Ferry whether they’re feeling it. Everybody goes has a completely different way of being—and through these waves, these moments where DAVE STEWART none of them are right or wrong. you can’t get anything to sound good. Then you’ll go through waves where it peaks, With Glen Ballard at the High From the Eurythmics to big-name producer, a life of rock and restlessness Window in Hollywood, July 2009 Who’s on your production wish list? where everything sounds really good. It can Kori Bundi Bundi Kori Kori I’d love to make a record with Leonard be something in your life, your circumstances, By Chris Neal her for a pilot for an HBO series, and Cohen, who is a person that I’m very inspired what kind of environment you’re in. You get during the interview we played “Rhiannon” by. I’d also love to make a record with Stevie the wrong person in the wrong place, or the DAVE STEWART IS STANDING BEHIND THE BOARD AT include fi lm score composition and a solo career of his own—although and “Landslide” acoustically. She says now Wonder. That may seem a bit eclectic and wrong person in the right place. Blackbird Studio, a top-fl ight recording facility tucked away in a quiet The Blackbird Diaries, due out in March, will be his fi rst album of when we did that she told her manager, “I suburb of Nashville. He bobs his head with approval as “Magic in new solo material since 1995. “How the hell did that happen?” he want Dave to work with me.” Later I sent her the Blues,” a track from his upcoming solo album, pours from the says with a laugh. “I just get into so many various things.” Distractions a song with just a backing track and chorus speakers at joyous full blast. The sound is crystal clear, but the during that period included production work for Katy Perry, Ringo with me singing, called “Everybody Loves music itself is swampy, organic and thoroughly ragged-but-right. Starr, Jon Bon Jovi, Sinéad O’Connor, Imogen Heap, Bryan Ferry You.” She really liked it, wrote the verses and Stewart plays a spot of air guitar, then points to the speakers. and others. He and sometime production and songwriting partner sent it back with her singing it. That was the “That’s what it sounds like when people play in the same room Glen Ballard established the High Window, a shared private studio beginning of it. together,” he says. in Hollywood. And last summer Stewart co-wrote The Business Playing well with others has brought Stewart a long way. The Playground: Where Creativity and Commerce Collide, a book about How would you describe your sound? Sunderland, England, native rocketed to fame in the early 1980s the need for creativity in business. I’m often working with lots of different people as half of the wildly popular duo the Eurythmics, but he quickly cast Stewart’s latest high-profi le production client is Stevie Nicks, at once—it could be Stevie or a soul singer his eye toward mixing things up with other musicians. He produced with whom he plans to tour next spring. Next year will also see the or a young indie person—and I morph into tracks for acts like Mick Jagger, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and premiere of Ghost: The Musical, a stage show co-written by Stewart their world. A lot of producers have a stamp. Daryl Hall even as he continued knocking out hits with Eurythmics and based upon the hit movie of the same name. We sat down with “This is my world, you’ve come into it and partner Annie Lennox. When the duo split in 1990 (they have Stewart in a quiet corner of Blackbird to talk about his restless quest you’re going to sound like me with you on occasionally reunited since), Stewart expanded his horizons to for new musical experiences. top.” I’m the other way ’round. I’m like, “I’m gonna sound like you, but you might hear a bit of this.” And I suppose that “a bit of this” ‘Every artist has a completely different way of being, is what you hear all over the Eurythmics— but that was a 50/50, equal thing. So With Annie Lennox and none of them are right or wrong.’ and Stevie Wonder 4848 49 M mag 7_BARS.indd 48 11/17/10 5:09:02 PM M mag 7_BARS.indd 49 11/17/10 5:08:41 PM NOVEMBER 2010 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM NOVEMBER 2010 ISSUE MMUSICMAG.COM At Blackbird PRODUCER Studio in Nashville, RICHARD THOMPSON SUGARLAND TRICKY NATASHA BEDINGFIELD August 2010 JOE SATRIANI Wizard of shred LINKIN PARK Goes nuclear With Joss Stone at LIZ PHAIR Collin Stark Henson Recording Studios in Hollywood, Fun time July 2009 ‘I’ve lasted through all sorts of changes, sound-wise.’ Brian Totoro Do you have a favorite studio? and has lots of choices. But I tend not to want and recreated his studio. I arrived with a This one! (laughs) I like this one. I also like to run a [private] studio like that, because laptop and a couple of pedals! (laughs) Glen Henson Recording Studios in Hollywood. then if you don’t use it you feel guilty, you laughs about this, too. I went to a local village I like the big room at Abbey Road. When think you should be renting it out—which I did and asked to borrow a café’s sound system, we’re recording in bigger rooms, I tend to for years. I had a studio in England called took it back to the house and plugged it in. I like them tangled up with wires and carpets, the Church, which became quite well known. like things that are meant to sound terrible, very old school. When I get into electronic It was a huge church from the 1850s, with like plastic Woolworth’s guitars, mixed with mode, like early Eurythmics, I like a little stained glass windows. I would use it for all something that sounds wonderful. The room with nobody else in it. That’s when the different things I was doing. I had Dylan Eurythmics records were all like that.

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