What does a producer do on a record? I have often wondered this, as the evidence suggests that they either do (i) too much, or (ii) not enough. The heavy rock producer Steve Albini legendarily limits his contribution to switching on the equipment and pressing ‘record’. The band bashes out the song, Albini switches off the equipment and everyone goes for a hearty lunch. By this studied policy of non-intervention, Albini seeks to reproduce a band at its most raw and primal. You don’t go to him if you want fancy keyboard fills or a symphony orchestra wheeling away in the background. Indeed, Albini is so fast that he ‘produces’ more records than anyone else would be able to. Not that he uses the word ‘producer’ any more. These days, his records are just ‘engineered by Steve Albini’.
At the other end of the spectrum lies Trevor Horn. So fantastically produced are his records — and I love them, have loved them for years — that what you can hear feels like only a small proportion of what’s actually there. Much as you try to pick apart the record in your head, you can’t do it: the countless different tracks all meld into a seamless whole. When this works, as on Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Left To My Own Devices’ or Yes’s ‘Owner Of A Lonely Heart’, it’s magnificent. When it doesn’t, as on some of Rod Stewart’s more flatulent recent albums, it seems like a lot of work for very little effort.
Horn works at his own pace, as they always say of someone who works so slowly no one can quite believe it. When commissioned to produce an album for Grace Jones he spent so long (and so much money) on one track, ‘Slave To The Rhythm’, that the album was made up only of different versions of ‘Slave To The Rhythm’.
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