Producing Country. Michael Jarrett

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       INTERLUDE

       THE PRODUCER AS DIRECTOR

       STEVE CROPPER

      The jobs of movie producer and record producer are totally different. The movie producer is the guy that goes around, gets the financing, does all that sort of stuff. That doesn’t mean he isn’t on set and he isn’t around. That doesn’t mean he isn’t giving suggestions to the director. But the director is the hands-on guy. So actually I’m a musical director rather than a record producer, but producer is what they coin it, so that’s what we go with. But there is a definite difference in the job.

       PETE ANDERSON

      You wear a multitude of hats, but basically it’s two jobs. One, you’re very much like the director of a film. You work on the script or the songs. You choose the cinematographer or the engineer. You get the locations or the studio. You help cast the actors or the musicians. You work with their performances. Everything that a director would do in a film is very much what a record producer does. Then, you’re also like a general contractor. A guy comes to you and says, “I want you to build a swimming pool in my backyard.” You go, “Okay, here are the drawings. Here’s what it’s going to look like. Here’s what it’s going to cost, and here’s how long it’s going to take. Give me half the money up front. When I’m done and you’re happy, give me the back half.” So those are the two broadest terms, I think, in trying to explain to people what a record producer does.

       CRAIG STREET

      It’s a weird, floaty, bizarre kind of a job. It’s a really ambiguous job. There’s such a wide range of what producers do that it’s hard for people to pin down. I think a contractor in construction or an architect or a film director is the easiest way to pin it down. And so, for example, that gives you the realm, the range of possibilities that opens up.

      The thing that has always been the most interesting to me is when you have a group of people together in a room with the goal of doing one thing. The artist is always the boss, but people are always looking to the producer and going, “What do we do now?” Some producers lead with an iron fist, just like some film directors—Hitchcock. “This is how it goes. This is how it is storyboarded. This is exactly what we do.” Some architects—Frank Lloyd Wright—“this is how it is. This is the furniture you’re going to have. These are the curtains you’re going to have.”

      Others, an architect like [John] Lautner or directors like Cassavetes and Fellini: “Let’s see what happens. Let’s invent another scene, right now. I know it’s not written down, but let’s do it.” You start to rely on the relationship with everybody in the room, the understanding that everybody has something to offer.

      If there’s a method—and I say if, because I’m trying like mad for there not to be—then it’s a bit of a Tom Sawyer thing. I’m getting other people to paint the fence. I’m identifying who those people are. It’s a bit of being like a voyeur. I really get off on what happens when people get in a room together. Now the trick is to control who gets into the room. I know that if I put certain thinking, breathing, feeling musicians in a room with certain other musicians—in a room that’s a wonderful environment with some great songs—good stuff is going to happen. So those are the control factors, rather than coming in and telling somebody precisely what to play. Once people know that you’re trusting them to be them, you get a lot more out of musicians. That’s part of it. The other part of it is that I draw really heavily from sources that are non-musical.

       DON LAW JR.

      My father was successful in being able to carve out his piece. He existed somewhat autonomously down there [in Nashville]. He had to deal with New York, but for a lot of that time, for a lot of his career, he was his own fiefdom. Back when everything was under one roof, you had the artists, and you were in your own studios with your own engineers. It was pretty much all in-house in a way, kind of like the movie studios were. I always got the sense that he was pretty much left alone most of the time.

      It took some effort on my father’s part to get Columbia to buy the Quonset Hut [Owen and Harold Bradley’s Music Row recording studio], but it was one of the early studios to get that music going. Then, all of a sudden, other companies started doing the same thing. Nashville became more of a central location.

      The interesting thing about that market and those artists is that they did well consistently. If you looked at the popular-music market, there was a lot of variability in it, whereas the country market was pretty stable. My father was able to keep that fairly successful. At times he would outsell the popular music division. I remember he and Mitch Miller occasionally had their issues. But the Columbia division in Nashville did quite well for quite a long time. I think his track record spoke for itself.

       JIM ED NORMAN

      I guess it’s a pendulum that СКАЧАТЬ