Shop Talk with Youth

May 29, 2008 6:01 PM, By Michael Molenda

             

(This article originally appeared in the November 1996 issue of Electronic Musician)

Youth (aka Martin Glover) pounded the bass for industrial punksters Killing Joke in the late 1970s and has since become one of Englands hottest producers. The triplethreat producer-songwriter-musician has a discography chock full of productions and remixes for U2, Crowded House, INXS, Erasure, The Cult, James, Faith No More, Siouxsie and the Banshees, PM Dawn, and a horde of other modernrock icons. He has also taken on a revitalized Vegas sexpot (Tom Jones), remixed a dead rock god (Jimi Hendrix) and updated his own past (producing Pandemonium in 1995 for the re-formed Killing Joke). The unrepentant workaholic also runs his own record label and studio complex, making it rather easy to see the truth in Crowded House-vocalist Neil Finn's assessment that Youth is "a bit of a nut."

How do you conceptualize the role of the producer?
Well. I don't believe it works well to tell people what to do. The goal is not to enforce your ideas on the act; it's to realize and unify the shared vision of the band, the songwriter, and the producer.

Unfortunately, some producers don't even use the musicians who are in the band. For example, when I was working with Crowded House [on Together Alone], I was talking to the bassist about reviewing his bass lines, and he said, "You mean I'm going to be able to play on this album?" They weren't allowed to play on their own records; session musicians were brought in to play the parts.

It's okay to do that sometimes with singers and solo acts, but a hand's bag is all about how the musicians play together. It's not about having a bunch of session musicians fill in; otherwise I might as well record the album by myself, and I'm not going to do that. I'd rather look at each musician's parts and try to make the best of them that I can. If a part really isn't right, I might suggest something else. More often than not, my suggestions are about stripping the part down and making it as simple as possible to cut out the clutter. I mean, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter who's playing the part—a session musician or a hand member—all that matters is that what goes on tape is right for the song. That's the goal I try to navigate toward. After all, record production is basically about producing a result.

But let's say you're producing singer-songwriters in the early stages of their careers. Even if you have to completely build the tracks from scratch for the artists, you still want to consolidate what they are and help realize their genius, not impose yours.

Because you are a songwriter and a musician, do you extend your production responsibilities to include editing and polishing an artist's songs?
I do, but working with songs and songwriters is delicate stuff. Essentially, you can hear a good song with a voice and an acoustic guitar or piano. The song should shine with or without a full arrangement behind it. In fact, when I start the preproduction process, I usually get the band to sit around and listen to the vocalist singing the song in an extremely strippeddown version, perhaps with just a single guitar as accompaniment. Such "unadorned" listening should give each person in the band an opportunity to better hear what the song is saying, without all the associations that different instruments bring to an arrangement.

Much of my role at this stage is to help the artist develop a vision for each song. Writers tend to get very close to the details of their songs and often cannot conceptualize an overall theme. I know this from writing my own music. You hear your work in a certain way, but someone else can come in and take it further because they're in more of an objective position to see possibilities that you can't, So I listen to the artists' songs and sit down and discuss what each song means to them. Then I try to help them expand the songs to best achieve what they want to communicate.

Does this creative assistance include suggesting lyric changes?
Again, it's a delicate process. You might think a line is not right, but it's close to what the artist is trying to express. I still might try to encourage them to develop the line further. I'll just say, "I've got a problem with this line. Can you think of something else?" It's usually not a big deal. I mean, there are always lyric changes in the song right up to the time you cut the final vocal. Many of these changes are for beter—to help a line fall into the rhythm of the track better.

And I have to say here that, although I may suggest lyric changes, I never ask for songwriting credit unless I was initially commissioned to cowrite a project. That way, there is no confusion about your role, and you're free to give 100 percent as a mixer or a producer or whatever you were hired for. If the band wants to cut you in on the publishing, that's up to them. It gets too weird otherwise. I mean, you can literally "rewrite" parts of a song in the mixing process, but that doesn't mean you should get a songwriting credit.