I started my career as a record maker, it actually was a publishing company that was owned by my father, and it was a great experience working for that publishing company. It was called Metric Music, because in those days songs were the most important element of a record. I think they still are for that matter. But you had to learn how to make the demos of those songs really sound like records for fear that the producers in those days would mess up the song or the arrangement. So it was a great way to learn how to make a record with limited funds, really limited funds, focus in on the songs and the most important parts of the song, and learn what it meant to take advantage of moments within a song.

So it was a great sort of beginning to producing records. Great way of doing it, and again it was way back in the early 60’s so in terms of technology it was limited and difficult, but you had to use your imagination.

Well what happened is the demos were received very well by the record producers at other record companies. They liked the quality of the demos and especially at Warner Brothers and Reprise, the two heads of A and R were so impressed by the demos that they needed to hire sort of an A and R gofer and they wanted to hire me. I thought it would be a good thing to move away from Liberty Records, my father, and go work at another record company, so I accepted the job.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a true record producer because I knew how difficult it was, but the idea of moving there and being on my own made sense at the time. So I went off and did that, and what was nice is I had two executives who have made records for many, many years who were very patient with me, and also who sort of pushed me in the swimming pool. They weren’t overly hands on, they wanted me to learn the hard way, and I had picked up so much stuff beforehand working for the publishing company that it wasn’t too bad. It was scary, but not that scary.

So if I had a project they just said, “Go hire an arranger and do it the way you want to do it,” and you learn real quick when you have that kind of pressure on you. And in those days it was so much different. It was really, again, about the song and being an artist and often the artist didn’t write songs so you’d have to cast the voice with the song and have an arrangement, and try to get two or three things in one night which would be three hours.

So again the limitations were important and I think helpful later on. I found an engineer who I could trust. I never really got involved in the technical part of making records. I never felt capable of doing it, I worked with someone who I thought was amazing, his name was Lee Hirschberg, and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to have to think about that. I mean, yes, I was concerned about how a snare drum sounded and how certain things were mic’d, but not obsessively. I had friends who were producers who understood it better than I did and were much more on the case when it came to that, but to me it was always about the arrangement, the song, the performance.

I don’t have enough of a musical background to actually arrange. I’d have ideas, thoughts, references because we all listen, we all had our favorite music, and we’d all have things we’d want to steal from. I mean that still exists and it was part of the game, but the real goal was to find a sort of familiar family of musicians and get them to work together and try to set up an environment that was creative and fun. And out of that when people are open and free you can get some amazing things done.

It took a while to learn that sort of a hands off approach, but finally it made sense to me that – I always wanted to surround myself with people that were better, that were musicians and who knew more about it than I did.

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