Producers

In the late 1950s the producer role rises: people want studio sounds that are not mere copies of the stage. Phil Spector builds his unique Wall of Sound.

Earlier lectures flagged producers; here we track them in rock, 1960–1963. Before 1960 the job is basically A&R man (artists and repertoire): keep a session orderly—two hours of studio time paid, a label person on site who may not even handle the music, just keep musicians on schedule so the company is not wasting money.

Under Leiber and Stoller’s influence a craft appears that shapes the recorded result. The person may be the songwriter or someone finishing others’ songs so the record is more than a live duplicate. If record and stage sound the same, you barely need a producer—players own the song; place the mics and you are done. People realize the studio can make sound different, better, more interesting. Mic placement and mixing yield results you cannot get live. Specialists emerge who do not merely capture but interpret a song by studio means—no longer Tin Pan Alley 1920s thinking, but aiming for a specific recorded style, the path that later leads toward Brian Wilson’s Pet Sounds or the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper.

We noted Leiber and Stoller moving from writing into cutting records with the Coasters; as top writers they could make demands, starting with the Robins’ 1955 “Smokey Joe’s Cafe.” Coasters playlets include 1956’s “Down in Mexico,” 1958’s “Yakety Yak,” and 1959’s “Charlie Brown”—teen-life stories (no chores, no allowance; the bullied high-school kid) that score in 1958–59. Their 1959 Drifters cut “There Goes My Baby” is a production breakthrough.

On the Shirelles’ 1960 Goffin/King hit “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” Carole King has strong ideas about how it should sound and will not stay outside the booth—she goes in and demos for the timpani player. Goffin and King apprentice under Leiber and Stoller and start building the tones they want.

For early-1960s U.S. producers you cannot skip Phil Spector and the Wall of Sound. As a Teddy Bears member he returns to the charts in 1958 with “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” titled from his father’s epitaph. It has a doo-wop flavor; then he apprentices with Leiber and Stoller and develops his studio method.

Records then are mono—everything from one speaker. Most people now expect stereo: sit between two speakers and sound seems to hang in front of you. By the 1970s acts like Steely Dan chase rich stereo fields. Spector goes the other way: all mono, as thick as possible. He packs the room with instruments and mics; spill bleeds across mics; everything blends into what he calls a wall of sound—like ingredients in one soup, hard to pick apart. On small car speakers his records sound denser than rivals—hear the Crystals’ 1963 “Da Doo Ron Ron” and the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” (lead Ronnie Bennett later marries Spector).

Many think Spector vanishes after the Beatles arrive in 1964, yet he cuts the Righteous Brothers’ 1964 smash “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.” He is close to the Beatles—on their first U.S. trip he sits by Paul McCartney and advises them; he also advises the Rolling Stones. He produces the Beatles’ 1969 farewell album Let It Be and solo work by John Lennon and George Harrison. Spector is a major figure in rock history.