What exactly does a record producer do? That’s a hell of a question, and Pete Anderson is glad you asked.
So glad, in fact, that he has written a book, How to Produce a Record: A Player’s Philosophy for Marking a Great Recording (80 pp., $21.99, Jessee Lee Music). Inspired by Elvis Presley and the first wave of rock and roll, Anderson picked up the guitar as a teenager. Later, he studied with studio guitarist Howard Roberts, a member of the legendary Wrecking Crew. Eventually, he ended up playing guitar in Dwight Yoakum’s band and producing his records. His career as a record producer gradually took shape, and over the years, Anderson worked with Buck Owens, k.d. lang, Jackson Browne and the Meat Puppets, not to mention Texans Rosie Flores and Darden Smith, selling over 25 millions records in the process.
Speaking from his home base in Los Angeles, Anderson answers the question previously posed. “There are three types of producers,” he explains, “One is a musicologist. John Hammond Sr., who signed Bessie Smith, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, blah, blah, blah, he’s got the greatest batting average of any producer / A and R [artist and repertoire] guy in the history of music. He was a record collector, so he could talk – educated – with musicians about records, because he listened to all the genres. He could sit down and talk to Benny Goodman, and he could play music from all eras, and he could talk about certain things that were going on. So he had taste.
“The second one is an engineer-producer, who is someone that has engineering skills and has some musical skills and usually becomes aligned with a band member who has a bunch of musical skills and is a writer.
“Then there’s the musician-producer, which is what I am. That’s the guy who did sessions and spent a lifetime out on the floor while guys talked about him behind the glass. So as a musician, you’ve been on a session with five guys trying to get a basic track, you’ve been in overdub mode, you’ve been in rehearsal mode, you’ve been in preproduction mode. So I’m a musician-producer who wrote the book from a musician-producer point of view,” Anderson concludes.
In the current age, when just about every musician has access to multitrack recording and editing, Anderson’s book is sure to help point neophytes in the right direction. It’s not an exhaustive guide, nor is it overburdened with audio science. The book does, however, include sections like “The Psychology of Bands,” “How to Create a Terrific Basic Track,” “Overdubs” and “Four Essential Elements of a Hit Song.” (For the record, they are spirit, melody, groove and lyrics.)
“It’s not a technical book,” Anderson says. “It’s not over anybody’s head. It’s a philosophy and an organizational ‘how to’ tutorial. It’s a procedural manual. So you could be producing your buddy down the street on your laptop. You could be producing your friend’s band. You could be producing the next Taylor Swift record. It goes from the top to the bottom.”
So what does the book’s subtitle, A Player’s Philosophy for Making a Great Recording mean? “It’s from a player’s perspective,” Anderson says. “I’m going to align myself with musicians. I can hire an engineer. I can hear what an engineer does to a project. I don’t want to do that. What I want to be able to do is align myself with all the musicians that I have to work with to get the best performances out of them.”
Anderson makes a semantic point, drawing a comparison between a record producer and a film director. “The word ‘producer’ is a misnomer. It should be ‘director.’ I am the director, like the director of a film. I judge performances, I pick the studio, I pick the engineer. The engineer is the cinematographer,” Anderson says, continuing the cinematic metaphor, “The location is the studio, the script is the song, the musicians are the actors, the star is the star.”
When a band and a producer begin working together, there are many questions hanging in the air. How does Anderson manage the relationship between himself and his musical charges? “Well, when you first do it, you get punched in the face,” Anderson laughs. “But as you do it more and more, you begin to recognize things, you recognize personalities. If it’s an artist without a band, it’s easier, because I will hire my guys [to play on the record].”
In dealing with a band, though, things get more complicated. “Usually you find one guy you can reason with and one guy that you can’t reason with. You’ll find the motivator, which is the songwriter or the singer-songwriter, and you’re going to align yourself with that person. You’re not going to undermine the other people, but you’re not going to let the other people in the band undermine you. You have to find out whether there are problem people in the band and who they are, and how quickly you can nullify what they’re going to do to this project,” Anderson says.
“What I don’t want to do is walk in and say, ‘OK, you suck, you shut up, you don’t play, you’re out of the band. All right, let’s start recording.’ I don’t want to do that, but it’s in my head.”
“I’m not crazy about working with bands,” Anderson continues, “because there are usually elements in the band that are negative. What I don’t want to do is walk in and say, ‘OK, you suck, you shut up, you don’t play, you’re out of the band. All right, let’s start recording.’ I don’t want to do that, but it’s in my head.”
With the advent of (relatively) inexpensive home studio equipment and a (basically) free distribution network (i.e. the internet), anyone can record music and deliver it to the masses. What does Anderson think about the current state of the music business? “In the old days, if you didn’t have a record deal, you weren’t in the business. Now, the last thing you need is a record deal. You don’t need one. Bonnie Raitt, she made a record and put it out on her own label. You don’t even need a record label. They just put it out on their own social media structure.”
With dozens of albums under his belt, Anderson has worked with the legends and learned a great deal. “I learn something from every project I do,” Anderson says. “There’s not a record that goes by where I don’t learn something. Either something I’d like to do more of, or something that I’ll never do again!”
A case in point is Anderson’s experience, early in his career, working with Norman Petty, who produced Buddy Holly among others. “It was totally by accident, with a bar band I was playing with in Ventura County. It was an amazing eye opener just to be around the guy that did Buddy Holly. He confirmed things. He would do something and I would think, ‘Oh, that’s how they did that.’ He was an engineer and a musician. He could play keyboards really well. But he was also an inventor, a creator, he understood electronics.”
So if Anderson could have a brass plaque engraved with a piece of advice mounted on the wall in every recording studio, what would it be? His answer, he says, applies not only to record producers, but to everyone. “Dream big,” Anderson suggests. “You might not make the biggest dream that you have, but you will get a lot closer if you dream big. When I was a little boy, I wanted to be Elvis Presley, and I realized fairly soon that I couldn’t be Elvis Presley. But then it was like, ‘Could I be Elvis Presley’s guitar player?’ And I sort of became Elvis Presley’s guitar player, the modern Scotty Moore. I even play a guitar that looks like his! So you dream big, you shoot for the stars, and you might land on a planet that works for you.”
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
