Making Music: Conversations with Record Producers

Groundbreaking conversations with the music producers behind the most successful recording artists on the planet, collected fromTape Opmagazine

THIS BOOK IS A COLLECTION OF INTERVIEWS with people who have made records with some of the biggest names in music. Along the way, they might be engineering the recordings, picking the songs, guiding the singers, picking the best takes of songs, balancing egos, fixing the lyrics, booking the studio time, buying lunch, playing instruments, pushing artists further, writing or cowriting the songs, selecting the musicians to use, overseeing the mixes, and many other tasks. Making records is always a combination of many skills and goals, and the producer needs to have what it takes to make the session productive and the music compelling.

In this book, interviewees include people who have worked with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Public Enemy, Taylor Swift, Bob Dylan, P!nk, U2, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Wu-Tang Clan, David Bowie, T.Rex, Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin, Amy Winehouse, Paul McCartney, Dolly Parton, Duran Duran, the Replacements, Christina Aguilera, Alicia Keys, Kendrick Lamar, Tom Petty, and Sabrina Carpenter, plus more. And that’s just the beginning of the credits these producers―Brian Eno, Finneas, Glyn Johns, Hank Shocklee, Jack Antonoff, Joe Boyd, Jon Brion, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Linda Perry, Mark Ronson, RZA, Sasami, Steve Lillywhite, Susan Rogers, T Bone Burnett, and many others―collectively hold.

All of these interviews come from the pages of Tape Op magazine, founded in 1996 by editor Larry Crane. Over the last thirty years, along with publisher John Baccigaluppi, Tape Op has become the world’s deepest archive of conversations about the art and science of recording music, and is still an active, print-based magazine with the highest circulation of any recording magazine in the world.

B&W profile sketches to begin each chapter

LARRY CRANE was a home recordist and member of the band Vomit Launch in the 1980s before he moved to Portland, Oregon, where he opened a studio and founded Tape Op magazine in 1997―initially photocopied and hand-stapled. Crane’s Jackpot! recording studio has hosted R.E.M., Sonic Youth, Eddie Vedder, Pink Martini, Spoon, Death Cab for Cutie, and Built to Spill, and he has worked with Elliott Smith, the Go-Betweens, the Decemberists, Sleater-Kinney, Jenny Lewis, Quasi, She & Him, M. Ward, Moon Duo, Team Dresch, Stephen Malkmus, Jolie Holland, Jason Lytle, and the Walkabouts.

JOHN BACCIGALUPPI is a producer, engineer, and studio owner; he met Larry Crane when he produced Vomit Launch’s third and fourth albums. He came aboard Tape Op in 1999 as the publisher, designer, and co-owner. Since then, Tape Op has become the largest-circulation recording magazine in the world. Baccigaluppi currently runs Panoramic House Studio and has worked with My Morning Jacket, Devendra Banhart, Kurt Vile, Cate Le Bon, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Feist, Deftones, Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, 7 Seconds, and Little Wings. Crane and Baccigaluppi have worked with some of the most important artists of the last thirty years, while also running a magazine that discusses the art of making records.