Producer for a new album
 

Jimmy Iovine produce BD and TWH, but during the recording of Rock A Little, Stevie's cocaine addiction started affecting her performance and Jimmy began to lose interest in helping her. He walked out before the album was finished (according to the Penguin and STevie's BTM).

During the BTM he talked very good about Stevie. Wouldn't be great if he produce another Stevie album? (if she had plans for a future solo album).

No doubt, in my mind, he was her best solo producer...but I dont think he's doing much producing anymore, he's very wrapped up in Interscope Records--and Eminem....but it would be a dream come true

Chris

I agree, as long as he doesn't persuade Stevie to let Eminem sing on something like Stop Gragging My Heart Around or Bombay Sapphires.

- Jake

"Gragging?" LOL I love Jimmy's work too - and that would be awesome if he'd produce more of Stevie's stuff...but, I also LOVE what John Shanks did for her on TISL. :nod:

Producer
 

I think Sheryl Crow should produce the next one. Probably not possible though,with her schedule and all.

How about Liddy Buck producing her next solo album? THAT I would love to hear.


Paula

If he did that then it would be a Buckingham Nicks album; I can't imagine Lindsey not playing the guitar and not singing on nearly every track. That's the way he's been working with her since the beginning.

But then again, I guess some would prefer a Buckingham Nicks album with only Stevie's songs. ;)

Me too! :nod:

Exactly :wavey:

Jimmy Iovine would be my producer of choice, but since that's highly unlikely to happen, then I'd be perfectly happy with Stevie working with John Shanks again.
I think Shanks did a terrific job of staying true to the "essence of Stevie" (for lack of a better term), but added just the right amount of fresh touches.

Don Was, who produced "Somebody Stand By Me" and "Lay Down Your Arms," might also be a good choice.

I enjoyed Sheryl Crow's work on 'Shangri-La,' and the two 'Practical Magic' tracks, and if Stevie ever re-records "Belle Fleur," Crow should definitely be at the helm... but I wouldn't necessarily want to see Sheryl produce the entire album.

Like Richard Dashut producing her sole next album, too, it would sound like a mac record.

But I would love to hear it, anyway!!!!

John Shanks
 

I love what John Shanks did with Planets and FFG but something about TISL seems overproduced to me. I prefer a more simple approach to her songs, ala Bella Donna. Lyrically TISL is my favorite album though.

I think LB could do an excellent job with her next solo album but that would probably be the end of any future Mac music. That is one part of Stevie's life that I think LB better stay out of! He could perhaps produce a track or two, play guitar a bit and even sing with her on one or two songs but any more than that, I fear big problemos. IMO, Liddy is her best producer, by far. Jimmy Iovine comes in second.

Count me in as a John Shanks fan. I'd love it if he did all of Stevie's next solo record. I love his work with Vertical Horizon as well. Count me out as wanting Lindsey to produce her next record. Save that for the next FM project. If anyone overproduces, it's gotta be Lindsey. And when it comes to overproducing, I don't think that that is necessarily the best approach to take with Stevie's music.

Me, too, I want Buck to do it. There is more space and dynamics and harmony when he does, I think stevie is at her best when other people provide these things as a foil to her. Otherwise it's too all-the-same, all-the-same-ALL-the-same-thing...hehehe
Amber

I agree. Whoever produces next time, she should take the same approach she did with Bella Donna: get a band together, rehearse the songs with them, THEN cut the record.

I am going to go...
 

out on a limb and say Dann Huff (Producer of Keith Urban's "Golden Road" & Megadeth's "Risk").

His production's always have a great live band sound and he is very conservative and never over-produces a release unlike others. I would say Rick Rubin too, But as of late I have grown tired of his productions...

Another producer I would throw in from left field is Richard Marx (Producer of Emerson Drive's new release "What If"), I think he would be great for Stevie.

John
 

I love all the producers but overall I have to say that I am a John Shanks fan...he knew what to do with songs that Sheryl did not...his songs shined on TISL and I would love to see what he could do with an entire CD....also I must say I loved Pierre Marchands work on Love Is and this would be another interesting avenue to pursue...I think we would have a very softer sort of cd from him but I think it would be amazing....

Makes sense.

- Jake

My pick is Jack White. No, I'm not kidding. I'm ready to hear something really stripped down from Stevie. He needs to work some "Loretta Lynn magic" on Stevie!!! :nod: :nod: :nod:

Good choice! :wavey:

Personally, I'd like to hear a Tom Petty produced album. But that's just me. ;)

Shanks isn't bad, but I think Sheryl and Stevie just clicked in a way that Stevie and her producer hadn't since Iovine. And I totally despised Marchand's production on Love Is. :laugh: It doesn't get any more maudlin than that, folks.

I think Lindsey would literally go insane producing a Stevie album. ;) I really don't think he was ever a big fan of her solo work, so working on it would be a bit of a handicap. :laugh: Being the perfectionist that he is, I don't think he and Stevie would get on too good when it came to the music and the direction of it. Plus, he wouldn't have his own music to tinker with and cool off with on the side like a Mac project would allow. He'd be doing Stevie 24/7 and the man would flip a turkey.

:shocked: Lindsey can never be accused of using a small amount of production, but the overproduction of the things he touches are his signatures, IMO. Everyhting he does is overproduced, but I think all of it elevates the songs to another level and you discover new things upon further listenings. The production is just as important as the lyrics and the music. The problem I have with solo Stevie is that everything is overproduced and slick, but there's really no meat to any of it after you listen to it once or twice. I'm not saying that she doesn't have a lot of gems out there on her solo albums, but there's not a single song out there that reaches the level of complexity that one of her Lindsey-produced songs has. There's no quirkiness or much depth to the production on her solo work.

Also i think that while Lindsey is known for overproducing, there has been songs where he's been quite spare and framed Stevie's work quite thoughtfully and beautifully - I think he overproduces way more on his own stuff or their joint stuff or christine's stuff. JMO. :rolleyes:

I don't know, a lot of his newer stuff is crap. :laugh: Ever since Cher came out with "Believe," he jumped on that dance fad and has produced some REALLY horrendous stuff. I love Bette Midler, but he really cheapened her album in 2000. Plastic production, if you ask me.

Well, I subscribe to the belief that he's the one true person who can really understand Stevie's material and not only work it out, but blow it out of the park. There have been very few cases where I haven't liked what he did to Stevie's stuff. Unfortunately, I can't say the same thing about her solo producers.

Bring on Tom Petty, dammit. That would be a classic album!

I disagree about the Lindsey factor. I know some of Stevie's solo stuff is not produced that wonderfully, but I think that's true of Lindsey's stuff as well. He overproduces himself and that's one of the reasons his stuff sells nothing and is relegated to bargain bins. He is talented enough to simplify things, as Stevie did on Leather and Lace, Has Anyone Ever Written, I Will Run to You, Rose Garden, etc. Many of his FM-produced songs for Stevie and Christine are gems but he's messed up a few too, like the "new" Smile at You, a case in point. And the whole OOTC album, which has great songs, would have hit home for more listeners without all that pseudo-Beach Boys heavy production stuff. I think they're both better with each other. But I don't think Stevie's stuff lacks meat. She just has made more recordings than Lindsey because he takes too much damned time and often ends up overproducing.
One of Stevie's best-produced tracks ever is "Bombay Sapphires," which she produced herself!

YESSSSS!!!! but my favorite part about them is the harmonies that ensue, my god best harmony ever Insider, and i'm not sure Stevie's voice could be as nimble and beautiful w/him now - or am I full of s**t??? who's heard them sing together lately?
Amber

Omigosh, I didn't even think of that - now that would be a Destiny Rules tape, if you know what i mean!! it would be like:
part 1: Lindsey yells at Stevie
part 2: Stevie yells at Lindsey
part 3: Stevie and her personal assitant lock themselves in Lindsey's bathroom
part 4: Stevie and the knife
part 5: Lindsey and the hammer
part 6: Stevie and Lindsey "disagree" over who is the biggest f***wad-a**hole!
part 7: Lindsey suggest several places for Stevie to put her ideas
part 8: Stevie and Sheryl make a "midnight visit" to Lindsey's recording equipment
part 9: Lindsey introduces Stevie to his lawyers

please add more if you feel the funny bone strike!
Amber

Hmm, I don't know about that. After all, for 'Say You Will,' Stevie's tracks were pretty much all they concentrated on for several months.
It was only after her tracks were completed, that they "opened up" Lindsey's tracks, and began adding her backing vocals, etc.

So, basically Lindsey was working on only Stevie's songs 24/7 for who knows how long. And (at least) 10 of them at that... which is just a few tracks shy of a solo album anyway. :)

Still, I think if Lindsey and Stevie were to do something outside of Fleetwood Mac, it should be another Buckingham Nicks album.
A few guest appearances on each other's outside projects are fine and dandy, but I'd rather see their solo albums remain largely solo. :)

That's your preference speaking out there and I'm sure many listeners would disagree on that. Is there any kind of rule that states that overproduced music is unlistenable and devoid of mass appeal? How come Law And Order wasn't a bigger success then? Oh, don't tell me, because some of that is underproduced and kooky?
You wanna know why I think he doesn't sell any more than he does. Because he's between new wave and classic rock. Between the dirt and the polish. Between the quirky and the traditional. Both sides are equally accessible but not everyone is willing to go to accept both.
Isn't "Goodbye Baby" simple enough for you?
How different is the production on Tango In The Night from the production on OOTC? TITN hit home well enough, didn't it?
She made more recordings in the '80s because she was willing to let her solo band do a lot of the work. But lo and behold, it seems that Stevie's more interested in "overproduction" and long labour over an album now. Gift Of Screws and TISL were both begun at the same time and both took about the same time to finish. You may claim that Stevie did Enchanted in between but Lindsey had his family, you know.
A credit which is at best questionable. How come there isn't more production work of hers where she has the only credit?

That assessment couldn't be more off base. ;)

Lindsey's solo material doesn't sell well for many reasons, overproduction being the least of them. OOTC didn't do so hot because it was released when grunge and rap were the flavors of the month. Fleetwood Mac and its counterparts were not "cool" back then, either. Another reason for why it didn't sell well was because he ahd been out of the public eye for five years and it had been seven since his last solo album.

His previous efforts sold minimally because they were just weird, experimental albums that fans of mainstream pop rock were not going to like. His 80s stuff was no more overproduced than any other album by any other artist, including Stevie's "Rock A Little" (the epitome of overproduction, IMO) and the Mac's "Tango In the Night." If you found "Law and Order" and "Go Insane" to be more overproduced than those two albums, I have some cotton swabs for your ears. :laugh:

Stevie's solo music does lack meat. I'm not knocking the lyrics or her singing because both are dead-on most of the time. But the music itself and the production leaves a lot to be desired sometimes. If you want to compare the "Mirror" album or the "Street Angel" album to one of Lindsey's, both of those albums would be blown out of the water when it came to production/music. Lindsey infuses lots of subtle elements to his music that only emerge with repeated listenings, whereas Stevie's music is as blah and mainstream as possible. You know, you could get Carole King to play the music to HAEWAFY and she could nail it on her first try just as good as it is on the album. But try getting another musician to play one of Lindsey's solo tunes and chances are most of the quirks and subtleties that made the song what it is would be missing. There's nothing really distinct about the Stevie's solo music, probably due to the fact that she concentrates on the emotions, lyrics, and performance of the song more than anything. And that is what draws me to her solo music.

In the end, overproduction means nothing when it comes to what the masses buy. If it mattered, La Nicks would be in the bargain bin right next to Lindsey, singing about "The Nightmare" and talking "to her famous friend last night."

As for Smile At You, it's a helluva lot better than the old demos, IMO. While they are quite good and I like listening to them, I can't say they're favorites because I'm not exactly wowed by someone screaming lyrics instead of singing. The SYW version of it just shows how creative Lindsey is as an arranger and producer. But, then again, Stevie herself could've worked on it over the years and changed it herself. ;)

PS: I like Bombay Sapphires a lot, but it's far from being one of her best produced solo tracks. Far from it. :wavey:

Digging out old pictures and picking some of my least favorite album tracks to include on a boxed set does not an album make. ;)

True enough... but she did tour during that time-period, whereas Lindsey did not. ;)

Which is what I was aware of but did Stevie change any diapers during that time-period? (Oh, the thought of it! ;))

:lol: :lol: :lol:

And since this thread is related to another thread where Johnny Stew gave his answer to another of my rants I'll answer to it here (because I was too lazy to do it earlier), just to confuse the matters further. ;)

Stevie's performance is rarely (and I might almost say never) lackluster. But the musicianship that surrounds them on her solo work does come off as such.
Ideologically your statement is understandable and from a business point of view it might be that even more. ;) But I'm going to claim that certain areas of Stevie Nicks only come out when she is with the band and especially with Lindsey Buckingham. And I think that is because he is allowed certain liberties with Stevie's songs that other producers are not. And I daresay that she is at her most vulnerable and at her bravest when she is with Buckingham (and I've seen even you stating something similar to this) and that is possibly due to the special quality of their relationship. Maybe this sounds like SNL shipper talk but they have an irreplaceable connection between them at least musically. Buckingham actually seems to be willing to understand some of the emotions that Stevie is going through (witness his crying to "Illume", for instance) and is not afraid of conveying that through music. We all know how some of Stevie's vocal performances change from the demo to the final take and that is very probably because of the music that has been laid down there for her. Now if there is someone willing to go with Stevie all the way to her deepest emotions then she most likely puts herself into it totally. It isn't something you necessarily always do alone, it's something you can do with someone who understands you. No wonder she sometimes thinks that it can get so lonely when she's doing a solo act. Her most vulnerable material is on Tusk and that is also because of the music surrounding it. She's never going to put something like "Illume" on a solo album and "Goodbye Baby" as of now is far more vulnerable to me than "Love Is" will ever be. Even "When I See You Again" fits this pattern, now doesn't it? ;)
So that's why I think that Stevie benefits from being in a group, that her message is more underlined within Fleetwood Mac. When she is a solo artist, that's when her personality goes through a filter, IMO.
One can always claim that as a solo act she can release more material but I've never heard such huge difference in it. I think she is a very non-diverse artist and that's why she has to use subtlety. But at that point the argument starts to approaching fan-talk; very few other people will hear that in the music, they will most likely say it's boring instead.
Ok, she didn't have the room to put on a "Beauty And The Beast" or "The Nightmare" on a Fleetwood Mac album and that's why I think the first three solo albums allowed her to be somewhat more excessive than she could be with FM. And that was important, and that was great. But that I will further expand upon a couple of paragraphs later.

What was I trying to say here? I was trying to say that whenever someone is giving their all in a performance, be it instruments or vocals, it's bound to affect the other musicians too. And so it goes with Stevie's performance. She is at her most extreme with Fleetwood Mac and therefore I do not see her solo career being a vital alternative to FM. It feels somewhat more bland to me.

I'm not going to debate over Fleetwood Mac sounding more homogenized and less eccentric than Stevie's solo material. I have always found more eccentricity in Lindsey's genre (and audience) hopping than in works of many other artists.
Like I said, you can make a valid (though I still have my gripes) point of that with Bella Donna, TWH and RAL, the Stevie solo albums that you had the access to in 1986.
But from The Other Side Of The Mirror onwards she's been clinging on to the same homogenous sound that you're speaking of when you're referring to Lindsey-produced Fleetwood Mac albums.
How much eccentricity is there in those albums? Surely there's no self-indulgence of the days of yore, or at least there isn't for me.
They're not diverse (Stevie solo never is) and they sound homogenous so where's the big difference?
I'm far from being the only fan who can hear the similarity between Lindsey's and John Shanks' work. Not to mention the near-sterilization of her voice on TISL, possibly thanks to Chris Lord-Alge.
They're albums I still like but they feel weaker and they feel less emotionally involved.
Should I go through some specific fan training so that my ears would hear the difference? ;)

As far as albums "lacking meat" and being "overproduced," etc., it's all entirely up to the listener's tastes.

I played "Come" and "Murrow" for my brother (the latter of which is in my Top 5 All-Time Favorite Lindsey Buckingham songs), and he turned up his nose and said they were both "overproduced."
Perhaps they are to some degree, but to my ears, they're two of Lindsey's most straightfoward rockers. In decades.

Some people also feel that 'Tango,' and 'Go Insane' and 'Rock A Little' are all over-produced, but to my ears, they sound terrific.

The ironic thing is, if they were produced in a more sparse way, we'd have a whole faction of people saying they were substandard and run-of-the-mill.
Further cementing the age-old adage, that you can never please everyone.

For me, personally, the lyrics & vocals are what draw me in first... the music and production is always going to be secondary.
I mean, as much as I love Lindsey's albums for how different and brilliantly produced they are, and as much as those albums have a place in my heart, the songs themselves (outside of a couple) don't really tug at my heart-strings or incite the feelings of emotional investment that I find in Stevie's albums.

Which I guess is why it doesn't bother me if Stevie doesn't exactly forge new ground with her albums.
The music and production are not "bad," and they never have been... they're just not terribly innovative. But I'm more than willing to give up innovation for the emotion I find.

Of course, there are fans who find emotion in far more of Lindsey's songs than I do... but I think that most of them would admit that they react more to the instrumentation and production, than they do to the lyrics or vocals.
And as long as the music is reaching you somehow, then I think it's an awesome thing.

I've always said that I prefer to focus on what makes Lindsey, Lindsey, and Stevie, Stevie... rather than trying to compare the two, or wish that one would be more like the other.

When I put on one of Lindsey's albums, I'm assured that I will be blown away by all of the nuances and sonic surprises that this man is able to accomplish in his studio all by himself; and when I put on one of Stevie's albums, I'm assured that I will be blown away by how deeply I find myself immersed in her experiences and life lessons, and how captivating her "weird little voice" is. :)

Ok, I'm pretty much with you on that last post of yours Johnny. It's stuff that I've sometimes tried to dress up in words myself too. :thumbsup:

You'll never hear me saying that Lindsey's influence doesn't bring forth from Stevie something really incredible.
I wholeheartedly agree that their chemistry lends itself to a completely different level of musical expression... for both of them. :)

However, I do still believe that there are yet other areas of Stevie's personality, that do not come across with Lindsey & Fleetwood Mac, the way they do in her solo music.

I really can't think of a decent analogy... but for me, it's sort of like having steak prepared two different ways. It's still steak, and it's still delicious... but both styles of preparation bring out something so different in it, making it hard to say one style is "better" than the other.

Anyway, maybe Stevie feels a little more comfortable taking risks within Fleetwood Mac, because she has that safety net. But I think she also likes the fact that she can be a bit more eccentric (lyrically, not musically) in her solo career.

But either way, it's why I value her solo career as much as I value her work with Fleetwood Mac, and why I'd hate to see her ever entirely give up that solo career. One way or the other, I come away from it feeling satisfied. :)