I entered the business in the early ’80s as an engineer in a small 8-track studio. Back then, there were no tell-all books the way there are today. All we had were gossipy stories about people like Morris Levy and the founder of Motown Records, Berry Gordy—paranoid tales of how entrepreneurs swindled naive musicians and songwriters out of their money.
As is common among engineers, after several of the records I worked on charted, I became a producer. I quickly realized that all I had heard as the artist’s confessor was true. And, I’m sorry to say, I had become part of that very system, employing many of the same values that I had disagreed with years earlier.
I recalled something a client had told me. He was a successful producer for whom I engineered for years. He said, “No one wants to rip off anybody. Everybody is just doing what they think is right for their client.”
Self-serving? Maybe, but I have seen enough over the years to know that in the arena of music, karma often takes a backseat to leverage. What you’ll see, after we dissect the pros and cons of major record deals, is that who the good guys and bad guys are is largely a matter of outlook.