← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Music Producer Duo Wendy & Lisa
00:24:07
Music producer duo Wendy & Lisa discuss their career.
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- [00:10]
A
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. In March this year, for Women's History Month, we ran a series called Equalizers, about women who work in the technical field of the music industry, fields where they're severely underrepresented. Two of our guests for that series were Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, AKA Wendy and Lisa. They were technically the first women nominated for the Grammy for Producer of the Year as part of Prince and the Revolution. When Purple Rain came out in 1984, Wendy and Lisa, of course, became a duo on their own, releasing a series of albums on which they continue to serve as producers. They're also Grammy and Emmy Award winners. AOI producer Simon Close also produced our Equalizer series, and here he is to tell me a little more about why he picked up this segment. Hey, Simon.
- [01:01]
B
Hey, Alison.
- [01:02]
A
Can you say a little more about the Equalizer series?
- [01:05]
B
Well, we do a lot of albums on this show, obviously, and I just noticed, looking through the production credits, when we're doing research on the albums, how often it's a man's name you hear, regardless of the gender of the person who recorded the song. Producers tend to be men. And so I digged into that a little bit. I came across some wild statistics that, like, there have only been a handful of women nominated for Producer of the Year at the Grammys. No, none have won so far. There's some ratio that, like, of the. Of the last decade at least, of Billboard Hot 100 songs, 35 produce male producers to one female producer are credited on these songs. So just thinking about that, I thought it was a good opportunity to shout out some female producers and engineers in the industry.
- [01:49]
A
And don't forget, they're Wendy and Lisa.
- [01:51]
B
And they're Wendy and Lisa. I mean, yeah, so we got Wendy and Lisa for this series, which was unbelievable. They were one of the first producers and artists that we spoke to in this month. And, yeah, this was just an excellent conversation. What also stood out to me about this conversation, or what I remember fondly about it, was I reached out to Susan Rogers, who was Prince's longtime engineer, and said, you know, we're gonna have Wendy and Lisa on. It would be great if, like, you could stop by, too. And she said, oh, I love those two. I would love to have, like, what ended up being a sort of reunion. And so you can hear that Susan. Susan Rogers will join partway through the conversation. And it's just a big love fest with a bunch of women who are really good at what they do here's.
- [02:35]
A
Wendy and Lisa.
- [02:56]
C
I never meant to call you.
- [02:58]
A
So the Revolution is officially credited as.
- [03:00]
D
Producers on Purple Rain.
- [03:02]
A
Wendy, back in those early days, did.
- [03:04]
D
You think of yourself as producers or was that just part of the music making process?
- [03:09]
E
Well, that's a really good question because I think growing up my ear kind of gravitated toward a producer's mind. I always heard things a certain way and wanted to learn how to tweak certain things and was very interested in the actual recording process. And all the gigs and the technical side was always very interesting to me. So I always kind of. I'm an autodidact kind of gearhead. So it wasn't, it wasn't sort of out of character for me to want to go in that direction. I kind of always do that. And as Wendy and Lisa, we're kind of always producing each other as well, which is an interesting anomaly between the two of us as music partners. We are always producing each other. So it's an interesting, it's an interesting question, but it's not far fetched from who I actually am.
- [04:00]
D
How about for you, Lisa?
- [04:03]
F
Yeah, I'm more the sort of it's all part of the same thing kind of person, I think, in terms of the whole arrangement usually. So it's, you know, just as the song happens, I think it's natural to serve the song and make it as good as it can be. And if that's what producing is, then that's what we do. But yeah, it's all part of the same thing. For me, it was. I never really thought of myself as a producer. I just thought I was a music maker.
- [04:38]
D
Wendy, what did you learn about production while working with Prince and the Revolution?
- [04:47]
E
The thoughtfulness about what's happening in an actual recording studio. And a great engineer can teach you that. And we worked with some fine engineers and I think I learned a lot about how I can get the sounds that I want and arrangements that I want and musicians that could work for this or couldn't work for that or in. Prince was just. I mean, obviously he's a guy that could do it all himself. But there were some incredible lessons to be learned from his discipline and his thoughtfulness behind a board and how he ran a studio. So I learned a lot from that for sure. And you know, we had an engineer that we worked with for many years, Susan Rogers, that really taught me a lot about sound and about technique, and I've carried that with me.
- [05:46]
D
Hold the thought on Susan Rogers. We're going to talk about her in Just a minute, Lisa. What is something from that time in your life that you still use today in your production, in your music making?
- [06:03]
F
Oh, wow. Well, I was thinking, well, Wendy was talking, you know, also about what, what I've learned and part of the working in the studio is just not to be intimidated by the gear and what. And it was great because we were younger and Prince was fearless and he played the studio like an instrument. He was just all over it. And so to witness that and to have that be the way that I learned was just great because, you know, I'm not afraid of pushing buttons and like, let's try this. Or, you know, just experimenting with the studio and not always, you know, being too intimidated by technology and, you know, like, I don't know how to work it. It really doesn't matter. Just turn it on and start fiddling. If it's, if it sounds cool, you're on the right track. That's where I'm at.
- [07:02]
D
You're listening to another installment of our March series, Equalizers. I'm speaking to Wendy and Lisa, the first woman to be nominated for the Grammy for producer of the year as part of Prince and the Revolution. Let's listen to a song from Purple Rain and we'll talk about it on the other side with a special gu.
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G
Guests.
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D
Here's let's go crazy.
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C
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life. Electric word, life. It means forever and that's a mighty long time. But I'm here to tell you there's something else. The after world, a world of never ending happiness. You can always see the sun, day or night. So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills, you know the one I want. Doctor, Everything will be all right. Instead of asking him how much of your time is left, ask him how much of your mind, baby. Cause the next life things are much harder than the after world. This life, you're on your own. And if the elevator tries to break you down, go crazy.
- [08:24]
A
I want to bring in another guest here. We're celebrating women in production and engineering all month. And if we're doing that, we're going to talk to engineer Susan Rogers. She has just been named by Wendy. Susan was Prince's staff engineer throughout the 80s and has engineered many other musicians including David Byrne, Barenaked Ladies, and Wendy and Lisa. She's currently a professor in music production and engineer at Berklee School. Susan, welcome to.
- [08:51]
G
Hi, Allison. Hi, Wendy and Lisa. Nice to join you all.
- [08:54]
E
Hi, darling.
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G
Hi.
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F
Susan.
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A
What do you Remember about the sessions around Purple Rain?
- [09:06]
G
Oh, golly. It was such an intense time. And when I think back to it, that was over 40 years ago, and we were young and we had that combination of seriousness that young people have and great doubt and then overconfidence, and you pile all that together. And then when you add the raw talent of Wendy and Lisa and Prince and the revolution, you combine all that. It's pretty potent mixture. We didn't realize it at the time, but we can look back on it now and realize, damn, we had it going on, didn't we?
- [09:46]
A
Wendy, what do you remember about that time?
- [09:49]
E
Well, she's. She's spot on. I would just. I would just add to the. The energy kind of like the. The system, the dynamics between everybody and what they were giving. Everybody gave their A game. So you knew what you were doing was something kind of otherworldly because you could just feel that it. It felt different than most stuff. And I'm sure every artist at some point in their career taps onto something that feels bigger than them. And that whole time felt bigger than all of us, but bigger than the sum, bigger than the one. It was, the sum total of all of it. So I remember a million different things, but the energy was. Was huge.
- [10:34]
A
Lisa, how about you?
- [10:36]
F
Yeah, yeah, right on. Everybody also, it was just. We worked from morning to night. It was, you know, it was all day, every day. It was. It was our life. That's how we spent our life. We woke up in the morning and went to the warehouse and it was either recording, rehearsing, doing acting lessons, you know, doing dance lessons for the film, you know, all this stuff. It was a daily thing, and it was all day. So I just remember that being just a whole new kind of life.
- [11:16]
D
Susan, you've also worked on Wendy and Lisa's albums. We're going to talk about them like they're not here.
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A
What do you think their skill set is?
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D
What do they do better than anyone else?
- [11:26]
G
Oh, oh. They are so deeply, innately musical. When Lisa's on a keyboard, especially on piano, Wendy said it once, she pets the keys, you can just feel her heart going right to her hands. And the way she coaxes music out of an instrument is astonishing. It's really breathtaking. And Wendy. Wendy's skill set on guitar and her ear and her taste. And you can imagine her thinking as she plays, she's filtering all the things she might be playing and then deciding on, here's what would be perfect in this moment. You're watching Maestros is that Is that the feminine pronunciation of maestro?
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A
Let's do it.
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G
Watching masters at work, when you work with them, it's really amazing.
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D
Okay, we're going to talk about you like you aren't here. Susan. Wendy, why was Susan the right person to work with on your albums after the revolution?
- [12:39]
E
Because she's superlative. I mean, if you're gonna get a list in high school of who's the funniest, who's the best, who's this, Susan's at the top of that list. And it was a no brainer for me and Lisa to use her because she has an incredible ability to learn the technical side of what she does, which, I mean, just listening to her talk and as a teacher, now anyone's blessed to have her as their teacher because the way she can explain something in terms for the common man is spectacular. And in the studio it's very same. And her enthusiasm and the love that she cares and approaches everything from like a piece of gear to the sound coming through the speakers. I remember one time Susan was explaining to me how women and men differently hear low end and that women hear low end more of a. More warmth. And I've never forgotten that. And when I listen back to the albums that me and Lisa did with Susan, there's a kind of puffiness to the sound of those records, for lack of a better way to describe it, a puffiness that has a lot of warmth as well. But there's a punch to it that only, only at the time I could imagine, only Susan could have done. I tried to recreate that kind of stuff, and I've never been able to recreate the kind of ear she has. She has a singular ear.
- [14:12]
A
Lisa, how about you?
- [14:13]
F
Oh, wow. I mean, I, I just can't say enough. And yeah, she's a unique creature. The, the, the, the amazing technical knowledge that she has. It. It's just incredible. She can build something out of nothing, you know, I asked her, I had a trouble, a problem with one of my keyboards back in the, in the 1900s, and things were very difficult back then. And she like just put a tuning knob on the front of my keyboard. She just drilled a hole and somehow figured out how to do that. And, you know, and, and so that's just amazing in itself. And then her heart, the heart that she puts into everything. Wendy said it cares about everything that she does. She cares about the music and the way that you're doing the music. And then like if you're hungry or something, like, she's the full package.
- [15:15]
E
She's just incredible person.
- [15:18]
A
Susan, we have a song here that you worked on for Mother of Pearls called from your 1990 album, Erotica, if I'm saying correctly. What did you want to highlight this track?
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E
Eroica.
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D
Eroica.
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A
Thank you.
- [15:32]
G
Yeah, we spent a lot of months on that album, and it was delightful because it's wonderful working with Wendy and Lisa, and you learn so much from them. Any. Any technical professional who's worked with them will admit how much they've learned about music and the art of sound from working with Wendy and Lisa. Every track on that record is. Is marvelous. I just picked this one because it's the most recent one I've listened to. They're all really fabulous, but this really does feature the beautiful best of what Wendy and Lisa do. And you'll hear that quality in it of sculpting music with a gentle and firm hand. You hear their musical minds at work, and that's always a treat.
- [16:21]
D
Let's listen to Mother of Pearl.
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E
Cold stare makes light of this. Size me up. Make sure that it fits.
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A
Susan, before we let you go, something I wanted to ask you about. What is. Because you're a professor at Berkeley, what is something that we could do better to make more space for women in production?
- [17:32]
G
Oh, gosh, Alison, that's a really hard question to answer. I know. I've been asked, and I'm sure Wendy and Lisa have, too, for over four decades. It's a complicated equation. There are reasons why women choose not to enter these fields, and then, of course, there are reasons why women want to and are blocked. But, wow, It's a bigger question than I can answer.
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A
Susan Rogers is a professor in music production and engineering at Berkeley and a veteran of recording engineering. Susan, thank you so much for being with us.
- [18:11]
G
Thank you for having me. And bye, buddies. I missed you guys.
- [18:16]
F
I love you, bud. Love you.
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A
Wendy, did you want to answer that question? How we can make more room for women in production?
- [18:28]
E
Susan's really correct. It's just we could spend an entire hour just talking about the difficulty and try and come up with some kind of master plan. We've been literally trying to figure this out for ages. And I think I've spent a lot of time in other studios now working with a lot of different people and trying to get my hands on producing other people. And there are a lot more engineers that are female that are coming up, and there are a handful of women coming up in the producer world that are getting their hands on more pop music. I'd like to be Able to see more producers in different genres of music, not just in the pop world. Like there's a lot of like DJ female DJs that are turning into producers, but they're doing a lot of dance music. I'd like to see a lot more women getting into a room that can like actually work with either a band or artists and do the best for the artist and get the best out of their songs. You know, get in the room with a woman who could produce a record as well as someone like Mitchell Froome could. Or, you know, there's, the list goes on and on and on. I think that we just need to allow women the room and the space and the encouragement to do it. And I think a lot of it and I don't want. This is not like man, woman, blah, blah, blah. But a lot of the guys gotta, gotta make a little bit more room. There's, it's a, there's a little bit of a. I don't know, there just seems to be not as much room as I'd like to see some of the men give these women. There's, it's like, it's still, it's very similar to the cooking world in a lot of men chefs and women chefs. It seems to be. There's a, that's a very common thread between female producers and male producers. You could draw a correlation between male chefs and female chefs if you look at it closely.
- [20:38]
D
That's interesting. What do you think, Lisa?
- [20:41]
F
Wow. Well, I think not to disparage men or anything, but get out of the way. I think it's a matter of education and I think it's just going to take some time. And I think that for lots of people, women included, when you say who do you want to produce your record? In your mind you automatically think a man producer. You say who produced the record? You think it's a man. So I, I think it's going to take a long time before a lot of records are produced by women and people let go of the. Just the automatic default goes to man.
- [21:30]
E
That's true. And I, I would add too that, that because so many people are doing their records in their, in their houses now, I mean there's really everything is streaming and everybody doing everything in their room. Women are doing a lot more themselves. So it's just the 1%. They're actually getting really, really famous and being able to stream or actually get signed. I mean the women are out there but the, the, you know, the, the 1% is, is almost non existent.
- [21:59]
D
Wendy Lisa, we booked you months ago, not months ago, weeks ago, to be a part of our series. But you happened to show up on a day that the daily. The New York Times did a podcast about Prince and the documentary that we will not see. We will not see for Netflix. You're in the documentary. It includes details about Prince, the women in his orbit, some complicated relationships. Wendy, indeed. Have you had any thoughts about the documentary? Never. It might never be seen.
- [22:31]
E
Yeah, I've had many thoughts about it. I think it's a. I think it's a shame that it. That it ended up being as complicated and fraught as it ended up being. I wish it hadn't ended. Ended up being that way. So many complications. I can't really get into the details of it because it could get me in trouble. But I will say that it's there. There are some magical moments in that documentary, and I hope at some point the world can see them.
- [22:59]
D
Lisa, how did you decide to be part of the documentary?
- [23:04]
F
Wow. It took a long time. It took a lot of conviction, to be honest. I think Wendy and I were like the last interviews to be done, and there were a lot of reasons. I wasn't sure that it was time to do that big documentary. And we had just come off like touring and grieving and doing a lot of that processing, and I kind of needed a break from it.
- [23:39]
E
We were pretty raw.
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F
Yeah, we were pretty raw emotionally about the whole thing. But I decided to be part of it because I felt like I had a real honest opinion and experience of Prince and I wanted to share my point of view.
- [23:58]
A
That was my conversation with Wendy and Lisa from our Women's History Month series, Women in Music Production. We'll have more, all of it on the way.
- [24:07]
B
Morning.
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E
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- [24:18]
H
That price is already a dollar.
- [24:19]
E
Take it or leave it. T. Take it, I guess.
- [24:24]
H
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- [24:35]
G
Ba da ba ba Ba.
- [24:37]
H
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