RECORDING ENGINEER/PRODUCER MAGAZINE (1983 )

Spencer Proffer
Interviewed by David Gordon

Transformless energy and well-earned pride coursed through Los Angeles' Pasha Music House. Metal Health by Quit Riot had just hit #1 in the charts, to become one of the most successful debut rock albums. As a Platinum "metal" album, it had the added distinction of shaking up the old foundations of the record industry. Quiet Riot has abruptly put Pasha, and its producer, studio owner and label president, Spencer Proffer, in a very powerful position. Pasha has a long, dues-paying history, and now it is a hot entity; it means Quiet Riot; it means two strong tracks from the soundtrack of "Staying Alive;" it means a tune in the film, "All The Right Moves, "and the long-awaited Vanilla Fudge reunion album.

How did Proffer slip into such an enviable position? He began as a songwriter for A&M at the age of 17. Gary Lewis and the Playboys recorded his song "Picture Postcard," and by the time he was 20 he had over 70 recorded songs. He recorded as an artist for ABC/Dunhill, MGM Records and CBS Records. A successful relationship with Clive Davis led to a position on the CBS staff. Meanwhile, he was pursuing studies at UCLA, and went on to law school. In 1974, he became National Executive Director of United Artists, where he produced 11 Top 50 hits in 18 months, and got industry attention for his progressive production of Tina Turner's "Acid Queen."

After leaving UA, Proffer formed his own music company and received critical acclaim with Allan Clarke, lead singer of The Hollies. His production of serialized concept albums with Australian success Billy Thorpe, and a touring laser show, exemplified the preoccupation at Pasha with big productions, bold visuals, and a departure from the usual visual support for recording artists. It's no surprise that Spencer Proffer supervised the Quiet Riot videos, and is energetically courting profitable marriages with the film industry.

R-E/P (David Gordon): How did you first come in contact with Quiet Riot? What made you single them out as a potential Pasha act?

Spencer Proffer: In January 1982 I met Kevin DuBrow who, along with Randy Rhoads and Rudy Sarzo, were the founding members of the band. I met Kevin while picking up a friend of mine, a manager named Pat Armstrong, who handles Molly Hatchet, amongst other bands, and they were discussing potential management. Kevin and I just started talking about music; he sings in the tradition of some of the classic English rock singers. And that's my favorite genre of rock and roll music-the days of Humble Pie, Deep Purple, Sabbath...early Rod Stewart. So I immediately asked Pat if I could take a listen to the tape that Kevin left with them. Upon hearing it, I thought, boy what a classic voice, reminiscent to a degree of Noddy Holder when he was in a band called Slade. Having heard the tape, I was real keen to see what Kevin and his band were all about live. At that time, the band lineup included Kevin and drummer Frankie Banali; Carlos (Cavazo) the present guitar player wasn't yet in the band, and Rudy Sarzo was still playing bass with Ozzy Osborne. After seeing them perform-watching Frankie play drums, and Kevin sing-I really felt that this is something that would be tremendous in front of a large audience. I saw a lot of distinctiveness in Kevin's visual and movement approach to rock and roll, as well as some of the best drumming technique from Frankie. So that was really step #1 in our collaborative process.

R-E/P (David Gordon): At that point did you go into the studio and start working on demos for the band?

Spencer Proffer: That was the catalyst for me to take it to the next step, in the true sense of artist development. I didn't want to commit them to me, or me to them, without seeing how the work experience would translate in the studio context. Being fortunate enough to have my own studio, I was able to take some time over a weekend and go in with the two of them. At the time they had another guitarist and bass player, but it was really the foundation of Kevin and Frankie, and the cooperative spirit in which we worked, which made me say, "Yeah, I'd like to pursue this relationship."

R-E/P (David Gordon): What contribution do you think you made to the band, in terms of maybe molding their music?

Spencer Proffer: Well, subsequently Carlos joined from a local metal band called Snow, when we decided that we needed a different guitar player; he also came to the band as a collaborative writer. So, in listening to all of their material-both Kevin's and Kevin's and Carlos'-they truly had a sense of what the kids would react to. I sensed that one thing that was missing in a lot of the Heavy Metal being played on the radio was the sense of melody, the sense of true song construction. And a real sense of audience participation; metal bands are primarily live, exciting, visual bands. The thing I felt most excited about with Quiet Riot was the musicianship of everybody involved; their sense of truly knowing who their audience was; and having music with a melodic flow. I really just helped nurture and encourage that. I worked with them on some of the arrangements, and heightened that sense of participatory rock, which is what I would call the Quiet Riot "musical genre." It's melodic participatory rock, not necessarily Heavy Metal, although with Carlos' guitar playing, Rudy's bass playing, and Frankie's drumming, it certainly competes as hard and as heavy as anything out there.

R-E/P: Do you feel that you were adding something to the typical Heavy Metal form with Quiet Riot?

SP: Oh, absolutely. I thought that we were really expanding the genre. We were adding an element of melody, but with enough lyrical content and story line so that the kids would enjoy the record once they hear it, and be motivated to go and see the band. We try to have the vocals and the ambience of the record sound as live as possible, so that when you hear it on the radio, first you want to get the feeling of: "Who was it?" and "Where are they playing?" and "When can we see them?" Fortunately, the record has been the #1 most requested album in this country for about the last 12 consecutive weeks (mid November), so that we happened to strike it right on the money with that approach.

R-E/P: How did you achieve that live, open sound in the studio?

SP: By not going for a lot of overdubs. For the most part, we recorded the album, using our entire building (Pasha Music House) as a studio-not just our control room and actual studio. We ripped apart our lounge, which is all brick and wood, and put Carlos' amps in there. We ripped apart our second studio, and put Rudy's amps in that. We had the ambience of the drums as the only sound in our main studio. By using separate environments we gave the album as much of an open-air, large feel as possible. There was a lot of reflective wood and brick on the walls. It didn't take us more than five weeks to make the Quiet Riot album. We didn't approach it in a very sterile sense, but rather in a very aggressive live-feeling sense, so that sonically it would give you the feeling of being out in a large stadium. While working on the vocals, I didn't restrain Kevin; I tried to push him even harder to sound as loose and a natural as he is on stage.

R-E/P: I assume that there'll be a second album.

SP: There will be a second album that we'll be recording in January, which will be entitled "Condition Critical."

R-E/P: Do you plan to make a departure from the sound of the first album?

SP: Not at all. It's going to reinforce it. We'll retain everything we had, and might be a bit more adventurous but, by and large, it's going to retain the same "melodic anthem," participatory feel.

R-E/P: Let's move on to you personally. It's not too common these days for one individual to have so many hats in his closet; you're a studio owner, producer, and you have your own label. Do you also get involved in the engineering side?

SP: Oh, I get involved in it. I've got a first-rate engineer in Duane Baron, who's been with me now for six years. He actually started his career at Pasha. But I'll mix my own records. Duane's been working with me long enough to know what sounds to go for, relative to the nature of the project we're working on. But, insofar as putting the records together, I need to have that total involvement in order for me to be called the producer. If I turn it over to someone, I can't feel that I am justifiably doing my job. So I do get involved on a broad context in the music and the arrangements, and certainly in the way the records ultimately are put together, which is the final mix. When you mention my wearing various hats, all of those are support mechanisms to my first and foremost love and function, which is to make records. I built my own studio because I wanted to have the tools necessary to make state-of-the-art records.

R-E/P: When did you build Pasha Music House?

SP: In 1978...and literally mortgaged everything that I had in order to do it! But I don't like looking at a clock when I work, and I don't like going places and having certain things not functioning on the level that I would choose to deal with. I felt that if I had my own facility, which was built to complement my style of recording, and the way that I make records, then I would have an edge in at least offering every option, sonically, aesthetically, emotionally, and practically.

R-E/P: Is there any special sound or facility aspect you were after in building your own studio?

SP: The monitoring is real true. I'll give you an example: We master our records with George Marino, who's with Sterling Sound in New York. George happens to be, for me, the finest mastering engineer, but he has an easy job with our records. Everything we put on tape requires very little, if any, equalization going into the translation to disk. The room is accurate. When Larry Brown, who is a fine engineer, and I built the room in 1978, we took great pains to make sure the monitoring was true. The room felt like the kind of place you could spend several months making a record. Aesthetically, the room is called The Pasha Music House, and our whole building is meant to feel like a home. People spend a good deal of their lives here, so the ambience of it is like being in an English country house, which does set it apart from the normal "commercial feel" of most studios I've been in.

R-E/P: Before we get on to the intra-workings of the Pasha family of companies, why did you decide to form your own record label?

SP: To have a little more control over the ultimate destiny of my work. I found that having had some experience working for record companies - both at CBS, and running A&R at United Artists - I could see some of the system's shortcomings. Having had the benefit of that experience, no one understands the music better than the people who make it. Fortunately, having some music industry background, I have ideas about the marketing of the music I'm involved with. The logical corollary of this experience would be that if I found something I believe in, to then make use of a major company such as CBS, with its marketing, promotion, and distribution resources, thereby allowing me to make some of the creative judgments. With the way our label is set up, CBS is my partner, but they do give me the latitude to find an artist; handle artist development; bring the project to them in a recorded form; and give them some ideas both in the marketing, merchandising and promotion. When you're just a producer, you might have a lot of good, valid ideas, and the label can say, "Go make your records, and keep your mouth shut." At least with a label identity, and the staff to back it up, we can present ideas, campaigns, concepts, and video ideas that, if the major agrees-and fortunately CBS has been wonderfully cooperative with us. We can then keep a continuity of image and profile that the artists want to have when they make their music. So I just get involved in the conceptualization, but I move on and continue to make records while my organization does the follow-through consistent with the ideas that the artists and I have about the music. It's relative security. Ha, there's no security in this business anyway! At least I know that when I finish a record, it's going to be handled in a manner consistent with the spirit in which it was made.

R-E/P: When you're developing an act, do you take those demos or pre-production forms to CBS for approval?

SP: No. They have pretty much given me the latitude. There are some very musical people at CBS that I have a lot of respect for but, from an A&R standpoint, it's pretty much my call. Tony Martell, who is most responsible for bringing Pasha to CBS, is the vice president of CBS' Associated Labels, and has been very much the guiding light for me at CBS, together with Don Dempsey ad Walter Yetnikoff, who blessed the whole deal at the top corporate level. Tony has been tremendously supportive on every level, and I find it a pleasure to submit my ideas and my projects to him as a sounding board.

R-E/P: Someone once referred to Pasha as a true "boutique" record company. Can you elaborate on that description?

SP: Boutique is a clothing term. When you go into some clothing stores, you've got to buy off the rack. When you come to Pasha, you have it custom tailored. And some of our projects are not necessarily on the Pasha label. We make some records for other record companies, if I'm very motivated about the project and the artist.

R-E/P: What are the main differences when you're handling an outside project like that?

SP: We make less money! We also have somewhat less control, although most of the major labels we're dealing with welcome our contribution. Fortunately, we get involved in some of the follow - through areas, but we don't have as much to say because they aren't our artists that we've developed from the ground up. But I offer that as an adjunct to my creative services, so that the time I've invested is somewhat protected and accentuated by our ability to get some records on the radio, and set up the campaigns in conjunction with the management and the respective labels.

R-E/P: What was your first job in the music industry?

SP: I was a songwriter, and I wish I could have gotten a job being one! I was working my way through UCLA in a band and, through a series of events, wound up having a number of my songs recorded, the first of which was "Picture Postcard" by Gary Lewis & the Playboys back in 1967/68. By the time I was 20, I had about 100 of my songs recorded by various artists throughout the industry.

R-E/P: What were you studying at UCLA?

SP: I was pre-law. I had two majors actually - political science and music - and was learning how to orchestrate for symphony, and trying to hone down my mind to go to law school, which I ultimately did.

R-E/P: Has the fact that you are a qualified lawyer helped your career in the music business?

SP: Well, it certainly allowed me to receive what I was contracted to receive! It's made it easier for me to become involved with projects, and conclude them without a lot of red tape. I've been able to understand the business parameters, and how they actually work in an operational sense; I have to live my deals. Most lawyers make and negotiate the deals and then walk away from them. By being able to up-front negotiate the deals that I and my company have to live with, they become more realistic, more functional, and there are less potential legalities to present problems. I've never had a legal problem in any contract that I've ever signed in my career! I've found that to be a tremendous aid in getting more business concluded quicker, so I could spend more time on the music and not get hung up on red tape.

R-E/P: Let's talk about a few of what you personally consider to be the major breakthroughs in your career over the previous decade or so. One that comes to mind is the album "Acid Queen."

SP: That brings to mind a really fertile period in music, back in 1974/75, when I got involved producing Ike and Tina Turner. Tina was cast as the "Acid Queen" in the Ken Russell movie of Pete Townshend's rock opera TOMMY. I felt that this particular role would be a great broadening device for Tina's audience; she would be seen by people who loved The Who, and loved contemporary concert rock. Since Janis Joplin there hadn't been a female rocker who really kicked ass, and who could take a rock song and interpret it. I thought Tina to be one of the finest interpretative singers of our generation. I had just produced a single for Ike and Tina prior to this movie coming up, and thought that it might be pretty exciting to take a voice like Tina's, couple it with songs by people like Pete Townshend, Jagger and Richards, and open up her audience to a much wider demographic. I found that album to be a very exciting project, because it fused her style of singing with progressive, melodic rock, and was one of the first projects I had ever coproduced that went a little left of center. "Acid Queen" wasn't quite your normal commercial record, although its novelty itself became commercial. Sometimes people lead, and sometimes people follow; my own personality has a tendency to want to take a step forward, and not necessarily look over my shoulder to see if I'm copying anybody. I'd rather try and set trends, than follow them. That was really my first opportunity to take one form of music, integrate it with another style, and achieve something that would create a new appeal.

R-E/P: Is there anything about the sound of the "Acid Queen" that you consider to be a step forward in terms of production?

SP: Well, it was more the coalition of her style and rock and roll. I had some great musicians involved on that album: The Crusaders' Wilton Felder and Joe Sample played keyboard; Ray Parker, Jr. and myself did the guitar work. The sound of it was technically as good as records may have sounded in that day. My standard of sonics was always one of creating some drama and adventure on record, so I tried to make it sound exciting and the kind of record you could actually visualize.

R-E/P: Let's move on to the Allan Clarke solo album project, including "Legendary Heroes." Was that another involvement that altered the course of your career?

SP: It was an interesting collaboration. I grew up listening to the Hollies, Beatles, Stones, and The Who. In terms of the manner in which they structured their harmony, Allan Clarke, Graham Nash, and Tony Hicks of The Hollies were very influential component of my own musical development. Having a chance to do some of his solo records was very exciting. I remember he and the Hollies were the first people to record Bruce Springsteen material outside of Bruce's own recordings. Allan and Bruce had developed a relationship, and one of the first songs that I recorded with them, cut 1, side 1 of Allan's "I've Got Time" album was a song called "Blinded By the Light." When I delivered that album, which had original songs by Springsteen, Carole Bayer Sager, Melissa Manchester, Nicky Chin and Mike Chapman, the record company (Elektra) did not agree that "Blinded By the Light" was the kind of material that would be played on the radio. They thought the lyrics were too obscure; that Allan would be better off doing other kinds of material. As a result, another English band, Manfred Mann, did a version of the song not far away from our version, and it went on to be the biggest record of 1976. A little heartbreaking from our end maybe, but at least it vindicated my own belief that (it would work if) I took a voice like Allan's, put it into a different genre with writing like Bruce Springsteen's, and did something that I felt was true to what Allan deserved to record. We did subsequently have a hit with a song called "Shadow in the Street," which made the Top 30. I found working with Allan just a wonderful, enriching experience. The next male artist that I had gotten involved with was an Australian "superstar" by the name of Billy Thorpe. Allan Clarke and Billy had been friends when he lived in London. Billy actually came in and played a guest solo on one of my later Allan Clarke albums, which was the beginning of my collaborative, cross-pollination idea of having Pasha artists work together with one another.

R-E/P: How would you describe the way in which you helped shape Billy Thorpe's career? As maybe an example of your contribution to the overall concept of his records, performance, touring, tie-ins from record to record; a long-range type of thing, not just a quick shot.

SP: Well, I can't take all the credit for that. Billy is one of the brightest human beings, both intellectually and creatively, that I've ever met. He came here from Australia, where he'd had 15 #1 records and 10 Platinum albums. When we decided to work together, we really wanted to come upon an approach to break his career in the U.S. so that he wouldn't have to start over totally. We really spent a lot of time getting to know each other, and establishing a pulse on what was happening in society, and how we could make an impact on that with music. The seminal event that charted our course together was going to see "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." At the same time the entire space phenomenon had hit the world in the broadest sociological sense. Omni magazine became a well-known publication; "Star Wars" and "Battlestar Galactica" went on television. There was a space orientation that pervaded almost every form of life, but yet no one in the industry hit the "celestial sphere" in music. Okay, they hit it with album covers - ELO, for example, put a spaceship on their cover - had laser shows, but they were singing songs that dealt with other subject matter. "Last Train to London" was an ELO song on a space-oriented cover. Boston had a tremendously successful debut album, but they sang love songs, yet the band put the space theme on the cover. So we thought it would be really hip to take the last scene in "Close Encounters" one step further, and tell a story on record: the birth of the "CHILDREN OF THE SUN."

R-E/P: What was the story line?

SP: In the year 1991, the Nostradamus prediction of the Eastern and Western powers joining to fight a middle power, and causing the world to blow up, created a shift in the earth's axis. Half the world was disintegrated, and the other half was burning up as the earth's orbit shifted closer to the sun. The Children of the Sun were a friendly race from another galaxy who'd been watching man's self-destruction since the beginning of time on Earth, and they came to Earth in a very friendly fashion and offered everyone a choice of staying or leaving. And, of course, by the end of the first song on the "Children of the Sun" album everybody split; they figured there was new hope. The overall theme of the project, and of Billy's recordings, was very hopeful, very positive. It's truly a fantasy, a movie in sound. Billy and I spent nine months making the first record, in the truest collaborative sense. We co-wrote the song "Children of the Sun," and from there it spawned Billy's fertile mind into creating this whole story.

R-E/P: How did you support such complex space theme music, in terms of sound to augment the basic concept?

SP: A lot of drama. "Children of the Sun" opened up with three minutes of sound effects and ships flying from left to right. We recorded them 46-track by linking two 24-track machines together, so we would have optimum separation and sonic brilliance in our stacked vocal harmonies. But we created sonics; in "21st Century Man," the follow-up album to "Children of the Sun," we had an atomic bomb burst that lasted two minutes. To create the effect, we used 24 banks of synthesizers, and it rumbled speakers. Many stereo shops throughout the West Coast used that album as a demo for their sound systems, because if it could withstand all the transients that we had on the record, you knew you were buying a good system!

R-E/P: And you played around quite a bit with stereo panning and effects, didn't you?

SP: Oh, yeah, very much so. We had things coming in and out, left to right. We had something coming in for four bars that you never heard again 'til the next album. It took me back to the days when I studied classical music; you'd have motifs for different characters. And there were sound effects that you would hear only briefly, and then would reappear, or certain harmony structures. On Children of the Sun, the song "We Welcome You" had the children of the sun welcome the earthlings on board the ships. We used the exact same vocal harmony structure and approach on the next album during a similar encounter. Those are subliminal links that only the truest fans of the project might pick up on, but we were real proud of it.

R-E/P: Is there a third album in the series?

SP: Yes. It's the unfinished part of the trilogy. Pasha is going to re-release "Children of the Sun in 1984, the "George Orwell" year. The album sold about 400,000 domestically after nine months of shopping it. Everyone told me I was crazy, that the kids would never relate to it, yet it became one of the most requested albums in 1979. To coincide with its re-release, I'd like to do a video, which we were not permitted to make at the time of its original release because visual-music was not "in."

R-E/P: Before moving on to your involvement with video, let's talk about the stage show you mounted for Billy Thorpe. That was pretty progressive at the time wasn't it?

SP: Well, not only was the particular performance aspect of Billy's show very visual, but we also had a touring laser show in 1980 that choreographed the storyline for both "Children of the Sun" and "21st Century Man." We ran that show in planetariums all over the world to really encapsulate audio-visual entertainment. It was too expensive to mount the laser show on video itself, although we approached RCA Videodisk and a number of other companies, and said it would represent sufficient abstract entertainment to warrant tremendous repeatability, if we could get it on the air. But it proved to be too expensive a process to put on the air, so we just toured it in a way that would have been cost-prohibitive to do with the band. To have the touring planetarium show run in nine cities simultaneously, however, together with cross-pollenating marketing of the records, we found to be a very exciting merger of the music and visual mediums. We were a bit ahead of ourselves in that a number of people thought we were crazy doing this too. They said, "Marrying audio and visual? No way. Have hit singles!" There were people that really thought we had jumped off the deep end. I mean, I was telling them I wanted to put this on Broadway, in the true sense of combining the mediums. And they just kept screaming: "Hit single! Hit single!" And this is the kind of project that had more depth than just necessitating a hit single.

R-E/P: Let's take this visual pre-occupation into the world of music video, which is something you're involved with now. Quiet Riot's latest video is creating a lot of response.

SP: Well, in the Quiet Riot videos we managed to be one of the first people to even link a couple of videos together. In our first video, on the title track, "Metal Health," we have our hero, with the mask, which also is on the album cover. I'm a strong believer in visual identification with the package, and with the album, so we had the cover come to life at the beginning of that video. As Kevin (DuBrow) breaks out of the padded room into the mental institution, we had a reason for his performance - he needed to break out so that he could get on-stage with the rest of the band. And when he saw a flashing light in the corridor of the hospital, he jumped down a large hole that landed him on-stage, and he threw the mask into the audience. In our second video, the kid who caught the mask from the first video is lying on the bed, with the mask hanging over his bend in very much of a religious fashion. We actually put a flashback in our second video to tie it together with the first. The director of that video, Mark Rezyka, and Steve Einczig from CBS, Warren Entner, the band's manager, and myself really brainstormed how we could tie all these elements together, so that there would be a continuity to the whole Quiet Riot visual as well as sonic stamp. We plan to use the same illustrator that did the cover on our second album to incorporate elements of the mask from the first one because this gives the consumer a continuing link into staying with an artist. The records won't be a one off; the videos won't be a one off.

R-E/P: While producing an album project do you have a visual in mind as you're laying down the music tracks?

SP: Very much so. Most of the records that I've made tend to have a lot of drama to them. And I also look to get involved with projects that have a very visual sense. I'm making a record now which is a true pioneer of the collaborative mediums. Roderick Falconer is currently directing and writing a screenplay. He wrote the screenplay to "Star Chamber," which was released last year, and is now going to be writing and directing a film called "Empire Man. " So that for a visually orientated guy like Rod, all his songs are "mini-movies." Every time we finish working on a piece for the record, we talk about how that's going to translate into video. I would very much like to do a video of Rod's entire LP, because a lot of the songs have a storyline that we've weaved together.

R-E/P: We're really talking about the many different, supposedly separate forms of art, music, records, live performance, music videos, and, of course, film. The connection is very obvious with artists you're now working with. How will Pasha become involved with the film industry?

SP: One way is certainly the proliferation of our involvement in videos that portray the music that comes out of here. The next step is that in 1984 we are going to be doing at least three complete movie soundtracks.

R-E/P: You had an involvement previously with a couple of tracks for "Staying Alive."

SP: Yes, we have two tracks on the "Staying Alive" soundtrack, outside of the Bee Gees and the Frank Stallone tracks. That came about through a series of relationships, and my desire to get involved in the film business. We have another track in "All the Right Moves," the new Tom Cruise film, on which Danny Spanos is singing. That was a song tailored for the film, and recorded specifically for emotional impact in the movie. Something I very much look forward to doing is being given an entire script or film, and being asked to work with the producer and director in picking the moments at which contemporary music would fit in. Then have the songs written and recorded to be custom-tailored to the movie, but also have a broad enough appeal to stand up as conventional records. We are now in the process of working on the music for a film for a major studio that we are going to be doing top to bottom, and next year we'll have two other pictures that we have been contracted to do from the ground up. That will still allow me to work first and foremost as a record producer, but then to visually translate the music into correlating with somebody else's visual images.

R-E/P: It might be interesting to take one of the Pasha artists as an example of this cross-pollination process. Randy Bishop seems to have slipped into various projects. How does a person like that operate at Pasha?

SP: Well, Randy is one of the most brilliant all-around talents I've ever encountered. He is a poet in his own right, but also has a tremendous musical sense. My initial involvement with Randy was producing him as an artist. But he is such a prolific writer, and such a consummate musical talent, that on every project I get involved with there is space for a self-contained element like Randy; for example, the new Vanilla Fudge record, which I just finished producing, and which features Jeff Beck on guitar. Mark Stein and Carmine Appice are two of the finest songwriters that I've come across, but they were not as proficient lyricists as the images of their music dictated. So we needed to find a lyricist to take some of Mark and Carmine's melodies and musical thoughts, and to be true to those very specific feelings that the music evoked. So, I immediately contacted Randy and had him get together with them. Initially, there was one tune Randy and I collaborated on that Carmine and Mark wrote the music to. Randy seemed to have such a fine sense of where the music was going that when Mark and Carmine came up with melodies that I felt were right for the album, we turned the melodies over to Randy. He wove beautiful pictures and stories around those melodies that were totally congruent and consistent with the record I wanted to make. Randy co-wrote the first Danny Spanos single off our "Passion in the Dark" EP: as a matter of fact, Randy co-wrote three of the key tracks on that album, both musically and lyrically. I just find Randy to be tremendously prolific, and a real team player. He is now going to be producing a project for Pasha, for which he will be collaborating on the writing with the band, Pictures, on some of the material. I'll be overseeing it as an executive producer. I see Randy's role here at Pasha in a very expansive sense, as an artist, collaborative writer, producer, and a true part of our musical family. Thus I am not hesitant at all in involving him because if I'm afforded the opportunity to work on a project, then people have come here because of a certain style and approach. It's very important to me that when I can't do everything on a project that I can turn it over to someone on my teamwho has the same musical sensability. Having grown up as a songwriter and performer, I think that sometimes the best producers and writers are those people that really have an understanding of the entire medium; I think that certainly Randy is a shining example of that. Carmine Appice is another one of our artists who, as a writer, performer, and potential producer of acts that will be involved with Pasha, can function as one of those total musical entities.

R-E/P: Let's touch briefly on the recent Vanilla Fudge reunion album. What considerations did you have in mind while translating the sound of a band from the Sixties, to a record that would work in 1984?

SP: I wanted to keep consistent the elements that made them big, which was a certain orchestral and dramatic elements. Mark Stein is a very dramatic singer and keyboard player. Timmy Bogert is a dramatic bass player, and Carmine is certainly the most dramatic rock drummer I've heard! So I knew the record had to have drama; it had to have a lot of emotional impact, and a lot of color. Thus, in going through all the material that they were writing, I selected the melodies that were the most dramatic, and yet at the same time ones that I felt were the most contemporary. We did two covers of outside songs that we totally re-arranged to remain consistent with some of the old Fudge material. We recorded "Walk On By," but it starts out with a 60-second orchestral intro that you think would lead into a modern "techno-symphony." But then it bursts into a real good rock feel of a song that was recorded in one genre by Dionne Warwick, and brought into a heavy contemporary genre by the Fudge approach. I'm most proud of that album in its original material, because it's very picturesque. The album's called "Mystery;" each song paints its own picture, and tells its own story. I consider it to be one of my favorite records that I can still listen to after having done the work, because it is really fulfilling musically.

R-E/P: What was it like working with Jeff Beck, who guested on the album?

SP: A dream. Being able to work with somebody like Jeff, who very graciously agreed to play as a guest guitarist on two of the tracks, was just magic. He is one of the most lyrical and melodic players I've ever had the opportunity to see, much less work with in the studio.

R-E/P: Let's close with an explanation of Pasha's motto: "Music for people with imagination."

SP: I just like closing my eyes while listening to music, and seeing the images dance in front of me. With Quiet Riot, you close your eyes and envision 30,000 screaming kids getting vibed up. With Vanilla Fudge, you can picture maybe elements of a beautiful Ken Russell or Fellini movie. With Billy Thorpe, you know you're definitely in the zone with Lucas. I really am a big fan of records that are very visual, and so I will continually strive to make records that really give a listener a lot more to go on than just "listening" to a record. I like to make memorable records that also feel good, and are very positive; I don't like producing negative lyrics. I like making records that make you feel good, and want to take a little journey with the artist. That way there's much more repeatability to them. I will strive to continue to make records at that qualitative level.