Producer Keith Olsen (Fleetwood Mac) a Shania/Mutt fan

[70aarcuda]

I copied and pasted this from an interview with Fleetwood Mac producer Keith Olson. Nice comments from a fellow music peer:

Reporter: Absolutely, in fact I was going…, funny you should bring up that producers take their sound with them, you know you only have to listen to Shania Twain and Mutt to know that it's more him than anyone else isn't it?
Olson: Don't short-change Shania.

Reporter: Oh no?
Olson: Shania has a lot of stories to tell. And she looks at her stories from a very female point of view and that's definitely not the way Mutt wrote. You know Mutt used to write everything definitely from a guy's point of view. I mean look at songs like 'Heaven in the Back Seat' [Eddie Money] and stuff like that (laughs). And Shania comes up with really great stories. I mean it's really, it's really good. Now, Mutt does have a way of making her sound absolutely fabulous.

Reporter: Oh absolutely.
Olson: His arrangement and concept for a song is spectacular. How it crosses over from genre to genre is totally spectacular.

Reporter: Yeah, well he brought Def Leppard to the masses didn't he? And AC/DC.
Olson: And he almost went crazy doing Foreigner (laughs).

Reporter: Yeah, Foreigner and The Cars…
Olson: But you know, it's one of those things where Mutt is absolutely brilliant.

[FinnFreak]

:shocked: - you mean: *THE* Keith Olsen..?!? :shocked: (OMG OMG OMG)

...and you left us hanging with just that snippet..?!? :scowl: Thx..!!! - :D:up: :D:up: :D:up:


http://www.melodicrock.com/interviews/keitholsen.jpg
Keith Olsen

Keith Olsen is an industry celebrated producer of such notable artists as: Fleetwood Mac, Foreigner, Pat Benatar, Rick Springfield, Santana, The Babys, Sammy Hagar, Whitesnake, Ozzy Osborne, The Scorpions, Heart, just to mention a few. His many soundtrack albums include: Footloose, Flashdance, Tron, Vision Quest, Top Gun, That Was Then-This Is Now and many more.

He produced and engineered more than 125 full albums garnering a 1 in 4 gold album ratio and was awarded 6 Grammy's. He has sold over 100 million units at retail.

During the late 90's he was headhunted by Mackie Designs, a pro audio equipment manufacturer, to design, develop, and define higher end very professional products for their newly started Mackie Broadcast Professional Division.

Being an advocate on issues concerning the industry, its problems and challenges, he ran for the Board of Governors for the Pacific Northwest Branch of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He was elected to the post of National Trustee of NARAS in 2001. From this position he has had ever increasing visibility is areas of Intellectual Property Rights, Illegal Copyright Theft, and archival of past works. Being in close communication with noted alliances for the structuring and preservation of these rights, Olsen has worked tirelessly toward solutions to benefit all property rights owners. The purpose of archival so as to not lose the early works of the current generation of artists is currently the focus of Mr. Olsen's work.




...man..! - what a find..!


I knew Olsen got fed up with producing after the ELP project, but that complete interview (http://www.melodicrock.com/interviews/keitholsen.html) is simply one of the best things I've read so far this year..!


Thank You Again. :]


...and I know I'll be using some parts for quotes in other topics around here - especially the copyright/piracy thread - Mr Olsen knows what he's talking about with this, so it must be addressed accordingly.


...but this part I'm going to quote here & then throw this thread into the Mutt Forum (because of the producing theme):


A long time ago, a real good writer then, was good friend of mine, a long time ago. You can't use her name but I'll tell you who it is. But you can't use her name. It was ___ ___. I'm walking on the beach, in Malibu with her. And I went out to her beach house. It was July 4th, it was the afternoon. She was having a Barbeque. Her and I are walking along the beach, I'd had quite a disastrous summer, three days earlier my house caught on fire because of fireworks in the neighborhood. All this stuff.

But, so she made me come out to this party, and shoot off a bunch of fireworks. She just said, we're going to get you un-depressed. So as we're walking along the beach, she says, you know Keith, all your life you take these life experiences, you stick them in this bag that you carry on your shoulder. We'll call it the 'Life Experience Bag'. And every time you write a song, you reach into this bag and you pull out something and you write about it. And you tell the story. But don't get too comfortable, because when you get too comfortable, you're not putting anything in the bag, you're only taking stuff out of it. And then one day, you stick your arm in the bag and there's nothing left except an old, rotten apple core. And you know, nobody wants to hear a song about an old, rotten apple core. And you know, if you start looking at that, and look at the quality of songs from a lot of artists, the more comfortable they get. They're not struggling - they're not putting those stories in the bag. And they're not writing the quality of song that they did on their 'breakthrough' album that comes right out of some horrific time in their life. Because it's all about the song. The strength of an album is about the strength of the songs. The strength of the stories that are told, it's the strength of the melodies, and it's the strength finally of the performance of those great songs. You can have a hit record with a great song, you can have an even bigger hit record with a great performance of that great song. And you know, the very final thing is sound. And if you have a great song, that has a great performance and it's recorded on some piece of junk recorder that barely records, you still have a hit record. But if you can put all three together, you have those giant records. Where you have song, performance and sound.

Right, that's a great story to hear – absolutely right. And putting that together is where you come in.
Well, you know, a lot of the times I'm there in the beginning. Identifying which are the great songs. Getting the great performance, that's my job. That's a producer's job. To get the performance on tape in an accessible manner to the marketplace, to who your customer is. That listener out there. The guy or the girl that really wants to have…captures that feeling, the same feeling who can claim their song in that performance as their own. That's what a producer's job really is. That may sound too flowery. Bottom line is, that's what you do.

I think the funniest thing though is what I call the Bic syndrome. You do an album with an act and it does really, really well. And this act is out there playing in front of 18,000 people a night. And you know that one time during that concert. Usually right as they're getting ready to leave the stage. 18,000 people flick those Bic lighters and start to scream 'You are the Greatest.' And they walk off stage and then they come back and play a couple more songs and they scream it again. 'You really are the greatest!' And you know, they play 18 months of concerts of which they're playing four days on, three days off. Whew! That's a lot of concerts.

Yeah.
In front of millions of people that are all screaming you are the greatest. And then you get back to the studio to cut your next record and they write some song about this old rotten apple core (laughs). And you suggest that maybe they rewrite that song. And they actually physically and mentally look at me and say 'No, because I am the greatest. How could all those people be wrong?' (laughs)

You came across that a lot?
I think every single act I came across said that one time or another. It happened to them. Because it's human nature. You just have to some how be patient enough. And as you work with artists you find a way where you can say, 'You know, you played that thing when you were tuning up yesterday. Why don't you try putting that line in?' 'Ah, what line?' 'You know it kind of went like this.' (sings some notes). 'Right there, right there. You played it yesterday. It's your line.' 'Ah, how did I play it? Sing that again.' (laughs).

So you have to have a tape rolling at all times then? (laughs)
No, I had my brain tape running. Running at all times. You know, they never played that line when they were tuning up or warming up. But you get them to say, where they can claim it as their own.



John - :]

[FinnFreak]

heh...

Finding that interview has effectively messed up my schedule for today... :up:


...the site it's from is quite interesting too: http://www.melodicrock.com ;)


so now: ...I'm off..! (lotsa stuff to do)


Have A GREAT Easter Bunny-Funny Weekend, Everyone..!


John - ;)

[Troll]

Thanks for the interesting interview.

[Shania's4life!!]

Someone who gets it. :)

[GorToma]

great - thanks for posting

[EilleenTwain88]

heh...

Finding that interview has effectively messed up my schedule for today... :up:


...the site it's from is quite interesting too: http://www.melodicrock.com ;)


so now: ...I'm off..! (lotsa stuff to do)


Have A GREAT Easter Bunny-Funny Weekend, Everyone..!


John - ;)
Amazing stuff ?!?!
And the www-search tecnique that it is built on... just put any name of hard/melodic rock into that Search field and you get more amazing stuff... from other sites.

It will take a year to look this thru, i'll tell ya.

[.:MiniShania:.]

hello ppl i hope you guys have a very safe and happy,fun easter.May God bless you with all his love and for shania... btw.,I LUVE YOU SHANIA ..make a new video pls..

[jgb 15]

You know Shania is the master behind her writing Mutt does the music part mostly and she has said that so I don't get why people just cant ever give Shania her writing credits??

Sure I bet he suggests here and there but it is Shania for the most part. Who comes up with songs like Pretty Face common who else... females duh and like What A Way to Wanna Be

Twain has a brain!!

Thanks for the post...

[dreamer]

yep and I would say it is almost as big as her :love:

[faithfully]

Thanks for the info:]