TOAST THEORY

In Behind the Glass, Howard Massey transcribes this conversation with Brian Wilson:

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[Massey]: Recently, though, you’ve been working with coproducers as opposed to being the sole producer. Is there a reason for that?

[Wilson]: It’s because I needed to have the springboard of ideas between people.   Because I’d run out of ideas – I had writer’s and producer’s block.

(Massey 2000, p.43)

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There are many reasons for coproduction – the sparking of ideas, the complementarity of skills, the desire to work together, the potential for greater success of the whole through team effort. And there are many forms that coproduction can take; from two producers knowingly working together to a whole world that works together on a singular project (either in denial or without realizing it). Even the individual may have to acknowledge that they are also others in themselves, those internal voices of one’s influences. In this section we focus on the more traditional workings of groups or teams based in studio settings.

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Type Overview

Emerging from a Vygotskian social science approach to joint authorship, Vera John-Steiner (VJ-S) in her seminal book Creative Collaboration (John-Steiner 2000) identifies four “patterns of collaboration” that she carefully caveats as being on a fluid spectrum, and that these move from the widest of collaborations to the closest and most intimate form. They are labelled as:

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• Distributed

• Complementary

• Family

• Integrative

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These have associated roles, values, and working methods, and they form a useful model for understanding different modes of operation in the studio. 

Distributed [Informal and voluntary, similar interests, spontaneous and responsive]

Complementary [Clear division of labour, overlapping values, discipline based approach]

Family [Fluidity of roles, common vision and trust, dynamic integration]

Integrative [Braided roles, visionary commitment, transformative co-construction]

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Distributed Coproduction

In terms of ‘normal’ studio practice, this would seem to be a somewhat anarchic working model, as its methods are “spontaneous and responsive” with roles that are “informal and voluntary” and might even lead to sabotage of others’ contributions. This model suggests a rather more open approach that might see the production group widen to anyone who might want to ‘have a go’. Hence, this is not likely to be a typical model in terms of song production in a studio. We will need to look wider to see this model in operation. Artists sometimes put out stems for fans to mix and produce as they will, and this fits this model well. Moving out even further, we might view the artist who coproduces by using a sample of a previous work, with or without consent. Further out still, we may see the whole of popular music as one production that everyone contributes to, and indeed that notion will be explored in more detail under the discussion of ‘Toast theory’ which aligns with John-Steiner’s role description of “informal and voluntary” collaboration. But there are good examples of a distributed model (in VJ-S terms) occurring in the studio, and as might be expected, these can be somewhat chaotic affairs. 

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Phil Harding (now Dr Phil Harding) was a mix engineer for the very hierarchical (and complementary model of) PWL Stock-Aitken-Waterman team in the ‘80s. But before that era Phil was involved with engineering for punk bands including The Clash and Killing Joke. The ‘70s had given us binaries of extremes, the punk protest against the prog rock institution as well as Disco kitsch and unison dance moves. And punk was anarchic, deliberately non-hierarchical and hence 'distributed'. As Phil noted in an interview at Leeds Beckett University:

 

PH: Going back to the first Killing Joke album in 1980, [there was] no producer in the room, much like the punk attitude of just book us into a studio with a young engineer, we’ll produce it ourselves, and the record companies didn’t stop it happening. The Clash were amongst those that did that, I worked with them and there was no producer. And of course, as young engineers you’ve been trained, certainly I was in the early ‘70s, where there’s a certain set up, the musicians are out there, the engineer there, the producer’s there running the session. And then suddenly all these punk bands turn up, they’re running the session from out there, you’re there as engineer, and the producer’s chair is empty. How much guidance dare you pipe up with when you know things are not right? And Killing Joke had no experience [of producing] they all wanted everything loud and the four musicians would come into the control room for playback, which they would want at a pretty deafening level and they wouldn’t sit down and say reasonable things like “could we turn the bass up here Phil”, they’d wait ‘til the playback was going on at full level and come and stand at the opposite side of the desk and scream at me. Scream into my face, each and every one of them about “my keyboard’s got to be more distorted” all this kind of thing coming at me, and you're frantically [doing what you’ve been asked] and then along comes the next person who wants something more extreme on their instrument. Man, oh man, it was very difficult, everyone was just piling in. That’s why for me even if it’s from within the band there’s got to be someone who’s in control, some sort of team leader. I don’t think many people work like that now but a lot of that did go on.

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Complementary Coproduction

Perhaps the most common form of coproduction is the mode in which roles are clearly identified and executed as such. In this way, one can assemble a team of experts trusted to do their activity best, and it will benefit the whole. One producer might be able to EQ the singer’s voice better than the other, but the other has inspired the singer to give the best performance in the studio and so on. Separation of roles is key here but so is an “overlapping of values” (John-Steiner 2000, p.197) so that the final product works as one unified thing.

 

The artists themselves are perhaps the most frequent coproducers, and most likely, this operation will fall into the ‘complementary coproduction’ type, that is where the division of roles is clear and complementary, but there is a shared vision (if it is to be successful) and the artists will often be with the ‘producer’ validating their decisions or trying out ideas with them in the control room. Complementarity is also probably the best understood of collaborative types. Where John-Steiner uses ‘complementary’, interdisciplinary collaborators have used the Deleuzian terms ‘striated’ and ‘stratified’ (see Alix, Dobson, and Wilsmore 2010). Joe Bennett, in song writing collaboration, uses the term ‘demarcation’ (Bennett 2011), and business teamwork theorists have this  complementary model worked out in great detail, in particular the roles identified by Meredith Belbin that produce successful working teams (see for example Belbin.com).

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The division of labour that separates out complementary skills is most famously exemplified through the workings of Motown records founded by Berry Gordy Jr in 1960. Based on local Detroit car manufacturers, the ‘Fordist’ approach to record production that Gordy took divided the labour up into component parts where each part was ‘manufactured’ by the best person for that part with Gordy himself as the leader and the unifying vision that everyone else had to adhere to. The components included songwriters, producers, engineers, lead artists, backing musicians (band, backing vocals, brass) etc.As well as Gordy himself ensuring the aims, objectives and values were met, there were the songwriters (such as Holland-Dozier-Holland), artists (Marvin Gaye, The Supremes), producers (Norman Whitfield, ‘The Clan’), and the in-house groups that gave a consistency to the Motown sound, as Stuart Cosgrove details:

 

"The Funk Brothers often improvised powerful backing tracks that were used and re-used by producers and engineers. The Andantes provided choral support and the vocal undercarriage to assist lead singers and a string of accomplished baritone saxophonists, including Andrew ‘Mike’ Terry, the purveyor of the legendary ‘bari-tacks’, delivered rasping support to many Motor city hits."

(Cosgrove 2016)

 

But Cosgrove is keen to point out that, although there are many similarities, there were also differences, not least that where cars are intended to be exact replicas of each other the songs were not, each bearing the marks of the individual creativity of the contributors. And there were also cross-over of roles, for example songwriters would also be producers, as was the case, for example, where Holland-Dozier-Holland are credited as songwriters for the Supremes hit ‘Stop! In the Name of Love’ (1965) with Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier credited as producers; Norman Whitehead produced ‘I heard It Through The Grapevine’ (released by Mavin Gaye on the Tamla Motown label in 1968) which he co-wrote with Barrett Strong; and Diana Ross and the Supremes’ hit ‘Love Child’ (1968) was produced by ‘The Clan’ of Taylor, Wilson, Sawyer, and Richards, with the addition of Henry Cosby on the song-writing team. But as with so many production companies, where there is a division of labour and each component is vital to the whole, then each part is also a potential weak link. Hence the strikes and disagreements of the car industry similarly affected Motown. The Clan replaced the departed Holland-Dozier-Holland as the in-house writing team, and they themselves were replaced by The Jackson 5 production team, The Corporation. There were teams working within teams, each with their own modus operandi.

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Familial Coproduction

Trust and common vision are central in this type. Coproducers will be highly familiar with each other and will have become used to each other’s ways of working and cross over roles easily. John-Steiner’s term is ‘family’, but we have used ‘familial’ here to emphasize that the mode is ‘typical of a family’ just to avoid any misunderstanding. In this mode, any division of labour might change, and expertise becomes dynamic. This is a pre-Integrative model where there are still identifiable contributions but much crossover. Here, one might find coproducers feeding in and out ideas and activity in all stages of capture, arrangement, and performance, comfortable enough to know that one has permission (indeed encouragement) to do so from the ‘family’. One producer has gone into the live room to move the kick drum microphone that the other set up without asking because they know they can act upon their own informed decision to do so and that consent is implicit (Eno and Lanois had such an agreement).

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Although familial collaborations do not necessarily require family connections, they can indeed be related, such as with Motown’s Brian and Eddie Holland. The turn of the century production team The Matrix, best known for bringing Avril Lavigne to the forefront of popular music, includes the then wife and husband pairing of Lauren Christy and Graham Edwards along with Scott Spock. One of the key factors of their success was that being three rather than two generally resulted in majority decision making rather than the 50/50 stalemate that might arise from a partnership just of two. Christy noted of the three that, “We all have things that we’re really, really strong at, but we also involve ourselves in all aspects” (Buskin 2006, p.142). John-Steiner’s family model has ‘trust and common vision’ as a characteristic along with a dynamic fluidity of roles. In the working methods of The Matrix the three had strengths in key areas but were also able to cross over into each other’s dominant areas with ease.

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The team note their differences and their similarities. In keeping with the chimera analogy, that of three distinctly different heads but one body, Christy articulates how they may seem to inhabit separate roles to the observer at first sight, but that this is not the whole truth:

 

"If people come around they’ll see us and they see Scott sitting in front of a whole lot of gear and they see Graham with a guitar and they see me sitting with a [note] book. They immediately go, ‘oh that’s what they do.’ Truth is, the lines are so blurred [...] we’ll all just blur each other’s lines, I guess that’s what makes the partnership great."

(Burgess 2004, p.4).

 

This makes sense in a team where permission to ‘blur the lines’ is welcomed. Their collaborative approach maps well to that of Vera John-Steiner’s ‘family’ model and hence our familial mode of operation whereby trust and common vision are central in this type. Coproducers will be highly ‘familiar’ with each other, will have become used to each other’s ways of working and cross over roles easily. In this mode any division of labour might change and expertise becomes dynamic.

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Integrative Coproduction

This is the mode in which we might best hope to find that purest of coproduced moments. The integration of producers at this point is such that their understanding has moved beyond the need for discussion, beyond the need to divide roles, in fact beyond any recognition as to who contributed what to the point where there is no difference between the operation of the one and the operation of the many. This moment may not actually exist outside of theory, even in a hypothetical example it seems hard to see how there could be this pure moment. One might imagine two producers with hands on the same fader making adjustments almost as if receiving spiritual guidance on a Ouija board, but even then (ghostly externality aside), we are drawn to the separate decisions that provided the pressures on the fader and hence are thrown back into knowing that there is separation. Perhaps Integrative coproduction is in proximity of this pure moment rather than achieving it. John-Steiner’s descriptions of this type are of “braided roles”, “visionary commitment”, and “transformative co-construction” (2000, p.197), the braiding confirming that separate strands still exist, making this model far more discoverable than the pure moment might be. That said, Keith Sawyer, in his research on ‘group genius’, points to moments of group decisions that are exactly this, that is, where the group finds a solution to a problem but none of the individuals within the group are aware of that solution. Following a narrowly avoided shipping disaster in 1985 on the USS Palau, researcher Ed Hutchins analyzed the responses and actions of those involved in averting the disaster and concluded that “the solution was clearly discovered by the organization itself [the collective group] before it was discovered by any of the participants” (Sawyer 2007, p.28). So, there may yet be hope of finding similar moments of coproduction that are outside that of any individual contribution.

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Amongst the poker-faced ‘geniuses’ of hidden producer-gods were the pioneering electronic duo behind Kraftwerk, Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter. It is hard enough when watching Kraftwerk perform ‘live’ to work out who is doing what (in 'live' performance the band are replaced by their robots and a recording of ‘The Robots’ is played. A perfect Auslanderian moment of confronting what it means to perform ‘live’).  For Kraftwerk this mode of performance and production is perhaps less of a deliberate obfuscation but rather that their authentic mode of production is that of the man-machine hybrid and not the authenticity of the guitarist, whom by hitting the guitar strings harder makes the sound louder. The latter gives the rock guitarist a direct connection to their sound production and with that the permission to raise their arm high in the air before bringing it down fast on the strings. That isn’t going to work for a band that only needs to press a button or turn a knob to make it louder. One may pound on a piano to genuine effect but it would be somewhat ridiculous to do so on a harpsichord that does not change its velocity, hence Kraftwerk are rather more Bach than Beethoven in their performance mode (although more Beethovenian when it comes to the thematic construction of their music). But with this lack of outward expression comes a sense of closedness, it exemplifies the difference between the ability to describe what the guitarist does (play the guitar) much more clearly than what the producer does (produce). The mode in which the creation of expression occurs is not immediately disclosed in Kraftwerk either in performance or in the studio if indeed there is a distinction. As Moorefield writes in The Producer as Composer:

 

"After Autobahn [1974], Kraftwerk began to produce themselves on a permanent basis. They became known as denizens of the studio, mysterious entities who created their purely electronic music behind closed doors."

(Moorefield 2005, p.90)

 

Perhaps we need to further delineate our integrative model into ‘pure integration’ and ‘perceived integration’, the difference being that the latter has no visible sole authorship but may have ‘actual’ individual contributions. Whereas ‘pure’ integration has no individual contributions, visible or not, rather like the sea rescue example noted by Keith Sawyer where the group found the solution and not any one individual.

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Collaboration in general

Collaboration and working with others, often with complementary skills, is usually the key to all productions, and the lonesome ‘King of the heap’ (Burgess) is perhaps an exception rather than a norm, albeit ‘the heap’ are contributors to the project. In Massey’s second volume of interviews Behind the Glass volume 2 (2009) he subtitles the opening chapter with a Nashville producers panel using the phrase “It’s all about the relationships”, and upon asking the question “what advice can you offer the young record producer?” Justin Niebank states the turning point for him was when:

 

"I made the conscious decision to quit chasing the brass ring and focus on the people instead. [...] So the best advice I can offer the young person is to take the self out of it and realise that it’s all about relationships."

(Massey 2009, p.11)

 

In a general understanding, such connections do not negate the singular producer within those wider relationships. This operation might result in gain through the old adage that ‘it’s who you know not what you know’, but if we widen the notion to ‘those that produce the product’, which is by and large different from the ‘record producer’, then it holds true that there are multiple producers of the artwork. Following on in the interview from Niebank, Tony Brown (2009, p.12) notes how some of those that are “more talented than me” are not producing significant work because they keep to small circles of relationships, and “in fact, they’re all pissed off and they have a chip on their shoulder. I just keep widening my circle”. As songwriter and producer Bruce Woolley told our students at York St John University:

 

 “Collaborate. Find the people who can do what you can’t”. 

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