John Leckie on Record Production

John Leckie, talking to George Shilling at Bank Cottage Studios in Oxfordshire, misses the ropey demo. Now everything is assembled in Pro Tools, tuned, double-tracked and mixed to a shine, and on first play a band sound fantastic. On a second listen, he says, it turns out they have never made a record, somebody has sampled the drums, and there is no telling what the drummer is actually like. A producer starts from nothing while believing he is starting from something.

The polished demo, in his view, is no longer an honest picture of where a band is, so he treats it cautiously. He would rather watch a band in a rehearsal room, or at a gig if he can stand it, and find out what they are trying to be. What he wants to know is whether they want to sound realistically like themselves or to make the best record ever made, which nowadays usually means replacing everything they play.

He kept up the way producers of his generation did, reading reviews in the music monthlies and the weekend papers and then splurging on 10 or 12 CDs a month on the strength of them.