Index

Ch. 1. From mirror to beacon 1
Beginnings 1
The Brill Building songwriters 5
Phil Spector's wall of sound 9
Brian Wilson 16
Hits off the assembly line : Motown 21
George Martin and the Beatles 26
Frank Zappa 35
The situation at the end of the sixties 40
Ch. 2. The studio as musical instrument 43
Sixteen tracks and more 43
Dark side of the Moon 44
Tony Visconti 51
Brian Eno 52
Bill Laswell 62
Trent Reznor 70
Ch. 3. The producer takes center stage 79
The Discotheque and Musique concrete 79
Disco : "the producer's genre" 80
Michael Jackson's work with Quincy Jones 83
Kraftwerk and Conny Plank 89
Hip-hop and the rise of sampling 90
Hip-hop in the late eighties 93
The hip-hop producer today 95
Electronica 97
Remix 103
The contemporary situation : is the producer obsolete? 109