Recording - January 2010 - 45

Continued from page 43 about it. What an awesome place to be in where Jimmy Iovine mandates that somebody has to write with you. How do the artists take it when they’re kind of forced into that position with you? Is it uncomfortable walking into the room? They’ve been arm-twisted, forced into writing with you, or are they like, “I want to write with this guy because he has such a great track record,” and they know you personally? Brian: At first it is. I remember Wes from Puddle of Mudd, who I was working on the Puddle of Mudd stuff, he basically just looked at me and goes, “Where’s your beer?” Literally, he just walked in my door, goes over to my fridge, and starts drinking all my beer. It was like, “OK, cool. Give me a couple of those.” So we had a couple of cocktails together, I told him some road stories, and he was like, “Oh, I remember your band.” We just had to bond. You’ve just got to get that door open with these guys and then they can see that it’s not a threat. I’m not going to try and rewrite their whole image and everything and make them compromise themselves. I think that’s the key to co-writing with people like that; there are certain boundaries that you have to write within. Like you can’t come up with Britney Spears lyrics for Chris Cornell or something like that. You know what I mean? But it’s that initial thing. Get the door open, and then kind of sell yourself. And sometimes it’s great to have a guy like Jimmy or somebody like that, because sometimes they just won’t do it. They’ll say, “No, I’m not going to do it.” But he has the juice to make it happen, so it’s kinda awesome. Darius, so many people think that a great bio, a great package … Oh, I get this one all the time, “But my CD’s been mastered,” as if an A&R guy is gonna go, “Wow, you’ve got a CD that’s been mastered, with four-color art.” How important is the song? Is it still the most important thing? Darius: Yes it is. Personally, I could care less if your package looks pretty, if it’s wrapped in nice fine paper and the pictures look beautiful. I could care less about that, because all that could be perfect, and the song could be crap. I’d rather have a CD with just your name written on it with a Sharpie and the songs are amazing. How many songs will you listen to before you finally hit on the 12 that are going to make it on a record? Darius: Wow, countless. Hundreds—200 to 300 songs. I am constantly bombarded with songs when I put it out there that I’m looking. They just flood your MP3 e-mail address, and hopefully you’ll find two or three good ones out of 200. Sherrill, what trends can we look forward to in Nashville as far as types of songs, types of artists? I know there is the ongoing fight of traditional and contemporary, or Pop/Country, and that older more traditional people like traditional stuff, and the kids seem to drift away from it. Is that battle still ongoing, who’s winning, and what are we going to see in the future? Sherrill: Historically, the pendulum has always swung, and I thought we were going to head back towards traditional after we had been inundated with the Pseudo-Country/Pop stuff we’d had for the past several years. But it’s not swinging back towards traditional, not to the extent that I thought it would. So I think we’re going to still be in more the Country/Pop mode for at least another two or three years. I also see more of the singer/songwriters emerging—artists like Taylor Swift. In fact, that’s one of the biggest obstacles I’m facing now, is more and more artists are trying to write, even though most of them are not real writers. So I’m getting as many calls now from artists and managers and record companies wanting to set their artists up with my writers to write for a project instead of just pitching songs straight out to those projects. So I’m almost kind of, in fact, becoming a writer manager, as well as pitching songs, and that frustrates me. No offense to anyone, but I wish they would let the singers sing, and the writers write. [applause] Brian: It’s the old, “Add a word, get a third,” thing. And with that sad but profound observation, I think we’ll wrap this puppy up. Gentlemen, thank you all for a great panel! [applause]

Recording - January 2010

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