The Producer as Composer: Shaping the Sounds of Popular Music (The MIT Press) by Virgil Moorefield

Author:Virgil Moorefield [Moorefield, Virgil]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780262134576
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2010-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

Bill Laswell

Bill Laswell is a versatile producer and bassist. I worked with him in 1988-1989 on the Swans album The Burning World as drummer for the band. At the time, Laswell had gained prominence in the pop world for having coproduced Mick Jagger’s solo album She’s the Boss (1985), and for having cowritten Herbie Hancock’s smash hit “Rockit” (1983), which one critic has described as “the song most often associated with the breakdancing movement of the mid-80s” (Ross, 3). Originally from Detroit, where he developed his funk style, Laswell moved his operation to New York around 1979 and soon became a leading figure in the Downtown underground punk-jazz scene. With his group, Material, Laswell worked with an exceptionally wide variety of musicians, recording with everyone from jazz saxophone legend Archie Shepp to the then-unknown Whitney Houston.

Once Laswell had a hit with Hancock and worked with Jagger, both rock bands and funk acts were eager to work with him. Around 1986, Laswell also adopted a “world” sound which was heard consistently across a number of his productions, from former Cream drummer Ginger Baker’s solo album Horses and Trees to Manu Dibango’s Afrijazzy. His own music bears a strong resemblance in terms of overall sound to some of the albums he has produced. Hear No Evil, for example, features the same core group of players which appears on a number of Laswell-produced CDs, including The Burning World (MCA, 1989).

Bill Laswell is an unusually prolific producer. He has made literally hundreds of records in the last twenty years. His process of development has been additive rather than serial. At the time Swans worked with him, Laswell was also making records with funk legend Bootsy Collins (Parliament/Funkadelic), baritone sax wildman and free-jazz legend Peter Broetzmann, punk-jazzers the Golden Palominoes, and his own Material.

His production methods are very flexible; in fact, Laswell comes across as being something of a chameleon. Not everything he does bears his recognizable thumbprint. On some albums, his presence is barely felt. Yet in the case of the Ginger Baker album, Laswell has said that he simply took rhythm tracks played by Baker at the time of the PiL Album sessions and built the music up himself, with the aid of the usual crew of diverse and talented musicians. On Hancock’s “Rockit,” Laswell’s bass plays a prominent part, and, as on many of his projects, Laswell is credited as cowriter.

Overall, the impression one is left with after listening to a number of Laswell productions is that he is extremely adaptable. Unlike a “personality” producer such as Brian Eno, Laswell seems to make records which fall all along the spectrum of production methods. On one end, he acts as an old-school producer, content to bring people together and stay in the background, while on the other, he takes over almost completely, coming very close to simply putting someone else’s name on what is essentially his music. He is different from someone like Eno, who puts his stamp on everything he is associated with.

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