By the end of the ’70s, I had just about made a clean transition from A&R man to producer. My corporate title was Senior Vice President/Executive Producer, since I had gone through all the promotions one had to have at CBS in order to justify my pay grade. The CBS Records offices in LA were located in the Carlsberg Building, on the western margin of Century City, on little Santa Monica Boulevard. If I went into the office at all, it was to catch up on routine paperwork, read mail, open unsolicited cassettes, and return messages. I was trying to settle into a nice three-project-a-year groove, with a summer vacation so I could actually spend some time with my family. There was really no one at the office to whom I reported, so if I wasn’t in the studio and I hadn’t any pressing matters or label meetings, the time in between projects was mine to use as I chose.

I was beginning to feel just the slightest bit of complacency about my situation, which was as unsettling to me as it was comforting. It seemed to me that a bit of repetition was creeping into the production process, even though I was eager to keep things fresh and exciting. I remember this period as a time when I started to formulate answers to the same questions being asked by journalists, and I recall saying that I tried to avoid having “a sound” to my productions, maintaining that each project required a unique approach. In theory, I truly believed this, but in practice I found myself relying more and more on things I had done on previous albums, because they produced great results. I don’t think that I had a sound, really, and I do think that I served each artist in the proper way. (more…)