Credit: Andrew Hoshkiw
Mon 24 August 2026 1:00, UK
You might think that the music you love, in the world of rock, indie, folk, and everything else, is the result of musicians and musicians only, but that’s not the case.
You need a lot of hands to bring a great record to life, and one of the most crucial components, outside of the band and songwriters, is the producer who must understand the vision of the artist and do everything within their power to fulfil it. Take a band like Led Zeppelin; Jimmy Page helped to produce a lot of those albums, and without him also in the controller seat, a lot of their more ambitious tracks may have never been made.
“I told the engineer, Glyn Johns, that I wanted to use backwards echo on the end,” said Page, recalling the recording process of ‘You Shook Me’, “He said, ‘Jimmy, it can’t be done’. I said, ‘Yes, it can. I’ve already done it.’ Then he began arguing, so I said, ‘Look, I’m the producer. I’m going to tell you what to do and just do it.’ So he grudgingly did everything I told him to, and when we were finished, he started refusing to push the fader up so I could hear the result. Finally, I had to scream, ‘Push the bloody fader up!’ And lo and behold, the effect worked perfectly.”
There’s no doubt that you need a good producer to make good music, and among the great ones out there who’ve well and truly made a name for themselves is Daniel Lanois. Throughout his career, he’s managed to help bring the visions of the likes of Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel and Willie Nelson to life; however, it was none of these big names that stopped the legendary producer in his tracks.
That was a privilege reserved for Robbie Robertson, who made a name for himself throughout the 1960s by playing guitar for Dylan. A lot of people thought it was a pretty controversial move when the latter decided to ditch his acoustic sets for a more electric approach, eventually turning away from him, while others who went to watch him play live were won over by the musical stylings of people like Robertson, who were able to elevate his sound.
Dylan said that Robertson was one of the best people to team up with when it came down to going on what was quite a hostile tour, and the feeling was mutual, wherein the latter said he couldn’t believe how powerful the former’s voice was. “When I started playing with Bob, I didn’t know how so much vocal power could come out of this frail man,” he said, “He was so thin. He was singing louder and stronger than James Brown. We were in a battlefield on that tour, and you had to fight back.”
Lanois was a big fan of Robertson because of his work with Dylan, of course, but as a proud Canadian, he loved him because of their hometown connection. When reflecting on his career as a producer, he remembered what it was like working with someone like Robertson, who had been an inspiration for such a long time for his musical skills, but especially because he got to sit down and talk about home, which really cemented the collaboration as magical for Lanois.
Further reading: From The Vault
“It was a dream come true as a Canadian kid to work with Robbie. He was a trailblazer,” he said, “I also realised that he was a great storyteller, so I asked him what it was like when he first went to Arkansas. At that point, we were just working in his studio, so the vocal mic was always on, and so I made sure that I recorded all of his stories.”
He gushed, “You know he has that beautiful low voice and he’s talking about the mystery of the nighttime and the crazy river and Nick’s cafe and hanging out with Levon Helm and fishing with dynamite”.
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