Squonk wrote
How much influence does the engineer/producer have over the finished product. How much did George Martin suggest to John and Paul when they went into the studio with their raw songs.
It depends on the producer, but usually they are hugely instrumental in crafting the
sound of a record and in some cases, the direction of the music. In the case of George Martin, he was writing all the Beatles string arrangements too, and was a big part of the Beatles' sound.
Speaking Beatles and Floyd - you can clearly hear a Beatles influence on Floyd's first two singles (Arnold Layne and See Emily Play) - The Producer was Norman Smith, who got his start as an engineer on almost 100 Beatles tracks - which should go some way to show how much influence a producer can have on a recording. There are a few producers who I can recognise immediately if they have produced a project - Daniel Lanois, Mark Knopfler, Brian Eno, etc.
Look at Glen Ballard again - Alanis Morisette's
Jagged Little Pill was more him than her, quite frankly, when she dropped him, her music became half what it was before.
I have heard that Bob Ezrin suggested to Pink Floyd about writing a song with a Disco groove and then asked them about incorporating children singing into the song (another brick in the wall). He could almost be credited for some of the writing of the song. ???
No not for writing the song - that is down to the chords, melody and words and the producer may do some of the basic arrangement and work very closely with the engineer and artist in crafting the sound of the song, but does not usually affect the songwriting itself. Producers often get "points" which is a percentage royalty on records sold - in fact, it's not unusual for a new band to be earning
less royalties that the "hot" producer the record company calls in to make them sound sellable.
Speaking of the Wall, someone else who was hugely influential on the sound of the album was the orchestral arranger, Michael Kaman, who did stunning work in blending rock band and orchestra into a whole. He also ended up playing some mean Hammond organ after the band fired Wright.
