The Telegraph: "Stephen Street on falling out with Morrissey, the Britpop wars and getting Pete Doherty to behave" (December 15, 2020)

Reproduced in full as it's a gated article.

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"The veteran British record producer has dealt with some of British music’s most notorious characters. How did he make their albums?

Stephen Street must have the patience of a saint. Over the last 35 years, he has become the go-to producer for some of music’s most demanding, damaged and downright difficult stars, coaxing career-defining albums from The Smiths, Blur, The Cranberries and Pete Doherty. He has never headlined Wembley or been stopped in the street by fans, but you almost certainly own one of his records.

“I don’t take any nonsense,” he says, speaking (via Zoom) from a home office piled high with CDs and cassettes. “We’re in the studio to do a job. It’s the artist’s money we’re spending and we have to deliver as good a record as possible.”

Straight-talking and considered, the 60-year old Londoner owes his career to this same sensible streak. He turned to music production in the early 1980s after realising that his band, the ska-pop act BIM, were going nowhere despite signing a record deal. Faced with the prospect of years touring the country in a Transit, Stephen decided there had to be a better way.

“I wrote to all the studios, and finally got a job as an assistant engineer at Fallout Shelter Studio at Island Records. It was there [that] I had my first big break, when The Smiths came in to record Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now. By then, they’d already been on Top of the Pops and I thought they were incredible. I went out of my way to try impress them and at the end of that session, they took my name and number.”

He went on to engineer The Smiths’ next two albums, Meat is Murder and The Queen is Dead, before taking over as producer on the band’s fourth and final record, Strangeways, Here We Come. By this time, ardent Smiths fans knew him as the band’s unofficial fifth member, capable of teasing magic from their formidable frontman Morrissey and exacting guitarist Johnny Marr.

“I learned a lot about man-management,” he says. “Morrissey is quite a demanding character, but I realised quite quickly that you don’t just focus on the lead singer. They were all incredibly hard-working, and the best bands are strong all the way through. The singer can have a hissy fit if he wants, but I make sure every single person is involved.”

The strategy paid off, and the sessions for Strangeways were fun, Street says. Everyone got on well and the band made their bravest and most ambitious album so far. Yet by the time Strangeways was released in September 1987, The Smiths had already announced their split.

“I never in my wildest dreams thought it was all over,” Street says. “I really thought it was just a little tiff and they’d be back together in a couple of months. [But] it was hard for Morrissey to stick with a manager, and bands need a good manager. Johnny wanted one, and he didn’t want to get rid of the manager they’d just found. The tension was there because the business in the background wasn’t getting sorted.”

Any chance of a reunion was finally destroyed two years later, when The Smiths’ drummer Mike Joyce and bassist Andy Rourke started legal action against Morrissey and Marr for an equal share of the band’s profits. Though Rourke settled out of court, the High Court eventually ruled in Joyce’s favour, asserting he was entitled to a 25 per cent share of the band’s earnings, rather than the 10 per cent he had been paid.

“That killed it,” Street says. “I think Johnny and Morrissey got that wrong because Mike and Andy were very important. They were certainly more than pieces of a lawnmower, as they were referred to in court. If they hadn’t gone through that, they probably would have reformed at some point. Too much had been said and too much damage had been done by then.”

Still, Street’s own relationship with Morrissey endured, and he co-wrote and produced the singer’s acclaimed debut album Viva Hate, released just five months after Strangeways. The pressure almost gave him a stomach ulcer.

“Towards the end, I couldn’t get out of bed. I had terrible stomach cramps caused by stress. Morrissey could do no wrong at that time, so if the record flopped, I would have been blamed,” he says. “I was producing, engineering, playing on it and trying to keep one step ahead of Morrissey’s whims and desires.

“I mean, people think he’s miserable and he’s not. He’s got an incredibly wicked sense of humour. But sometimes the darkness can descend and everything closes down, so you have to read the signals.”

It was the last album the pair would make together. Street argued that he should be due a greater share of profits if they continued working together and both parties called in the lawyers. Morrissey eventually returned the torn pieces of one solicitor’s letter to Street with a note declaring simply: “Enough is too much.” Since then, there has been the odd e-mail, a friendly meeting at Claridge’s a decade ago, then another falling out about the remastering of Viva Hate in 2012.

“I dared to criticise so I was incommunicado again,” Street says like a man who has seen it all before. “Occasionally there’ll be an e-mail. I’ll reply, then six months later, that e-mail address is gone.”

Stephen’s musical Midas touch ensures that other bands always return his call. Since Viva Hate, he has worked his magic on The Pretenders, Catatonia, The Psychedelic Furs, Kaiser Chiefs, New Order and The Cranberries. Following singer Dolores O’Riordan’s tragic death, he returned to work with the latter band one final time to produce last year’s release In The End, using O’Riordan’s posthumous vocals.

“God bless her, she had her demons, but she had the voice of an angel. She was only 19 when I first met her and she wouldn’t work unless her boyfriend came to the studio. That’s something I stamped out straight away.

“She didn’t mix too well with drink unfortunately, but I really enjoyed working with her. Most of the time I was in the studio with her, she was as good as gold.”

But it’s Street’s work with Blur that remains his best known. He produced the band’s first five albums, including Parklife, which became the defining record of the Britpop era. “I’m very proud of it,” Street says. “It was a really exciting time. Later on, the Blur and Oasis thing got a bit nasty, especially some of the things coming from their [Oasis’s] side. I thought they were a little below-the-belt.”

The biggest challenge through it all, however, was keeping the party out of the studio.

“I would tell band members, ‘I want you in the studio at 10am, because I want to be done by 9pm.’ A lot of bands think the studio is their time to party, but it’s not. It’s time to work.

“Damon [Albarn, Blur frontman] has said he learnt his work ethic from me, and he’s one of the hardest working people in the business. The guy is a machine. A lot of people find him too much or overbearing, but he’s a lovely bloke. I think of him like a brother.”

Inevitably, Britpop mania eventually took its toll on Blur. By the time they came to record their fifth self-titled album, the band needed Street more than ever.

“They were not in a good state,” he says. “Graham [Coxon] wasn’t talking to the rest of them. One of the first things Damon asked me to do was go to Graham’s place in Camden and convince him we could make a record. That’s now my favourite album [of those] I’ve done. And it was enough to save Blur.”

Yet Stephen’s greatest challenge was still to come. In 2007, he produced Babyshambles’ second album Shotter’s Nation, followed by their controversial frontman Pete Doherty’s debut solo record, Grace/Wastelands, two years later.

“I didn’t fully appreciate what a challenge it would be,” Street admits. “I can say this because it’s well-documented, but Pete really is the only junkie I’ve ever worked with. Everyone thinks all musicians are junkies but they’re not. I felt I had to try and get through to this guy.

“He had the Kate Moss circle around him, and I didn’t want anything to do with that. When those people turned up, I’d call it a night. I did not want to sit there while they did God knows what. I had to read him the riot act a few times – but I’m very proud of what I’ve done with him. I love him and I worry about him, and I know he’d hate to hear me say that. But he’s up there with Morrissey as one of the greatest poets I’ve worked with.”

He pauses, choosing his words with the same thoughtful precision so many bands have needed to rely on when it really mattered.

“The thing about truly great artists is they inspire you to do really good work too. Damon, Pete and Morrissey are very different people, and very demanding in their own different ways to work with – but they’re geniuses. I don’t use that word often, but they really are.”

Bradford’s new album, Bright Hours, produced by Stephen Street, will be released in February and is available to pre-order here"


TELEMMGLPICT000002119664_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqmRz2i0BYLgZHjHqS8l-QubhBYMiTdMy6qmzC8lbSq4M.jpeg


Regards,
FWD.


Related item:
 
I think Morrissey is one of those performers who need the producer to say, 'that was fabulous, but let's try...'

Any hint that he was bad or wrong seems to crush him, going by his interviews & autobiography.
 
But Morrissey doesn't make his own records. If you want to give him credit for being the only member of The Smiths to do anything worthwhile after the breakup, you're actually talking about the collective energy of Stephen Street, Clive Langer, Mark Nevin, Alain Whyte, Boz Boorer and so on.

Yes, but how many of them had hits or created songs of worth without Morrissey’s collaboration.
 
Yes, but how many of them had hits or created songs of worth without Morrissey’s collaboration.
I didn’t say that he played no role, obviously Morrissey was brilliant. I’m simply saying that buying into the myth of the artist and pretending that Moz is some lone auteur is disingenuous.
 
:cool:

pay no attention to BGV😶
his sucky punk rock group bombed.🤕
none of these cucks have done anything without Moz input.
:handpointright::guardsman::handpointleft: nothing, currently in the C section of the B section, the Lawnmowers, nada zero, working scams.....Street hoe ing himself
to Mojo trying to feed himself. none have jobs.
without Moz zohar none of these cucks have anything going.😐
 
Yes, but how many of them had hits or created songs of worth without Morrissey’s collaboration.

Alain has co written songs with Madonna, Black Eyed Peas, Cherry Cole and many others.

Street has produced albums for some very well known artists eg Cranberries, Blur, Kaiser Chiefs and many others

Langer has produced albums for some very well known artists eg Madness, Elvis Costello, Dexys Midnight Runners and many others

Mark Nevin was a member of Fairground Attraction who had a number one single and album one album which went double platinum
 
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Alain has co written songs with Madonna, Black Eyed Peas, Cherry Cole and many others.

Street has produced albums for some very well known artists eg Cranberries, Blur, Kaiser Chiefs and many others

Langer has produced albums for some very well known artists eg Madness, Elvis Costello, Dexys Midnight Runners and many others

Mark Nevis was a member of Fairground Attraction who had a number one single and album one album which went double platinum
Again - nothing to imply. Still, my original thought and comment was about hits or just memorable songs written by any of them AFTER they worked with Morrissey. Not producer credit, no big names, but songs any of us could name - and there are none to be honest. Don't get me wrong, I wish there were....
 
Alain has co written songs with Madonna, Black Eyed Peas, Cherry Cole and many others.

Street has produced albums for some very well known artists eg Cranberries, Blur, Kaiser Chiefs and many others

Langer has produced albums for some very well known artists eg Madness, Elvis Costello, Dexys Midnight Runners and many others

Mark Nevin was a member of Fairground Attraction who had a number one single and album one album which went double platinum
Alain was also in the all-star band Stadium.
 
Again - nothing to imply. Still, my original thought and comment was about hits or just memorable songs written by any of them AFTER they worked with Morrissey. Not producer credit, no big names, but songs any of us could name - and there are none to be honest. Don't get me wrong, I wish there were....
You should listen to Something Out Of Nothing from L.A Crash Landing. As good as anything he's ever written, and after the Moz time. You really are pretty desperate to show that the creative muse was somehow linked to Morrissey. If that were the case then how come Jesse Tobias hasn't written a single decent tune in his time with the band?
 
You should listen to Something Out Of Nothing from L.A Crash Landing. As good as anything he's ever written, and after the Moz time. You really are pretty desperate to show that the creative muse was somehow linked to Morrissey. If that were the case then how come Jesse Tobias hasn't written a single decent tune in his time with the band?
I don't want to show anything, and definitely am not desperate. I can't emphasise this any more than I did. Though I dislike Jesse a lot - I'm on board with people here who ridicule him - I can't say "Smiler" is not a good track, for example . I do recall you being positive about World Peace upon its release, too. But that's beside the point.
But I see my original thought is somehow misinterpreted repeatedly - which is OK, I might have been not clear enough. Maybe it's the same with other solo artists' musical collaborators.
 
You should listen to Something Out Of Nothing from L.A Crash Landing. As good as anything he's ever written, and after the Moz time. You really are pretty desperate to show that the creative muse was somehow linked to Morrissey. If that were the case then how come Jesse Tobias hasn't written a single decent tune in his time with the band?
I get your point, but that's unfair on Jesse. He's hardly Marr, and he's probably not even a Whyte, but there's some good songs of his out there with Morrissey. Not enough to construct a hill to die on, but Youngest, If You Don't Like, All You Need Is Me, I'm Not A Man, Smiler, amongst others, are good tunes.
 
Reproduced in full as it's a gated article.

View attachment 66671

"The veteran British record producer has dealt with some of British music’s most notorious characters. How did he make their albums?

Stephen Street must have the patience of a saint. Over the last 35 years, he has become the go-to producer for some of music’s most demanding, damaged and downright difficult stars, coaxing career-defining albums from The Smiths, Blur, The Cranberries and Pete Doherty. He has never headlined Wembley or been stopped in the street by fans, but you almost certainly own one of his records.

“I don’t take any nonsense,” he says, speaking (via Zoom) from a home office piled high with CDs and cassettes. “We’re in the studio to do a job. It’s the artist’s money we’re spending and we have to deliver as good a record as possible.”

Straight-talking and considered, the 60-year old Londoner owes his career to this same sensible streak. He turned to music production in the early 1980s after realising that his band, the ska-pop act BIM, were going nowhere despite signing a record deal. Faced with the prospect of years touring the country in a Transit, Stephen decided there had to be a better way.

“I wrote to all the studios, and finally got a job as an assistant engineer at Fallout Shelter Studio at Island Records. It was there [that] I had my first big break, when The Smiths came in to record Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now. By then, they’d already been on Top of the Pops and I thought they were incredible. I went out of my way to try impress them and at the end of that session, they took my name and number.”

He went on to engineer The Smiths’ next two albums, Meat is Murder and The Queen is Dead, before taking over as producer on the band’s fourth and final record, Strangeways, Here We Come. By this time, ardent Smiths fans knew him as the band’s unofficial fifth member, capable of teasing magic from their formidable frontman Morrissey and exacting guitarist Johnny Marr.

“I learned a lot about man-management,” he says. “Morrissey is quite a demanding character, but I realised quite quickly that you don’t just focus on the lead singer. They were all incredibly hard-working, and the best bands are strong all the way through. The singer can have a hissy fit if he wants, but I make sure every single person is involved.”

The strategy paid off, and the sessions for Strangeways were fun, Street says. Everyone got on well and the band made their bravest and most ambitious album so far. Yet by the time Strangeways was released in September 1987, The Smiths had already announced their split.

“I never in my wildest dreams thought it was all over,” Street says. “I really thought it was just a little tiff and they’d be back together in a couple of months. [But] it was hard for Morrissey to stick with a manager, and bands need a good manager. Johnny wanted one, and he didn’t want to get rid of the manager they’d just found. The tension was there because the business in the background wasn’t getting sorted.”

Any chance of a reunion was finally destroyed two years later, when The Smiths’ drummer Mike Joyce and bassist Andy Rourke started legal action against Morrissey and Marr for an equal share of the band’s profits. Though Rourke settled out of court, the High Court eventually ruled in Joyce’s favour, asserting he was entitled to a 25 per cent share of the band’s earnings, rather than the 10 per cent he had been paid.

“That killed it,” Street says. “I think Johnny and Morrissey got that wrong because Mike and Andy were very important. They were certainly more than pieces of a lawnmower, as they were referred to in court. If they hadn’t gone through that, they probably would have reformed at some point. Too much had been said and too much damage had been done by then.”

Still, Street’s own relationship with Morrissey endured, and he co-wrote and produced the singer’s acclaimed debut album Viva Hate, released just five months after Strangeways. The pressure almost gave him a stomach ulcer.

“Towards the end, I couldn’t get out of bed. I had terrible stomach cramps caused by stress. Morrissey could do no wrong at that time, so if the record flopped, I would have been blamed,” he says. “I was producing, engineering, playing on it and trying to keep one step ahead of Morrissey’s whims and desires.

“I mean, people think he’s miserable and he’s not. He’s got an incredibly wicked sense of humour. But sometimes the darkness can descend and everything closes down, so you have to read the signals.”

It was the last album the pair would make together. Street argued that he should be due a greater share of profits if they continued working together and both parties called in the lawyers. Morrissey eventually returned the torn pieces of one solicitor’s letter to Street with a note declaring simply: “Enough is too much.” Since then, there has been the odd e-mail, a friendly meeting at Claridge’s a decade ago, then another falling out about the remastering of Viva Hate in 2012.

“I dared to criticise so I was incommunicado again,” Street says like a man who has seen it all before. “Occasionally there’ll be an e-mail. I’ll reply, then six months later, that e-mail address is gone.”

Stephen’s musical Midas touch ensures that other bands always return his call. Since Viva Hate, he has worked his magic on The Pretenders, Catatonia, The Psychedelic Furs, Kaiser Chiefs, New Order and The Cranberries. Following singer Dolores O’Riordan’s tragic death, he returned to work with the latter band one final time to produce last year’s release In The End, using O’Riordan’s posthumous vocals.

“God bless her, she had her demons, but she had the voice of an angel. She was only 19 when I first met her and she wouldn’t work unless her boyfriend came to the studio. That’s something I stamped out straight away.

“She didn’t mix too well with drink unfortunately, but I really enjoyed working with her. Most of the time I was in the studio with her, she was as good as gold.”

But it’s Street’s work with Blur that remains his best known. He produced the band’s first five albums, including Parklife, which became the defining record of the Britpop era. “I’m very proud of it,” Street says. “It was a really exciting time. Later on, the Blur and Oasis thing got a bit nasty, especially some of the things coming from their [Oasis’s] side. I thought they were a little below-the-belt.”

The biggest challenge through it all, however, was keeping the party out of the studio.

“I would tell band members, ‘I want you in the studio at 10am, because I want to be done by 9pm.’ A lot of bands think the studio is their time to party, but it’s not. It’s time to work.

“Damon [Albarn, Blur frontman] has said he learnt his work ethic from me, and he’s one of the hardest working people in the business. The guy is a machine. A lot of people find him too much or overbearing, but he’s a lovely bloke. I think of him like a brother.”

Inevitably, Britpop mania eventually took its toll on Blur. By the time they came to record their fifth self-titled album, the band needed Street more than ever.

“They were not in a good state,” he says. “Graham [Coxon] wasn’t talking to the rest of them. One of the first things Damon asked me to do was go to Graham’s place in Camden and convince him we could make a record. That’s now my favourite album [of those] I’ve done. And it was enough to save Blur.”

Yet Stephen’s greatest challenge was still to come. In 2007, he produced Babyshambles’ second album Shotter’s Nation, followed by their controversial frontman Pete Doherty’s debut solo record, Grace/Wastelands, two years later.

“I didn’t fully appreciate what a challenge it would be,” Street admits. “I can say this because it’s well-documented, but Pete really is the only junkie I’ve ever worked with. Everyone thinks all musicians are junkies but they’re not. I felt I had to try and get through to this guy.

“He had the Kate Moss circle around him, and I didn’t want anything to do with that. When those people turned up, I’d call it a night. I did not want to sit there while they did God knows what. I had to read him the riot act a few times – but I’m very proud of what I’ve done with him. I love him and I worry about him, and I know he’d hate to hear me say that. But he’s up there with Morrissey as one of the greatest poets I’ve worked with.”

He pauses, choosing his words with the same thoughtful precision so many bands have needed to rely on when it really mattered.

“The thing about truly great artists is they inspire you to do really good work too. Damon, Pete and Morrissey are very different people, and very demanding in their own different ways to work with – but they’re geniuses. I don’t use that word often, but they really are.”

Bradford’s new album, Bright Hours, produced by Stephen Street, will be released in February and is available to pre-order here"


View attachment 66672

Regards,
FWD.


Related item:

Thanks, FWD.
 
No, I really didn't mean to imply anything. Just said out loud it's interesting to see there are no great (or even good) Street, Whyte, Nevin co-writes. I don't have the answer to that.

I believe that Morrissey's persona, his lyrics and voice have always been able to operate a kind of alchemy that involves his music partners and gets the best of everyone. Since The Smiths we've seen it happening.

It isn't even a conscious thing, I guess.

It's himself bringing to the game all his passion, love, knowledge and unwavering commitment to music.

And his genius, of course.

Viva Morrissey!
 
Alain has co written songs with Madonna, Black Eyed Peas, Cherry Cole and many others.

Street has produced albums for some very well known artists eg Cranberries, Blur, Kaiser Chiefs and many others

Langer has produced albums for some very well known artists eg Madness, Elvis Costello, Dexys Midnight Runners and many others

Mark Nevin was a member of Fairground Attraction who had a number one single and album one album which went double platinum

I also said songs of worth, or as Musician said ‘just memorable songs written by any of them AFTER they worked with Morrissey’

I didn’t say that he played no role, obviously Morrissey was brilliant. I’m simply saying that buying into the myth of the artist and pretending that Moz is some lone auteur is disingenuous.

I totally agree, but those producers and the other Smith members have also not worked alone, and yet ...,,

have not really released anything as memorable (or touches people in the same way) as their work with Morrissey does or has.

Not to say that those producers or other Smith members have not in any way released anything good at all, just not much.
 
🤒

WTF???? Something Out Nothing???? Sucko track nobody has ever heard of.:straightface:

if they make such "MEMORABLE" songs why when it comes to sing
on Youtube or makes scams on the auction they pull Moz songs and
Moz material..
why dont they make an hour show with their sucky 'memorable songs'doh:
on youtube? like those dumb hooky concerts from next to the outhouse?
12 watchers is what they will total, all the lawnmowers put together produced by the Street twit.
and, if they bring in you know who (LePew) for the grand finale even
the 12 will immediately sign off. likely blind drunk to have signed on in the first place.o_O
 
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