STUDIO THE PRODUCERS: MARTIN RUSHENT
Martin Jerram pays tribute to the career of British producer Martin Rushent, whose ground-breaking 1980s productions still influence many of today’s artists.
Martin Rushent 1948-2011
Martin Rushent (born in 1948 in Enfi eld, North London) developed an early interest in the recording studio, experimenting at home with his father’s 4 track machine and recording a demo at EMI headquarters in Manchester Square, London. However, things really took off when he managed to secure himself a job as a fi lm projectionist at the famous London studios Advision. After only three months Rushent had been promoted to the heady heights of Tape Operator where he served his apprentiship alongside, among others, legendary producer Tony Visconti. As a Tape Operator at Advision he managed to cut his teeth working with diverse acts from Yes to Shirley Bassey and Emmerson Lake & Palmer to Jerry Lee Lewis. By the end of his time at Advision, Rushent had been promoted to Chief Engineer at which point he decided to move into the role of Freelance Engineer.
Post Punk Pioneer Much of Rushent’s early freelance work was for the United Artists record label and saw Rushent again
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working with Shirley Bassey as well as producing Manchester Pop/Punk legends the Buzzcocks whereby he developed the uncanny knack of capturing the Buzzcocks now trademark snarly guitars and vocals whilst still delivering the hits! At Rushent’s insistence United Artists signed The Stranglers on the understanding that Rushent produce them; he went on to produce their fi rst three albums: Rattus Norvegicus, No More Heroes and Black and White. Often overlooked, the sound of the early Stranglers records are a master class in ‘post punk’ production, notable for the inclusion of synthesizers in a prominent role, whilst avoiding the pop, novelty and disco connotations. By all accounts the crunchy distorted sounds coming from Jean-Jacques Burnell’s bass guitar owe their characteristic biting tone to a ripped and generally broken speaker! Towards the end of his tenure Rushent also produced some early demos for Joy Division.
Who Dares…wins Seemingly tiring of producing guitar bands Rushent took the plunge and invested in a Linn Drum, Roland MC-4 sequencer and a Roland Jupiter 8 synthesizer; all pretty advanced stuff for the period! One of his fi rst projects with this new equipment was a series of demos he made with the ex-Buzzcocks lead singer Pete Shelley. These tracks were picked up by Island Records and released as Pete Shelley’s debut Homosapien album. At this point Rushent set up his own Genetic Studios in Berkshire, fi lled with the very latest in music technology, Genetic was arguably the most advanced and expensive studio of it’s day in the UK, featuring as it did a Mitsubishi digital tape recorder, and Synclavier and Fairlight sampling/sequencing machines. The air conditioning
for the studio alone reportedly cost a whopping £35,000! After hearing Homosapien, Virgin
Records decided that Rushent and his new Genetic facility was the ideal candidate to produce their latest act, The Human League. The Human League had been struggling since being signed to Virgin, with core members of the band leaving due to a recent change in direction (to form Heaven 17). Lead singer Phil Oakey found himself in a position where the band now consisted of Oakey, session musician Ian Burden and two teenage girl singers (Susan Sulley and Joanne Catherall) whom Oakey had fi rst met in a Sheffi eld nightclub. The fi rst single Rushent produced with Human League was Sound Of The Crowd, which achieved a respectable chart placing in the UK of number 12. Buoyed by this moderate success Virgin Records agreed to let the Rushent/Human League partnership to continue and record their debut album, Dare. During the Dare sessions Martin Rushent hit upon a sound that will no doubt sum up his career more than any other; the synth pop soap opera symphony, Don’t You Want Me which hit number 1 in the UK charts in December 1981. It was a sound that fully captured the imagination of a nation, and went on to infl uence the music of the next thirty years that followed. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to hear this infl uence in the works of Pet Shop Boys, Erasure or even later acts like La Roux. Whilst the band enjoyed the success, the whole band didn’t always favour Rushent’s production methods. In fact the only guitar Joe Callis played on the Dare album was actually used to trigger a synthesizer! A later album saw singer Suzanne Sulley making a glib comment to Rushent about the time spent on programming, at which point Rushent walked away from the Human League project.
Martin Rushent 1948-2011
After the Human League, Rushent continued to produce acts from the era, notably, XTC, Altered Images, Generation X and the Go-Go’s. Returning a little more towards the guitar bands that he’d originally made his name with. In 1984 Rushent decided to leave the music making business for good and sold all his assets including Genetic so he could spend more time bringing up his family. In recent years Martin Rushent
had returned to music production from a modest home studio in Berkshire featuring an affordable Mackie desk and digital multi- track. Ironically this ‘modest’ home studio could technically blow the expensive 1980’s Genetic Studios out of the water in the technology stakes! Notable recent work included the Pipettes and Does It Offend You, Yeah! (his son James’ punk/dance band). Martin Rushent died suddenly on 4th June 2011, leaving behind a formidable legacy one of the most talented and infl uential record producers of the 1980s. PM
Human League
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