Robert Lange (music producer)

Robert John "Mutt" Lange (born November 16, 1948 in Mufulira , Northern Rhodesia ) is a South African music producer .

biography

Education and early years

Robert Lange's mother came from a wealthy German family; his father, a South African , worked in the center of the Copperbelt as a mining engineer. Lange grew up with two brothers, from whom he was nicknamed Puppy , which later became Mutt (mutt). He enjoyed a comfortable colonial upbringing; there was housekeeping, but no running water. He only had contact with international music through records, as there was no radio station in the mining towns. After attending a boarding school in Southern Rhodesia, he switched to the state-funded Belfast High School. Despite strict rules at the school, which forbade dancing, among other things, support was given to founding a band in which Lange played and sang rhythm guitar . The group was allowed to use classrooms for rehearsals and perform at school events. Much of the repertoire consisted of cover versions of songs by the Beatles , the Hollies and Manfred Mann . He gained his first experience in the field of music production in the late 1960s as a sound engineer for radio jingles . From 1970 to 1971 he played in a group called Hocus, which had as little success as his school band. Long married the former Hocus singer Stevie Vann (real name Stevie van Kerken) and moved with her to Great Britain .

1970s and 1980s

In the mid-1970s, Lange began to make a name for himself as a producer. The first album he produced independently was Graham Parker's Heat treatment. Commissions from City Boy , The Motors and other groups followed. His breakthrough came with the Australians AC / DC . Highway to Hell , one of the most successful rock albums of its time , was created under his aegis . He also produced Shades in bed from the records in the late 1970s and Broken home from a band of the same name in 1980 . After the death of AC / DC singer Bon Scott , Lange took on the task of coaching the group's new front man, Brian Johnson , for studio recordings for his first album with the group. Back in Black , conceived as an homage to Bon Scott, who had just died a few months earlier, became a commercial success for which Lange was largely responsible.

A year later he was nominated as producer of the year for the Grammy because of his work as a producer on Foreigner album 4 . Also in 1981 he produced the AC / DC LP For Those About to Rock (We Salute You) , which was not recorded in a studio as usual, but in a hall in France. In the same year he began his collaboration with Def Leppard , whose albums High'n'Dry (1981), Pyromania (1983) and Hysteria (1987) he produced. In 1985 he was last at the mixer for AC / DC when the album Who Made Who was recorded. The band broke up with Lange on the grounds that they saw themselves too restricted in the implementation of their possibilities: “A lot of people believed that Mutt Lange was what AC / DC was all about, and that pissed us off. Mutt had never worked with a proper rock and roll band before. Although he has very clear ideas about the sound he wants to create, and he gives clear instructions, and he deserves recognition for that, we had different ideas than him and didn't let us say much about him. If we had done what he wanted, he would have polished us even more. […] You work with some of these people for years, listen patiently to what they have to say, and suddenly you realize that you've always known what really matters. "

In 1987 the collaboration with Def Leppard ended, who said that Lange was unsuitable for the “new sound” they wanted from the 1990s. Nevertheless, this contributed two tracks for the 1992 album Adrenalize and worked as an "Executive Producer".

1990s until today

As early as the 1980s, Lange worked for musicians outside of hard rock such as Billy Ocean , Michael Bolton and Bryan Adams . In December 1993, three titles in which Mutt Lange was involved made the top ten of the American Billboard charts: Bryan Adams' Please forgive me , Michael Bolton's Said I loved you… but I lied and All for love , a collaboration between Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting for the soundtrack for The Three Musketeers .

At this time, the Canadian country singer Shania Twain made her musical debut; her song What made you say that was played on the radio . Until now, Lange had not had much luck with country music. The albums with Clover , which later became Huey Lewis & the News , and the Outlaws received little attention. At the same time, Garth Brooks ' successes proved that Nashville was also able to generate million-sellers. Lange name meant almost nothing there, although he was one of the top producers with more than 100 million albums sold and only established greats could afford to employ him for six-figure prepayment and royalty payments of 5%. He decided to try country again. The first time he heard Shania Twain's single he was so excited that he called their manager Mary Bailey, who believed she was a mad fan, not a professional producer, on the other end of the line. He managed to get in touch with Twain; the two became friends and married - to the surprise of many - at the end of 1993, although they had only known each other for half a year.

In 1995 the most expensive country album ever produced in Nashville was released: In 1996, the couple received the RPM Big Country Music Award as Songwriter of the Year for the CD The Woman In Me . In order to reach audiences outside the USA, the country influences were reduced on the following album. The plan worked, Come on Over (1997) went over the counter 36 million times and gave Shania Twain an international breakthrough. The subsequent tour was a complete success. After their work was done, the couple initially moved back to Switzerland, where Twain gave birth to their first child in 2001. A year later the album Up! , which was launched in three different versions (pop, world music , country) and was able to stay in the charts for over a year. In parallel to working with his wife, Lange produced In Blue from the Corrs , wrote songs for the Backstreet Boys , Celine Dion and others.

In mid-May 2008, the Twain / Lange couple announced their separation.

From October 2014 to April 2015, Lange produced the album " Drones " by the British rock band Muse .

In 2017 Lange composed and wrote the song Gotta Thing About You with Tony Nilsson for the Swedish boy band FO&O . The song took part in the Melodifestivalen 2017 , the Swedish preliminary decision for the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 , and reached eleventh place in the final.

Grammy Awards

• 1991 - (Everything I Do) I Do It For You - Best Song Written Specifically For A Motion Picture Or For Television
• 1995 - The Woman In Me - Best Country Album
• 1999 - You're Still The One - Best Country Song
• 1999 - Come On Over - Best Country Song

Web links

• Mutt Lange at VH1.com (English)