What are you favorite Prog Rock producers

One of the greatest progressive rock producers of all time was Conrad (Conny) Plank, legendary Brain Records producer of Cluster, Ash Ra, Neu!, Kraftwerk, Grobschnitt, Guru Guru, Holger Czukay and almost everybody else of importance in Germany. You almost certainly know his sound - if you need something more well known and modern, listen to In The Garden by The Eurthymics (their first, most transcendant and finest album) or Ultravox's Vienna.

John Anthony is pretty darned important too - early works by all of VDGG, Genesis, Roxy Music, Lindisfarne, Al Stewart, and Queen.

I'm surprised that there's been no mention of Hugh Padgham, who's done more engineering with progressive rock bands than production, but who is very famous for producing the Genesis sound of the 80s (not a big fan of this period of Genesis myself, but the production's great) the later Police albums (which are expansive, beautiful and captivating).

Good that people picked Terry Brown - in my mind, his absence is a large part of the reason Rush's later albums miss the mark, even when full of strong compositions.

Steve Hillage, Brian Eno and Todd Rungren are among progressive rock artists who are also important producers of many others' work.

Blacksword wrote: ... Hugh Pagdam (although not with Genesis - he should be locked up for the hash he made of those already awful albums)

I wonder then, what albums with Hugh Padgham do you like?

Edited by Moogtron III

Gus Dudgeon was always a name I looked for

TP,

on the UK and US level, you are right : one might even say that a producer is an artistic director

However in Continental Europe a producer is more the one financing the record (from the studio to the factory), but this varies greatly. In terms of Author's right (divided in three parts: Author - lyrics, Compser- music, and producer) he gets almost 50% (which I find scandalous). But he is the one taking the (calculated) risk 

Aaron wrote: Just something I have been thinking about lately, for example I was looking at some Camel albums and they use the same producer for 3 consecutive album, so it makes me wonder if this producer has produced any other great albums but i have no good way of looking this up... or do I? Aaron

Valid question, and I do not know of a way of looking it up

As far as I know there has never been a book on producer

Maybe worth investigating on this

 

In Germany in the early 70's Conny Plank was definitely THE producer, (along with Dieter Dierckx, I think)

Almost every album he produced is an excellent one