Peter Collins was an unashamedly old-fashioned kind of record producer. He insisted his acts had their songs fully rehearsed and ready to record before they entered the studio and preferred the organic approach of recording “live” rather than the modern method of piecing together tracks with sequencers, samplers and endless computer editing.
It was a method that most of those he worked with appreciated and his talents were deployed across the musical spectrum as he produced hits for pop musicians (Nik Kershaw and Tracey Ullman), metal bands (Rush and Queensrÿche), stadium rockers (Bon Jovi and Alice Cooper) and acoustic folkies (Indigo Girls and Nanci Griffith).
Unlike many of his peers, he did not have a “signature” sound that he imprinted on the records of all those with whom he worked. Rather than shoehorning his artists’ talents into his own production masterplan or remixing their songs beyond recognition, he stuck to a set of simple but adaptable rules that served equally well in different contexts and genres.
“As long as you are generally appreciative of music and one has fairly broad taste, it doesn’t really matter what the music is. You can apply your production principles to whatever it is,” he said. “My job is to try to identify what the artist’s vision is and help them achieve it.”
He combined this approach with an enviable diplomacy which meant that when he felt the acts he was recording were getting it wrong, he was able to convince them that the fixes he suggested were their own idea.
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“I’m sort of an agent provocateur,” he explained. “If I hear weaknesses or things I think could be better, I’ll try to provoke them to come up with some ideas which I think would be satisfactory.”
Steeped in British pop as a protégé of Peter Waterman, who as part of Stock Aitken Waterman dominated the UK charts in the 1980s with records by the likes of Kylie Minogue, Rick Astley and Bananarama, he found his greatest success after moving to America in 1985.
Settling in Nashville, the twanging sound of country was ironically one of the few genres in which he did not work extensively. “I’m outside that circle, I just use the facilities here,” he explained. “There are excellent studios, excellent rental equipment and of course you’ve got superb musicians here and everywhere you go there’s a songwriter. For a producer, it’s a wonderful environment.”
He particularly loved the fact that you couldn’t go to a Nashville restaurant without the waitress and the coat-check girl handing you their demo tapes. The bands with whom he worked most regularly such as the Canadian rockers Rush and the American heavy metal outfit Queensrÿche referred to him as “Mr Big” and were still calling him that in the tributes they paid on the news of his death.
Both also credited him with giving their heavy rock style a more commercial edge that broadened their appeal and enhanced their record sales. “I had a British pop sensibility and when I became a rock producer that was quite an asset, because I was able to bring some pop elements to the music subversively, without the listener realising it,” Collins said.
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His no-nonsense approach — he maintained a nine-hour working day and made a point of switching off the machines at 8pm, convinced that all-night sessions were more about indulgence than inspiration — meant that he had fewer tales to tell of rock’n’roll Babylon than some of his peers.
It was a strict regime that had its roots in an early experience when he was employed to produce the second album by a successful British band, whom he tactfully refused to name.
“We got together at the mansion they’d rented in LA and after watching them splash about in the swimming pool and sitting with them for a magnificent catered dinner, I finally said, ‘OK guys, now let’s run through the songs we’ll be recording’,” he recalled. “There was nothing but stunned silence — a real Spinal Tap moment.” Thereafter he made it a rule to insist on hearing the material before committing to produce any act, however big they might be.
Peter Julian Alexander Collins was born in Reading in 1951, the son of Rita and Gerald Collins, who played clarinet in a jazz band and later became an art dealer with a gallery in Dorset. He grew up in Sussex and after attending Steyning Grammar School and sixth-form college in Brighton, he landed a recording deal with Decca as a singer-songwriter. While making his first, and only, album he realised he didn’t have what was required to be an artist and was “more interested in being in the studio and in the process of making a record”.
He took a job as an assistant producer at the Decca studios in north London — “in practice that came down to being tea boy” — but crept back after-hours and began recording his own radio and TV jingles.
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After briefly forming an unsuccessful group with the page three girl Cherri Gilham in 1980 he started a production company with Waterman, who put him in charge of recording Kershaw and several other acts. His first No 1 came in 1982 when he co-produced Pass the Dutchie for one-hit wonders Musical Youth.
The move to America came at the behest of his Mississippi-born wife Debbie and, although they later divorced, he remained there. He is survived by their son, Alex. In later life he became a keen salsa dancer and flyer of remote controlled model aircraft. A man who counted his blessings, he rated producing records as “the most favoured job going”, doubly rewarded by “a big fat advance and ongoing royalties”.
“An artist typically has one shot,” he said. “We have multiple shots. We’ve been very privileged.”
Peter Collins, record producer, was born on January 14, 1951. He died after a short illness on June 28, 2024, aged 73