Pop’s Secretive Svengali, Mutt Lange

Investigative profile of pop genius Mutt Lange, a press-shy knob-twiddler behind chart-toppers as diverse as AC/DC, Tina Turner, the Backstreet Boys and Shania Twain. Good training for my run-in a few years later with another evasive celebrity, Mel Gibson.

The first thing Robert John Lange says when we meet is that I should call him Mutt. Not Robert. Definitely not Mr. Lange. He may be a multimillionaire record producer and songwriter with unparalleled power in the music industry, but he’s also a regular sort of bloke, a former cover-band bassist who took his nickname from a beloved basset hound.

He welcomes me at the front door of his 19th-century Swiss ch—teau wearing his usual outfit—Hawaiian print shirt, baggy pants and slip-ons. His hair is long, blond and shaggy in a style that hasn’t changed much since his glory days of the mid-‘80s—the headbanger’s ball may be long over, but at 52, Mutt’s keeping the faith, God bless him. We tour the grounds, past the stables where we run into his wife grooming one of her five horses—“Hi, Shania!”—and then he gives me the tour of the house, with its sweeping southern views of Lake Geneva. The Swiss “freakin’ ch—teau,” as the missus calls it. He laughs about that and then turns serious, his slight South African accent going soft. It wasn’t easy, he says, making the transition from the mansion in Lake Placid to the estate in Tour-de-Peliz. But hey—the taxes aren’t as brutal, the people are nice, and it’s easier to keep a low profile.

Next he leads the way to his studio, a vast spot-lit sanctum decorated with a few of his multi-platinum albums (AC/DC’s Back in Black, Shania’s Come on Over, the Backstreet Boys’ Millennium). Settling in behind his console while blowing steam off a mug of herbal tea, Mutt plays the rough mixes of a few songs he and Shania have been working on. From the first note, you can hear Mutt’s trademark—the songs are huge and regal, slinky and hummable. They’re a bit on the repetitive side, sure, with hammy wink-wink lyrics about something vaguely naughty (Mutt’s catalogue includes songs called “I Wanna Be Your Underwear” and “Velvet Tongue”)—but like all his best songs, they’re carefully crafted to generate a moment or two of pure uplift coming from crappy car speakers one miserable morning on the way to work.

When the control room falls silent, Mutt settles back in his chair and closes his eyes. And then without any prompting at all, he unravels the story of his life and career, how the son of an African asbestos miner became a pop music mastermind whose manic perfectionism and easy command of rock star egos has helped produce seven of the top 100 records of all time.

And then he asks to hear me sing.

I can dream, can’t I? Robert John “Mutt” Lange is about as likely to have me over for tea and conversation as he is to launch a line of pet supplies for the extra cash. The first thing you learn about Mutt is that he’s reclusive. His friends call him private. His publicists call him press-shy. Collaborators call him a control freak. Add it up and you’ve got a Howard Hughes-scale aversion to the spotlight.

But where it counts, Mutt has all the recognition he needs. He’s widely regarded as one of the most consistent hitmakers in the music business, crafting mass-appeal records in a wide variety of formats. The best evidence of this is a wall in Mutt’s house picturing the acts he’s worked with. Featured photos include Bryan Adams, whose collaboration with Mutt resulted in two multi-platinum albums and three of the best-selling singles of all time. There are the long-hairs: Def Leppard and AC/DC. There are the pop stars: Britney, the Backstreet Boys, Michael Bolton. There are the New Wave heroes: XTC and The Cars. And of course, there’s his proudest accomplishment: Shania, who went from Nashville neophyte to international megastar after hooking up with Mutt as partner, producer and spouse.

“Mutt is a single-minded hitmaker—one of the great writer/producers of all time,” declares Michael Greene, president and CEO of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, the professional organization that hands out the Grammies (Mutt has four). “Other producers have passed between genres, but no one has been so successful at it or gone to the extremes he has.”

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) has honored Mutt in the rock, country, pop, Latin and soundtrack categories. Last October, he was awarded seven honours for songwriting and named writer of the year (for the second year running) at a ceremony in London. To no one’s surprise, when the winner was announced, Mutt was absent.

“It would be nice if he’d show up sometime,” says Todd Brabec, ASCAP’s executive vice-president of membership. “But the fact that he never does isn’t going to stop us from recognizing him.”

As much as Mutt has mastered the mechanics of hit records, he appears to have an even firmer handle on their economics. For starters, Mutt has an undisclosed stake in Zomba Recording Corp., the record company founded by his longtime friend and manager, Clive Calder. Zomba generates $800 million in annual sales and bills itself as the “largest independent record company in the world.” With guidance from Calder and Lange—who met while playing in bar bands in their native South Africa 30 years ago—Zomba now encompasses 12 recording studios and seven independent labels, including Jive Records, home to cash cows Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync. The track record has put Zomba in a league with the top five record companies in the world—Sony, Universal, BMG, Warner and EMI.

Meanwhile, Mutt profits more directly from the artists he produces, positioning himself at the receiving end of all streams of revenue his records generate. Most other producers are content to receive flat fees and a rate of around two to three “points” on records they produce—a percentage of total sales. But Mutt has always been a hard bargainer. Back in 1976—long before his breakthrough hits with AC/DC and Def Leppard—Mutt took an astromonical four points on a single from XTC’s first record.

“He made more on that record than we did,” says XTC lead singer Andy Partridge. Not that musicians or record executives are complaining. “There has always been this view that if you gave Mutt Lange a band, you didn’t have to worry,” says Alan Gregg, a longtime player in the Canadian record industry. Mutt reaps even bigger rewards from songwriting, receiving publishing fees and performance royalties on such mega-sellers as Heart’s “All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You,” Huey Lewis & the News’ “Do You Believe in Love” and all but a few songs on Shania’s last two records. The 16 songs Mutt and Shania wrote for Shania’s Come on Over, for instance, have earned the couple $18,374,803. That doesn’t take into account performance royalties based on radio airplay, which with a crossover hit like the album’s “You’re Still the One”—which spent a record 20 weeks at the top of the country music chart and peaked at number two on the pop chart—has raked in tens of millions more. Then there’s film and TV licence fees. Industry observers say Mutt makes between $100,000 and $250,000 every time one of his songs is chosen for a soundtrack—which works out well, since Mutt is also in the business of producing soundtracks (credits include Footloose to Twister to America’s Sweethearts).

None of these calculations include the income brought in by Mrs. Mutt, whose three albums have sold more than 50 million copies worldwide, more than any other female artist in history. Last year, when National Post Business added up Twain’s royalties, her share of $119 million in concert revenues, a $4.5-million endorsement deal with Revlon and other income, it arrived at a net worth of $69.5 million.

While Mutt’s private dealings with Zomba make it much harder to tally his total worth, it’s safe to assume that he brings at least as much to the party as Shania, making the pair perhaps the wealthiest couple in pop. “I don’t think any producer makes as much money or is as revered in the industry as Mutt Lange,” notes Gregg.

But perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Mutt’s career is how hard he works to keep success from spinning into celebrity. Last year, he reportedly bought the rights to nearly every photograph ever taken of him. (He apparently prefers a soft-focus Peter Frampton-ish portrait that dates back 20 years or more.) He reportedly demands that his face be cropped out of all promotional pictures and videos. When VH1 produced a biopic on Def Leppard earlier this year, he declined to give any advice to the actor who portrayed him, Anthony Michael Hall.

Mutt’s strict policy of silence tends to feed curiosity as much as discourage it. Early last summer, I started wondering about Mutt and how he’s managed to stay on top of a market that’s seen the swell and sputter of so many trends. So I set out on a Mutt Hunt—contacting friends, collaborators, colleagues, publicists and fans, looking for answers to questions he appears eager not to answer himself. How does he do it? Why the secrecy? How did a guy reared on such ‘60s stalwarts as Van Morrison and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young end up as a king of hair metal, teen pop and glam country?

I start by faxing an interview request to Zomba—the powerhouse music company behind such mega-sellers as ‘N Sync, Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. I carefully weigh the wording, trying to strike the right balance between fawning appreciation and professional curiosity. “While I understand your reluctance to talk to the press, it would be a shame to base such a well-intentioned story solely on the perspectives of associates,” I write. I even offer to jet to Switzerland for a chat.

“Don’t hold your breath,” says George Frazer. If anyone knows the frustrations of the Mutt Hunt, it’s Frazer, a 44-year-old hospital worker, medical technician, father of two and self-described “pretend songwriter” from Owen Sound, Ont. Frazer is the world’s foremost expert on all things Mutt—under the nom-de-Web Big Bro, Frazer runs an online news depository and posting board called the Mutt Lange Zone. The site includes a full inventory of Mutt’s producing and writing credits, the reminiscences of school buddies and even a few scanned paparazzi photos from Mutt and Shania’s wedding.

Frazer got interested in Mutt after hearing the now legendary story of how he and Shania met—Lange reportedly saw a navel-bearing, hip-wiggling video from Shania’s modestly successful first record and phoned her up. Twain’s longtime manager, Mary Bailey, took the initial call, liked the sound of Mutt’s voice and passed him along to Shania, who, initally, wasn’t aware of who he was. Twain found herself complaining to Mutt about how her producers didn’t let her record more of her own music, which she played for Mutt into the phone. Soon the two started an intense long-distance relationship. Mutt recorded her voice on the phone, reworked the songs and then played them back to her. Eventually, he agreed to work on her next record.

The two finally met face-to-face in the summer of 1993 at a country music festival in Nashville. Six months later, they were married. The pairing has produced two blockbuster records and, this past August, a baby boy named Eja (pronounced “Asia”). But initially, fans were suspicious about what appeared to be a purely opportunistic match, with its whirlwind romance, long periods of separations and the 16-year difference in age. But Shania has insisted in interviews—and written in a few songs—that there is a special and easy bond between them that also happens to include a shared determination to make hit records.

But for all that Shania has talked about her private life, precious little is known about the shadowy Mr. Twain. When he set out to find out more, Frazer was surprised to discover Mutt’s name on a number of records he’d enjoyed over the years—from Billy Ocean’s “Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run)” to Bryan Adams’ “Everything I Do (I Do it For You).” Mutt not only produced these songs; he occasionally sang backup, shared songwriting credits and endlessly fussed over their arrangements. “I discovered I’d been a fan for years without even knowing it,” Frazer says.

He warns me not to expect much from my attempts to reach Mutt directly. After several phone calls and even a visit to the Zomba offices in Nashville, Frazer has yet to receive any direct communication. Any hope I’ll get better treatment is shattered soon enough. Two weeks after writing Zomba and hearing nothing back, I call the publicity office directly. No one returns the call. I try again every few days, leaving polite messages, official messages, annoyed messages. One day I leave a message in a silly South African accent. It makes no difference. I get it: I’m being blown off.

My luck improves when I reach Shania’s Canadian manager. While she says Shania herself isn’t available to talk—she’s holed up at the ch—teau this summer, working on her next album and preparing for the birth of her baby—she promises to get my letter to Mutt.

Meanwhile, I fill in the outlines of Mutt’s biography. Frazer puts me in touch with one of Mutt’s old bandmates from South Africa, a drummer named Geoff Williams, who tells me Mutt grew up in the copper belt of Zambia and moved to the South African town of Belfast as a teenager. At a time when Elvis was hot, Mutt was into country rocker Slim Whitman. He played bass in a succession of local bands and worked as a sound engineer at Johannesburg studios, recording radio jingles. Williams has his own theory as to why Mutt shrinks from the spotlight—and why such an apparently gifted musician has never recorded under his own name. “As I remember him, he was extremely modest,” Williams writes via e-mail. “He hates any form of hype and is definitely not one to bask in any form of glory.”

Mutt moved to London in 1973, following a pair of musician friends who had formed a publishing and production company called Zomba. (Mutt may have inherited his press-shyness from his friend Calder, who never gives interviews and avoids photos.) After a few moderate successes, producing bands like The Boomtown Rats and The Outlaws, Mutt hit it big with the rowdy Australians AC/DC, following up the 1979 hit Highway to Hell with Back in Black, a three-chord pop-metal masterwork that now ranks as the sixth best-selling record in history, one spot above The Beatles’ White Album.

Mutt’s winning streak continued, most notably with the pop-friendly headbangers Def Leppard. Mutt produced the group’s breakthrough 1981 LP, High ‘N’ Dry. A few months later, he put together Foreigner’s fourth album, streamlining and polishing a sound that had already given the group multi-platinum success. All this, of course, was but a prelude to Mutt’s top-to-bottom overhaul of the country singer from Timmins. While Shania’s success may seem inevitable in hindsight, Mutt took a big risk waltzing in from the rock world aiming to make a record that would get airplay on both country and top 40 radio, says Danny Goldberg, a music industry veteran who was chairman of Mercury Records during production of Shania’s breakthrough record, The Woman in Me. “He had a lot of respect for the conventions of country,” Goldberg says. “At the same time he has a total grasp on the pop market. He’s a certifiable genius—and there aren’t too many of those in this business.”

The theme is echoed by Thomas Dolby, the synth-pop wizard who has worked with Mutt on and off since the early ‘80s. Mutt sang backup vocals on Dolby’s 1982 hit “She Blinded Me With Science,” and Dolby later played keyboards on Def Leppard’s Pyromania and Hysteria. I reach Dolby at a high-tech music software company called Beatnik Inc. that he founded in Northern California (Zomba is an investor). Dolby says that while Mutt is known primarily as a big-sound, big-ticket producer, he owes most of his success to songwriting. “Songwriting is the gold mine in all of this,” says Dolby. “Compare the income between Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, and you’ll find out where the money is.”

Mutt’s genius as a songwriter is in crafting songs especially for radio, says Nashville songwriting coach Ralph Murphy. Whether he’s composing for heavy metal rockers or country crooners, Mutt knows his ultimate audience is the same: the poor schmo listening to drive-time radio. “Mutt knows how to design pieces of music that keep you interested between the Ford commercial and the Coca-Cola commercial,” says Murphy. “That’s why radio loves him. He’ll keep you listening right until the last bar.”

Dolby remembers presenting a demo tape to Mutt and Calder at Zomba in 1978, when Zomba consisted of a small stable of musicians and songwriters on the north side of London. In addition to producing albums, including a few from Mutt’s own band, City Boy, Zomba released music for pregnancy fitness videos, theme music for soccer clubs and any other project that might turn a quick profit. “They were a brilliant moneymaking machine,” says Dolby. “Obviously, they still are.”

Dolby says he still can’t quite reconcile the Mutt he knows with the Svengali behind such mega-sellers as Def Leppard or the Backstreet Boys. He has a vivid memory of Mutt sitting cross-legged on the bed of a hotel suite in Manhattan, where he and Dolby were working on Foreigner’s record 4. “He sat there for hours between studio sessions, doing pitch-perfect covers of Van Morrison songs,” he says. “It was the last thing you’d expect from a guy who went on to do Def Leppard or Shania.”

In business as in music, Mutt carefully calculates every move. While it’s difficult to estimate exactly how much business Mutt has generated in the industry, it’s clear that Mutt is among the most well-compensated producers in the business. “He’s working all the angles,” says Mitchell Frank, a Los Angeles record industry veteran who has worked with the Dust Brothers and Beck. “Look anywhere that a producer might profit, and Mutt is right there.”

An average producer on a major label project might receive a $100,000 fee and two or three percentage points of future royalties paid out after a record company recoups its costs. A producer of Mutt’s stature likely receives upwards of $750,000 in upfront fees and in the neighbourhood of five or six points on a record, which can pay off big-time down the line.

It makes for a continuing series of great paydays for a job much less taxing than that of even the biggest pop star. “The life of a producer on that level is pretty fucking cushy,” says Gregg. “Their risk is relatively low, they don’t have to go on tour, they don’t have to do promotion—and even when they’re making a record, they get to dictate the terms of how they work.”

And Mutt has never been afraid to dictate his own terms. While other producers take a month or two to record an album, Mutt is famous for spending a year or more in the studio, methodically layering each sound and demanding endless retakes. “You play something over and over and think you’ve nailed it,” Dolby says. “And Mutt says, ‘That was great man, but in the 15th bar, the third note was a hair early.’ And you say, ‘Okay, you want me to punch in [overdub a small section]? And in his sweetest South African accent, he goes, ‘No, just take it from the top.’ You might end up playing the same part 150 times. After a while, it can drive you crazy.”

Others have been grateful to discover that Mutt is as demanding of himself as he is of those around him, says Mike Moore, a session engineer and producer who worked with Mutt on the recording of Millennium for the Backstreet Boys. Moore recalls watching Mutt hunched over a mixing board, adjusting the level of a vocal track long after anyone else could detect any difference. “He pushed that fader for three days,” Moore says. “No one works on a vocal fader for three days. But no one else has his ear for detail.”

Few can argue with the result of such meticulousness. “He cooked the shit out of us,” says Andy Partridge, lead singer of the British trio XTC, which recorded a single and B-side with Mutt. “He boiled out of us any nerves or uncertainty about the rhythm. We got to the point that we were so sick of it, we were playing it in our sleep. It was completely locked. It was painful, but when he was done, it was 80 times better than when we started.”

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Mutt, says Dolby, is his ability to switch gears. “Mutt is aware of the precise placement of every single note in every single track,” he says. “At the same time, he can sit back in his chair and listen to the record like he’s a 19-year-old fan hearing it for the first time. That’s an incredible skill, and one that results in hit records.”

While Dolby, Moore and Partridge are happy to reminisce about their experiences with Mutt, I hit a brick wall with more recent collaborators and other industry leaders. Bryan Adams’ publicist at Bruce Allen Talent sends a curt, one-sentence reply: “Bryan Adams is not available for comment on Mutt Lange.” I had hoped to get a few words from Michael Bolton, but his agent at William Morris asks for a formal letter of request, then ignores it. Publicists for AC/DC and Def Leppard don’t bother responding either. Three editors at the trade bible Billboard, including editor-in-chief Timothy White, decline requests to talk. And a representative of Mercury Nashville gets back to me with an explanation for chairman Luke Lewis’ blanket no comment: “Mutt Lange is a very private person and, out of respect for Mutt, [we] have turned down this opportunity to do this interview.”

I finally do hear back from Mutt’s camp. Shania’s manager gets back to me six weeks after my request for an interview or referrals to anyone else who might be willing to talk. “Sorry for the lengthy delay,” she writes. “Unfortunately at this time neither are available for interviews. Also, the request for referrals has been declined. Thanks for your patience.”

It may very well be, as friends suggest, that Mutt’s silence is motivated by simple humility. “He doesn’t want anything to get in between the music and the fan,” says Dolby. “I think he really believes that the music is the only thing that’s important.” Unlike journalists. “Mutt doesn’t have anything to gain by talking to you or any other reporter,” says Goldberg. “Not everyone likes to be in the press—it’s a burden you have to endure as a performer, but not if you’re a producer.”

Then again, I suspect there’s a more basic reason why Mutt stays in the shadows. Mutt Lange is an epic perfectionist whose biggest successes were the result of intense labour, careful calculation and countless revisions. I imagine Mutt simply can’t stand the idea of handing control of something as precious as his own story over to anyone whose work he couldn’t then tweak, trim or redo a thousand times over. But I swear, if we were to hang out at his place, it’d be great. We’d rock.