The Don Was Demo Session

A great producer plays some never-heard tracks for students and faculty.
December 12, 2008

"What happens in this room stays in this room," producer Don Was said at the beginning of a recent visiting artist presentation in Studio A. He was about to play segments of unreleased studio sessions by artists like the Rolling Stones and Bonnie Raitt, and he wanted every recorder turned off first.

His instructions provided a model for how smart producers perform their most important task: taking care of the artist.

It was one of several such examples Was provided during the two-hour session. He talked about listening to hours of tape of Stones guitarist Keith Richards improvising chords and lyrics at the piano. Was took one portion of the tape and then recorded his own demo version of the tune, which Richards then refined and made back into his own.

"I was an organizer and an editor," said Was about working with the Richards tape. "I was working with a guy who's right-brained. He didn't love my demo, but if I had never done that, he would have never listened to it."

Was told aspiring producers that the most important task when working with a band like the Stones is to be a diplomat and stress its unity.

Producing Bonnie Raitt's Nick of Time stands as one of Was's career highlights. When he played the final version of "I Can't Make You Love Me" during the session, he bowed his head and rocked back and forth.

"I don't know how you can ask for a better performance from somebody," Was said. "It was a pure, raw emotional performance. . . . everything about her is in there. It would take two years of therapy to get this close to her."

Over and over, Was stressed the importance of producers keeping their egos in check, hammering home the point after he was asked to name his most influential producer.

"Arif [Mardin]. It's not so much about his work. He was a lovely, kind, sweet, decent man," Was said of Mardin, who produced Aretha Franklin after studying at Berklee in the early 1960s. "With all the records he worked on, he had every right to be a megalomaniac. Humility. He was a great producer, but it was really about how he conducted himself."