The 1980s were the years of the producers, more so than at any previous time in the history of rock music. Producers were always important to the recording process. Their role was to capture the essence of a band and their songs on tape, and to coach musicians to get the best out of them during recording sessions. This role was greatly expanded in the 1980s because science was heavily applied to song arrangement and production after the disco era.

My band, White Summer, went into the studio in 1984 to record our third album. Wheelsville Records sent three producers into our sessions. We were in for a big surprise. They had only a slight interest in allowing us to project ourselves as artists while they focused on capturing our sound on tape. They were there to apply strict, preconceived, scientific rules to the songs we had written from the heart. All the cool intros and endings we had lovingly created were thrown out the window right away. They told us that every song had to establish the main melody immediately. "Why?" I asked. The reply was, "People don't want to be surprised. They want what they expect. We have scientifically studied every hit record of the past 20 years of rock music and 82% of the hits began this way."

Then they started cutting the guitar solos. "They are too long and nobody wants to hear them anyway." The fancy, original drum rolls I had created were nixed because "people want to hear the drum rolls they have heard before." All songs had to be cut to three and a half minutes or less because 87% of all hit songs in the past were of that length. Over 70% of all hit songs had the same arrangement, we learned, and ours had to conform (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, double chorus, vamp out to fade out). We were told to play some of our songs faster than we wrote them and some slower, because over 90% of all hit songs are at 110 beats per minute. The only victory we won was when we refused to have the whole band play to an electronic click track set at 110 beats per minute (musicians conforming to machines). We actually, in our naiveté, thought we were there so that the songs we had created, and the essence of the band's creativity, would be recorded. We could not have been more wrong.

This homogenization of rock music is similar to the franchising of chain restaurants, motels and retail outlets. No matter where you are, you get the same burger. Gone is the individuality and originality. But music is art—not food. In the late sixties and early seventies, many musicians could listen to a new record and tell you who was on drums or bass guitar. Each player developed his own style that was a recognizable signature of him as a creative artist that would be left behind after he was gone from the earth. By the late eighties, everybody sounded the same except the singers. The producers decided what was to be played and how it was to be played. It became a cult of the singer, really, whereas in the days of authentic rock music the singer was one of the guys, who maybe stood out a little. The backing tracks for the singer were increasingly played (unbeknownst to the public) by uncredited studio players brought in by producers who wanted the actual band members to be photogenic for marketing purposes above all else, whether they could play their instruments well or not. A record company executive told me, "When they (his band of poseurs) have to play these songs live, it won't make any difference how well they play because the crowd will be so happy to bask in their presence and too f****d up on drugs and alcohol to be able to comprehend what they are hearing. The important thing is that they were there. It is an event, a happening—not a concert for music. Those days are gone. " Something dear was lost.