Nigel Godrich nominated for Grammy award
Nigel Godrich is nominated in the 'Producer of the year' category at the Grammy Awards for his production of Paul McCartney's album 'Chaos and creation in the backyard'. McCartney's album and single ('Fine Line') are also nominated in the 'Album of the Year', 'Best pop vocal album' and 'Best Male Pop Vocal Performance' categories.
Rave reviews for Paul McCartney's 'Chaos...'
Paul McCartney's new album is receiving rave reviews in the press. Nigel Godrich's latest production has been released on September 12th 2005. Time magazine breathlessly declared "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard " to be McCartney's first album that matters since the Beatles broke up 35 years ago.
Associated Press: But it's simply unlike anything he's done before, a quiet disc with complicated emotional shadings - the album that generations of critics who derided his sunny, silly love songs have been asking him to make.
The Guardian: On first glance, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard looks like more dabbling. It teams McCartney up with Nigel Godrich, the modish producer of Radiohead, Beck and, perhaps less laudably, Band Aid 20's Do They Know It's Christmas? In interviews, McCartney has made the sessions sound hard work: "painful", "a plunge into the darkness" and "like being pulled through a hedge backwards". Godrich first dismissed McCartney's idea to make an Indian-themed album, then dismissed his backing band, then started dismissing his songs. (...)
For all the nods to the past, not a note of Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard comes close to Beatle standards: it's an intriguing diversion rather than a major addition to the canon. What it has is a sense of purpose, lovely tunes in abundance, and charm. It mints an unassuming and idiosyncratic style with which McCartney could see out his career. At last, it seems he's found an answer to the previously imponderable question: now what?
Paul McCartney on Nigel's work on new album
Associated Press: His method was to force the music legend out of his comfort zone. McCartney brought his touring band in to record; after two weeks Godrich dispatched them. Much like he did with his very first solo album, McCartney played virtually every instrument himself - on "Friends to Go" alone, he's credited on the grand piano, acoustic/bass/electric guitars, harpsichord, drums, tambourine, flugelhorn, melodica and shakers.
Producer and artist particularly clashed on "Riding to Vanity Fair," which McCartney brought in as a fast song and Godrich kept trying to slow down.
"There were one or two moments on the album when I had to think to myself, `You know, I could just fire this guy,"' McCartney said.
Tapai Times: It was Godrich, for example, who convinced McCartney to leave his group out of the picture for this album, and to play virtually all of the instrumental part himself, as he did 35 years ago on McCartney.
Godrich is also responsible for the lean and clean sound that helps give the album a timeless quality.
Adding an almost uncanny symmetry to the album in relation to McCartney's career, it was George Martin -- the Beatles' producer in the 1960s and, in a real sense, the "fifth Beatle" -- who suggested that McCartney work with Godrich in the first place.
Talking to NME: "I've produced a lot of records, been on a lot of Beatles records, records, on my own, I've had a lot of hits. He said 'I just want to make a great album, and for the album to be you', Once we got in the studio, and we're playing head to head on a couple of songs that I thought as good and he didn't, I thought of immediately firing him. I just thought, 'I don't have to take this'. But the point is, 'This is why you're working with him'."
As the relationship developed, started to take Godrich's advice on board. He continued: "He'd be like 'Look, I've got to tell you that I don't like this', and I said 'What don't you like about it?'. He'd say 'You've done better than that'. In the end I started to value that more, it's what I need. We kept the standard up that way, but we had our moments."
Billboard interview with Paul McCartney
Have you been getting a lot of good reaction to the album?
I must say we have. We had a lot of fun making it. Nigel Godrich, the producer, and I had a lot of fun making it. We were determined to make something that we wanted to listen to at the end of it all. Had you met Godrich before?
No, I'd just started to hear about him. I'd liked certain records, and he turned out to be the common link between them. I'd like Radiohead's records he was involved in, and I'd been sent an early copy of the Travis record, because I knew the Travis guys. We'd met along the road somewhere and got on very well.
Then I heard on the radio a track by Beck that I liked. The link between all these was Nigel, so when George [Martin] suggested him, I must admit he was on my good board. He was in the top 10 of people I would have considered.
One of the things that struck me about the album is that it's not really a rock'n'roll record. There's a lot of reflective stuff on it.
That's right. It's only with people saying things like that, that I've thought, "It's true, there's only two rockers on it." I would bring something to Nigel, thinking, "This would be OK," and he'd say, "I don't really like it." I'd say, "Fair enough, then we won't work on it," and I'd pull the next one out of the bag, and he'd say, "I love that one, let's do that."
It did mean we didn't have a conscious policy about it being a rock album or this or that. It'd be a "whatever it was" album. So you've got a few rockers, a few others reasonably uptempo, and it has meant a lot of the tracks we liked were quite introspective. But it's nice to find that out now, when it's too late!
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