Joe Boyd

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #132 (October/November 2007).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Joe Boyd

A Lifetime of Production

by Tom Nelligan

Musicians make music. Listeners listen. In between, at least in the case of recordings, there is usually a producer, the person in the studio who is entrusted by the artist with creating the best recorded representation of his or her work. A good record producer is part coach, part critic, part technician, and part fan. Over the last 40 years, Joe Boyd has been one of the most noteworthy producers in the folk-rock, singer/songwriter, and world-music genres, working with artists as diverse as Pink Floyd and June Tabor, as well as being at various times an artist manager, a major-studio film soundtrack coordinator, and the founder and head of Hannibal Records, one of the most eclectic roots-oriented independent labels.

At age 64, Boyd has written a book called White Bicycles (published by Serpent's Tail), subtitled "Making Music in the 1960s," a vivid collection of his memories and observations from that rich musical era. It's what he says is just the first volume of an autobiography, recalling with subtle humor and experienced insight the first part of his lifelong involvement with musicians and the music industry. Earlier this year, he came to the United States from his London home to do a series of readings in connection with the book's U.S. publication. The tour included an oral-history workshop at the Folk Alliance conference in Memphis, after which he talked about his philosophy of record production and about some of his favorite projects.

Boyd has been involved in so many musical adventures over the years that it's hard to summarize all that he's done. He is a tall and still youthful-looking man, a loquacious storyteller whose memories flow into each other like the verses of a compelling ballad. Born in Boston in 1942, he was raised in New Jersey, where his love of music began when he was a teenager excited by the early rock 'n' roll television program American Bandstand. As a student at Harvard University, he produced blues concerts and ran a dorm-based record distribution business that he later turned over to the future founders of Rounder Records. After college, festival producer George Wein gave him job overseeing a British tour by a group of American bluesmen, which led to jobs as stage manager at the Newport Folk Festival and as a talent scout and promoter for folk-oriented Elektra Records. He moved to London, ran a psychedelic rock club called UFO. As a producer, he mentored the brilliant but troubled singer/songwriter Nick Drake and helped Fairport Convention invent English folk-rock.

[cover #132]