Today I ran across a piece of a CNN interview with legendary pop music producer David Foster. Yeah, me too. My first reaction was also "Blecch!" But when I read this piece, I realized that he was refreshingly honest (and of course he has the track record of success to back him up). I don't know -- when I was younger I wouldn't have had a problem with calling him a sell-out and a schlockmeister. But as I near my 50th birthday (in 2012) I can appreciate what he does. I'm sure no fan of Celine Dion, or most of the artists with whom he works, but I understand their place in the galaxy of pop stars over the past 40 years.
Money quote:
I did three albums with the group Chicago. And we had huge success. I was playing piano; I was co-writing the songs; I was playing the bass; I was arranging it. I was doing everything. And they wrote on the liner notes of their new album that "He was such a control freak and an egomaniac, he wanted his name on everything." And then they went, "But it's the most success we've ever had." They weren't happy, but their pocketbooks were.
I would contend that they were very happy. I disagree with him that "art and commerce are natural enemies." If you ask a guy like guitarist Robert Fripp, who has made a decent living for 40 years as a "small, intelligent, mobile unit," one can be fairly uncompromising with one's art and still be commercially viable and to some degree successful. Foster's problem is that nothing is legitimate unless it sells mega-millions of copies.
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