24 minute read
Fred Again Producer
Fred Again is a producer who has worked with the likes of BTS and Stormzy, and an artist who has been nominated for a BRIT. But he is best known and most successful as Ed Sheeran’s production and writing partner. He tells MBUK about being mentored by Brian Eno, working on = and his creative ethos…
You’re a young producer. You’re interested in hits and success, but also in the nature and possibilities of sound. You want to collaborate with a range of artists, across a variety of genres and you’re most often happy to be the guy in the booth rather than on the cover.
But you also want to pursue your own, slightly more experimental projects, away from the spotlight and further from the mainstream.
Who do you want as your mentor?
Well, Brian Eno, obviously, the man who created that template. But, be realistic. Or, be Fred Gibson – otherwise known as British super-producer, Fred Again.
The co-writer and producer on Ed Sheeran’s last two albums, Collaborations Project No. 6 (2019) and = (2021) (both of which went to No. 1 in the US and the UK), Fred has also worked with Stormzy, BTS and Romy from The xx.
His first credits, however, came on Eno’s two back-to-back collaborations with Underworld’s Karl Hyde, Someday World and High Life, released in 2014. He co-produced both records in their entirety, with Eno, aged just 20.
Five years later, Fred had either a writing or production credit on a staggering 30% of all the UK’s number one singles that year and, not surprisingly, was named Best Producer at that year’s BRITs.
A year later, in 2020, he released his first solo album, Actual Life, followed by the acclaimed sequel, Actual Life 2 in 2021.
His importance within Sheeran’s current creative team, meanwhile, is illustrated by the fact that on No. 6 he produced 12 out of the 15 tracks (including collaborations with Khalid, Cardi
Ed Sheeran
B, Chance The Rapper, Justin Bieber, Travis Scott, Eminem and H.E.R.), while on = he has credits on nine out of 14.
Fred tells MBUK about the two most important introductions of his life, becoming one of the most in-demand producers in the world in his twenties, and why there should be no such thing as an off day. Even if you’re having an off day…
How did your big break come about?
It came about through no intention or plan on my part, that’s for sure. I was working on a bunch of different projects, and I was working with Brian Eno a lot. Some of the people we were working with fell away, one of them moved, one of them became unwell, and they were all duos, so I stepped into these collaborations and ended up focusing on that for four or five years or so.
We have to go back and ask how you came to be ‘working with Brian Eno a lot’?!
We met when I was 16. I did a concert of this piece that I very grandly called an Electronic Symphony, for an orchestra, a band and some rappers. Brian came, he was invited by a friend of a friend. It was just a beautiful coincidence. He asked me to join his singing group and we became very good friends. I was working on stuff with him and he would help me with it. And then we “The most fascinating made the albums with Karl Hyde from Underworld. thing to me about It was a real blessing. We’re still very close to this day.
Brian [Eno] is he’s It must have been hard to like a kid.” believe that, almost by chance, as an aspiring producer, you’re
suddenly being mentored by one of the greatest producers of all time!
To be honest, I feel that more now than I did then – because I was 17. Funnily enough, Karl was more like that, because he had grown up with Brian’s music, and with Brian on the posters, whereas I hadn’t. In a weird way, that probably worked
Fred has produced hits including Headie One’s Ain’t It Different, featuring Stormzy and AJ Tracey
better, because it meant that I wasn’t overly awestruck, I was more, like, come on, let’s make some songs!
But, of course, as I get older, I appreciate it more and definitely become more and more grateful for our relationship.
What were the most important things Brian taught you? Not necessarily technical things, but perhaps more in terms of the nature of the job.
It would be entirely non-technical things, Brian would be happy to hear me say [laughs]. I think the most fascinating thing to me about Brian is he’s like a kid. And I say that in nothing but a great way.
When I first started working with him, I was the classical guy, the guy who had the theory, and he would tell me to play something and then be like, ‘Oh my God, that was amazing! What was that?’ And I’d be like, ‘It’s a C-major chord, it’s really nothing to write home about’ [laughs].
But Brian would be hearing how it would sound and how it would work in a particular part of a particular song, he saw everything in a bigger picture.
Originally, I sort of didn’t get it, but now, the longer I work in music, and I think this arc will continue for the next 50 years, the more I value exactly that instinct of someone who’s unaffected and not looking for anything other than how it feels.
Your next big break was meeting and working with Ed. How did that come about?
There’s a guy called Ed Howard, who is Ed Sheeran’s A&R. I’d been working with him on a few projects and he said he thought the two of us would get along, so he introduced us – and we really did!
We have a very similar approach, we both come from the school of wanting some sort of discipline, working through it, even if you’re not feeling on top of your game. We enjoy pushing each other.
We’ve both carried on writing in times where you just feel a bit like, Nah, I’m shit today.
Because things can be alchemic, you can get past that level of feeling a bit rubbish and really good things can just suddenly happen. We’ve learned a lot from each other, for sure.
Did you hang out socially at first or was it a professional situation?
We went straight into the studio, just because, again, the way we think is, we’ll get to know each other through writing songs, let’s kill two birds with one stone. We like to work!
It doesn’t need to be too deep, we’ll just get together, write a couple of things and see what happens. And that was what we did, with the beautiful Johnny McDaid.
How does the creative process work between the two of you?
It’s basically always face-to-face, sat with a piano or a guitar and a laptop. We wrote all of the record before the last one [No. 6 Collaborations Project] with just my laptop and a set of monitors in a house in Nashville.
We’ll maybe start something on the guitar, sometimes over a beat, sometimes just a little riff, and then go go go… The main thing for me is to not get into that trap of producing whilst writing; that’s dangerous.
I’ve found there is no advantage in getting stuck into production while writing, because all you do is create shortcuts in the writing process. There might be a nice loop to work to, something to give it a sense of pulse, but then that’s it, then you write a song that doesn’t rely on any big thrills or shortcuts, like production cheat codes.
So, when you come to produce the song, you don’t have to rely on these tropes as much. It’s more like the song is doing the work for you, which is always a better place to be.
Do you, Ed and the team have a meeting at the start of a project, to talk about the sonics of the record you want to make?
Yeah, there’s sometimes a chat with some vague intention behind it, and I’m down for those chats, because they can be nice things to kind of frame your inspiration. But 99% of the time, what ends
up happening is informed by what you end up just doing, which is generally kind of out of your control anyway.
So yeah, it’s nice to have a little chat and everyone enjoy a cappuccino while we talk about what we intend to do, but, really, the music has much bigger plans and much bigger agendas than we do. So you go into the studio and write songs and all of your intentions and plans fall by the wayside, because something just reveals itself. I feel very much a servant of that.
It’s like working with Brian, we would always do sets of rules and restrictions, which he’s so famous for, but then if there was a moment we got excited about something, about where a song was going, but it was ‘against the rules’, he’d be like, ‘No, just do it man, the rule has served its purpose’.
What was it like being parachuted into Ed’s world? Because by the time you started working with him he was already one of the biggest-selling artists in the world. Did you feel any pressure to help keep the run going?
I mean, I feel a responsibility to try and make good music, the best music I can, with anyone I work with.
So there will always be nerves of some sort, based on that. But it’s not, I don’t think, proportional to any scale of success. It’s the same as working on a niche ambient record, or a record with Headie [One].
From what I’ve read, there seems to be this interesting balance in Ed’s creative team between being extremely professional and hard-working, but also making sure it’s really enjoyable, is that right?
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I’ve never worked in the studio with Ed… maybe once. We just write and work wherever we go, wherever we are. These kind of things, I don’t think of as being part of the job.
I mean, they definitely are, but wherever we are, I’ll just rent monitors and we’ll get going. It’s not a complex dynamic to get right, him and I; we’re pretty simple beasts.
I think the main thing is not to be in some public studio where you sort of feel the stress of three engineers wanting to make sure everything’s okay. They’re obviously very well-intentioned, but it just means that there’s a bit too much weight on what is basically just hanging around trying to write a song.
With the latest Ed Sheeran album, =, what was the discussion like at the start of the project in terms of production and what you wanted it to sound like compared to previous albums?
I think Ed has already said this, but we started trying to make the next scheduled album, Subtract, and then – and this is a good example of what I was talking about – the music revealed itself and it was a whole other album.
How nervous or excited are you when it comes to release and watching how it performs?
Yeah, it’s in the past for me by then. I mean, sometimes it’s six months after you’re done. And by then I’m so much more excited about what I made last week or this morning.
What are your longer-term production ambitions?
I’m just gonna keep making music for 10 hours every day and work with people who inspire that process.
In the same way that I could make plans about a song, I could make plans about who I’m going to work with, but I’d rather just kind of go with what happens each day and try and work really hard at it.
What advice would you give to a young producer just starting out in the business?
Hone the muscle of discipline. Same with inspiration; it’s a muscle and you can train it to be much more powerful. n
Andy Ross with Polly Birkbeck, Reading Festival, 1997
Remembering...
ANDY ROSS
Andy Ross, former head of Food Records, the man who first signed Blur and a highly decorated general in the Britpop wars, sadly died earlier this year. MBUK gathered thoughts and memories from a handful of his closest friends in the business to paint a picture of a legendary figure…
Dave Balfe Founder, Food Records
In 1984, aged 25, I met a young woman who worked at WEA Records.
At the end of our dates she wouldn’t let me take her home because, she said, she was still living with her ex-boyfriend.
Nevertheless, as our relationship progressed I began to regularly spend Friday or Saturday evenings at her flat, having been assured her ex would not come home until at least 11.30. However, still nervous about him, I always made sure I left before he returned.
Weeks went by, until one night I dallied too long and heard the key turn in the door. I braced myself for a confrontation with this man, who’d swollen in my imagination into a boozefuelled brute, who wouldn’t be at all pleased to see some strange bloke on the sofa with his girl. The man entered the room. He headed for the kitchen, but then he saw me and froze. We sized each other up. Suddenly, a big grin appeared on his face.
That’s how I met Andy.
By the time his ex had also become my ex, Andy and I had become good friends. He was then working for the Inland Revenue, but at night he transformed into his alter-ego, Andy Hurt - freelance
music journalist. Mainly live reviews for Sounds, then one of the big three music papers, and occasional interviews.
I’d just come down from Liverpool and had few London contacts. So, figuring Andy had these connections to what was new and happening, I suggested he join me to help find bands for the record label I’d recently started, Food. I couldn’t afford to pay him so gave him a chunk of the company instead.
At that point I’d only enough money to sign an act at a time, put out their first one or two singles while building up their press and live profile, then manage them and sign them to a major. I was midway through doing that with Zodiac Mindwarp when Andy came on board. We did it together for our next discovery, Voice of the Beehive, co-managing them and signing them to London Records.
But both these bands proved very difficult to manage - the role of manager being, when push comes to shove, essentially advisory. Andy and I decided sticking as the record label would give us the power to prevent our future bands making the mistakes of the previous two. Our plan was to make a couple of strong signings and parlay that into a label deal with a major. This we did with Crazyhead, who we got to the top of the indie charts with their first couple of singles, and a new signing, Diesel Park West.
Their impressive demos combined with Crazyhead’s rapidly increasing profile, and our track record, got us serious interest from several majors. We eventually signed a label deal with EMI. They provided the funding and distribution, we handled the A&R, making the records, and getting the press, packaging and general vibe right for launching and developing the bands. We’d even find the bands their managers.
This arrangement worked well. Our next two signings, Jesus Jones and Blur, both sold in the millions.
Andy undoubtedly had a talent for discovering and nurturing talent, but he had many other less remarked upon skills. Here are just two of them:
His journalistic experience and writing skills combined to create wonderful band press releases, especially at the beginning of their careers. He’d come up with some brilliantly entertaining and surprising description of the band that always managed to avoid the obvious
clichés or tedious self-aggrandising, but in a clever and witty way that Andy knew would pique the interest of jaded rock journalists. In the alternative rock world, “He was a wonderful first impressions are enormously important to how a band is friend, who I loved thereafter perceived, and Andy was a master at presenting the like a brother. I miss bands creatively and teasingly to the press. him terribly.” He was also the good cop. After many stormy meetings in my office, where I’d got on my high horse with some poor band, he’d entice the disgruntled bunch of musicians down to the nearest pub, buy them a few drinks and talk it all through again,
With Dave Balfe, 2019
but in far more reasonable tones. He’d calm and charm, listen and persuade. And on those rare occasions when he couldn’t persuade, he’d come back to me the following day and fight for a compromise.
He was great at this because it was plain to everyone that he cared about people. Andy was patient, creative, articulate, thoughtful, dryly funny and a treasure-house of obscure facts, both musical and general. But most of all he was kind and caring.
But now all that we achieved together in the music business seems trivial compared to the good times we shared, the thousands of hours we spent chatting about music and all life’s myriad daftness. He was a wonderful friend, who I loved like a brother. I miss him terribly.
Mike Smith Global President, Downtown Music Services
It’s interesting, because the way I got to know Andy was an early indication of what a remarkable person he was.
I heard the first Jesus Jones single, Info Freako, which I thought was brilliant. At the time I was a talent scout at MCA. I didn’t know much about the band. I knew they were on Food, but I was so green I didn’t even realise that was part of EMI.
I rang up the offices and asked if they were published. Luckily, I got Andy and not Dave Balfe, because he’d have probably bitten my head off!
Instead, Andy told me they were published by EMI, at which point I just asked him to tell me a little bit more about Food. He was very approachable and friendly and said we should meet up for a drink.
So, we ended up going out, and straight away I was totally in awe of him. He had an amazing musical knowledge. He was the first person who explained to me that Remi from the Stone Roses nicked everything from Jaki Liebezeit from Can, and then played me the loops that he’d lifted from. Andy could just spiral off in any direction.
Plus, he was unbelievably funny. Not to mention the fact he was a good-looking dude. Andy drank more than most people I knew, and yet never seemed to be particularly drunk. I was blown away.
A little while later I was in Record and Tape Exchange in Camden and there was a poster up on the wall, saying ‘New Food Signing Playing at the Bull & Gate’.
I just thought, well, if it’s Food, it’s Andy, and if it’s Andy it’ll be brilliant. I went along and that was the first time I saw Blur.
The thing I remember about it more than anything else was that there were only about six or seven people there, and Andy was right at the front, almost on the stage. Damon was being very physical, jumping on Alex, smashing things around, and Andy was the one picking it up and putting it back together again.
As soon as the gig finished, he would be backstage doing a bit of a post-mortem, and then he took them across the road, downstairs in a Spanish tapas bar and just carried on.
I came back the following week. He introduced me to the band and invited me out for a drink with them. He was really instrumental in aiding my courtship of them.
That was challenging, because Balfe, I think, desperately wanted to sign them for publishing as well. And obviously Dave was his boss.
What was fascinating was just watching the way that he interacted with the band. I remember thinking, So this is what being an A&R person is: discussing every aspect of the song, being with them at every gig, every out-of-town gig, being literally almost on stage with the band, and then as soon as the gig’s finished, you’re backstage
analysing it. I was just like, yeah, this is what I want. I genuinely thought this is what the music business is about, this is what A&R people are like: intelligent, erudite, funny, harddrinking individuals. I found out, of course, not only that not everyone was like that, but actually no one else was quite like that. Because to this day, I have never met anyone who is even half what Andy “His philosophy was Ross was. He was the person I wanted to be and I modelled myself on him. always, how are we I mean, I could never be what Andy was, not least because he was a lot going to make magic more handsome and charming than me. But just in terms of the way he happen today?” worked with the artists, his devotion, his ‘I don’t care what anybody else thinks’ attitude, his unwavering belief and determination to see things through – that was what I wanted to be. He was a complete mentor at a time when I hadn’t even signed my first band. In the end, the first thing I did sign was Blur, and he was a big part of the reason I was able to do that. And Andy wasn’t just like that with the bands that he worked with, that’s what he was like with everybody he met. If you rang him up, he’d give you the time of day, you could be a talent scout, you could be an aspiring photographer, you could be a journalist just starting out – anybody who wanted a bit of a helping hand in the business, he was there. He was just an exceptional human being and really loved other people. He was interested in them and he had that amazing quality to bring out the best in you when you were in his company; there was always great energy and great fun. He never dwelt on the negative, his philosophy was always, how are we going to make magic happen today?
Jo Power Director of UK Marketing, BMG
I’d just moved to London to start a job at Columbia Records and a friend asked if I’d
like to see Chelsea play at home. They were meeting their friend Andy – a big Crystal Palace fan.
We met in a pub on the Kings Road. I found Andy great company – and he ran Food Records! Wow!
My overriding memory of the day was the three of us stood in the Shed, Palace scoring and Andy jumping up, punching the air….before remembering he was actually in the Chelsea end, surrounded by some rather intense looking home supporters. His tall frame visibly shrank as small as possible as he peered around looking rather sheepish. Luckily those quite feisty Chelsea fans surrounding us thought it hilarious.
Of course I then bumped into him literally all the time at various gigs over the next couple of years. The next thing I know, Miles Jacobson was leaving Food to take up a publishing job and Andy suggested I join as A&R/Marketing Manager.
There followed a five-year rollercoaster, learning so much about the human and creative side of the business and having a huge amount of fun on the way.
It was Camden in the middle of Britpop, and Andy and Food Records was right in the centre of it all. After I left Food I kept in touch with him, and of course Helen, his wife, and I’d look forward to seeing them both for weekend lunches with our ‘Camden Gang’.
Beyond the obvious artists he signed, his take on the industry was brilliant. He enjoyed his job immensely. He got the industry and how to use it and never forgot how lucky we were to be right in the middle of it, how important it was to enjoy it for what it was. He enjoyed life and did things his way.
I’ve never worked with anyone that people so loved coming to talk to and hang out with. He had time for everyone and celebrated the small wins, not just the No. 1s. He was hugely creative and he inspired people to think differently.
Andy was intelligent, caring, understated, generous, fair, gentle, supportive, a great mimic, with a huge vocabulary and a brilliant sense of fun. He cared hugely for his artists and those who worked for him.
Also, his knowledge of music was such he could pick out where musicians had nicked bits of/been influenced by other songs like no one I’ve ever met. Great to have on your quiz team!
My favourite memories are of the countless evenings sat on the little stage in the window of The Good Mixer, with an ever-rotating group of people coming and going to hang out with Andy and talk about music while trying to beat him at pool.
There was usually a market trader or two from Inverness St and at least one person who’d come to the office for an early afternoon meeting and never got to leave thrown into the mix.
I feel very lucky to have had those times during some of the best years of my life.
Polly Birkbeck Complete Control PR
From early 1991 to mid 1993 Andy was my boss at Food Records. And one of my dearest friends for over 30 years.
I first met Andy backstage at a Metallica/ Cult gig in NYC in 1989. I already knew who he was from his work at Sounds. We’d then bump into each other at the same gigs.
He’d not long started at Food Records with Dave Balfe and it was just a threeperson operation. I pestered him for a job. Andy initially started to pay me to go to selected gigs in an A&R scout capacity and report back. A&R clearly wasn’t for me after I pooh-poohed the Manic Street Preachers (‘they’re wearing Dunlop Greenflash!’).
Eventually I got a full-time job as his assistant, accompanying him to gigs (we
practically lived at the Camden Falcon), taking his side when he and Balfey disagreed on single choices and sorting through the Mount Everest of demo tapes. Andy listened to every demo and we formulated a ‘filing system’ using post-it notes stuck on each tape with acronyms which became words like ‘NOCOT’ and ‘GFWII’ (Not Our Cup Of Tea & Good For What It Is) and ‘ODOL’ (Oh dear Oh Lord: which meant shit, basically). Andy would go the extra mile and even take time to meet up with artists whose demos showed promise but he felt weren’t ready to be signed, dishing out valuable advice for their future. He would get excited when he uncovered a band who appeared to tick all the boxes, and with his best ‘This is it’ attitude would attend the make or break gig. I remember we heard a great demo and Andy was all geed up to see them live. The singer came prancing on with bare feet. Andy just turned and looked at me crestfallen and we promptly left. There was another band who had huge potential but Balfey wasn’t convinced. Andy was so keen for them to get signed to any label, he organised a gig at the Borderline and corralled a slew of industry folk and other A&Rs to the show. Unfortunately, the band had vastly overdone the Class As beforehand, ambled onstage and were a chaotic druggy catastrophe. But things like this “I’ve never worked with didn’t phase Andy, he’d dust himself off and find the Next Big Thing anyone people so loved tomorrow. As Food records grew, we moved coming to talk to and to bigger offices in Camden and more staff were recruited. After hang out with.” nearly three years I was itching to get into PR and standing on the sticky floor at the Bull & Gate had lost its allure. I left, moving literally next door, from Food to Savage & Best PR. I would still meet Andy in the Good Mixer Pub for years to come and discuss the big issues, such as whether or not Badgeman Brown was Blur’s worst song. The music industry has lost a true one-off.
