My ambition was to be a record producer, and I had started doing that in the late '60s with my work with the MC5 and my friend Livingston Taylor.

The Beatles production is often so 'perfect' that it sounds computerized. 'Sgt. Pepper' really does sound like it took four months to make.

The modern recording studio, with its well-trained engineers, 24-track machines and shiny new recording consoles, encourages the artist to get involved with sound. And there have always been artists who could make the equipment serve their needs in a highly personal way - I would single out the Beatles, Phil Spector, the Beach Boys and Thom Bell.

The Rolling Stones are constantly changing, but beneath the changes they remain the most formal of rock bands. Their successive releases have been continuous extensions of their approach, not radical redefinitions, as has so often been the case with the Beatles.

There is a 'patrician arrogance' to James Taylor that accounts in part for his popularity while it at the same time explains the critical resistance to his work.

What makes the Stones' arrogance so divine is that we all believe that long ago and far away they weren't rich and famous but poor and struggling, just like us.

One gets the impression that Elvis Presley does what his business advisors think will be most profitable. My advice to them: Put Elvis Presley in the studio with a bunch of good, contemporary rockers, lock the studio up, and tell him he can't come out until he's done made an album that rocks from beginning to end.