Every time I meet the CEO of a record label I tell them how they did it in the seventies because they want to know. I tell them, "Sign a hundred people! Throw it against the wall and see which ones stick!" And they frown and say, "Oh, we can't do that!" and they start mumbling about demographics and this and that.

You could make some great sounds with technology. That's what recording is all about. What happens in the studio is very magical, and should be, in my opinion.

Today a record producer is even more involved and is often the production's sole musician, one person playing all the instruments one-by-one.

Originally a record producer more or less hired a bunch of professionals to participate in a recording session, the performers and the technicians, and a music director was put in charge. That directly related to a film producer's job.

No one else in our family was a professional musician so this took an enormous leap of faith on their part.

But some great records are are being made with today's technology and there are still great artists among us. Likewise there are artists today who are so reliant on modern technology, they wouldn't have emerged when recording was more organic.

We always started these albums as making demos, that went right on until Scary Monsters.