Record Producer Phil Ramone died last week. So why am I writing about this now? As I write this it is last week and I like to write blog posts about the current music news but when a boatload of things happen all at once things get backed up. Luckily only that Bot that spams our Comments section reads this blog so no one really cares. Also, this is a blog, not a news service.
I met Phil Ramone when I took a UCLA Extension class about record producing and Phil was one of the guest speakers. The audience got to ask the speakers questions and he picked me to go first and asked me my name. For the rest of the class he kept referring to me when answering other questions as in, "As I said when Neal asked..." It was nice of him but also a bit embarrassing.
One of the interesting things he talked about was how disappointed and surprised he was at the relative failure of Billy Joel's The Nylon Curtain album which he produced. This also surprised me as I was not a Billy Joel fan and that particular album was the only one of his I owned and listened to, at least side one which I think is great. This was the age of albums so one was not required to automatically listen to an entire record at once. I suppose it makes sense if I don't really like Billy Joel but liked The Nylon Curtain then all those regular fans of Billy Joel's who like most of what he's done wouldn't care for the album that's different than the rest.
Phil Ramone was a great record producer and according to all the comments coming onto the web by music business luminaries he was also a real nice guy. That certainly was my experience with him.
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