![]() I played with both bands and through them I got my first chance to be part of something professional. "I was playing bass by this stage and eventually I met up with a guy called Bobby Henry who had a band that was signed to the Oval label and was also involved with another band that had a deal with Warners. I loved playing music enough to give up the day job and I worked in pubs to support myself while I tried to find a decent band to join. "And even after I left school and began training to be a surveyor (for my sins), I played in bands in the evening. "Like a lot of people in this business I started out playing bass and guitar in bands at school," he explains. So how did this extremely young looking 34‑year‑old become a producer in the first place - hard work or an accident of fate? Well, a bit of both really, he says. In a business where fashion so often dictates choice of producer, a producer who can build up that kind of rapport with an act is indeed a rarity. "I try to make records for the band to like and for me to like." Undoubtedly he achieves what he sets out to do - The Smiths have called him back three times, Morrissey used his skills on his solo album Viva Hate, Blur have used him on all three of their albums and he has just finished recording the second Cranberries album. "I don't set out to please A&R departments," he says. ![]() How odd, then, that Street - who has also engineered and co‑produced three best‑selling albums for The Smiths - is still regarded by record companies as a producer of indie‑based guitar bands rather than a man whose abilities have helped create such mainstream hits as Parklife and The Smiths' Meat is Murder, The Queen Is Dead and Strangeways, Here We Comeīut that's the way life goes - and in any case Street seems unconcerned about the indie‑based guitar band tag because that's the sort of music he likes producing. ![]() Yet in the last year alone, his production skills have resulted in two hugely successful albums - one for the Irish band The Cranberries, whose debut album Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can't We? has sold nearly two million copies, and one for Blur, whose new album Parklife has had more superlatives heaped upon it than any other album this side of Christmas. Stephen Street is not a name that immediately springs to mind when one thinks of producers known for their ability to create chart‑topping hits. With a track record that includes hit albums for the Smiths and current chart success with both Blur and the Cranberries, producer Stephen Street is making himself quite a name for his honest and straightforward production approach. ![]()
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