Interview With Producer Arif Mardin -- Part 2

MARDIN: I don’t know. That’s very difficult. I think it has to be through someone. I don’t accept unsolicited demos because there’s always the fear of being sued two years later--someone saying, “You had access to my song and you used it. “

JC: So it only would come through a publisher?

MARDIN: It has to be a publisher or a lawyer or a manager. The young songwriter has to go through another person. Definitely.

JC: How political is song selection for an artist?

MARDIN: Political is the wrong word. We’re talking about if the artist has written three songs herself, those will probably be in the album. That’s the obvious. Then you would have maybe two equally good songs, and one songwriter is the artist’s friend, the other an unknown. The artist would obviously say, “Let’s put my friend’s song in.” I don’t think politics is involved, because, after all, we are in this business of trying to sell records and being successful. If by cronyism we endanger the record’s success, that’s not right. Nobody does that. We’re all there for one journey, to make the project successful.

JC: There’s so much emphasis placed on demo production for new songwriter. How produced should a demo be?

MARDIN: If I hear just a piano and a vocal, that would be enough for me, because I don’t want to be influenced. Some people would like the song to be presented on a platter. And that means that the songwriter would like the song to be done that way, that maybe that’s the most maximized way. However, there may be a totally different way of doing that song. Just do what you think is integral to the song. What the songwriter thinks is important for the song, that would be the blueprint for me. A simple drum machine, so we know what the tempo is going to be. The simplest demo, with the essentials in it, would be, for me, ideal. But some people would like to have the arrangement prepared. The more they go into production [of a demo], the more I think rejection becomes sort of a heartbreak. It also leads to many financial and credit problems. If the songwriter presents the song in a certain way and the producer takes it exactly and gives credit to the second programmer as

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