In memory of the invisible producer

There are producers who make popular music history and become famous among fans of every stripe. Then there are others who, despite having worked on hugely important records, get lost in the folds of history: David Hitchcock is the perfect example.

News of his death, which occurred on January 8th, was reported only by fan-run sites dedicated to bands he produced: Genesis News and Marko's Marillion Museum. No major publication picked up the story.

Never ranked among the greats, never brought up when discussing the creative use of the recording studio, almost never interviewed by researchers, documentary makers or journalists — online it's even hard to find photos of him: the few available are all recent, dating from the period when he had stepped away from music to work in management and financial consulting, hardly the most compelling profile, in terms of personal mythology, for anyone thinking of the story of a Brian Eno or a Phil Spector.

Even his date of birth relies on a single source: an interview he gave to CoCaCamp, a site dedicated to Caravan, in which he states that the album "In The Land Of Grey And Pink" came out on his twenty-third birthday, which leads us to deduce he was born on April 8, 1948.

His approach to the studio was not fixed, and depended on the band he was working with. His biggest clients were Caravan, the legendary Canterbury group: according to their own interviews, Hitchcock pushed them to play live in the studio, rehearsing and re-recording the various parts until they were perfect, though rarely the whole song at once. Often he'd ask for just one section, which he would then splice together with the others by physically editing the tape. He tended to avoid overdubs, except for the occasional solo or some bizarre effect achieved in the studio.

With Camel, on the other hand, he resorted to them often, recording parts separately partly because of creative disagreements within the band, and during the sessions for "The Snow Goose" he even created a tape loop nearly ten metres long.

In any case, he was known as a producer who demanded a great deal of work from musicians: some thrived on it, achieving outstanding results (Caravan keyboardist Dave Sinclair recalled how hard he was to satisfy, but also how much his approach pushed them creatively), while others were less at ease with it (Genesis's Tony Banks was decidedly unimpressed with the production on "Foxtrot", and perhaps rightly so: compared to the results Hitchcock achieved for other giants of progressive rock, that album's production doesn't quite live up to its legendary status).

Hitchcock produced several other cult bands of the era, but his legacy essentially rests on three cornerstones of prog: Caravan's "In The Land Of Grey And Pink", Camel's "Mirage" and Renaissance's "Scheherazade And Other Stories", all deeply marked by his studio work, with a sound that is at times delicate and melancholic, at others full and majestic.

After producing the debut EP by Marillion, "Market Square Heroes", featuring the cult suite "Grendel", Hitchcock gave up production work, and his subsequent absence from the scene effectively kept him from entering rock mythology. This article aims, in its own small way, to set that distortion right.

Among the sources used:

David Hitchcock interviewed by Tony Rigg and Ewa Mazierska

David Hitchcock interviewed by CoCaCamp

In the Land of Grey and Pink, by Caravan (from the Music Aficionado blog)

Mike Barnes' retrospective on Deram for Louder Than Sound

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