Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. In March this year, for Women's History Month, we ran a series called Equalizers, about women who work in the technical field of the music industry, fields where they're severely underrepresented. Two of our guests for that series were Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, AKA Wendy & Lisa. They were technically the first women nominated for the Grammy for Producer of the Year as part of Prince and The Revolution when Purple Rain came out in 1984.

Wendy & Lisa, of course, became a duo on their own, releasing a series of albums on which they continue to serve as producers. They're also Grammy and Emmy Award winners. AOI producer Simon Close also produced our Equalizer series, and here he is to tell me a little more about why he picked up this segment. Hey, Simon.

Simon Close: Hey, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Can you say a little more about the Equalizer series?

Simon Close: Well, we do a lot of albums on this show, obviously, and I just noticed, looking through the production credits, when we're doing research on the albums, how often it's a man's name you hear, regardless of the gender of the person who recorded the song. Producers tend to be men. I digged into that a little bit. I came across some wild statistics that there have only been a handful of women nominated for Producer of the Year at the Grammys. None have won so far.

There's some ratio that, of the last decade at least, of Billboard Hot 100 songs, 35 male producers to 1 female producer are credited on these songs. Just thinking about that, I thought it was a good opportunity to shout out some female producers and engineers in the industry.

Alison Stewart: Don't forget, they're Wendy & Lisa. [laughs]

Simon Close: They're Wendy & Lisa. I mean, yes. We got Wendy & Lisa for this series, which was unbelievable. They were one of the first producers and artists that we spoke to in this month. This was just an excellent conversation. What also stood out to me about this conversation, or what I remember fondly about it, was I reached out to Susan Rogers, who was Prince's longtime engineer, and said, "We're going to have Wendy & Lisa on. It would be great if you could stop by, too." She said, "Oh, I love those two. I would love to have what ended up being a sort of reunion." You can hear that Susan Rogers will join partway through the conversation. It's just a big love fest with a bunch of women who are really good at what they do.

Alison Stewart: Here's Wendy & Lisa.

[MUSIC - Prince & The Revolution: Purple Rain]

Alison Stewart: The Revolution is officially credited as producers on Purple Rain. Wendy, back in those early days, did you think of yourself as producers, or was that just part of the music-making process?

Wendy Melvoin: Well, that's a really good question because I think growing up, my ear kind of gravitated toward a producer's mind. I always heard things a certain way and wanted to learn how to tweak certain things, and was very interested in the actual recording process and all the gear, and the technical side was always very interesting to me. I'm an autodidact gearhead. It wasn't out of character for me to want to go in that direction. I always do that. As Wendy & Lisa, we're always producing each other as well, which is an interesting anomaly between the two of us. As music partners, we are always producing each other. It's an interesting question, but it's not far-fetched from who I actually am.

Alison Stewart: How about for you, Lisa?

Lisa Coleman: Yes, I'm more the it's all part of the same thing kind of person. I think in terms of the whole arrangement, usually. Just as the song happens, I think it's natural to serve the song and make it as good as it can be. If that's what producing is, then that's what we do. Yes, it's all part of the same thing for me. I never really thought of myself as a producer. I just thought I was a music maker.

Alison Stewart: Wendy, what did you learn about production while working with Prince and The Revolution?

Wendy Melvoin: The thoughtfulness about what's happening in an actual recording studio. A great engineer can teach you that. We worked with some fine engineers. I think I learned a lot about how I can get the sounds that I want, and arrangements that I want, and musicians that could work for this or couldn't work for that. Prince was just-- I mean, obviously, he's a guy that could do it all himself.

There were some incredible lessons to be learned from his discipline and his thoughtfulness behind a board and how he ran a studio. I learned a lot from that for sure. We had an engineer that we worked with for many years, Susan Rogers, that really taught me a lot about sound and about technique, and I've carried that with me.

Alison Stewart: Hold the thought on Susan Rogers. We're going to talk about her in just a minute. Lisa-

Wendy Melvoin: Oh, boy.

Alison Stewart: -[laughs] what is something from that time in your life that you still use today in your production, in your music making?

Lisa Coleman: Oh, wow. I was thinking while Wendy was talking also about what I've learned, and part of the working in the studio is just not to be intimidated by the gear. It was great because we were younger. Prince was fearless, and he played the studio like an instrument. He was just all over it. To witness that and to have that be the way that I learned was just great because I'm not afraid of pushing buttons and like, "Let's try this," or just experimenting with the studio and not always being too intimidated by technology, like, "I don't know how to work it." It really doesn't matter. Just turn it on and start fiddling. If it sounds cool, you're on the right track. That's where I'm at.

Alison Stewart: You're listening to another installment of our March series, Equalizers. I'm speaking to Wendy & Lisa, the first woman to be nominated for the Grammy for Producer of the Year as part of Prince and The Revolution. Let's listen to a song from Purple Rain, and we'll talk about it on the other side with a special guest. Here's Let’s Go Crazy.

[MUSIC - Prince & The Revolution: Let’s Go Crazy]

Dearly beloved

We are gathered here today to get through this thing called life

Electric word, life

It means forever, and that's a mighty long time

But I'm here to tell you there's something else

The afterworld

A world of never-ending happiness

You can always see the sun

Day or night

So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills

You know the one, "Dr. Everything'll-be-alright"

Instead of asking him how much of your time is left

Ask him how much of your mind, baby

'Cause in this life, things are much harder than in the afterworld

In this life, you're on your own

And if the elevator tries to bring you down

Go crazy, punch a higher floor

Woah

Alison Stewart: I want to bring in another guest here. We're celebrating women in production and engineering all month. If we're doing that, we're going to talk to engineer Susan Rogers. She has just been named by Wendy. Susan was Prince's staff engineer throughout the '80s and has engineered many other musicians, including David Byrne, Barenaked Ladies, and Wendy & Lisa. She's currently a professor in music production and engineer at Berklee School. Susan, welcome.

Susan Rogers: Hi, Alison. Hi, Wendy & Lisa. Nice to join you all.

Wendy Melvoin: Hello, darling.

Lisa Coleman: Hi, Susan.

Wendy Melvoin: Yay.

Susan Rogers: Hi. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] Susan, what do you remember about the sessions around Purple Rain?

Susan Rogers: Oh, golly. It was such an intense time. When I think back to it, that was over 40 years ago. We were young, and we had that combination of a seriousness that young people have and great doubt and then overconfidence, and you pile all that together. Then, when you add the raw talent of Wendy & Lisa and Prince and The Revolution, you combine all that, it's pretty potent mixture. We didn't realize it at the time, but we can look back on it now and realize, "Damn, we had it going on, didn't we?"

Alison Stewart: Wendy, what do you remember about that time?

Wendy Melvoin: Well, she's spot on. I would just add to the energy, kind of like the system, the dynamics between everybody and what they were giving. Everybody gave their A game, so you knew what you were doing was something kind of otherworldly because you could just feel that it felt different than most stuff. I'm sure every artist at some point in their career taps onto something that feels bigger than them. That whole time felt bigger than all of us, but bigger than the one. It was the sum total of all of it. I remember a million different things, but the energy was huge.

Alison Stewart: Lisa, how about you?

Lisa Coleman: Yes. Right on, everybody. [chuckles] We worked from morning to night. It was all day, every day. It was our life. That's how we spent our life. We woke up in the morning and went to the warehouse, and it was either recording, rehearsing, doing acting lessons, doing dance lessons for the film, all this stuff. It was a daily thing, and it was all day. I just remember that being just a whole new kind of life.

Alison Stewart: Susan, you've also worked on Wendy & Lisa's albums. We're going to talk about them like they're not here. What do you think their skill set is? What do they do better than anyone else?

Susan Rogers: Oh, oh. They are so deeply, innately musical. When Lisa's on a keyboard, especially on piano, Wendy said it once, she pets the keys. You can just feel her heart going right to her hands. The way she coaxes music out of an instrument is astonishing. It's really breathtaking. Wendy's skill set on guitar and her ear, and her taste. You can imagine her thinking as she plays, she's filtering all the things she might be playing and then deciding on, "Here's what would be perfect in this moment." You're watching maestras. Is that the feminine pronunciation of maestro?

Alison Stewart: Let's do it.

Susan Rogers: You're watching maestras at work. When you work with them, it's really amazing.

Alison Stewart: Okay, we're going to talk about you like you aren't here, Susan. Wendy, why was Susan the right person to work with on your albums after The Revolution?

Wendy Melvoin: Because she's superlative. I mean, if you get a list in high school, who's the funniest, who's the best, who's this, Susan's at the top of that list. It was a no-brainer for me and Lisa to use her because she has an incredible ability to learn the technical side of what she does. I mean, just listening to her talk. As a teacher now, anyone's blessed to have her as their teacher because the way she can explain something in terms for the common man is spectacular. In the studio, it's very same.

Her enthusiasm and the love that she cares and approaches everything from like a piece of gear to the sound coming through the speakers. I remember one time Susan was explaining to me how women and men differently hear low end and that women hear low end more of more warmth. I've never forgotten that. When I listen back to the albums that me and Lisa did with Susan, there's a kind of puffiness to the sound of those records, for lack of a better way to describe it, a puffiness that has a lot of warmth as well, but there's a punch to it that only at the time I could imagine only Susan could have done. I've tried to recreate that kind of stuff, and I've never been able to recreate the kind of ear she has. She has a singular ear.

Alison Stewart: Lisa, how about you?

Lisa Coleman: Oh, wow. I just can't say enough. Yes, she's a unique creature. The amazing technical knowledge that she has is just incredible. She can build something out of nothing. I had a problem with one of my keyboards back in the 1900s, and things were very difficult back then. She just put a tuning knob on the front of my keyboard. She just drilled a hole and somehow figured out how to do that. That's just amazing in itself. Then her heart, the heart that she puts into everything. Wendy said she cares about everything that she does. She cares about the music and the way that you're doing the music. Then, if you're hungry or something, she's the full package. She's just an incredible person.

Alison Stewart: Susan, we have a song here that you worked on for Mother of Pearl, it's called, from your 1990 album, Erotica, if I'm saying it correctly. What did you want to highlight this track?

Wendy Melvoin: Eroica.

Alison Stewart: Eroica. Thank you.

Susan Rogers: We spent a lot of months on that album, and it was delightful because it's wonderful working with Wendy & Lisa, and you learn so much from them. Any technical professional who's worked with them will admit how much they've learned about music and the art of sound from working with Wendy & Lisa. Every track on that record is marvelous. I just picked this one because it's the most recent one I've listened to. They're all really fabulous, but this really does feature the best of what Wendy & Lisa do. You'll hear that quality in it, of sculpting music with a gentle and firm hand. You hear their musical minds at work, and that's always a treat.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to Mother of Pearl.

[MUSIC - Wendy & Lisa: Mother of Pearl]

A cool day for a tidal wave

Drowned impressions falsely made

A cold stare makes light of this

Size me up, make sure that it fits

And I'll be so nonchalant--

Alison Stewart: Susan, before we let you go, there's something I wanted to ask you about because you're a professor at Berklee. What is something that we could do better to make more space for women in production?

Susan Rogers: Oh, gosh, Alison, that's a really hard question to answer. I know I've been asked, and I'm sure Wendy & Lisa have, too, for over four decades. It's a complicated equation. There are reasons why women choose not to enter these fields, and then, of course, there are reasons why women want to and are blocked. Wow, it's a bigger question than I can answer.

Alison Stewart: Susan Rogers is a professor in music production and engineering at Berklee and a veteran of recording engineering. Susan, thank you so much for being with us.

Susan Rogers: Thank you for having me. Bye, buddies. I missed you guys.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Lisa Coleman: I love you. Bye.

Wendy Melvoin: Love you.

Alison Stewart: Wendy, did you want to answer that question, how we can make more room for women in production?

Wendy Melvoin: Susan's really correct. We could spend an entire hour just talking about the difficulty and try and come up with some kind of master plan. We've been literally trying to figure this out for ages. I've spent a lot of time in other studios now, working with a lot of different people and trying to get my hands on producing other people. There are a lot more engineers that are female that are coming up, and there are a handful of women coming up in the producer world that are getting their hands on more pop music. I'd like to be able to see more producers in different genres of music, not just in the pop world.

There's a lot of female DJs that are turning into producers, but they're doing a lot of dance music. I'd like to see a lot more women getting into a room that can actually work with either a band or artists, and do the best for the artist and get the best out of their songs, to get in the room with a woman who could produce a record as well as someone like Mitchell Froom could. The list goes on and on and on.

I think that we just need to allow women the room and the space and the encouragement to do it. I think a lot of it. This is not like man, woman, blah, blah, blah. A lot of the guys got to make a little bit more room. There's a little bit of a-- I don't know, there just seems to be not as much room as I'd like to see some of the men give these women. It's very similar to the cooking world and a lot of men chefs and women chefs. That's a very common thread between female producers and male producers. You could draw a correlation between male chefs and female chefs if you look at it closely.

Alison Stewart: That's interesting. What do you think, Lisa?

Lisa Coleman: Wow. Well, I think not to disparage men or anything, but get out of the way. [laughs] I think it's a matter of education, and I think it's just going to take some time. I think that for lots of people, women included, when you say, "Who do you want to produce your record?" In your mind, you automatically think, "A man producer." You say, who produced the record? You think it's a man. I think it's going to take a long time before a lot of records are produced by women, and people let go of the-- Just the automatic default goes to man.

Wendy Melvoin: That's true. I would add, too, that because so many people are doing their records in their houses now. Everything is streaming, and everybody is doing everything in their room. Women are doing a lot more themselves. It's just the 1% that are actually getting really, really famous and being able to stream or actually get signed. I mean, the women are out there, but the 1% is almost non-existent.

Alison Stewart: Wendy, Lisa, we booked you weeks ago to be a part of our series, but you happened to show up on a day that The Daily, The New York Times, did a podcast about Prince and the documentary-

Lisa Coleman: Oh, wow.

Alison Stewart: -that we will not see, we will not see for Netflix. You're in the documentary. It includes details about Prince, the women in his orbit, some complicated relationships. Wendy, have you had any thoughts about the documentary? It might never be seen?

Wendy Melvoin: Yes, I've had many thoughts about it. I think it's a shame that it ended up being as complicated and fraught as it ended up being. I wish it hadn't ended up being that way. So many complications. I can't really get into the details of it because it could get me in trouble. I will say that there are some magical moments in that documentary, and I hope, at some point, the world can see them.

Alison Stewart: Lisa, how did you decide to be part of the documentary?

Lisa Coleman: Wow, it took a long time. It took a lot of conviction, to be honest. I think Wendy and I were the last interviews to be done. There were a lot of reasons. I wasn't sure that it was time to do that big documentary. We had just come off touring and grieving and doing a lot of that processing, and I kind of needed a break from it.

Wendy Melvoin: We were pretty raw.

Lisa Coleman: Yes, we were pretty raw emotionally about the whole thing. I decided to be part of it because I felt like I had a real, honest opinion and experience of Prince, and I wanted to share my point of view.

Alison Stewart: That was my conversation with Wendy & Lisa from our Women's History Month series, Equalizers: Women in Music Production. We'll have more All Of It on the way.