The super-producer who tangled with Dylan, Jagger, New Order

Telegraph

23-05-2025

Talk about a musical Zelig. A figure who was there in the heat of disco, the birth of hip-hop and electro, the heady rush of the 1980s British Invasion, the jostling crush of the New York of Madonna, Cyndi Lauper and Mariah Carey. Producer Arthur Baker has been there, done that, tangled with the Mafia and racked out the cocaine in the studio while hiding from Bob Dylan and going toe-to-toe with Mick Jagger.
All of which was part of this musical obsessive's (still ongoing) passion for looking for the perfect beat. That's the title of the 70-year-old American's new memoir, Looking For The Perfect Beat: Remixing and Reshaping Hip-Hop, Rock and Rhythms.
One chapter is titled Rum And Coke because 'there was a lot of rum and coke during those sessions,' he writes of his time working on 1985 Dylan album Empire Burlesque. The project began in the musician's hotel room on the southern edge of Central Park, with Dylan bombarding Baker with cassette-tape demos of '15 to 20' songs, challenging the producer with: 'Well, what would you do with this one?'
Having passed the audition, in the studio, 'Dylan was drinking the rum (Mount Gay), and I was snorting the coke (but not in front of Bob),' he writes. 'Bob would like to start his sessions at 5pm, work for about three hours and then leave. I'd then stay up all night, working on the record and doing drugs. I had lots to do on the tracks. I was basically trying to take the songs I had heard on those cassettes, which he had started with various different producers, and make them sound like a cohesive album.'
Was Dylan toying with him? 'Yeah, of course he was!' Baker replies, laughing. 'It's Dylan, man! But I think he liked me, after a while… I loved working with him, and just being with him, but he was always taking the piss. That was him, though. But I didn't feel he was targeting me. Because everyone I've ever heard talk about working with him [has a similar story]. Someone told me a story about [serial Dylan collaborator] Daniel Lanois that was very similar to what he was doing with me.'
What else did Baker learn while writing the book? 'I learnt that I made it through,' the still-garrulous, still-hirsute, long-sober Baker replies as we speak in the rooftop bar of Shoreditch House, the East London private members club and 'old home away from home' where he wrote chunks of his autobiography. 'Through a time when I could have not made it through.'
Baker's roll-call of credits is peerless. Arguably his most groundbreaking production was Planet Rock by Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force, the 1982 track that's pretty much the birth of electro. He wrote the 'A E, A E I O U' chorus for Brit-funkers Freez's 1983 transatlantic hit IOU, then (literally) immediately jumped into a Manhattan studio with New Order to help them come up with, in 48 hours, foundational tracks Confusion and Thieves Like Us.
He watched, powerless, as hard-charging industry executive Tommy Mottola pinched the unknown Carey from under his nose and stood by, even more powerless, as notorious music boss-cum-Mob-man Morris Levy took control of Baker's own label, Streetwise. And he did all the drugs while being the go-to man for megastars seeking some dancefloor love – Springsteen, Jagger, McCartney – a habit that continued through his pivotal role, alongside good friend Steven Van Zandt, in the creation of Artists United Against Apartheid.
'The most on drugs and sloppiest I was, probably, was Sun City,' he admits of the pressure group's accompanying 1985 album. 'That was the peak of my doing drugs.' Nonetheless, he counts the project – an all-star, conversation-starting record that featured Run-DMC, Bono, Herbie Hancock, Lou Reed, Darlene Love and dozens more – as his proudest achievement. Not least because even at his sloppiest, 'I did all the work and was organised enough to get people to do stuff.'
Baker started out DJing in Boston in the mid-Seventies, a time when many of the clubs were run by the Mafia. 'Boston's known for being a hotbed of the Mafia,' the Miami-based producer tells me over glugs of water on a baking day in London, 'both Italian and Irish. It was never so scary that it was too much, but it was all really shady. But disco was very much that whole world – all of the big clubs in New York were Mafia,' he says, mentioning legendary spots Studio 54 and the Funhouse. 'The Funhouse was owned by guys who could have at The Bada Bing, for sure,' he says of The Sopranos' strip club and Mob hang-out. 'You should see the pictures of the door staff from the Fun House. These guys were knuckle crushers.'
Still, he admits those early experiences didn't stand him in good stead as he navigated the shark-infested waters of the booming New York music industry of the Eighties. 'Because I ended up partners with Morris Levy!' he says of the music industry figure who was convicted of being involved with organised crime and was, by all accounts, the inspiration for The Sopranos character Hesh Rabkin.
'When I became partners with him, that was a little before The Sopranos. And when The Sopranos came out, I'm going: Hesh… Morris… they've both got horses… They didn't even try to hide the fact! I'd been up to Morris's horse farm. He was a charming guy, up until the point that he held you out the window! Which he didn't do to me. He just took my label and pressured me out. But listen, I wouldn't have missed that experience.'
As it happened, that partnership came about when Baker was also in business with Mottola, another take-no-prisoners character. 'Tommy told me: 'Don't get in business with Morris. He'll end up taking everything.' And they were friends! And he was right. It was one of the few times that Tommy gave me good advice – that I didn't take.'
To be fair, Baker had good cause to mistrust Mottola. They simultaneously came across an unknown young backing singer with a killer demo.
'The moment I heard the tape, I knew she was going to be a star. You listened to it, and then you looked at her and how she looked, it was undeniable… And I knew because Tommy wanted to, ah, bang her, in his words, he was going to call her,' he says of Mariah Carey, the future Mrs Mottola. 'But if Tommy hadn't seen her, I would have taken her back to the studio, said 'this is amazing', and been able to get her a record deal. But bidding against the guy who was the head of CBS at the time? I tried. I didn't give up. But I knew it wasn't going to happen.'
If he puts Carey into the category of 'the ones that got away', into what category does he put Madonna? At the time she was coming up, Baker was one of the hottest producers in town, with an unerring ear for the dance floor and the clubs in which the young singer was then performing. Yet they never worked together in any meaningful way.
'Friends of mine were already working with her,' he says, although he adds that 'we were all friends at that time. We shared a house in the Hamptons. Then she blew up, she moved and we didn't really see her much after that.'
Did they ever circle each other for any projects after that? 'No, we didn't. She went with Shep [Pettibone],' he says of his New York contemporary on the 'remix front' as he puts in. 'But for some reason, Madonna and I never had any kind of spark to work together. Oh, and the other reason would have been: I never pursued it because my [then] wife was a singer also. And she would have been really pissed off if I had worked with Madonna, for sure. All the singers in New York were super competitive with Madonna. Because she was just another club singer, and then she became the biggest act in the world. So all these other club singers were like: 'We could do as well as that...''
Nonetheless, he admits he'd have liked to have worked on something with Madonna – but only one song. 'I'm a reluctant producer. I like doing collaborations. But doing an album is a nightmare… Even with New Order, I never did that. I [generally] would like two songs. To me, it's torture to be in the studio trying to work on music where you just don't like the songs.'
His time with New Order came in 1983. The Mancunians came to New York in search of the energy of the electro scene that Baker helped create. In his book Baker describes himself as 'hot, in demand and out of control' and the Mancunians as 'dour'. In his own memoir, Chapter and Verse, frontman Bernard Sumner describes Baker as 'a big bear of a man. Think Grizzly Adams only grizzlier.' Were they intimidated by each other?
'It's funny, because me and Hooky – he's on my podcast – were just discussing that,' he says of former New Order bass player Peter Hook, one of the guests on Baker's upcoming podcast series, also called Looking For The Perfect Beat. 'And they were scared of me. First, they thought I was going to be a flash producer. Then they were scared of me because I was a big guy and out of control, doing lots of cocaine. [Whereas] I thought: there were five of them – the four band members, and [late manager] Rob Gretton, who was there at all moments – and one of me.'
There were duelling egos, too, in his time working with The Rolling Stones. He was commissioned to remix their 1983 track Too Much Blood. But such were the nature of those sessions that they begat a book chapter with the title Too Much Drugs. At mention of that Baker – who's in London with his wife and daughter, partly to empty a flat he's just sold in northwest London, a legacy of his years living here in the Nineties – laughs.
'You know what's funny with that? My daughter's just turned 11, and I wrote the book for her, really. So she'd have all these stories later in life. But she got her hands on [an early copy of] the book. She's under the covers with a flashlight and she's reading it. She goes: 'Papa, is this one you don't want me to read, 'Too Much Drugs'?' Which I thought was so cute. But it's easy to [write] that because I don't do drugs any more.'
In Looking for the Perfect Beat, he writes of Jagger's demeanour during the sessions at the famed Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village on November 5 1983. 'I vaguely remember Mick coming in, fairly sober, listening intently and being seemingly happy. He went out for some Italian and came back hours later, pretty drunk, and almost fell asleep while trying to get involved in adjusting the fader levels.'
'He just said, 'Do what you want', literally,' Baker tells me now. 'It was meant to be a 12-inch [remix]. It wasn't a pop record and it wasn't ever meant to be a hit. He disappeared [and then] he did come back to the studio. But it's like everyone, you're sober, and you're great, you're fine… And then you get drunk and you get sloppy. But I can't throw stones at the Rolling Stones!'
He had greater success with another remix the following year: a suck-it-and-see take on the as-yet-unreleased first single from Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA. Talking with Springsteen's manger Jon Landau 'a year and a half ago', he finally learnt just how successful his take on Dancing In the Dark – a track that was already a boldly poppy move for The Boss – had been.
'Landau said that when they got the acetate of my mix, Bruce took it out to one of the clubs in Asbury Park – I don't know if it was The Stone Pony – and everyone danced to it. People loved it. Landau said that he thinks that if Bruce hadn't got that reaction to it, he wouldn't have let Dancing in the Dark come out as a single.'
Baker's remix became the number one-selling 12-inch in America that year in America. 'Not only that – and this is all from Landau – when the single came out in England, it wasn't doing well. Then they put out my version, and that kickstarted it. So he said to me: 'Your mixes of Dancing in the Dark had a lot to do with the success of the whole [Born in the USA] project.''
Presumably, too, it made for a decent payday for Baker. But might his biggest payday have been, I venture, for his remix of Paul McCartney's No More Lonely Nights (from his 1984 album Give My Regards To Broad Street)? Baker nods.
' No royalties, just a fee. If it had been royalties, I wouldn't have made any more money. It didn't sell anything! But the fee was great. I have to say, I did that purely for the money, because there was nothing I could do with that track.'
How much money? 'Thirty grand.'
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For a day's work? 'A couple. Listen, I wish it had been one of his solo tracks from back in the day when he was doing electro. Temporary Secretary, that one I would have fun with. That could be mixed now, absolutely. But the remix wasn't [McCartney's idea], that was the label... It just wasn't something that I was very...' He pauses. '… involved with! Well, I was involved with it, but I wasn't motivated by it. It was a s___ song. Come on, he's made a lot of great songs but that ain't one of them. Let me mix Get Back. What a great record. I'd mix that now for 30 quid!'
Fast-forwarding to the mid-Nineties, Baker relocated to London. Cool Britannia was in full swing and he was working with multiple UK artists and projects including Wet Wet Wet, Robbie Williams, Babylon Zoo and (again) New Order. He was by now sober and wiser. Well, wiser to a point.
While in the UK, Baker became partner in a group of nightspots including The Elbow Room (a small chain of pool bars). This Boston Jew with a taste for the soul food of the American South also opened a restaurant, Harlem, in Notting Hill. Baker supplied the cash, a business partner the managerial 'expertise'. They went into administration, 'and I was forced to use every last penny to save the restaurant,' Baker said in 2007. 'For the past two and a half years, I've run the place with no back-up – I even had to cook when chefs walked out… Would I do it again? No. It's cost me all my money, my hair's gone grey and it's the most stress I've ever had. Food is definitely more rock'n'roll than rock'n'roll.'
'Which is definitely true,' he says now, chuckling. 'Anyone who can make it through [the restaurant business], it has to be their lifetime dream. But it was my fantasy more than a lifetime dream.'
Arthur Baker is still living the life – albeit, of course, at a gentler pace. He still DJs, curates parties, has his podcast and is working on a Broadway musical of Beat Street, the 1984 drama about hip-hop culture for which he produced the soundtrack. 'I'm still trying to be creative every day.'
That creative life for this white guy started out with lots of now-legendary records with black artists. Does he think that would be allowed to happen now, or would it be seen as cultural appropriation?
'I don't know,' he muses. 'It's funny because I wanted to bring Mark Ronson into Beat Street. But it became clear that we should probably use a black writer. I don't think that would have happened back in the day. It would have been whoever was right for the project. And I think that's an issue now. To me, it was never a thing. I just went in with groups. I don't know, they probably thought 'who's this white guy?' But I never had any sort of insecurity. '
And that's on every front. Baker insists has no burning desire to get back in the studio for another session with any of the ones that got away.
Not even, I ask, Madonna? ' No, absolutely not!'