Bill Schnee On His New Memoir “Chairman At The Board,” Working With Some Of Music’s Greats For Decades & More
Bill Schnee has personally been nominated 11 times for a “Best Engineered Recording” GRAMMY, winning 2 of those nominations for the Steely Dan albums Aja and Gaucho. In his new memoir Chairman At The Board, Schnee lovingly shares his magical musical journey behind the closed doors of many recording sessions with a host of the greatest musical artists from the last 50 years. A list which includes Huey Lewis & The News, Chicago, Ringo Starr, Dire Straits, Miles Davis, Natalie Cole, Marvin Gaye, The Jacksons, George Benson, Barry Manilow, Bette Midler, Rod Stewart, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Carly Simon, Julio Iglesias, Aaron Neville, Kenny G and Whitney Houston.
The journey for Bill Schnee as an in-demand producer, engineer and mixer essentially began after his high school band was dropped by Decca Records. Famed music industry executive Clive Davis soon gave Schnee a “big break” by hiring him to work for CBS Records, where he partnered with famed music producer Richard Perry. In the words of Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler, Schnee is “one of the top sound engineers in the game.” The aforementioned Huey Lewis has said of Chairman At The Board: “If you love hit records and the behind-the-scenes stories of how they were made, you’ll love this book. This is inside stuff everyone wants to know about, from a guy who helped make it all happen.”
On April 3, 2021, I had the pleasure of interviewing Bill Schnee via Zoom, as embedded below. Besides Chairman At The Board, we spoke about his decades in studios, how music factored into his recovery from cancer, future goals and more. More on Schnee and Chairman At The Board can be found at www.billschnee.com and www.bravurarecords.com, while his book can be ordered here.
