<img class="image_right" src="/editor_images/0000/0759/IMG_2710.jpg" border="0" alt="Tony Clarke" title="Tony Clarke" width="334" height="224" />The record producer <a href="http://www.tonyclarkestudio.co.uk/" target="_blank">Tony Clarke</a> was one of the architects of symphonic "prog rock" through his work with the Moody Blues. His production on the group's album, Days of Future Passed (1967), and its hit single, Nights in White Satin, blended the sounds of an electric rock band with a symphony orchestra and came to be seen as a hugely influential landmark. He went on to work with the group on six more albums, helping them to become one of the most commercially successful bands of the era. He also produced the Equals' No 1 hit Baby Come Back and worked with a variety of other acts, including the Irish folk band, Clannad, and Rick Wakeman. In addition, he was immensely proud that he was one of the few white producers to work for Motown, when he was asked to produce the Four Tops in 1972. Anthony Ralph Clarke was born in Coventry in 1941, and his earliest memories were of a bombed-out and shell-shocked city that had suffered heavily at the hands of the Luftwaffe in the Blitz. By his teens he was playing bass in a West Midlands skiffle combo, soon graduating to various local beat groups. By 1963 he had landed a job in London with Decca Records, first working in promotions and then in the production department, under Dick Rowe, the man who famously turned down the Beatles because "guitar bands were on the way out", but who later made amends by signing the Rolling Stones to the label. Clarke's first success as a producer came with Pinkerton's Assorted Colours, whose Mirror Mirror made the UK Top Ten in 1965. The group failed to have another hit but Clarke went on to further success when he produced the Equals' Baby Come Back, which went to No 1 in 1966 and launched the career of Eddy Grant. At about the same time he produced his first LP, a live recording by John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. On the strength of these successes, Clarke was given the task of reviving the fortunes of fellow Midlanders the Moody Blues, who had scored a No 1 hit in 1965 with Go Now, but whose subsequent singles had failed even to break into the Top 20. His first production for the group, Fly Me High, marked the debut of the singer-songwriter Justin Hayward, but once again failed to chart. Clarke then helped to steer a remarkable change of musical direction for the group. Decca had set up the Deram label as a showcase for its latest developments in stereo sound and the initial plan was for the Moody Blues to record a rock version of Dvorak's New World Symphony. The concept was soon rejected (although Voices in the Sky, which utilised a melody based on the largo from the symphony, subsequently appeared on a later album). In its place, group and producer assembled Days of Future Passed, featuring original songs by the group and grandiose orchestral arrangements played by the London Festival Orchestra, buttressed by the quasi-symphonic electronic sounds of the mellotron. One of rock music's first "concept albums", it revolved around the story of "everyman's day" from dawn to nightfall. Decca, however, was not sure what to make of the results and, according to one story, was initially reluctant to release the album. When it was released, British record buyers were also initially nonplussed by the transformation of a Midlands R&B group into symphonic prog-rockers and the album barely scraped into the UK Top 30. The US was more open-minded and the album shot to No 2 in the Billboard chart. The album also produced two hit singles, the million-selling Nights In White Satin and Tuesday Afternoon. Decca continued to deploy Clarke to work with other acts but the increasing complexity of the Moody Blues' recordings was soon taking up almost all his time, to the extent that he effectively became the sixth member of the band. The group's next two albums, In Search of the Lost Chord (1968) and the chart-topping On the Threshold of a Dream, were so successful that the Moody Blues then established their own label, Threshold Records. Clarke left Decca, effectively to run Threshold, and took the lead role in building the group its own studio in northwest London. He also produced albums by other groups signed to the label such as the US classical-acoustic sextet, Providence, and made an unsuccessful attempt to sign King Crimson to Threshold, losing out to Chris Blackwell's Island Records. Yet it was the Moody Blues' own records that primarily concerned him. By now these were hugely time-consuming affairs, the result of countless hours of painstaking recording, multi-tracking and overdubbing under Clarke's expert direction. Four albums followed on the Moody Blues' own label in the next four years, during which time it seemed that group and producer were seldom out of the studio. To Our Children's Children Children made No 2 in the UK charts in late 1969 and was followed by two chart-toppers, A Question of Balance (1970) and Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1971). If there was disappointment that the next album, Seventh Sojourn (1972) only made No 5 in Britain, there was ample compensation when it topped the US charts. The Moody Blues broke up soon afterwards and Clarke worked with various band members on solo projects, the most successful of which was Justin Hayward and John Lodge's album Blue Jays. He was also asked by Motown to produce the Four Tops in 1972, when the US soul vocal group covered several Moody Blues songs. Clarke was instrumental in getting the Moody Blues back together to record Octave in 1978 but he was so distressed by the conflict between the band members in the studio that although they continued with a modified line-up, he did not work with them again. He went on to work with Clannad, producing their highly successful album, Legend (1984), and with Rick Wakeman, producing his album The Gospels (1987), in addition to working on a number of film soundtracks. He is survived by his wife, Helen, and six children. Tony Clarke, record producer, was born on August 21, 1941. He died of emphysema on January 4, 2010, aged 68 (original story in The Times, January 23, 2010) 2010-01-23T13:16:13+00:00 2010-01-23 180 Tony Clarke: record producer obituary

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The record producer Tony Clarke was one of the architects of symphonic “prog rock” through his work with the Moody Blues.

2010-01-23T13:19:47+00:00