Mick Jones not included.

Excluding self-produced albums, what established artists who have dabbled in producing records for other artists most interest you? And I put an emphasis on dabbled to rule out established artists who are also established producers, like Steve Albini and Brian Eno.

For instance, I wish I could hear a few more albums produced by Elvis Costello, who somehow made both clear and extremely simple the clutter of The Specials‘ debut. He also produced the only (in my opinion) fully enjoyable Squeeze album, East Side Story, which was engineered by Friend of the Hall Roger Bechirian.

Andy Partridge is another artist I’d like to hear produce a few more albums. I’m a big fan of his work on Peter Blegvad‘s The Naked Shakespeare and Martin Newell‘s The Greatest Living Englishman. I wish he’d have taken the reins on his own band’s albums beginning with Skylarking, but that may have eliminated him from this discussion.

As far as I know Ray Davies only produced one album for another artist, The Turtles‘ Soup album. That’s a winner, but considering Kinks albums are typically no great shakes in terms of conventional recording techniques I’m not sure Davies had that much else to offer.

David Bowie has proven himself a pretty lousy producer, or at least a less-than-satisfying one, in his work with others. I’m not saying the bass-heavy version of Raw Power rectified the shortcomings of the original mix, but it’s still hard for me to fully enjoy that album. His production work on the biggest-selling singles by both Mott the Hoople and Lou Reed is amazing, but I’m not a big fan of his work overall on their albums.

Which artists do you wish you could hear more—or less—of in the producer’s chair?