Sandy Roberton Dead: Record Producer Becomes Director of Producers

Sandy Roberton, a producer and director who worked with artists from Stella Span in the early 1970s to The Matrix in the 2000s, died Monday in a London hospital.

After a successful career in record production and managing artists in London in the 1970s, Scottish-born Roberton moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1980s, where he founded his company Worlds End Management for nearly four decades. The company has survived to this day and currently represents producers and mixers including Stephen Lipson, Larry Klein, Brad Wood, Stephen Haig, Ted Hut, and many others.

In the mid-1960s, he was part of the duo Rick and Sandy, releasing singles under the names Sandy and later Lucien Alexander, before moving behind the scenes as a producer to such acts as John Martin, Ian Matthews, and Chocolate. Watch Band, Decameron and others. He produced the first three albums of folk rock band Stella Span.

But later in Los Angeles, his company made a name for itself representing successful producers like The Matrix, the collective of Lauren Christie, Graham Edwards and Scott Spock that had huge success producing Avril Lavigne’s debut album in 2002, and went on to work with artists like Britney Spears and Shakira. and Korn and Liz Fair.

Kristi (pictured above with Roberton, attending a pre-Grammy party to publish Elementary Wave music in 2009) told Kristi diverse How their former manager was responsible for much of the Matrix’s success.

Kristi said: “Graham and I were heartbroken when we learned of Roberton’s death – and shocked, too, because if you know Sandy, you know he never stopped working. Ill health wasn’t on his schedule!”

Sandy had a long and successful career in production and management before Graham and I (who were nearing the end of our careers as recording artists) suggested that we team up with Scott and set up a songwriting and production team. The idea changed our whole lives. We worked non-stop: Send an artist after An artist went to our filthy studio in Culver City until he finally suggested we try our luck to write a song for Christina Aguilera’s Christmas album.This was our first clip, and the rest is pop history.

“Sandy’s passion for music, the endless hours he puts in the business, and the changing deals for his clients are unparalleled in the industry. The Matrix owes much of his success to him. He has been a groundbreaking champion for many people who have written and produced many of the best songs of the past four decades. Thank you, O Sandy for your love of music and the people who made it. Good luck.”

Roberton actually started Worlds End in Chelsea, London in 1980, and the company described itself as “probably the first full-service company to represent only producers, mixers and engineers.”

Roberton grew up in Kenya and moved into the music business shortly after his family moved to London when he was in his mid-teens. He joined Tom Springfield, Dusty’s brother, to form Tom and Dusty, who recorded singles for Decca and Mercury. As a later solo artist, he released a cover of Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man” for Columbia, as Sandy, and Bob Dylan’s “Baby, You’ve been on My Mind” as Lucien Alexander for Polydor.

After completing his short career in recording, he moved on to the publishing side of the business, representing classic blues artists while working for the European publishing companies Chess Records as well as Lowery Music and Blue Horizon Records. Later he founded his own company, September Productions and Records Rockberg, where he worked with, in addition to the aforementioned British artists, such as Jay and Terry Woods, Joe Joe Zip and The Falcons, The Woods Band, Wilco Johnson, Finch, Liverpool Scene, Robin Scott and Sheila MacDonald Keith Christmas, Harold McNair, Tim Hart and Maddie Pryor.

From the shift from production to management, he said in a 1978 interview“I felt like I wasn’t getting any recognition. I know this sounds big, but I was getting a lot of work before me that included artists I hadn’t heard of before. I was cutting three quarters of my way through a record I was putting so much love into, and then I realized Suddenly after the record company sent the promotional discs, nothing else would be heard about it. Record again. In the end, things didn’t seem to be worth it. And even though I was getting paid, I got more and more depressed and felt like a boy. In the boys’ back rooms.

In 2013, Goldmine . magazine He said, “Talk about the behind-the-scenes wonders of British folk rock as it evolved from the 1960s into a new era of world domination, three names rising above all the other names in business at the time”—Joe Boyd, Austin John Marshall and Roberton.

“In the mainstream right now, most producers are songwriters, certainly in the pop world,” he told Goldmine. “I think the best producers are from no You have to write the material, but you are able to set the direction and arrange the artist’s music to bring out the best in the songs and create a mood.”

Roberton’s daughter, Nikki Roberton, was the co-founder of Iamsound Records, a company whose releases included early works by Florence and the Machine, Lord Huron and Nikki Lane.