Larry Klein

Musician/songwriter/producer Larry Klein is a collaborator by nature. A world-class bassist, the SoCal native performs on most of his productions, while also frequently co-writing with the artists he produces.

Klein’s collaborations are aesthetic and emotional explorations aimed at bringing out the purest representation of his artist partners. Never is it about him. “If you approach working with someone from a purely auteur-like process, you’re doing the artist a disservice,” he asserts. “At the end of it, they’re left thinking, ‘This has nothing to do with me—it’s somebody else’s vision.’ I also believe the things that work are things that are honest. That’s what makes me feel intensely when I listen to music, read a book, see a movie or experience any form of expression. So that’s what I’m really interested in trying to make. When I work with an artist, I try to discern what is the center of this person, and what can I do to amplify that center, to make it speak in a more focused, vivid and interesting way?”

The in-demand producer’s numerous collaborations include one of the most impressive arrays of jazz legends, rock stalwarts, female ingénues and revered superstars on record. Among the highlights of Klein’s CV is Herbie Hancock’s River: The Joni Letters, which won 2008 Grammys for Album of the Year and Best Contemporary Jazz Album. The album featured vocals from such luminaries as Norah Jones, Tina Turner, Corinne Bailey Rae, Leonard Cohen, Klein’s wife Luciana Souza and former spouse Joni Mitchell, whose music was interpreted on the LP.

His other recent productions include Madeleine Peyroux’s Bare Bones (his third consecutive project with the critically acclaimed interpretive singer), Steely Dan auteur Walter Becker’s Circus Money (also collaborating on the material, as he did with Peyroux), Melody Gardot’s My One and Only Thrill, Souza’s Tide, Rebecca Pidgeon’s Behind the Velvet Curtain and Tracy Chapman’s Our Bright Future. He also recently produced an upcoming album by the inventive singer/guitarist Raul Midon.

“I don’t sing myself, so that has always pushed me towards collaborating,” Klein explains. “And the collaborative process has always been part of what I’ve loved about music, whether it’s playing or co-writing. The collaborative element is also part of what I enjoy about producing records—the puzzle of how to couple two sensibilities that are hopefully kindred aesthetically; how to make something out of two different heads, or three, even. The most stimulating thing for me is to be using as many parts of what I can do at the same time as possible.”

Peyroux’s Bare Bones, he says, “feels like it’s emanating from her in a certain way, more than the other two. We’ve come to a new place on this record, and it feels fantastic—it feels like a new high point for what we’re doing together.”

Peyroux treasures their relationship. “Larry really was the first person who ever said to me, ‘Let’s write every song on the record—you should do this,’” she says. “I wasn’t sure, but I said, ‘OK, fine, let’s see what happens.’ I’d co-written with Larry a couple of times in the past—one song on Careless Love and four on the last record—but this was a big leap for me as a writer, and also a deep exploration as a co-writer.”

“I’d say 90 percent of what she does is implied, and there’s 10 percent that’s actually literally there,” Klein says of Peyroux’s particular gift. “That’s the kind of art that I’m attracted to, whether it’s philosophy or art or music. I’m attracted to things that suggest something much bigger but don’t actually say that larger thing. And Madi, I think, just has this type of sensibility naturally. She gets at this almost indescribable, ineffable kind of poetry that you could never teach someone to get at. It’s in your blood, it’s in your cells, that way of hearing or playing something. You hear it in Miles and Wayne Shorter’s playing; you see it in Picasso’s work. It’s a certain kind of…insouciance—that’s the word.”

Klein started his musical journey relatively early, and showed himself to be a quick study. While in high school, he enrolled in an after-school musical program at USC, which enabled him to hone his playing and compositional skills with university professors. “I had been playing the guitar since I was 7,” he recalls, “but I soon grew to love the bass. When I was in my teens I had a teacher who would sneak me into the old Playboy Club in L.A., where I could see greats like Bill Evans. It was just mind-boggling; I was 16 years old and here were all my icons playing right in front of me every night.”
He worked in with various jazz and Latin groups while still a college student at Cal State L.A., leading to a half-decade of touring with groundbreakers like Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson and Willie Bobo. Stanley Clarke later cited him as one of the handful of great bass players who have “moved beyond the bass.” Between the mid-’70s and early ’80s, Klein appeared on records from a diverse array of artists including Dianne Reeves, Bobby McFerrin and Neil Diamond.

“I had an omnivorous appetite for music,” he says, “and I grew up wandering back and forth across the border between jazz and pop. Before I got into jazz, I was really into pop music and blues. That led me to get interested in jazz while I was very young, and then I got obsessed with jazz. Eventually, though, it all became part of the same continuum for me, as it did for Walter and Donald [Fagen] with Steely Dan. The same thing happened with Joni as well.”

As Klein recalls, it was the “Robbie Robertson tributary” that led to his acclaimed work with the up-and- coming tier of groundbreaking rock musicians, with Klein appearing on Robertson’s first solo project, 1987’s Robbie Robertson. He also collaborated with the legendary songwriter/guitarist, along with his equally brilliant cohorts from The Band, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel, on the soundtrack of the historic Martin Scorsese masterpiece, Raging Bull, which kicked off Klein’s growing interest in the production side of making albums. His work with Robertson led to such memorable works as Don Henley’s Building the Perfect Beast and The End of the Innocence), Bob Dylan’s Down in the Groove, Bryan Adams’ Waking Up the Neighbors, Mitchell’s Grammy winning Turbulent Indigo, Chapman’s self-titled debut and Peter Gabriel’s So.

Klein’s celebrated collaboration in and out of the studio with revered singer/songwriter Mitchell became the cornerstone of his early collaborative period. The two became romantically linked during the making of 1982’s Wild Things Run Fast; they became husband and wife the same year. The duo forged an intense creative relationship that would endure for more than a decade and include such monumental albums as their first joint production, 1985’s Dog Eat Dog, and their Grammy-winning swan song, 1994’s Turbulent Indigo, a song cycle addressing the dissolution of their marriage.

He points to those 10 years of sessions with Mitchell as possibly the best production school one could ever attend. “She always stressed the importance of having the right climate and feel to a session,” he points out. “She taught me to always be cognizant of the emotional subtext in the room, not to just think about solving problems. I think that the array of great musicians, songwriters and artists that I’ve worked with has provided more of a learning curve than sitting down and studying any particular technique.”
In 1985, Klein notched his first solo production credit with The Lace from Cars singer/bassist Benjamin Orr. Three years later came Mitchell’s Klein-produced Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm. An enlightening session with producer John Robert “Mutt” Lange during work on Adams’ Waking Up The Neighbors became another transformational production encounter. At the same time, Klein’s reputation as a songwriter grew, via memorable co-writing ventures with Bonnie Raitt (“The Fundamental Things”) and Warren Zevon (“Genius,” much of the 2002 classic My Ride’s Here).

In the 1990s, Klein began to be recognized as a simpatico producer of female singer-songwriters, working with critically acclaimed female trailblazers such as Mary Black (Shine, 1997), Shawn Colvin (Fat City, 1994), Julia Fordham (Concrete Love, 2002; That’s Life, 2004) and Peyroux (Careless Love, 2004, which made Newsweek’s year-end Top 10 List). Klein reunited in the studio with Mitchell for 2000’s Both Sides Now, an orchestral reworking of eight standards and Joni classics, and the 2004 double album Travelogue.

“Somewhere along the line, I became known as being supportive of the female singer songwriter,” he says with a bemused laugh. “But all of the women I’ve worked with have been so unique in their own way. Julia has this beautiful kind of blue-eyed soul thing, and Shawn is a killer talent. Madeleine is one of the most genuine and unselfconscious artists that I have ever worked with—the real deal, no artifice.”

Upcoming projects include another ambitious album with Hancock that bears the working title Imagine. “Without getting too heady or didactic about it,” says Klein pausing briefly for another laugh, “we’re trying to do something that braids together poetry and music with players and singers from various traditions around the world, bringing out the correlative aspects of music as a language.”

Klein recently signed a label deal with Verve Records. He and Souza married in 2006; they have one child, son Noah.

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