How a 'pot-smoking, acid-gobbling smart-arse' became the producer behind some of Australia's greatest music

• Or maybe this excellent memoir by engineer and producer Tony Cohen, who died in 2017, will fling him into the spotlight.
• Cohen, who was mostly Melbourne-based, made an astonishing contribution to Australian recorded music in the 70s and 80s.
• The gist of the stories was pure, even if the dates might have needed a bit of research on Olson’s part.
• Read more:
  'A gentleman with the mad soul of an Irish convict poet': remembering Chris Bailey, and the blazing comet that was The Saints

‘Turn it up a bit more!’

• Working as an assistant, cleaning toilets and getting coffees, he was 15 and he had a job!
• In the first week he was paid $17 – “I was so young I spent it on lollies.
• I was up myself: a pot-smoking, acid-gobbling smart-arse who thought he knew it all.
• This time at Armstrong’s was informative, not just in learning what to do, but what not to do.
• And he talks a bit about Molly [Meldrum], which people will probably be surprised to read.” Cohen’s regard for Molly Meldrum is clear.

A strange, scrambled method

• He was daring to do different things, and there was a bit of "Fuck you!” to what the normal music benchmarks were.
• He was daring to do different things, and there was a bit of "Fuck you!” to what the normal music benchmarks were.
• He didn’t care that I wanted to tune my drums differently, it was all cool.
• Cohen wrote:
  I’ve got a strange, scrambled way of working.
• I know how to use most pieces of equipment, but I don’t necessarily know what they do or why they do it.
• I’ve got a strange, scrambled way of working.
• He was a master at both what not to do in the studio and what to do in the studio.