Terry Brown (record producer)

Terry Brown is a British record producer involved in a variety of work. He has been noted for his collaboration with the Canadian rock band Rush. Brown produced every album by the band from Fly by Night (1975) up to Signals (1982).^[1] He was also involved with the English pop rock band Cutting Crew and the Canadian progressive rock band Klaatu.^[2]

Brown began his career at Olympic Studios in the mid-1960s, working as one of Keith Grant's tape ops. His first engineering credit was on the Who's single "Substitute".^[2] He next worked at Lansdowne Studios, where he worked with Adrian Kerridge. At Lansdowne, Brown engineered such songs as Donovan's "Mellow Yellow" and Procol Harum's "Homburg".^[2] In 1967, while overseeing the construction of Morgan Studios, Brown again worked at Olympic. Doug Riley came to the studio to record a commercial for Labatt 50, and the two hit it off. Brown later went to Canada to help re-record the commercial, and he and Riley decided to open a recording studio, co-founding Toronto Sound Studios in 1969.^[2]

In 1973, Rush utilized Toronto Sound Studios to record portions of their debut studio album, with Brown recording "Finding My Way" and mixing the album. The band continued to work with Brown at Toronto Sound for its next three albums, Fly by Night (1975), Caress of Steel (1975), and 2112 (1976). Other albums recorded at the studio included April Wine's Electric Jewels (1973).

Faced with rising competition, Toronto Sound Studios closed in 1978,^[2] but even as Rush recorded subsequent albums at other studios, they continued to work with Brown as co-producer on every album through Signals (1982). Brown's contributions on Rush albums included not only engineering and production, but also as a musician, arranger, and background harmony singer.^[3]

Rush refers to Brown fondly as "Broon" in the liner notes for their albums,^[4] and the nickname appears in the title of the instrumental piece "Broon's Bane" from their live album Exit...Stage Left. On this same record, Geddy Lee jokingly introduces the song "Jacob's Ladder" as having been written by "T. C. Broonsie", another reference to Brown and a pun on the name of Big Bill Broonzy.

In the 1990s while working at Metalworks Studios in Toronto, Brown recorded Fates Warning's Parallels and Voivod's Angel Rat, and again worked with Fates Warning on A Pleasant Shade of Gray. He also produced vocals on the Dream Theater album Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory, and appears as the uncredited voice of the hypnotist on that album.^[1]

Brown has also engineered, produced or mixed for many other artists, including Silent Running, Sonny and Cher, Kenny Rogers, Traffic, Joe Cocker, The Who, Procol Harum, The Troggs, Manfred Mann, Marianne Faithfull, Spencer Davis Group, Donovan, Barbra Streisand, Blue Rodeo, Max Webster, Klaatu, Thundermug, Lizzy Borden, Ray Stevens, the Bonzo Dog Band, Motherlode, Dr. Music, April Wine, The Stampeders, Michel Pagliaro, Moe Koffman, Alannah Myles, B.B. Gabor, Cirque du Soleil, Dream Theater, Lawrence Gowan, Rough Trade, The Killjoys, FM, Toronto, Ian Thomas, Moist, and Tiles.^[1][5]

• Terry Brown official website