What’s It Like to Write Songs With Madonna, McCartney, and the Stones?

N o one has ever produced albums by both the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney in the same year before, and those were just a couple of the highlights of Andrew Watt‘s last 12 months. Watt, who’s become music’s leading legend-whisperer, also continued his partnership with Lady Gaga on several new songs, worked on two tracks on Madonna‘s Confessions II, and produced Brandi Carlile’s Returning to Myself. His work with Michael Stipe on the soundtrack song “I Played the Fool’ led to an ongoing collaboration on Stipe’s upcoming solo album.

Watt talked about all of it and more in the latest episode of The Rolling Stone Studio. You can watch the whole conversation above, or read a lightly edited text version below.

Tell me about “Danceteria,” the song you-co-produced with Madonna, and the remix with Charli XCX.
That song, in general, was just an amazing process to make. Talking with Madonna and hanging out with her, she has probably the coolest life of anyone. I’m from New York, so we just got into fun conversations about New York and, like, the scene and all the people that were around her. We started talking about Danceteria, which was the club where it all started for her.

As we were talking about the story of that place, it just became apparent that this should totally be a song. She would tell us, like, you look around and there’s Nile Rodgers and there’s David Byrne. And, like, all of the way that she was just talking about it seemed so cool, and she obviously invented talking on a pop song, right? And so it just felt so cool the way she was just naturally talking about it, so we threw the beat on, and then she started just talking about her life. It’s her origin story, and it’s amazing that it’s on a record, and you can listen to it whenever you want and hear all that. So I think Charli doing her [own] origin story was the cool thing for them being on it together.

I presume they did it separately. That’s how things go these days.
Yeah, Charli recorded her part, but then they worked on the track and the production together, like, for a long time. We all kinda did, going back and forth. They’re both amazing producers. It’s a completely different record than the original. And I actually put them on a text message together to kinda meet and talk before they were ever gonna do a record together, because they just needed to be friends. They’re both so awesome and so cool, and really special people to me in my life. I was at a wedding with Charli, and I was like, “Have you ever met Madonna?”

And she’s like, “No, we don’t know each other.” And so I thought that needed to happen. And then the song was just a natural progression.

What synergy did you see in their production styles as they worked together on it?
Well, they’re both extremely detailed producers. Know exactly what they wanna hear, how something makes them feel. Very technical. Like, turn this up a dB or down, or it needs to be a bit bright, the EQ needs to change here, or the compression’s too strong, or we need a synth here that’s like this, maybe something more of a stab instead of a bass sound.

It’s very, very detailed. It’s so much fun to work with an artist who also is a producer because they know what they want. Sometimes you can be talking about production with anyone that you’re collaborating with, and you have to figure out what they mean in emotional terms, which is your job, you know?

Or, “It makes me feel like this,” or, “I want to feel like that,” and what does that correlate to musically? It’s so awesome when someone’s like, “Actually, it needs to do this,” and they just tell you straight up in technical terms. And the music’s always gonna come out better and, I think, more personal when the artist is also the producer.

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In general, what surprised you about Madonna’s vibe in the studio?
I just loved sitting with her and watching her writing process. She likes to work in small spaces, which I thought was really cool. Watching her process and how detailed she gets with her lyrics and how she’d go home and write and then bring in more the next day.

Probably my favorite part of working with her, there’s this song that we did on the album called “Lower East Side Girl,” and I was just sitting with a guitar, and Stuart [Price] and Cirkut and Madonna were there. It was the four of us. But we kind of went downstairs in the studio while the guys were focused a little bit on the track and the production, and we just sat there with a guitar, and I was playing it, and we were kind of singing it back and forth and just writing lyrics back and forth.

And she’s such an amazing songwriter. And sometimes people like to write their lyrics alone, and she did some of that as well, but writing with her in person and going back and forth and seeing how her mind works was really beautiful. I think it started a friendship between us.

I have a feeling there must have been way more songs with that group of collaborators than just those two songs.
Well, we didn’t work for very long, which was what was cool. I think we had four days in the studio. And we made three songs in the four days, two of which came out. So that’s pretty good. I think we’ll definitely work together again. We’re text buddies now and talk about art and different things, and I just absolutely loved the process of working with her, and whenever she needs me, I’m there.

You obviously have the most insane list of phone contacts. Do you keep people under code names just in case?
Some people get a middle name of Fucking. So Mick Jagger is not Mick Jagger. It’s Mick Fucking Jagger, right? That’s his name.

What was the worst one?
I butt-dialed Keith Richards’ house once, and he does not like the phone. I got called back and you gotta, like, prep yourself to like be on the phone with Keith. It was just calling me back, and it was like, “Hello, you called me.” And it was just weird. It lasted only about, like, two seconds, which most phone calls with him last about 10 seconds, so.

Now, most people love working with you. Tony Iommi said that he didn’t want to make the final Black Sabbath album that you wanted to make because — strange reason — you were too excited about it.
Yeah. That, I think is taken out of context. You know me. I’m definitely an excited musician, a person.

That part I bought.
Yeah, that would be a true statement. But that’s not why it didn’t happen. Ozzy was wanting to continue to work and make stuff. And we were making music, and he had the idea, ’cause we were talking about, “Let’s try and do something a little different than…” The two albums that we made, Ordinary Man and Patient Number 9, were different albums, but they were of the same DNA.

So we’re like, “What could we do that’s different? Do you wanna make something with Tony? Should we make an Osbourne-Iommi album?” We were talking about that, and then he was just like, “Let’s make a Sabbath album.” He’s like, “We didn’t do an album with Bill Ward.” I think looking back at all the stuff he wanted to do, making an album with Bill was really important to him, and this was before Back to the Beginning was happening and everything. I think the idea of doing something with Bill was very, very important. And so one of the first incarnations of that was a potential album. As Ozzy does, [he] gave me the marching orders, “Call Tony. Then you call Geezer. Then you call Bill.” Right? So called Tony. “Would you wanna do it?” “Yeah, that sounds cool, if Bill would do it, yes.”

Geezer, “If Bill would do it, yes.” It was all about, “If Bill would do it, yes.” So then I had to have a conversation with Bill, and that was one of the strangest and funniest and coolest conversations. It was a long conversation. He was speaking in tongues.

Which, now knowing him and being friends with him, makes sense. Long story short, and without going into it too deeply, he was unable to do the album for personal reasons. And there was a nice, beautiful, long e-mail sent to all of us, and I was on an e-mail with the original members of Black Sabbath, which was pretty cool.

Then after we talked, it was like, “OK, Bill can’t do it, and there’s no reason to do it.” I’m sure Tony didn’t feel like going into all of that. Tony’s awesome. He’s a great friend to me. He’s a great mentor. We made a couple songs together on Ozzy’s album and had an amazing time working together.

I was definitely excited about the fact that it was going and everything, but that wasn’t the reason why we didn’t make the album.

Fair enough.
I think he’s just taking the piss. Which anyone that wants to do that with me, they absolutely should.

I’ve heard there is some unreleased Ozzy stuff. Is there anything that you can say about that?
There are some songs that we made for a specific reason. And yeah, that’s all I can say. They’re hard for me to listen to. I haven’t listened to them.

I’m sure. Any plans for them that you know of?
Kind of. Back to the Beginning, the night before the concert, I actually went in Birmingham with Sharon and a couple of people to go get a curry, and I was texting with Ozzy, who was in his hotel room, and he was like, “Come to the hotel, come to the hotel.”

I was sitting with Sharon, and we were both like, “He has a big day tomorrow. Like, maybe I shouldn’t go ’cause he’ll get excited and everything.” But he was like, “No, you’re coming to the hotel. You are coming.” So I went, I brought a curry with me, and sat with him, and he was drawing like he usually does, and we sat and we listened to the stuff that we had made, and made notes.

And that and the next day were the last times I got to see him. But we had a beautiful listening session and talked about a lot of stuff. It’s hard to think about, but I miss him every day.

I love what he told you about bass in rock & roll.
I take it with me all the time. It’s really true. He asked me, “What’s the loudest thing in a Led Zeppelin album?” I just said, John Bonham. Ozzy said it’s the bass: “The most important part in a rock & roll mix is the bass.” He had so many things he taught me about.

And if Ozzy Osbourne chose you, he gave you a career. I mean, he did it over and over and over again. I always loved rock music, but I was a pop producer before he chose to let me stand next to him and work with him, and then I got to do all these amazing things after. But he was the first one, and he chose Randy Rhoads. ‘Cause he chose Zakk Wylde, Jake E. Lee, and then even you get to, like, now currently, Yungblud.

Like, Yungblud was on an amazing path before the Back to the Beginning concert, but Ozzy chose “Changes” for him to sing and loved Dom as a person and what he was doing as an artist and brought him out there, and he sang that song, and it changed his life.

You made a great song with Michael Stipe, “I Played the Fool,” and now you’re working on his new album. How did you end up with Stipe in the first place?
We met through Elton John. We actually went to go see a play that Elton had done the music for, and we sat next to each other. Talked as much as you can during an intermission where you’re watching a play. We also had to be extremely attentive — we were both sitting right next to Elton, so we’re listening to every piece.

I was scoring the show Rooster, which is made by Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses. Bill is my future father-in-law. I’m engaged to his daughter, Charlotte. And so we wanted to do something fun together, so I thought, “I’ll score one of your shows,” and this one really made sense, and it’s based around Steve Carell, and his character is a writer who comes to a college campus to kinda save his daughter, who’s going through some stuff, so he takes a guest-in-residence job. The sound of the show kinda became the musical sounds of bands that Steve, his character, Rooster, would’ve been listening to when he went to college — because he doesn’t go for this reason, but he ends up reliving his college experience.

When we were talking about the great Eighties American college bands, R.E.M. was the first one that came up, and both Bill and Matt’s favorite band is R.E.M., so there was a personal thing involved as well. So when that started happening, I was like, “I actually just met Michael this year, and so let me see if I can get in touch with him.”

So I asked Elton to put us in touch, and Michael says he answered because Elton’s never gave his phone number to anyone else ever. And so we met and hit it off and started working on this thing. And yeah, he’s become an awesome friend. I’m gonna see him later today, actually.

Michael has been working on a solo album for a really long time. It seems like he hasn’t wanted to get to the finish line. What is your sense of that?
I don’t think that’s the case. He, as all great artists are, he’s extremely hard on himself. He works really hard at his craft, and he kinda beats himself up, I think, in a healthy way.

I’ve seen him write lyrics, throw them out, write them again, do all his own merit, you know? So I think he is wanting to make sure that he is gonna say exactly what he wants to say, and make a sound that’s exactly how he wants it to sound.

One of the things that he said is that he really misses — with R.E.M., they wrote beds of music, and he sang over them. So I think part of the challenge is to figure out what can substitute for that.
Yeah, the key is he’s working with a bunch of different people, so… And it’s exactly that. Different flavors of different beds, and then finding his way around them, but he’s one of the all-time greats, great songwriter, great lyricist, great melodist. And really fun to be around.

The McCartney album is very adventurous in a lot of its choices. It’s very produced. In addition to some tight folky songs, there’s some great Wings-like guitar excursions, really letting him go out there. How much of that was his idea, and how much was you nudging him a little bit?
Well, what was really cool about that record is it was just the two of us. Like, the whole time. So we’d just be bouncing off of each other. He is a hundred-percenter, which there are very few of. Can play every instrument, can mix, can produce, write every word, write every melody. Write all the chords. I mean, he does 100 percent of it.

His choice to have a producer is not out of necessity. It’s out of desire. So he likes to bounce off someone sometimes. I got the incredible honor of taking that role this time around. We would just have fun in the studio. Sometimes things would start from nowhere, which is not a common thing for him.

The way the Beatles would work, they would have songs that they’d write. They’d go over them at Paul’s place, which is around the corner from the studio, Abbey Road, and have a coffee and a cigarette in Paul’s garden, go over the songs, go over to the studio. There’d be one session in the morning for however long it was.

They’d take a break, and then they’d do the other session. I think they’re two, three-hour blocks or whatever. They’d take them both. They’d record two songs a day, and that’s how the Beatles made their music. His process is not, “Let’s go into the studio with nothing and see what happens” a lot.

And we got to do that here a little bit. So that’s how we ended up actually writing a couple of things together ’cause the guitars would come out, and we’d get on a thing. We’d get on a tangent and follow it down. There was never a point until, like, the last, like, two or three months in the five years that we spent working together where we were like, “OK, we’re making an album.”

It would just be like, “Hey, Andrew, I’m coming to L.A. at this time. Do you have a couple weeks to just kinda mess around?” And that’s what we would do. And we’d collect songs, and then we started working on some of the things that he had already started and everything, and then it kinda just turned into this natural, natural thing.

But working with him is like going to college. You know? Every time I’d get those couple weeks with him, I’d be a better musician, a better producer. I’d have more chord knowledge. Right after you work with Paul, you’re like, “OK, I’m ready to get right back in the studio” because, like, you’re better. You know? And then that eventually goes away because you’re not spending as much time with him.

When you have that incredibly rare privilege of sitting across from Paul McCartney and making a song from scratch, what do you learn about the essence of his creativity?
His process is amazing. Him being around a collaborator is cool. His time alone is extremely important. Tucking away, often in a small space and writing, taking stuff home and writing in the morning. He’s fearless. And our whole collaboration started from, we were having tea. We were introduced by his manager, and he went to tell me, “You know, you can write a song out of anything.”

And he went to go grab a guitar. He’s like, “Oh, you only have righty guitars.” And I actually had some lefties brought over….

Just in case, right?
Yeah. I woke up in a sweat the night before thinking, “What if he wants a guitar? What’s gonna happen?” I didn’t have any lefties. So—

But see, this is part of why you’re where you are, because you thought of that.
I thought of it at the last second. Barely thought of it. Gave him a lefty. He played this weird chord, and then he’s kind of giggling to himself in a boyish way. It was such a weird chord that he had to resolve it. And once he resolved the chord, it was time to go to a third chord, and then the guitars came out, and we kind of—

And that’s the opening track of the album.
That’s the opening track of the album. “As You Lie There.” And so that song was so much fun. Once that was there, it was kind of like, OK, let’s use the studio in all these fun ways, and he was kind of, like, teaching me the way he works. That was the point. It was like, you can write a song out of anything, and then sometimes you switch it up and go to a weird thing. It changes form a million different times, that song. And then it goes to a rock section. Then it goes to a bluesy guitar section. You know? It was kind of like, let me show you how we can use the studio. That’s how that song kinda came together. 

And all of a sudden you realize why he’s the guy who made “Uncle Albert” and the Abbey Road medley and all this stuff.
He loves playing characters, even, like, “Rocky Raccoon.” Who’s that guy? You know? He loves to play different characters and do voices, and his imagination is unlike anyone else’s. Like Mozart, you know? Bouncing around the studio and playing every different instrument, watching him do that, watching him know to play the cymbals quieter than the snare drum.

I asked him why he did that. He’s like, “So that you could crank the overheads, and it’s gonna sound great, and you’re not gonna be, you know, bashing people in the head with cymbals.” He’s thinking about all that stuff. Watching him arrange background vocals, which he does either at the piano or with a guitar in his hand at the mic, and goes through the note and sings it, and is really choosing the notes and arranging them.

He’s incredible at coming up with the perfect part on every different instrument and not making you feel like he played any instrument worse than the other. I mean, it just sounds like someone who’s a master on each instrument. Sounds like a band.

The Stones album is also incredible, in a very different way. Paul is kind of addressing mortality and looking back, whereas Mick and Keith and Ron sound immortal — libidinous and alive, as if they’re gonna go on forever. How do you even make sense of the amount of energy they bring?
It’s a trippy thing to think about, right? Because for us, rock & roll’s been in our life forever, but in the history of music, it’s not that old of a genre. The Stones guys, they wanna rock. That’s what they wanna do. They want it to be loud, and get in the studio, and have drums, and push the tempos. And as with all bands that we love, it’s not about one person.

It’s the sum of all parts. You can listen to a Keith Richards solo album, they’re awesome. You listen to Mick’s solo albums, they’re awesome. Or Ronnie’s solo albums, there’s songs on there I love. When those three guys play together, the roof leaves the building.

It’s something that doesn’t sound like anything else in how they interpret each other and how they play off of each other. When I made those records, I would always be in the live room while the band tracked, kind of as far from Keith as I am from you, and Mick kinda right in front, and be in that circle so I could watch how they’re interplaying with each other and what they’re doing.

It helped me so much to understand, like, the chords and what they’re playing, and to be able to help arrange things as they were happening. And you don’t want it to ever be an arduous process with a band like that. They’re magic. If you’ve seen a Stones show, you see what happens when they hit a magic moment. It’s like, you wanna be able to help that happen as quick as possible when they’re playing a song. So my job would be to have a mic like this and call sections. “B section.” That one’s—

The conductor.
Yeah, try and not get [my voice] into the overheads too much, and like, they kinda look up and switch, you know?

And, “OK, let’s go back to the A section. Take it out on that,” you know? And like, to make codas and stuff like that. So it would just be kind of, they’re playing the tune that they made and I’m arranging it as it’s happening in the moment.

Kind of amazing. If you had to guess, will there be another Stones album?
I don’t know. I don’t know. I didn’t know if there was gonna be another one after the first one. If they call, I’m there. It’s the greatest honor of my life being around that band.

You’ve worked with so many great people, so many of your heroes. Where does that leave you as far as goals?
I don’t ever really think like that. I’ve been so blessed to meet all these amazing people, and that turns into us working together. The artists that I’ve worked with has been a natural progression of meeting them and it making sense for us to work together. So I’m never really, like, going after someone or something like that. Things come into my life, and then I think about how amazing it would be to work with that person. But yeah, my antenna is open as always.

I think a lot of what you do is cross-pollinate. You’re bringing things from pop into rock, and vice versa, into K-pop, into whatever. You’re planting seeds, bringing sounds and people together. That seems like your overall thing.
Yeah. I will say this, pop music is in a great place right now. You’re seeing the rise of all of these amazing pop girls coming back. It’s always been a big part of mainstream music, but there’s a lot of new artists breaking, and so that’s really exciting to me, too. I’ve been having fun making some pop music again, which I’m always doing as I’m making rock records as well. A part of the fun of my job is to get to work in all these different genres, but I’m really excited about what I’m hearing in pop music right now.

Your collaboration with Gaga is obviously ongoing. You did “The Dead Dance,” you did all those songs for The Devil Wears Prada 2. Tell me about those ongoing sessions. What’s it like to go back with her?
Greatest feeling in the world is, like, when you make a project with an artist, it ends, and everyone’s sad, and you’re gonna miss each other, and then they call you back, and they’re like, “Let’s make more stuff.” You feel so great about yourself because that means they enjoyed working with you, they enjoyed the process.

She and I are from the same place. We’re from New York. We both grew up playing in the Bitter End, and were walking in the same streets, and in the same scenes a couple years apart. And so our foundation of music and our references are very aligned. So it feels like my sister, you know? Like my older sister, couple years older than me. When we sit, we break a song down, even when it’s an electronic song, and I’m on the guitar and she’s on the piano, sitting head-to-head and going through the song, it’s one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. It’s brought me to tears multiple times. It’s awesome.

Do you have a sense of when you’re working with her again?
No. We’re in touch all the time, and it’s the same kinda thing. Whenever she sounds the bell, I’ll be there.

How do you work out the priority thing? What if Mick and Paul and Gaga all want you on the same day? What the hell do you do?
It’s happened. You hold on, you breathe, and you figure out a way to make it all work. I find that if you are transparent always — it’s a big thing for me, transparency, especially in the music business. There’s so many people that are not that way.

And honest. You’re not lying to them.
Yeah, that’s what I mean. People seem to react to that, and will follow you, and they’ll tell you when they really need you. And other people will be like, “Yeah, it’s OK. Well, let’s do it tomorrow,” whatever, you know? Or then there’s sometimes when everyone wants you at the same time, and then it gets fucked. But there’s always a way through it if you’re transparent and honest and real.

We were talking about cross-pollinating. What do you see in these veteran rock stars, and what do you see in the young pop stars you work with? What are the chief things you think they can learn from each other?
They’re all different. And everyone works differently. And so you take something from that project, then you bring it into your next project. It’s just, like, natural. A great example of that for me was when I was working on the first Stones album, I had, like, a week off, and then we started the Pearl Jam album. And Keith had just showed me how to play in open G tuning and, like, gave me basically lessons and was like, “This is how you do it.”

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And I started writing like that in my own way. And then he was, like, laughing. He was like, “You’re off to the races,” you know? And then I was able to take being able to play like that into Pearl Jam, and then there’s a song on the album that ended up in open G called “Wreckage,” that was directly influenced from learning open G tuning from the Stones.

And then that was just, like, a cool thing, you know? Learning how to record bands and capturing live energy is something that I try to bring into the pop music that I make. And the idea of performance-based music all the way through, not flying loops. That’s great, too. I do that all the time. Love doing that, but music that’s performed top-down does a different thing to you. So I try to incorporate that into the pop music and electronic music that I make as well.

Andrew Watt talks about working with the world’s biggest artists in an episode of The Rolling Stone Studio