producer’s cut: Susan Rogers

By Aki Sanjay

In November 1984, the Purple Rain Tour opened at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena, marking the start of Prince’s 98-show arena tour. The tour came on the heels of the hit album Purple Rain, which remained on the Billboard 200 Chart for over six months, thrusting Prince into a bright, all-encompassing spotlight. However, although the charismatic frontman may have captured the eyes (& hearts) of many, another force was at play behind-the-scenes, making sure each song, at each show, ran perfectly.

Born and raised in southern California, Susan Rogers grew up collecting records, listening to records, and dreaming of one day working with records. “I was never interested in becoming a singer, songwriter, performer,” Susan shared in an interview with PRM, “Nor did I have any desire to be a record executive. Maybe a disc jockey.” Records, however, were Rogers’ passion: at age eight, she was gifted Sonny and Cher’s debut album Look at Us. On the back cover, alongside the musicians who played on the record, was a photo of recording engineer Stan Ross. Rogers immediately saw her future. “Something just clicked in my mind,” she said, “and I thought - that feels right. That’s for me.”

Rogers’ path to record-making was not straightforward. At twenty, she was still in California, working in the Biomedical field and trapped in an abusive marriage. However, after watching Led Zeppelin perform at the LA Forum in 1977, Rogers knew she had to leave. By the next year, in a quest to pursue her musical dream, she moved to Hollywood, and took a job with the Audio Industries Corporation. By day, she worked as a maintenance technician, repairing tape machines, installing studios, and fixing consoles. In her free time, she studied audio electronics and basic electronics theory, slowly learning the ins and outs of the studio.

In 1981, Rogers found her first big break with Rudy Records, owned by Graham Nash and David Crosby. Production quickly became her passion; in an interview with Tapeop, she reflected on her early days in the field. “I was starting to see how it worked,” she shared, “learning to listen to music as it comes together, and learning to develop the decision criterion for what constitutes a ‘perfect take.’” No genre was off-limits: Rogers worked with soul and new wave; rock and rap; drum machines, horns, strings, and synthesizers. Music became a puzzle to solve, and each new piece intrigued Rogers further.

Rogers worked with Rudy Records for two years, assisting on records for Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Bonnie Rabbit, and the Eagles, amongst several other groups. However, soul music was her true passion. In 1983, Rogers received a call from an old boyfriend, who directed her to a job as an audio technician for Prince. Within weeks, Rogers had secured the job, and begun work as a full-time studio engineer.

Working with Prince, as Rogers described, consisted of early mornings, late nights, and a shared love of music. “It didn’t matter if it was 18 hours a day, 24 hours straight, or even longer,” Rogers laughed. “I could hang, which made me a good fit for him.” The two recorded Purple Rain in a small wood-panelled warehouse in the southwest of Minneapolis: tracks that would eventually become ‘When Doves Cry’, ‘Let’s Go Crazy’, and the eponymous title track. Recording in the warehouse presented a unique set of challenges: sounds were never heard in isolation, muddying the tracks and forcing Rogers to adapt rapidly. The resulting record was a global hit.

While Rogers left Prince’s full-time employ in 1987, she continued her journey in music production for several years, working with artists such as Mavis Staples, Sheena Easton, and Patti LaBelle. However, she soon realised that she was outgrowing the job. “Record producing is a youth-oriented profession,” she claimed in an interview with the Berklee School of Music. “Most producers are making records that are consumed by younger people. When I was in my mid-40s, I was making records for a college audience, mostly alternative rock - I’d reached a point where I was no longer listening to the records that I was making.”

Rogers decided to leave the music industry, turning instead to university. In 2000, she enrolled at the University of Minnesota as a freshman, and then completed her graduate studies at McGill, focussing on music perception and cognition. Combining her expertise in production with her early career in the sciences, Rogers dove into the psycho- and neurological perspective of music: the “what, where, how, when, and why of human musical experience.”

Currently, Rogers works as a professor at the Berklee School of Music, teaching Music Production and Engineering. Although she no longer actively works within the music industry, her impact and legacy is undeniable: her touch remains on some of the most iconic records of the last century, inspiring generations of new musicians and producers to, as Rogers once did, fall in love with records.