Watt Spills on Year With McCartney, Stones, Elton, Stipe — SkimNews
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- Andrew Watt produced Paul McCartney's 'The Boys of Dungeon Lane,' the Rolling Stones' 'Foreign Tongues,' two songs on Madonna's 'Confessions II,' and co-produced Brandi Carlile's 'Returning to Myself' in a single year
- Watt is making a new Elton John album using an inverted songwriting workflow — Elton improvises melodies to drum tracks first, then Bernie Taupin writes lyrics after hearing them, with final lyrics displayed on a screen for Elton to scan and place
- Watt played matchmaker between Madonna and Charli XCX via text after meeting Charli at a wedding; the conversation led to Charli recording the 'Danceteria' remix, which Watt calls 'a completely different record than the original'
- Watt arranged Rolling Stones tracks in real-time during live band tracking, calling out song sections ('A section,' 'B section') from the center of the room while the band played
- Watt is co-writing and co-producing Michael Stipe's long-awaited solo debut, including the track 'I Played the Fool'; Stipe is described as 'extremely hard on himself,' discarding and rewriting lyrics across multiple collaborator sessions
- Watt confirms a planned Black Sabbath reunion album died after drummer Bill Ward 'was unable to do the album for personal reasons,' despite Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Ozzy Osbourne all conditionally agreeing — Iommi's public claim that Watt was 'too excited' is dismissed as 'taking the piss'
- Watt confirms he worked on unreleased Ozzy Osbourne songs and that they listened to the recordings together the night before Osbourne's final concert — 'the last times I got to see him'
Why it matters: Elton John's vision loss has forced a complete reversal of his lyric-first songwriting method — Watt and Bernie Taupin now build tracks around Elton's improvised melodies rather than the lyric-first process Elton has used for decades. The interview also confirms Bill Ward's 'personal reasons' unavailability killed a planned Black Sabbath reunion, and reveals unreleased Ozzy Osbourne recordings from the night before his final concert.
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