Behind The Music
He’s made albums with the Stones, Sir Elton, Iggy and more, but who exactly is go-to producer to the elite Andrew Watt?
Star Wattage: Andrew Watt in Sunset Sound studio, LA, October 2023.
AS IF FURTHER proof were needed that Andrew Watt is currently the most in-demand record producer on the planet, MOJO’s hour-long call with the 34-year-old New Yorker is almost interrupted more than once by one of his most famous charges, Elton John.
“He’s tried to FaceTime me about six times since you and I have been doing this interview,” Watt laughs. “I have to keep pressing the red button on him.”
Watt is talking while driving between Italy and France, on a rare vacation (since last September, he claims he hasn’t taken “even a fucking weekend” off). If his current production CV is impressive – catalogue-refreshing, elixir of youth-supping albums by The Rolling Stones, Elton/Brandi Carlile, Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop and Pearl Jam, pop success with Lady Gaga and Post Malone, ongoing work on the upcoming Paul McCartney record – his rapid career ascent has surely been dizzying. He admits he’s still acclimatising to life in the starry firmament.
“Paul said, ‘I just fucking played bass in The Rolling Stones, and I’m a fucking Beatle!”
ANDREW WATT
“‘Why do they want me?’ That’s hard for me to think about,” he confesses. “Sometimes you get imposter syndrome a little bit, but all I can say is that, y’know, I love these artists.”
A top-flight production career certainly wasn’t in his plans. Having grown up in Long Island’s Great Neck versed in rock classics and playing in bar bands, he became a guitarist for Australian pop artist Cody Simpson, through whom he met Justin Bieber, leading to his first co-written 2016 hit, Bieber’s Let Me Love You. Subsequent work with Post Malone, Lana Del Rey and – side-stepping into rock – his production of Ozzy Osbourne’s 2020 LP Ordinary Man led to a Producer Of The Year Grammy win in 2021.
The next thing, Paul McCartney was coming to his Beverly Hills studio for tea. Watt confesses that, the night before, he woke up in a cold sweat, realising he had no left-handed guitars should McCartney fancy playing. That morning, he hired a Hofner violin bass, Epiphone Casino and late-’60s-era Martin D-28 acoustic. When Watt asked Macca to teach him his finger-picking technique on Blackbird, he was able to hand him the Martin.
“He picked up the lefty guitar, and an hour later, we were writing a song,” says the producer. “You just always have to be ready because you never know what’s going to happen.”
From left: Watt with collaborators Mick Jagger, Elton John and Paul McCartney
Sometime later, over lunch, McCartney recommended Watt to Ronnie Wood, leading to Watt’s overseeing of the Stones’ Hackney Diamonds. “Paul McCartney got me the gig for The Rolling Stones!” he enthuses now, disbelievingly. “I mean, that sounds like a fake-ass dream.”
Still, Watt wasn’t thrown by the challenge. During the Stones sessions at Henson Studios in LA, the producer ended up playing bass on a number of songs (and co-writing three). “It’s not me pushing in and just inserting myself,” he insists. “Sometimes there wasn’t a bass player present.”
In addition, in the old school tradition of the ‘executive producer’, Watt brought in two of his other clients, Gaga and McCartney, for appearances on the album – the latter contributing thrillingly fuzzy low-end to Bite My Head Off. “He got to just be the bass player in the band, and he fucking loved it. As I was walking Paul out of the studio, he said, ‘I just fucking played bass in The Rolling Stones, and I’m a fucking Beatle!’”
Playing ball with Iggy Pop and Chili Pepper Flea.
When MOJO spoke to the Stones in 2023, Jagger explained that part of Watt’s appeal was his understanding of modern streaming platforms and his promise to help the band navigate them. Some critics of Hackney Diamonds, however, felt that Watt’s production sacrificed vintage, analogue warmth for Spotify-friendly digital punch.
“I mean, I use it all,” he retorts. “I use tape machines, I use digital. But we mixed it a little louder than maybe older records are and, y’know, a little more in-your-face… to make them more upfront, so that when you’re listening to a Travis Scott song and then a Rolling Stones song comes on right after it, it sounds at a competitive level.”
Significantly, Watt managed to push the Stones’ first album in 18 years over the line. He’s able to get records made, even if the process involves gnarly moments. As captured on in-the-studio video, he even managed to cope with one of Elton John’s legendary tantrums while recording 2025 Brandi Carlile collab, Who Believes In Angels?. At one point, an exasperated Elton, sat at the piano, ripped up his lyrics sheet and trashed a pair of headphones. Watt remained unflappable.
“I’ve seen the behaviour before,” he says. “I’d never had it directed at me. But I really understand the process of a genius at work that is frustrated. And I moved through it with him as slow as I could, but tried to stay strong, and I never take anything personally.”
Watt with his Grammy for Best Rock Album for his work on Ozzy Osbourne’s Patient Number 9
Today, Watt is circumspect about the details of the long-gestated McCartney album (“That’s something you have to talk to Paul about”) and his helming of Morrissey’s Capitol Records contract-busting and yet-to-appear Bonfire Of Teenagers (which the singer now holds the rights to). “I don’t know what’s happening,” he carefully avers. “I just leave it to Moz. It was awesome. Another master at work, y’know? We don’t make art for it to sit on a hard drive.”
As to his own growing fame, Watt tells MOJO that he has a solo album half-finished but is for the moment content with performing alongside Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith in their “high-level cover band”, the Smith & Watt Steakhouse – whose summer 2024 appearance at a small New York venue saw Macca get up and sing I Saw Her Standing There. “A bar with 200 people got to watch Paul do his thing,” he says. “It was amazing.”
Ultimately, Watt is keenly aware that his hot streak could end any day, and is determined to make the most of it.
“If Mick Jagger’s dancing in the control room, then I’m doing my fucking job,” he stresses. “I’m so lucky to be in the room, and I’m gonna work harder than anyone else to stay in that room.”
Tom Doyle
Courtesy of Andrew Watt, Adali Schell, Danny Clinch, Getty Images