Paul Staveley O'Duffy
Encyclopedia
Paul O’Duffy is a British record producer, composer, mixer. He is best known for producing Swing Out Sister
's Grammy-nominated multi-platinum debut album, for his BMI nomination as 'Producer of the Year' in 1987, and work with John Barry
and other film score producing. More recently he worked with Amy Winehouse
, co-writing one of the tracks on her multi-platinum album Back to Black
.
, Yes
and Marvin Gaye
. He moved to New York in 1984, establishing himself as a club remix
er working on remixes for artists such as KC and The Sunshine Band
, Man Parrish
, Stephanie Mills
, The System
, Animotion
, The Bar-Kays, Patti Labelle
, Ian Dury and the Blockheads and Freeze.
which included the top twenty hit on both sides of the Atlantic, "Honeythief". He followed this up with production on the number one platinum selling debut album by Curiosity Killed the Cat
Keep Your Distance.
His BMI nomination for Producer of the Year in 1987 came from his work on the multi-platinum debut album It's Better To Travel by Manchester group Swing Out Sister
, which included the worldwide hit "Breakout
". The album was also nominated in the US for a Grammy Award
and led to more work for him and his distinctive retro sound with US acts.
One of these was eccentric Pop R&B group Was Not Was with the resulting worldwide hits "Walk The Dinosaur" , "Spy In The House Of Love" and platinum selling album What Up, Dog?
. At the other end of the spectrum O’Duffy produced one of Barry Manilow
’s last chart hits "Keep Each Other Warm" from his eponymous album Barry Manilow, in which he recorded other artists’ songs using a variety of top producers.
O’Duffy additionally produced and mixed Tom Verlaine
’s (Television) critically acclaimed solo album Flash Light in 1987.
Starting in 2009, he is producing John Barry's orchestral album, "The Seasons".
) as well as production for Dusty Springfield
on her album Reputation, which became Springfield's best-selling new album since her '60s-era peak. He produced the Pretenders' "If There Was a Man" and "Where Has Everybody Gone?", as well as Necros
, Frankie Goes to Hollywood
, Jeff Beck
, Lisa Stansfield
, Danny Wilson, The Beloved
, John Barry
, the eponymous debut album by Lewis Taylor
, Joe Meek
and Pigeonhead.
when a car cut across his lane and ran him down. His back was broken in two places, and he spent many months in traction and several years in recovery. His motorcycle, a Ducati 888
SP5 limited edition which had been given to him by his then management team, was repaired and presented back to him after a chance meeting with Federico Minoli then-head of Ducati worldwide at the Houses of Parliament. Now fully recovered after further surgery to fuse his back, O’Duffy is back racing in Seniors races.
During the first three years after the accident, O’Duffy worked almost exclusively out of the substantial studio he had built at his home in North London. It was here that Amy Winehouse
came to spend a month in 2007 to work on tracks for what became the Back to Black
album, which features the O’Duffy/Winehouse song "Wake up Alone".
score for 007 film The Living Daylights
(winner, 1988 BMI Film Music Award).
Further work with Barry continued, including in 1992 the movie Chaplin starring Robert Downey Jr, for which Barry was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe. Recently O’Duffy worked with John Barry on his UK concerts at the Albert Hall
.
O’Duffy produced the Hans Zimmer
score for the film Days of Thunder
(winner, 1991 BMI Film Music Award), and is infamous for his unique treatment of the version of "All By Myself
" used in the film Bridget Jones Diary. He also produced the Dr Calculus track "Full of Love" for the 1988 Kevin Bacon
film She’s Having a Baby.
O’Duffy is also a well-known composer for television, having composed the themes and incidental music for: The Team - A Season With Mclaren (BBC2 series) The Great Outdoors (Channel 4 series) The Big Elsewhere (with Swing Out Sister, NHK Japan series) London Bridge (Carlton TV drama series).
Swing Out Sister
Swing Out Sister are a British "sophisti-pop" group best known worldwide for their 1986 song "Breakout". Other hits include "Surrender", "Twilight World", "Waiting Game" and a remake of "Am I the Same Girl?" Though album sales in the U.S. and Europe have levelled off since the early 1990s, the...
's Grammy-nominated multi-platinum debut album, for his BMI nomination as 'Producer of the Year' in 1987, and work with John Barry
John Barry (composer)
John Barry Prendergast, OBE was an English conductor and composer of film music. He is best known for composing the soundtracks for 12 of the James Bond films between 1962 and 1987...
and other film score producing. More recently he worked with Amy Winehouse
Amy Winehouse
Amy Jade Winehouse was an English singer-songwriter known for her powerful deep contralto vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres including R&B, soul and jazz. Winehouse's 2003 debut album, Frank, was critically successful in the UK and was nominated for the Mercury Prize...
, co-writing one of the tracks on her multi-platinum album Back to Black
Back to Black
Back to Black is the second studio album by English recording artist Amy Winehouse, released on 27 October 2006 by Island Records. It is the last album released in her lifetime. The album incorporates 1960s soul music styles and modern R&B production, with subjective lyrics that concern...
.
Mixer / engineer
O’Duffy started out his music career at Marcus Music Studios London, and by the age of 17 was engineering sessions for WarWar (band)
War is an American funk band from California, known for the hit songs "Low Rider", "Spill the Wine", "The Cisco Kid" and "Why Can't We Be Friends?". Formed in 1969, War was a musical crossover band which fused elements of rock, funk, jazz, Latin, rhythm and blues, and reggae...
, Yes
Yes (band)
Yes are an English rock band who achieved worldwide success with their progressive, art, and symphonic style of rock music. Regarded as one of the pioneers of the progressive genre, Yes are known for their lengthy songs, mystical lyrics, elaborate album art, and live stage sets...
and Marvin Gaye
Marvin Gaye
Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. , better known by his stage name Marvin Gaye, was an American singer-songwriter and musician with a three-octave vocal range....
. He moved to New York in 1984, establishing himself as a club remix
Remix
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
er working on remixes for artists such as KC and The Sunshine Band
KC and the Sunshine Band
KC and the Sunshine Band is an American musical group. Founded in 1973 in Miami, Florida, their style has included funk, R&B, and disco. Their most well known songs include the disco hits "That's the Way ", " Shake Your Booty", "I'm Your Boogie Man", "Keep It Comin' Love", "Get Down Tonight", "Give...
, Man Parrish
Man Parrish
Man Parrish is an American composer, songwriter, vocalist and producer. He, along with artists such as Yellow Magic Orchestra, Kraftwerk, Art of Noise, Arthur Baker, Afrika Bambaataa, John Robie, Jellybean Benitez and Aldo Marin helped create and define electro in the early 1980s...
, Stephanie Mills
Stephanie Mills
Stephanie Dorthea Mills is an American R&B and soul singer, and a former Broadway star.-Career:Mills began her career appearing in her first play at the age of nine. Two years later, Mills won Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater a record six times...
, The System
The System (band)
The System was an American synth pop duo consisting of vocalist/guitarist Mic Murphy and seasoned session keyboardist David Frank. The band was founded in 1982 in New York and backed up by Paul Pesco on electric guitar and Kris Khellow - keyboards, synthesizers.Sometimes the group is referred to...
, Animotion
Animotion
Animotion is a 1980s U.S. New Wave/synthpop band from Los Angeles, California best known for their songs "Obsession" , "Let Him Go", "I Engineer" and "Room to Move"...
, The Bar-Kays, Patti Labelle
Patti LaBelle
Patricia Louise Holte-Edwards , better known under the stage name, Patti LaBelle, is a Grammy Award winning American singer, author and actress who has spent over 50 years in the music industry...
, Ian Dury and the Blockheads and Freeze.
Production
O'Duffy returned to London in the late eighties where his remixing successes took him into record production. His first production success was the debut album by Scottish group HipswayHipsway
Hipsway were a Scottish pop/rock band.The band was formed in Glasgow in 1984 by ex-Altered Images guitarist Johnny McElhone on bass, and featuring Grahame Skinner , and Harry Travers . Skinner and Travers had been members of the band Kites with Paul McGrath and Ian McGreevy before Hipsway formed...
which included the top twenty hit on both sides of the Atlantic, "Honeythief". He followed this up with production on the number one platinum selling debut album by Curiosity Killed the Cat
Curiosity Killed the Cat
Curiosity Killed the Cat was a British pop band that found success in the UK Singles Chart in the late 1980s and early 1990s.-Career:The band tried to play soulful, jazzy, and funky pop music and was initially signed to Phonogram Records' Mercury imprint. They first came to notice of the UK music...
Keep Your Distance.
His BMI nomination for Producer of the Year in 1987 came from his work on the multi-platinum debut album It's Better To Travel by Manchester group Swing Out Sister
Swing Out Sister
Swing Out Sister are a British "sophisti-pop" group best known worldwide for their 1986 song "Breakout". Other hits include "Surrender", "Twilight World", "Waiting Game" and a remake of "Am I the Same Girl?" Though album sales in the U.S. and Europe have levelled off since the early 1990s, the...
, which included the worldwide hit "Breakout
Breakout (Swing Out Sister song)
"Breakout" is a single from British pop act Swing Out Sister's debut album It's Better to Travel.The single reached the number four position in the UK in 1986, and rose to number six pop and number one adult contemporary in the U.S. in 1987...
". The album was also nominated in the US for a Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
and led to more work for him and his distinctive retro sound with US acts.
One of these was eccentric Pop R&B group Was Not Was with the resulting worldwide hits "Walk The Dinosaur" , "Spy In The House Of Love" and platinum selling album What Up, Dog?
What Up, Dog?
-LP edition:-UK CD edition:* The UK CD edition and Cassette editions featured this configuration-Personnel:* David "Michigan-Boy Snake" Was — flute, keyboards, harmonica, vocals* Don "Rope Drink" Was — bass, keyboards, guitar, mandolin...
. At the other end of the spectrum O’Duffy produced one of Barry Manilow
Barry Manilow
Barry Manilow is an American singer-songwriter, musician, arranger, producer, conductor, and performer, best known for such recordings as "Could It Be Magic", "Mandy", "Can't Smile Without You", and "Copacabana ."...
’s last chart hits "Keep Each Other Warm" from his eponymous album Barry Manilow, in which he recorded other artists’ songs using a variety of top producers.
O’Duffy additionally produced and mixed Tom Verlaine
Tom Verlaine
Tom Verlaine is a singer, songwriter and guitarist, best known as the frontman for the New York rock band Television.-Biography:...
’s (Television) critically acclaimed solo album Flash Light in 1987.
Starting in 2009, he is producing John Barry's orchestral album, "The Seasons".
Writer/producer
In the Nineties O’Duffy increased his songwriting credits, producing and writing on four subsequent albums for Swing Out Sister (including 1992's Get in Touch with YourselfGet in Touch with Yourself
Get in Touch with Yourself is the title of the third studio album by the British pop group Swing Out Sister. The album was released on Fontana Records in 1992 and was produced by Paul Staveley O'Duffy.-Lineup and musical style:...
) as well as production for Dusty Springfield
Dusty Springfield
Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'BrienSources use both Isabel and Isobel as the spelling of her second name. OBE , known professionally as Dusty Springfield and dubbed The White Queen of Soul, was a British pop singer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s...
on her album Reputation, which became Springfield's best-selling new album since her '60s-era peak. He produced the Pretenders' "If There Was a Man" and "Where Has Everybody Gone?", as well as Necros
Necros
Necros were an early American hardcore punk band from Maumee, Ohio, although they are usually identified with the Detroit music scene. They are the first band to record for Touch and Go Records.-History:...
, Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Frankie Goes to Hollywood were a British dance-pop band popular in the mid-1980s. The group was fronted by Holly Johnson , with Paul Rutherford , Peter Gill , Mark O'Toole , and Brian Nash .The group's debut single "Relax" was banned by the BBC in 1984 while at number six in the charts and...
, Jeff Beck
Jeff Beck
Geoffrey Arnold "Jeff" Beck is an English rock guitarist. He is one of three noted guitarists to have played with The Yardbirds...
, Lisa Stansfield
Lisa Stansfield
Lisa Stansfield is an English singer and songwriter.-Early years:Stansfield was born to Marion and Keith Stansfield in Heywood, Lancashire, in England, where she attended Redbrook School, Rochdale. Her first television appearance was on a talent programme in the Granada TV area in 1982...
, Danny Wilson, The Beloved
The Beloved
The Beloved are an English electronic dance music group, best known for the singles "Sweet Harmony", "Hello", "Your Love Takes Me Higher", and "Satellite".-Formation:...
, John Barry
John Barry (composer)
John Barry Prendergast, OBE was an English conductor and composer of film music. He is best known for composing the soundtracks for 12 of the James Bond films between 1962 and 1987...
, the eponymous debut album by Lewis Taylor
Lewis Taylor
Andrew Lewis Taylor is a British multi-instrumentalist musician, born in London, UK, in the late 1960s. He started in the music business touring with the progrock band Edgar Broughton Band. In 1986 he began performing as Sheriff Jack, releasing two albums of psychedelia music, Laugh Yourself Awake ...
, Joe Meek
Joe Meek
Robert George "Joe" Meek was a pioneering English record producer and songwriter....
and Pigeonhead.
Hiatus and recovery
An amateur racer of both off-road and on-road motorcycles, O’Duffy was riding a road bike in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
when a car cut across his lane and ran him down. His back was broken in two places, and he spent many months in traction and several years in recovery. His motorcycle, a Ducati 888
Ducati 888
The Ducati 888 was a motorcycle manufactured by Ducati as an upgrade to the Ducati 851. The earlier 851 had introduced liquid cooling, computerized fuel injection and four-valve heads to the company's two cylinder motors. In 1991 Ducati increased the capacity of the 851 to 888 cc to create...
SP5 limited edition which had been given to him by his then management team, was repaired and presented back to him after a chance meeting with Federico Minoli then-head of Ducati worldwide at the Houses of Parliament. Now fully recovered after further surgery to fuse his back, O’Duffy is back racing in Seniors races.
During the first three years after the accident, O’Duffy worked almost exclusively out of the substantial studio he had built at his home in North London. It was here that Amy Winehouse
Amy Winehouse
Amy Jade Winehouse was an English singer-songwriter known for her powerful deep contralto vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres including R&B, soul and jazz. Winehouse's 2003 debut album, Frank, was critically successful in the UK and was nominated for the Mercury Prize...
came to spend a month in 2007 to work on tracks for what became the Back to Black
Back to Black
Back to Black is the second studio album by English recording artist Amy Winehouse, released on 27 October 2006 by Island Records. It is the last album released in her lifetime. The album incorporates 1960s soul music styles and modern R&B production, with subjective lyrics that concern...
album, which features the O’Duffy/Winehouse song "Wake up Alone".
Film and television
O’Duffy produced the John BarryJohn Barry (composer)
John Barry Prendergast, OBE was an English conductor and composer of film music. He is best known for composing the soundtracks for 12 of the James Bond films between 1962 and 1987...
score for 007 film The Living Daylights
The Living Daylights
The Living Daylights is the fifteenth entry in the James Bond series and the first to star Timothy Dalton as the fictional MI6 agent 007. The film's title is taken from Ian Fleming's short story, "The Living Daylights"...
(winner, 1988 BMI Film Music Award).
Further work with Barry continued, including in 1992 the movie Chaplin starring Robert Downey Jr, for which Barry was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe. Recently O’Duffy worked with John Barry on his UK concerts at the Albert Hall
Albert Hall
Albert P. Hall is an American actor.Born in Brighton, Alabama, Hall graduated from the Columbia University School of the Arts in 1971. That same year he appeared Off-Broadway in The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and on Broadway in the Melvin Van Peebles musical Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death...
.
O’Duffy produced the Hans Zimmer
Hans Zimmer
Hans Florian Zimmer is a German film composer and music producer. He has composed music for over 100 films, including critically acclaimed film scores for The Lion King , Crimson Tide , The Thin Red Line , Gladiator , The Dark Knight and Inception .Zimmer spent the early part of his career in the...
score for the film Days of Thunder
Days of Thunder
Days of Thunder is a 1990 American auto racing film released by Paramount Pictures, produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Tony Scott. The cast includes Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Robert Duvall, Randy Quaid, Cary Elwes and Michael Rooker. The film also features appearances...
(winner, 1991 BMI Film Music Award), and is infamous for his unique treatment of the version of "All By Myself
All by Myself
"All by Myself" is a power ballad written and performed by Eric Carmen in 1975.The verse is based on the second movement of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Opus 18...
" used in the film Bridget Jones Diary. He also produced the Dr Calculus track "Full of Love" for the 1988 Kevin Bacon
Kevin Bacon
Kevin Norwood Bacon is an American film and theater actor whose notable roles include Animal House, Diner, Footloose, Flatliners, Wild Things, A Few Good Men, JFK, Apollo 13, Mystic River, The Woodsman, Trapped, Friday the 13th, Hollow Man, Tremors, Death Sentence, Frost/Nixon, Crazy, Stupid, Love....
film She’s Having a Baby.
O’Duffy is also a well-known composer for television, having composed the themes and incidental music for: The Team - A Season With Mclaren (BBC2 series) The Great Outdoors (Channel 4 series) The Big Elsewhere (with Swing Out Sister, NHK Japan series) London Bridge (Carlton TV drama series).