Shanks Produces Pop Girls

"I really like being the number-two guy: the Keith Richards guy, the Jimmy Page guy," says producer and songwriter John Shanks, who has worked with artists from Robbie Robertson to Alanis Morissette. But he has found his greatest success cranking out guitar-heavy pop tunes for a new generation of teen-girl singers, including Ashlee Simpson, Kelly Clarkson, Lindsay Lohan and Michelle Branch. He recorded thirteen Top Twenty singles in the past year -- and in February, he won a Grammy for Producer of the Year.

Those are Shanks' power chords making Simpson sound tough on "La La" and his labyrinthine guitar-and-vocal orchestrations buoying Hilary Duff's baby-voice singing on "Come Clean." Shanks, who usually co-writes as well as produces, added rock touches to songs ranging from Branch's "Everywhere" to Clarkson's "Breakaway" -- and in the process, he created a lasting flavor of bubblegum that has supplanted Britney-style dance pop. "John's records have become the sound of Top Forty radio," says Jordan Schur, president of Simpson's label, Geffen Records. "He's the father of that guitar-driven kind of pop sound."

How does a forty-two-year-old married father of two young sons find common ground with girls just out of braces? "It's weird -- I've never really analyzed it," says Shanks. "But mostly I just listen. You basically sit there and you talk about their lives." In the case of Simpson, a chance comment ("I have all these sides to me, and my boyfriend doesn't understand") inspired Shanks and songwriting partner Kara DioGuardi to bang out the Top Ten hit "Pieces of Me." Says Shanks, "Someone starts singing something, and you go, 'Keep singing it.' You pull up a drum loop. And three hours later, the song is basically written." Shanks is hesitant to be pigeonholed, pointing to his extensive work with grown-ups including Sheryl Crow ("Steve McQueen" and her cover of "The First Cut Is the Deepest") and Morissette (last year's So-Called Chaos). "I put as much love into pop records as I do into more artist-y records," he says. "There are some people who go, 'He's doing pop crap.' Meanwhile, they wish they had a hit."

A former session musician, Shanks joined Melissa Etheridge's band on guitar in 1988. After several tours, Etheridge enlisted Shanks as co-producer on her 1999 album Breakdown. But his defining moment came when a record executive suggested he cut a track with a then-unknown sixteen-year-old singer-songwriter, Michelle Branch. He ended up producing and co-writing Branch's entire 2001 platinum debut, The Spirit Room.

Released ten months before Avril Lavigne's debut, The Spirit Room kicked off five years' worth of girlish sopranos over rock backing. "These girls want to be emotive," says DioGuardi. "And they want to jump up and down and be rambunctious."

Shanks denies having any formula, but many of his hits share certain characteristics. "He's famous for these big choruses that go right on the radio and crush it because they sound so smooth," says Schur. Shanks -- who honed his chops at L.A. hair-band mecca the Guitar Institute of Technology -- combines the guitar-driven sensibility of his classic-rock faves, from Kiss to Zeppelin, with a computer-perfected, glossy, contemporary Top Forty sound.

So far this year, Shanks has produced an upcoming album by Bon Jovi, two songs for the next Santana record (one of which features vocals from Branch) and a debut from the duo of DioGuardi and former Eurythmic Dave Stewart, under the band name Platinumweird. Shanks is also devoting many hours to two new albums by Sheryl Crow -- a pop CD and a more introspective disc. "John knows how to make stuff sound like it belongs on the radio," says Crow. "I used to have some snobbery about that, but there's a real knack to it."