Mike Shipley
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Mike Shipley (born Sydney, Australia) has been a prominent and extremely successful figure in the global music industry for several decades, having worked on projects with combined sales in the hundreds of millions.
He has produced and mixed albums for such diverse artists as Queen, AC/DC, Joni Mitchell, The Cars, Meat Loaf, Def Leppard, Winger, The Corrs, Kim Carnes, Kelly Clarkson, Shania Twain, Blondie, Aerosmith, Tom Petty, Foreigner, Devo, Cheap Trick, Jimmy Barnes, Enrique Iglesias, Tim McGraw, Maroon 5, Barenaked Ladies, Berlin, Faith Hill, Nickelback, Michael Bolton, Ronan Keating, Thomas Dolby, Jefferson Airplane, Green Day, and The Black Crowes.
Until recently, he was a Senior Director at Bardic Records, a company founded by Jack Ponti with bases in New York and London. The company has since merged into another entity, with which Mike is still affiliated.
[edit] Biography
Mike Shipley first became interested in a recording career while at school in the UK in the early 1970s. He completed high school in Melbourne, Australia, but quickly returned to London, where he got his first big break working for Wessex Studios, home to huge acts including Queen and The Sex Pistols. His first engineering sessions were during the punk-music explosion of the late 70s and early 80s and included recordings with the likes of these names and others, including The Damned. His contemporaries at Wessex included producer Roy Thomas Baker, Chris Thomas, and engineers Tim Friese-Greene and Bill Price.
Asked to work with Joni Mitchell, Shipley went to Los Angeles in 1984, where he has since been based.
When the sound for which Shipley was famous lost favour among emerging acts, he headed to Hawaii for a sabbatical. However, he soon began to receive calls from bands who admired his work and so returned to LA, where his career has been at full-steam ever since, and has included huge successes, including particularly Shania Twain, The Corrs, Maroon 5, Faith Hill, India Arie, Kelly Clarkson and Nickelback.
