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A Man Called Mutt continued
From the age of 11 the Lange boys were sent away to boarding school, paid for by the government. John followed his elder brother Peter to a school in Southern Rhodesia. He was a good all round sportsman, the opening bowler in the cricket team and a keen rugby player but showed little interest in music at all. However by the time he moved to Belfast High School in South Africa Mutt was determined to make his career in pop music. It was a state funded co educational boarding school which took in teenagers from all over Africa. Radios were not allowed in the school and boys were never allowed to talk to girls without a chaperone. Mutt loathed it. He did start a group in which he played rhythm guitar and sang harmonies. They played British pop hits by the Beatles, Manfred Mann (an expat South African) and the Hollies. Despite their radio ban the school did allow the band to practise and even to play at school functions. Dancing, however, was not permitted.
Mutt honed his craft in South Africa, forming his first band and working as an advertising jingle writer before moving to Britain with his first wife Stevie. He quickly found success producing million selling records for the Boomtown Rats, AC/DC, Def Leppard, the Cars and Bryan Adams and a reputation as one of the most painstaking perfectionists ever to sit behind a control desk. In December 1993 Mutt Lange had three songs simultaneously in the top 10 of the US Top 100 singles chart - Please Forgive Me (Bryan Adams), All For Love (Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting), from the Three Musketeers soundtrack and Michael Bolton's I Said I Loved You ... But I Lied. He appeared to be at the height of his profession. In fact his greatest triumph was still to come and from a most unlikely source. Country music. During his career Lange had dabbled in country - recording albums with Clover ( who later metamorphosed into Huey Lewis and the News) and the Outlaws - without much success. By 1993 he was ready for another challenge. The Garth Brooks explosion had shown that Nashville had the power to shift millions of units but their sound was still outdated and thin compared to what he could deliver. When he was working in his studio liked to have Country Music Television flickering in the background. One day Mutt looked up and saw a young girl , with a perfect flat stomach dancing on the sand. It was a coup de foudre, love at first digital glimpse. Everything about the clip for What Made you Say That which had upset the programmers in the States had the opposite effect on Lange. He saw the video and fell in love with her. When he subsequently listened to the album he felt she had a voice. He knew he had to have her so he pursued her until he did. In riding to the rescue Prince Charming turned her career from squatting in the basement to owning the castle. He was certainly struck enough to set about breaking his cardinal patterns. Mutt, who had not worked with a woman singer successfully for over twenty years actively set out to pursue an unknown artist. He hadn't done that for years. He hadn't broken a new act since Def Leppard. As one of the top record producers on the planet with combined album sales well over the 100 million mark he commanded a royalty of 5% and an advance running into six figures. Only established acts could afford him. Nashville was probably the only recording centre in the world where his name meant next to nothing. The first time he called and spoke to Shania's manager, Mary Bailey, she thought he was an over enthusiastic fan. Six months later Mutt and Shania were married For their honeymoon the Langes set about recording the most expensive album in the history of Nashville. It was called The Woman In Me
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