Ultimate-Guitar.com recently caught up with producer/engineer Tony Platt to discuss his career, which includes having worked on some of the greatest albums of all time, such as AC/DC’s Back In Black. An excerpt is available below:

UG: From your perspective, how would you define the role of a producer and engineer?

Platt: "The whole essence about being a good producer and engineer is about making a balance between creativity and musicality and the technology. And if you let the technology take too much of a forefront, you are kind of making an album by numbers. And if you let creativity take too much of a forefront, then you’re capturing some special moments but they may not be as accessible or as listenable as they would be if you’d paid a bit more attention to the technology."

UG: You were in charge as an engineer – and working with producer Mutt Lange - to capture the guitar sounds on the classic AC/DC albums, Highway To Hell and Back In Black.

Platt: "Those sessions were fantastic as AC/DC are an amazing band. They already had a sound before coming into the studio. AC/DC’s sound comes from the way Malcolm and Angus’ guitars combine together. So when people ask me 'How did you capture that sound of theirs,' the straightforward answer is really, I just didn’t fuck up! The sound was already there and I just captured it. But I captured it in a way that worked on record but further than just being able to hear on big speakers, it worked on a record that you knew was going to come out of a radio."

UG: What was it like working with a producer the caliber of Mutt Lange?

Platt: "It was great. Working with Mutt I learned so much from him. It wasn’t so much about how to capture sounds. It was more about how to deal with the sessions, how to deal with the people and how to treat musicians. And almost how to request the sound that you wanted to get the result that you had in your head."

Go to this location for the complete interview.