Ultimate-Guitar.com recently caught up with producer Michael Wagener, known for his work with DOKKEN, ACCEPT, SKID ROW, ALICE COOPER and STRYPER to name a few. An excerpt from the interview is available below:

UG: Back before you carved out a production career, you were previously the original guitarist for Accept and you also recorded a couple of their early albums?

Wagener: "Yes I did but I had my own studio in Germany before I even began working with the band as an engineer and producer, so I did some recording before working with them. And then when I left the band, Wolf Hoffman joined. In later years, I came back onboard and did a whole bunch of albums with them. The first one we did was Breaker in 1981 where I was just the engineer. Then after that we did Restless and Wild (1982) where I was co-producer and then we did 1984’s Balls To The Walls which I actually mixed and then we did Russian Roulette (1986) together which I produced."

UG: So how did you become the go to guy for hard rock bands in the 1980s?

Wagener: "It was just the music I liked really and what I was good at. Don Dokken was the guy who actually brought me over to the US for the first time. I had met him in Hamburg, Germany where I had my studio and he invited me over. So I came over and showed up at his doorstep three weeks later and decided I wanted to stay in the US. And so in 1980 I actually moved there for the first time but as the economy wasn’t great at the time, I had to keep going back and forth between projects. But then in 1984 I did a record with the band X and that kept me here permanently. One of the other early bands I worked with around the same time was Stryper whom were a lot of fun to work with too and they were great musicians."

UG: You produced Skid Row’s debut album as well, what was it like working with the band?

Wagener: "It was a lot of fun, and to me that was my favorite recording project. The guys were super crazy and they had really good songs, really good stuff, and everybody was totally into recording and making good music. And it certainly worked out as the success of the album proved."

Go to this location for the complete interview.