Ultimate-Guitar.com recently caught up with producer CHRIS TSANGARIDES, known for his work with metal royalty that includes JUDAS PRIEST, OZZY OSBOURNE, YNGWIE MALMSTEEN, ANVIL and IRON MAIDEN to name a few. An excerpt from the interview is available below.

Q: Who have been some of the best artists you’ve worked with in the studio?

Chris: "I have always loved the ones that do things differently and have crazy ideas that sometimes work and sometimes may not. That way, you get to progress and not make the same record again and again. But I loved working a lot with Bruce Dickinson when we did his Tattooed Millionaire album because we decided on a no keyboards rule and that it was going to be a fun rock ‘n’ roll record. And we wanted to come up with textures and sounds and things that made it sound bigger than just the guitar, bass and drums. So we did things with the guitar that maybe the keyboard would have done, and took that approach. And we used his voice a lot too, as up to that point, he hadn’t done quite so many harmony vocals and textures with the IRON MAIDEN boys. Likewise, with CONCRETE BLONDE, the guitar player Jim Mankey was an amazing guitarist. He is not what you’d call a metal shredder, but he comes from the same school that the likes of Jeff Beck and Chet Atkins do, and so Jim was very innovative. The noises he was able to make on his guitar and even without a plectrum. On the Bloodletting album, the opening title track, you can hear these sorts of crickets and bug sounds…well that’s just Jim and his guitar."

Q: You worked on Anvil's Metal On Metal album in 1982, which became the template for the likes of the speed metal genre, and from which came bands such as METALLICA and SLAYER…

Chris: "Yeah, I was young at the time and always wanted to do something that nobody had done before. When I first heard the start of Metal On Metal it started with a cymbal clanging and so I suggested to the guys, “why not use an anvil to do the clanging sound?” And they had an anvil there which was part of the stage set, but when we did mic it up, no matter which way we did it, the thing just sounded crap. So we ended up getting Rob Reiner to stand outside in the freezin’ weather in the car park bashing a manhole cover with a hammer. And that made the sound of Metal On Metal. My belief is, you have to do whatever it takes to make something happen. We used to record the guitar in this huge corridor that was next door to the studio. And we’d mic it up in all manner of ways and we got this phenomenal sound that became the signature sound of Anvil."

Q: You’ve had a long association with Anvil, how did you feel when the band finally got achieved recognition via The Story Of Anvil movie?

Chris: "That was a lovely feeling. They never gave up and they carried on no matter what happened in the music industry and whether or not they had money. They just kept making their music and it was lucky they had an ex-roadie friend who became this wonderful screen writer who had a way to make this movie for them, as a bunch of friends. And that’s why I made the record, too, because I wanted to help my old friends."

Go to this location for the complete interview.