"A Philistine at heart? Oh, yes. I'm certainly that," laughs Ian Broudie, and to look at him it doesn't take that much believing.

I'm not one to make any big deal about personal appearances but Ian Broudie looks more like plain Joe Public with plain Joe Public's tastes than a record producer adept at making the most of the most delicate and sensitive artistic situations. In those horn rims and that chunky sweater he seems hardly the modern media kind. No designer jackets and hip haircuts for this amiable Northerner. In fact it's only the fact that he's Liverpool born and bred and not a Manchester man which stops me claiming he bears an uncanny resemblance to Freddie Garratty of Freddie and the Dreamers fame. Greater insult could be levelled at no man. But it seems the idea quite appeals and makes Ian Broudie laugh some more.

Joking apart though the fellow who has, in his time, put the Echo into Bunnymen, Colour into Field, Pale into Fountains and Red into Guitars, prides himself in keeping a distance from his work. And adopts a paradoxically 'unprofessional' attitude towards music bordering on Philistinism.

"When it's your job to make music, whether as a musician or a producer, it becomes very hard to remember what it used to be like listening to a new record for the first time and thinking 'Wow! That's really good!'. It's that impartial perspective which few people in the business manage to retain. So I believe it's vital to keep as much of the Layman's point of view as you can.

"It's like when I was a kid at school, all the hip guys were into Jazz Rock but I always preferred things which were a bit more obvious. Like The Clash. They always seemed dead obvious to me whereas all those 'amazing' Jazz Rock records were only good for the sake of being good and anybody could 'learn' to appreciate them if they were shown what to appreciate. That 'muso' mentality never appealed to me and it still doesn't. And now that I'm not a musician anymore but a producer I find there's a similar mentality among the studio set. And I don't like that either."

After that little mouthful it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to you to learn that Ian Broudie holds quite a number of unconventional opinions regarding the art and science of record production. Many of which can be traced back to his early days on Merseyside when, as a founder member of the now-legendary Big In Japan, he was right in there at the beginning of the post-Punk, independent label scene.

Numbered within its ranks Big In Japan boasted FGTH's Holly Johnson (on bass guitar, would you believe?), The Banshees sticksman Budgie, the Teardrops David Balfe and soon-to-be-Bunnymen manager and Zoo keeper Bill Drummond. A motley crew who made use of a Teac 3440 lent free-of-charge by the Merseyside Centre for the Arts to record a four track EP considered by many to be a classic example of pre-Rough Trade alternative Pop. Naturally enough the only reason they released it themselves was because none of the London-based majors wanted to know.

"I think there's always been a feeling of being cast-off and adrift in Liverpool. This whole business of the city council going bankrupt has only brought to a head a situation which has been brewing for years. And it has its effect on musicians. There's an attitude I believe is peculiar to Liverpool which says 'I'm doing what I'm doing and if you don't like it I'm still going to do it.' It's a good one, because it breeds originality. Up there, people don't do things primarily because they think it's going to make them a lot of cash. Consequently they keep doing it and doing it until they get really good at it. That's when everybody else begins to sit up and take notice.

"When I'm in London I hear people talking about this kind of music and that kind of music and how you've got to have such and such a sound to appeal to such and such a market. I've always believed that you've only got to be good at what you're doing and if you do it really well then you'll be successful sooner or later."

Broudie cut his production teeth with the band who probably most perfectly bear out his theory: the self-styled greatest Rock band in the world — Echo and The Bunnymen. Back in 1979 Broudie was still a mere musician, playing keyboards and guitar for the Original Mirrors, and had no thoughts about ever becoming a producer. One, fateful night, however, he accepted a lift in the Bunnymen's van and heard a rough demo of Rescue which was to be the band's first single for the Warner Brothers subsidiary label Korova.

"I thought it was good but it could be loads better. So I told them as much. They turned round and said 'Okay, if you feel like that about it, why don't you produce it?' I accepted the job. It didn't worry me at all that I might have any difficulty with getting the record to 'sound' good because I was then, and still am really, much more into songs. I had a strong vision of how the song should be. And I believe that once you've got the song right then the sounds are simply a means to an end."

Last year's Echo and The Bunnymen compilation album Songs To Learn And Sing begins with Rescue and ends with the band's most recent single Bring On The Dancing Horses produced by Laurie Latham. It must be a tribute to Ian Broudie's early instinct that the two tracks stand up side by side despite the five years which elapsed between their releases. Then again, of course, we're talking here of a group with a very distinctive and consistent style which Broudie has helped develop through various stages of their career.

"I produced their third album, Porcupine, which had The Back Of Love and The Cutter on it. They were the band's first two Top 20 singles. After Rescue they asked me to do the first album but I was busy touring with the Original Mirrors. They did the second album with Hugh Jones. By the time we got back together they'd got a lot of experience under their belts and so had I. So both the band and I reached one of those points when all the chemistry lines up and the results are fantastic."

By rights Messrs McCulloch, Seargent, Pattinson and De Freitas aren't the sort of band who are supposed to have hit singles. Not if you take Top Of The Pops or Radio One's daytime output as a gauge of all that's commercially successful in British Pop these days. The same could well be said for Terry Hall's Colourfield with whom Broudie had just finished recording four tracks as potential 45s when we spoke. But if you're expecting our friendly neighbourhood Scouser here to decry single success on artistic grounds then you've got another think coming.

"I try to marry musical integrity with commerciality because I believe it's tremendously important to have hits. I think it's a fallacy to believe that integrity and commerciality should compromise each other. If you think about it the bands who have enjoyed the most durable success commercially are invariably those who got there by being true to themselves rather then being bland.

"So I believe you have to try and make things sound as 'commercial' as you can. But it all boils down to how you define your terms. I don't think that half the things the industry decrees makes a record sound commercial actually do. The major record companies have a terrible tendency to look at the charts one week and say 'That's what you've got to sound like. There's too much forcing round pegs into square holes going on.

"If you break it down there are only three main elements which will determine whether a record will be successful. There's the beat, which is probably more important these days than ever before. It's got to have a good feel with enough to make it dancey. Then you need a great melody and a great sound. But once you do break it down that way then you can be talking any kind of music. You can apply that formula right across the board and it will still fit. It all comes back to what I said before: If you do what you do well and make it sound as good as possible, then you're in with a shot."

Following through the philosophy that it is the producer's role to coax the best performances from his clients, Ian Broudie likes to spend long hours in rehearsal, taking the songs apart and then piecing them back together as meticulously as possible. That way he not only ensures that each song to be recorded will be properly structured but that he has had the opportunity to get under the band's skin too, building up the right atmosphere of mutual understanding and respect. The better you know a band, its strengths and weaknesses, he reckons, the better job you can do.

"I believe with any group it is possible to turn their disadvantages into advantages. What other people might regard as faults you can actually turn into their biggest attractions. I mean, how many singers do you hear who really can't sing at all well but they have something distinctive in their voices or some idiosyncracy in their delivery which makes them particularly appealing? Tom Waits is a perfect example or Johnny Cash. He probably couldn't get his voice round a Billy McKenzie song but he's great because he takes his limitations and turns them into a special feature. Quite often, you know, it's taking things out of the expected perspective and putting them into another which is the masterstroke of a production."

Once embarked upon a project Ian Broudie seems like one who takes his responsibilities seriously, and puts a lot of thought into them too. Not over-enamoured of the recording studio as a working environment for 14 or 15 hours a day, he will nevertheless expect to use up to three or four different studios before delivering the final mixes to the record company or the cutting lathe. Room sounds have a lot to do with it, Broudie being a man who prefers to hear the character of a real room to go tape when recording real instruments — and preferring true ambience to digitally-simulated echoes as a matter of course. Sometimes, however, there is real psychological value to be gained out of a change of venue in mid-record.

"If I'm working with a band who aren't from London, then there's a lot to be said for recording the vocals somewhere close to where the singer lives. It helps make him feel relaxed and confident. On the other hand I reckon you get the best results out of a band if you take them well away from home to do the backing tracks. The fewer the distractions the better they can concentrate on the job in hand.

"The most interesting thing about changing studios part of the way through recording is that something which sounded great in the first studio never sounds quite as good in the next. So you have to work doubly hard on it so that it sounds just as good in both places. It means you're less tunnel-visioned about it. And, naturally, you get the benefit of having two or more engineers working on each track. I know each will always complain about what the other has done. But if you're getting twice the input, how can you lose? I think it's important to let engineers breathe and use their talents to the utmost, as long as you can keep them confined to your brief. You have to treat the groups in the same way. Let them have their head over everything they're good at but keep them in line over everything else and with luck you'll be able to push them to do better than they thought themselves capable."