Producer Gary Langan, part owner of the successful Metropolis recording studio complex in London, has recently found time to join the British Record Producer's Guild. He explains why he joined and what expectations he has for the future.

Earlier this year I joined the British Record Producer's Guild — an organisation that, for various reasons, I hadn't found time to get involved in before.

My main reason for joining was to be able to meet people who were doing the same job as myself. A producer's life is a lonely one. It's not a team thing, and unlike other people, I don't have workmates that I can go and discuss things with.

I have a couple of really good friends who are also producers, but after we've all spent three months doing an album, the last thing we want to do when we go out socially is discuss work.

By being part of the BRPG, I feel I can share my experiences of the industry and perhaps by doing so, give something back to the industry. I like the idea of being able to talk to younger producers and to give them hard-earned advice on possible pitfalls.

I've been a producer since I was 18. My father was a professional musician, and when I was a teenager, I had the choice of spending my summer holidays with him in various studios, or with my mother, who had a hairdressing salon. Maybe if I had gone with my mother, I would have ended up as a hairdresser, but I didn't — I hung onto my father's shirt tails and followed him.

By the time I left school, I was a fairly good pianist, but I feel now that I was taught to play for all the wrong reasons. I was never taught to play for personal satisfaction — only to please a music teacher. Although I took and passed the Royal Academy of Music's Grade 7 exam, I didn't really enjoy it. Children should be encouraged to play music for their own pleasure — not just to pass exams.

I followed my father around various studio sessions and sat in the control room watching three engineers in white coats and ties working on consoles that had big bakelite knobs on them. It wasn't very rock 'n' roll, but it was enough to convince me that I wanted to be this side of the glass, rather than on the other side playing an instrument. I left school at 17 and went to college to do an electronics degree. However, after a year, I was offered a job at Sarm studios, so I packed in college and have been in studios ever since.

Over the years, I've seen the role of producer change a lot and I've watched the industry change too. The role now demands a lot of very diverse skills — from being a psychiatrist, a nanny and a wet nurse to being a musician, a director, a manager and an A&R man. I have to employ all these skills every time I make a record, and that makes the job very difficult. I don't think people outside the industry know how much work and effort a producer has to put in — when you leave the studio and go home, you are constantly thinking about the job; when you get up in the morning, you play the tapes from the previous night to see how you did. It is a very sapping job, but at the same time, very rewarding.

I really enjoy starting out with a bag of ideas and together with the band, sorting and sifting them until we arrive at an end result we're all happy with. I prefer working with bands rather than solo artists, because there is more input that way. I advise on the direction the band should go in but I don't sit and tell them what they should do because if I did that, I would be recording my album, not theirs.

I would like to see the BRPG attracting more young producers to its ranks; you never stop learning, and I feel I could learn as much from them as they could learn from older producers like me. One of the good things about the BRPG is the way it brings producers together and prods them into talking. This job has been insular for such a long time that people are not open about how they work. They seem scared of talking, perhaps fearful of having their ideas pinched. I don't have that problem, because if I can give somebody a bit of help, I know I'll get repaid somewhere down the line. It's not a question of stealing other people's ideas — it's a question of helping each other.

In many ways, I think the BRPG could be more heavy handed about issues that really matter to producers — issues like the proliferation of home taping or the high cost of CDs in the UK, which is having such a disastrous effects on record sales. These are some of the issues I'd like to see the BRPG tackling, but I didn't join because I wanted to tackle these specific problems — I joined because I wanted a forum where such subjects could be discussed.

I'm right behind the BRPG's hunt for new talent. I've listened to several of the demo tapes, and though I haven't found anything I want to follow up yet, I like the idea because it gives me the chance to get at some of the raw talent that I know is out there. Kids don't send me demos because I'm not an obvious person to send them to, but I feel that as an experienced producer, I have a lot of information I could use to help someone who really has a talent worth pursuing. However, I should add that I don't see the business as being about having one hit — it's about building a career based on a number of good albums. There are no shortcuts and it's hard work. But for those with the talent, will and desire, it is still possible to succeed.

Gary Langan's many production and engineering credits include work on LPs from The The, ABC, Spandau Ballet, Public Image, T'Pau, Jody Watley, Queen and Malcolm McClaren. He won a Grammy award for his work with the Art Of Noise and Duane Eddy.