When Tony Berg was 18 years old, he discovered that Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys lived just down the street from his parents’ house in Los Angeles. Berg is known these days as a Grammy-winning record producer and A&R exec, but in the early 1970s he was just another teenager trying to get noticed with his rock band.
“So I left a note in Bruce’s mailbox that said that anyone who could write a song like ‘Disney Girls’ would like my band, and we’re playing the Ice House on Sunday,” Berg recalls. “Sunday comes, and there’s Bruce in the audience. We became friends — he’d call and say, ‘Hey, I’m coming to pick you up, and we’re going to a session at the Beach Boys’ studio in Santa Monica.’ I walk in — there they are singing backgrounds on Elton John’s ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down.’
“I was a kid watching the greatest musicians in the world make a song that would have an impact on millions of people.”
Half a century later, Berg is the one happily fostering young talent. Working at his historic Sound City recording studio in Van Nuys, the 72-year-old has played an instrumental role in the rise of Phoebe Bridgers and Sombr; this year he co-produced Bridgers’ “Lost Weekend” album and Sombr’s single “Homewrecker,” both of which are expected to turn up when Grammy nods are announced Nov. 16. And he’s just formed a joint venture with Warner Music called Crime & Punishment Records that will launch in early 2027 with a debut by the gifted newcomer Elle Bramhall.
“I’m obsessed with popular music’s effect on young people,” he says, “because there’s nothing more profoundly influential on a young person than the music he or she listens to. Think about it: If you love a book, you might read it two or three times. If you love a song — if you love ‘Strawberry Fields,’ like I do — you’ll listen 10,000 times.”
Berg says his goal as a record maker is to create things that endure — and indeed among his other recent projects are LPs by veteran songwriters Bruce Hornsby and Sarah McLachlan. At the same time, nothing irritates him more than when a fellow old-timer “starts bemoaning the state of the industry and how things used to be,” he says.
“You’re gonna tell me that Mitski’s not good? Or that Kendrick isn’t good? F— you. If you aren’t present and if you aren’t listening, I don’t think you should do this job. If I don’t focus on young people, I become a curator of relics.”
Sombr, who broke out at age 19 last year when his song “Back to Friends” went viral on TikTok, calls Berg “an amazing mentor and collaborator” and says “his instincts are insane.” Adds the singer nominated for best new artist at this past February’s Grammys ceremony: “There’s no ego — it’s all about what’s right for the song.”
“You know the first thing he ever said to me?” Berg asks of his protégé. “‘Sit your bitch ass down.’ I immediately loved him.” The producer is hanging on a recent morning at Sound City, which looms in rock mythology as the place where Tom Petty made “Damn the Torpedoes” and Nirvana cut “Nevermind.” In 2018, Berg and another of his musical partners, Blake Mills, took over the lease for the studio; today it’s got a cozy clubhouse vibe, with shelves of vintage percussion doodads and a wood-paneled gear closet crammed with guitars.
“I want artists to feel this is their home,” Berg says. “So when Phoebe’s here or Sombr’s here, this is their studio. I’ve taught both of them how to use everything.”
A songwriter’s songwriter, Bridgers approaches the big topics — love, death, technology — with a candor and intimacy that can convince the listener they’ve stepped directly into her mind. Yet “Lost Weekend” actually features what might be the year’s busiest liner notes, with input from an expansive cast of players and writers that includes Conor Oberst, Jim Keltner, Maya Hawke, Alex G and Jack Antonoff.
Tony Berg at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
“Phoebe’s a great curator — like no one I’ve ever met,” Berg says. “What was interesting about this conglomeration is that nobody was feeling territorial or proprietary about an instrument or a contribution.” The goal shared by everyone involved, he adds, was “showing off this woman who is arguably the writer of her generation.”
Sombr, for all his commercial success, hasn’t been as warmly embraced by tastemakers; some have described his darkly glossy pop-rock as the work of a so-called industry plant.
“That stuff’s meaningless,” Berg says. “What’s important is that he pursues excellence. When we first started working together, the idea of a bridge was completely foreign to him. I tried to instill in him the idea that the structure of a song can make all the difference in the world, and now he’s become a great writer of bridges. It’s actually the best thing he does.”
Berg himself learned quickly as he was coming up. One of four brothers who went on to find careers in show business and the arts, he built on his early experiences with Johnston with an apprenticeship under Jack Nitzsche, the composer and arranger known for his work with Phil Spector and Neil Young. He played alongside David Foster in the band for the original “Rocky Horror” stage show and took a job once held by Barry Manilow to serve as Bette Midler’s musical director. In the ’80s and ’90s he produced records for the likes of Michael Penn and Aimee Mann; he helped sign acts like Beck and At the Drive-In to major-label deals and played a part in Apple’s development of its GarageBand software.
In a phone call, Hornsby said, “I have a description of Tony that I’d like to share with you. My statement is this: Tony Berg is a singular individual — he can claim the great Jack Nitzsche as his mentor, can recite Nietzsche from memory and can detail the glorious stats of the great Ray Nitschke from the Green Bay Packers’ golden era of the ’60s.” Hornsby laughed.
“So, from Nitzsche to Nietzsche to Nitschke, Tony covers the waterfront.”
Says Berg of the pal with whom he’s worked on and off for four decades: “Bruce is a laugh machine. Great practical joker.”
Of his latest project, Berg says he views Crime & Punishment as his attempt to correct for the corporatization of the music industry that began when “Wall Street discovered the record business 40 years ago and suddenly quarterly expectations were dictating artistic choices.” His hope is to build “a place where artists feel heard, where deals are less onerous than they might be elsewhere and where I’m present in their career, not just their record.”
Is there a company he might consider a model?
“Apple Records once upon a time,” he says, referring to the Beatles’ label. Even though it famously failed?
“Commercially,” Berg allows. “But go back and look at what they signed: James Taylor’s first record. Jackie Lomax. Badfinger. Billy Preston. F— me, that’s a great label. A label’s quality is determined by the artists on it, and if I do a good job of finding young talent and putting out great records, I think it’ll speak for itself.”
He’s got at least one believer in Warner Records boss Aaron Bay-Schuck, who calls Berg an “artist whisperer” and says that teaming with Crime & Punishment was an easy decision after their experience working together on Sombr.
The company’s first signing is something of a family affair: Bramhall is the daughter of musicians Doyle Bramhall II and Susannah Melvoin, whom Berg says he introduced 25 years ago. But the door for fresh talent is wide open, he says.
“I’m contacted by new artists on a daily basis, and I love it. I listen to everything I’m sent.” He laughs. “I probably shouldn’t be saying that.”
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