David Hentschel

Born

1952-12-18

Birthplace

Chichester, Sussex, England, UK

Biography

David Hentschel (born 18 December 1952) is a retired English recording engineer, film score composer and music producer who engineered on George Harrison's All Things Must Pass and Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, as well as for such artists as Genesis, Tony Banks, Ringo Starr, Queen, Nazareth, Marti Webb, Andy Summers, Mike Oldfield, Renaissance, Peter Hammill and Ronnie Caryl. Hentschel was born in Sussex. His career began at Trident Studios in London where he was initially an assistant before rising to become one of the in-house producers. In addition to engineering and production credits, Hentschel also played early synthesizers with a diverse range of bands including Nazareth, Pilot and Byzantium. He played synthesizer on several high-profile recordings, including Elton John's "Rocket Man" and "Funeral for a Friend" from the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album. "Funeral for a Friend" featured an early analogue synthesizer, the ARP 2500, to create tonal feeling and effect. After leaving Trident in 1974, he produced his own album Startling Music for Ringo Starr's short-lived record label, Ring O' Records, consisting of a song-by-song, instrumental cover of Starr's album Ringo and featuring performances by Phil Collins, David Cole, Ronnie Caryl, John Gilbert (the son of Lewis Gilbert) and Starr. He then began a successful collaboration with the band Genesis which resulted in four albums beginning with A Trick of the Tail in 1976 and continuing through to Duke in 1980. In the 1980s and 1990s, Hentschel coproduced, engineered, and/or played keyboards and synthesizers on five albums by Police guitarist Andy Summers: the rock vocal album XYZ (MCA Records, 1987) and the primarily instrumental albums Mysterious Barricades (just Summers and Hentschel, Private Music, 1988), The Golden Wire (Private Music, 1989), Charming Snakes (Private Music, 1990), and Synaesthesia (CMP Records, 1995). Relocating to Los Angeles in 1985, Hentschel established one of the first dedicated MIDI studios and worked with Ensoniq on developing instruments and custom sounds. He eventually moved back to Great Britain and continues to produce, compose and arrange on both sides of the Atlantic.