Rod Stewart long ago traded raunchy rock songs about “Hot Legs” for such romantic, decades-old standards as “Embraceable You,” “Night and Day” and “Isn’t It Romantic.” But the 60-year-old British singer still knows how to party like a rocker.
Just ask Jon Allen. Last year, Allen traveled to London with his boss, producer Steve Tyrell, to work as production coordinator on Stewart’s latest album, “Stardust . . . The Great American Songbook Volume III.” The recording is up for a Grammy Award on Sunday in the Traditional Pop Vocal Album category.
Allen also . . . er, worked as a pub mate of Stewart’s in between sessions recording those aforementioned songs by Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Rodgers and Hart.
Stewart “knows how to live,” Allen says with a laugh during a phone interview from his Los Angeles apartment. “He’s a rock star in every sense of the word. We hung out with him a lot. The man knows how to party. He works for two days then he goes on a cruise to Italy on his private yacht.”
As production coordinator for the Tyrell Music Group, Allen handles duties that include “a little bit of everything. Essentially I’m associate producing. I’m making decisions as far the music goes: tempos, keys. I’m there when we record every part of it. I’m checking over every part. I also do the budget. I hire the musicians. I get the studios. I coordinate the travel. I helped record Rod’s vocals.”
That meant putting in 12- and 14-hour days in the studio while Stewart boated to the Mediterranean, “but on the weekends we were out at his house in Essex,” Allen says. “He has a soccer game every Sunday. He has a team of his own with his buddies, and he invites all these European teams to come play him.
“Afterwards, we’d go to his little pub at his house and drink some beers, and then go to the little pub down the street, and everybody parties together for four or five hours.”
The 24-year-old Allen, who graduated from UCLA with a degree in music composition, also supervised recording sessions with the album’s many guest stars: Stevie Wonder, Eric Clapton, trumpeter Arturo Sandoval and country singer Dolly Parton.
In fact, Allen took charge of the session in which Wonder recorded a harmonica solo for the song “What a Wonderful World.” Tyrell was committed to working on a session with a 48-piece orchestra, when a call came from Wonder’s camp saying he could help Stewart out — but only if Wonder could record his bit that day. So Tyrell sent Allen. “Of course I’m a little intimidated because it’s Stevie Wonder,” Allen says. “I grab the hard drive — everything we do is with a hard drive — and I go to Wonderland, which is his studio.
“It was kind of surreal working with Stevie Wonder. You can’t really produce him too much because he does it himself. Stevie is such a great musician, he just does his thing.”
Same with Stewart, Allen says. Though Allen, who plays keyboards and percussion, occasionally had suggestions for the singer during the recording process, the apprentice producer was politic enough to relay his advice through Tyrell.
“You’re always catching stuff,” such as the occasional flat note, Allen says. “You’re trying to get the best thing out of him (Stewart). But he knows what’s going on. He knows when he’s not hitting it, when he’s hit it. He’s a very cool artist.”
Allen won’t be attending the Grammy Awards, but he will be watching on television. If Stewart wins against albums by Harry Connick Jr., Barbara Cook, Monica Mancini and Ronnie Milsap, Allen will not receive an actual Grammy statue, but he will receive a certificate marking his contribution.
“The little guys go unnoticed sometimes,” Allen says with a chuckle.
However, he says, “It was a great feeling to have the album sell the first week at number one. That was amazing. It’s already sold a million copies in the U.S. I’m going to have a platinum record on my wall, believe me.”
Besides working with Stewart, Wonder and other artists, Allen frequently finds himself in meetings with record label executives and industry heavyweights, including the fabled Clive Davis.
“I’m getting to know everybody in the industry at this point,” Allen says. His goal is to become a producer and also to work as an arranger and songwriter, much like his boss Tyrell, who has won several Grammy Awards.
“It’s all working out for me at this point in my life, which I’m very grateful for,” Allen says.