November/December, 1997

Publication title: Words & Music, vol. 4, Iss. 10, pg. 11
Place: Unknown
Writer: Alexander Varty

Pierre Marchand on building mysteries with Sarah McLachlan

In interviews promoting her current hit album Surfacing (Nettwerk), Vancouver singer/songwriter Sarah McLachlan has repeatedly acknowledged her debt to producer/co – writer Pierre Marchand. The singer credits her Quebec – based collaborator with creating the kind of supportive studio environment that allowed her to overcome a severe case of writer’s block during the early stages of the album’s creation.

Marchand confirms that playing psychologist is a major part of the producer’s job description. “There’s a bit of everything in there,” he says. “Being a member of the band; moving things along; maybe stopping everything when it’s the right time; lighting the candles … all kinds of things. I think a lot of production is getting the basic mood to start with. After that, there’s kind of a focus that everybody can hang on to and continue with the improvisation.”

His whatever – it – takes approach has made Marchand one of McLachlan’s closest musical confidantes. He helped pen the hit single and video “Into the Fire” from 1991’s Solace, as well as the title track from the 3 – million selling Fumbling Towards Ecstasy; on Surfacing he’s co – credited with three songs, including the hit “Building a Mystery.”

With that song, I was just singing something in the car,” he says. “I got home that day with a chorus idea, and Sarah was playing these chords in the studio. I was making coffee in the kitchen and I could hear her, and I started singing this chorus I’d just written on top of them. So I walked over and said ‘I’ve got this idea,’ and I whispered in her ear the melody I had and the idea — without articulating it too clearly, just trying to keep the magic of what it could be. That night I wrote more lyrics, a whole bunch of them, and we tried them out the day after.”

Just as Marchand — an accomplished synthesizer and drum machine programmer — finds technology useful in the studio, he and McLachlan have also devised a mildly high – tech way of collaborating on songs. With “Mystery,” the two polished their lyrics using the thesaurus function of Marchand’s PC. “Sitting in front of the computer was a great way to work,” he recalls. “Instead of having two people with their own pieces of paper, that way we were both sitting in front of something and working on it together.”