Mike Shipley

Over the years, engineer/mixer Mike Shipley has worked with Shania Twain, the Cars, Cheap Trick, Shawn Colvin, Def Leppard, Thomas Dolby, Lene Lovich, Guster, Blondie, Green Day, Starship, Splendor, the Black Crowes, Chaka Khan, Devo, Foreigner, Tom Petty, Neve, Aerosmith, Sponge, Joni Mitchell, and producers Robert John "Mutt" Lange and Patrick Leonard. The native Australian started his recording career after his family moved to London because of his father's business. While in his teens, a schoolteacher asked Shipley to sing on a record that he was making. After the experience, the teenager instantly felt that he'd found his life profession. Returning to Australia, Shipley graduated from high school and after a brief stint in art school, he quickly returned to London. A fan of the rock group Queen, Shipley contacted Wessex Studios (where the band recorded their music). Beating out 200 other jobseekers, Shipley was hired by the studio manager. His first engineering sessions were during the punk-music explosion of the '80s and included recordings by the Sex Pistols and the Damned. His contemporaries at Wessex included producer Roy Thomas Baker, Chris Thomas, and engineers Tim Friese-Greene and Bill Price. Asked by manager Elliot Roberts to work with Joni Mitchell, Shipley came to Los Angeles.

When the alternative grunge sound became popular, Shipley was out of work, and he headed for Hawaii for a while to mull over his options. The turnaround came when he began getting calls from young bands who idolized Def Leppard's Pyromania. As busy as ever, one of Shipley's projects, Shania Twain's Come on Over, sold 15 million albums. In mid-1999, Shipley worked with Sony artist Nikki Hall and MCA Nashville artist Alecia Elliot.