The wonderful thing about working with Steve Lillywhite on Naked [1988] is that he was great at bringing an excited and positive élan to the studio. This was the last studio record we did, and there was certainly some strain in the group and we didn’t want to exacerbate any of that by putting people in charge of each other, so that’s why we wanted an outside producer. By this point, all of us in the band had produced our own records and other people’s records, so our demands on a producer were different than they were when we began. And Steve was obviously already established.
But he had this great, positive and encouraging attitude and he really knew what was on every track, which was impressive because we made it in Paris and New York and there was a lot going on musically on that record — it was a thick mélange of instruments, with a big Latin brass band on there and these interesting rhythms, yet he kept it all together somehow.
— Jerry Harrison, producer, musical mentor, former Talking Head
