Obituary: Mark Moffatt, producer

He was not a household name, but arguably no-one did more to define the sound of Australian music than producer Mark Moffatt. A much-respect engineer, he was the controls for more songs in the Australian Performing Rights Association Top 30 Songs Of All Time than any other producer. The Queenslander also worked with more than a dozen Australian music Hall of Fame inductees, and polished Kiwi Tim Finn’s Fraction Too Much Friction into a transtasman hit. Moffatt fell in love with music as a Brisbane schoolboy but it was during is OE in London, when he met the likes of Jimmy Page and Paul McCartney, that he found his career path.

Back in Brisbane he was working in a studio recording commercials when scruffy proto-punks The Saints turned up and asked to make a record. They cut several tracks, including the classic Australian rocker (I’m) Stranded, and Moffatt was on his way. He recorded everyone from Slim Dusty to Jenny Morris, Keith Urban to Mental As Anything, Yothu Yindi to his own band The Monitors. In 1996 Moffatt moved to Nashville where he worked as a songwriter and film score composer. He died there on September 6 aged 74. — Agencies