Best known for his longtime collaboration with
Elton John, producer
Gus Dudgeon began his career during the mid-'60s as an engineer with Decca, where he worked on records by artists including
the Rolling Stones,
the Zombies,
John Mayall,
the Small Faces,
Marianne Faithfull, and
Them. In 1967, he earned his first co-production credit on
Ten Years After's self-titled debut; a year later,
Dudgeon formed his own production company, quickly scoring a pair of U.K. Top 20 hits with
David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and
the Locomotive's "Rudy's in Love." His partnership with
Elton John began with the singer's self-titled 1970 effort, which generated the perennial "Your Song"; the album's popularity kick-started one of the most successful artist-producer pairings of all time, with
Dudgeon guiding
John throughout the decade and launching such blockbuster albums as 1971's
Madman Across the Water, 1972's
Honky Chateau, 1975's
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and 1975's
Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. Although
John remained
Dudgeon's primary creative focus throughout the 1970s, he also produced albums for
Joan Armatrading,
Ralph McTell,
John Kongos, and
Chris Rea.
After he and
John went their separate ways following 1976's
Blue Moves,
Dudgeon kept a rather low profile during the latter half of the decade and into the early '80s; he and the singer reunited in 1985 for
Ice on Fire, returning with
Leather Jackets the following year before again parting after 1987's
Live in Australia. Another period of relative inactivity preceded
Dudgeon's work on
XTC's 1992 album
Nonsuch. He was again absent from the spotlight for some time before agreeing to mix tracks for
the Frank & Walters' 1996 LP
The Grand Parade, and
Menswear's U.K. hit "We Love You" soon followed. On July 21, 2002,
Gus Dudgeon and his wife, Sheila, left a party at 4 a.m. and were returning to their home in Surrey when
Dudgeon lost control of his Jaguar convertible on the M4 motorway; the vehicle plunged down an embankment and landed upside-down in a drainage ditch. Both were killed in the accident,
Gus at age 59 and Sheila at age 60. A deeply saddened
Elton John later proclaimed
Gus Dudgeon "the greatest producer of his generation" and credited
Dudgeon with spurring on his career: "He gave me my first hit in 1970. It was all down to
Gus." ~ Jason Ankeny