Producer Shines on Both Sides of the Recording Equipment : Albums: Daniel Lanois, called “the most important record producer to emerge in the ‘80s” by Rolling Stone magazine, has put out an impressive effort of his own.

When record producers venture out of the control room and start performing themselves, the results are generally disappointing.

Take Jerry Fuller. In the late 1960s, his fine-tuning of Gary Puckett and the Union Gap’s rock ‘n’ roll balladry set the national pop charts ablaze. But Fuller’s own assault on the charts a decade later created nary a spark.

Or Kim Fowley. In the 1970s, he did some neat things with the Byrds, Steppenwolf, Helen Reddy and the Runaways. Yet his concurrent string of solo albums was dismissed by critics as directionless and self-indulgent.

Daniel Lanois is an exception. Called “the most important record producer to emerge in the ‘80s” by Rolling Stone magazine, Lanois in September made his debut as a performer with an album, “Acadie,” that is as enchanting and intriguing as anything he has produced for such respected artists as U2, Peter Gabriel, Bob Dylan or the Neville Brothers.

“An incredible album,” said Musician magazine. “On ‘Acadie,’ Lanois proves that he’s not just a terrific producer, but a compelling performer,” noted the Chicago Tribune.

And to what does Lanois--whose inaugural two-month, 15-date North American tour includes a stop this Sunday night at the Bacchanal in Kearny Mesa--attribute his successful transition from producer to performer?

“I was a musician initially, and for me, the music has always worked in tandem with the tape recorders,” the Canadian said in a recent telephone interview. “In fact, the music is still my strongest tool in the studio, and I really don’t like to separate the two; I like to think of music and production as one picture.”

Indeed. Whenever he’s in the control room, Lanois said, he sees his role as not just a producer, but a fellow musician.

“I like to communicate on a musical level when I’m producing a record. My strength is definitely in the area of arrangement and sketching out tracks, in actually going down into the trenches, if you like.

“There was a time when producers played perhaps a more executive role, but these days, like myself, there are many producers who choose to get involved in the music, who work best when they can relate to someone musically,” he said.

Accordingly, Lanois tends to have a pronounced impact on the acts he produces. “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” off U2’s 1987 “Joshua Tree” album, for example, “is a song I completely redirected in the studio,” Lanois said.

“Originally, it was another song altogether called ‘Under the Weather,’ ” he said. “We weren’t sure if it was going to make the album, but it had a great drum beat, and I suggested to Bono (U2’s lead singer) that he try a more melodic approach to singing and write new lyrics, which he did.”

Lanois also takes credit for the stark arrangement of “Ring Them Bells,” off Bob Dylan’s recent “Oh Mercy” album.

“Before we went into the studio, Bob was just sort of outlining the songs, saying, ‘This is how they go,’ and when he did ‘Ring Them Bells,’ I was amazed at the clarity,” Lanois recalled.

“So I suggested, ‘Let’s record it like this, just vocals and piano,’ and although he had this view of doing a full-band version, he accommodated me--and after living with it for a couple of days he agreed that the song would have gone wrong had there been too big of a production.”

While Lanois has certainly left his mark on the acts he’s produced, the relationship works both ways. As a result, the songs on “Acadie” are influenced as much by the traditional French-Canadian folk music he grew up with as by the cutting-edge rock ‘n’ roll of U2 and Peter Gabriel.

“Whenever you spend a long time working with someone, exchanging ideas and building philosophies, it’s difficult to shake them,” Lanois said. “When you walk away, of course you carry some of that with you.

“Yet, at the same time, you need to look to your own past for inspiration, because by drawing on the past, you’re being true to yourself--if you’re singing experience, you’re singing truth, and truth always rings out in the end.”

Lanois, 38, was born in Hull, Quebec, and was acclimated to his French-Canadian musical heritage at an early age.

“My father was a violin player,” he said, “and whenever there was a family get-together, the violins would come out and all hell would break loose.”

When he was 11, Lanois’ parents divorced and he moved with his mother to Hamilton, Ontario, “where I soon became obsessed with this little instrument called the recorder.”

A year later, Lanois switched to the guitar, and, throughout junior and senior high school, he played in a succession of local rock bands.

“I spent one summer on the road with this strip-tease show, playing various rhythmic pop songs behind these women doing their routines,” he said. “It was quite an experience.”

By the time he was 17, Lanois and his older brother Bob had opened a recording studio in the basement of their mother’s home.

“We started making demos of our own, demos of our friends, and eventually went from two-track to 24-track, working with all sorts of different people. In 1979, we did some stuff with a post-punk duo called Time Twins, and somehow the tape ended up catching Brian Eno’s ears.

“He liked what I had done, so he called me up and booked some time in our studio.”

At the time, Eno was already a legend among the art-rock set. Since splitting from Roxy Music in 1973, he had recorded with David Bowie, Robert Fripp and John Cale, and produced albums for the Talking Heads and Ultravox.

After working together on “some real eccentric, innovative things,” Lanois said, Eno took him under his wing and, in 1984, asked him to co-produce U2’s “Unforgettable Fire” album.

“From that point on, everything just sort of snowballed,” he said, and resulted in a string of subsequent production credits that include ex-Band leader Robbie Robertson’s brilliant solo debut, Peter Gabriel’s “So,” U2’s “Joshua Tree,” the Neville Brothers’ “Yellow Moon,” and Dylan’s “Oh Mercy.”

Lanois said his growing demand as a producer has made him increasingly selective.

“If you get asked to do 500 records a year, but you can only put out four, you’re obviously going to have to say no to somebody. So I look for people who are strongly committed to their music, people to whom I feel I can make a contribution, people with whom I feel I can collaborate.”

Has he given any thought as to who he’d like to produce in the future?

“I was looking to make a record with the Pixies, but that’s not going to happen immediately,” Lanois said. “They’re already working with people, so I’m going to have to stand in line.

“And then there are those voices I just love to hear, like Joe Cocker. I’d really like to do something with him.”