Mark Wirtz

(1943-2020)

French record producer

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Mark Philipp Wirtz (3 September 1943 – 7 August 2020) was an Alsatian pop music record producer, composer, singer, musician, author, and comedian. Wirtz is best known for the never-completed A Teenage Opera concept album, a project he devised while working under contract to EMI at Abbey Road Studios with Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick. The first single from the planned album, "Excerpt from A Teenage Opera" by Keith West, was a number 2 hit on the UK Singles Chart in September 1967 and encapsulates Wirtz's signature style, described by Mojo magazine as "Phil Spector scoring Camberwick Green". Another track produced and arranged by Wirtz, the 1966 single "A Touch of Velvet - A Sting of Brass" credited to The Mood-Mosaic featuring The Ladybirds, became well known in Germany as the theme tune for the Radio Bremen show Musikladen and was used by some radio stations and DJs in the United Kingdom as an ident, notably Dave Lee Travis on Radio Caroline.