Earle Mankey, born on March 8, 1947, in Washington, United States, is a multifaceted American musician, record producer, and audio engineer. He co-founded the band Halfnelson, later rebranded as Sparks, as the guitarist, and went on to become a prominent record producer, primarily working with Los Angeles-based bands such as The Pop, 20/20, The Runaways, Concrete Blonde, Jumpin' Jimes, The Long Ryders, The Three O'Clock, The Tearaways, The Conditionz, Adicts, Durango 95, Leslie Pereira and The Lazy Heroes, and Kristian Hoffman.
As the brother of Concrete Blonde guitarist James Mankey, Earle's entry into studio work began with the demo recordings he engineered for Halfnelson. Using two stereo reel-to-reel tape recorders, a Sony quarter-inch, and a Panasonic quarter-inch, he painstakingly built up the tracks by recording onto the first recorder and then playing the results back into the second recorder, simultaneously performing either on guitar or keyboards, until a finished backing track was completed. To this, Russell Mael would add vocals. Mankey describes these early experiments as "fussing around with tape recorders," although he takes pride in the "cutting edge" nature of the home recordings he made at the time.
On his approach to recording and making music, Earle Mankey reveals, "About the only thing that can excite me is to try to think of something I haven't thought of before and then try to do it - which is the satisfying part."
