“A lot of times when you were in the studio recording an album, you didn’t know what the single was going to be,” said Joe, who produced The Ventures and a ton of other rock acts. “The label liked it if they could pull a song from an album that didn’t need a remix. So I tried to treat every track like it was a single. And hit singles all faded out at the three-minute mark.”
It was all about radio, Joe thought. Programmers had decided that no one liked a song that lasted more than three minutes, and DJs needed a fadeout to signal that the tune was ending, so they could talk over the fade about the song coming up next.