and Pink Floyd, often with engineer Geoff Emerick, Wirtz wrote and produced landmark recordings by artists such as Keith West, Tomorrow, and Kippington Lodge. He reached global success with his production of "Excerpt from A Teenage Opera" (also known as "Grocer Jack"), recorded by Keith West. Though never completed or released as an entire work at the time, the idea of a rock opera became influential. Wirtz was married to singer Ross Hannaman for a period of time. Together, they wrote and recorded the song "Barefoot and Tiptoe" under the name The Sweetshop, erroneously believed to have been from A Teenage Opera. Wirtz and Hannaman divorced in 1969, at which time Wirtz teamed up with poetry writer Maria Feltham to record Wirtz's concept album, Philwit and Pegasus, for composer Les Reed's Chapter One label. In 1969, his creative freedom restricted by drastic changes in A&R policy, Wirtz resigned his post at EMI Records to return to independent production. Associations with Larry Page's Penny Farthing label, Samantha Jones, and Kris Ife followed, during which Wirtz formed a co-writing partnership ("Learning 2 Live With Love", MWET/Spyderbaby (2005); "One Night Stand", MWET/Anthony Rivers (2005), and the Cooking For Cannibals soundtrack album (2007). 1970s In 1970, Wirtz moved to Los Angeles to accept an invitation by his fellow expatriate producer and friend Denny Cordell to work with him at Hollywood's Shelter Records. In 1973, Wirtz signed a writer/artist/producer contract with Capitol Records for whom he recorded two albums, Balloon and Hothouse Smiles. Both were released under the name "Marc Wirtz". In 1975, dropped by Capitol for his refusal to tour or perform publicly, he signed with producer Tom Catalano and veteran publisher Dan Crewe's RCA-distributed TomCat label, a short-lived association because of the label folding only weeks after Wirtz's first single release, "We Could Have Laughed Forever". Having become a parent in the same year, Wirtz dropped his "loose cannon" career pursuits and, under the name of Marc Peters, became a freelance session arranger/conductor in partnership with several producers, including Kim Fowley and Jimmy Bowen. He subsequently created numerous pop, R&B and country songs that featured an array of artists as diverse as Helen Reddy, Leon Russell, Vicky Leandros, Kim Carnes, Dean Martin, and Anthony Newley. In 1979, signed by Russ Regan to Interworld Music/CBS Records as writer and producer, Wirtz produced his third solo album, Lost Pets, sequentially joined by guitarists Richard Bennett