Jack Douglas (record producer)

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Jack Douglas is an American record producer. He is known for his work with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, Cheap Trick, and the New York Dolls, among other rock artists in the 1970s and 1980s; notably he produced four successful albums for Aerosmith.^[1][2]

Early life and education

Jack Douglas was born in the Bronx in 1947, New York City. He was trained at the Institute of Audio Research and was a member of its first graduating class.

Career

Starting out as a folk musician and performer, he worked on Robert F. Kennedy's 1964 senatorial campaign as a songwriter. Douglas then moved to England and joined a succession of bands before returning to New York to attend the Institute of Audio Research.

His first professional job was at the then-new

A chance encounter with a group member led Douglas to help engineer the Who's 1971 Record Plant sessions for the aborted Lifehouse project. Songs developed from these sessions were later included on Who's Next (1971). Douglas was then given the opportunity to engineer John Lennon's classic Imagine^[3] album in 1971. Douglas and Lennon formed a close bond and worked together for the remainder of Lennon's life.

As a Record Plant staff engineer, Douglas also forged working relationships with Patti Smith, Blue Öyster Cult, the New York Dolls, Cheap Trick, Starz, and most notably Aerosmith. It was during the recording of the New York Dolls' first album that Douglas was encouraged by producer Bob Ezrin to also consider becoming a record producer.^[4]

Douglas engineered and produced many of Aerosmith's albums in the 1970s, including Get Your Wings (1974),^[5] Toys in the Attic (1975),^[6] Rocks (1976)^[7] and Draw the Line (1977),^[8] all of which have gone multi-platinum. Toys in the Attic and Rocks broke Aerosmith into the mainstream and have become highly influential, with both albums ranking among Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.^[9]

The close relationship between Douglas and Aerosmith extended beyond producing and engineering, as Douglas was also a musical contributor to the group when they came up short of material on their projects. For example, Douglas helped write the band's 1978 hit "

Since then he has kept working as an engineer and producer, reuniting with Aerosmith for three more albums and producing albums for artists such as Supertramp, Zebra, Clutch, Local H, Slash's Snakepit and, in 2006, the return of the New York Dolls.^[11]

Douglas also taught a studio etiquette class at

References