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Jack Douglas | |
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 Douglas in 1995 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | November 6, 1945 New York City, U.S. |
| Genres | Rock |
| Occupation(s) |
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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 three successful albums for Aerosmith. [1] [2]
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.
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 Record Plant, not as a producer or engineer, but as a studio janitor. Soon he was working at the recording desk, as a recording engineer, contributing to projects by Miles Davis, The James Gang, Alice Cooper, Cheap Trick, Montrose, Rough Cutt, Artful Dodger, Moxy, Flipp, and Mountain.
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 "Kings and Queens". He was often given the nickname of "the sixth member" of Aerosmith, due to his close relationship with the band. Douglas was replaced as producer by the band for the 1979 release Night in the Ruts , but Douglas was to again work with the group on 1982's Rock in a Hard Place and several of Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry's solo albums. For much of the late 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, Aerosmith worked with other producers, but in the mid-2000s, they re-united with Douglas on the 2004 blues cover album Honkin' on Bobo . Douglas also produced the band's album Music from Another Dimension! in 2012, himself providing the narration on the album's opening track "LUV XXX", parodying the style of narration from The Outer Limits .
In 1980, Douglas was working as producer with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on their Double Fantasy album (for which he shared a Grammy Award for Album of the Year). During the same sessions he worked on a follow-up Lennon/Ono album, Milk and Honey , but Lennon's murder on December 8, 1980 cut that project short. An unfinished version of the album was released in 1984. Douglas was later involved in litigation with Ono over unpaid royalties from Double Fantasy.
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. [10]
Douglas also taught a studio etiquette class at Ex'pression College for Digital Arts.
Aerosmith is an American rock band formed in Boston in 1970. The group consists of Steven Tyler, Joe Perry (guitar), Tom Hamilton (bass), Joey Kramer (drums), and Brad Whitford (guitar). Their style, which is rooted in blues-based hard rock, has also incorporated elements of pop rock, heavy metal, glam metal, and rhythm and blues, and has inspired many subsequent rock artists. Aerosmith is sometimes referred to as "the Bad Boys from Boston" and "America's Greatest Rock and Roll Band". The primary songwriting team of Tyler and Perry is sometimes referred to as the "Toxic Twins".
Rocks is the fourth studio album by American rock band Aerosmith, released on 3 May 1976. AllMusic described Rocks as having "captured Aerosmith at their most raw and rocking." Rocks was ranked number 366 on the updated Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2020. It has greatly influenced many hard rock and heavy metal artists, including Guns N' Roses, Metallica, and Nirvana. The album was a commercial success, charting three singles on the Billboard Hot 100, two of which reached the Top 40. The album was one of the first to ship platinum when it was released, and has since gone quadruple platinum.
Toys in the Attic is the third studio album by American rock band Aerosmith, released on April 8, 1975, by Columbia Records. Its first single, "Sweet Emotion", was released on May 19 and the original version of "Walk This Way" followed on August 28 in the same year. The album is the band's most commercially successful studio LP in the United States, with nine million copies sold, according to the RIAA. In 2003, the album was ranked No. 228 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The album's title track and their collaboration with Run-DMC on a cover version of "Walk This Way" are included on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame list of the "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll".
Draw the Line is the fifth studio album by American hard rock band Aerosmith, released on December 9, 1977. It was recorded between June–October in an abandoned convent near New York City. The portrait of the band on the album cover was drawn by the celebrity caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.
Night in the Ruts is the sixth studio album by American rock band Aerosmith, released on November 16, 1979 by Columbia Records. Guitarist Joe Perry left the band midway through the album's recording.
Thomas William Hamilton is an American musician and songwriter who serves as the bassist for the hard rock band Aerosmith.
Double Fantasy is the fifth album by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and the final one to feature Lennon before his death. Released in November 1980 on Geffen Records, the album marked Lennon's return to recording music full-time, following his five-year hiatus to raise his son Sean. Recording sessions took place at the Hit Factory in New York City between August and October 1980. The final album features songs from both Lennon and Ono, largely alternating between the two in its track listing. Other tracks recorded by Lennon from the sessions were compiled by Ono for release on Milk and Honey in 1984.
Get Your Wings is the second studio album by American rock band Aerosmith, released on March 15, 1974. The album was their first to be produced by Jack Douglas, who also was responsible for the band's next three albums. Three singles were released from the album, but none reached the singles charts.
The Plastic Ono Band was a rock band formed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1969 for their collaborative and solo projects based on their 1968 Fluxus conceptual art project of the same name.
"Sweet Emotion" is a song by the American rock band Aerosmith, released in 1975 on their third studio album Toys in the Attic by Columbia Records. It was released as a single on May 19, 1975. The song began a string of pop hits and large-scale success for the band that would continue for the remainder of the 1970s. The song was written by lead singer Steven Tyler and bassist Tom Hamilton, produced by Jack Douglas and recorded at Record Plant studio.
Standing on the Edge is the eighth studio album by the American rock group Cheap Trick, released by Epic in 1985. The album was produced by Jack Douglas, the producer of Cheap Trick's 1977 debut album, Cheap Trick. Standing on the Edge reached No. 35 on the Billboard 200 and remained on the charts for 18 weeks.
Wants You! is the second album of the band Rough Cutt. On certain versions/portions of the album, the full title appears as Rough Cutt Wants You!, as opposed to simply Wants You!.
The Record Plant is a recording studio established in New York City in 1968 and currently operating in Los Angeles, California. Known for innovations in the recording artists' workspace, it has produced highly influential albums, including Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run, Blondie's Parallel Lines, Metallica's Load and Reload, the Eagles' Hotel California, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP, Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction, and Kanye West's The College Dropout. More recent albums with songs recorded at Record Plant include Lady Gaga's ARTPOP, D'Angelo's Black Messiah, Justin Bieber's Purpose, Beyoncé's Lemonade, and Ariana Grande's Thank U, Next.
Roy Joel Cicala was an American producer, engineer, songwriter and musician. His body of work includes over 10 Platinum Records for producing, writing, engineering and management for talent from the 1970s through to 2014.
"You See Me Crying" is a power ballad by American hard rock band Aerosmith. It was released in 1975 as the last track on the band's breakthrough album Toys in the Attic. A shorter mix of the song was released as the third single from the album in November 1975, but failed to chart. Consequently, the original single is rather rare.
Karl Rosqvist, also known as Karl Rockfist is a Swedish drummer. He played in the Swedish metal band Sorg in the early to mid 1990s.
Music from Another Dimension! is the fifteenth studio album by American rock band Aerosmith, released on November 6, 2012, by Columbia Records. Their first studio album since 2004's Honkin' on Bobo, as well as the first to feature all-new material since 2001's Just Push Play, its release marks the longest gap between Aerosmith's studio albums. The album was released in a single CD edition, along with a deluxe version. It is the last album in Aerosmith's recording contract with Sony/Columbia Records and was produced by Jack Douglas, Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, and Marti Frederiksen. It is also their longest studio album with total track time of nearly 68 minutes.
George Marino was an American mastering engineer known for working on albums by rock bands starting in the late 1960s.
Brynn Arens is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and record producer from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is best known as guitarist and frontman of the rock band Flipp, as well as guitarist for the alternative rock band Zen From Mars. He is also the founder of Brynn Co., which is his own model of guitar amplifiers created from vintage radio consoles.
Warzone is an album by Yoko Ono released on 24 October 2018, her 50th anniversary as a musician. It consists of 13 songs she picked up and reconstructed from her past albums released from 1970 to 2009. It also includes the newest version of the 1971 song "Imagine" by John Lennon. Since Take Me to the Land of Hell in 2013, this is the Ono's first in five years and 20th original album in total. This includes a bonus track only for Japan. An English-born singer, Anohni listed Warzone as her favorite album of the 2010s.
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