Jack Douglas: Lennon's Producer | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Summary

The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Episode: Jack Douglas: Lennon's Producer
Date: November 26, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Billy Corgan sits down with Jack Douglas, the legendary producer whose fingerprints are on some of rock’s most influential records—from John Lennon’s Imagine and Double Fantasy, to Aerosmith’s iconic run, Cheap Trick, Alice Cooper, New York Dolls, and beyond. The conversation journeys through Douglas’s unlikely musical beginnings, his pivotal role in shaping the sound of the ‘70s and ‘80s, and intimate behind-the-scenes stories about Lennon, Yoko Ono, Aerosmith, and more. Douglas reflects on the personal highs, the professional turbulence, and the creative philosophy that’s sustained his singular career.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Jack Douglas's Origins and Early Encounters

• Musical Adventurism

  • As a teen in the Bronx, Douglas and a friend impulsively traveled to Liverpool in December 1965 to "be rock stars", showing up with no immigration permit and no return ticket.
  • Featured in the Liverpool Echo for their audacity, this episode would later connect him with John Lennon.
  • [03:39]: “We just showed up and decided we were going to be rock stars in Liverpool…not even a return trip ticket.” (Jack Douglas)

• Entry into Recording

  • Received a reel-to-reel tape recorder from his father (who mistakenly thought it was a record player), sparking a fascination with recording and sonic experimentation.
  • “I was putting the mic into the acoustic guitar, letting it feedback, getting all these sounds... It was crazy about the whole thing.” [15:14] (Jack Douglas)

• Transition to Engineer and Producer

  • Started at the Record Plant as a janitor, worked up to engineer, and later, producer.

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Meeting and Working with John Lennon

• The Big Break

  • Douglas’s pivotal moment came when Lennon recognized him from that Liverpool newspaper clipping and chose to pull him into sessions. This was the start of life-changing opportunities.
  • “He invited me in to work... for him to recognize me from a newspaper article in the Liverpool Echo in 1965 was very stunning.” [02:42] (Jack Douglas)

• Session Dynamics

  • Lennon brought Douglas into sessions for Imagine, asking studio heads to “give this guy something to do,” which placed Douglas in the inner circle of recording titans.
  • “Suddenly, you’re being elevated into a spot that anybody would die for.” [07:00] (Billy Corgan)
  • Douglas describes Lennon's ability to create a relaxed yet highly creative atmosphere, but also his impatience for inefficiency.

• Phil Spector's Role

  • Working with Phil Spector was both disillusioning and enlightening. Spector's legendary production style sometimes gave way to excess and chaos; Roy Sakala often stepped in to keep projects on course.
  • “Sometimes [Spector] would be kind of half asleep at the end of the board … Roy Sakala very subtly took over the production of the record.” [09:20] (Jack Douglas)
  • Yet, Spector’s brilliance shone on projects like Lennon’s Christmas single: “When we did the Christmas record, Phil was totally in his element. That, to me, was like, the most successful I’d seen Phil work with John.” [10:25]

• John & Yoko: Personal and Professional Dynamics

  • Douglas recounts Lennon's dependence on Yoko Ono in creative partnership and how he devised session strategies to safeguard their creative process and emotional balance during vocal sessions.
  • “If John was producing … and he came in, it became more difficult for her … So, I would have her come in at 11, work until 4, and he would come in after.” [54:08]

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Philosophy and Approach to Music Production

• Fundamental Philosophy

  • Influenced by the Al Schmitt/Phil Ramone school: “Go out and listen to the instrument you’re about to record and then come back in the studio and recreate that sound as best you can.” [33:46]
  • Layering “the magic” over a natural foundation with subtle compression, EQ, and reverb.
  • “When I would make a record, the thing that was important to me is that I’m making the record I want to make with the band, and second—not what other people are producing or what the sound is today.” [62:44]

• Studio Techniques

  • Embraced leakage for ambiance: “If I put the bass in a booth, I always opened the door to the booth … let that big wave leak into the drums.” [35:57]
  • Kept mixes “quite dry,” shied from excessive reverb or studio effects.

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Notable Projects & Moments

Aerosmith

• First Impressions
  • “Being such a Yardbirds fan, I immediately got it … charisma and the aggression.” [36:19] (Jack Douglas)
  • Stephen Tyler’s drive and unique force singled him out as the essential ingredient.
  • “He’s a force of nature … dedicated and loyal to the band. He loved them. He loved Joe.” [40:42]
• Band Dynamics
  • Details the internal chemistry (“an unrequited love” between Tyler and Perry) that made, broke, and remade Aerosmith.
• Production Notes
  • Orchestrated “You See Me Crying” with the New York Philharmonic, inspired by Beatles’ tradition of closing LPs with a ballad—“That’s inspiration from the Beatles … they finish off an album with Ringo singing.” [44:36]
  • Confirms session rumors: On some early tracks, Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter played guitars in place of band members.
    • “On a couple of tunes [on Get Your Wings], Joe’s not playing—it's Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter.” [45:39]
  • The band quickly grew as musicians, fully reclaiming their instrumental parts on subsequent albums.

Cheap Trick

• Creating the Right Sound

  • The debut was “snotty and dirty and funky and fat and dry—what Cheap Trick was.”
  • “We recorded all those [future hits like 'I Want You to Want Me'], but I said, next record, put them on the back burner … we're going slowly, we'll make this statement first.” [68:20]

• Budokan Story

  • The iconic live album was actually recorded primarily in Osaka, not Budokan, because the latter’s tapes were subpar. Douglas reconstructed drum sounds using innovative techniques.
  • “In order to reproduce the drum sound, I put a speaker in a bass drum, filtered out everything but the low end … and miked that bass drum. So now I had a thump.” [70:25]
  • “Rick calls me up 20 years ago, he goes, ‘We have the film for Budokan, we want you to make a 5.1 mix.’ … I said, ‘But that mix is Osaka, remember?’ He’d forgotten.” [71:25]

Other Key Collaborations

• Alice Cooper & Bob Ezrin

  • Psychedelic editing story—accidentally takes a psychedelic while editing “I Love the Dead,” resulting in an unconventional mix that Bob Ezrin loved.
    • “My arms suddenly got 10ft long … one piece of it's backwards. Bob came in, he goes, ‘Brilliant, perfect.’” [27:53]

• New York Dolls

  • Stepped in to aid production while Todd Rundgren was often absent.
  • “After that, Bob [Ezrin] said to me, ‘You’re a producer, that’s what you’re doing on the record.’” [31:18]

• Lifehouse Sessions with The Who, LaBelle, Billy Joel, Patti Smith, Rick Derringer, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, and more

  • Recalls working on Bangladesh benefit (Harrison), Bowie, Stevie Wonder, Montrose (with Hagar’s replacement), and others. Many stories and credits are missing in his public record.

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John Lennon: Final Years & Aftermath

• Double Fantasy: Secret Comeback

  • Douglas describes hearing Lennon’s “home demos,” double-tracked with cassette boomboxes, narrated for his ears only.
  • “He said, ‘I want you to listen to this, and tomorrow tell me if you think it’s just shit or I have a record.’ … They were wonderful, wonderful.” [75:39]
  • Lennon’s comeback project was a “dialogue” with Yoko—much to some critics’ consternation.
  • “Where’s the edge? Where’s the angry John? I'm like, this is him at approaching 40 … he’s never sung anything but his truth.” [78:44]

• After Lennon's Murder

  • Douglas recounts the profound impact Lennon’s assassination had on him, including a collapse into depression, addiction, and isolation.
  • “I felt this terrible guilt … I would have been in the car, I would have seen the guy, I would have tackled him, John would be alive. So that played over and over and over…” [82:36]

• Path to Recovery

  • Found sobriety, spent years out of the industry before being “rescued” by a call to produce Supertramp.
  • “It was a chance for me to check in with [my dad], stay with him, kind of take care of him for a while … and then after rehab … almost two years to the day, I got a call to produce Supertramp. Hello. Miracle.” [83:10]

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Yoko Ono, Legal Struggles, and Reconciliation

• Legal Battle

  • Suffered a major rift with Yoko Ono over royalties, triggered by a manipulative advisor who sowed distrust.
  • “She was being advised by a really bad guy … who told her you should trust no one … especially me.” [85:48]

• Courtroom Anecdotes

  • Colorful trial details: Yoko hires a witch to hex him (“He quit… said he couldn't get anywhere with this guy…” [91:16]), Phil Spector’s disastrous court testimony, Jan Wenner having to read his own flattering biography of Douglas into the court record.

• Making Peace

  • Years later, they reconcile at a show of Sean Lennon’s.
  • “She gave me a big hug and said, ‘Really, there’s a lot of water has run under the bridge.’ And then we started working on little things together.” [91:38]

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Selected Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the Role of the Producer

  • “Good antenna. And that I understood, because I knew that when you work with John, you’re staying two or three steps ahead at all times.” [55:18] (Jack Douglas on John Lennon)

• On Studio Etiquette [92:20-92:54]

  • “The artist is always right.”
  • “Listen before you touch anything.”
  • “Treat everyone that you work with well.”
  • “Stay ahead of everything that’s going on.”

• On Working with Cheap Trick

  • “It was snotty and dirty and funky and fat and dry. But also had mando cello … so it showed they could do this too.” [66:22]

• On Lasting Impact

  • “I would really like 20 years from when I’m producing this record that this record is still listenable.” [62:44]

• On Lennon’s Talent

  • “Nobody Told Me … that vocal is perfect. He’s in there singing and playing at the same time. It’s just what he does, perfectly.” [57:17]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:56] — Meeting John Lennon: The shifting trajectory
• [10:25] — Spector’s presence in the studio
• [13:29] — Liverpool adventure, early band exploits, and credibility
• [25:47] — Cinematic production style and film composition background
• [36:19] — First impressions of Aerosmith, band chemistry
• [45:39] — Session musicians on early Aerosmith records
• [62:44] — Production philosophy and sound legacy
• [70:25] — Cheap Trick’s Budokan album: Rebuilding the sound
• [75:07] — The secretive return of John Lennon, “Double Fantasy”
• [81:34] — Aftermath of Lennon’s death, withdrawal and recovery
• *[85:48] — Legal conflicts with Yoko Ono and reconciliation
• *[92:20] — Studio etiquette “parables”

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Memorable Anecdotes

• Lennon defending Jack from Yoko’s wrath over late-night pot smoking, with John making monkey noises (“woo!”) at Yoko’s threat to bring in Phil Spector [06:47]
• Editing Alice Cooper on a suspected speed pill, only to find out it was a psychedelic—resulting in a unique backwards section approved by Bob Ezrin [27:53]
• Yoko hiring a witch to hex Jack during their lawsuit (“I can’t get anywhere with this guy... he quit.”) [91:16]

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Tone and Dynamic

This episode is both heartfelt and humorous—peppered with Jack Douglas’s self-deprecating warmth, Billy Corgan’s fan’s curiosity, and a wealth of hard-won industry wisdom. The stories combine inside baseball for studio nerds with human themes of fate, grief, forgiveness, and the enduring power of rock music.

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For listeners or readers, this wide-ranging conversation is a crash course in 50 years of rock history—told by someone who was there for the moments that shaped it, and lived to tell the tale with candor and grace.

Transcript

[Jack Douglas]

I mean, crossing the North Atlantic in November is no fun on a little tin can of a ship. Word got out that maybe we were smoking pot after the session was over, and then Yoko would get like, pissed off at us and she'd call us and John and I looked at each other and before I could do it, John went, woo.

[Interviewer]

In amongst all this, here comes Aerosmith.

[Jack Douglas]

Know I never said no to them.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. What was your role in this?

[Jack Douglas]

I was a getaway driver.

[Interviewer]

Thank you so much for being here. Longtime fan. Here we are together, talk nerd stuff. Recording. And of course, the Bach and all that is rock and roll. You've been in the epicenter of it now for a good 50 gosh, 50 plus years.

[Jack Douglas]

50 plus years, yeah. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So even though it's the most obvious thing in the world, I'd like to start with the day you met John Lennon. Because it seems to me it's the watershed moment of your life. Because the moment you meet John Lennon, your life literally does change.

[Jack Douglas]

Right.

[Interviewer]

It's not like you met him and then your life changed later. I mean, your life changed the day you met John Lennon.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, it did. But is that fair? I don't know if it's totally fair because I was on some kind of path already.

[Interviewer]

But maybe you. But had.

[Jack Douglas]

This was unexpected and. And if you did some research, you probably know that the whole Liverpool.

[Interviewer]

No, that's the second part of my question, you see.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. So.

[Interviewer]

No, because. No, because the reason I say that is because you were on a trajectory. You were already working as an engineer.

[Jack Douglas]

You were.

[Interviewer]

You were working at the record plan.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And you worked your way up, literally, from Janitor on up.

[Jack Douglas]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

So it's not to discount what you were doing, but I'm saying is that's the day John Lennon personally walks you into a session.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And says, can we give this guy something to do? And now suddenly you're working with Phil Spector and all these esteemed musicians.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, it took a notable change. But.

[Interviewer]

But if it's not. If you don't think it's fair to put it that way, tell me why it isn't fair to put it that way. Because that's why I asked the questions. I asked my questions. Assumptions. But.

[Jack Douglas]

It did cause a huge change in my life. But I didn't think that day that it was going to be the kind of change that it turned out to be.

[Interviewer]

I see. But you look, looking back now, do you look at it that way?

[Jack Douglas]

Yes. For both good and for both bad and tragic and for Me, you know, like led me on a really self destructive kind of journey after his passing. But for him, for him to recognize me from a newspaper. Yeah. Article in. In the Liverpool Echo in 1965.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

Was very stunning. And. And my surprise was that he was surprised to meet me. Like in all the rooms I walk into. Here's the guy that was like, you know, we should have been just on the front pages of our local newspaper. We just released Rubber Soul.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And there's these two guys on a ship with their guitars and they're banned from.

[Interviewer]

So for. People don't know the story. I actually knew the story. You and friend go over to Liverpool, 1965. It's the winter, I believe.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. December.

[Interviewer]

Okay. And you show up on a ship. You don't even have a. No immigration permit, nothing. You just show up and you decide you're going to be rock stars in Liverpool.

[Jack Douglas]

Not even a return trip ticket.

[Interviewer]

But yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

You know, you had that, that energy.

[Interviewer]

Once where it doesn't matter, you know, it's a. It's a kind of a beautiful blind faith or something.

[Jack Douglas]

Yes. And.

[Interviewer]

Which turned out honestly to be accurate because that has everything to do with why when you. The day you meet John Lennon, you go, by the way, I was in Liverpool once.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And he knows the story and he's like. He recognizes you from the story.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. You know what he asked me? You know, in that picture in the newspaper. I've got a 1955 Les Paul custom with the Bigsby.

[Interviewer]

Okay. Was it with the one with the d' Addario pickup? I can't.

[Jack Douglas]

No, no, no. This is the original 1955 magnesium pickups.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

The second question he asked me was, you still have that? See, now there's a musician he wasn't much interested. Interested in my partner's guitar. He mos. Right. Yeah. Which I don't even think he knew what a Mosrite was that was. But he wanted to know about that last Paul.

[Interviewer]

That's funny that he remembered it.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. Well, right there, I'll. I'll send you a picture. I'd love to see it from the newspaper. But he just thought that it was a, a, like a, like a strange moment that he would run into me there and that I was a guy who had the, you know, the wherewithal to take a trip like that to Liverpool.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

I mean crossing the North Atlantic in November is no fun on a little tin can of a ship. But he invited me in to work.

[Interviewer]

On the record, which is the imagined record produced by Phil Spector.

[Jack Douglas]

Right. The reason that John was in the room that I was in was to escape from Phil.

[Interviewer]

He had kind of a love hate relationship with Phil, right?

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, very much so. And in fact, when we were doing Double Fantasy and word got got out that maybe she had been. We were smoking pot after the session was over, and then Yoko would get like, pissed off at us and she'd call us. She'd call us down into her office in Studio one, and John and I would be standing there like two school children. Why she yelled at us for, you know, what were you doing? You were, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then she looked at me and she said. She said, you know, I can always get Phil to do this, to do these sessions. And John. Because John at this point, hated him. I hated him. And John and I looked at each other, and before I could do it, John went. It was. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So as the story goes, he brings you into the session. You were. You were in editing a room or something.

[Jack Douglas]

I was, yeah. Transfers and editing.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. So he brings you in the session, he says, can we give this guy something to do?

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And, you know, politics being what they are, suddenly, you know, you're being elevated into a spot that anybody would die for.

[Jack Douglas]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

I mean, there were two engineers on the date. It was.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. They probably looked at. What's he doing?

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. I mean, my boss, Roy Saala, and. And Shelly Akis, an amazing engineer.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And they were just like. I mean, first of all, when I didn't walked in the room, they said, what are you doing? And all I could say was, I'm with him.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. My new bud. Yeah. My new buddy, John.

[Jack Douglas]

And. And he. For some reason, he took a liking to me and would ask me to do stuff.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

Eventually, he. He asked me where I lived. I lived in the Village. He lived in the Village on Bank Street. He gave me a ride home a few times. He asked me if I knew a restaurant he could go in, a back door. He. In Yoko. We did that a few nights. And then one night he called me up, he asked me for my phone number. He called me up and he said, I have to go to this party. There's all these kind of nutcases here. I just want you to keep an eye on things because I don't know them personally. It was Abby Hoffman and that whole.

[Interviewer]

Oh, is that whole world?

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, that whole crew. And they were talking in this apartment off the Pig. And they were talking about violence. And he was getting drunker and drunker.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. That's also what got him investigated by the. Was it the FBI?

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Because they was hanging out with these dissidents.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. They were using him, of course.

[Interviewer]

Really? Yeah, that's pretty obvious.

[Jack Douglas]

But he made quite a scene at that party. He grabbed a knife in the kitchen and went at this woman who had been yelling to off the pigs. And he was like, you want violence? I'll show you violence out of her.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Jack Douglas]

And then we left.

[Interviewer]

So how was Phil Spector? Two questions. What did you think of Phil Spector? I mean, I'm not talking about necessarily by reputation. When you're walking in, were you a fan? But, I mean, now you're working with Phil Spector, at least you're in his proximity. And this is, you know, this is John, just after the Beatles. This is. Yeah. And Phil Spector is still Phil Spector.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. I was rather disappointed because I had a lot of respect from him. I loved his records, and especially growing.

[Interviewer]

Up in this part of the world, Right.

[Jack Douglas]

And Ronnie was there very frequently, and Phil was frequently quite drunk or high. Sometimes he would be kind of half asleep at the end of the board. And I watched Roy Sakala very subtly take over the production of the record. Phil would lift his head every once in a while and more reverb. And. And. And I had no respect for Phil after that until I worked on the Christmas Song at that point. And John had no reason. John treated him badly and argued with him constantly. And I learned a great deal about how to work with John from watching those sessions.

[Interviewer]

But.

[Jack Douglas]

But when we did the Christmas record, Phil was totally in his element. And that, to me, was like, the most successful I'd seen Phil work with John. It was just. It was a Phil Spector production.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. What's that live. I don't know, magical thing that he would do, where he would just be. Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

I mean, look, he had. He had four acoustic guitar players in a circle with it with a mic and Omni in the middle. They're all strumming the same thing. I mean, that kind of.

[Interviewer]

No one ever did that better.

[Jack Douglas]

No.

[Interviewer]

Whatever that was.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Because there's a science, I'm sure. But the magic is knowing what works or something.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. They're absolutely playing the tracks out over the. The monitors in the room.

[Interviewer]

Oh, the tracks back into the room.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Jack Douglas]

During overdubs.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. That kind of stuff.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. So did you.

[Jack Douglas]

I mean, a big choir of, you know, kids and.

[Interviewer]

But back to Imagine, you know, and I don't know where in the sessions you came in the sessions when I think I wrote it down. But it's like February to July of 71.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Somewhere on there. But so. But you know, in any given time. George Harrison's on the record.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Nikki Hopkins. Claus Vorman's playing bass, Keltner's playing drums. Who's the other drummer? Alan White.

[Jack Douglas]

Alan White, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yes. Fame. That's a pretty interesting group of musicians too. You know, you're not just working with John Lenny, you're working with like a pretty. A crew of talent.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, yeah. I. I think I underappreciated it. I was so, like, nervous to actually be there doing it that I just treated it like I was working with session guys.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

Like I was working with, you know, Steve Gad and Tony Levin.

[Interviewer]

Sure. You know. So in a given day, were you miking? I mean, were you.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, I was, Mikey.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

You know, lucky. I had been mentored by Roy Sacala.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

So that I knew.

[Interviewer]

So you were already in.

[Jack Douglas]

I knew his liking technique.

[Interviewer]

That would be a big deal if you're coming in as a sort of.

[Jack Douglas]

A. Yeah, I mean, he didn't have to tell me what he wanted on a. I mean.

[Interviewer]

I mean, you and I understand studio politics. It's like an outsider just can't walk in.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, I wasn't so much of an outsider.

[Interviewer]

That's my point. Yeah, that's the point I'm making. If you were just some guy he found on the street, it would have been disaster. Because even if you were a genius, you're suddenly.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, you're in a. You don't belong there, but you're.

[Interviewer]

Because you're part of that family. Okay, now. Okay. You're.

[Jack Douglas]

You're the kid.

[Interviewer]

And they're giving you.

[Jack Douglas]

And I was. And I was Roy's baby.

[Interviewer]

I wanted to touch a little bit when you were in Liverpool in 65, going into 66. Because you were there for a brief time. And correct me if I'm wrong, but you guys started doing gigs when you weren't supposed to and the same trouble and shipped back out. Yeah, but did you see any. Any artists play around that time?

[Jack Douglas]

Oh, yeah, we did. We hung out at the original Cavalry Club.

[Interviewer]

I mean, what an incredible time to be there.

[Jack Douglas]

It was amazing. I mean, it was like a dream come true, you know, it was. It was better than anything I could ever have imagined.

[Interviewer]

Well, you can argue it's the greatest moment in rock and roll history is that period of time.

[Jack Douglas]

And we would. We would hang out at the Cavern. A big plus of coming back Because I was already a working musician, but small time. Yeah, locally. But when I came back from Liverpool, I had cred. I. I was a guy that had beetle. And, and, and we both, Eddie and I, we both hooked up with the Angels. My boyfriend's back.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

And. And went on the road with them and playing guitar. Playing bass.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Jack Douglas]

And we just did a bunch of road gigs with the Angels.

[Interviewer]

That sounds pretty.

[Jack Douglas]

That was fun.

[Interviewer]

But.

[Jack Douglas]

But Liverpool. I wish I could remember all of the bands that I saw down there. Yeah, we were playing in the suburbs with a, you know, a pickup. A band that picked us up because we were kind of famous, but within two weeks we were busting.

[Interviewer]

You went viral, basically, in the modern parlance.

[Jack Douglas]

Yes. And we left in shackles on a train to Southampton.

[Interviewer]

So when you were young, somebody gives you a reel to reel tape recorder. And this sort of begins your fascination with sound.

[Jack Douglas]

That's right. My father did.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And you started doing all these like these music concrete. You were recording different things. Were you editing the tapes and.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, I was. I also was putting my guitar, the mic into the acoustic guitar I had and I was recording my guitar in there as a kid and letting it feed back and getting all these sounds and it was crazy about the whole thing. It was. Yeah, it was, you know, cheap tape recorder that my dad worked in a freight yard. So things used to fall off freight cars as they do the whole neighborhood. Neighborhood. He sold TVs and radios to the whole neighborhood. I lived in the Bronx. But he thought he was getting me a record player because I used to drive my parents crazy wanting to use their record player as a kid and playing my, you know, Bozo under the Sea. The Tortoise and the Hare uncle remix. Yeah, the Song of the South.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

So. And you know, and they just wanted to listen to their big band records. My father's opera stuff. So my father, when he went into the freight car to get. He thought it said record player. It said recorder.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And it was a web core.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

You know, good brand. It was something that came in from Chicago, I think.

[Interviewer]

And that's right. I think it was from Chicago.

[Jack Douglas]

And, and, and he pulled that out and we didn't know until I opened the present that because he put it in. He had it in a bag and he put the bag under the bed.

[Interviewer]

Well, actually reel to reel at that time would have been more valuable than a record player.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, but, yeah, I wanted a record player, but this turned out to be much better.

[Interviewer]

Well, it worked out. It worked out yeah. So at what point do you make this transition sort of psychologically, like from I want to be a musician to I want to be on the other side of the glass and recording. And.

[Jack Douglas]

The. The last band I was in was a group called Privilege. And, you know, and I've been in.

[Interviewer]

Is this the. Is this the Isley Brothers?

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, the Isley Records. Yeah, they produced us.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And I didn't. And we recorded at A R Studios.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

Phil Ramones played.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

But it was a wrong combination what.

[Interviewer]

Kind of music they were, because there's not a lot of information on that part of your life.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, it's kind of psychedelic. Psychedelic. We wanted to be Led Zeppelin, but a New York version with a Hammond organ.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

So it was kind of blues based. Psychedelic.

[Interviewer]

I played music more psychedelic than Vanilla Fudge.

[Jack Douglas]

Say more like that, but more. More blues based.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

More Led Zeppeliny.

[Interviewer]

Cactus.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, yeah. Cactus Fairy. Part New Jersey.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

Part New York.

[Interviewer]

Because there was a cool hard rock thing happening in this. We're in New York. But there was a kind of. There was. It was different here in terms of heavy music than say, Detroit, Chicago.

[Jack Douglas]

Well, I had. After I quit the. One band I can. In Florida that I was playing with, I joined a Canadian band that was called the Liverpool Set. They were already. Now, not one of these guys had ever been to Liverpool.

[Interviewer]

That's why I'm laughing. Yeah. I already know where this is going.

[Jack Douglas]

I was the only guy that ever been there and I'm the only American in the band. They were from Latvia, Scotland, England, and of course Canada. And they were based in Toronto. And the days in Toronto when. When the Village was really something.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Jack Douglas]

The Czech mates and the. You know, the Mandela and. And so we wanted to get. We wanted this drummer from a group called the Minor Birds. Okay, that sort of some famous people in that band. But we got him. He was English. And we got the piano player from Ronnie Hawkins. Okay, The Hawks. His name was Scott Kushny. He wanted to leave because when they were playing Le Coc d' or on Yonge Street, Ronnie would crank him up, you know, part of it and make him play really fast. So he didn't. He wanted out. We got him. Interestingly enough, I, Scott Kushney, ended up in Aerosmith for a while because he's the piano player on big 10 inch. But anyway, he. Interesting story. I was just working on a documentary about him. He was called Dr. Piano or something. He had a great reputation at Toronto. And, um. And he played Thursday through Sunday at a club when People came into town. They'd always end up jamming with him. Scott Kushner.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

And. And so I got a message. It is a couple of years ago. He's disappeared. He was blind also. He disappeared. And I'm like, scott disappeared. He. He could see kind of. He had Coke bottle glasses. He knew how to get home all the time. He didn't make it home just one day. And so he disappeared. And now he was gone for months. It was all over Canadian News. Scott Cushing, Dr. Piano, disappeared. So they thought he must have drowned. He must do this. So it ended up at some point, he was in the hospital. He had fallen, and he. His face hit the curb, and it completely disfigured him, and he was in a coma, and he finally passed away. These people came in. They were looking for their uncle or somebody who had disappeared that same week. And they identified Scott as their uncle.

[Interviewer]

Oh, my goodness.

[Jack Douglas]

And they gave him a big Greek Orthodox.

[Interviewer]

Sorry to laugh.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, I know. And buried him. Now he's missing for, like, a really long time. You know what happens? The uncle shows up, and you're like, oh, my God, who did we bury? Scott Kushner.

[Interviewer]

I've never heard a story like that. That is crazy.

[Jack Douglas]

Scott Kushner. Anyway, so I was in this band. We were assigned to Columbia. We recorded in Nashville, made a couple of hits, and we played the. The craziest places you could ever imagine.

[Interviewer]

Is this privilege or this is the.

[Jack Douglas]

This is Liverpool set? Yeah. But we did play the summer of 66 or 67 at Tony Mart's. Did you ever hear At Tony Martz? Oh, it's a fabulous place on the Jersey Shore.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

You know, it's like a dream to play there. I once asked Bruce, did you ever play Tony? He said, I dreamed of playing Tony Martz. I was just slightly too young.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And played there. It was great. And then I had another band after that called Waterfront, which became a production company for some years. And we were signed to Epic Records, but they changed our name to the Swamp Seeds.

[Interviewer]

Almost none of this history is available.

[Jack Douglas]

Where I looked, so. And then the swamp.

[Interviewer]

I would have done my research. I would have gone, yes.

[Jack Douglas]

Swamp Seeds morphed into Privilege.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

And we went from Epic Records to.

[Interviewer]

Teanec Teaneck, which was their Isley's private imprint.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, well, Buddha Records.

[Interviewer]

Right, okay. Yeah. Right.

[Jack Douglas]

You know, even earlier in my. In my later teens, I was writing for Kennedy.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Jack Douglas]

So I already. I already had, you know, President Kennedy.

[Interviewer]

It's not just Kennedy.

[Jack Douglas]

No. Robert Kennedy.

[Interviewer]

Sorry. Robert Kennedy.

[Jack Douglas]

He was running for Senate.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

In New York. And I was writing campaign songs and then warming the crowd up.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

On a tour.

[Interviewer]

Right. But again, sorry, because I'm glad you told me all this, because I couldn't find any of this information because I love this type of stuff, because I love the musical journey part of it. But, like, at what point do you go, okay, I'm done as an artist, and now I just want to be on the recording side, I think, because that's a hard. That's a hard psychological thing for a lot of musicians to get over when they go out of. You know what I mean? Like, we worked when we were young. We worked with Butch Vig.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Who had done two, had been signed to a couple labels. Both bands didn't kind of work. So when we're working with him and he's working with us in Nirvana, he's kind of somewhat bitter on some level that his musical life didn't work out the way he wanted. Eventually, he formed Garbage and had a lot of his own success as an artist. But most guys or girls who make that transition, there's always that kind of feeling that they didn't get out of it, what they came in to give.

[Jack Douglas]

Oh, I never felt like that.

[Interviewer]

That's why I'm asking you.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. No, for me, it was all a great adventure from. From start to wherever I am now. You know, it's like I could never figure that it would. You know, each step would be more enlightening.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

I started. I started that I wanted to. To score film.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

That's what I studied in school, Theory and composition. And. And even while I was the janitor at Record Plant in. At Night, I was a client because I was scoring the ABC After School specials.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

I was writing the music for that show, so I wasn't sure exactly, you know, which path. And now I'm scoring film constantly. Yeah. So I wasn't sure where.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

Where else? Where else?

[Interviewer]

Kind of explains. Suddenly you tell me that it helps because it sort of explains the cinematic aspect of some of the productions that you've done. Some particularly. Some of the most famous ones, particularly. When I think of Aerosmith.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Well, there's a cinematic quality to the way that you produce them also. Does that ring true to you?

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, yeah, it does. First of all, if you. If you're looking up at the monitors. When I look at the monitors, I see a movie, you know, I'm seeing Band in a movie up there. And. And I'm watching, you know, each of the strings, of the guitar becomes a live thing, and the drums become an image in a live thing.

[Interviewer]

And so maybe you're just a dadaist at heart.

[Jack Douglas]

Yes, could be. I think so.

[Interviewer]

It's kind of a dadaist. Mind you describe it even, you know, and even the idea of cutting tape up, playing with sound.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. You know, when I was working with Bob Ezrin on Billion Dollar Babies, there's a song on there called I Love the Dead. And, and we were mixing that thing for 40 hours straight. Bob said, I'm, I'm so tired. I, I, I'm gonna go get a couple of Z's back at the hotel. You work on it for a while. I was already wiped out. It was right around Christmas, just before Christmas. And I was like, okay, maybe just, I'll take this mix, I do some editing, maybe I come up with something. I got all this. So I took a couple of mixes and I pinned up all these different pieces that I thought were good up on the wall. Chorus from here, verse, second verse, middle eight. And, and I put my hand in my pocket and there was a pill. And I'm looking at the pill and I said, who gave me this damn pill? Oh, this girl. She's a speed freak. Gave me this pill. This will work great, you know, it was a capsule. It must be speed. Just what I need, really, to get me through the next three or four hours to put this together. It wasn't, it was, it was.

[Interviewer]

Some.

[Jack Douglas]

Kind of psych psychotic.

[Interviewer]

A psychotic or a psychedelic?

[Jack Douglas]

A psychedelic.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

It was a psychedelic of some kind. Maybe mushroom.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Jack Douglas]

So anyway, I, I'm, I'm trying to edit and, and I'm editing on a, on a 440Ampex, which is a low kind of machine. But I look down, my arms suddenly got 10ft long. I'm rocking the reels and anyway, I put it back together best I could, and one piece of it's backwards. And Bob came in. I was now out sound asleep. Bob came in, he turned down the machine, listened to it. He goes, brilliant, perfect. So that, yeah.

[Interviewer]

So it was Bob who really, Bob Ezrin, really encouraged you to really become think like a producer. Right?

[Jack Douglas]

He did. He told me that I was a producer because of that first Dolls album. Because Todd wasn't there very often, nor did he care much about the record. It was not a good fit because Todd's production style was so beautifully clean and the harmonies are always so perfect. I remember we were doing Personality Crisis or Trash or one of these things. I I knew all those guys, you know, I. I hung out at Max's and I knew the scene and. And so I got the gig so that there would be somebody they could relate to, that they knew. Yeah. And. And of course, Libre Krebs managed them. And so we're doing one of those songs and. And Todd turns to me, he says, it's really awful. And I said, well, you know, it's not that they don't play that well, but when it's all together, it's kind of really cool sound. It's something about.

[Interviewer]

It's what we would call my band. A vibe.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. So now. So now the band comes in and. And they're like. You know, half of them are stoned. And Johnny Thunders. I don't even think he came in. He wanted very straight to the bathroom. And David comes in last. David had been doing a live vocal just to get to keep the band going.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And David, who was a very close friend of mine. I'm so sorry.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Just passed away.

[Jack Douglas]

David comes in and not knowing what to say, Todd said to him, you know, this is going to be really good when, like, we put some harmony on there. And David looked at me and he said, harmony? Are you accusing me of having melody? I thought that was life I ever heard. Yeah. And, you know, he was taking the piss, but, yeah, it was really wonderful. Anyway, so Bob would stop by every once in a while to see how that was turning out in there. And decombined. Todd was that. We have to. We had to keep the label out a lot of the time so they wouldn't know Mercury Records, that there was nobody in charge, that the. The inmates were running the asylum at that point. But we were getting it done. But after that, he said to me, you know, you're a producer, you. That's what you're doing on the record.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Jack Douglas]

You know who my assistant was on that for? Jimmy Iovine.

[Interviewer]

Ah, yeah. What did he ever do? Did he ever do anything? So you have these interesting experiences with. With. With Lennon's and Yoko. John and obviously John and Yoko. And then, you know, there's other things you get into, like Edward hawk, Edwin Hawkins, LaBelle.

[Jack Douglas]

Well, I did LaBelle's. I did her demos. I also did. And I was just reading about it because I've. I also did Billy Joel's demos to get his.

[Interviewer]

Oh, wow.

[Jack Douglas]

For where he got his deal from. Just strict, just piano and vocal. And Artie Rip had paid for the session and Artie came in with Billy and, And.

[Interviewer]

And Billy Was just. He'd been in some kind of psychedelic band, too, right?

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, he was in the Huns or something. He wore horns.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, but he was also. He was also in the Hassles, which was very much like the Vanilla Fudge.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

Oh, that's right.

[Interviewer]

Very much stuff.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. Yeah. Very much like the Vagrants, another East coast Hammond group.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

Leslie west was the leader.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I love Leslie West.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, he's great. So, you know it. I'm sorry, what were we talking about?

[Interviewer]

No, I guess what I'm trying to point you at is, you know, now you're in the hustle, like, you're in the game.

[Jack Douglas]

Oh. Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know what I mean? But with the who, right? I was getting there, too. But, I mean, with Bob Ezrin's encouragement, now you're taking these experiences. You've worked with the who on Lifehouse sessions. You know, you've got your foot in it now. And the way the business works is once your name gets around, people start saying, you know. So did you come into it with a philosophical approach? Because there was kind of a. It seems like around that time, and you tell me you were there, but it seems like a. Not a back to basics, but kind of more of an organic vibe to the records. Is that.

[Jack Douglas]

Oh, very much so. Very much.

[Interviewer]

Is that something you were interested in, you were a proponent of, or was that sort of of the time?

[Jack Douglas]

Well, that was a school of recording that goes back to Al Schmidt and Phil Ramona.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And. And the philosophy was go out and listen to the instrument you're about to record and then come back in the. Into the studio and recreate that sound as best you can so that you can see that instrument in front of you.

[Interviewer]

That really explains it, because the world I grew up in, we didn't think like that. But I. When I go back and listen to those records, I could never understand sort of philosophically where that was coming from.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Because to us, especially as kids listening to records, my daddy was a musician, so I heard a lot of music when I was a kid, too. It always seemed kind of very. Not clear, but defined. You know, it was like good sound was a big part of that logic. But, you know, in Chicago was about the blues. Everything was, like, over amplified, over distorted. So to us, the east coast thing was always kind of the, you know, the Phil Ramone, like, almost too clear, too. Too defined. Where we were growing up with everything over overhand.

[Jack Douglas]

Well, then. All right, so this was passed on to Royce Kall at Cheliakis Then their philosophy in particular, Shelley, was, now you've got all of these instruments that sound like the instruments that are out in the room now. Make it sound like a record.

[Interviewer]

Okay. What does that mean to you?

[Jack Douglas]

Add the magic to it.

[Interviewer]

Okay. So the magic is the compression, the.

[Jack Douglas]

Eq, the reverb, the del. All those things that make it have that magic. Don't go completely crazy.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

Be subtle with it and it'll work out great. Okay.

[Interviewer]

That helps me understand because particularly your work with Aerosmith, it's got a particular feeling to it where a lot of guys would have gone maybe the other way into aggression. Your work has a lot of beautiful definition that holds up really, really well over time.

[Jack Douglas]

It's quite dry, actually.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that too. Which for the punter in the room, means you're not adding reverbs and.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And undo ambience. Back then, you would have used plates and.

[Jack Douglas]

But right now, also, leakage was important to me.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Jack Douglas]

Like, if I put the base in a booth, I always opened the door to the booth.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

And let that big wave.

[Interviewer]

Do you like that?

[Jack Douglas]

That big wave will leak into the drums. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So in amongst all this, here comes Aerosmith. What was your first impression of them?

[Jack Douglas]

Well, being such a Yardbirds fan.

[Interviewer]

Okay. I immediately got it.

[Jack Douglas]

I got it right away. And when I went up to Boston to see them, by the way, they wanted Bob to produce that record.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Jack Douglas]

And was.

[Interviewer]

Because he was more of a name or.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, he was. He was a big name, but.

[Interviewer]

But he's Canadian. See, that's how we said.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, but I'm also. I'm a landed immigrant.

[Interviewer]

That's a joke for all our.

[Jack Douglas]

I'm a Canadian landed immigrant from working up there. They just. I got landed immigrant status. But. But Bob didn't think they were ready after hearing the first record, and. And Lieber and Krebs also managed them and the Dolls, and they were looking to give me the prize that I deserved for making sure that the Doll's album got through.

[Interviewer]

So you got that gig because that was.

[Jack Douglas]

That was. That was my. My. My prize.

[Interviewer]

Who'd you first connect with in Aerosmith? Sort of emotionally, like, of the.

[Jack Douglas]

Of the guys, I think Stephen, because he's basically Bronx Yonkers.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Jack Douglas]

So we recognized each other right away. But, you know, it's basically. It's Stephen and Joe. Yeah, those are the guys. Joe is very standoffish or very shy. Either. Either one of those.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

I mean, he's the. The reluctant rock star. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, he. He's a Very bookish. He wanted to be some kind of scientist. He was interested in saving fish in the ocean.

[Interviewer]

He.

[Jack Douglas]

He. The reason he started playing guitar was so that girls would notice him.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. So that worked. Yeah. But I love it because. But I, you know, go, please put.

[Jack Douglas]

It in a room. At a high school gig they were doing where they were playing where it was. So the acoustics were so terrible, you could hardly hear anything.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. But the charisma was there.

[Jack Douglas]

The charisma and the aggression.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And the. And they played Drink kept rolling. Yeah. And, you know, from Blow up, that was always a big thing for me.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. When we. The last day of school in sixth grade, which for me would have been. Gosh, what age would I have been? 11 years old. So that would have been 1978. They. We had a kind of little. Like a little commons area. And so they said for the last day of school, you can play whatever you want. We have a record player. Bring in your records. You can play whatever you want. Kind of like a last day of school party. So I played Train kept Rolling, and the teacher made me turn it off. And I said, but you said I.

[Jack Douglas]

Could play whatever I want. Anything but that.

[Interviewer]

And he said, wait, you can't play that.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. Oh, my.

[Interviewer]

And shut it off and did that in the middle of it. Right in the middle of. Train kept the rule. So the reason I love this type of stuff is, you know, the Legend of Aerosmith, particularly at this point. It's a long train. There's a lot of history there, good and bad. Mostly good. But the records and the breakups and Joe going solo, and you did that stuff and all of it. Right. But you were at the beginning of that particular Train. You saw them in that infancy, but you saw them before they became this legendary, now the number one selling hard rock band in American history, mostly borne up by records that you did.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, the first three.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. So it's hard from an interview point of view. It's like, what's a point of entry? You know what I mean? And because it's, you know, there's the war stories in the thing, I'm. I'm more interested. Right. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm not that interested in that because that's already all out there.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So did you. Did you feel right away, or did it take you a hot second to think, okay, this band's got something that's really, really unique and special, not just. This is another good band?

[Jack Douglas]

Oh, absolutely.

[Interviewer]

What was that for you?

[Jack Douglas]

First of all it was Stephen's voice and his very being, you know, he's.

[Interviewer]

A force of nature.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. He really is. And I knew that he was going to drive that band to make it no matter what.

[Interviewer]

Well, there's that song, Make It. You know what I mean? He literally sings it in the song.

[Jack Douglas]

Right.

[Interviewer]

And he was going to make it.

[Jack Douglas]

You know, dedicated and loyal to the band. He loved them. He loved Joe. Like the kind of love he could never get back from Joe, you know, that would cause problems quite often, but.

[Interviewer]

Interesting.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. He could never get that kind of love back from Joe, you know, it was sometimes heartbreaking.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

I don't mean in a sexual or.

[Interviewer]

No, I get it. I get it. Every band has its. It's weird chemistry.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And the thing that makes it work is almost the thing that doesn't make it work. It's some. It's like a cutting edge in there somewhere. Like an unrequited love.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know what I mean? Like, in my case, I was talking about recently, like, I would write some of these songs that now are big songs and my band would just shrug.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Like they didn't give at all. It was like it didn't matter what magic trick I did. They were like. But I think that's part of what drove me in the band.

[Jack Douglas]

Oh, I could see that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Like trying to impress. I was trying to impress them more than I was trying to impress the world or something. It's interesting.

[Jack Douglas]

They become the most important people to impress.

[Interviewer]

Well, they're the people that are in the room every day.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know, they're your brother. Everybody else comes and goes. And in the case of Aerosmith, I mean, the fact that that's still a moving train, you know, 50 something years.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Just release these new songs with Joe and Joe and Steven.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. It's not bad either. It's not something I would be producing, but. But that's fine.

[Interviewer]

So alluding to my. My previous thing, you know, there's so much there. I mean, you and I could just literally talk about Aerosmith for three hours. So we'll keep it simple. But so I. I just picked like one spot. Right. So I was looking at the records and what was on the records, and you were obviously in the room. But I thought, okay, I can't remember which it was. Get yout wings. Right. It's 1974. And one side of the record is no More, no More. And then I think the last track on that side is You See Me Crying.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And it's like so Just take those two songs. Do you know what I mean? Because there's so much to talk about. So no more. No more. It's basically guns n roses. 15 years before guns N Roses, and you see me crying. And I remember hearing that song when it came out, it was like, what band is this? Yeah, you found this. And basically it pre stages the ballad version of Aerosmith that was so big in the 90s. Like, you were doing that with them in 1974. Like, you saw that in Stephen's voice. Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And I knew I wanted to orchestrate it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. It's beautiful that way. Did you do the string?

[Jack Douglas]

No. Mike Minary.

[Interviewer]

Okay. Beautiful. Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. I mean, I. You know, I already knew who I was going to. Who the orchestra was going to be. Was primarily near Philharmonic. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

See, that's the cinematic thing in you that.

[Jack Douglas]

You know, I sat with Michael and talked through the arrangement with him.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

But. But you know that scoring for 90 pieces. Out of my. My league.

[Interviewer]

Sure. But I mean, if you were just like a common. You know, growing up in Aerosmith was huge in Chicago. So, you know, you couldn't escape them in Chicago, whether you wanted to or not. And. But that was one of those songs where, as a fan, you would listen to the record and it's all this rock stuff and obviously a lot of swagger from Stephen and Joe's guitar playing and this and this and that. And then all of a sudden it's like, wait, what is this band?

[Jack Douglas]

Well, you know that. That's inspiration from the Beatles.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

Who finish off an album with Ringo singing, oh, Good night. Good night. Yeah. So that was the inspiration for that.

[Interviewer]

I didn't know that.

[Jack Douglas]

And. And the other thing was, you know, we're working primarily with vinyl. Right?

[Interviewer]

Sure. You.

[Jack Douglas]

So you can't put a loud song on the inside of the record because.

[Interviewer]

It starts to degrade.

[Jack Douglas]

Right, Right.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

You can't have a heavy bottom or.

[Interviewer]

So we also. 18 minutes or 20 minutes is where it starts to go. Right?

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. That's why our. There were only nine songs on those arrows.

[Interviewer]

Right. I see.

[Jack Douglas]

And you could start out with a bang. You know, we always started out with, you know, like Toys Back in the Saddle or something that was really bottom heavy and introduced the record.

[Interviewer]

Now, what about all those weird rumors we always heard that Joe wasn't really playing guitar. Like, what is.

[Jack Douglas]

What is the what on get yout Wings? On a couple of tunes? He's not. It's Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

Which was a hard sell.

[Interviewer]

Was it because of Musicianship or was it because of.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, there weren't. They weren't the players they wanted to be. Excuse me. Yet they had in their minds what they wanted to do.

[Interviewer]

You know, it must have been hard for Joe.

[Jack Douglas]

Brad was a trained guitarist.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

But Joe. Joe was a guy who played from the gut, all feel. And at that time, very little technique, but the greatest feel ever. It would have feel and. And dangerous really. Because he didn't care what key went into. And sometimes that was great. So. But there were. There were. It needed a couple of songs needed to discipline that they didn't have at that point. When I approached Stephen about it first, he was like, absolutely. I totally get it. You know, I totally get it. You sell it, but I get it. Yeah, I'll support it. And. And Joe took it really badly. Brad didn't at all. And said, I always wanted to watch those guys work. Okay.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. But I imagine it would be hard for Joe.

[Jack Douglas]

It was hard for Joe, but it was only a couple of tunes. Same old song and dance train kept to rolling.

[Interviewer]

Somebody once told me they thought it was Rick Derringer playing some of that stuff.

[Jack Douglas]

No, no, just, you know. And I knew Dick and Steve from the. The Alice albums.

[Interviewer]

What a great band that was. Yeah, what a great band.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. But in the end it worked out because they learned those solos and went out on the road for a year. You came back when we did Toys, they were like different.

[Interviewer]

I see completely different musicians to jump in their musicians. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And what was just say one thing about the magic of that band was that they. They really acted like a band. They really respected the contributions that each member of the band made. They were totally open to everything. Including Stephen. Except for lyrics.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

Including Stephen. Somebody made a suggestion. We. We played it out before. You know, I never said no to them. I just said, let's see what works best. And that's why the pre production stages were sometimes months long.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

Because they came off the road with no music, no. Nothing at all.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Probably just a riff.

[Jack Douglas]

And that's a riff.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I want to circle back because this is. We're sort of in your arc. 1974, 75. Were you still in orbit of John and Yoko at this point? Because I read something that you were sort of around for the lost weekend time in la.

[Jack Douglas]

I was. Because I did Muscle of Love out there, which John talked me into doing.

[Interviewer]

Oh, really?

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. I. I said to John, wow, did.

[Interviewer]

He like Alice Cooper?

[Jack Douglas]

He did. He said, I'm producing Alice Cooper. And he said, to me. Really? Where are you doing it? And I said, wherever they tell me.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

Being a novice.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And he said, you're the producer. You tell them where you're going to do it. Of course, Richardson was also producing to keep an eye on me. Really. And so he said, why don't you bring it out to la? Warners will love it. You'll be close to them.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

So we did it at Sunset Sound, and this gave me a chance then to become one of the original Hollywood vampires, along with Alice.

[Interviewer]

Were you in the. In Sunset 1? The original room. The original Sunset Room.

[Jack Douglas]

Were we in each room? Yes, the big room.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. Loved it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I did one song in there once. It was interesting.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. The big knees. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I think they finally sold that knee. Oh, well, you know, that's the thing with us old studio guys, you know.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It all. It all goes eventually.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. I have a studio as well.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

In la, so I have a nice.

[Interviewer]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. An ssl. And all of. All the bells and whistles and five or six hundred thousand dollars worth of mics.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Jack Douglas]

Like, everything.

[Interviewer]

What's the name of your studio out there?

[Jack Douglas]

No name. Oh, no name. No. It's not a commercial studio.

[Interviewer]

Oh. It's just a.

[Jack Douglas]

We let friends use it.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

And it's a big room.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

I can score in it.

[Interviewer]

Oh, wow.

[Jack Douglas]

It's big enough for a small orchestra. Got everything you could ever imagine. Except for the Fairchild we just sold for $150,000.

[Interviewer]

You talking about the Fairchild compressor?

[Jack Douglas]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

What made it so expensive, other than.

[Jack Douglas]

The normal, was 50 when we bought it?

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Was it a special one?

[Jack Douglas]

It sounded great, but we had it tuned as well.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

And it was. And a guy from Dubai was buying. He went around la, made us an offer, and my partner and I. Plug.

[Interviewer]

In'S looking really good.

[Jack Douglas]

You know what? The plugin sounds great. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

The plugins are pretty good these days.

[Jack Douglas]

It depends on what you sample, what instrument you sample. So. Yeah. So we were like, yeah, I think we bought a rack of 1073s. Wow.

[Interviewer]

So back to the last weekend for a second.

[Jack Douglas]

You know, I was a getaway driver.

[Interviewer]

What was your role in this?

[Jack Douglas]

I was a getaway driver in this Cadillac.

[Interviewer]

So the vampires were. It was Alice, Leton, Nielsen.

[Jack Douglas]

Sometimes Ringo.

[Interviewer]

Sometimes Ringo. Anybody else?

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. Mickey Dolenz.

[Interviewer]

Mickey Dolenz, that's right. What a crew.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Jack Douglas]

And. And there was some pretty hairy times.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

Getting John out of places where he was getting into trouble when he was drunk.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

He once kicked the rear windshield out of the car I was driving. He could get pretty violent. That was some bad times for him.

[Interviewer]

What was your relationship like with Yoko? I mean, I get the sense that you wouldn't have been in that orbit if she didn't want you around.

[Jack Douglas]

Well, I'd made all those Yoko records.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that's what I'm asking.

[Jack Douglas]

I mean, yeah, that was John.

[Interviewer]

Early.

[Jack Douglas]

In our relationship, said, I'd like you to work with Yoko on her music.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And I guess. And I'm asking because it's a sense I have just from reading through what I could find about your life, is she must have felt seen and respected by you because your. Your presence in their life, personally, professionally, indicates that.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. I think when I first started working with her, she tested me and left because I.

[Interviewer]

Because, you know, I also interviewed Elliot Mintz.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know, so I've heard Elliot Mintz's version especially. He wrote a book too, you know, about how she would sort of test him.

[Jack Douglas]

Oh, yeah, she test all the time. But the first thing I said to her about something we were doing was I said, yoko, I don't care if you play the piano from the bench or inside it, it's going to be unique. So whatever you want to do. I mean, we did some strange things, but it was all cool, right? You mean, I was a big John Cage fan. I was a big. I was a jazzer. Yeah. You know, I loved all of that stuff.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. So looking back now, I mean, we. We know how this story goes, and you were there for different parts of it. But how do you view their relationship? Because I think there's more respect now with time for her, their partnership, maybe is the best way to put it, you know, because back then it was a very contentious thing, her being, you know, she was blamed for breaking up.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. Which is pretty much nonsense. Sure.

[Interviewer]

But I'm saying is, you know, there's the. There's what the public thinks and the lazy journalism and all that stuff. But then when you're actually in the room, you're in the room with these two people who are both, you know, incredible artists.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Hugely influential.

[Jack Douglas]

He relied on her a great deal.

[Interviewer]

Sure. That's what I'm saying is you got an inside track where most people didn't, on how they actually worked together.

[Jack Douglas]

But I would, at some point, I would stop them from working together so that they didn't become too critical of each other. Particularly this I learned from working with Yoko early, was that if John was producing those sessions and he came in, it became more difficult for her because if she was singing a little bit flat, he would say something and she would then sing flatter.

[Interviewer]

How can you not be?

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. So when it came time for her to do her vocals, I would. We would have breakfast in the morning at La Fortuna. Make a plan then. Then I would have her come in at 11 o'. Clock. We work from 11 to 4, sometimes 5, and he would come in at 5 and we would work to whatever time that. Just during vocals.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Jack Douglas]

Which meant that she was free most of the time to do whatever she wanted to do on the vocals. Just taking some direction from me.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And John was very easy to. To work with. The one thing I had learned about working with John, and I had asked him this one time when we were sitting there, and I said to him, you know, what is it? You know, of all the producers you could have worked with. Yeah. And I knew half the. I knew half the reason was that they trusted me. But if all the producers you could have worked with to do your comeback record here, why me? You know? And he just put his head. I think I said, good antenna, good antenna. And that I understood because I knew that when you work with John, you're staying two or three steps ahead of him at all time. He has no patience for anything that's slowing down. If a song isn't going right after two or three takes, we can move on. And he doesn't have a problem with that. John, let's move on to the next song. Not a problem. Okay. We'll get back to it tomorrow.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Jeff Emmerich tells this amazing story in his book Here, There and Everywhere, about John coming in, had a cold, was grumpy, and he did four takes of A Day in the Life, and that just banged off. And Jeffrey's like. He didn't necessarily like working with Lennon because Lennon had no patience. And where McCartney was willing to do all the meticulous stuff, and he was more interested in that than the Lennon vibe, which was like, let's just get it done. But then he turns around, he says, but he had such immense talent, he could actually pull this off in four takes. So there's always this dichotomy of, like, well, why would you do more than four takes when you don't have to.

[Jack Douglas]

Absolutely, absolutely. If take two is good. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Then why is there. Is there a moment that stands out in your mind where you're like. You see that level of talent? Because obviously that's a rare level of talent.

[Jack Douglas]

Well, because we did live vocals for everything.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so give me one where you were like, holy. This is why it's John Lennon.

[Jack Douglas]

Nobody told me.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

I mean, that vocal is perfect. It's just. He's in there singing and playing at the same time. Yeah, it's perfect. Yeah, he's playing, he's singing. It's what he does perfectly.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

I mean, that. That just. His talent was enormous. His mic technique was incredible. I mean, and also, he. He drew a line, which was very nice, between me, producer, and he's the performer, so that he'd go. He'd do four vocals.

[Interviewer]

Sure.

[Jack Douglas]

Maybe five if I needed a little patching up here and there. And then he'd leave.

[Interviewer]

And it's. You. You figured it out.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. You figured out. When you get it, call me, and I'll come out of the room and do. And do and double it. And that. That's. That's all it was. He didn't. You know, Stephen would be leaning over you. That S could be better. Do we have another S? How about that T? Do you know what I mean? You'd be, like, micromanaging every inch, especially when it got to Pro Tools. But he was. John was like. He knew that they were all good, that they were all relatively good. Yeah. And he didn't know that we had a record until he heard the vocal back on, Watching the Wheels.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

He was still. He was, like, not sure.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Jack Douglas]

But when he heard that back, he was like, mother, tell him we have a record.

[Interviewer]

Right. So now that you're a successful music producer in the fantastic music business, I imagine your. Your. Did your phone start ringing a lot? I mean, did. Were you in demand suddenly?

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You're making money. You're.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. I mean, money was never a thing. Part of it for me, it was like, you know, the apartments kept getting better in New York, you know, nicer neighborhoods, and. And. And. But it was like.

[Interviewer]

Did you feel, though, you had your pick, though? I mean, you know, are you. Were you getting offered enough stuff that you thought, okay, I want to do that, and I don't want to do that, and. Yeah, because you made some interesting choices. Montrose. Yeah, it's interesting, right?

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, I liked it. Ronnie was great, and he was a really interesting man. Astronomer. Astronomer. Astronomer. Astronomer.

[Interviewer]

It sounds weird when we say it. Yeah, I know.

[Jack Douglas]

He was an astronomer.

[Interviewer]

I didn't know that.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. He could tell you anything about this.

[Interviewer]

Great guitar player.

[Jack Douglas]

Amazing guitar, cool sound.

[Interviewer]

Is this Mantras with Hagar singing or is it.

[Jack Douglas]

No, with car. Second guy.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Patti Smith. Right.

[Jack Douglas]

That I loved doing that record.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Cool. Rick Derringer, also a really good guitar player.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Recently passed away. God bless him.

[Jack Douglas]

Also, I don't know how many, four or five, eight songs with Allen Ginsberg.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

That I co produced with Bob Dylan.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that's right.

[Jack Douglas]

That was a trip.

[Interviewer]

You want to talk about somebody with no patience.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. Oh, but Bob, you know, he. He was truly shy. You know, he used to slip notes to me about what. What we should do next. What, do you think we should save the notes? No. Then one day told me a terrible joke.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

Out of nowhere. I mean, just really bad, like. And so I wrote him a note back. I said, stick to the notes. And I couldn't have broke the wall.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

But, yeah, we did. And we had all the beat guys and David Amram and.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I actually knew David.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. Still around. So that was an interesting record. I mean, I did Sha Na Na, the Knack.

[Interviewer]

Did you do the First Knack?

[Jack Douglas]

Round Trip? I guess Third.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

Is considered a classic now because I.

[Interviewer]

Need to go listen to that because I missed that.

[Jack Douglas]

We did what they always wanted to do. Of course, Capitol Records was Where's My Sharona?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

How about this instead? The Rockets.

[Interviewer]

Did you ever meet Sharona?

[Jack Douglas]

Yes, many times.

[Interviewer]

She was my real estate agent at one point.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. In la. Yeah. Yeah. Not what you would expect.

[Interviewer]

No, not at all.

[Jack Douglas]

You expect this blonde in this. Yeah, she was great. Great girl.

[Interviewer]

Bit of philosophical bent. Did you find yourself when you were successful? Sort of. I guess the. The query is something along the lines of, like, did you attribute your success to anything particularly particular in philosophy? Because as somebody who's produced records, like, at some point you got to kind of pick a lane, you know what I mean? Because there's the intuitive faculty of producing, which is, I feel this is the right thing. But then you're also under constant pressure about what other people are doing.

[Jack Douglas]

I never. No, I never felt that at all.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so if you had a. If you had a recording or an aesthetic philosophy, how would you define it? Because. Theresa. Sorry. The reason I'm asking is because I know so many of your records and I know them really, really well, and there is a common sort of feeling to your records, but it's almost hard to put my finger on what it is. So that's why I feel I should ask you.

[Jack Douglas]

You know, when I would make a record, the. The thing that was important to me is that I'm making the. The record that I want to make with the band first. The band and Second, not what other people are producing or what the sound is today, because I want. I would really like 20 years from when I'm producing this record that this record is still listenable.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And that was the kind of feelings.

[Interviewer]

That go back to that Al Schmidt, Phil Ramon, like, yeah. If it sounds good and it has heart to it, it's going to work and it'll endure. And.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So that's. Is that for you, like, the common thread?

[Jack Douglas]

It is your work. Yeah. That it's still. You can still play the record and. And not go to the gated reverb.

[Interviewer]

Okay. So you have to indulge me here because, you know, 1977, 76. 77. I'm in my backyard listening to Cheap Trick live at Budokan. Being from Chicago, which doesn't. I mean, Cheap Trick was a. They were. They were the local legend.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, of course.

[Interviewer]

But that was their breakthrough moment. You know, they had their first record come out, but, like, Budokan was where they suddenly be. They were on pop radio. They. On the radio station I grew up listening to, they would play I want you to want me at 10 minutes after the hour, every hour.

[Jack Douglas]

Wow.

[Interviewer]

So I knew if I sat in the backyard at 1 10, 2 10, 3, 10, 4, 10, that I'd hear why I want you to want me. Eventually, I figured out if I could record it, I didn't have to sit and listen. But that was a watershed moment for me because by having a. My father was a musician, like I told you, but he never had success. But the fact that there was a band from Chicago that had success that I actually could identify with, that actually told me it was possible to get out of Chicago as a musician. Because with my father, all you ever heard was, you can't be successful out of Chicago. I know it's a lot of information, but. No, but there's not really.

[Jack Douglas]

I'm trying to think. And all I could think of is, you know, Bloomfield and, you know, the blues bands and.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And my dad liked those guys and saw those guys, too. But Trick was the moment where, like, it was actually about a younger band making a very Midwestern statement, what we now would call power pop.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And Cheap Trick was the ultimate purveyor of power pop.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And Nielsen is crazy genius.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Whatever goes on in that brain.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know, because, you know, being in a room with Rick is like. It's a. It's an endurance test because it's. He's so add.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know, and you're never quite sure if he's in self promotion or self deprecation. And Cheap Trick being one of the meanest bands I've ever met in terms of not only dissing each other, but dissing whoever's in the room, you know, and I know you went through that too.

[Jack Douglas]

No, sure, sure.

[Interviewer]

So give me some Cheap Trick just. Just to indulge me, because I just love them.

[Jack Douglas]

Oh, well.

[Interviewer]

And I. I actually. I want to tell you a funny story at the end of it, but please go ahead. The.

[Jack Douglas]

The first record that we made was for me what Cheap Trick was the first Cheap Trick album.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. That's snotty.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

What's that song we wrote about the serial killer? The Bat.

[Jack Douglas]

It was the. It was the Ballad of Richard Speck before they changed.

[Interviewer]

They changed the name. Ballad of TV Spec was the guy in Chicago killed all these nurses.

[Jack Douglas]

The nurses, right. He.

[Interviewer]

He horrible grizzly thing. He.

[Jack Douglas]

He was going to sue from the. His jail cell. So CBS without. They didn't want to fight it. So it was the Ballad of TV Violence.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Jack Douglas]

But, you know, it was snotty and. And dirty and funky and fat and dry.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And. But also had mando cello. Yeah. In the middle of.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

So that it showed, you know, this. They could do this too. But I. When I got stuck, and I'm really stuck on Draw the Line.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

For almost a year, and I was supposed to do the next Cheap Trick album.

[Interviewer]

Ah, that's why you didn't do it.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. I was stuck there. Yeah. I wanted. I. I went to Tom Worm and I said, tom, listen, I can executive produce it even while I'm doing this up here in Armonk, but I want Rick Derringer to produce it.

[Interviewer]

Oh.

[Jack Douglas]

And he said, I'll take that under advisement. But he loved the band so much, he did it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

God bless him. He did a great job. But I thought he turned the band in a different direction, that I would have turned them. The only thing I. The first record I knew was going to land at college because of the statements that were on it was. It was a, you know, a social. It was a social protest record. You know, every. Everything on it. Daddy should have stayed in high school.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

I mean, it was about, you know, taking heroin. It was about a serial killer. It was, you know, all these issues.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Jack Douglas]

And I thought, well, it'd be great there. It's not gonna. It's a good start.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And then all those other songs like I Want yout To Want Me, which we recorded. I love Go Go Girls, Dream Police, we recorded all those. And I said, next record for these guys, put them on the back burner. We're going to go slowly.

[Interviewer]

I never knew that.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, we're going to go slowly over there, but we're going to make this statement first.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Jack Douglas]

College will love you. The rest of the world won't yet. And then. And that's how we'll move. And then. And then when I heard I want you to want me with that piano, I was like, no.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

No. And then when it was a hit from Budokan, which I had mixed, I was like, yeah, see, that's it. You know, that's it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. That's because there's been a lot of contention through the years about the way those other records were produced. You know, the word that we would throw around back in the day was they sounded a little bit wimpy. Where they don't. They. The band that you see live still to this day, and the band that's on Budokan. That band doesn't sound wimpy at all.

[Jack Douglas]

No, no. I have a funny story about Budokan.

[Interviewer]

Please.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. So Budokan is not Budokan. You know that. It's Osaka. It's Osaka. But they sent me the tapes.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And. And Jay and I, we listened to all. You know, we listened to everything. Budokan sounded terrible. It was just so poorly. I don't know, like, really mics were off or they were pointed the wrong direction or there was a little bit of drums. Very little, not much. No bass drum. We went to Osaka. It was better. It was the best performance.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

I mean, the best recording. The performance was good.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

As good as Budokan.

[Interviewer]

They played good every night.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, they're. When it was crazy and the screams and everything. It was all great. So in order to reproduce the drum sound, what I did was I put a. I put a speaker in a bass drum and I filtered the whatever I had from the tape down so only 60 below and below cycles were getting through. And then I miked that bass drum, so now I had a thumb.

[Interviewer]

Oh, you basically did like a virtual sample. That's amazing.

[Jack Douglas]

And I did the same thing with the snare drum.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

There was a one overhead on it, so it was getting a little bit of snare and some toms and some symbols. So I put a. I put a speaker on top of a snare drum and miked underneath it. And I. I think from 5k to 8k or from 3k to 8k, and that was. Okay.

[Interviewer]

That's how Cool.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, I got a snare drum. So that's how we did that. And it was tough. But here's the funny story. Rick calls me up 20 years ago, something like that. He goes, we have the film for Budokan. We're going to do a 5:1. I want you guys to mix a 5:1 version of. Of it. And I said, you have the film from Budokan? I said, but he goes, yeah, just use like kind of the same mix maybe. I said, but that mix is Osaka, remember?

[Interviewer]

Did he not know that?

[Jack Douglas]

No, he forgotten.

[Interviewer]

Oh, he forgot.

[Jack Douglas]

He thought you were so excited.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

So now Jay and I go to work on this thing and thank God for Pro Tools. There was a cut and paste job you would not believe because when there was a close up on Rick or.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

His hands or Robin singing, that was Budokan, you know.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

When I was a wide shot, it was Osaka and. And it was just, it was a labor. Love him. We love doing it. And yeah.

[Interviewer]

What great songs though. Oh, yeah, Great time.

[Jack Douglas]

They're in Japan now, I think.

[Interviewer]

Or they're doing the final. They're doing their final because I was just there. All the advertisement is final. Budokan final. I just played Budokan the other day. So whenever we're in that building, it's always like a. You know, I go back to sitting in the backyard listening to the mix that you've done for Mosaka. Uh, is that. That just that sound of that record still to this day, I just being from Chicago, it's. That record means so much to us in Chicago.

[Jack Douglas]

Used to go back to Chicago at all.

[Interviewer]

I still live there.

[Jack Douglas]

Oh, you do?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that's a. It's. I always say it's the, it's the most, most indicative side of my insanity that I live in Chicago still that I've never, I've never gotten out. We don't get political here. Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

Okay.

[Interviewer]

Just a couple more things. Thanks for indulging me.

[Jack Douglas]

I also worked during that period of like John and the who and I also worked with. With George Harrison.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Jack Douglas]

On Bangladesh.

[Interviewer]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I have to say your public record is very incomplete.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, I worked with David Bowie on some live record that he wanted.

[Interviewer]

I had no idea.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. You know, I was working with. Worked with Stevie Wonder. I mean, I was working with.

[Interviewer]

You need to get some minion to go out there and fix your public record.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Let's cycle back and. And, and I know, I wanted to tell you a story now I can't Remember, the story I want to tell you was a good story. Anyway, doesn't matter. So at some point, John or Yoko, one of them, college, and says, john's going to come out of retirement. Once you hear these demos.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

What was your opinion when John was in his retirement, his house husband sort of retirement.

[Jack Douglas]

I saw him about a year before we did this record. I was at a health food restaurant over on the east side. He had been in the Y with Sean, teaching him to swim. And he came in and he put his hands over my eyes that guess who. I guessed, of course, all the wrong people. But I knew it was there. I love it. And he said to me, what are you up to? He goes, I said, you know, I asked him, what are you up to? And he said, you know, I'm a house husband, not doing anything. I found that hard to believe. And he said, look, why don't you. He says, I miss the whole scene. Here's my private number. And I only lived like, four blocks from him on. On the west side, on Central Park West. Yeah, here's my phone number. Call me up and come up and hang out. And I didn't. Really, I didn't, because I thought, you know, all this stuff I'm reading about him, and he just wants to be a dad, and I'm the last thing. He needs me to come up there. And now maybe that was a good thing.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Jack Douglas]

It might have been a good thing because now, a year later, when the mystic phone call came in to come out to their mansion out there in Glen Cove or wherever that was, they flew me out in a seaplane, okay. And. And Yoko gave me an envelope that said, for Jack's ears only, was from John. And John then called from Bermuda and he said, I want you to listen to this, and tomorrow tell me if you think it's just shit. Or I have a record there. And there were two cassettes, and they were wonderful, wonderful. They're all narrated.

[Interviewer]

Were these just like him playing into a tape recorder or.

[Jack Douglas]

Well, yeah, he's either playing guitar or some shitty keyboard, I think.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, he had some kind of keyboard that he used to use.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. Just kind of like organy piano sound. Somebody's banging on pots and pans in the background.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

Then he recorded that directly into the mics on a blaster. Then he took that blaster and played it. Not wired it, just played it into another blaster. And while he did that, he doubled the vocal because he had to double his vocals.

[Interviewer]

Oh, my God.

[Jack Douglas]

So it was a generation away, you.

[Interviewer]

Know, but you heard the songs right away.

[Jack Douglas]

And I heard them and they were all narrated. Most of them said, here's another piece. One of them, One or two of them were. This is definitely for Richard Starkey.

[Interviewer]

Which.

[Jack Douglas]

I finally gave to Richard Starkey and we recorded it with Paul playing Vase a couple years ago. But I thought, when I spoke to him the next day and he said, what do you think? And I thought it was incredible, beautiful, great songs. There were just a ton of them. And I said to him, why don't you just release these cassettes?

[Interviewer]

Interesting.

[Jack Douglas]

I don't think I could get the magic of what you've captured here. It's. It's incredible, you know, it's just beautiful. And he said, I suppose that means that you like the record, you like the music. And I said, I love it. He goes, okay. Oh well, it's gonna. We're gonna make a record.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Jack Douglas]

It has to be secret.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

So no one knew. Kinda.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

Andy Newmark says he knew from. From the get go. Because I rehearsed the band without John.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

I charted all the songs.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. How'd you feel though about this kind of, you know, again, this idea of them sharing the. The record, you know, because that sort of feeds into how it. When it comes out.

[Jack Douglas]

At first I thought it was just a John record for a minute. Until Yoko handed me this much, these pretty tapes and she said, here's my stuff. Ah, okay. It's going to be both of you. She said, yes, it'll be both of us. So that's when I knew that day.

[Interviewer]

I was shocked in doing the research that the record was at least what I read it was poorly received. It didn't.

[Jack Douglas]

They were like, where's the edge? Where's the angry John? I'm like, this is. This is him at approaching 40 years old. This is. He wants to know how the rest of you are doing. This is how he's doing. Yeah. He's never. He's never sung anything to you, but his truth, always.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And there. And there he is singing his truth.

[Interviewer]

And.

[Jack Douglas]

Where'S the edge? Where's I'm the walrus in the world.

[Interviewer]

That we live in now, you would think automatically a number one record. He's back after five years. Yeah, the whole thing. And it was the complete opposite. I don't remember that at the time.

[Jack Douglas]

It was. Well, because it was mostly ill received in the uk, less so here. Starting over was a big hit right out of the box. So it wasn't.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, was Part of the criticism. Yoko still, or was it more.

[Jack Douglas]

Oh, that was a tremendous.

[Interviewer]

You know.

[Jack Douglas]

Why do we have to hear Yoko in order to hear John? Well, it's a hard play.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

It's. It's a dialogue.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I see.

[Jack Douglas]

And, you know, I didn't understand at all why it would feel that way about it. Geffen understood it.

[Interviewer]

This is it. This is a. Maybe a strange question to ask because obviously when someone passes away, it puts everything that's happened before into a different relief. Did you love the record as it was when it came out? Irregardless of the.

[Jack Douglas]

Oh, yeah, I absolutely loved it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Because it's gone on to be a classic now, but it's also imbued with the tragedy that follows them coming out.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. Try to dust that off a little bit.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, you kind of can.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. That's why you ask how you felt when it would actually went out.

[Jack Douglas]

Also, I think that Walking on Thin Ice is quite brilliant.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, it is. Cool. So, because we talked about a little bit before we rolled cameras, you alluded to the fact that John being assassinated. And I use that word because Sean uses that word. Yeah. And I remember the first time I heard Sean say that, I kind of. We were talking in private, and he said, when my father was assassinated, not when John Lennon was killed or John Lennon was assassinated. When my father was assassinated. You know, it's one of those things where you kind of. It hits you like a fish upside the face because you're like, wow, I never thought about it that way. I think that's accurate, which is why I would say it that way. Right. So when John was assassinated, you alluded to the fact that it kind of sent you off in a different path. Can you talk about that? Because.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, because suddenly everyone wanted a magazine article. Everyone wanted a book. Everyone wanted this, everyone wanted that. I wanted, you know, absolutely nothing to do with it. And so I started hiding out and. And then taking pills so that I could just stay in the house, send somebody else.

[Interviewer]

Did you feel. Was it. Was it a sense of personal trauma, or did you. You didn't like that you were in this different circumstance, or was it all of the above? Can you.

[Jack Douglas]

All of the above. Yeah. I didn't want to go out of the house. I. It was just. It was terrible. It. And I felt this terrible guilt because very often I went home with him, and I didn't. Because I had another session after. And so I played it over and over.

[Interviewer]

What could have been different?

[Jack Douglas]

I would have been in the car. I Would have seen the guy, I would have tackled him. John would be alive. So that played over and over, over and over until I could put it away with medicating it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

And, and that turned to different drugs and then it was out of control and I had to just lay Low. After 82 or 80 something, I don't know, I, I just stopped altogether.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

Until, until I was sober. I'm sober 31 or 32 years. But I remember them telling me in the program, wait, stay sober for two years before you even think about going back to work. And I had really good sobriety because my, my dad had a big old house upstate and it was a chance to. My mom had already passed. It was a chance for me to check in with him, stay with him, kind of take care of him for a while, take care of this big house, that big old 17 room farmhouse, contribute to that. My wife and I, our son. And, and there was, it turned out that there was a lot of sobriety in the area. And it was so, it was good. I mean, I went to rehab and then after rehab, it's right. They said, okay, stay sober for two years. And then think about almost two years to the day. I got a call to produce Supertramp was like, hello. Because, you know, I don't know if you know anything about aa and they're all their mottos, of course, wait for the miracle is one other thing.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

You know, and it was like, oh, miracle. And, and, and then after that I was back to work and it was good. Yeah. And I felt, I felt good. And I put, put, put it behind me. Yeah. But, but never completely. Yeah, never completely. So it comes to me often in a dream. Okay, John Does.

[Interviewer]

Is it a recurring situation? Is always different.

[Jack Douglas]

It's different. It's different. It could be in different places. Could be the studio.

[Interviewer]

Is it a comfort to you that it is?

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he talks to me. He, he liked to talk to me. He liked to tell me that I didn't know anything. He said, for a bright guy, Jack, you don't know anything.

[Interviewer]

So, two, two last things. And. Because I saw where at some point you had to sue because of unpaid royalties. And I'm not, I'm not as interested in that as the fact that at some point there's this piece and you, you still work with the estate. And how did, how did that come about that you end up making peace? Because usually once there's a legal thing, that's kind of the end of the relationship.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, well, she was Being advised by a really bad guy that she was having a relationship with, who told her that you should trust no one and especially me. Who? To this guy. I look like I knew everything because I'd been around for so long. This is the one guy you. You don't want to trust. And I was like, you know, number one guy you can trust, you know, no matter what was going on. Yeah, no matter what I saw.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

So she went into this at one point during a free trial hearing. I slid over next to her. Security went for me. She said to her security, and I said, don't do this, okay? Don't. Don't do. Doesn't make any sense at all. It's a signed contract.

[Interviewer]

Just pay me and let's move on.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, let's just. Yeah, let's just get over it. And still we went to trial, which lasted a week. The jury was out for 10 minutes. They said they got a sandwich and came back. But there was some funny moments during the trial that I could think of. Apparently she promised. What's his name from Rolling Stone, the owner, Jan Winner. Jan. She promised Jan that he could have the journal.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

If he came in and testified on her behalf. Of course she didn't have the journal. Nobody had the term because somebody's stolen it. Yeah. Sam Havatoy was the guy, by the way, was the behind all of this.

[Interviewer]

Who actually wrote a weird book. Have you ever seen that book?

[Jack Douglas]

No. Oh, my God.

[Interviewer]

He wrote a book where he admits that he stole the journal. And he can't put what was in the journal out publicly, but he can put what he remembers about reading in the journal.

[Jack Douglas]

Oh, Jesus. I think he stole the watch too.

[Interviewer]

It's such a scummy, weird bottom of the dumpster.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. So Johan gets up there, and so her attorney is saying, so who was this Jack Douglas anyway? And Jan is saying he was really a nobody.

[Interviewer]

He only produced.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. He was like nobody. Kind of an engineer. That's all. I mean. I mean, John liked him and he gave him a job. So now my attorney, Peter Parcher, gets up, and he's got a book in his hand, and it's Jan's book. And he said, jan, would you read this? And it's a chapter in his book where he talks about me being this producer he makes. Makes Yan read it to the jury. Yeah. And of course, that was terrible. Yeah, that was. And then Phil Spector comes in to testify.

[Interviewer]

Oh, my goodness.

[Jack Douglas]

Because she promised, Phil, I'll give you more stuff to work on.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jack Douglas]

So now Phil And Phil is totally sorry to laugh. He's totally up, and he gets on the stand, and they're asking him questions that he can't make any sense, that even what they're asking him. So now, no more questions. He gets up and he stumbles. And as he stumbles out of the witness box, his wig goes sideways. So now his sideburns are over his nose. And it was just a pathetic sight. Now everybody was like, oh, my God. The funniest one and strangest one of all was I would come in. I guess this lasted maybe, maybe two weeks. I would come in, and this is the Supreme Court, New York City.

[Interviewer]

Goodness.

[Jack Douglas]

The room was divided by aisle in the middle. I was sitting up front. She wouldn't sit up front because of assassination attempts. So she was sitting crowded by her people, okay? Everyone that was supporting her was on that side. And everyone supporting me was on my side, behind me. And so I would come in, and it would be the same people every day, same people. And I would come in and I always. Thanks. Thank you for. Thanks for coming by. Thank you. Your support is really welcome. Thank you so much. And there was one guy, he was sitting almost directly behind me. And I'd say, thank you so much for coming in. And he would just look at me. He wouldn't even say anything. Just look at me. And then as I'm sitting up at the bench, everyone. So I turned around, I could feel the guy's. His eyes boring into the back of me. I turned around, he'd be, like, staring at me. And then one day, he was gone. About a week later, he was gone. So now Bob Gruen, because he was worked with Yoko, had to sit on Yoko's side. And Bob and I are very good friends. So Bob and I would meet in the men's room so we could talk. And Bob said to me, boy, you that guy up. So I said, what guy? He's going, that witch that Yoko hired to put a spell on you. He was sitting directly behind you. He went up to Yoko and he said, I can't get. No, I can't get anywhere with this guy. Every day he comes in, thanks me, smiles, he pats me on the back. He quit.

[Interviewer]

And I was like, whoa, that's a good story. Yeah, but you made peace. That's the nice.

[Jack Douglas]

We did at a show at. Going to Sean's shows at Bowie Ballroom.

[Interviewer]

Okay?

[Jack Douglas]

I went to see it. She was upstairs. I was sitting downstairs, and somebody came downstairs and. And said, yoko would like you to come up to the table.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Jack Douglas]

And I came up and. And I went upstairs, and she gave me a big hug, and she said, really? There's a lot of water has run under the bridge. And then we started working on little things together.

[Interviewer]

I saw that. That's why I was surprised.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. And I get a Christmas card from her when she opened that moma, she sent me an invitation to the opening, and. Yeah. We stay in touch.

[Interviewer]

That's good.

[Jack Douglas]

I love her.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Wayne shared a lot of. A lot of stuff together.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Important stuff, too.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Okay, last thing.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Tell me if I'm wrong. I saw you. You teach a class on studio etiquette.

[Jack Douglas]

I. I did that. School closed.

[Interviewer]

Okay. Okay. That doesn't seem much for your teaching, but.

[Jack Douglas]

But for all those schools.

[Interviewer]

Give me one or two parables of studio etiquette. I got to hear this.

[Jack Douglas]

The artist is always right.

[Interviewer]

I want to.

[Jack Douglas]

Listen before you touch anything.

[Interviewer]

I know this feeling.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. Treat everyone that you work with well.

[Interviewer]

No matter who it is, whoever's on the totopole, all the same.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. And stay ahead of everything that's going on.

[Interviewer]

Can I tell you a quick Frank Sinatra story? Because I love this story.

[Jack Douglas]

Sure.

[Interviewer]

Are you Frank Sinatra fan?

[Jack Douglas]

I am.

[Interviewer]

Okay. So I worked with a guy in New York at a place called Chung King, if you remember.

[Jack Douglas]

Oh, I know it downtown.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And this was the 90s. And he had recently, you know, within recent times, worked. Had worked with Sinatra towards the end of Sinatra's life. And I said, what was it like working with Sinatra? And he said, every day, all the boys would come in with, you know, bins of masticcioli. Yeah. And set up the table full, everything. And then Frank at 5 or whatever would sit down for dinner, and everybody working would sit at the table with Frank. Didn't matter if you were the tape op, the guy sweeping the floor. Everybody sat at the table with Frank, and Frank sat there and ate. They ate the same food Frank was eating. And then Frank sat there for a while and told stories. So that buoys up what you're saying.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

If Frank can do it, so can you. So I love that. Thank you.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah. You're very welcome.

[Interviewer]

Have a good time.

[Jack Douglas]

Yeah, great time.

[Interviewer]

Thanks.