Sound Man
A Life Recording Hits with The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Eric Clapton, The Faces . . .
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4.3 • 131 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A ROCK AND ROLL MEMOIR FROM GLYN JOHNS, THE LEGENDARY PRODUCER FEATURED IN THE NEW DOCUMENTARY SERIES The Beatles: Get Back
“Few figures in rock history have a more impressive résumé than Glyn Johns...[Sound Man] is full of amazing anecdotes from his fifty-year career.”—Rolling Stone
“A fantastic romp through the pages of rock and roll history.”—Sir Paul McCartney, the Beatles
In 2012, legendary producer and sound engineer Glyn Johns was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Over the course of his incredible career, Johns helped create some of rock’s most iconic albums, including those by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, the Eagles, the Who, the Clash, and, more recently, Ryan Adams and Band of Horses. In this one-of-a-kind memoir, Johns shares incredible stories about the musicians he’s worked with from the freewheeling sixties to the present. Sound Man is an intimate glimpse into rock and roll history and the perfect gift for any music fan.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this dry but fascinating memoir, producer and sound engineer Johns describes his work with the most important musicians of the 1960s and '70s. As an unemployed teenager, Johns serendipitously received a junior engineering job in the independent IBC recording studio. This led to a career in which he became a sought-after engineer (and later producer) for performers including the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Who, the Band, the Eagles, and many others. Unusually for his era, Johns never used drugs, which might explain his excellent recall of events stretching back over six decades. Johns's writing can be flat but his understated humor and candor have a bracing charm. Take his comments on the Let It Be sessions he recorded and mixed for the Beatles: "John gave the tapes to Phil Spector, who puked all over them, turning them into the most syrupy load of bullshit I have ever heard." It's no surprise that Ronnie Lane gave him the nickname "Bluto." To Johns's credit, he doesn't spare himself from similar criticism. Fans of the era will enjoy both the anecdotes and the technical descriptions of life behind the recording console.
Customer Reviews
Incredible Career
The number of huge, seminal albums in which the author has been involved is astounding. His success seems to be a combination of talent, humility, and how productive one can be without drugs and alcohol.
Fascinating but poorly written and edited
Some fascinating inside stories, ranging from the poignant and hilarious to the petty an absurd, from Glyn Johns who engineered, mixed, produced and helped create some of the landmark music of the 1960s and 70s, and socialized with many of the musicians, their managers and coteries.
If you like the popular music from the 1960s and 70s, you will probably enjoy Sound Man. Unfortunately Johns’s storytelling suffers from too many dead clichés, limp metaphors and weary platitudes. Had the book been ghost written or Penguin Random House assigned a competent editor, we would have a much more readable work. Johns must not have kept a diary or journal but rather written Sound Man from recall; it has that feel to it and given Johns’s 50 years in the music recording industry, I thought there would be many more stories that would make it into Sound Man.
Great read. Easy to pick-up when you want
Great! Easy read, strolling through the back door of some amazing rock and roll tales of lore.