Producer Jack Douglas, known for his work with Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, New York Dolls and many others, has died at the age of 80 from complications related to lymphoma.
Douglas was born in New York in 1945. After moving to the United Kingdom in the mid-’60s, where he performed as a folk musician, he returned to the US and became the bassist in Privelege. That was a hard rock outfit whose one and only self-titled album was produced by the Isley Brothers.
After finishing his training as a sound engineer, he joined the crew at the then newly opened Record Plant studio in New York, where he worked on recordings by James Gang, Alice Cooper, Montrose, Mountain, Cheap Trick, The Who, John Lennon, Patti Smith, Blue Öyster Cult, New York Dolls, Starz, Aerosmith and many more.
Aerosmith was the band he was most closely tied to, as Douglas produced their ’70s classics like Get Your Wings, Toys In The Attic, Rocks and Draw the Line. He also worked on 1982’s Rock In A Hard Place before returning to helm 1998’s A Little South Of Sanity, 2004’s Honkin’ On Bobo and 2012’s Music From Another Dimension!
Douglas’s relationship with Cheap Trick was just as long-running, with production credits on various albums, from their 1977 debut to 2006’s “RockFord”. He also worked regularly with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, from Lennon’s 1971 album “Imagine” all the way to the last album, “Double Fantasy”.
