Sound Man: A Life Recording Hits with The Rolling Stones, The Who, LedZeppelin, The Eagles, Eric Clapton, The Faces . . .

by Glyn Johns

  I have a residing memory of sitting in the truck, my hair being parted by what was coming out of the speakers, a massive amount of adrenaline coursing through my veins. There have been a few occasions over the years when I have been completely blown away, believing without a doubt that what I was listening to would become much more than just commercially successful but also a marker in the evolution of popular music, and this was one of those moments.

  The novelty of recording at Stargroves only lasted two days and was soon replaced by the convenience of Olympic, where we worked for the next two weeks, it only being a short drive away for everyone each day. Some of the songs required a slightly more conventional approach than John and Keith were used to, so tailoring them to suit the band without losing the essence of the way they had been written became a bit of a problem. We achieved this in various ways. Making Keith’s kit smaller and getting John to play with more weight to his sound being two of them. I felt a bit like I was treading on hallowed ground. Although both of them would have preferred to have been left alone, they generously tried what I suggested and seemed happy to go along with the end result.

  Having worked for thirteen days straight, we decided to take a break and reconvene in a month. So, still not having had a day off since New Year’s Eve, fifteen weeks earlier, I went back to L.A., bought a car, and persuaded my pal Ethan Russell to accompany me on a drive across America. What an adventure that was. We arrived in New York ten days later, and Ethan dropped me off at JFK in order for me to fly home in time for me to see my family, and for he and I to meet up with the other guests at Gatwick Airport to fly down to the South of France for Mick Jagger’s wedding to Bianca. Mick had very generously rented a plane to take us all to Nice, and a couple of buses to take us on to the reception in Saint-Tropez. The trip there and back being the best part. Most of us knew one another and those who did not soon put that right, everyone determined to have a good time. It was a pretty odd collection of people from all walks of life, like any typical wedding except for a couple of Beatles and the odd member of the Faces thrown in. Everyone was quite raucous on the way there and mostly asleep on the way back, having been up all night.

  On my return, I did a couple of days mixing with the Stones and announced that that was it, recommending my brother Andy to take over from me as their engineer. He was eight years younger than me and left school with a burning desire to follow in my footsteps. I managed to get him a job at Olympic, which did not last long, as his timekeeping proved to be less than reliable. However, he moved on and quickly established himself as a formidable engineer, making wonderful-sounding records with, among others, Led Zeppelin, Blind Faith, Jack Bruce, Free, Ten Years After, Jethro Tull, and Cat Stevens. So he was more than qualified to work with the Stones. We never worked together, but I was a huge fan of his sound. I believe that he eventually became the best in the world at recording the heavier side of rock and roll, with Zeppelin’s II, III, IV, and Houses of the Holy, Van Halen, and Joe Satriani.

  • • •

  I started back in with The Who to finish Who’s Next, finding that you had to be on your toes working with them as they had quite volatile tendencies, but that just made life more interesting. I recall sitting in the control room, discussing what the album should be called, having just finished the first playback of the final running order. Keith Moon’s suggestion was All Their Records. When asked to explain, he said, “Well, the kids will go into a record store and ask for all their records by The Who.”

  When it came to the cover, I recommended Ethan Russell, who did the most brilliant job. After a couple of days driving round the south of England with the band, he chanced on the concrete monolith sticking out of a slag heap that became the centerpiece of the now famous cover. The band are walking away, having supposedly urinated on it. Pete Townshend has since claimed that inadvertently it could be viewed as a rebuff for Stanley Kubrick’s refusal to direct the movie of Tommy.

  Denny Cordell and Leon Russell

  Denny Cordell got his start in the music business working for Chris Blackwell in 1964, when he was twenty-one years old. He left Island Records to go freelance, having had success producing The Moody Blues, and established a working relationship with David Platz, who owned the music publishing company Essex Music. By the time I met him in 1967, he was a well-respected producer.

  He was a striking character, very tall, with a blob of tightly curled hair. He spoke with a cultured, somewhat superior tone that belied his slightly unkempt look. He was extremely assertive on a session and left no one in doubt as to who was in charge. I was amazed to find out recently that he was a year younger than me. I never saw him play an instrument or come up with a musical idea or a part for anyone to play. In fact, I often wondered if he could hold a tune or sing at all. What he did have was a great sense of “feel,” and certainly knew a hit when he heard one and how to get the best performance out of any artist.

  Our first project was at Olympic, and was an album with The Move, a very successful rock and roll band from Birmingham with whom he had several hits in the sixties.

  Next, we worked together on a single for Joe Cocker called “Marjorine.” Joe had just arrived on the scene from Sheffield. He turned up at Olympic studio B with his sidekick Chris Stainton, a pale skinny little guy with long lank hair. It turned out that Chris was not only one of the finest keyboard players on the planet but was also an engineer. He was the first musician I can remember to tell me how to record his piano practically before we had said hello, and I am very glad he did, as his method worked brilliantly for the song.

  Denny went on to produce Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” at Olympic with Keith Grant engineering, and Joe Cocker’s single “With a Little Help from My Friends,” both hits making it all the easier to establish himself in America.

  He returned to London in September 1969 for me to mix the Joe Cocker album, bringing Leon Russell with him. Leon had been working on a solo album at his home in Los Angeles and they decided to continue working on it with me at Olympic. We ended up recutting most of it, and although Leon can play almost any instrument, we brought in a host of great musicians to play on the record: Alan Spenner, the bass player from the Grease Band; Klaus Voormann on bass; Charlie and Bill from the Stones; and Ringo and George from The Beatles, to name but a few.

  We didn’t mix the record until I returned to Los Angeles in January 1970. It is an extraordinary album. It was great fun to do, and although there is a cast of heavy-duty guys playing on it, Leon still comes across as master of all he surveys.

  Denny and Leon formed Shelter Records in 1969, and its first album release was Leon Russell in 1970. The label went on to have great success, signing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Phoebe Snow, Freddie King, and JJ Cale. I remember Denny calling me and telling me he had just signed a fantastic band who would be perfect for me to produce once he had made their first album. That was the Heartbreakers. Sadly, it was never to be. They are still one of my favorite bands. There is an upside though. I have often thought that I might well have not done nearly such a good job as whoever went on to produce them and therefore would not enjoy listening to their records nearly as much as I do now. The mystique that comes with listening to a record obviously is not there if you have produced it.

  In late June 1970, I got a call from Jerry Moss. He explained that he was in something of a predicament. Joe Cocker, who was probably the biggest male solo artist in America at that time, had gone out on a tour of America with an ensemble put together by Leon Russell and Denny Cordell. Jerry, Denny and Leon had come up with a plan to make both a film of the tour and a live album. They had chosen only two venues to record for the album. The first, right at the beginning of the tour, was the Fillmore East in New York, and the second was right at the end, in Los Angeles. Having listened to the recordings of the two shows, Denny and Leon decided that neither performance was good enough to be used. This meant that there would
be no live album and the movie that had been several weeks in the making at some considerable expense was a write-off.

  Jerry had suggested that as Denny and Leon were not prepared to continue with the project, would they consider bringing in a third person who they could all agree on, who would be fresh to it all, to try and save it. They had agreed on me.

  I was in the middle of the second batch of sessions at Olympic with The Rolling Stones for what became Sticky Fingers. Fortunately, they were quite happy for me to go to Los Angeles for a couple of weeks, as we were making the record in fits and starts.

  I arrived in L.A. and went straight into A&M Studios to check out the multitrack tapes of the two concerts, and it quickly became apparent that the concert recorded in New York was usable. Eddie Kramer had done a brilliant job recording it, and the band and Joe were still flushed with energy and adrenaline from the freshly rehearsed material. It is quite possible there had been better shows that were not recorded, but my opinion was not tainted by wonderful memories of the gigs that were not recorded, and I thought it was great.

  The big problem was the enormous choir. This consisted of six really wonderful singers who had been supplemented by anyone else on the tour who was a friend, hanger-on, groupie, or who had nothing else to do. The result was a cacophony of noise that had little to do with the key that any song was being performed in. I am sure they were all having a great time, but it ruined the recording. However, it was simple to fix. I called Rita Coolidge and asked her to contact the other principle singers, and booked them for the following day to come in and overdub on the entire concert.

  Jerry Moss was quite rightly concerned that it should be a double album. This gave me very little leeway to leave anything from the concert off the record. There is a medley that lasts for thirteen and a half minutes that had to be included if I was to meet Jerry’s request. Halfway through, there is a key change as it goes into “When Something Is Wrong with My Baby,” and as the band reaches a climax Joe attempts one of his marvelous elongated, high, raspy notes. Only, on this occasion all he managed was rasp. This one unfortunate error put the whole thirteen and a half minutes in jeopardy. So I got the choir to sing over it and cover it up, which solved the problem and gave Jerry the double album he wanted.

  When I finished, I got Denny and Leon down to studio 1 at Sunset Sound where I had mixed it and tentatively played it back to them. Fortunately, they approved of what I had done and reported back to Jerry that they were quite happy to have the record released.

  Throughout this whole process, no one had mentioned Joe. So I called him and asked him to come down to the studio for a playback before I delivered the masters to A&M. It transpired that he had become disenchanted with Denny and Leon and the whole project and had lost any enthusiasm for the record. I told him that I was quite prepared to erase the whole thing if he did not approve it, so he begrudgingly came down to the studio and sat silent and straight-faced through the entire playback, only speaking to utter his approval as he got up to leave.

  This turned out to be a very strange project for me. I had been caught in the middle of a disagreement between four individuals, all of whom I respected and considered to be friends. The only happy one when I delivered the finished record was Jerry, who had his album and his movie.

  It looked to me like Denny and Leon had used the tour to promote Leon, perhaps to the detriment of Joe. Leon had put the band together and done all the arrangements and was very much the bandleader onstage. So it looked more like the Leon Russell show with Joe as the lead singer. In any event, I had a marvelous time piecing it all together and was greatly inspired by Joe’s performance and the music. Mad Dogs & Englishmen went on to sell really well, so I am sure that ended up pleasing all concerned.

  Denny bought Leon out of Shelter Records in 1976. Once he had started the label it progressively took him away from producing records, which was undoubtedly his forte. Something I would remind him of whenever we met. I felt that we had lost a major talent well before he quit the music business in the late eighties to go and live in Ireland and train horses.

  In 1990, I was pleased to hear that he had returned, having found The Cranberries in Ireland, taking them to Chris Blackwell’s Island Records. You can’t keep a good man down.

  So he ended up right where he started, working for Chris, but this time as a traveling A&R man/producer, which he did with great success until he died suddenly in February 1995 from lymphoma.

  The Eagles, 1971

  In November 1971, I was in Los Angeles and was contacted by David Geffen, who had just started Asylum Records. He had signed the Eagles and set about securing me as the producer for their first record. I had never heard of him or his label, but he was very convincing and assured me that he felt the act would go on to be very successful. He did have Elliot Roberts as a partner, who managed Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, among others, so that gave him some credibility. I agreed to go to Denver, Colorado, accompanied by John Hartmann from Elliot and David’s office to see them play. Unfortunately, there was hardly anyone in the audience; it was a bit unfair really. Not a particularly inspiring situation for them. I have often thought how tricky it must be for any act to play knowing that there is some supposed hotshot producer in the audience who, if things go well, is supposedly going to change their lives by association. There were numerous occasions when I was asked to go and see a band by a record company and the very fact that I had flown several thousand miles for the purpose already made it too big a deal before they had even played a note. I usually knew after a few bars if they were right for me or not, and if they weren’t I would spend the rest of the time they were playing trying to figure out how to decline in as pleasant a way as possible without giving offense. There would very often be one guy in the band who would take it the wrong way and become abusive. No matter how you put it, it would end up being really embarrassing for me and the other guys in the band. There is nothing worse than sitting in the middle of an empty room and having a band play for you and you alone, as if you are the arbiter of all taste. I would dread it, and I am sure a lot of the acts dreaded it, too.

  The Eagles were at least playing a venue with a few paying members of the public along. They were not that impressive. They played a selection of covers. Chuck Berry rock and roll kind of thing. Bernie Leadon, a great country picker, on one side of the stage, and Glenn Frey, an average rock and roll guitar player on the other, with Don Henley and Randy Meisner being pulled in two directions in the middle. The sound was not that great, and I got no impression of the wonderful vocal harmony that they became famous for. All that, combined with a fairly bland, somewhat awkward stage presence convinced me that they were not worth pursuing, and I returned to London.

  I had met Bernie before when he was in The Flying Burrito Brothers with Gram Parsons. I had gone with the Stones to see them play at a small club in Topanga Canyon called the Corral. Keith Richards had a blossoming friendship with Gram. It was a bizarre event, as most were that had anything to do with going anywhere with the Stones. We drove out from Beverly Hills to what seemed like the wilds of Topanga, in a couple of limousines, arriving quite late in the evening to find a handful of people there, most of whom seemed stoned out of their minds.

  The most memorable thing about the evening was definitely Gram’s voice and Bernie’s guitar playing. Other than that, I was bored to tears having to watch a small group of girls who were definitely on acid, dancing—or throwing themselves around, more like—right in front of the table I was sitting at, vying for the attention of any one of the Stones.

  David Geffen would not let it go, insisting that I had not seen the Eagles in the best circumstances. He pestered me until I agreed to go back to L.A. and see the band in rehearsal, and thank God that he did.

  We spent a morning in a rehearsal facility somewhere in the Valley. They played through the set that I had seen already in Aspen, the result being p
retty much the same. We decided to take a break for lunch and as we were exiting the building someone said, “Hold on, before we go, let’s just play Glyn ‘Most of Us Are Sad,’” a ballad that Randy Meisner sang the lead on, with the others singing harmony. Bernie and Glenn grabbed a couple of acoustic guitars and they played the song without bass and drums, with all of us standing in a group near the door of the building, and there it was. The harmony blend from heaven. It knocked me clean off my feet. In effect, the band had four great lead singers all with completely different voices. When they sang together it created the most wonderful sound.

  I am pretty sure we did not break for lunch. We spent the rest of the day exploring the material that they had assembled, during which time it became more and more apparent to me that they were a much better combination of musicians than I had given them credit for. The contrast of Bernie’s and Glenn’s guitars was really refreshing, with Randy and Don providing a solid and versatile rhythm section for it all to sit on.

  I was converted and became quite excited at the prospect of making a record with them, and in equal part felt incompetent for not spotting the potential in the band earlier.

  I hung out with them for a few days, going through songs for the album, then went to see them play at the Troubadour, and did a couple of sessions with Rita Coolidge and David Anderle at Elektra Studios. These were the demos that got Rita a record deal with A&M. Then I flew back home to England to start the album the next day with the Eagles at Olympic.