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

by Glyn Johns

  After a few days, having made a fairly slow start, I got word that Little Feat was playing in Amsterdam and suggested that we should all go and see them, thinking it might be stimulating and give the band a bit of a kick into gear. The night before I left for Rotterdam, I went to a reception at the American Embassy in London that Warner Bros. had arranged in order to promote a tour round Europe with a bunch of American acts that they had recently signed. I attended because the band Little Feat was among them. I had been introduced to them in 1973 by David Anderle, who had sat me down at his house in L.A. and played me their album Dixie Chicken. This was an extraordinary group of musicians put together by their leader Lowell George and the keyboard player Billy Payne. Lowell was the singer and an unbelievable guitar player and Billy was nothing short of a genius on the piano. Add to this Richie Hayward on drums, Kenny Gradney on bass, and Sam Clayton on percussion and you get the slipperiest southern/New Orleans rock and roll you ever heard. They had the same effect on me as Delaney & Bonnie did the first time I heard them. A new sound and completely brilliant musicianship.

  So we all jumped into cabs and took the short drive to the venue in Amsterdam, turning up in the middle of their set. We were ushered into the wings by the promoter, where we were treated to one of the best live shows I have ever seen. They proved to be every bit as good as their album suggested. Maybe even better. We all stood there with our jaws on the floor as, one by one, the guys onstage realized who was standing in the wings. They had no idea we were coming and, having got over the shock, seemed to even kick it up another notch. Years later, Richie Hayward told me jokingly that he would never forgive me for stopping his heart that night, turning to see the entire Rolling Stones standing in the wings, watching their show.

  My ploy did not have any visible effect on the Stones’ sessions, particularly as Mick and Keith had decided to use them to audition guitar players to replace Mick Taylor. A huge amount of recording time was wasted, as over the next few days, a steady progression of hopeful guitarists from near and far trooped up and down the stairs and corridors of the building we were in. The sessions started later and later. This coupled with the fact that I was stuck out in the truck miles away from the little bit of action, if any, that was taking place each night. Things were slipping back to how it had been when I quit, and the speed and efficiency of the Munich sessions was left in the dust.

  On the tenth day, after a falling out with Keith, the first and last I ever had, I quit in yet another puff of steam. A few hours later, on my way down to check out of the hotel, I called by Mick’s room, at his request, to say a final farewell. He had left the door open and called to me to come into the bathroom, where we had our final conversation. We had been through all manner of trials and tribulations, having run the gamut of what enormous success had brought them. I had spent far more time with them than with my wife and kids and I had been privileged to witness the creation of some of the best rock and roll of the era, and it all ended with him in the bath and me standing in the doorway with my coat on and my suitcase at my feet. What a strange way to finish a working relationship that had started all those years ago in our youth.

  On the rare occasion that we have met since, Keith has greeted me with warmth, the episode in Rotterdam long forgotten. Possibly our mutual unspoken grief for the loss of our friend Stu being the underlying factor.

  In 2012, I mixed an album that Don Was and Keith produced in New York with Aaron Neville. The mix was done in London at British Grove and only Don was available to attend. This resulted in me getting a charming handwritten letter of thanks from Keith, which I was really touched by, it being a first in all those years. It will serve to remind me of the more positive aspect of my relationship with him and the band.

  Thirty-five years after my last session with the Stones, Don Was asked me to mix a version of the two new tracks they recorded in Paris for the fiftieth-anniversary album. It was a lovely gesture on his part, and it was wonderful to have a momentary reunion. Mick and Keith came separately to supervise the mix of the song they had each written on their own, with Charlie and Ronnie Wood popping in for ten minutes to say hi. How things have changed. The tolerance that existed between Mick and Keith has long since dissipated, as they are unwilling to write together anymore, resulting in a somewhat watered-down “glimmer” of what the band was. However, many of my friends have seen them play live in the past few months and report back that they are as good as ever. How bad can that be after fifty years? As for me, I have no further desire to see them play, as I prefer to remember the band as it was with Stu and Bill.

  WITH BILL WYMAN AND JIMMY MILLER BACKSTAGE AT MEADOWLANDS, NJ, 1981.

  Fairport Convention, Keith Moon, Derek Green, AFL, and Joan Armatrading

  On returning to London from Rotterdam in 1975, I found I had no time to reflect on the abrupt end to the Stones era. I did a couple of days of preproduction with Georgie Fame and then immediately went on to the one and only album I got to make with Fairport Convention, Rising for the Moon. This was the first time I had worked with any of them and it proved to be a terrific experience and enormously beneficial to my future. The drummer Dave Mattacks and the guitar player Jerry Donahue bringing their finely honed and original talents to the many projects they worked on with me over the next few years. Sandy Denny proved to be every bit as good a singer as I suspected. The song “White Dress” from this album remains one of my all-time favorites. I suggested that the lovely Dave Pegg should take a bass solo, giving this egoless man a rare opportunity to be in the spotlight for a few seconds. The brilliant icon of the fiddle Dave Swarbrick supports beautifully on the viola, while Sandy gives a stunning vocal performance of one of the many songs she wrote.

  Three years later, drugs and alcohol taking their toll, she fell and died from a head injury.

  • • •

  Next was The Who and the start of The Who by Numbers. We were working at Ramport, their studio in Battersea and had been trying to cut one song all day long. Keith was not in the best shape and found it difficult to remember the arrangement and made a mistake in each take. Everyone was very supportive and no one gave him a bad time, we just kept going. Trying all the tricks of coffee breaks, playing a different song for a while, then coming back to the original. All to no avail. In the end we took yet another break, as I didn’t think anyone had another take in them.

  Keith remained, sitting at his kit in the studio, looking somewhat dejected. I went out to try and cheer him up.

  My encouragement fell on deaf ears. He was upset and felt he was letting the others down. So I suggested, in as pleasant a way as possible, that if he really felt that way then maybe to rectify the problem he should stop drinking for a few days and come to the sessions straight, to increase his attention span when trying to remember the more complicated arrangements he was confronted with. Our friendly chat immediately turned sour. “It is all very well for you to suggest that I stop drinking,” he spat at me. “You must smoke sixty cigarettes a day, and have done ever since I have known you. What if I told you to stop smoking?” Okay, I told him. I will stop smoking if you stop drinking. “It’s a deal,” he said, visibly relaxing and shaking my hand.

  I stopped smoking there and then, and of course, he made absolutely no attempt to stop drinking. So dear Keith may well have saved me from lung cancer and certain death, for all I know.

  • • •

  These sessions were followed by a request from Derek Green at A&M in London for me to make an album with Andy Fairweather Low. This also ended up being beneficial to me in several ways. We made a fabulous album, from which we had a hit single in the UK, “Wide Eyed and Legless.” Perhaps most important of all, we became lifelong friends. He introduced me to the drummer Henry Spinetti and the amazing John “Rabbit” Bundrick, a frighteningly good keyboard player. Andy became my go-to rhythm guitar player on many albums for many years. He had been in the very successful band Amen Corner in
the sixties. The album we made was his second as a solo artist, and I shall always be grateful to Derek for the introduction.

  Derek Green was probably the most influential record company executive in Europe in the seventies. In 1972, he took the job of managing director of A&M Records in London at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, having been previously retained by Chuck Kaye in 1969 to set up and run A&M’s publishing company Rondor Music in Europe.

  His story is quite extraordinary. Having left school at age sixteen with his only interests being football and music, he got a job as a messenger at Carlin Music, a very successful music publisher in London. His only qualification being that he had a bike. They took him on at the recommendation of his girlfriend, who worked there and was fed up with getting stuck with the bill every time they went out together.

  Being the type of guy that he is, he realized that the only way to get noticed and progress was to become the best messenger that one could possibly be. With his sights set on becoming a song plugger in the company’s “professional department,” his enthusiasm was quickly rewarded with a job in the sheet music department and then on to a royalty clerk, eventually making it to his objective, becoming a song plugger at age eighteen, a job he was extremely good at.

  By the time he was twenty-four, having helped to establish subsidiary publishing companies for Strike Records and RCA in London, he was an obvious choice for Jerry Moss and Chuck Kaye at A&M in Los Angeles to help them get their publishing foot in the door in Europe. Among the artists he signed were Yes, Albert Hammond, Johnny Nash, and Bob Marley. So when the position of managing director for the label in Europe became vacant, he was the obvious choice. He was reluctant to accept, as his heart was in publishing, but thankfully for all involved he was persuaded by Abe Somer to take the job.

  In the next few years he established the label as an independent in Europe, and with the help of Mike Noble as head of A&R and the team he set up around him, Derek signed and guided some of the most influential British artists in the popular music of the day, while retaining the originality and ethos of the parent label in America. These included the platinum-selling artists Supertramp, The Police, Peter Frampton, Humble Pie, Joan Armatrading, Rick Wakeman, Sting, Stealers Wheel, Chris de Burgh, Squeeze, Joe Jackson, Elkie Brooks, and Gallagher & Lyle.

  He spotted and signed the Sex Pistols, albeit a short-lived triumph, as before the ink was dry on the contract he became disenchanted with their violent behavior. They physically assaulted the disc jockey Bob Harris at a club in London’s West End and, after a press conference to announce their signing, turned up and wrecked A&M’s offices on New King’s Road. Although he still believed in their music, he felt that he could not sanction their behavior and was forced to drop them like a hot potato. So he should be credited with being one of the first to recognize the commercial viability of punk, which was very much against the grain of the rest of the industry at that time, and something that I shall never thank him for.

  My first encounter with him was not a pleasant one. I had just delivered Willie and the Lapdog, an album I am terribly proud of, that I produced for A&M with Gallagher & Lyle. These two had been the writers in McGuinness Flint and had left the band to establish themselves on their own, asking me to continue with them as their producer. They were wonderful songwriters, appealing to my folk roots, and a refreshing contrast to the rock and roll I had been immersed in for so long.

  Graham Lyle telephoned me to say that the newly installed head of the company in London had refused their request for a booklet of lyrics to be inserted in the sleeve of their album, on the grounds that it would be too expensive. As he was getting nowhere, he asked if I could take over and have a crack at persuading Derek to change his mind. Not knowing Derek at all, I foolishly assumed that he was just another egotistical, jumped-up record company executive. So when he took my call, I ripped into him, accusing him of being cheap and disrespectful to my artist, neither adjective normally being associated with A&M. In fact, it was me who was being disrespectful and incredibly rude. Derek dealt with my bullying outburst in the most diplomatic way, without rising to the bait, remaining calm and polite. So by the end of the conversation, without me even realizing, he had my respect and it is to his credit and the fact that he gave in to our request that we remain close friends to this day.

  While at A&M he used his relationships with various DJs from his song-plugging days to great effect and employed a team of like-minded individuals from a similar background to him to promote the label’s product with wonderful success.

  After twelve years with A&M, he moved on to start his own label, China Records, and, with Bob Grace, the publishing company Empire Music. Both companies achieved equal success, eventually being sold to Warner Bros. and PolyGram Music, respectively.

  Perhaps his finest achievement is what he gave back to the business with his time on the board of the BPI, the association that represents the British Phonographic Industry, and his time as chairman of the board of Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy, the charity that is supported by the music business. He was the driving force behind a concert at Knebworth that raised the money to buy the charity its headquarters and to fund the building of the BRIT School, a school for the performing arts in South London that he served invaluably on the Board of Governors in its infancy. This school is the first of its kind in Britain—a state school that is funded annually by the music business and gives kids from all walks of life an opportunity for free education in music, dance, and drama.

  Derek is an extraordinary man, who never lost sight of where he came from, bringing his exceptional taste and business acumen to all he encountered.

  • • •

  Having finished recording with Andy, I went back in with The Who to complete The Who by Numbers at Shepperton Studios. They had bought a soundstage there, and we used the Stones Truck once more to finish the recording, ending up at Basing Street to mix.

  As I had to return to L.A. once more to master the album at Doug Sax’s Mastering Lab, I decided to take the family and have a working holiday. So I rented a house on Coldwater Canyon in Beverly Hills for the month of August to use as a base.

  I was still married to my first wife, Sylvia. We had two children—a son, Ethan, and a daughter, Abigail. John Entwistle called and asked if he could come by with his wife, Alison, and their son, Christopher, so that the kids could play together. So we invited them over for lunch and were having a drink while the children played happily outside around the pool when the doorbell rang, and much to my surprise there stood Keith Moon, immaculately dressed in a white suit. John was visiting L.A. for a few days and had invited him, thinking it would be okay with me, and had forgotten to mention it. Keith was living there at that point, so he saw it as an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and see us both together.

  He joined the party and all was going well until the gardeners turned up and started to water all the plants around the pool area. We brought the children inside out of the way, leaving their clothes and toys by the pool. I went back to get their things only to find that they had been liberally watered by the gardeners. I mentioned this to John, apologizing for their carelessness. The house was a typical California design with a very large open-plan area opening out onto a paved terrace, beyond which was the pool. As John and I stood there in conversation, we were interrupted by a loud Tarzan-like holler. Keith, having stripped to his underpants, launched himself from the back of the room and ran at full speed through the house onto the terrace and threw himself into the pool, taking the two poor unsuspecting gardeners with him. The older man could not swim and I dived in to help pull him out. Both he and what turned out to be his son were visibly shaken and had no more idea than me why they had been knocked into the pool. I apologized profusely but as I did not speak Spanish it fell on deaf ears, and they left drenched to the skin, never to return. Keith muttered something about teaching them a lesson for watering the kid’s thi
ngs and disappeared into the house to dry himself off, having been asked to leave by me.

  John and I had made arrangements to go to Fred Walecki’s music store in Westwood for John to look at the new Alembic bass guitar. So we hopped in the car, leaving Alison and Christopher at the house, and thinking that Keith was leaving, left for Fred’s. Once we had gone Keith reappeared, only to be confronted by my wife, who admonished him for what he had done, saying how awful it was for those poor men to have to drive home in wet clothes. When Keith showed no concern for their predicament, she took the immaculate white suit he had arrived in and deposited it in the pool, saying, “Well, perhaps you would like the same experience.” He apparently went berserk for a few minutes, and having calmed down, persuaded Sylvia to lend him a white kaftan with a floral motif embroidered on the front, which he duly put on and left, still complaining about the wet cash in the pocket of his suit.

  A couple of months after my tenure at the house, I received a bill for several thousand dollars from the owner. The gardeners required new watches and had quite understandably never returned, so when I left, as the house was unattended, all the plants had died and the entire garden had to be replanted.

  Many years later, Eric Clapton and I were swapping stories about The Who when he told me that one afternoon in August 1975, Keith had inexplicably turned up where he was staying at the Hyatt House hotel on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, wearing a white dress with a floral motif embroidered on the front.

  There are many stories about Keith Moon’s extraordinary behavior, most of which sound amusing when told. In reality, these incidents were anything but funny to witness, as they very often involved some degree of violence or destruction of someone else’s property. He was capable of being very funny. Unfortunately, it very rarely stopped there, and what started out being amusing ended up being extremely unpleasant.