Sound Man

September 8, 2014
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.