Glyn Johns Sound Man: A Life Recording Hits with The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Eric Clapton, The Faces…

Graham Nash Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life

The preface to Glyn Johns’ memoir Sound Man, opens with a question that someone poses to him: “What exactly does a record producer do?” He responds, “You just have to have an opinion and the ego to express it more convincingly than anyone else.” Given the caliber of artists that Johns has worked with over the years—including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Eric Clapton, The Eagles and Ryan Adams—his convictions have held sway among particularly confident and opinionated company. Johns shares some of that dialogue and debate in this book, which touches on many of his most celebrated sessions.

Johns was still a teenager in 1959 when, through a serendipitous introduction and the prompting of his mother, he began work as an assistant engineer at IBD Recording studios in London. Sound Man starts here and eventually moves through many of rock history’s main currents. Highlight include Johns’ account of his friendship with Ian Stewart and his subsequent work with the Stones, along with the story of how he arrived at his technique for recording stereo drums during a Led Zeppelin session. Producers are under-represented in the canon of rock memoirs so this is welcome addition, although at times, one wishes that he shared more from his personal life, particularly since his younger brother Andy and son Ethan followed him into what has become a family profession.

One of the artists Johns worked with on a few occasions was Graham Nash, whose autobiography has just come out in paperback. If Johns’ narrative tone feels slightly impersonal at times, then Nash’s, by contrast, is warm and welcoming. He draws the reader into his British boyhood, including the moment, at age six, when he met Allan Clarke, his future co-founder of the Hollies. Nash remains a genial tour guide as he moves through his initial success, subsequent frustration, the moment when he first joined voices with David Crosby and Stephen Stills, and onward to superstardom. Still, he is frank about his foibles and excesses, as well as the idiosyncrasies of his collaborators. (Here’s looking at you Neil Young—Nash’s story of first listening to Harvest with Young on a boat in the middle of a lake, with Young’s house as the right speaker and his barn as the left speaker, is worth the price of admission.) While a bit more insight into Nash’s creative process would have been welcome, this is a breezy and enjoyable book and a perfect complement to Johns’ own angle on the action.