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It’s been announced that Jack Douglas, the record producer who was behind the desk for John Lennon’s final studio album, 1980’s Double Fantasy, has died aged 80.
According to a statement on his Facebook page, Douglas passed away on Monday (May 11) from complications from lymphoma. “He passed away peacefully on Monday night,” his family has written. “As many of you who follow him know, he produced great music, and lived a colourful life. We know that he touched many of your lives. He will be missed.”
Other than Lennon, the group that Douglas was most associated with was Aerosmith. He produced their run of classic 1970s albums – Get Your Wings, Toys In The Attic, Rocks and Draw The Line – before returning to helm their 1998 live album A Little South Of Sanity, as well as 2004’s Honkin’ On Hobo and their most recent album Music From Another Dimension, released in 2012.
Douglas was born in the Bronx, just months after the end of the war, in 1945. He travelled to the UK in the mid ’60s, where he spent some time as a folk musician, before returning to the States and training as a sound engineer. In the early 1970s, he joined the staff at New York’s Record Plant, where he worked on records by Alice Cooper, The Who, Blue Öyster Cult, Patti Smith, the New York Dolls and Cheap Trick.
The latter were another band Douglas enjoyed a long relationship with – he produced their 1977 self titled debut and was still working with them as late as 2006’s Rockford.
For Double Fantasy, Douglas brought in a number of ace session players, including Bowie alumni Andy Newmark and Earl Slick, Peter Gabriel bassist Tony Lewin and guitarist Hugh McCracken. Stunned by Lennon’s murder just weeks after the album was released, the same band worked on Yoko Ono’s 1981 album Seasons Of Glass.
Douglas went on to work with names such as Supertramp, Clutch and on Slash’s 1996 solo project Slash’s Snakepit.
Producer Warren Huart, who was mentored by Douglas, has paid to tribute to him, saying: “Jack carried decades of success with humility and grace. He never acted like a legend, even though he absolutely was one. He treated people with respect. He listened. He cared. He gave so much of himself to the artists, musicians, friends, and family around him.”
“There are producers who make hit records. Then there are producers who leave a lasting mark on people’s hearts and lives. Jack did both.”
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