Born just outside London in 1942, Glyn Johns was sixteen years old at the dawn of rock and roll. His big break as a producer came on the Steve Miller Band's debut album Children of the Future, and he went on to engineer or produce iconic albums for the best in the business: Slowhand by Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin's and the Eagles' debuts, Who's Next by The Who, and many others. Even more impressive, Johns was perhaps the only person on a given day in the studio who was entirely sober, so he he one of the most reliable and clear-eyed insiders to tell these stories today.
In the entertaining and observant memoir, Johns takes us on a tour of his world during the heady years of the sixties, with beguiling stories the will delight music fans the world over: he rembers helping to get the Steve Miller Band released from jail shortly aafter their arrival in London, he recalls his impressions of John and Yoko during the Let It Be sessions, and he recounts running into Bob Dylan at JFK and being asked to work on a collaborative album with him, the Stones, and the Beatles, which never came to pass. Johns was there during some of the most iconic moments in rock history, including the Stones first European tour and the Beatles final performance on the roof of their Savile Row recording studio.
Johns's career has been long and prolific, and he's still at it — over the past two decades he has worked with Crosby, Stills & Nash; Emmylou Harris; Linda Ronstadt; Ryan Adams; and, most recently, Band of Horses. Sound Man provides a firsthand glimpse into the art of makin gmusic and reveals how the industry — like the musicians themselves — has changed since those first freewheeling years of rock and roll.
