Remembering Jack Douglas, the Producer Behind Aerosmith's Classic Hits

Jack Douglas, the producer who worked with Aerosmith, Cheap Trick and John Lennon throughout his career, has died. He was 80.

According to a post on his Facebook page from his family, Douglas "passed away peacefully on Monday night. As many of you who follow him know, he produced great music and lived a colorful life. ... He will be missed."

Douglas was born in the Bronx in New York City on Nov. 6, 1945, and got his start as a folk singer in the early '60s, and worked on Robert Kennedy's senatorial campaign in 1964 as a songwriter.

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After graduating from New York's Institute of Audio Research, Douglas began a career working at local recording studios, first as a janitor before becoming an engineer at the Record Plant, where he worked on records by artists as diverse as Alice Cooper, Miles Davis and James Gang.

Listen to John Lennon's '(Just Like) Starting Over'

That work led to board assistance on the Who's follow-up to Tommy, Lifehouse. After the project was abandoned, the album was pared down and retitled Who's Next in 1971, with some of Douglas' engineered songs making the track listing.

What Records Did Jack Douglas Produce?

From there, Douglas worked with John Lennon on his 1971 album Imagine, serving as the record's engineer.

When Lennon returned to record-making after a five-year hiatus in the '70s, Douglas was tapped as a coproducer, along with Lennon and Yoko Ono, of his 1980 comeback album, Double Fantasy. (He and Ono later went to court over his royalties for the No. 1 album.)

Douglas stayed busy in the '70s, working on albums by Blue Oyster Cult, New York Dolls and Patti Smith. He also produced Cheap Trick's 1975 self-titled debut album around this time.

In late 1973, he was introduced to Aerosmith, who were starting work on the follow-up to their self-titled debut album from earlier that year.

Listen to Cheap Trick's 'Oh, Candy'

He then worked with the band as a producer or co-producer for the next four years on their multi-platinum albums Get Your Wings (1974), Toys in the Attic (1975), Rocks (1976) and Draw the Line (1977).

What Did Jack Douglas Say About Working With Aerosmith?

"I listened to that first record over and over, and I thought, 'These guys know how to write tunes,'" Douglas told UCR in 2025. "My feeling [was] that Steven [Tyler] wasn't using all of his vocal capabilities, and that both Brad [Whitford] and Joe [Perry] wanted to be more than they were.

Listen to Aerosmith's 'Walk This Way'

"They really wanted to work on being great guitarists, in the English kind of way. They weren't there yet, but they had a good head start. I think that's why I brought in two other players for a few tunes. ... They came back after a year of touring as completely different guitarists."

Douglas' relationship with Aerosmith included a handful of cowriting credits on songs and eventually returning as producer on the band's two most recent albums, 2004's Honkin' on Bobo and 2012's Music From Another Dimension!

Since then, Douglas has produced albums by Slash's Snakepit (2000's Ain't Life Grand) and New York Dolls' 2006 reunion album, One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This.

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