Jack Douglas

As a Record Plant staff engineer, Douglas also forged working relationships with Patti Smith, Blue Öyster Cult, the New York Dolls, Cheap Trick, Starz and most notably Aerosmith. Douglas engineered and produced many of Aerosmith’s albums in the 1970s, including Get Your Wings (1974), Toys in the Attic (1975), Rocks (1976) and Draw the Line (1977), all of which have gone multi-platinum. Toys in the Attic and Rocks broke Aerosmith into the mainstream and have become highly influential, with both albums ranking among Rolling Stone’s list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”.

His close relationship with Aerosmith extended beyond producing and engineering, as Douglas was also a musical contributor to the group when they came up short of material on their projects. For example, Douglas helped write the band’s 1978 hit “Kings and Queens”. He was often given the nickname of “the sixth member” of Aerosmith, due to his close relationship with the band. Douglas was replaced as producer by the band for the 1979 release Night in the Ruts, but Douglas was to again work with the group on 1982’s Rock in a Hard Place and several of Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry’s solo albums.

For much of the late 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, Aerosmith worked with other producers, but in the mid-2000s, they re-united with Jack Douglas on the 2004 blues cover album, Honkin’ on Bobo. Douglas will also produce the band’s upcoming album Music from Another Dimension!, slated for release in November 2012. The band continues to maintain a cordial friendship with Douglas.