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

Glyn Johns is a major contributor to music, PERIOD. He has recorded and produced some of the most important records of the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s. His recording techniques were groundbreaking. He is also a very interesting, friendly and made his book very fun to read. You like that music? Don’t go w out this book.

I read this immediately after finishing Geoff Emerick’s delightful “Here, There, and Everywhere”, and the contrast is startling.There is very little detail here, and Johns has an irritating penchant for replacing a comma with a full stop before a verb. You can download the free kindle sample to get a sense of what his prose is like. With Emerick, you often feel as if you’ve gotten a sense (perhaps fraudulent; few will ever know) of what it was like to have been there. You never get that sense with Johns. What you get instead is page after page of “then I flew to LA to work with so-and-so and then I flew to Compass Point to make a wonderful album with the delightful Whatsisnuts, and then…”I had hoped a man as irascible and opinionated as Johns would have some good stories about the Who or the Stones in the studio. He has one mild anecdote about Keith Moon jumping in a swimming pool. The story about getting headbutted by Roger Daltrey isn’t here.Don’t waste your money.

If you are a fan of rock music, it doesn't get much better than this.. Johns worked with virtually all of the rock royalty in the 60s and 70s. The book contains wonderful stories of all these amazing musicians, singers, and songwriters. A thoroughly enjoyable read for all rock fans!

He seems to have been at the center of almost all the Important records and bands in history . Fascinating read ...loved it !!! Well done !!

This is Johns insight into his studio work (including his own early attempts at becoming a singer) with many of the greatest bands of that era. The book has the feel of the era ("Johnny McLaughlin was so cool in his sharkskin suit and pencil tie with a button down shirt. He would lean on the pillar on the left side of the stage, barely moving, while playing the most incredible guitar.") but at several important points in his reminisces Johns glosses over, or judiciously prunes (for many readers including me) the seemingly important points of some subject, leaving them out altogether. Presumably it's because he's talking about friends and/or he's doing the British thing of being polite to a fault. And that's too bad because at some points you want him to keep on describing the action, but good manners and/or modesty seems to prevail. Because I'm from that era and would look for Johns' name on the back of an LP as an indication of how good it might be, I think (for nostalgia's sake) this book floats somewhere between 3 and 4 "stars". But to each his own.But to his credit Johns does write in some depth about the era in general--from meeting Ian Stewart and recording the Rolling Stones very early on, to meeting both Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page at the start of their respective careers--and working in the studio with many of the best musicians of the period, but without resorting to gossip. Johns' remembrances (taken from his diaries) like this of George Harrison-- "So we waited for everyone to leave and he went out into the empty studio and played "Something in the Way She Moves"...." He came into the control room, and after having it played back to him, he asked what I thought of it, as he seemed unsure."--is about as personal as the book gets as far as any deep depth. But the many sessions he produced and the many great albums we all still hold up as pinnacles of great rock music give the book a feel of those days when the music was new and exciting. From his work on the Steve Miller Band album "Children of the Future" to working with The Eagles, and everyone else, the book brings up good memories of those times. He also talks about the music business in his era as compared to the present and how things have changed, and not all for the better. But if you're looking for information on how he got the sound he wanted, Johns doesn't dwell on the technicalities of his work.But the day to day workings in the studio ("The rest of March 1971 was taken up with starting and completing the second album with McGuiness Flint and recording The Stones live in concert...", and "I went back in the studio with The Who to complete "The Who By Numbers" at Shepperton Studios.") with all the many bands does have the flavor of those heady times. This book isn't supposed to be a "tell all" type of read. He doesn't dwell on or go into the negative aspects of working with the many bands he's produced. This is Johns' observations of what went on in his life as a top studio producer, and being "straight" while most everyone else was under the influence of various substances means that he writes honestly (but not to deeply) without being judgmental. And on that point the book succeeds. Yes, at times I wish Johns had included a bit more about certain events, but for whatever reason he chose not to. And for a book about (basically) his job as a producer, Johns succeeds pretty well."The day I don't learn something in the recording studio is the day I'm done." Glyn Johns.So if you're looking for some deep secrets to emerge or some mysteries to be brought into the light, this isn't the book. But if you want a look inside at working under pressure with some of the most egotistical artists of the era, with Johns trying to keep things moving in the right direction, this book will be of some interest.

"Matter-of-fact, cursory, dry" all describe the book. A 2-D presentation with no depth. Don't learn about the personalities or the technicalities, both which I assume to be fascinating.

I've read a few books by producers & engineers & this is on of the best. I found it interesting to read how some of the best pop records got made & how they sounded so good. Yes, it was about Glyn Johns, but it was also about getting the best performance & making the artist sound good without getting in the way. This behind the scenes stuff made me go back & listen to some of the lps he produced with a whole new set of ears.

On apprend peu de choses sur la technique de Glynn Jones mais comme il a côtoyé toutes les stars du rock depuis 1960 (Beatles, Stones, Who, Clapton, Eagles ... etc), les anecdotes sont amusantes pour un fan de ces groupes. Cà permet de comprendre la partie "production sonore" de ce business.

Viene en perfecto estado, Excelente compra

It is a pity, that all this musical history, is not being documented for the ages, properly. Johns is a global musical treasure. Someone should sit him down, turn on a recorder, give him a whiskey, entice some metaphors and etch the stories in stone. It's a necessity. This book, unfortunately, doesn't do his legacy justice.

The sound man is not a man of letters, yet he has written a book accumulating about a million words: “Sound Man”. Glyn Johns was a sound engineer and occasional producer mainly known for his work in the 60s and 70s. He did the sound engineering on albums by The Rolling Stones, The Small Faces, The Eagles, The Who, Fairport Convention and many others. The sound he achieved in the studio was sharp and crisp and voluminous, yet his writing is shallow and thus the book drags along like a tortoise on land. It does not rock. Though he had an ear for Rock ‘n’ Roll, his life style was the opposite. When travelling he even dressed as conventionally as possible – suit and tie – to avoid attracting attention. Perhaps Glyn Johns is the only person in Rock ‘n’ Roll business to never have touched any drugs apart from cigarettes. Glyn Johns obviously was someone who knew it all, and not someone ready to compromise: “I had a disagreement over the content of the second album [of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils] with Stanley Plesser, the band’s manager – a man who should have stuck to selling shoes, in my opinion. This resulted in me quitting…” (p. 151).When Johns is fond of a person, he finds ways to express it. “When I was an engineer I would see him almost every day, and a nicer guy you could not wish to meet” (about John Bonham, p.115). And “He was softly spoken, always casually dressed, with a cultured English accent and an air of relaxed confidence about him…” (about Chris Blackwell, p.79). Or: “You won’t meet a nicer guy. He is generous to a fault and a true professional to work with” (about Graham Nash, p. 72). And so on and on, yet occasionally he also picks on the negative sides of people, like the violent streak in Don Arden (p. 66).By reading Johns’ book you will get a lot of inside stories, some of them interesting, but also a lot of self-praise and irrelevant side-information.

Only for sound engineers. It's a whole lot of love and inspiration for people who care deeply about music and sound. I had read about John's peculiar recording setups and that led me to this articulately explained book