Sound Opinions and Glyn Johns

Sound Opinions and Glyn Johns

Oh my, where to begin...in short, a simply fantastic and entertaining interview with producer and engineer Glyn Johns (bio here and here) makes up most of episode 528 of the excellent podcast Sound Opinions. He talks about his work and firsthand experiences collaborating in the studio, and very much a part of the dynamic creative/recording process, on albums with The Who, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin’s first album, The Kinks, Steve Miller, The Eagles, The Clash, and even the Beatles (and more, more, more--if you can believe it). Incredible. Illustrating how involved and engaged he was in his formative days, Glyn confirms in the interview that over a day to day-and-a-half period in February 1969 he worked with the Beatles on Abbey Road, did an all night session with the Stones on Let it Bleed, then flew to Royal Albert Hall to work with Jimi Hendrix. Are you kidding me? Amazing. So many choice moments through the course of the interview. I learned that Glyn was brought in, pre-Phil Spector, to work on what became the Beatles Let it Be album in ’69 (at that time it was referred to as the “Get Back Sessions”). When asked what Phil Spector contributed to the final version of Let it Be:

He just mixed it...he didn’t do anything else, and he added a load of choir and orchestra and a lot of rubbish. Oh god, syrupy bull****. No, no complete and utter nonsense. Awful, awful..I say in the book “he puked all over it.” It’s exactly what he did.

(note: in the background The Long and Winding Road is playing--first the paired down version, then the orchestrated version--to illustrate the changes made by Spector, I assume.)

Wow. Glyn pulls no punches.

The “book” he refers to is his biography, “Sound Man: A Life Recording Hits with The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles , Eric Clapton, the Faces . . .” which was recently released.

Both the podcast and the biography are well worth checking out.