Jack Douglas' 99 interview in Beatlefan

This is from the January/February issue of Beatlefan.

Lennon's Last Sessions
Producer Jack Douglas on Recording 'Double Fantasy.'

When John Lennon and Yoko Ono decided to return to the recording studio
in 1980, they enlisted an old cohort to produce the sessions. In this
revealing conversation, he tells Ken Sharp what it was like....

Producer-engineer Jack Douglas was known primarily for his work with
Aerosmith and Cheap Trick before he got a mysterious phone call in 1980
that launched him into John Lennon's 'comeback' recording sessions -
also his final sessions, as it turned out. Contributing Editor Ken
Sharp talked with Douglas recently about those sessions and Lennon's
work with Cheap Trick- one track of which is included in the new "John
Lennon Anthology" box set...

Q: I want to get into the Lennon "Double Fantasy" sessions, but I
didn't realize that you'd worked with John prior to that on, was it,
the "Imagine" album or the song "Imagine"?

A: The "Imagine" album.

Q: You engineered some of that?

A: Yeah. Well, I was second engineer. Roy Cicala was first engineer
but that was where I met John.

Q: What was that like working with John back then?

A: It was amazing and it's so weird because we got to be friends. I
was working in one studio; I was doing editing while he was tracking in
another room and doing vocals. I mean, there was no way I was allowed
to do vocals with him. I was way too young but he came in and I was
putting stuff together and editing and he said to me "How ya doing?"
You know, I'd met him earlier in the day but this was the first day and
I said "OK, OK." I wanted to be nervous but like I said, he wouldn't
let you be. And he lit up a smoke and I said to him "I've been to
Liverpool" and he looked at me and said, "Why the hell would you have
been to Liverpool?" and I said, "Well, you want to hear this story?"

Q: Is this the one on the boat? (As a young musician, Douglas and a
friend stowed away on a boat In order to get to Liverpool, only to be
caught and written up in British newspapers.)

A: Yeah. I told him that story. And he, like, cracked up, he was
cracking up 'cause they'd read the papers about these idiots who were
held captive on this boat ... after that, he said "What are you doing?"
I said, "Well, after this?" He goes, "Yeah." I said, "Nothing." He
goes, "You can come with me." So we went out, you know, and he took me
to a party and he was like - see, I told him I was born and raised in
New York, and he would say to me, "See that guy over there?" "Yeah,"
and if I knew him, he'd say, "Well, who is he? What is he?" I'd say,
"Well...that guy's an ***. Don't even go near him. He'll *** and
suck your blood." "Thanks, man." It was like one of those kind of
things.

Q: So you continued the friendship through the' 70s?

A: Yeah, all through it. And, in fact, I was staying with him out in
L.A. during the crazy period (the so-called "Lost Weekend") while I was
producing Alice Cooper.

Q: Oh, okay "Muscle Love"?

A: "Muscle Love," yeah. And so I was hanging, I was hanging with him
and I was doing Yoko records. All those crazy records with Yoko during
which John was most of the time not allowed in the studio.

Q: Really.

A: Yeah. You know, I never let those two...very rarely when I did
"Double Fantasy" did I ever have them in the room at the same time.

Q: Why?

A: It just didn't work. John always wanted to get in to Yoko's stuff
and she could not bear it. It was already...there was already too much
competition between those two.

Q: You really think there was, even then?

A: Yeah. Absolutely. And so it was, it just was when John came in and
heard what she did after it was done, it was like "Yeah!" He'd get
really excited. But if he was there ...

Q: Would she be excited, conversely, with what he did?

A: Nah, "That's good, John," you know. But, yeah, he was always good.
For her, getting her part done was the biggest challenge, you know.
And I mean, he was just ... I mean, for me, he was the ultimate guy to
produce because he was such a true professional. He always left his
ego outside the door when he came into work.

Q: What was he like as a player?

A: He was a great rhythm player. He could not play lead to save his
life. Very small hands, so he had no reach at all. But man, rhythm...


Q: How did you get enlisted to produce "Double Fantasy" and wasn't It a
secret for awhile? If you can talk about how it was kept hush-hush...

A: Yeah. How did I get ... I think I ran into John about six months
before we did that record, maybe almost a year. I was in a health food
store over on the East Side and in comes John and Sean, who was maybe
3. And the nanny and they were just coming from the YMCA where they'd
been swimming. And John comes up and goes "Hey, Jack" and I hadn't
seen him in years. "Jack, how ya doing? What's happening? Oh, you're
a big producer now.' He was always kidding me, or goofing with me. And
I was goofing back with him. And he told me, "Why don't you call me?"
Gave me his number, and he said, "Come on over to the Dakota and hang
out," and I just, I took the number and I stuck it in my pocket and my
wife said to me, "Wow, that s great, he wants you to come over and hang
out and stuff." And I said, "Yeah, I'll do it, you know, but, you
know, maybe he was, I mean, he's so involved with his family now and
he's kinda out of the business. I'll call him sometime." I never did.
I never did. Stupid, too, isn't it?

Q: Damn, If John Lennon gave me his phone number ...

A: And I never, I never called him. I always felt like "I don't want
to really bother him," you know and it turns out he would have liked to
have gotten that call and it was really stupid of me not to do it but
anyway the thing was John was - we had a relationship and it was a
good, trusting relationship and also I had that same relationship with
Yoko. She also
trusted me; she knew that I respected her work. And that I was a
trustworthy person and John, I once asked him, I said -well into the
album, we're sitting there and mixing and I said to him "I meant to ask
you, why am I doing this record with you?" I said, "I just wanted to
know..." He said, "Because you have good antenna and that works for me
because you always can read me, you know what this is about," and
that's pretty cool because I always felt that was one of my strong
points but it was very important to him to be able to so
easily communicate with his producer. And again, like I said, because
he was so without ago when he was working, he would just take a
direction- If I told John, "For this vocal, I need you to stand on your
head." He'd say, "if you think that's better, I'll do it." I mean, he
was like that.

Q: Were there any tracks that took a bit more time for him to nail?

A: I don't remember. Sure ... they all took about an equal amount of
time. "Beautiful Boy" maybe took a little bit longer because of the
chorus. Then he would double. He would double track his vocal, like
in "Beautiful Boy," like he would double. First shot. He loved
doubling. Yeah, he was the perfect doubler. But you know, he doubled
because he hated the sound of his voice. And I used to tell him,
"John, you don't have to double." I mean,
when he sent me the demos from Bermuda - you have to understand that
these are recorded on a boom box, right, a Panasonic, and it was just
acoustic guitar or in one case, piano on "Real Love" and him and I
think, Fred Seaman, banging on pots and pans, and he actually took the
time to play those from one Panasonic to another one and double his
vocal because he couldn't bear that - I would hear these things with a
single vocal.

Q: What did you think of Seaman, by the way? He's now like this
vilified character.

A: Fred, was like, you know, he just got hammered, man, I mean, there
was no - John loved him and he was hired to be John's assistant. I
mean, wherever John went, he brought Fred, you know? And, I mean,
Fred, he probably made a couple of mistakes. But what he got nailed
for was like really off the wall. John - and I was there - John used
to get things sent to him, not just one thing, he'd get a boom box, or
a cassette machine, they'd send him two, three of them, or they'd just
send him one - he just didn't want all the stuff that he used to get
from companies. Everybody would just want him to say "I use this," you
know. And he was getting complimentary stuff all the time and he told
Fred one day, "Take that," he says, "Go in the room, Fred, and take
whatever you want, man, you can have it." And Fred went in and he took
stuff and he brought it home and it was practical stuff he could use
but Yoko had
somebody always keeping an inventory of everything that was in that
room and so, I mean, you know, Fred never, like, signed this stuff out.
John told him, "Keep it Take it, I don't want that crap," and when
Fred finally got nailed it was because they said, well you know,
"There's this stuff missing and you might find it at Fred Seaman's
house." And once they went there, they matched the serial numbers, it
was like a grand larceny rap. And so, that's what he got taken down on
and it was really like, you know, he was there to keep a journal for
John...and whatever John ever asked him to do, Fred was like right
there. It was a bum rap.

Q: Tell me about the secretiveness of the sessions.

A: Well, I'll go back a little bit here...You probably already know the
story that I got flown out in a sea plane to Glen Cove to the big house
out there and a seaplane right onto the beach, hush-hush, and I already
knew I was being asked to do a record because I had already gotten the
phone call from Yoko and John. He's going back, he wants to talk to me
about making this record; "Don't say anything to anyone; just go to
34th Street, get on a
seaplane and come out." And I came out and Yoko said to me, she handed
me the envelope "For Jack's Eyes Only." Or was it "For Jack's Ears
Only"? Maybe it was both. And she said, "John is going to call you in
a few minutes." She said, "But I just want to tell you, he's going to
ask you to do a record." I went, "Cool, that's great." "You would
produce it with us." "Cool." She said, "I'm going to have a few songs
on it and John doesn't know yet." "OK." She said, "You can't tell
him." "All right; you tell him." So I had opened the
tape; there was one cassette from John. And Yoko said, "Now here's
some of the songs," so she handed me a thing, like a stack...

Q: Of her songs?

A: Yeah, a stack. I mean, she'd been in the Record Plant with
Elephants Memory, doing demos...I wonder where those demos are; some of
them were very cool. And just a stack of not cassettes, of 5-inch
reels, of seven and a half, dozens and dozens of songs. And I was like
shook up, "You gonna have a couple of tunes on this record?" Handing
me stacks and John finally called me and he said, you know, "I don't
really think I have that much stuff, you know." He eventually sent me
another one. He said, "I think if it's kind of the same old ***," and
actually that is on the tape, him saying that. "Most of it, I think
we'll give to Ringo" and "The deal is, I don't know if this is really
going to come off." He said, "I'm going to give it a try but, Jack,
I've been out of it for a while and I don't even know what's going on."
So
the deal was put together a band, arrange the songs any way I thought
would work, I mean, as you know, if you've heard any of those things
that are out around, you know, that things like ... "Watching the
Wheels" was like boom-jang, boom-jang, it was like fast, and almost
Dylany and stuff. And he wrote me a letter saying, "Can you make it
sound circular?" You know, it was all these instructions I got from
him and the deal was "Don't tell anyone this is happening." We put
together the band.

Q: I was curious about why you chose some of those players.

A: I wanted guys that were - well, he knew Hughie (McCracken), anyway.
And he knew (Andy Newmark) and he'd played with him. So these were
guys who were his contemporaries. So the important thing for me there
was if John made a reference to something that was maybe from the early
60's, or even the 50's these were guys who would know what he was
talking about.

Q: Quick.

A: Yeah, quick was very important. I did not want guys who went "duh"
and I also needed
guys who could read. You know, the only guy who couldn't read was Ed
(Slick). And I brought in Ed because he'd done such fine work with
David Bowie.

A: Let me just go back a little bit...now the band didn't know, had no
idea who they were - Tony Davilio and I did all the charts for all the
songs except for "Starting Over," which did not exist at that time,
just didn't exist. So I'm singing all of the songs to the band at
rehearsal an octave lower than he would sing 'em. And they're like
"Wow, great songs, Jack, but
really, the vocals, I mean, who's singing these things?" Apparently, a
couple of the guys had guessed but didn't say anything because I told
them, you know, this is a secret session. They all loved it. The pay
was good. They're all getting double.

Q: Of the scale?

A: Yeah. The same with the studio. I booked the time but they didn't
know who for.

Q: The Hit Factory, right?

A: It was way out west...it was out of the way. No one would know. We
could go in and out of there without ever being seen.

Q: So what was it like when he first walked in?

A: Well, there was one more rehearsal, the last, the night before the
sessions, the last rehearsal was at the Dakota. He sits down at the
Fender Rhodes and he plays "Starting Over" and I said, "Where'd that
come from?" He said, "Oh, I dunno, it just kinda came." He said, "You
think it'll make it to this record?" I said, "Make it? " I said, "It's
gonna be the first single." I said, "It's gotta be the first song on
the record. You know, come on, it's perfect." So we recorded that, we
went in and rehearsed that in the studio...

Q: It's the first track you recorded?

A: The first track we recorded. And it just went down. Now, all this
time, we're in there, we were in there a month before there was any
acknowledgement that these sessions were going on. Here was the deal:
If word got out that these things were happening, it was over; it was
gonna end. So, I mean, I'd tell that to the musicians...

Q: Why was it so secretive?

A: Because he wasn't sure if he could do it. You know, he was very,
very insecure about this stuff. He didn't think he had it any more,
you know. He thought he was too old, he just couldn't write, he
couldn't sing, he couldn't play, nothing.

Q: Do you think once he started playing again with the band...

A: It took awhile, it took awhile, there were some moments there where
yeah, he was like, "I don't know..." I used to have breakfast with him
every morning, he insisted at 9 a.m. I'd come to the Dakota and he was
always so punctual. 9 a.m., he came out his door and we would walk
from the Dakota to La Fortuna on 71st Street, a little cafe. We'd sit
in the back, in the garden, and have chocolate iced cappucinos and talk
over what happened last night, what was gonna happen, what was going on
with Yoko, everything. And then, he'd go back and he'd like take a nap
and by 11 o'clock I'd working with Yoko. But we'd sit there couple of
hours and talk through every and there were moments at La Fortuna when
I had to say, "John, really, I swear, it's good know, it's good, I'm
telling ya. Even the vocals, everything, you sound great."

Q: What do you remember about the last thing you said to John or what
did he say to you?

A: The last thing I said to him and he said to me was "I'll see you in
the morning at 9 a.m." The usual. We were going to meet and then we
were mastering that next morning. We were going to master 'Walking on
Thin Ice." It was done. We'd finished the mix so, I mean, I said
goodbye to him. I saw him with this huge, with this big smile on his
face and his new leather
jacket that he'd gotten at The Gap a few weeks earlier which he loved,
and there's just this big smile on his face, "I'll see you in the
morning."

Q: How long after did you hear (that he'd been shot)?

A: About 45 minutes later.

Q: How did you hear about it?

A: My wife came in and told me. We lived only a few blocks (away).

Q: You must have thought you were hallucinating...

A: I absolutely did that. I thought I was hallucinating for a good six
months, good six months, it was like, gone-it wasn't a good six months,
a bad six months.

Q: Yeah, of course, of course.

A: I mean, I just flipped out.

Q: What happened after, there was a lawsuit at some point because you
weren't paid royalties? Did that get straightened out? You got paid
finally.

A: Yeah, yeah. Boy, what that was. Cause I waited like, two years,
three years. I had a contract. I waited like three years then I
finally said to Yoko, you know, "It's like really like a lot of
royalties probably accruing here. You know, I think it's time like we
maybe have ... accountants, have somebody, you know, you don't have to
deal with it, let's just sort it out,
let our people sort it out." And I got like a nasty letter. Almost
like "*** you, you're not getting anything." And it was like "What?
I don't get this." And, I mean, all kinds of nasty business went down
after that, you know, being followed and having people offered money to
say bad things about me. None of which, even if they had succeeded, I
mean, Cheap Trick was approached, none of those things...

Q: To say bad things about you?

A: Yeah, yeah.

Q: By her? By someone in...

A: Yeah, someone In her camp, ex-FBI guys, Elliot Mintz.

Q: What do you think of him?

A: Ugh. I'm not an Elliot fan. You doesn't like me; I don't like
him...weird because John, you know, didn't have one good word for
Elliot. Sorry, Elliot. It's like, if Elliot was coming, John was like
"ugh." He was more Yoko's friend. Yeah. I can remember Elliot coming
by our place, you know. Someone brought him their not knowing that it
was not a good idea but I came up and it was a house I had in the
Hollywood Hills...I was doing some records out there. And I so
treasured these great pictures that I had, of John and I, that I would
take them with me when I was traveling. I was going to spend six
months in a house in Los Angeles so in my little office I had pictures
of John and I. Amazing picture of John and I listening to "Starting
Over" for the first time, (while finishing up "Double Fantasy")
somebody from the maintenance shop, because we released it as (an
advance) single. Somebody from maintenance said, "Hey, they're playing
'Starting Over on the radio." John and I went running into the
maintenance shop and we're both standing like dumbfounded, like with
these stupid smiles, like kids, listening to "Starting Over" and
there's a little radio, me and John leaning
over it, unopposed just like kids and somebody took a snap of it and so
I had all these pictures and someone brought Elliot by and Elliot saw
these pictures around my place...

My place was burglarized and you know what they stole? Pictures.
That's all. All the pictures were gone. Every picture I had. There
must have been a dozen, really beautiful. That's strange.

I mean, all my gold and platinum records ended up in a closet at
Yoko's. I never got them! Well, somebody (took) one out and gave it
to me as a birthday present. They gave me a platinum single and a
platinum record.

Q: But you worked on the record, you were very loyal.

A: One day, I asked someone, I'm not gonna mention the name because
he's still working, a loyal employee, who was also a good friend, and I
asked him, "What's the story up there?" and he said, "I don't know,
Jack, for some reason you are on the enemies list." And all I could
ever think of was that I knew too much. And that it would be better -
she suspected that everyone who knew a lot over the years was gonna
write a book, you know, and that I would be one of these people who
wrote a book and like tried to make money off it.

Q: And you still haven't.

A: You know, I made enough just in the royalties, (they) were like 3
million bucks. It was like ridiculous and she really lost a good
friend because I was really a friend to her and I really respected her
art. And she always knew that, so she really lost a good friend. I
pleaded with her over and over again every time that we could see each
other where I could get a word in, "Yoko, don't go to court. This is
so silly, let's not go to court." And when we did, it was a big public
to-do. And she really was, I mean, it was a jury trial, six in the
civil size, and the jury was out five minutes, came back in and the
judge screamed at her, and it was like all this. Like how can you do -
it was a matter with the contract. Like she tried to say the contract
was a forgery, all this really weird stuff, brought in people to say
that I...people like (Rolling Stone publisher) Jann Wenner to say that
I was a nobody, that they'd never heard of me...and then my lawyer
said, "Can we talk about how many times you've mentioned him in your
magazine?"...He made Jann read those on the stand.

Q: John was talking about touring?

A: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Q: What was his plan?

A Oh, tremendous production, including and these have to be on some of
the "Lost Lennon Tapes" or whatever they call them his arrangements of
songs that he said "we never got right," which were "She Loves You" and
"I Want to Hold Your Hand."

Q: He was gonna do them?

A: Yeah, he was gonna do them. He was going, "You know, we never - we
always wanted to do something like...but it never got done exactly the
way we wanted to do it."

Q: You remember how he wanted to do some of those songs?

A: He played them on guitar.

Q: And how were they different?

A: Maybe the tempo was a little different but it was more like ideas he
had for what the rest of the band was gonna do. But that was gonna -be
in the show.

Q: He was gonna do some Beatle songs?

A: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Q: I heard that McCartney or Harrison called the studio during the
sessions and Yoko didn't allow the call to be placed through.

A: No, it was McCartney.

Q: What happened?

A: Well, from what I heard and from what I heard from John as well, he
was looking to get. like, hooked up with Paul before Paul went to
Japan, to do some writing. (Ed. note-Jack is confusing Paul's call to
the Dakota seven months earlier before the Japan tour with Paul's
attempt to call John at the studio)

Q: They were going to write together?

A: Yeah. And...after the sessions, John never left immediately, he'd
always sit in the control room and usually took a little grass. He had
this old opium pipe, it was probably 500 years old, and he'd say to me,
"is it all over?" "Cause he would never do anything if we were
working. And I'd say, "It's over, John." And he'd sit back and put
his feet up on the console and he'd load up the pipe and sit back and
light up and a few of us - I'd ride home with him because I only lived
two blocks from him. And he'd start talking, you know, reminiscing
about things, we'd listen to tile radio and if a Beatles song came on,
he'd talk about it. But the one thing - the overwhelming feeling about
the things that he was saying was that he loved the guys in that band
more than anybody else, you know? He was pissed off at
George because George's book had come out and didn't mention John. You
know, like, "How can he write a book about his life and not mention me?
I'm the most important..." Yeah. But he loved the guys in The
Beatles. He loved them. And he loved that band. And, you know, it
was like his band. And I mean, the way he went on about it...

Q: And he was gonna write with Paul?

A: He was looking to get hooked up with Paul. Yeah. But yeah, that
call came through and that didn't happen. And Paul went off and got in
trouble. And when he got in trouble...

Q: He didn't get the message from anyone?

A: No.

Q: Who kept him away?

A: I think Yoko probably thought...I can't speak for Yoko. Maybe she
thought it'd be a distraction. I don't think it would have been.

Q: Who knows what would have happened. But when Paul got busted for
pot in Japan, we were in the studio, when that call came in that he was
in trouble, man, you oughta see John flippin' out.

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