Legendary Producer Jack Douglas, Who Worked with Aerosmith and Recorded with John Lennon on the Day of His Death, Dies at 80
Legendary Producer Jack Douglas, Who Worked with Aerosmith and Recorded with John Lennon on the Day of His Death, Dies at 80
Rachel DeSantisTue, May 12, 2026 at 9:45 PM UTC
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Jack Douglas in New York City in May 2015.
Credit: Cindy Ord/Getty
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Producer Jack Douglas, known for his work with Aerosmith and John Lennon, has died at age 80
Douglas was instrumental in creating iconic Aerosmith albums and was often called the “sixth member” of the band
He co-produced John Lennon's Double Fantasy and was with Lennon the day he was tragically killed in 1980
Producer Jack Douglas, known for his work with artists like Aerosmith, John Lennon, Cheap Trick and more, has died. He was 80.
A post shared to Facebook by his family on Tuesday, May 12 said Douglas died “peacefully” on Monday, May 11.
“As many of you who follow him know, he produced great music, and lived a colorful life,” the post read. “We know that he touched many of your lives; we would love to hear more about that in the comments. He will be missed.”
Douglas was a major force behind a number of Aerosmith albums, as he engineered and produced hit records like Toys in the Attic, Rocks, Get Your Wings and Draw the Line. His substantial contributions led to him often being called the “sixth member” of the popular rock group.
“My thing is, listen to the band first of all. My job is to make a band's dreams come true, not mine,” he said on the podcast Takin' a Walk in 2023. “That's the way I approached all of that stuff with [Aerosmith].”
Douglas was also known for his friendship and working relationship with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The day Lennon died, he'd been in the studio with Douglas, and it was Douglas who served as Ono's mouthpiece on TV in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.
During his appearance on Takin' a Walk, Douglas said he grew up in an apartment in the Bronx listening to the music his parents loved and playing with a tape recorder, given to him as a childhood birthday present.
When he was a teenager, he worked on Bobby Kennedy's Senate campaign writing jingles, and eventually got a job at Record Plant studios in New York City — not as a producer or engineer, but as a janitor.
Jack Douglas in Plymouth, Michigan in February 2022.
Credit: Scott Legato/Getty
“I wanted to be a producer and a composer, and the funny thing was, while I was the janitor at night, I was also a client, because I was scoring the original ABC after-school specials for the producer Danny Wilson,” Douglas recalled on the podcast. “So at night I would be a client and in the daytime I was the janitor, but you know, I would beg other engineers if I could just sit in on their sessions so I could learn, and I worked my way up.”
Douglas eventually became an assistant engineer and also did artist demos, with Record Plant letting him come in at midnight and record whoever he wanted — often local bands — for free; he worked on all of the demos that eventually scored Billy Joel his record deal with Columbia in 1972.
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A self-proclaimed Beatles fanatic, Douglas met Lennon for the first time while working at the studio, and charmed him by revealing that he'd snuck over to Liverpool in 1965 on a tramp steamer boat, only to make headlines in the local news and get himself deported.
Jack Douglas with John Lennon, Yoko Ono and others in an undated photo.
Credit: Globe Photos/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
“The door opens and John comes into the room and I nearly peed myself, because I didn't think I would be having contact with him… And he sits down, he says, ‘Okay if I hang out in here? I'm just looking for a place that's not so noisy,'” Douglas recalled.
They struck up a conversation, Lennon invited him to a party, and the rest was history, with the two beginning a fruitful working relationship that lasted until Lennon's death in 1980.
Douglas engineered Lennon's landmark album Imagine, and co-produced Double Fantasy, which came out shortly before his death. On the day Lennon died, he and Douglas had been at Record Plant recording what would become Yoko Ono's 1981 single “Walking on Thin Ice.”
Douglas and Lennon lived just three blocks away from one another, and typically left the studio together. But that night, Douglas stayed behind to work on a Karen Lawrence & the Pinz record, having already pushed that work later in order to squeeze Lennon's session in earlier that day.
“I would normally get out of the limo and just walk out Central Park West to our apartment. And that played very heavily on me for many years,” Douglas told PEOPLE in 2023.
When tragedy struck, Douglas and his wife rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, and remained there until 6 a.m. In the immediate aftermath, he even appeared on Tom Snyder's late night show at Ono's request to tell fans that Lennon would not want them to hurt themselves over news of his death. Two days later, Douglas and Ono held a private memorial service in the studio — the only service held for Lennon.
“We went to the studio, 11 or 12 at night, and I had an assistant bring out everything we could find in the vault,” Douglas told PEOPLE. “It was talking, his music, anything. And we sat there until dawn just listening to different things that John had done. And that was the only service that there was. It was just Yoko and I.”
Douglas was also known for his work with artists like Miles Davis, Alice Cooper, Blue Öyster Cult and more.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
