Starting out as a
folk musician and performer, he worked on
Robert F. Kennedy's 1964 senatorial campaign as a songwriter. Douglas then moved to England and joined a succession of bands before returning to New York to attend the Institute of Audio Research. His first professional job was at the then-new
Record Plant, not as a producer or engineer, but as a studio janitor. Soon he was working at the recording desk, as a recording engineer, contributing to projects by
Miles Davis,
The James Gang,
Alice Cooper,
Cheap Trick,
Montrose,
Rough Cutt,
Artful Dodger,
Moxy,
Flipp, and
Mountain. A chance encounter with a group member led Douglas to help engineer
the Who's 1971 Record Plant sessions for the aborted
Lifehouse project. Songs developed from these sessions were later included on ''
Who's Next'' (1971). Douglas was then given the opportunity to engineer
John Lennon's classic
Imagine album in 1971. Douglas and Lennon formed a close bond and worked together for the remainder of Lennon's life. 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. It was during the recording of the
New York Dolls' first album that Douglas was encouraged by producer
Bob Ezrin to also consider becoming a record producer. 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 Stones list of the
500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The close relationship between Douglas and 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 Douglas on the 2004 blues cover album ''
Honkin' on Bobo''. Douglas also produced the band's album
Music from Another Dimension! in 2012, himself providing the narration on the album's opening track "LUV XXX", parodying the style of narration from
The Outer Limits. In 1980, Douglas was working as producer with John Lennon and
Yoko Ono on their
Double Fantasy album (for which he shared a
Grammy Award for
Album of the Year). During the same sessions he worked on a follow-up Lennon/Ono album,
Milk and Honey, but
Lennon's murder on December 8, 1980 cut that project short. An unfinished version of the album was released in 1984. Also in 1984, Douglas opened litigation with Ono over unpaid royalties from
Double Fantasy. A jury ruled that Ono had wrongfully withheld royalty payments from Douglas and that he was entitled to $2.5 million from revenues for
Double Fantasy and an undetermined share of revenues from
Milk and Honey. Since then he has kept working as an engineer and producer, producing albums for artists such as
Supertramp,
Zebra,
Clutch,
Local H,
Slash's Snakepit, Blackrain, and, in 2006, the return of the New York Dolls. Douglas also taught a studio etiquette class at
Ex'pression College for Digital Arts. == References ==