After responding to an ad in the Village Voice offering a program for recording engineers, Bronx-born producer Jack Douglas began his music business career just as the famed Record Plant Studio was opening its doors. Although Douglas started out as the studio's janitor, he quickly moved behind the control board as an assistant engineer on records by Miles Davis, The James Gang and Mountain. After a chance encounter led Douglas to act as the Who's engineer during the sessions for Who's Next, he was given a chance to engineer John Lennon's Imagine. The two formed a close bond and Lennon career often enlisted Douglas to be a part of his own recording ventures, as well as Yoko Ono's. Being a staffer at the Record Plant in the '70s allowed Douglas to work as both producer and engineer on several landmark albums such as Lou Reed's Berlin and the New York Dolls' debut. It was this latter association that led to Douglas' prolonged working relationship with Aerosmith. Admirers of The Dolls and their gritty sound and image, Aerosmith enlisted Douglas as producer of their breakthrough record Get Your Wings. Over the next several years Douglas worked closely with the group during Toys in the Attic and Rocks recordings. Douglas produced, engineered, counseled and often helped to write material when the group was short a song or two. Additionally, he worked on outside projects such as albums by Patti Smith, Cheap Trick and Blue Oyster Cult. With their creative run gone and the band spiraling out of control over drug use, Douglas' five-year run with Aerosmith ended in 1979 when they hired Gary Lyons to produce the Night in the Ruts album. In later years the producer occasionally re-teamed with the group, but never with the same creative or commercial success as their early work together. In 1980 Douglas was enlisted to produce Lennon's comeback albums, Double Fantasy and Milk Honey, but Lennon's assassination cut short the sessions of the latter. With Lennon's death Douglas lost his only other lasting creative relationship and spent much of the '80s moving from project to project. ~ Steve Kurutz, Rovi