Douglas also helmed records by Cheap Trick and the Patti Smith Group and worked with Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, the Who, and New York Dolls

Jack Douglas, the revered producer behind hit records for John Lennon, Aerosmith, Patti Smith, Cheap Trick, and more, died on Monday. He was 80.

Douglas’ daughter, Sarah, confirmed her father’s death to Rolling Stone, adding he died from complications from lymphoma. “He most enjoyed being with his family — his wife, his four children and five grandchildren — and he died peacefully, with us surrounding him,” his family said in a statement. “He lived an incredible life and was an amazing storyteller. He was very, very funny and goofy and loved to tell jokes. He loved what he did, and he worked til the very end. We will miss him a lot.”

Douglas worked on some of the biggest albums of the Seventies and early Eighties, including Aerosmith’s Toys in the Attic and Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy. Over the course of his career, he also crossed paths with the Who, Lou Reed, Miles Davis, Alice Cooper, the Knack, and even Allen Ginsberg. 

Born in the Bronx in New York City, Douglas spent the Sixties as an aspiring folk singer and wrote tunes for Robert Kennedy’s 1964 senate campaign. In 1965, he and some Beatles-obsessed friends pursued music in Liverpool, England, and traveled there via cargo ship with no work permits or visas. 

As Douglas recalled in a 2017 interview, U.K. immigration officials detained them, but he was able to sneak onto dry land, where he promptly bought a copy of Rubber Soul and shared his story about being held on the ship with the editor of a local paper. The story garnered enough attention that Douglas and his friends were let off the ship and allowed to enjoy a stint in Liverpool before being deported. 

Upon returning to New York, Douglas enrolled at the Institute of Audio Research and, after graduating, secured a job at the just-opened Record Plant Studio — as a janitor. 

Though he started on the bottom rung, Douglas was soon working as an engineer’s assistant. One day, while editing some tapes for Lennon ahead of a session, the former Beatle walked in. Douglas worked up the courage to tell him about his time in Liverpool, and Lennon soon realized he was one of the “Crazy Yanks” he’d read about in the newspapers.

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“He got really excited to meet me. It was amazing,” Douglas told Music Radar in 2012. “He invited me into the tracking rooms, he gave me a ride home in his limo. Pretty soon, I was working on the record as an assistant. We became friends.”

Douglas earned an engineering credit on Lennon’s 1971 album Imagine. He continued to work with Lennon, as well as Ono, over the coming years, while also contributing to sessions for the Who’s Lifehouse project (which became their legendary LP, Who’s Next), Reed’s Berlin, and the New York Dolls’ self-titled debut. 

While working on the New York Dolls record, the super producer Bob Ezrin encouraged Douglas to try his hand at producing. He soon got his chance with an upstart group from Boston, Aerosmith. Douglas was one of a few credited producers on the band’s second album, Get Your Wings, but then helmed the 1975 follow-up Toys In the Attic, on his own. 

Toys was a massive success, securing platinum certification nine times over and boasting perennial hits like “Sweet Emotion” and “Walk This Way.” It was Douglas who gave Steven Tyler the key lyrical inspiration for “Walk This Way,” all because he was goofing around and recreating a bit from Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, which he and the band had just seen. After Toys, Douglas and Aerosmith made two more hit albums together, 1976’s Rocks and 1977’s Draw the Line.

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Amid his Seventies run with Aerosmith, Douglas continued to work with other artists: He and Bob Dylan co-produced some sessions with Allen Ginsberg, while he also helmed the Patti Smith Group’s Radio Ethiopia. Douglas worked closely with Cheap Trick, too, including their self-titled debut and 1978’s Live at Budokan. The band said they were “forever indebted” to Douglas during their 2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction speech in 2016.

And in 1980, Douglas was working again with Lennon and Ono on what would wind up being their final album together, Double Fantasy. Speaking with Rolling Stone in January 1981, a month after Lennon was killed, Douglas remembered the celebratory mood around the sessions, especially after several difficult years for Lennon. 

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“Having been with John in L.A. during that time when he was just unbelievably depressed, the one thing that makes me feel not so bad now is that when he died he was real happy, maybe happier than he’s ever been,” Douglas recalled. “I mean, he was feeling terrific, constantly talking and joking… during the Double Fantasy sessions he was always full of chitchat about how the Beatles’ old records were made.” 

Douglas stayed busy in subsequent decades with a variety of projects. After briefly parting ways with Aerosmith, they reunited for 1982’s Rock in a Hard Place, while Douglas also helmed the band’s 2004 blues cover album, Honkin’ on Bobo. He was at the boards again for what remains the band’s recent album of all new material, 2012’s Music From Another Dimension! (Along the way, Douglas produced several of guitarist Joe Perry’s solo albums, too.) The producer’s other credits include albums by Graham Parker, Zebra, Starz, Supertramp, and Slash.