The British Invasion

Though best known for the records he made with the Rolling Stones, with whom he worked until 1975, Mr. Johns also was the recording engineer for the Who, the Kinks and Small Faces on some of the most notable songs of the 1960s. Even at the time, he sensed these were not ordinary sessions.

“There was absolutely a sense of the possibility of rules being changed, of the enormity of what was going on. One had no idea whether the general public would pick up on it the same way I did. But I can remember very clearly the session for ‘My Generation.’ I can remember very clearly ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again,’ and lots of Stones stuff. ‘My Generation’? A bass solo? A stuttering vocal? Not to mention feedback or the song itself. Extraordinary! It was certainly special to me at the time. Are you kidding? You’d have to be deaf not to get excited by that.”

The Beatles

Early in 1969, the Beatles invited Mr. Johns to work on their new project. He accepted eagerly, thinking he would be the engineer for George Martin, who had produced the group’s previous albums. But when he arrived, Mr. Martin, who had grown tired of the bickering, was absent, and he realized he was being thrust into a producer’s role. The experience, which eventually yielded the album “Let It Be” after the tapes were turned over to Phil Spector, was frustrating:

“The idea was something like ‘The Basement Tapes,’ to show what they were really like. I’d worked with everyone and their mother by then, so I was quite used to being around people who were famous. But when I got the call, to walk in and be privy to those guys sitting around, doing what they did, and to be invited in, was pretty astonishing. I didn’t know them. I was the same as every other punter on the planet, who saw them as these extraordinary icons of marvelousness.