Producer Jack Douglas—Who Worked with John Lennon, Cheap Trick & Aerosmith—Dies

John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Jack Douglas

Record producer and engineer Jack Douglas, whose impressive list of clients included John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith and others, has died. His passing, yesterday (May 11, 2026), was confirmed in a post by members of his family. Douglas was 80. No cause or place of death have been reported.

In addition to the above, Douglas worked on notable recordings by the New York Dolls, Alice Cooper, Patti Smith and many others.

Said former Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos in an online post, “Jack ‘discovered’ us after we flew him out to see us in 1976. Where would we be without him? Jack produced our first album, mixed songs on ‘At Budokan’ and produced or mixed or engineered many of our subsequent projects over the next 40+ years! What a guy!”

Born Nov. 6, 1945, in The Bronx, New York, Douglas began his music career as a songwriter and performer, but changed course in the 1960s when he attended the Institute of Audio Research in New York. His first professional job was at the city’s new Record Plant studio, where he graduated from janitor to engineer, contributing to recording projects by artists as diverse as Miles Davis, Mountain and the James Gang.

Jack Douglas in a 2025 interview with Billy Corgan.

In 1971, Douglas helped engineer the Who’s aborted Lifehouse album, which ultimately morphed into Who’s Next. Collaborating with John Lennon on the artist’s Imagine album, Douglas formed a bond with the ex-Beatle and continued to work with him for the remainder of Lennon’s life. At the Record Plant, Douglas contributed to albums by Blue Öyster Cult and others; during his time with the New York Dolls, he was convinced to move from engineering into production work.

Most notably, Douglas produced four classic Aerosmith albums—Get Your Wings (1974), Toys in the Attic (1975), Rocks (1976) and Draw the Line (1977)—which helped catapult the band into superstardom. He later worked on the band’s Rock in a Hard Place album and several of the band’s later albums, as well as guitarist Joe Perry’s solo albums.

Related: Jack Douglas talks about working with Aerosmith

He also produced Cheap Trick’s self-titled 1976 debut, Patti Smith’s 1978 Radio Ethiopia, Starz’s and Zebra’s self-titled debuts and Montrose’s Jump on It, and co-produced Alice Cooper’s Muscle of Love (1973), Graham Parker’s Another Grey Area (1982) and Supertramp’s Some Things Never Change (1997).

In 1980, Douglas was tapped to produce Lennon and Ono’s Double Fantasy, as well as tracks that became Milk and Honey following Lennon’s death. Talking about working with Lennon and Ono at the time of Lennon’s murder, Douglas told writer Jim Sullivan in a Best Classic Bands interview, “There’s a great amount of joy on one side and just terrible tragic feelings on the other. And scars that have yet to go away and probably never will. But it’s easy to separate between the two. Because I was working with him right up to the last day and the last night, there’s a certain line drawn there. It drew a line in my life.”

In 2006, Douglas produced the New York Dolls’ comeback album, One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This.

Douglas received more than 40 gold and platinum albums for his work during his career.

Related: Musician deaths of 2026