Ahead of 2026 Musicians Hall of Fame Induction, John Boylan Talks 5 Key Projects: Boston, Linda Ronstadt, Charlie Daniels Band & More

I had already done four or five tracks including “Love Has No Pride” and “Silver Threads and Golden Needles.”  Some of the good stuff I had already cut. And then Linda decided she wanted to have JD Souther produce. She was living with him. So, she and JD went in to do a couple of things and I was out. I was no longer the manager and no longer the producer. 

Despite the turmoil, I have fond memories. The session for “Love Has No Pride” is one of my happiest achievements. It was written by a girl I went to Bard College with, Libby Titus, with Eric Kaz. I thought this is the perfect kind of song for Linda— emotional ballad with powerful notes. So, I played it for her and she said, ‘Great! Let’s cut it.” It was the night before the session, and I didn’t have any arrangement idea. The only thing Linda had heard was Bonnie Raitt’s version on acoustic guitar and I said, ‘No, this needs to be a power ballad.”

I was fiddling around on my Wurlitzer the night before the session when I came up with that instrumental intro lick and the next day, we went into the studio and cut it with me on the Wurlitzer. She sang most of the vocal with the track. I don’t think we overdubbed. She’s the only singer I’ve ever worked with where there was ever really a chance of getting a final vocal during the basic track. She’s certainly the best female vocalist I ever worked with. We cut “Silver Threads” because David Geffen was convinced that was a hit single, and he was right.

(Boston mastermind Tom Scholz had already recorded most of the demos in his Watertown apartment basement outside of Boston with vocalist Brad Delp before Boylan heard it.)

I got involved through a guy named Paul Ahern, who I met in about 1972 when he was working for Atlantic Records, and I was on the road with Linda. He played me the demo tape, and I said, Paul, “If you need me involved, please. I love this.” Everybody and his dog had passed on it. Isn’t that crazy? I was hearing “More Than a Feeling” and “Peace of Mind.” It was a combination of things which I hadn’t heard before: metal — crunchy, full on distorted guitar — but with melody.

We thought our best bet was Epic to sign them. We met with Steve Popovich, who was the head of the A&R department. He said, “East Coast A&R exec Lennie Petze says there’s no band.” I said, “We’ve got a band.” We lied. They said, “Show us a band and we’ll sign them.” Ahern quickly put together those guys in rehearsal in Boston. Epic execs Tom Werman and Petze and a couple other people went up there and said, “Okay, it’s a band.” Boom.

I met with Scholz and I quickly realized that I was not the producer; I was the co-producer, because he had everything going for him already.  The only deficiency he had were acoustic instruments. Anything electronic, the guy’s a genius. We rented some expensive German microphones and we showed him how to mic drums. Scholz would not give up his very lucrative day job at Polaroid, so he would come home at night, his wife would make him a little dinner. Then they’d go down in his basement, and they re-recorded all the drums. They kept the original guitars and he played the bass and the keyboards.  

A remote truck from Providence drove up to Watertown, ran snakes through a window and they copied his tracks onto a 24-track recorder. He took those tapes, took a leave from Polaroid, and came to LA. We went into Capitol Studio C. We did all of Brad’s vocals again. We did the harmonies. We did the percussion. I remember we did the hand claps on “More Than a Feeling” in the men’s room at Capitol because it had such a cool sound.

Gregg Geller, who was the head of A&R on the West Coast for Epic, listened to the tapes and he offered me a job. I went to work for them after I turned the album in.

(While at Epic Records, Boylan was allowed to produce one outside project a year. EMI Records executive Rupert Perry introduced him to Australian group Little River Band and they asked Boylan to produce the album, their third, in Australia. The album broke them in the U.S. with such hits as “Help Is on Its Way” and “Happy Anniversary.”)

The manager of Pure Prairie League told me, “Are you kidding? Don’t go to Australia. It’s a complete backwater.” No one really thought it was a good idea for me to waste my one outside project. I was very nervous about it, but I said, “I liked Australia. I liked these guys.” I hit it off with lead singer Glenn Shorrock. Don Henley’s voice jumps out of the radio speaker at you, and so does Glenn Shorrock’s.  They’ve got just enough rasp to be interesting texturally but still got plenty of pitch and accuracy. But I was worried about songs. I flew down there; it’s an 18-hour flight.

The studio was not that great. It’s a little behind. I go to rehearse and the first song they play me is “Help Is On Its Way.” I breathed a sigh of relief. That hook: “Hang on, help is on its way.”  Honestly, I said, “I’m home free.” I was not nervous anymore after that.

The other thing I liked about that band that I thought was different were the harmonies. They had Glenn on the melody, Beeb Birtles just above him in the kind of David Crosby part, and then Graeham Goble was the Graham Nash part on the top. The difference from the Eagles’ kind of harmonies or the Dillards or any of those bluegrass harmonies was that it had a little bit of an edge to it, like The Hollies. It was a kind of a combination of California and England and I thought, “That’s pretty original sound.” I did four albums with them.

Don Dempsey called me up. He had just taken over Epic from Ron Alexenberg, and he said, “Ron signed Charlie Daniels. It’s a big money deal. We’ve done two albums. We seem to be stuck at around 300,000 units. What can you do with this?” I said, “I like Charlie.” I knew he played with Bob Dylan and so I was really interested. I went to see him at the Forum on a bill with Willie Nelson. The first thing you always ask yourself when you’re offered a deal like this is, “Can I bring anything to the party here?” It wasn’t a complete show, so I said, “I better go on the road with them.”

I watched two college dates in Albany and Utica in New York. I said, “This band plays 250 dates a year. They’re just on the road all the time.” I’m watching and I realize what was wrong. They were all bored as s–t with the music and overplaying. When you play a song that many times, the tempos get faster. Then, you start to overplay because you’re looking to do something interesting that you haven’t done before. I said, “If I can correct that, I’m home free.”

I went down to Nashville. Charlie had a rehearsal hall set up in a trailer on his ranch. I said, “Play just the rhythm guitar, the bass and the two drummers,” and they looked at me like I was completely nuts. I broke it all down. I said, “Relax the tempo. Here we go.” We started working on the material. We cut three, four, five, six songs. Things are coming out great because the tempos are the right tempo for the lyrics, and nobody’s overplaying.

Charlie says, “You know, we don’t have a fiddle song.” Literally, the next day, he comes to me and says, “Look, I’ve been listening to some old fiddle stuff, and I came up with this,” and he played me “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” I said, “Whoa, that’s a great song! It sounds like The Skillet Lickers,” one of those string bands from the ‘30s. In fact, some of the lines in the song like “Chicken in a bread pan pickin’ out dough/ Granny, does your dog bite? No, child, no” — those are all square dance lines that were used in many songs.

Charlie’s a great fiddle player. My engineer, Paul Grupp, came up with the idea to layer the fiddle parts for the devil’s part to make it really diabolical and to put some weird noises on it. We also strummed the strings of the piano at one point for the devil part. It came out really great. I said, “I don’t know a radio station that’s going to play this, but just in case, Charlie, just sing that one line differently.” He said, “What line?” I said, “’I told you once, you son of a bitch.’ Sing it once as ‘told you once, you son of a gun.’”

I turned the album in and flew to Melbourne to do the next Little River Band album. Lennie called me and said, “It’s going crazy!”

[The song, in part because of the clean radio edit, reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the band’s biggest hit by far. It also won a Grammy for best country vocal performance by a duo or group.]

The music supervisor, Becky Shargo, was brilliant. She came to me and said, “Look, this demo came in over the transom. It’s not very good, but I think there’s something about the song.” And she played me “Lookin’ for Love.” She said, “We’ve sent it to a Nashville songwriter to punch it up a bit.” I went to Jim Bridges, the director, who was the best movie director as far as music goes that I ever worked with. The guy understood about music in the movies. Other directors I worked with didn’t get it at all. He was brilliant.

I said, “Who you want to cut this?” He said, “I want Mr. Nobody.” He was down in Gilley’s, and Mickey Gilley was headlining his own club. He had this house band with this kid, Johnny Lee. He was the opening house band. Bridges said, “I want that guy.” He wasn’t a great singer or anything, but he was a regular guy, and that’s what Bridges wanted for the movie.

I came up with that intro arrangement, that ascending line, and I cut it at the Record Plant before principal photography because Bridges wanted to refer to it in the movie. There’s a scene where it’s on the radio in [John] Travolta’s trailer. He says, “Turn that up. I like that song.” Mostly you do the music after the movie’s finished. In those days, you did six stems or however many you wanted and you mix it to magnetic film and that’s what they use to sync it up with the picture. I didn’t do a stereo mix.

Months later, I was finishing up the other songs in the movie. Becky said, “Will you compile and master this album?” I said, sure. She said, “‘Lookin’ for Love,’ everyone’s excited about that.”  I said, “I better go make us a two-track stereo mix.” I went back to the Record Plant, and [the studio’s president] Rose Mann looked at me and said, “I got some bad news for you. We can’t find the tape.” I had to get Johnny Lee back from Nashville. I got the same musicians, same background singers, and we had the six-track magnetic mix to refer to. I had to recut it and clone it. That’s the only time that’s ever happened to me.

(“Lookin’ For Love” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and No. 5 on the Hot 100.It also received a Grammy nomination for best country vocal performance, male.)