![\"Billboard](\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/2HpFicp.png\")
<\/p>\nLinda Ronstadt, Don\u2019t Cry Now<\/em> (1973)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\tI had already done four or five tracks including \u201cLove Has No Pride\u201d and \u201cSilver Threads and Golden Needles.\u201d\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tDespite the turmoil, I have fond memories. The session for \u201cLove Has No Pride\u201d 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\u2014 emotional ballad with powerful notes. So, I played it for her and she said, \u2018Great! Let\u2019s cut it.\u201d It was the night before the session, and I didn\u2019t have any arrangement idea. The only thing Linda had heard was Bonnie Raitt\u2019s version on acoustic guitar and I said, \u2018No, this needs to be a power ballad.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tI 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\u2019t think we overdubbed. She\u2019s the only singer I\u2019ve ever worked with where there was ever really a chance of getting a final vocal during the basic track. She\u2019s certainly the best female vocalist I ever worked with. We cut \u201cSilver Threads\u201d because David Geffen was convinced that was a hit single, and he was right.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
- \n
\nBoston, Boston<\/em> (1976)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n(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.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\tI 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, \u201cIf you need me involved, please. I love this.\u201d Everybody and his dog had passed on it. Isn\u2019t that crazy? I was hearing \u201cMore Than a Feeling\u201d and \u201cPeace of Mind.\u201d It was a combination of things which I hadn\u2019t heard before: metal \u2014 crunchy, full on distorted guitar \u2014 but with melody.<\/p>\n
\n\tWe thought our best bet was Epic to sign them.\u00a0We met with Steve Popovich, who was the head of the A&R department. He said, \u201cEast Coast A&R exec Lennie Petze says there\u2019s no band.\u201d I said, \u201cWe\u2019ve got a band.\u201d We lied. They said, \u201cShow us a band and we\u2019ll sign them.\u201d 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, \u201cOkay, it\u2019s a band.\u201d Boom. <\/p>\n
\n\tI 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. \u00a0The only deficiency he had were acoustic instruments. Anything electronic, the guy\u2019s 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\u2019d 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. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tA 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\u2019s vocals again. We did the harmonies. We did the percussion. I remember we did the hand claps on \u201cMore Than a Feeling\u201d in the men\u2019s room at Capitol because it had such a cool sound.<\/p>\n
\n\tGregg 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
- \n
\nLittle River Band, Diamantina Cocktail<\/em> (1977)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n(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 \u201cHelp Is on Its Way\u201d and \u201cHappy Anniversary.\u201d)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\tThe manager of Pure Prairie League told me, \u201cAre you kidding? Don\u2019t go to Australia. It\u2019s a complete backwater.\u201d 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, \u201cI liked Australia. I liked these guys.\u201d I hit it off with lead singer Glenn Shorrock. Don Henley\u2019s voice jumps out of the radio speaker at you, and so does Glenn Shorrock\u2019s.\u00a0 They\u2019ve got just enough rasp to be interesting texturally but still got plenty of pitch and accuracy.\u00a0But I was worried about songs. I flew down there; it\u2019s an 18-hour flight.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe studio was not that great. It\u2019s a little behind. I go to rehearse and the first song they play me is \u201cHelp Is On Its Way.\u201d I breathed a sigh of relief. That hook: \u201cHang on, help is on its way.\u201d\u00a0 Honestly, I said, \u201cI\u2019m home free.\u201d I was not nervous anymore after that.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe 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\u2019 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, \u201cThat\u2019s pretty original sound.\u201d I did four albums with them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
- \n
\nCharlie Daniels Band, Million Mile Reflections<\/em> (1979)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\tDon Dempsey called me up. He had just taken over Epic from Ron Alexenberg, and he said, \u201cRon signed Charlie Daniels. It\u2019s a big money deal. We\u2019ve done two albums. We seem to be stuck at around 300,000 units. What can you do with this?\u201d I said, \u201cI like Charlie.\u201d 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\u2019re offered a deal like this is, \u201cCan I bring anything to the party here?\u201d It wasn\u2019t a complete show, so I said, \u201cI better go on the road with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tI watched two college dates in Albany and Utica in New York. I said, \u201cThis band plays 250 dates a year. They\u2019re just on the road all the time.\u201d I\u2019m watching and I realize what was wrong. They were all bored as s\u2013t with the music and overplaying. When you play a song that many times, the tempos get faster. Then, you start to overplay because you\u2019re looking to do something interesting that you haven\u2019t done before. I said, \u201cIf I can correct that, I\u2019m home free.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tI went down to Nashville. Charlie had a rehearsal hall set up in a trailer on his ranch. I said, \u201cPlay just the rhythm guitar, the bass and the two drummers,\u201d and they looked at me like I was completely nuts. I broke it all down. I said, \u201cRelax the tempo. Here we go.\u201d 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\u2019s overplaying.<\/p>\n
\n\tCharlie says, \u201cYou know, we don\u2019t have a fiddle song.\u201d Literally, the next day, he comes to me and says, \u201cLook, I\u2019ve been listening to some old fiddle stuff, and I came up with this,\u201d and he played me \u201cThe Devil Went Down to Georgia.\u201d I said, \u201cWhoa, that\u2019s a great song! It sounds like The Skillet Lickers,\u201d one of those string bands from the \u201830s. In fact, some of the lines in the song like \u201cChicken in a bread pan pickin\u2019 out dough\/ Granny, does your dog bite? No, child, no\u201d \u2014 those are all square dance lines that were used in many songs.<\/p>\n
\n\tCharlie\u2019s a great fiddle player. My engineer, Paul Grupp, came up with the idea to layer the fiddle parts for the devil\u2019s 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, \u201cI don\u2019t know a radio station that\u2019s going to play this, but just in case, Charlie, just sing that one line differently.\u201d He said, \u201cWhat line?\u201d\u00a0I said, \u201c\u2019I told you once, you son of a bitch.\u2019 Sing it once as \u2018told you once, you son of a gun.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tI turned the album in and flew to Melbourne to do the next Little River Band album. Lennie called me and said, \u201cIt\u2019s going crazy!\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t[The song, in part because of the clean radio edit, reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the band\u2019s biggest hit by far<\/em>. It also won a Grammy for best country vocal performance by a duo or group<\/em>.]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n- \n
\nUrban Cowboy Original Motion Picture Soundtrack<\/em> (1980)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\tThe music supervisor, Becky Shargo, was brilliant. She came to me and said, \u201cLook, this demo came in over the transom. It\u2019s not very good, but I think there\u2019s something about the song.\u201d And she played me \u201cLookin\u2019 for Love.\u201d She said, \u201cWe\u2019ve sent it to a Nashville songwriter to punch it up a bit.\u201d 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\u2019t get it at all. He was brilliant.<\/p>\n
\n\tI said, \u201cWho you want to cut this?\u201d He said, \u201cI want Mr. Nobody.\u201d He was down in Gilley\u2019s, 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, \u201cI want that guy.\u201d He wasn\u2019t a great singer or anything, but he was a regular guy, and that\u2019s what Bridges wanted for the movie.<\/p>\n
\n\tI 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\u2019s a scene where it\u2019s on the radio in [John] Travolta\u2019s trailer. He says, \u201cTurn that up. I like that song.\u201d Mostly you do the music after the movie\u2019s finished. In those days, you did six stems or however many you wanted and you mix it to magnetic film and that\u2019s what they use to sync it up with the picture. I didn\u2019t do a stereo mix.<\/p>\n
\n\tMonths later, I was finishing up the other songs in the movie. Becky said, \u201cWill you compile and master this album?\u201d I said, sure. She said, \u201c\u2018Lookin\u2019 for Love,\u2019 everyone\u2019s excited about that.\u201d \u00a0I said, \u201cI better go make us a two-track stereo mix.\u201d I went back to the Record Plant, and [the studio\u2019s president] Rose Mann looked at me and said, \u201cI got some bad news for you. We can\u2019t find the tape.\u201d 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\u2019s the only time that\u2019s ever happened to me.<\/p>\n
(\u201cLookin\u2019 For Love\u201d reached No. 1 on <\/em>Billboard\u2019s Hot Country Songs chart and No. 5 on the Hot 100.<\/em>It also received a Grammy nomination for best country vocal performance, male.)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/lists\/john-boylan-talks-producing-boston-linda-ronstadt-more\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2210649697-e1776991807799.jpg?w=1024″] In his more than 50-year career, John Boylan has served as the connective tissue between some of the most culturally significant albums of the last 50 years. Plus, he helped make a lot of great music. Boylan, who will be inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum at Nashville\u2019s Fisher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,226],"class_list":["post-1900586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-billboard-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1900586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1900586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1900586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1900586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\tI had already done four or five tracks including \u201cLove Has No Pride\u201d and \u201cSilver Threads and Golden Needles.\u201d\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tDespite the turmoil, I have fond memories. The session for \u201cLove Has No Pride\u201d 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\u2014 emotional ballad with powerful notes. So, I played it for her and she said, \u2018Great! Let\u2019s cut it.\u201d It was the night before the session, and I didn\u2019t have any arrangement idea. The only thing Linda had heard was Bonnie Raitt\u2019s version on acoustic guitar and I said, \u2018No, this needs to be a power ballad.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tI 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\u2019t think we overdubbed. She\u2019s the only singer I\u2019ve ever worked with where there was ever really a chance of getting a final vocal during the basic track. She\u2019s certainly the best female vocalist I ever worked with. We cut \u201cSilver Threads\u201d because David Geffen was convinced that was a hit single, and he was right.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
Boston, Boston<\/em> (1976)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n(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.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\tI 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, \u201cIf you need me involved, please. I love this.\u201d Everybody and his dog had passed on it. Isn\u2019t that crazy? I was hearing \u201cMore Than a Feeling\u201d and \u201cPeace of Mind.\u201d It was a combination of things which I hadn\u2019t heard before: metal \u2014 crunchy, full on distorted guitar \u2014 but with melody.<\/p>\n
\n\tWe thought our best bet was Epic to sign them.\u00a0We met with Steve Popovich, who was the head of the A&R department. He said, \u201cEast Coast A&R exec Lennie Petze says there\u2019s no band.\u201d I said, \u201cWe\u2019ve got a band.\u201d We lied. They said, \u201cShow us a band and we\u2019ll sign them.\u201d 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, \u201cOkay, it\u2019s a band.\u201d Boom. <\/p>\n
\n\tI 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. \u00a0The only deficiency he had were acoustic instruments. Anything electronic, the guy\u2019s 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\u2019d 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. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tA 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\u2019s vocals again. We did the harmonies. We did the percussion. I remember we did the hand claps on \u201cMore Than a Feeling\u201d in the men\u2019s room at Capitol because it had such a cool sound.<\/p>\n
\n\tGregg 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
- \n
\nLittle River Band, Diamantina Cocktail<\/em> (1977)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n(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 \u201cHelp Is on Its Way\u201d and \u201cHappy Anniversary.\u201d)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\tThe manager of Pure Prairie League told me, \u201cAre you kidding? Don\u2019t go to Australia. It\u2019s a complete backwater.\u201d 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, \u201cI liked Australia. I liked these guys.\u201d I hit it off with lead singer Glenn Shorrock. Don Henley\u2019s voice jumps out of the radio speaker at you, and so does Glenn Shorrock\u2019s.\u00a0 They\u2019ve got just enough rasp to be interesting texturally but still got plenty of pitch and accuracy.\u00a0But I was worried about songs. I flew down there; it\u2019s an 18-hour flight.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe studio was not that great. It\u2019s a little behind. I go to rehearse and the first song they play me is \u201cHelp Is On Its Way.\u201d I breathed a sigh of relief. That hook: \u201cHang on, help is on its way.\u201d\u00a0 Honestly, I said, \u201cI\u2019m home free.\u201d I was not nervous anymore after that.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe 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\u2019 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, \u201cThat\u2019s pretty original sound.\u201d I did four albums with them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
- \n
\nCharlie Daniels Band, Million Mile Reflections<\/em> (1979)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\tDon Dempsey called me up. He had just taken over Epic from Ron Alexenberg, and he said, \u201cRon signed Charlie Daniels. It\u2019s a big money deal. We\u2019ve done two albums. We seem to be stuck at around 300,000 units. What can you do with this?\u201d I said, \u201cI like Charlie.\u201d 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\u2019re offered a deal like this is, \u201cCan I bring anything to the party here?\u201d It wasn\u2019t a complete show, so I said, \u201cI better go on the road with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tI watched two college dates in Albany and Utica in New York. I said, \u201cThis band plays 250 dates a year. They\u2019re just on the road all the time.\u201d I\u2019m watching and I realize what was wrong. They were all bored as s\u2013t with the music and overplaying. When you play a song that many times, the tempos get faster. Then, you start to overplay because you\u2019re looking to do something interesting that you haven\u2019t done before. I said, \u201cIf I can correct that, I\u2019m home free.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tI went down to Nashville. Charlie had a rehearsal hall set up in a trailer on his ranch. I said, \u201cPlay just the rhythm guitar, the bass and the two drummers,\u201d and they looked at me like I was completely nuts. I broke it all down. I said, \u201cRelax the tempo. Here we go.\u201d 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\u2019s overplaying.<\/p>\n
\n\tCharlie says, \u201cYou know, we don\u2019t have a fiddle song.\u201d Literally, the next day, he comes to me and says, \u201cLook, I\u2019ve been listening to some old fiddle stuff, and I came up with this,\u201d and he played me \u201cThe Devil Went Down to Georgia.\u201d I said, \u201cWhoa, that\u2019s a great song! It sounds like The Skillet Lickers,\u201d one of those string bands from the \u201830s. In fact, some of the lines in the song like \u201cChicken in a bread pan pickin\u2019 out dough\/ Granny, does your dog bite? No, child, no\u201d \u2014 those are all square dance lines that were used in many songs.<\/p>\n
\n\tCharlie\u2019s a great fiddle player. My engineer, Paul Grupp, came up with the idea to layer the fiddle parts for the devil\u2019s 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, \u201cI don\u2019t know a radio station that\u2019s going to play this, but just in case, Charlie, just sing that one line differently.\u201d He said, \u201cWhat line?\u201d\u00a0I said, \u201c\u2019I told you once, you son of a bitch.\u2019 Sing it once as \u2018told you once, you son of a gun.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tI turned the album in and flew to Melbourne to do the next Little River Band album. Lennie called me and said, \u201cIt\u2019s going crazy!\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t[The song, in part because of the clean radio edit, reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the band\u2019s biggest hit by far<\/em>. It also won a Grammy for best country vocal performance by a duo or group<\/em>.]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n- \n
\nUrban Cowboy Original Motion Picture Soundtrack<\/em> (1980)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\tThe music supervisor, Becky Shargo, was brilliant. She came to me and said, \u201cLook, this demo came in over the transom. It\u2019s not very good, but I think there\u2019s something about the song.\u201d And she played me \u201cLookin\u2019 for Love.\u201d She said, \u201cWe\u2019ve sent it to a Nashville songwriter to punch it up a bit.\u201d 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\u2019t get it at all. He was brilliant.<\/p>\n
\n\tI said, \u201cWho you want to cut this?\u201d He said, \u201cI want Mr. Nobody.\u201d He was down in Gilley\u2019s, 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, \u201cI want that guy.\u201d He wasn\u2019t a great singer or anything, but he was a regular guy, and that\u2019s what Bridges wanted for the movie.<\/p>\n
\n\tI 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\u2019s a scene where it\u2019s on the radio in [John] Travolta\u2019s trailer. He says, \u201cTurn that up. I like that song.\u201d Mostly you do the music after the movie\u2019s finished. In those days, you did six stems or however many you wanted and you mix it to magnetic film and that\u2019s what they use to sync it up with the picture. I didn\u2019t do a stereo mix.<\/p>\n
\n\tMonths later, I was finishing up the other songs in the movie. Becky said, \u201cWill you compile and master this album?\u201d I said, sure. She said, \u201c\u2018Lookin\u2019 for Love,\u2019 everyone\u2019s excited about that.\u201d \u00a0I said, \u201cI better go make us a two-track stereo mix.\u201d I went back to the Record Plant, and [the studio\u2019s president] Rose Mann looked at me and said, \u201cI got some bad news for you. We can\u2019t find the tape.\u201d 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\u2019s the only time that\u2019s ever happened to me.<\/p>\n
(\u201cLookin\u2019 For Love\u201d reached No. 1 on <\/em>Billboard\u2019s Hot Country Songs chart and No. 5 on the Hot 100.<\/em>It also received a Grammy nomination for best country vocal performance, male.)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/lists\/john-boylan-talks-producing-boston-linda-ronstadt-more\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2210649697-e1776991807799.jpg?w=1024″] In his more than 50-year career, John Boylan has served as the connective tissue between some of the most culturally significant albums of the last 50 years. Plus, he helped make a lot of great music. Boylan, who will be inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum at Nashville\u2019s Fisher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,226],"class_list":["post-1900586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-billboard-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1900586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1900586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1900586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1900586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
(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.)<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tI 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, \u201cIf you need me involved, please. I love this.\u201d Everybody and his dog had passed on it. Isn\u2019t that crazy? I was hearing \u201cMore Than a Feeling\u201d and \u201cPeace of Mind.\u201d It was a combination of things which I hadn\u2019t heard before: metal \u2014 crunchy, full on distorted guitar \u2014 but with melody.<\/p>\n \n\tWe thought our best bet was Epic to sign them.\u00a0We met with Steve Popovich, who was the head of the A&R department. He said, \u201cEast Coast A&R exec Lennie Petze says there\u2019s no band.\u201d I said, \u201cWe\u2019ve got a band.\u201d We lied. They said, \u201cShow us a band and we\u2019ll sign them.\u201d 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, \u201cOkay, it\u2019s a band.\u201d Boom. <\/p>\n \n\tI 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. \u00a0The only deficiency he had were acoustic instruments. Anything electronic, the guy\u2019s 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\u2019d 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. \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tA 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\u2019s vocals again. We did the harmonies. We did the percussion. I remember we did the hand claps on \u201cMore Than a Feeling\u201d in the men\u2019s room at Capitol because it had such a cool sound.<\/p>\n \n\tGregg 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n (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 \u201cHelp Is on Its Way\u201d and \u201cHappy Anniversary.\u201d)<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tThe manager of Pure Prairie League told me, \u201cAre you kidding? Don\u2019t go to Australia. It\u2019s a complete backwater.\u201d 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, \u201cI liked Australia. I liked these guys.\u201d I hit it off with lead singer Glenn Shorrock. Don Henley\u2019s voice jumps out of the radio speaker at you, and so does Glenn Shorrock\u2019s.\u00a0 They\u2019ve got just enough rasp to be interesting texturally but still got plenty of pitch and accuracy.\u00a0But I was worried about songs. I flew down there; it\u2019s an 18-hour flight.<\/p>\n \n\tThe studio was not that great. It\u2019s a little behind. I go to rehearse and the first song they play me is \u201cHelp Is On Its Way.\u201d I breathed a sigh of relief. That hook: \u201cHang on, help is on its way.\u201d\u00a0 Honestly, I said, \u201cI\u2019m home free.\u201d I was not nervous anymore after that.<\/p>\n \n\tThe 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\u2019 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, \u201cThat\u2019s pretty original sound.\u201d I did four albums with them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n \n\tDon Dempsey called me up. He had just taken over Epic from Ron Alexenberg, and he said, \u201cRon signed Charlie Daniels. It\u2019s a big money deal. We\u2019ve done two albums. We seem to be stuck at around 300,000 units. What can you do with this?\u201d I said, \u201cI like Charlie.\u201d 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\u2019re offered a deal like this is, \u201cCan I bring anything to the party here?\u201d It wasn\u2019t a complete show, so I said, \u201cI better go on the road with them.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tI watched two college dates in Albany and Utica in New York. I said, \u201cThis band plays 250 dates a year. They\u2019re just on the road all the time.\u201d I\u2019m watching and I realize what was wrong. They were all bored as s\u2013t with the music and overplaying. When you play a song that many times, the tempos get faster. Then, you start to overplay because you\u2019re looking to do something interesting that you haven\u2019t done before. I said, \u201cIf I can correct that, I\u2019m home free.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tI went down to Nashville. Charlie had a rehearsal hall set up in a trailer on his ranch. I said, \u201cPlay just the rhythm guitar, the bass and the two drummers,\u201d and they looked at me like I was completely nuts. I broke it all down. I said, \u201cRelax the tempo. Here we go.\u201d 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\u2019s overplaying.<\/p>\n \n\tCharlie says, \u201cYou know, we don\u2019t have a fiddle song.\u201d Literally, the next day, he comes to me and says, \u201cLook, I\u2019ve been listening to some old fiddle stuff, and I came up with this,\u201d and he played me \u201cThe Devil Went Down to Georgia.\u201d I said, \u201cWhoa, that\u2019s a great song! It sounds like The Skillet Lickers,\u201d one of those string bands from the \u201830s. In fact, some of the lines in the song like \u201cChicken in a bread pan pickin\u2019 out dough\/ Granny, does your dog bite? No, child, no\u201d \u2014 those are all square dance lines that were used in many songs.<\/p>\n \n\tCharlie\u2019s a great fiddle player. My engineer, Paul Grupp, came up with the idea to layer the fiddle parts for the devil\u2019s 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, \u201cI don\u2019t know a radio station that\u2019s going to play this, but just in case, Charlie, just sing that one line differently.\u201d He said, \u201cWhat line?\u201d\u00a0I said, \u201c\u2019I told you once, you son of a bitch.\u2019 Sing it once as \u2018told you once, you son of a gun.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tI turned the album in and flew to Melbourne to do the next Little River Band album. Lennie called me and said, \u201cIt\u2019s going crazy!\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t[The song, in part because of the clean radio edit, reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the band\u2019s biggest hit by far<\/em>. It also won a Grammy for best country vocal performance by a duo or group<\/em>.]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n \n\tThe music supervisor, Becky Shargo, was brilliant. She came to me and said, \u201cLook, this demo came in over the transom. It\u2019s not very good, but I think there\u2019s something about the song.\u201d And she played me \u201cLookin\u2019 for Love.\u201d She said, \u201cWe\u2019ve sent it to a Nashville songwriter to punch it up a bit.\u201d 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\u2019t get it at all. He was brilliant.<\/p>\n \n\tI said, \u201cWho you want to cut this?\u201d He said, \u201cI want Mr. Nobody.\u201d He was down in Gilley\u2019s, 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, \u201cI want that guy.\u201d He wasn\u2019t a great singer or anything, but he was a regular guy, and that\u2019s what Bridges wanted for the movie.<\/p>\n \n\tI 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\u2019s a scene where it\u2019s on the radio in [John] Travolta\u2019s trailer. He says, \u201cTurn that up. I like that song.\u201d Mostly you do the music after the movie\u2019s finished. In those days, you did six stems or however many you wanted and you mix it to magnetic film and that\u2019s what they use to sync it up with the picture. I didn\u2019t do a stereo mix.<\/p>\n \n\tMonths later, I was finishing up the other songs in the movie. Becky said, \u201cWill you compile and master this album?\u201d I said, sure. She said, \u201c\u2018Lookin\u2019 for Love,\u2019 everyone\u2019s excited about that.\u201d \u00a0I said, \u201cI better go make us a two-track stereo mix.\u201d I went back to the Record Plant, and [the studio\u2019s president] Rose Mann looked at me and said, \u201cI got some bad news for you. We can\u2019t find the tape.\u201d 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\u2019s the only time that\u2019s ever happened to me.<\/p>\n (\u201cLookin\u2019 For Love\u201d reached No. 1 on <\/em>Billboard\u2019s Hot Country Songs chart and No. 5 on the Hot 100.<\/em>It also received a Grammy nomination for best country vocal performance, male.)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/lists\/john-boylan-talks-producing-boston-linda-ronstadt-more\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2210649697-e1776991807799.jpg?w=1024″] In his more than 50-year career, John Boylan has served as the connective tissue between some of the most culturally significant albums of the last 50 years. Plus, he helped make a lot of great music. Boylan, who will be inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum at Nashville\u2019s Fisher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,226],"class_list":["post-1900586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-billboard-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1900586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1900586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1900586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1900586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Little River Band, Diamantina Cocktail<\/em> (1977)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Charlie Daniels Band, Million Mile Reflections<\/em> (1979)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Urban Cowboy Original Motion Picture Soundtrack<\/em> (1980)<\/strong><\/h2>\n