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Producer/Engineer Andy Johns dead at 61

Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Van Halen among his many credits

Legendary producer and engineer Andy Johns died over the weekend at the age of 61. According to Billboard, Johns had been hospitalized since last week.

Few producers and engineers can ever hope to amass even a fraction of the resume Johns did over the course of his long career, and if you call yourself a fan of rock ‘n’ roll, you own many of his records. By the time he turned 21 he had already worked with The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Humble Pie, Jethro Tull, Free, Blind Faith, Traffic, and Mott the Hoople. Although he had engineered such classics albums as Led Zeppelin IV, Physical Graffiti, Houses of the Holy, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main St., he went on to make a name for himself as a producer in the late-‘70s, his most important work being Television’s seminal Marquee Moon in 1977.

From a metal and hard rock perspective, Johns became a go-to producer/engineer for many artists in the 1980s and 1990s, including Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, Cinderella, Gary Moore, and L.A. Guns. In recent years, some of his more successful collaborations were with Chickenfoot and Godsmack.