Email Interview with Jack Douglas
1. First things first - how did you come across Silverplanes?
“I met him [Aaron Smart] through my son Blake who knew him and Jesse Kramer in San Francisco when my son was going to college. My son turned me onto his studio that he had in Hollywood in the Hollywood Athletic Club. Though I didn’t meet him then, I used the studio - it was a great studio. Later my son came back to me and said you know, the guy whose studio you were using is a really cool artist, you should listen to his material. I set up a meeting with Aaron and we met over at Johnny Depp’s place. He played me a bunch of his stuff and I said wow, I really like it. He told me he was moving his studio from Hollywood to downtown LA with it’s the same board - a beautiful Neve board, and we could do it down there. I don’t remember what year that was, I think it was 2016 or 2017."
2. How long did it take to produce the album, and did the songs evolve from demo form to full-fledged recordings?
"He would come over to the house and play me a few tunes acoustically and sing them. We would work on the arrangements and sometimes the lyrics, and then go into the studio to do one or two basic tracks a day. How we did that was since Aaron’s a drummer, I would put him in a booth and he would lay down an acoustic version and a vocal at the same time to a click track and then we would record drums over that. We’d replace the acoustic guitar and vocal and start building with other musicians. We did that for a while until Jesse came in to replace him on drums on all but one song when my son Colin played drums on one song. Maybe a month or a month and a half to do everything."
3. Jesse Kramer plays drums on the record; does his style of playing remind you of his father’s, Joey?
"No, not at all. Jesse can play almost anything. He can play rock, but he can also play jazz. He’s very diverse. He can play anything and play it really super well. Joey is a great drummer, but he’s probably the best guy who could play a shuffle I’ve ever worked with and he’s the best Aerosmith drummer that could ever be. He’s perfect. He makes that thing rock. Jesse’s very different and much more experimental."
4. Do you think the theme of “Down the Drain” bears a thematic similarity to John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy”?
"Only in that there’s a reflection of him talking about his son, in particular in the video. But otherwise no."
5. Double Fantasy features some incendiary, but innovative, works from Yoko Ono. Do you think her songcraft resonates to audiences more today than they did in 1980?
"I think that they resonated sometime after 1980 and she got the cred that she deserved between ’80 and ’90. Now she gets more respect than she ever got before, but I don’t particularly think it resonates with the audience today."
6. There’s an edge to Cheap Trick’s arrangement of “I’m Losing You” that’s missing on the version Lennon issued on Double Fantasy. Why did he choose to issue the latter version?
"We debated that for a long time and we felt that it just didn’t fit on the album - it would’ve jumped out of the album, seeming out of context because it rocked so hard. We liked the arrangement that we worked up with Rick and Bunny and John and Tony Lennon in the studio. That arrangement was worked up then. What I did to kind of get close to it was I kept playing that arrangement in the headphones of the band I originally hired to play the album. They kept playing along with it. Then I took it out of their headphones and they were playing it and I recorded it. It fits more in the album than the hard-edged Cheap Trick version. But that version is available I’m happy to say."
7. Talk to us about Julian Lennon: How did he fit in with Aerosmith during the recording of Music from Another Dimension!?
"Julian is an old friend of both myself and Steven Tyler. He stopped by the studio to see us while recording that album. We thought it would be interesting to get the sound of Julian’s voice which is Lennon-esque and have Steven and Julian song together in harmony. I think it was really cool."
8. Silverplanes’ “The Last Place” feels like it was written for an audience craving something from the post-punk age; is that a fair comparison?
"It’s not as crazy as punk. It’s very well-arranged. I think it fits more in today’s rock scene than it does in a post-punk scene."
9. Do you have any favorite lyrics from the album, or songs that you feel proud of?
"My two favourite songs that were recorded are ‘Young’ and ‘Years to Awaken’. Those two songs are really highlight and there’s lyrics on both that really strike me. On ‘Young’ it’s ‘All these yesterdays, all been and now they’re gone.’ On ‘Years to Awaken,’ it’s the opening one ‘Hard for you to face all the things you can’t erase.’ I think I probably relate to both of those, and I think a lot of other people do too. I think those two songs really stand out as beautiful and his vocals are amazing."
10. Would you like to tell us what you have planned for the future?
"I’m working on the label, Confidential Records. That keeps me busy. I’ll be going back into the studio with our artist Robin Taylor Zander shortly to do another record. I’ll also be working with Aaron Smart on some new recordings for SILVERPLANES. I’ll continue doing film scores which have also been keeping me really busy."