Jack Douglas

There's elements from... all over the place and you know there's newer stuff like Louisiana Way is something I finished a couple of years ago and we started the record in 2023 you know actually it took us it didn't happen overnight you know we worked on it for a while we have other songs that we didn't finish that we could put on another record so there's a lot of material there but I think this was the material we put together for this was good.

And I think a lot of it had to do with Jack Douglas.

You know, we had all these songs and two of them were songs that I did with using Edgar Allen Poe poems for the lyrics.

And Jack just loved them.

They ended up on there and he did a great job producing.

And

Jack Douglas.

I mean, I was shocked to hear that that he passed away.

Zebra 5, by the way, comes out in November, and it's the band's first new album in 23 years.

In this episode, I discuss with Randy working with legendary producer Jack Douglas, who worked on the first two Zebra masterpiece records.

We lost Jack, by the way, in May of 2026, so this definitely a very poignant project.

We deep dive into some of the songs on Zebra 5, talk about the upcoming tour, how does Randy keep his voice so strong, and more.

So we fast forward, you know, 50 years, almost 50 from the debut.

And then we have the incredible Jack Douglas on, on zebra five so a friend of mine tells me that in in the business tells me gary tells me that the zebra record's coming you know mutual friend of both of ours gary jay and he says jack douglas produced it so i hit him back with jack douglas question mark exclamation point so then he starts explaining to me oh he's the guy who did the error i go no dude i know who jack douglas is But I was so surprised to hear this because I had not heard this before.

And I think we had just lost Jack, legendary, amazing producer, the sixth member of Aerosmith.

He was behind Budokan and he engineered amazing records like Patti Smith.

Right.

But then the problem is that who did they talk to? They talked to Jack Douglas.

Oh, okay.

Who produced Aerosmith.

And it was amazing, so much fun to connect with her.

And her producer, Kathy McCabe, introduced me to Billy Kinsley.

And she said he knew John Lennon as a boy.

And I had never met anybody who could look at my photos with that eye.

The musicians were going to be arriving.

Those were not my assignments.

To get photos of the producer, Jack Douglas, who I didn't even know.

I never heard his name.

Yeah.

Once Jack Douglas started working with us, you know, that even gave us more, you know, fire in the engine.

And it's super exciting, too, to work with Jack Douglas, who did your debut album.

And was it did you fall back into that same old routine or things change so much over the years that it's a completely different method?

Different method.

incredible but you had no indication that jack was sick right through any of this

none at all and it was just uh it was a shock it was a shock

yeah i'm just countless if you're a rock fan you look in your record collection yeah you might not realize it but you maybe you know a good 10 percent of your record collection has jack douglas's name on it so

That wasn't the purpose of the day.

Jack Douglas hadn't shown up yet.

That wasn't the purpose of the day.

This wasn't day one of recording.

was the first day.

They were getting ready to record.

And I believe Jack Douglas came in just before I left because he's in my...

I think he's in my last photo in the background bending over.