BRIEF ENCOUNTERS WITH ELLIOT MAZER!
May 9, 2009
The first time I met producer Elliot Mazer (Janis Joplin, Neil Young) was in the office of Arnold Shaw, the General Professional manager of E.B. Marks music. Elliot was with another Philadelphia producer Billy Jackson (The Tymes) who was playing “Wonderful, Wonderful” (Raleigh/Edwards), for Shaw (the publisher) which was the follow up to the Tymes’ #1 hit, “So Much In Love”.
The next time I saw Elliot was on my first trip to Philadelphia, where I was trying to get some of my songs recorded by the artists who were dominating the charts, like Chubby Checker, Dee Dee Sharp, and Bobby Rydell. Producer/songwriter Jerry Ross (who I met in Harold Lipsius’ Jamie/Guyden record office trying to sell a master), took me up to Sigma Sound where I met all the top producers in Town.
Over the next few years, I’d run into Elliot at airports, getting brief, but always interesting reports about his recording activities. He’d start a story about a Janis Joplin session at LAX, and finish it up a few weeks later when I’d run into him at at JFK in N.Y. After a while I got used to hearing partial stories about producing Linda Rondstadt, or the Band’s “Last Waltz”.
When I was General Professional manager of Warner Brothers Music, we had a co-publishing deal with Neil Young and I had the privilege of hearing The “Harvest” album, produced by Mazer, months before its release. For weeks “Heart of Gold” was #1 with a bullet, in my office.
Now thirty years later, after reconnecting with Elliot on FACEBOOK I find he still has interesting stories, and I discovered they just reissued a remastered digitized version of “Harvest”…which I can’t wait to hear!
Copyright 2009 by Artie Wayne https://artiewayne.wordpress.com/about-artie-wayne/
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May 10, 2009 at 4:52 pm
I met Elliott in London in 1973 while I was singing with/for, legendary blues guitarist Roy Buchanan.
I think he was friends with Teddy Irwin the other guitarist in the band.
Anyway, we’re riding in a car, and he presses a button on a watch on his left hand which displays the time in brilliant red letters.
Now, this was 1973,and this kind of technology was in it’s infancy, if not embryonic, and what I was looking at was the latest thing.
The PULSAR watch!
WOW Elliott, that thing is really cool, do you like it?
“I hate it”, he said.
“You have to press this button to see the time, and it only stays on for about three seconds, and when you’re driving, it’s just a big pain in the ass”
The only reason I even wear it, is because it’s so cool, and it’s so expensive, you don’t see many people wearing one.”
Things sure changed quickly.In ten years or so, it went from being so expensive,to being in a cereal box.