Between songs on Bob Dylan’s 1969 album Nashville Skyline, the singer can be heard asking, “Is it rolling, Bob?” That Dylan chose to include the candid moment when he asked his producer if the tape was running in the final recording was his subtle way of recognising the debt he owed to Bob Johnston.

Johnston played a crucial role in the most tumultuous period of Dylan’s career, producing his seminal first all-electric album Highway 61 Revisited and its incendiary follow-up Blonde On Blonde — two of the most influential albums in rock history. He then played a vital part in a similarly far-reaching revolution as Dylan embraced country music, a genre which at the time was considered deeply unhip. Dylan and Johnston’s work on the albums John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline changed the perception of country songs as sentimental ballads for rednecks and brought the genre to a rock-orientated audience.

The producer’s admiration for Dylan was boundless. “I still believe that he’s the only prophet we’ve had since Jesus,” he said many years later. “I don’t think people are going to realise it for another two or three hundred years when they figure out who really did help stop the Vietnam War, who did change everybody around and why our children aren’t hiding under the damn tables now worrying about an atomic war.”

Johnston also oversaw landmark recordings by artists including Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash and Simon and Garfunkel. Great songs, he believed, had the power to provoke change: “My job wasn’t to be a hero and to tell Paul Simon or Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash what to do. All I cared about was seeing that it was going to be a better world. And I think these people made a better world for us.” His skill lay in creating an environment in the studio in which artists felt at ease and could rely on his guidance, as Cohen, for whom Johnston produced three albums, recognised: “He created an atmosphere that really invited you to do your best, an atmosphere that was free from judgment, free from criticism, full of invitation, full of affirmation.” Cash described him as “an artist’s dream”.

Johnston had to be quick on his feet, too, when working with mercurial artists such as Dylan. “He never did anything twice. He’d pick up a guitar; then he’d get on the piano; then he’d be gone again,” Johnston recalled. “No one ever counted off for him. He’d start tapping his foot and nobody had any idea where he was going. I told everybody that I ever came in contact with, ‘Just keep playing. Don’t stop, you can’t make him go back and do that song again’.”

An example of how demanding Dylan could be came when they were recording Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 with its famous “everybody must get stoned” chorus. Johnston suggested that they should attempt to recreate the sound of a Salvation Army band. Dylan liked the idea and immediately demanded that they get one. Johnston pointed out that it might be a tall order as it was 2am. “But I got a trombone player and a trumpet, put a drum around a guy’s neck and everybody marched out there and sang. That’s what I did for a living.” Johnston spent eight years working with Dylan, far longer than any other producer.

In addition to his work in the control room of the studio, he sometimes had to deal with unusual demands outside of it. When Cash told him he wanted to record a live album in a prison, it fell to Johnston to set it up. “I picked up the phone and called Folsom, got through to the warden, told him, ‘Warden, my name’s Bob Johnston. Johnny Cash is going to come up there, do an album, and give a concert.’ He said, ‘My God, when?’ Despite the opposition of Cash’s label, CBS, a date was agreed and the concert was recorded. The album, Johnny Cash at Fulsom Prison, went to No 1 and sold seven million copies.

Donald William “Bob” Johnston was born in 1932 in Hillsboro, Texas, into a musical family. After serving in the US navy, he co-wrote songs with his mother and launched a singing career as a solo artist. He abandoned his singing ambitions after sharing a show with Ricky Nelson. He recalled, “All the girls were hollering ‘We want Ricky!’ I got about halfway through and had to quit. It was embarrassing. I looked like s**t because I didn’t have any money, and he looked like four million dollars. I thought, ‘This isn’t a good way to earn a living’.” He moved into production and co-wrote songs with his future wife, Joy Byers, several of which were recorded by Elvis Presley.

He is survived by Joy, to whom he was married for 58 years, and their son Kevin, who works in the mail centre operations and document services division of BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated). Two other sons predeceased him: Andy died of Aids, aged 50, in 2009 and Bobby of cirrhosis, aged 54, in 2013.

By the mid-1960s Johnston was working as a producer for CBS, who assigned him to Dylan in 1965. He subsequently became head of CBS operations in Nashville but left the company in the 1970s in protest at being paid a flat salary rather than receiving royalties on the million-selling albums he produced.

As an independent producer he had success with the British group Lindisfarne whose Fog on the Tyne topped the UK album chart in 1972.

He spent his final days in a hospice during which, according to a friend, he was still “swinging, swaying and waving around his hands, telling stories, entertaining and consuming all those that saw and heard him”.

Bob Johnston, record producer, was born on May 14, 1932. He died of heart failure on August 14, 2015, aged 83

(London Times)

[Edited on 8/25/2015 by Shavian]