Crawdaddy! The Magazine of Rock

Phil Ramone exudes the kind of “oh, get outta here” humility you’d expect from a guy who’s been commended for achieving something noteworthy—like maybe a promotion from head cashier to floor manager at JC Penney—and who’s a little embarrassed by the kudos. He speaks in a steady, calm, almost mesmerizing tone, and is so gracious, it’s not until he nonchalantly, even inadvertently, begins dropping names like “Sinatra” and “Dylan” and “Streisand” and “Pavarotti” that I have a “pinch me” flash of realization: This is the guy who toured with Dylan and the Band on my ultimate Dream Tour, the tour I was too young to experience firsthand—Tour ’74—and recorded one of the first great live albums, Before the Flood, with its iconic Barry Feinstein cover of flicking Bics. This is the guy who produced the seminal albums of my youth—and the youths of younger Baby Boomers and older Gen-Xers—among them Billy Joel’s The Stranger and 52nd Street, Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years, and Dylan’s magnum opus, Blood on the Tracks.

Yes, he’s arguably the most successful, most sought-after, most celebrated—and most innovative—record producer of the past four decades. Yet talking with Ramone feels comfortable, natural, sort of like talking with a teacher or a mentor or a friend of my father’s. Sure, there’s an undercurrent of hipness, of streetwise New York City straight out of the ’70s. But there’s also eloquence, graciousness—this man is a gentleman. He comes across as quietly sage and has the wisdom of years that compels me to call him “Mr. Ramone” and not “Phil,” until he insists otherwise.

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