Graham Nash, then in the Hollies, first met Reid in 1966, when he was opening for the Rolling Stones as a member of Peter Jay and Jaywalkers.
“You talk to any of his friends, they’ll tell you,” Nash says, “I don’t understand why he’s not a gigantic star.”
Jack Douglas heard Reid in the late ’60s. Later, Douglas would go on to produce Aerosmith and John Lennon. He also produced the cover of Reid’s “Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace” on Cheap Trick’s 1977 debut.
“Just that voice,” Douglas says. “It’s a white guy who sounds like a black guy. And for the kids, that was the coolest thing.”
On a recent Monday night, Douglas and Reid walked into actor Johnny Depp’s home recording studio in Los Angeles to begin work on a new song.
Douglas met Depp before he was an actor, when he was a kid playing in a rock band in Florida. He introduced Depp to guitarist Joe Perry at an Aerosmith recording session four years ago, and the two became friends and started Hollywood Vampires with Alice Cooper. Now Depp and Douglas are executive-producing Perry’s new album, which features collaborations with Iggy Pop, David Johansen and others.
One night, Douglas and Depp were discussing other potential guests.
“Jack goes, ‘What about Terry Reid?’ My mouth just dropped,” says Depp, a guitarist who has an encyclopedic knowledge of rock history. “I had no idea where Terry Reid was. I didn’t know if he did what Syd Barrett did. Went off and become a ... postman.”
Barrett, Pink Floyd’s original leader, famously melted down in the ’60s and died almost anonymously in 2006.
ncG1vJloZrCvp2PEor%2FHoqWgrJ%2BjvbC%2F02eaqKVfqLNwv9Oyo55nYmV%2Bd3uPbWZqa1%2BstbB5yKxkrZ2ip8ZuvsSim2g%3D