New York, NY (November 18, 2024)—Producer/engineer Sheldon “Shel” Talmy died Wednesday, November 13, 2024 of undisclosed causes. As an American ex-pat living in London during the Swinging 60s, Talmy was instrumental in capturing some of the era’s most enduring Classic Rock cornerstones, recording smashes by The Who and The Kinks, as well as hits by Manfred Mann, The Easybeats and others, not to mention a young, pre-stardom David Bowie. Talmy was 87.
Born August 11, 1937, Talmy was raised in Chicago before his family headed west to Los Angeles when he was a teen. Graduating high school in 1955, he found work five years later as a studio engineer at an early version of Conway Recorders, where he learned to use a 3-track recorder and was immediately pressed into service after less than a week of training.
Talmy headed to London in 1962 to look for work, armed with Capitol Records acetates of acts like The Beach Boys, which he told U.K. publishing executives he had produced. The lie quickly nabbed him assignments, and two years later, he produced The Kinks’ debut single, perfectly capturing the primordial caveman stomp of “You Really Got Me” by using experimental microphone placement techniques he’d picked up at Conway. Building on that success, Talmy and the band collaborated numerous times over the next three years, recording a string of eight UK top-10 hits, including two number-ones.
That hot streak led to working with an emerging act, The Who; in short order, the Talmy-produced “I Can’t Explain,” “My Generation” and “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere” all hit the top 10, but a falling out with the band’s management brought the collaboration to an end. It also led to a protracted legal battle that worked out well financially for Talmy in the short-term, as he received a cut of the group’s royalties for six years, but it also meant he never produced the group again.
The two primordial rock’n’roll acts were hardly the only ones he produced; over the course of his career, Talmy also worked with the likes of Chad & Jeremy, Roy Harper, The Damned, Manfred Mann, Pentangle, The Easybeats, comedian Rich Little and two pre-stardom David Bowie vehicles—The Manish Boys and Davy Jones & the Lower Third.
Talmy is survived by his wife Jan, daughter Jonna and brother Leonard.
For more on Shel Talmy, check out our Mix Interview with the recording legend from October 1990.
