Turn It Up!

Growing up in the Boston suburbs, Tom Werman was deeply affected by pop music from a young age. He long dreamed of a career in music—first as Elvis, then as the next George Harrison—but it almost didn’t turn out that way. Dutifully following the path his parents had laid out for him, he obtained an MBA from an Ivy League university and took a plum job in an industry he came to despise. Then, in 1970, a chance letter sent to CBS Records boss Clive Davis led to a new opportunity . . . and a place in rock’n’roll history.

As an A&R man at Epic Records, Werman helped introduce the world to REO Speedwagon, Boston, Ted Nugent, and Cheap Trick; he also discovered KISS, Rush, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, but his record label passed on all of them. Then, as an independent producer, he oversaw landmark albums by Mötley Crüe (Shout At The Devil), Twisted Sister (Stay Hungry), Lita Ford (Dangerous Curves), Jeff Beck (Live With Jan Hammer), Poison (Open Up And Say … Ahh!), and many more. All in all, his record-making résumé includes twenty-three gold- or platinum-selling albums and cumulative sales of more than fifty-two million copies.

After bearing witness to several sea changes in the music industry, Werman retired from producing in 2001 and reinvented himself as an award-winning innkeeper in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts. And that might have been that—until an off-the-cuff rebuttal to a disparaging critique of his role in making the Mötley Crüe album Girls, Girls, Girls on a music website led to a fortnightly column and now this book—an honest and engaging insider account on how some of the best-loved albums of the 1970s and 80s came to be. A must for anyone interested in the glory days of rock and metal, Turn It Up! offers valuable insights into the recording process, the recording studio, the role of the producer, and the production values that are essential to the creation of a hit record.