Elliot Mazer

Harvest producer BORN 1941

When Neil Young rolled into Nashville in February 1971 to guest on Johnny Cash’s TV show, making a new album did not appear to be part of his plans. At a dinner party, though, he met Elliot Mazer, a New York transplant and self-described “long-haired Jew intellectual” who’d recorded Linda Ronstadt, Big Brother And The Holding Company, Gordon Lightfoot and more. Swiftly bonding, the two rapidly moved into the studio, backed by a band of Nashville outsiders corralled by Mazer who Young would soon christen The Stray Gators. The sessions resulted in Harvest, Young’s biggest solo hit, and the pair would reconvene for Time Fades Away and Homegrown, as well as Everybody’s Rockin’ and Old Ways in the 1980s, when Mazer introduced the notoriously analogue Young to digital recording. Mazer remained a technical innovator throughout his career, designing the world’s first all-digital studio, and combined academic work with hands-on assignments: he was one of the engineers who worked on The Band’s The Last Waltz.