Terry Melcher

Terry Melcher, the offspring of Doris Day, emerged as a central figure in the Los Angeles music community during the 1960s and the opening years of the following decade. His professional path began amid the surf-music wave launched by the Beach Boys at the decade’s outset. Partnering with the future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston, he established the Rip Chords, who achieved success via the single “Hey Little Cobra.” Melcher and Johnston further created the short-lived studio ensemble the Hot Doggers. He additionally composed surf material alongside Bobby Darin and Randy Newman. Only after Columbia Records brought him aboard as a staff producer did he exert lasting influence on the California rock aesthetic.

Tasked with overseeing the newly formed Byrds, Melcher guided the ensemble’s blending of rock and folk elements into an innovative style. Friction with the band’s manager ultimately led to his removal from the production chair, yet not before the group, under his supervision, cut the definitive rendition of Pete Seeger’s “Turn, Turn, Turn.” Following his exit from the Byrds, he turned his attention to the rough-hewn, Stones-influenced garage outfit Paul Revere & the Raiders. Applying his studio skills, Melcher reshaped them into a radio-friendly pop act and later co-wrote several of their successes, among them “Him or Me -- What’s It Gonna Be?” and “The Great Airplane Strike.”

Already regarded as a sought-after producer, Melcher played a decisive role in securing a contract for the Rising Sons, the near-mythic Los Angeles collective fronted by Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder. Unlike the Byrds and Paul Revere & the Raiders, however, the Sons’ disparate influences resisted cohesion, leaving Melcher to struggle with their sessions. He continued to operate within the late-1960s Los Angeles milieu, working alongside veterans such as Glen Campbell and Bruce Johnston, and he entered darker notoriety when the Cielo Drive residence he had previously occupied became the location of the Manson Family killings. Melcher had been acquainted with Manson, and speculation persisted that the producer’s unwillingness to advance Manson’s songwriting ambitions had marked the property as a target.

Re-engaged by the Byrds in the early 1970s, Melcher produced the albums The Ballad of Easy Rider, Untitled, and Byrdmaniax, although his production and arranging decisions on the last of these prompted Barney Hoskyns, in his book Waiting for the Sun, to label it “Melcher’s Folly.” As the gentler country-rock atmosphere of the mid-1970s came to dominate southern California, Melcher gradually receded from prominence, limiting his studio activity to sporadic projects that included the Beach Boys’ comeback single “Kokomo.” Following an extended struggle with cancer, he died on November 19, 2004.