This highly focused, yet wide-spanning book plays a vital role in the recent efforts to recognize Tom Wilson by amplifying his role at the vanguard of sound in the epochal year of 1966. During his lifetime, Wilson received only partial or peripheral attention, mostly from within the music industry. It has only been in the last two decades that Wilson and his legacy has begun to receive the belated acclaim he deserves. His life and top-tier jazz & pop production work are finally being chronicled, documented and discussed through a variety of media. Momentum has slowly built up around Tom Wilson and the seminal role he played in producing groundbreaking singles & albums by Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Frank Zappa, the Velvet Underground as well as the first releases from jazz giants Cecil Taylor, Donald Byrd and Sun Ra. Appreciation for what Wilson accomplished can be traced back to the Tom Wilson, Producer website established by Irwin Chusid in 2013. Significant ground has been gained this decade with the 11-part Invisible Icon: The Tom Wilson Story podcast that was produced in 2020-21 out of Wilson’s home town of Waco, Texas by Rogue Media. Still, it was not until 2025 that Wilson received the first book length treatment with the publication of Everybody's Head is Open to Sound – Writings on Tom Wilson. This French monograph, edited by Anaïs Ngbanzo with contributions by Ignacio Juliá and Richie Unterberger, is also notable as it contains the most comprehensive discography of Tom Wilson’s productions in existence. Matt Krefting’s research includes both albums and singles.
Everything Is Everything: Tom Wilson and Pop Music in 1966 by Steven E. Jones is now the second book devoted to Tom Wilson and comes at an opportune time and advances the scholarship on Wilson. Through Jones’ writing, he provides the opportunity for readers to consider Wilson’s 1966 work in fine detail as well as embarking into some mostly unexplored territory. While the book’s introduction sets the tone, there is not much debate on Steven E. Jones' assertion that Tom Wilson, the extraordinary producer with the ordinary name, was one of the foremost producers and musical trailblazers who broke barriers as a Black man in one of the monumental decades. With Wilson’s credentials already established by the aforementioned documentation projects, Jones’ book can then be assessed on a different level. Using the Wilson produced albums as a jumping off point, Jones combines history and commentary to make further connections and provides the reader with additional considerations. Jones gets under the hood of what is arguably pop music’s peak year, along with covering the exciting years leading in and out of the pinnacle of 1966. Wilson was certainly at the epicenter of a transformative era where musical breakthroughs can be heard on the singles & albums he produced from a wide-array of mainstream, avant-garde and unclassifiable acts, all who reflected Wilson’s adventurous approach to pop music.
Suiting the Situation
The introduction also presents Wilson as a major architect of early folk-rock with his production work at Columbia Records for Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel. Wilson brought a jazz sophistication and versatility to pop-rock, which could be a reason he was so well respected at Columbia Records and MGM/Verve. In 1965, he made remarkable jumps from jazz and folk to becoming a folk-rock innovator. Wilson took what he learned in one context (jazz) as an A&R executive for United Artists and Savoy and applied it to an entirely new context (folk-rock). His vanguard productions helped spark a sound that would be heard around the world and continues to endure. For instance, Wilson restructured the flat “Sound of Silence” to a fully dimensional version with his overdubs employing ringing electric guitars bathed in echo and launched Simon & Garfunkel's career in the process.
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| Bob Dylan, Albert Grossman, Tom Wilson Columbia Studio A on 799 Seventh Ave. New York Photo of a photo from the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, OK |
Writing under the position that history is “about conflicts and complications” (p. 26), Jones defends Wilson’s production on Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” against the panning by notable critic Greil Marcus. In his 2005 book Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads, Marcus rails against Wilson’s production of having “a harsh edge-the acrid tone that was everywhere in 1965, the sound of the time, if not the times.” Jones takes another view as he defends the enduring and intriguing sound achieved by Wilson:
“Around 1965, a good deal of pop in various genres did sound, if not necessarily "harsh” or "acrid,” a little metallic, sometimes even tinny. And it often involved a clean separation of instruments, as Marcus says, but these were also frequently mixed with echo and/or tremolo to produce a warbly, layered soundscape indebted to surf music, Phil Spector’s wall of sound, and numerous studio string sections as heard on records at the end of the monaural era.” (p.15)
Jones goes on to present Wilson as a conduit and catalyst who was able to work with a broad-spectrum of artists in 1966 including the Blues Project, Sun Ra, the Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Hugh Masekela and Eric Burdon & the Animals. In his A&R role for MGM/Verve, he was a man about town and in the Hollywood/Los Angeles clubs. In fact, Wilson signed the Mothers (of Invention) after hearing “Trouble Every Day” at the Whiskey a Go Go and produced their first two albums Freak Out! and Absolutely Free. He also played an integral role with the Velvet Underground, producing their first two albums along with Nico’s Chelsea Girl, her debut solo “baroque folk” outing. Jones often compares Wilson to Warhol, with their shared ability to introduce and incorporate avant-garde elements into mainstream productions as they worked from their respective “factories.”
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| Tom Wilson, John Cale & Lou Reed |
At the Helm
One of the largest criticisms of Tom Wilson as a producer was his hands-off style. Vic Briggs, lead guitarist with the Animals, recalled Wilson being preoccupied with designing American football plays during studio sessions with the Animals in Richie Unterberger’s Do What You Fear Most: The History of The Velvet Underground. This laissez-faire approach most likely developed from Wilson's jazz years in the ‘50s running the independent label Transition Records. However, his light and deft touch in the studio, earned him respect amongst the musicians and allowed him the best chance to catch lighting in a bottle. Conversely, he also had the professional sense of awareness when he needed to intervene and keep the session on track as studio time in the ‘60s still had its strictures and union rules. The Wilson way also put musicians (e.g., Frank Zappa, John Cale of the Velvet Underground) into place to later produce and fly on their own. Wilson proved there are many conducive ways to be and define yourself as a producer in and out of the control room.
Each act or group that Wilson recorded in 1966 are given their own chapter, allowing Jones to go deeper into each album’s production along with incorporating contextual elements at play. This focus provides readers with overall big-picture historical perspectives, while illuminating the intricate layers of interconnections, which also influenced and shaped the resulting sounds. Utilizing the benefits of time and distance, Jones traces the stylistic and common denominators shared between the acerbic complexity found in the jazz of Sun Ra and the avant-pop-rock from Zappa. While some chapters do meander in some tangential directions in order for Jones to address some unresolvable and shopworn notions of authenticity and credibility, he does raise some interesting points. In his chapter on the Blues Project, he considers and compares their legacy to the Velvet Underground. The eclectic Blues Project actually had a larger profile during the time of their existence, while the Velvet Underground, as ahead-of-their-time proto-punks, have more listeners now with their towering influence on music and culture. Credibility was something a band achieved just by being in the same studio and sphere as Wilson. Jones’ treatment of the Blues Project also provides the impetus that their albums and singles should be listened to for their own merits as well as being Tom Wilson productions.
Deepening and Expanding
The iconoclastic Wilson was also a walking dichotomy who, as a Lincoln-Republican, was both Harvard-educated (in economics) and street smart. He was able to achieve a sense of equilibrium and equanimity between the strong personalities and fragile egos that have an overwhelming presence in the music industry. Who else would be able to hold their own with such provocateurs as Dylan, Zappa and Reed? On the larger world stage, Wilson worked and lived in the middle of a volatile era that quickly turned extreme and militant. It’s remarkable that he was able to shape such a variety of sounds at the major label level, but then again there was no one like Wilson who could fluidly move between jazz, folk and rock worlds as Wilson. The only comparable figure would be the much more well-known Quincy Jones. While “Q” went on to achieve household name recognition and acclaim as Michael Jackson’s producer among his many other achievements, Tom Wilson remains mostly known, respected and revered amongst the cognoscente. As a jazz and major label pop-rock producer, Wilson arguably went deeper than Quincy Jones. However, Wilson’s career was truncated as he died prematurely at age 47 from a heart attack brought on by Marfan syndrome in 1978.
The Tom Wilson Organization The concluding chapter on the Monkees seemed tacked on or already existing in some form and in search of a publication home. This superfluous ending addresses issues of authenticity and artificiality, which are major themes of the book, however the fact remains that Tom Wilson had no involvement with the Monkees. Additionally, there is no need to defend the Monkees at this point-as they are now considered part of the grand narrative of ‘60s music. While Jones uses the chapter to assert some cogent points about the porousness between the mainstream and the underground at the time, he could have done it at previous points. Despite losing focus in the last chapter, it’s an overall compelling book and advances the documentation of Tom Wilson as more listeners find their way to “Tom Wilson Appreciation" society. Hopefully, others will expand upon his later ‘60s independent years where he worked with labels like ABC and Capitol and produced albums by Ill Wind and Harumi, which are considered psychedelic pop/rock classics by the genre specialists. His waning work years in ‘70s, when the entire music industry drastically changed, could also use further exploration. Lastly, the varied singles he produced including “Bend Me, Shape Me” by the Models presents an opportunity for further exploration. There are additional ongoing efforts to recognize Tom Wilson, including Marshall Crenshaw’s documentary which is still in the works.
While many readers might have wished for a more straight-ahead biography of the enigmatic producer, Jones succeeds on his own terms and accomplishes what he sets out to do in an holistic and interconnected way that Wilson himself would declare as “Everything is Everything.” Jones’ extensive research and written account furthers the cause for Tom Wilson by highlighting his versatility and the ability to set things in motion during a brief, shifting and exciting era when AM & FM, mono & stereo, singles & albums and subterranean and mainstream acts overlapped and flourished.
