"Any producer is only as good as the sounds he helps create."
By this standard, Eddie Kramer must be regarded as a Rock Icon. In the course of a production and engineering career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Kramer has been behind the boards for the biggest names in music - The Rolling Stones, Traffic, Peter Frampton, Carly Simon, Joe Cocker, Johnny Winter, David Bowie, The Beatles and Bad Company, just to name a few. Still, he is perhaps best known for three long-term associations in which he not only helped create some of the most important music of the rock era, but also set standards for rock production that set him aside as a true innovator. His work with Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Kiss continues to influence rock musicians and producers today.
After moving to London from South Africa, Eddie began his recording career working at three of the most legendary studios in rock, Pye Studios, Regent Sound and Olympic Studios, where he recorded Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Traffic and a myriad of other major recording stars.
In 1968 Kramer came to work at the Record Plant in NYC, engineering Hendrix’s “Electric Ladyland” LP, and also worked with The Vanilla Fudge, Joe Cocker and NRBQ. In 1969 Kramer went independent, producing Johnny Winter’s first LP and engineering “Led Zeppelin II,” acknowledged by fans and critics alike as perhaps that bands most influential work. In 1969 Jimi Hendrix hired Eddie and architect John Storyk to build a state of the art studio. After 13 months Electric Lady Studios was complete, and Kramer served as its Director of Engineering from 1970 -1974. Electric Lady became one of the world’s most popular recording studios and still rocks the world today with its great sounds.
In 1973, two unknown musicians (Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley) who asked if he would be interested in producing their new group’s demo tape. He accepted, touching off a relationship with theatrical heavy metal’s Kiss that would last throughout the ’70s — resulting in such hard rock classics as their breakthrough Alive, plus Rock and Roll Over, Love Gun, Alive II, Double Platinum.
Kramer spent the 1980s and 1990s producing many more heavy metal acts and returning to work with Kiss as well as with the Jimi Hendrix Estate in addition to co-authoring two Hendrix-related books Hendrix: Setting the Record Straight and Jimi Hendrix Sessions.
In 1999 he won a Grammy Award for his audio production of the video for the Jimi Hendrix live album Band of Gypsys. Since then he has won several more Grammys and an Emmy for his exemplary work.
In 2002 he formed a new company called Kramer Archives, Inc., featuring his original photographs of some of the artists he worked with between 1967-1972, including Hendrix, the Stones, Zeppelin, Santana, Traffic, Johnny Winter, Joe Cocker, and Frank Zappa.
His unique access and life long friendships with Rock’s luminaries have given him access to a world others rarely see. Eddie’s photographs have been exhibited in some of the world’s most prestigious galleries and museums and have become prized possession of international collectors.