And the bandwagon for this book adds another.

Bob Dylan Wanted to Make an Album With the Beatles and Rolling Stones

Few figures in rock history have a more impressive résumé than Glyn Johns. Throughout the 1960s the producer/engineer worked on albums by the Rolling Stones (Beggars Banquet, Sticky Fingers, Let It Bleed), the Beatles (Let It Be, Abbey Road), the Who (Who's Next, Quadrophenia, The Who By Numbers), the Band (Stage Fright), Neil Young (Harvest), Eagles (Desperado, On the Border), the Clash (Combat Rock) and too many others to mention. His new book Sound Man hits shelves on November 13th and is full of amazing anecdotes from his 50-year career.

Perhaps the most surprising story comes from his brief encounter with Bob Dylan at a New York airport. Johns was traveling with Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner, who had just completed his groundbreaking interview with Dylan. "[Dylan] asked me about the Beatles album I had just finished and was very complimentary about my work with the Stones over the years," Johns writes. "In turn, I babbled about how how much we had all been influenced by his work."

Dylan then dropped a bomb. "He said he had this idea to make a record with the Beatles and the Stones," John writes. "And he asked me if I would find out whether the others would be interested. I was completely bowled over. Can you imagine the three greatest influences on popular music in the previous decade making an album together?"

Johns quickly began working the phones. "Keith and George thought it was fantastic," he writes. "But they would since they were both huge Dylan fans. Ringo, Charlie and Bill were amicable to the idea as long as everyone else was interested. John didn't say a flat no, but he wasn't that interested. Paul and Mick both said absolutely not."

Needless to say, the plan didn't go forward. "I had it all figured out," writes Johns. "We would pool the best material from Mick and Keith, Paul and John, Bob and George, and then select the best rhythm section from the two bands to suit whichever songs we were cutting. Paul and Mick were probably, right, however I would have given anything to have given it a go."

Johns doesn't give the exact timeframe for this story, but he does indicate that Wenner was in the process of editing his interview with Dylan when they met at the airport. That would likely place this sometime in the summer of 1969. At the time, Dylan was just beginning to work on Self Portrait and was gearing up for his comeback performance with the Band at the Isle of Wight.

What He Saw From the Control Room

After disembarking from a Los Angeles to London flight in February 1969, the recording engineer and producer Glyn Johns went straight to a studio to work with the Beatles on the album that became “Abbey Road.” That was followed by an all-night session with the Rolling Stones for the album “Let It Bleed,” after which he rejoined the Beatles, then concluded his marathon that day by recording Jimi Hendrix live at Royal Albert Hall.

That’s what life was like for Mr. Johns during one of the most fertile periods in popular music. Born in suburban London in 1942, he went to work as an apprentice sound engineer at the age of 17, when music was still recorded in monaural, and soon became the engineer of choice for the British pop groups then emerging: He was in the control room twirling the knobs the first time the Rolling Stones went into a recording studio, on a Sunday early in 1963.

Now Mr. Johns has written a memoir, “Sound Man” (Blue Rider Press), in which he explains, among other things, what a record producer actually does: guide musicians in “painting a picture in sound.” Published last month, the book offers behind-the-scene glimpses of his studio work — which in the 1970s and 1980s expanded to artists like the Eagles, the Clash, Howlin’ Wolf, Eric Clapton, John Hiatt, Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt — and the working relationships he forged.

“My objective was not kiss and tell, but an observation of the industry over the last 50 years, how it has developed, and about the characters I’ve met,” he said. “I just love making records, and that’s never going to change. I can’t wait to get back in.”

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, Mr. Johns remains active, having recently produced CDs by Ryan Adams and Benmont Tench. In New York on book tour, he spoke of his 50-plus years in the recording studio. Here are excerpts from his descriptions of some of his biggest projects.

The British Invasion

Though best known for the records he made with the Rolling Stones, with whom he worked until 1975, Mr. Johns also was the recording engineer for the Who, the Kinks and Small Faces on some of the most notable songs of the 1960s. Even at the time, he sensed these were not ordinary sessions.

“There was absolutely a sense of the possibility of rules being changed, of the enormity of what was going on. One had no idea whether the general public would pick up on it the same way I did. But I can remember very clearly the session for ‘My Generation.’ I can remember very clearly ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again,’ and lots of Stones stuff. ‘My Generation’? A bass solo? A stuttering vocal? Not to mention feedback or the song itself. Extraordinary! It was certainly special to me at the time. Are you kidding? You’d have to be deaf not to get excited by that.”

The Beatles

Early in 1969, the Beatles invited Mr. Johns to work on their new project. He accepted eagerly, thinking he would be the engineer for George Martin, who had produced the group’s previous albums. But when he arrived, Mr. Martin, who had grown tired of the bickering, was absent, and he realized he was being thrust into a producer’s role. The experience, which eventually yielded the album “Let It Be” after the tapes were turned over to Phil Spector, was frustrating:

“The idea was something like ‘The Basement Tapes,’ to show what they were really like. I’d worked with everyone and their mother by then, so I was quite used to being around people who were famous. But when I got the call, to walk in and be privy to those guys sitting around, doing what they did, and to be invited in, was pretty astonishing. I didn’t know them. I was the same as every other punter on the planet, who saw them as these extraordinary icons of marvelousness.

“And although they could hardly be normal people, because of what their success had done to them, I was witnessing them being normal to each other. Which no one else had got to see, and which nobody really had a clue about. And so my concept of the record was: how fantastic to have a record of them playing live, sitting around mocking each other, just having a laugh.

“It was very weird. But George Martin, being the gentleman that he is, he realized that I had been compromised in a way, and he saw fit to put me at ease about the situation. He took me to lunch, and he said, ‘You’re not to worry about a thing.’ I was feeling really awkward about the whole thing, and he was completely at ease about the situation. Because he is confident of his own abilities.

“I was disappointed that Lennon got away with giving it to Spector, and even more disappointed with what Spector did to it. It has nothing to do with the Beatles at all. ‘Let It Be’ is a bunch of garbage. As I say in the book, he puked all over it. I’ve never listened to the whole thing, I’ve only listened to the first few bars of some things and said, ‘Oh, forget it.’ It was ridiculously, disgustingly syrupy.”

Led Zeppelin

In 1968, Mr. Johns engineered and mixed the first Led Zeppelin album at the request of the guitarist Jimmy Page, who had been a session musician on many of the hits Mr. Johns had recorded. But when he excitedly played the album for Mick Jagger and George Harrison, he did not get the reaction he expected:

“It was groundbreaking, astonishing musicianship, it had everything, and I’m terribly proud of the sound, I must tell you. We were putting together the ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Circus’ ” television special, “so I’m thinking, ‘We’ll get them on that.’ But Mick says he doesn’t get it, not at all. And George was the same. Exactly the same. George just didn’t get it. He didn’t know what I was going on about.

“Look, we all have different tastes, and I’m sure there are things that Mick or George liked that I didn’t particularly like, like Ravi Shankar. It’s just that because I had been so excited about something and it was so new, I naturally expected my contemporaries to feel the same way. It was disappointing. I didn’t lose sleep over it, but it was a bit of a shock.

“In retrospect, the only thing I can think is, that if you consider what the Stones had done up to that point, and still do, it is pretty far removed from heavy metal. I think it’s disgraceful to align that first Led Zeppelin record with heavy metal because it’s far, far better, but you know what I’m saying: It started that genre.”

The Rolling Stones

Mr. Johns also engineered the Rolling Stones sessions at which “Honky Tonk Women” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” were recorded. He and Mr. Jagger disagreed as to which song should be the A-side of the single, and Eric Clapton, visiting the studio one night, was asked his opinion. After listening to both songs, he looked at Mr. Johns “like I had a screw loose” and backed Mr. Jagger’s choice, “Honky Tonk Women,” which zoomed to No. 1 and remained there during the summer of 1969:

“I was very rarely right about that. I was useless. The fact of the matter is that I’ve never cut singles, never been known for producing hit singles. Whatever hits I’ve ever had have been flukes, really. Something will come up when you’re making an album, and you’ll say, ‘This is catchy,’ or whatever. But it’s never been anything I was particularly brilliant at. It really annoyed me that he asked Eric. Who knows? I could have been right. ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ has endured, sure, but so has ‘Honky Tonk Women.’ ”

Eric Clapton

What does a record producer actually do? Often he suggests repertoire and arrangements, or advises artists about which take or solo is the best. But there is always a mental and emotional component as well.

“There is a massive amount of psychology involved. It depends on the individual. In certain instances, say ‘Slowhand,’ I was overdubbing Eric Clapton playing lead guitar on an instrumental called ‘Peaches and Diesel.’ Basically, it was a weekend, there was no one else there, just him and me. He was just goofing around. He wasn’t giving it anything. And I realized, knowing Eric as I did, Eric is quite lazy. It’s difficult to drag him into a studio and put a guitar in his hands and get him to play. So he’s playing, and it’s not really going anywhere. So I deliberately ticked him off. I was really rude to him. And he played one of the most aggressive, astonishing solos. He got really mad, and he played like he was mad. And it worked. So there’s an example, not of making them relaxed, but the other side. It can work both ways.”