Bob Ezrin

Full Name: Robert Alan Ezrin
Birth Date: 1949
Birth Place: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Robert Alan "Bob" Ezrin (born 1949) is a Canadian born music producer, known for his work with artists including Alice Cooper, Kiss and Pink Floyd. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2004.

Ezrin was born in Toronto, Ontario. In a career as a music and entertainment producer that has, as of 2010, spanned 40 years, Bob Ezrin has worked on recordings with artists including: Alice Cooper, Kiss, Pink Floyd, Lou Reed, Roberta Flack, Peter Gabriel, Dr. John, Nils Lofgren, Kansas, Rod Stewart, Berlin, Hanoi Rocks, Nine Inch Nails, The Jayhawks, 30 Seconds to Mars, The Darkness, Jane's Addiction, Julian Lennon and The Deftones. Recently, Ezrin has produced a live and TV extravaganza to reopen the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, starring Green Day and U2 and has worked on an album and live opera with L'Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio in Rome, Italy. As well, he co-produced Peter Gabriel's new album, Scratch My Back. He has also been working with Christian Kane on his new album and with the Canadian Tenors and young pop sensation Fefe Dobson on her album Joy.

On February 18, 2010, Ezrin mobilized Young Artists for Haiti. Fifty Canadian artists recorded a rendition of renowned hip hop star K'naan's "Wavin' Flag" for the victims of the Haiti quake. The song was reworked by Ezrin to include specific lyrics for Haiti and will be released in the coming weeks with proceeds going to Free the Children, War Child Canada and World Vision Canada. He is currently producing the new The Feeling album, which is due for release in 2010. Pre-production was recently done in Nashville, while recording will begin in London in March, 2010. In May 2009, Ezrin co-produced The Clearwater Concert at Madison Square Garden celebrating the 90th birthday of legendary musician and activist, Pete Seeger, and starring over 50 guest artists including Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp, Ben Harper, Joan Baez, Tom Morello, Ani DiFranco, Emmylou Harris and Kris Kristofferson. He was also co-producer of the PBS broadcast of the event.

Bob Ezrin has been described by Alice Cooper as "our George Martin". Having defined the group's sound on his first album as a producer, Love it to Death in 1971, Ezrin embarked on a long-term collaboration that by 1973 would see the release of the number one Billion Dollar Babies album a year after the success of School's Out and Alice Cooper established as the biggest act in the world. After the group separated, Ezrin continued his collaboration with Alice as a solo artist in 1975 with Cooper's ground breaking Welcome To My Nightmare. Ezrin worked with the Alice Cooper group (and later with Alice as a solo artist) not just as a producer but also co-writer, arranger and musician. Ezrin produced Kiss's best selling album, Destroyer, in 1976. As explained by Peter Criss during an interview in the documentary KISS: Krazy Killer (1994), Ezrin co-wrote, arranged and performed the piano accompaniment to the song Beth. He went on to produce two other albums with the band and remains close to them to this day.

Ezrin has worked with Pink Floyd on a number of occasions, co-producing the albums The Wall, A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell. He has also co-written their songs "The Trial", "Signs of Life", "Learning to Fly" and "Take It Back". For his work with Pink Floyd after the departure of Roger Waters, he was attacked by Waters in the lyrics of the song Too Much Rope from Amused to Death: "Each man has his price Bob / And yours was pretty low". Ezrin created new theatrical, television and live events with @Radical.Media in New York including Jay-Z's feature film, Fade to Black. In 1993, he co-founded a computer software company called 7th Level which developed and published educational and entertainment CD-ROMs including a highly popular and groundbreaking series of Monty Python games. In 1999, he co-founded Enigma Digital, a pioneer internet radio provider. It was eventually sold to Clear Channel, where he became vice-chairman of Clear Channel Interactive. Ezrin was also Chairman of Live Nation Artists Recordings in 2007 and the first half of 2008.

Ezrin was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in April, 2004, and into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame in March, 2006. He is Chairman Emeritus of the Los Angeles Mentoring Partnership, Vice President of the The Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, a founder of MusiCounts, CARAS' music education initiative and, along with U2's the Edge and Henry Juszkiewicz the CEO of Gibson Guitar Corporation, a co-founder of Music Rising (www.musicrising.org), an initiative to replace the musical instruments that were destroyed or lost in the gulf coast region due to the hurricanes and flooding of 2005. He is also a past Trustee and Governor of NARAS.

In 1982, Ezrin briefly appeared as the host of Enterprise, a City-TV panel show replacing Dr. Morton Shulman's The Schulman File. He has been a keynote speaker at numerous music, entertainment and business conferences as well as a guest lecturer at various universities and colleges around North America. He has also been a frequent interviewee for documentary films and television. In 2007, Ezrin joined the Board of Advisors of Tonic, an online media site that produces and aggregates content around goodness. Ezrin is now a partner in Bigger Picture Group in Nashville, TN and continues his work in the studio as well as on film, television and in theatrical productions. In 2008 he co-founed Beat Kangz electronics, a music technology start up focused on rap music equipment. In 2009 Ezrin, along with Garth Richardson, started Nimbus School of Recording Arts in Vancouver, BC. He is married and has five grown children.

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