Larry Johnson (film producer)
Encyclopedia
Larry Alderman Johnson (June 11, 1947 – January 21, 2010) was an American
film and music producer
, director
, and editor
best known for his long association with musician Neil Young
.
and Rutgers University
. While at Peekskill Military Academy, his creative skills and "good ear" for music were well respected. He served as a band leader and drum major. Johnson became involved in filmmaking in the late 1960s and was originally one of the East Coast guerilla documentary filmmakers that emerged in that era. Part of a New York scene that also included Martin Scorsese
, Brian De Palma
, editor Thelma Schoonmaker
, L.M. Kit Carson and others, they brought a street-wise sensibility and engaged political bent to their work that reflected the turbulent era of the late Sixties.
Johnson lengthy career includes stints as producer, director, editor, sound recordist, cinematographer
, and production manager. Beginning his career as a sound recordist, he was nominated for an Academy Award in 1971 for Best Sound for his location recording, mixing and sound design
on the feature documentary
, Woodstock
and also was involved as an assistant to director Michael Wadleigh
.
In the following year, Marjoe, an expose of the evangelist
-con man Marjoe Gortner
, was released in which Johnson was the sound recordist. Frequently teamed with veteran cameraman David Myers, in the early 1970s Johnson was frequently associated with TVTV
, a band of renegade documentarians who brought a fresh sensibility to the conventions of television documentaries and their work appeared on PBS and gained much critical respect.
in 1969 where Young, who was performing as part of Crosby, Stills & Nash, refused to be filmed (although there is footage on Young's "Archives" of Young and Stills playing the slower, original arrangement of "Mr. Soul" on acoustic guitars). Johnson and cameraman David Meyers were recruited by CSNY to film their residence at the Fillmore East
in 1970 for a never-completed concert film. 1971 saw Frederic Underhill and Johnson produce Neil Young’s film Journey Through the Past
, which incorporated some of the CSNY 1970 footage and was the beginning of his long association with Neil Young. He received producer credit for the soundtrack LP.
In 1978, Johnson re-united with Young for Young’s concert film, Rust Never Sleeps
, and was also producer of Young’s feature film, the eccentric "nuclear comedy", Human Highway
featuring Young, Dennis Hopper
, Dean Stockwell
, Russ Tamblyn
and Sally Kirkland
, which was released in 1982. His continued association with Young also found him producing the 1984 Solo Trans
LaserDisc
/VHS
directed by Hal Ashby
and directing Young’s 1986 Cow Palace
concert "Live From a Rusted-Out Garage" for Pay Per View. This little-seen broadcast was a successor of sorts to Young’s fabled Rust Never Sleeps but it is Johnson’s majestic sweeping camera gliding over the audience combined with the ferocious performance of a pumped-up Young that makes this arguably the single greatest video document of Neil Young and Crazy Horse
.
As head of Young’s film production company, Shakey Pictures, Johnson has produced Young’s concert videos, Weld
, Year of the Horse
, Neil Young: Silver and Gold
, and Neil Young: Red Rocks Live, directing the latter two as well. Johnson continued working with Young on his many projects including the long-awaited The Archives and was co-producer of Young’s ambitious concept album Greendale
(2003). Described by Young as a "musical novel," it was a series of songs depicting a small-town California
family caught up in the post-9/11
world, as they struggle to maintain their way of life during a time of social and political upheaval. Reminiscent of David Lynch
’s Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks
, with the Devil
lurking in the shadows, Johnson helped Young craft the multi-layered backstories for the song’s characters and the record and ensuing film remain one of the singer-songwriters greatest accomplishments. Johnson also produced the accompanying movie, directed by Young, and oversaw the two year Greendale tour, a rock concert-cum-Broadway musical hybrid that was an astonishing realization of the concept. Recently, both a comic book
and a play based on the concept album have been reputed to be in the works.
Johnson also co-produced Young’s 2006 protest album, Living with War
and served as in-house video director on many of Young’s tours, including the CSNY "Freedom of Speech" tour, which drew heavily from Young's anti-war album. While producing videos for the Living with War
website, Young and Johnson became acquainted with "Nightline" correspondent Michael Cerre, who provided stories of his experiences as a correspondent in Iraq
. Cerre and Young began to craft a narrative that would incorporate footage of soldiers in Iraq intercut with concert footage of the tour. Johnson produced the feature, which garnered Young his strongest reviews as a filmmaker. Writing for the Huffington Post website, Evan Handler opined, "I feel strange saying it, but "CSNY/Déjà Vu" might just be the most important film to come out of the 2008 Sundance
festival. Not due to any great filmmaking innovation (though I do think it's a good movie), but due to the simple choice by director Neil Young (working under the pseudonym
Bernard Shakey) to make the film's focus not so much his and his bandmates' outspokenness in opposition to the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, but the reactions that outspokenness provoked in their audiences and the press." The film was also accepted at the Berlin Festival. It opened in American theatres in July 2008 and received further praise for its emotional power, with the Los Angeles Times saying, "Though it may be another in a long line of choir-preaching, anti-Iraq war documentaries, "CSNY/Déjà Vu," Neil Young's effective hybrid of concert film and political snapshot, is one of the shrewdest and most entertaining of the bunch....Recent and archival interview, news, war and music footage, which often juxtapose the Vietnam and Iraq conflicts, round out this unflinching, well-constructed picture," while Richard Roeper gave it a thumbs up on "At the Movies", calling it, “A good, strong documentary....(Young) is a brilliant artist;” and Steven Rea of "The Philadelphia Enquirer" wrote, "as Young - er, Shakey - shifts the focus from himself and his bandmates to several of these veterans, the film achieves a level of unexpected power and poignancy." Johnson was heavily involved in the both the video and physical production of the two decade gestation of Young's The Archives Vol. 1 1963-1972 and was credited as the producer when released in June 2009.
’s Rolling Thunder Review fantasia, Renaldo & Clara, and was a line producer for the legendary The Last Waltz
concert and film. In the 1980s, Johnson turned to directing concert videos for various musicians including Joni Mitchell
's "Shadows and Light", Belinda Carlisle
's "Live in Concert", New Edition
's "Past & Present", and Bobby Brown
's "My Prerogative". He also directed music videos, including the popular jingoist anthem, “God Bless the U.S.A.” by country singer Lee Greenwood
.
1993 saw the release of a different kind of music video for Johnson, “Lean by Jarre,” a symphonic performance by the Oscar-winning film composer Maurice Jarre
, whose long collaboration with director David Lean
was the basis for the concert video. With clips from such Lean film classics as Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, the home video release was a testament to the unforgettable contribution of Jarre’s scores to Lean’s later films as well confirmation that Johnson was a master of the in-concert form, be it classical or popular and it remains a career highlight.
In 1995 Johnson produced and directed the innovative Forrest Gump: Music and the Times CD-ROM
featuring songs from the Academy Award-winning film’s soundtrack and interviews with the recording artists including reunions of the members of The Byrds
and Buffalo Springfield
. He also worked outside of his involvement with Neil Young, often utilizing the talents of his son, Ben, an acclaimed director/cameraman in his own right. Though perhaps not well known to the public at large, L.A. Johnson was widely respected by his peers in both the film and music communities. Twice married and divorced to music contractor Leslie Morris, he was father to a son, Ben (b. 1982) and a daughter, Hannah (b. 1984). An avid fisherman, he named his production company Upstream Productions, and lived on a boat in the Bay Area.
in Redwood City, California
on January 21, 2010 at the age of 62.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
film and music producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
, director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, and editor
Film editing
Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...
best known for his long association with musician Neil Young
Neil Young
Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...
.
Early life
Born in Ft. Benning, Georgia to a military family, this self-described “military brat” attended Peekskill Military AcademyPeekskill Military Academy
Peekskill Military Academy was founded as 'Peekskill Academy'. It was a military academy for young men and women, founded in 1833, located in Peekskill, New York, United States. The academy was built by a hanging tree and when a building was built near the great tree , one of the British who was...
and Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
. While at Peekskill Military Academy, his creative skills and "good ear" for music were well respected. He served as a band leader and drum major. Johnson became involved in filmmaking in the late 1960s and was originally one of the East Coast guerilla documentary filmmakers that emerged in that era. Part of a New York scene that also included Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
, Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma
Brian Russell De Palma is an American film director and writer. In a career spanning over 40 years, he is probably best known for his suspense and crime thriller films, including such box office successes as the horror film Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission:...
, editor Thelma Schoonmaker
Thelma Schoonmaker
Thelma Schoonmaker is an American film editor who has worked with director Martin Scorsese for over forty years. She has edited all of Scorsese's films since Raging Bull...
, L.M. Kit Carson and others, they brought a street-wise sensibility and engaged political bent to their work that reflected the turbulent era of the late Sixties.
Johnson lengthy career includes stints as producer, director, editor, sound recordist, cinematographer
Cinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
, and production manager. Beginning his career as a sound recordist, he was nominated for an Academy Award in 1971 for Best Sound for his location recording, mixing and sound design
Sound design
Sound design is the process of specifying, acquiring, manipulating or generating audio elements. It is employed in a variety of disciplines including filmmaking, television production, theatre, sound recording and reproduction, live performance, sound art, post-production and video game software...
on the feature documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
, Woodstock
Woodstock (film)
Woodstock is a 1970 American documentary on the Woodstock Festival that took place in August 1969 at Bethel in New York. Entertainment Weekly called this film the benchmark of concert movies and one of the most entertaining documentaries ever made...
and also was involved as an assistant to director Michael Wadleigh
Michael Wadleigh
Michael Wadleigh is an American movie director and cinematographer renowned for his groundbreaking documentary of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, Woodstock....
.
In the following year, Marjoe, an expose of the evangelist
Evangelism
Evangelism refers to the practice of relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs. The term is often used in reference to Christianity....
-con man Marjoe Gortner
Marjoe Gortner
Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner, generally known as Marjoe Gortner , is a former revivalist who first gained a certain fame in the late 1940s when he became the youngest ordained preacher at the age of four...
, was released in which Johnson was the sound recordist. Frequently teamed with veteran cameraman David Myers, in the early 1970s Johnson was frequently associated with TVTV
TVTV
TVTV was a San Francisco-based pioneering video collective founded in 1972 by Allen Rucker, Michael Shamberg, Tom Weinberg, Hudson Marquez and Megan Williams. Shamberg was author of the 1971 "do-it-yourself" video production manual Guerrilla Television. Over the years, more than thirty "guerrilla...
, a band of renegade documentarians who brought a fresh sensibility to the conventions of television documentaries and their work appeared on PBS and gained much critical respect.
Working with Neil Young
L.A. Johnson and Neil Young first crossed paths at WoodstockWoodstock Festival
Woodstock Music & Art Fair was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969...
in 1969 where Young, who was performing as part of Crosby, Stills & Nash, refused to be filmed (although there is footage on Young's "Archives" of Young and Stills playing the slower, original arrangement of "Mr. Soul" on acoustic guitars). Johnson and cameraman David Meyers were recruited by CSNY to film their residence at the Fillmore East
Fillmore East
The Fillmore East was rock promoter Bill Graham's rock venue on Second Avenue near East 6th Street in the East Village neighborhood of the Manhattan borough of New York City. It was open from 1968 to 1971, and featured some of the biggest acts in rock music at the time...
in 1970 for a never-completed concert film. 1971 saw Frederic Underhill and Johnson produce Neil Young’s film Journey Through the Past
Journey Through the Past (film)
Journey Through the Past is a 1972 film by Neil Young. Originally shot in 16mm format and then transferred for theatrical release the experimental film is a self-directed combination of concert footage from 1966 onward, backstage footage and semi-fantastic art film-like sequences. Although Journey...
, which incorporated some of the CSNY 1970 footage and was the beginning of his long association with Neil Young. He received producer credit for the soundtrack LP.
In 1978, Johnson re-united with Young for Young’s concert film, Rust Never Sleeps
Rust Never Sleeps
Rust Never Sleeps is an album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse released in 1979. The bulk of the album was recorded live at San Francisco's Cow Palace, with overdubs added. Audience noise is removed as much as possible, although it is clearly audible at certain points, most noticeably on the opening...
, and was also producer of Young’s feature film, the eccentric "nuclear comedy", Human Highway
Human Highway
Human Highway is a 1982 comedy film starring and co-directed by Neil Young under his pseudonym Bernard Shakey. Dean Stockwell co-directed the film and acted along with Russ Tamblyn, Dennis Hopper, and the band Devo...
featuring Young, Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...
, Dean Stockwell
Dean Stockwell
Dean Stockwell is an American actor of film and television, with a career spanning over 65 years. As a child actor under contract to MGM he first came to the public's attention in films such as Anchors Aweigh and The Green Years; as a young adult he played a lead role in the 1957 Broadway and...
, Russ Tamblyn
Russ Tamblyn
Russell Irving "Russ" Tamblyn is an American film and television actor, who is arguably best known for his performance in the 1961 movie musical West Side Story as Riff, the leader of the Jets gang....
and Sally Kirkland
Sally Kirkland
Sally Kirkland is an American film and television actress.-Early life:Kirkland was named after her mother, fashion editor Sally Kirkland, who was a fashion editor at Vogue and LIFE magazines, and was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her father, Frederic McMichael Kirkland, worked in the scrap...
, which was released in 1982. His continued association with Young also found him producing the 1984 Solo Trans
Solo Trans
Solo Trans is a concert film by Neil Young, released in 1984. It was recorded at the Hara Arena in Dayton, Ohio on September 18, 1983 during Young's Solo Trans tour...
LaserDisc
Laserdisc
LaserDisc was a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. Initially licensed, sold, and marketed as MCA DiscoVision in North America in 1978, the technology was previously referred to interally as Optical Videodisc System, Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Optical...
/VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
directed by Hal Ashby
Hal Ashby
Hal Ashby was an American film director and film editor.-Birth and early years:Born William Hal Ashby in Ogden, Utah, Ashby grew up in a Mormon household and had a tumultuous childhood as part of a dysfunctional family which included the divorce of his parents, his father's suicide and his...
and directing Young’s 1986 Cow Palace
Cow Palace
Cow Palace is an indoor arena, in Daly City, California, situated on the city's border with neighboring San Francisco, notable as a sporting arena.-History:...
concert "Live From a Rusted-Out Garage" for Pay Per View. This little-seen broadcast was a successor of sorts to Young’s fabled Rust Never Sleeps but it is Johnson’s majestic sweeping camera gliding over the audience combined with the ferocious performance of a pumped-up Young that makes this arguably the single greatest video document of Neil Young and Crazy Horse
Crazy Horse (band)
Crazy Horse is an American rock band best known for its association with Neil Young. It has been co-credited on a number of albums throughout Young's career and has released five albums of its own.-Early years:...
.
As head of Young’s film production company, Shakey Pictures, Johnson has produced Young’s concert videos, Weld
Weld (album)
Weld is a live album and concert video by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1991, comprising performances recorded on the tour to promote the Ragged Glory album...
, Year of the Horse
Year of the Horse
Year of the Horse is a 1997 documentary directed by Jim Jarmusch following Neil Young and Crazy Horse on their 1996 tour.-Eponymous album:Year of the Horse is also a live album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse released in 1997...
, Neil Young: Silver and Gold
Neil Young: Silver and Gold
Neil Young: Silver & Gold is a live video by Neil Young performing solo on acoustic guitar and piano. All but the last song were performed at Austin, Texas' Bass Concert Hall during his 1999 solo acoustic tour.-Track listing:# Intro# Looking Forward...
, and Neil Young: Red Rocks Live, directing the latter two as well. Johnson continued working with Young on his many projects including the long-awaited The Archives and was co-producer of Young’s ambitious concept album Greendale
Greendale (album)
Greendale is the name of an album, movie and graphic novel by Neil Young. As the twenty-seventh album by Neil Young, Young and Crazy Horse's Greendale, a 10-song rock opera, is set in a fictional California seaside town...
(2003). Described by Young as a "musical novel," it was a series of songs depicting a small-town California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
family caught up in the post-9/11
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
world, as they struggle to maintain their way of life during a time of social and political upheaval. Reminiscent of David Lynch
David Lynch
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
’s Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks is an American television serial drama created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. The series follows the investigation headed by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper , of the murder of a popular teenager and homecoming queen, Laura Palmer...
, with the Devil
Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
lurking in the shadows, Johnson helped Young craft the multi-layered backstories for the song’s characters and the record and ensuing film remain one of the singer-songwriters greatest accomplishments. Johnson also produced the accompanying movie, directed by Young, and oversaw the two year Greendale tour, a rock concert-cum-Broadway musical hybrid that was an astonishing realization of the concept. Recently, both a comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
and a play based on the concept album have been reputed to be in the works.
Johnson also co-produced Young’s 2006 protest album, Living with War
Living With War
Living with War is the twenty-ninth Grammy and Juno Award-nominated studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released in 2006. The album's lyrics, titles, and conceptual style are highly critical of the policies of the George W. Bush administration; the CTV website defined it as "a musical...
and served as in-house video director on many of Young’s tours, including the CSNY "Freedom of Speech" tour, which drew heavily from Young's anti-war album. While producing videos for the Living with War
Living With War
Living with War is the twenty-ninth Grammy and Juno Award-nominated studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, released in 2006. The album's lyrics, titles, and conceptual style are highly critical of the policies of the George W. Bush administration; the CTV website defined it as "a musical...
website, Young and Johnson became acquainted with "Nightline" correspondent Michael Cerre, who provided stories of his experiences as a correspondent in Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
. Cerre and Young began to craft a narrative that would incorporate footage of soldiers in Iraq intercut with concert footage of the tour. Johnson produced the feature, which garnered Young his strongest reviews as a filmmaker. Writing for the Huffington Post website, Evan Handler opined, "I feel strange saying it, but "CSNY/Déjà Vu" might just be the most important film to come out of the 2008 Sundance
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
festival. Not due to any great filmmaking innovation (though I do think it's a good movie), but due to the simple choice by director Neil Young (working under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Bernard Shakey) to make the film's focus not so much his and his bandmates' outspokenness in opposition to the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, but the reactions that outspokenness provoked in their audiences and the press." The film was also accepted at the Berlin Festival. It opened in American theatres in July 2008 and received further praise for its emotional power, with the Los Angeles Times saying, "Though it may be another in a long line of choir-preaching, anti-Iraq war documentaries, "CSNY/Déjà Vu," Neil Young's effective hybrid of concert film and political snapshot, is one of the shrewdest and most entertaining of the bunch....Recent and archival interview, news, war and music footage, which often juxtapose the Vietnam and Iraq conflicts, round out this unflinching, well-constructed picture," while Richard Roeper gave it a thumbs up on "At the Movies", calling it, “A good, strong documentary....(Young) is a brilliant artist;” and Steven Rea of "The Philadelphia Enquirer" wrote, "as Young - er, Shakey - shifts the focus from himself and his bandmates to several of these veterans, the film achieves a level of unexpected power and poignancy." Johnson was heavily involved in the both the video and physical production of the two decade gestation of Young's The Archives Vol. 1 1963-1972 and was credited as the producer when released in June 2009.
lincvolt
Johnson continued to work with Young on his latest film project, a documentary about converting older gas-guzzling automobiles into fuel-efficient, low emission, environment-friendly vehicles titled, "Linc-Volt".Other projects
Returning to the rock scene in 1975, Johnson handled sound recording on Bob DylanBob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
’s Rolling Thunder Review fantasia, Renaldo & Clara, and was a line producer for the legendary The Last Waltz
The Last Waltz
The Last Waltz was a concert by the rock group The Band, held on American Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco...
concert and film. In the 1980s, Johnson turned to directing concert videos for various musicians including Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...
's "Shadows and Light", Belinda Carlisle
Belinda Carlisle
Belinda Jo Carlisle is an American singer who gained worldwide fame as the lead vocalist of the Go-Go's, one of the most successful all-female bands and the first such group whose members wrote their own songs and played their own instruments...
's "Live in Concert", New Edition
New Edition
New Edition is an R&B group formed in Boston in 1978. The group reached its height of popularity during the 1980s. They were the progenitors of the boy band movement of the 1980s and 1990s and led the way for groups like New Kids on the Block, Boyz II Men, Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync...
's "Past & Present", and Bobby Brown
Bobby Brown
Robert Barisford "Bobby" Brown is an American R&B singer-songwriter, occasional rapper, and dancer. After success in pop group New Edition, Brown began his solo career in 1987 and had a string of Top 10 Billboard hits, culminating in a Grammy Award. He was a pioneer of New Jack Swing music, a...
's "My Prerogative". He also directed music videos, including the popular jingoist anthem, “God Bless the U.S.A.” by country singer Lee Greenwood
Lee Greenwood
Melvin Lee Greenwood is an American country music artist. Active since the early 1980s, he has released more than twenty major-label albums and has charted more than 35 singles on the Billboard country music charts....
.
1993 saw the release of a different kind of music video for Johnson, “Lean by Jarre,” a symphonic performance by the Oscar-winning film composer Maurice Jarre
Maurice Jarre
Maurice-Alexis Jarre was a French composer and conductor.Although he composed several concert works, he is best known for his film scores, and is particularly known for his collaborations with film director David Lean. Jarre composed the scores to all of Lean's films since Lawrence of Arabia...
, whose long collaboration with director David Lean
David Lean
Sir David Lean CBE was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best remembered for big-screen epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai , Lawrence of Arabia ,...
was the basis for the concert video. With clips from such Lean film classics as Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, the home video release was a testament to the unforgettable contribution of Jarre’s scores to Lean’s later films as well confirmation that Johnson was a master of the in-concert form, be it classical or popular and it remains a career highlight.
In 1995 Johnson produced and directed the innovative Forrest Gump: Music and the Times CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
featuring songs from the Academy Award-winning film’s soundtrack and interviews with the recording artists including reunions of the members of The Byrds
The Byrds
The Byrds were an American rock band, formed in Los Angeles, California in 1964. The band underwent multiple line-up changes throughout its existence, with frontman Roger McGuinn remaining the sole consistent member until the group disbanded in 1973...
and Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield is a North American folk rock band renown both for its music and as a springboard for the careers of Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and Jim Messina. Among the first wave of North American bands to become popular in the wake of the British invasion, the group combined...
. He also worked outside of his involvement with Neil Young, often utilizing the talents of his son, Ben, an acclaimed director/cameraman in his own right. Though perhaps not well known to the public at large, L.A. Johnson was widely respected by his peers in both the film and music communities. Twice married and divorced to music contractor Leslie Morris, he was father to a son, Ben (b. 1982) and a daughter, Hannah (b. 1984). An avid fisherman, he named his production company Upstream Productions, and lived on a boat in the Bay Area.
Death
Johnson died of a heart attackMyocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
in Redwood City, California
Redwood City, California
Redwood City is a California charter city located on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California, approximately 27 miles south of San Francisco, and 24 miles north of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans from its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people, to its tradition as a port for...
on January 21, 2010 at the age of 62.
Achievements
- Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Sound, Woodstock 1971
- Nominated for a Grammy for co-producing “Looking for a Leader” from Living with War 2007