Terry Manning, whose fingerprints are pressed into some of rock's most enduring records, has died at the age of 77. His son, Lucas Manning, confirmed that he passed away at home in El Paso, Texas. Reports from the Memphis Flyer, close to Manning’s long-time musical home, note that he suffered a “sudden fatal fall.”
To the wider world, Manning might have been best known for his work on Led Zeppelin’s pivotal third album, but his career stretched far wider, threading through soul, R&B, and rock & roll. Manning was, in equal measure, a studio craftsman, a musician, and, as it turned out, a patient witness to the birth of many landmark records.
He first crossed paths with Jimmy Page backstage in 1966, when Manning’s band, Lawson and Four More, supported the Yardbirds during Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars tour. A fast friendship followed. “We were really very good friends and in close touch,” Manning recalled to Memphis Magazine. “Jimmy would send me cassette copies of the first two albums before they were even released. ‘Oh here’s what we’ve done, what do you think?’”
Manning’s handiwork on Led Zeppelin III would help define the band’s next chapter. He himself noted the leap in ambition. “The first two LPs showed great promise,” he said, “but they weren’t super diverse — and I think Jimmy really knew that the third album is so important to a band … the third has always been the real thing that turned on the question of, ‘Are we a group that will last a long time?’ So he really went in with the intent of doing something way beyond what they’d done before.” The result was not just a hit, but a statement. Led Zeppelin III topped charts and eventually went six-times platinum. Page would later call it “the real beginning of the band.”
Manning himself was born in Oklahoma but spent much of his youth in motion, trailing behind his father, a travelling minister. His own path, though, was always leading towards Memphis. Inspired by the address he spotted on a 45 of “Last Night” by the Mar-Keys, Manning showed up, uninvited, at Stax Records in 1963. Steve Cropper handed him a broom. The rest followed.
By 1966, he was among the first hires at the upstart Ardent Studios. Under the quiet genius of founder John Fry and the soulful guidance of producer Willie Mitchell, Manning found himself working with a parade of future legends — Isaac Hayes, Booker T. & the MGs, the Staple Singers. “I got a full education,” Manning would later reflect. “I could not have asked for any better school.”
Though many remember him for his rock credentials, Manning’s discography is a thicket of surprises. He enjoyed a long and fruitful run with ZZ Top, beginning with 1973’s Tres Hombres and extending through the slick, synth-heavy Eliminator, and later Recycler. He was behind the boards for Molly Hatchet, George Thorogood, Joe Cocker, and Joe Walsh. He even lent his technical touch to Iron Maiden’s 2010 album, The Final Frontier.
Along the way, he opened his own Studio 6, spent time at Abbey Road, and, at the behest of Island Records’ Chris Blackwell, refurbished and ran Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas — a space that, under Manning’s watch, became an oasis for artists for nearly two decades.
Later in life, Manning shifted his creative eye towards photography, launched the Lucky 7 label to champion Memphis’s musical roots, and remained, always, a student of his craft.
Reflecting on his journey, Manning once said: “The people and places I’ve bumped into have been amazing. To have been in Stax, in Ardent, Abbey Road, Compass Point. I can’t believe it sometimes. I’m just lucky, very lucky, to have done all that.”
Indeed, the music world was lucky too.
