Trivia

Influential record producer who is known for "You Really Got Me", "My Generation" and "Friday On My Mind" among many others.

In the late 1960s Talmy worked with American artists Lee Hazlewood and Tim Rose and supervised film music with his favored arranger David Whitaker.

He was the elder brother of the American linguist Leonard Talmy.

He also played guitar or percussion on some of his productions.

Thanks to his work with the Who and the Kinks, Talmy is considered at the forefront of the British music scene in the mid-1960s.

Talmy joined Decca Records as an independent record producer (among the first in the UK) working with Decca's pop performers, such as Irish trio the Bachelors, leading to the release of the hit single "Charmaine".

Shel Talmy was an American record producer, songwriter, and arranger, best known for his work in England in the 1960s with the Who, the Kinks, and many other artists.

In his book Before I Get Old, Dave Marsh commented that the records that Talmy made with the Who "are technically among the best that the band ever did, and they have a distinct, original sound.".

Though he was famous primarily for his contributions to rock music, Talmy also worked with musicians from the folk scene, including Pentangle, Roy Harper and Ralph McTell. He has also worked in the pop, orchestral, pop and punk categories.

He graduated from Fairfax High School in Los Angeles in June 1955, the same high school attended by songwriter Jerry Leiber, A&M label owner and performer Herb Alpert, Michael Jackson, and producer Phil Spector.

After working for ABC Television, he became a recording engineer at Conway Studios in Los Angeles where owner/engineer Phil Yeend trained him on three-track recording equipment. Three days later, Talmy had his first assignment, producing the record "Falling Star" by Debbie Sharron.

By the early 1970s, Talmy was doing less record production work and pursuing his other interests in the book publishing and filmmaking worlds. He was however still in demand as a producer and worked on records by Small Faces, String Driven Thing, Fumble, Coven, Chris White, Mick Cox Band, Blues Project, Rumplestiltskin and others.

In 2017, Ace Records began issuing a series of compilations from Talmy's vintage catalog, including the career anthology Making Time 'A Shel Talmy Production', produced by Alec Palao.

For CBS, he produced Music to Spy By and The Revolutionary Piano of Nicky Hopkins, both arranged and conducted by David Whitaker.

In 2003, a tribute to Talmy was aired on the radio program Little Steven's Underground Garage.