Biography

John McClure was born on June 28, 1929 in Rahway, New Jersey, USA. He was a producer, known for Heavy Metal (1981), Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982) and Great Performances (1971). He was married to Susan Presson. He died on June 17, 2014 in Belmont, Vermont, USA.

Producer at Columbia (now Sony) Records; once ran the division Columbia Masterworks.

He was a record producer and engineer who helped create some of the most famous classical music recordings of the 20th century.

He learned piano pieces by ear as a boy, but said he struggled whenever he "got to the hard part." Decades later, he said he had never really mastered score reading.

He worked with Igor Stravinsky, Bruno Walter, Aaron Copland, Rudolf Serkin, and Leonard Bernstein. He also worked with Dave Brubeck and Joe Nin Williams; recorded 'Peter, Paul and Mary'; and helped engineer the string parts for Pink Floyd's 1979 double album "The Wall.".

He attended New York University and the New School for Social Research (now the New School), but did not receive a degree. He worked in the merchant marine and took a string of other jobs, including installing stereo systems, before getting an entry-level job at the Carnegie Hall Recording Company in 1950. Within a few years he had become an engineer for Columbia Records, and moved on to producing.

I preferred that the artist be very much involved because I didn't have that much faith in my musicianship. I was not a trained conductor and I hadn't studied conducting and I wanted their inputs very badly. I was afraid I'd miss something, so I always pushed my people to stay involved. [in a 1997 interview with Michael Hobson of Classic Records]