Winner of 1 JUNO Award
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, Hanoi Rocks, Roberta Flack, Peter Gabriel, Dr. John, Nils Lofgren, Kansas, Rod Stewart, Berlin, Nine Inch Nails, The Jayhawks, 30 Seconds to Mars, The Darkness, Jane’s Addiction, Julian Lennon and The Deftones.
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”.
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 May 2009, Ezrin co-produced The Clearwater Concert at Madison Square Garden celebrating the 90th birthday of 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.
On February 18, 2010, Ezrin mobilized Young Artists for Haiti. Fifty Canadian artists recorded a rendition of 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.
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