Led Zeppelin and ZZ Top Engineer Terry Manning Dies at 77

Terry Manning has died after working as a producer and engineer with Led Zeppelin, ZZ Top and Joe Walsh, among many others. He was 77.

His son Lucas Manning confirmed his death on Tuesday at home in El Paso, Texas. The Memphis Flyer, from Manning’s long-time career base, reported that he’d suffered a “sudden fatal fall.”

Manning’s most important early rock engineering job was 1970’s Led Zeppelin III. Manning was a musician in his own right, and Jimmy Page first met him when Manning’s band Lawson and Four More opened for the Page-era Yardbirds in 1966 on Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars.

READ MORE: Ranking All 92 Led Zeppelin Songs

“We were really very good friends and in close touch,” Manning later told 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 issued his first solo album, Home Sweet Home, the same year Led Zeppelin III arrived. He said Led Zeppelin’s first two LPs “showed great promise,” 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.”

Led Zeppelin III would become a chart-topping six-times-platinum success. Later, Page described the LP as “the real beginning of the band.”

Born in Oklahoma, Manning moved around a lot as the child of a traveling minister. He landed in Memphis after lobbying for his father to take a job there because one of Manning’s first music purchases had been “Last Night” by the Mar-Keys. The single listed the address of Stax Records, 926 E. McLemore, Memphis, Tennessee. Manning showed up there unannounced in 1963, and studio ace Steve Cropper helped him get a job sweeping up.

By 1966, Manning had become one of nearby Ardent Studios’ first employees. He also worked with legendary Hi Records producer Willie Mitchell. Manning was soon recording a parade of R&B legends, including Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers and Cropper’s band, Booker T. and the MGs.

“I got a full education,” Manning told Memphis’ Commercial Appeal. “I learned the technical side from [Ardent founder] John Fry and the emotional aspects with someone like Willie Mitchell, and the music and in-between parts from people like Steve [Cropper] and Booker. T. [Jones]. I could not have asked for any better school.”

He Also Worked With Joe Walsh, Iron Maiden and Joe Cocker

More recent Manning albums included a tribute to Bobby Fuller called West Texas Skyline and Playin’ in Elvis’ House, which was recorded in Elvis Presley‘s first home on Memphis’ Audubon Avenue. After Led Zeppelin III, however, Manning would become best known for his studio work with some of rock’s biggest acts.

A long run of collaborations with ZZ Top began with 1973’s Tres Hombres and included engineering 1983’s multi-platinum Eliminator. His most recent project with the group was 1990’s million-selling Recycler.

Manning produced Molly Hatchet‘s 1984 album The Deed Is Done, George Thorogood‘s 1985 LP Maverick (home to “I Drink Alone”), Joe Cocker‘s 1986 album Cocker (“You Can Leave Your Hat On”) and Joe Walsh‘s 1987 LP Got Any Gum?. Later, Manning worked as a studio tech on Iron Maiden‘s 2010 album The Final Frontier.

He spent time in the mid-’80s working out of Abbey Road Studios in London, and also opened his own recording facility, Studio 6. In the early ’90s, Island Records owner Chris Blackwell asked Manning to oversee the renovation of Compass Point Studio in the Bahamas, and Manning operated and managed the space for the next two decades. He launched a record label for archival Memphis acts called Lucky 7 and, late in life, launched a successful second career as a photographer.

“The people and places I’ve bumped into have been amazing,” Manning told the Commercial Appeal. “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.”