Hendrix/Zeppelin/Stones

Behind The Glass: The Sounds of A Generation

Meteor 17 Presents:

A Spencer Proffer Production 

HENDRIX, ZEPPELIN, STONES: Behind The Glass:

HENDRIX/ZEPPELIN/STONES is a cinematic story telling mini movie in the form of a documentary (factual vs scripted)- through the lens of world renown, legendary audio engineer and producer Eddie Kramer, the tentpole records he engineered and produced - while examining the socio cultural landscape at the time each evergreen recording took its place in rock history.

The film will be produced in 2024 for it’s premiere on a world class streaming platform in 2025 which Spencer will determine via Meteor 17’s multiple outlet and distribution platforms opportunities around the world.

We will do a deep dive into Eddie’s fertile imagination and vision in securing the trust, confidence and collaboration of our music icons to make the sounds and recordings of many of the most revered, magical and influential artistes in music history– Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Carly Simon, KISS and more. Eddie was there, in the front row. He can and will reveal what he felt and knew to be in their minds and hearts when they created as did - he with his groundbreaking skills.

Our aim will produce a film in the form of a doc that is real—relatable and inspirational to all people around the world - in all walks of life and art. 

Like thematic threads in Meteor 17 films, here SEARCHING is an an anchor theme of this film. What these tentpole artists searched for in writing and producing their timeless work with Eddie engineered will be highlighted.

It's no exaggeration to say that Kramer engineered some of the most influential recordings in modern rock and pop.  During the “Golden Age of Rock”, Hendrix, Zeppelin, The Stones, Traffic and even the Beatles enlisted this young studio wizard to record the sounds that changed music forever. Eddie helped these trailblazers translate the music they heard in their dreams into the records we listen to today.

We are simultaneously developing a stage play written by noted playwrights, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, a table top book, illustrated children’s book and art exhibit around Eddie’s classic and original photos.  We are also developing an episodic television series anchored with Electric Lady Studios modern day, with a look into the artists who have and are recording there, guided by Eddie in the studio which he designed and built for Jimi Hendrix.

Sterling Proffer, former SVP Business Strategy & Development at VICE, will serve as one of the project’s two lead producers.  Mary Wharton, a highly respected director of the recent Tom Petty documentary, “Somewhere You’ll Feel Free” and the Jimmy Carter documentary, “ Rock and Roll President”, will serve as an Executive Producer. Brand strategist and chief creative officer of Tether, Inc., Stanley Hainsworth (Starbucks Entertainment, Nike Entertainment) will be the film’s Associate Producer. 

Eddie recorded and was an integral part of recording many of the greatest albums of all time as well as the biggest moment in rock history, Woodstock. Through his lens and soul, we will see the anchor of rock music today. For fifty + years (and counting), visionary artists have enlisted Eddie to help paint the musical landscapes they hear in their dreams.

Our cinematic film in a doc format, will combine interviews with many legendary colleagues- revered pop and rock music icons, as well as snapshots along with discussions of their time together. We will cut in and around footage of what was happening in the world, socially, politically, and culturally, at each juncture and show its relevance to events of today. The documentary will tell the tales we don’t know about the music, the artists and the inner Eddie when he stood next to and was deeply involved with capturing some of the most important rock music of the past century. We will also show the visionary ethos behind many of the songs that apply to pop culture then and now. This documentary won’t just be a legacy piece about the past; it will show the evergreen nature, themes and impact of the music Eddie was next to and part of, for generations. As the stories and music come to life, the photos will too, by utilizing still photo animation and beyond: Imagine the advanced Ken Burns Effect” of “The Kid Stays in the Picture”.

Eddie’s psyche, imagination, creative and sonic dreams as well as his desire to push greatness forward via his unique skills, next to the talent he befriended, will give our film a sheen of reality and authenticity in this lane, like no other.

NPR aired a one hour special around the 50th anniversary of the launch of Electric Lady Studios in NYC. Eddie was one of 4 people interviewed for this special which went out to the world. It also showed the timelessness of the studio with a view toward the current superstars who record there today (Adele, JayZ, Kendrick Lamar, Lana Del Rey, John Mayer, Black Keys and many more).

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/26/906016218/50-years-later-jimi-hendrixs-electric-lady-studios-is-still-an-artistic-haven

Eddie Kramer helped create the sounds that changed a generation. Besides immortalizing the sounds, he captured the sights too.

THE KRAMER ARCHIVES – PHOTOGRAPHY Eddie’s photos have been exhibited in cities around the world, including The Grammy Museum, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, VH1 Corp HQ in NYC, the San Francisco Art Exchange, Wild About Music Gallery in Santa Monica, The Morrison Hotel Galleries in NYC and California, VIP Gallery in Rotterdam, Gallerie Profilen of Denmark, as well as the Metropolis Studios and Proud Gallery in London. Several of Eddie’s photos are on permanent display at Experience Hendrix in Seattle. Although the music Eddie created with these rock icons were sonic blasts stretching the limits of imagination, his photos are the polar opposite—the pictures are intimate, candid, personal moments of these legends at work, in thought and at play. His images often feel like snapshots of close friends visiting his home, except his young friends were recording some of the greatest songs in rock history.

Ck out Eddie at the mixing board breaking down the classic Hendrix track “Dolly Dagger” in 1972.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP9RgbFSoDA

As we take Eddie’s journey into the making of some of the tentpole albums, we will cut and dissolve into newsreel footage and interviews that will highlight notable, landmark events which coincided with the ascent of the music:

1967

  • Are You Experienced – Jimi Hendrix

  • Axis: Bold as Love – Jimi Hendrix

  • Mr. Fantasy – Traffic

  • All You Need is Love  & Baby You’re A Rich Man– The Beatles

  • Their Satanic Majesties Request - The Rolling Stones

    Significant Events:

  • Detroit Race Riots

The 1967 Detroit Riots were among the most violent and destructive riots in U.S. history. By the time the bloodshed, burning and looting ended after five days, 43 people were dead, 342 injured, nearly 1,400 buildings had been burned and some 7,000 National Guard and U.S. Army troops had been called into service. The entire city was in a state of economic and social strife: As the Motor City’s famed automobile industry shed jobs and moved out of the city center, freeways and suburban amenities beckoned middle- class residents away, which further gutted Detroit’s vitality and left behind vacant storefronts, widespread unemployment and impoverished despair. A similar scenario played out in metropolitan areas across America, where “white flight” reduced the tax base in formerly prosperous cities, causing urban blight, poverty and racial discord.

Thurgood Marshall

Chief Justice Earl Warren swears in Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. As chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1940s and ’50s, Marshall was the architect andexecutor of the legal strategy that ended the era of official racial segregation. The great-grandson of a slave, Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1908. During his 24years on the high court, Associate Justice Marshall consistently challenged discrimination based on race or sex, opposed the death penalty, and vehemently defended affirmative action.

Apollo 1 Fatal Fire

The Apollo program changed forever when a flash fire swept through the Apollo 1 command module during a launch rehearsal test. The three men inside - “Gus” Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee - perished despite the best efforts of the ground crew. NASA had a lofty goal, set by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the decade. The Apollo 1 fire was a difficult time for NASA and its astronauts, but the improvements in astronaut safety allowed the agency to complete the rest of the program and fulfill Kennedy’s dream with no further fatalities.

1968

  • Electric Ladyland – Jimi Hendrix

  • Traffic – Traffic

  • Beggars Banquet - The Rolling Stones

  • Hurdy Gurdy Man - Donovan

Significant Events:

Tet Offensive

During the lunar new year (or “Tet”), North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched acoordinated series of attacks against Hue, Saigon and various other key targets in South Vietnam. The Tet Offensive, which surprised U.S. and South Korean forces and caused heavy casualties, would eventually be a turning point in the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, as media coverage brought the full horrors of an already unpopular war home to TV screens in 56 million American homes.

My Lai Massacre

The My Lai massacre was one of the most horrific incidents of violence committed against unarmed civilians during the Vietnam War. A company of American soldiers brutally killed most of the people—women, children and old men—in the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968. More than 500 people were slaughtered in the My Lai massacre,including young girls and women who were raped and mutilated before being killed. U.S.Army officers covered up the carnage for a year before it was reported in the American press, sparking a firestorm of international outrage. The brutality of the My Lai killingsand the official cover-up fueled anti-war sentiment and further divided the United States over the Vietnam War.

Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated

While in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers in that city, the civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a sermon in which he told listeners: “I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.” The following evening, Martin Luther King was assassinated while he was standing on the balcony outside his room at a Memphis motel. As news of King’s murder sparked rioting in dozens of cities across the country, an international manhunt for his shooter, James Earl Ray, ended in his capture in London.

Robert F. Kennedy Assassinated

On the night of the California primary (which he won, putting him in reach of securing the Democratic presidential nomination), Robert F. Kennedy was leaving the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after addressing a large crowd of supporters when he was shot by the young Jordanian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan. Born in Jerusalem, Sirhan later said he assassinated Kennedy out of concern for the Palestinian cause, and had felt betrayed by the senator’s support for Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967.

Chicago Democratic Convention

RFK’s assassination left Vice President Humphrey as the most likely Democratic nominee, even though he supported Johnson’s unpopular Vietnam War policy. When the Democratic National Convention opened in August, thousands of students, antiwar activists and other demonstrators—including groups like the Yippies, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Black Panthers—poured into Chicago, where they were met with a violent police response called out by Mayor Richard Daley. As TV cameras captured the bloody clashes between police and demonstrators, the chaotic convention ended in Humphrey’s nomination as the head of an embattled Democratic Party.

1969

  • Led Zeppelin II – Led Zeppelin

  • Woodstock Live – Various Artists

  • Johnny Winter

  • John Mayall

Significant Events:

Stonewall Riots

In the early hours of June 28, 1969, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club located in Greenwich Village in New York City. The raid sparked a riot among bar patrons and neighborhood residents as police roughly hauled employees and patrons out of the bar, leading to six days of protests and violent clashes with law enforcement outside the bar on Christopher Street, in neighboring streets and in nearby Christopher Park. The Stonewall Riots served as a catalyst for the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.

Chappaquiddick Incident

Late on the night of July 18, 1969, a black Oldsmobile driven by U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy plunged off the Dike Bridge on the tiny island of Chappaquiddick, off Martha’s Vineyard, landing upside down in the tidal Poucha Pond. The 37-year-old Kennedy survived the crash, but the young woman riding with him in the car didn’t. Though newspaper headlines at the time identified her simply as a “blonde,” she was 28-year- old Mary Jo Kopechne, a respected political operative who had worked on the presidential campaign of Senator Kennedy’s brother, Robert Kennedy.

The incident at Chappaquiddick ended Kopechne’s young life and derailed Ted Kennedy’s presidential ambitions for good, but half a century later, the details of what happened that fateful night remain unclear.

Apollo 11 Moon Landing

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About six-and-a-half hours later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. As he set took his first step, Armstrong famously said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The Apollo 11 mission occurred eight years after President John F. Kennedy announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s.

Woodstock

The Woodstock Music Festival began on August 15, 1969, as half a million people waitedon a dairy farm in Bethel, New York, for the three-day music festival to start. Billed as “An Aquarian Experience: 3 Days of Peace and Music,” the epic event would later be known simply as Woodstock and become synonymous with the counterculture movement of the 1960s. Woodstock was a success, but the massive concert didn’t come off without a hitch: Last-minute venue changes, bad weather and the hordes of attendees caused major headaches. Still, despite—or because of—a lot of sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and rain, Woodstock was a peaceful celebration and earned its hallowed place in pop culture history.

1970

Band of Gypsys – Jimi Hendrix

Mad Dogs & Englishmen - Joe Cocker

Derek & The Dominoes Live at Fillmore East = Eric Clapton

The Chicago Seven

The Chicago Seven were political radicals accused of conspiring to incite the riots that occurred at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. During the five-month trial, the prosecution stressed the defendants’ provocative rhetoric and subversive intentions, while the defense attributed the violence to official overreaction. The case drew national attention for the artists and activists that testified as witnesses, as well as

defendant Bobby Seale’s actions, which earned him four years in prison for contempt of court. In February 1970, five of the seven were found guilty, but an appeals court overturned the convictions in 1972.

Paul McCartney Announces Breakup of the Beatles

The legendary rock band the Beatles spent the better part of three years breaking up in the late 1960s, and even longer than that hashing out who did what and why. And by the spring of 1970, there was little more than a tangled set of business relationships keeping the group together. Each of the Beatles was pursuing his musical interests outside of the band, and there were no plans in place to record together as a group. But as far as the public knew, this was just a temporary state of affairs. That all changed on April 10, 1970, when an ambiguous Paul McCartney “self-interview” was seized upon by the international media as an official announcement of a Beatles breakup. The occasion for the statements Paul released to the press that day was the upcoming release of his debut solo album, McCartney. Nothing in Paul’s answers constituted a definitive statement about the Beatles’ future, but his remarks were nevertheless reported in the press under headlines like “McCartney breaks off with Beatles” and “The Beatles sing their swan song.” And whatever his intent at the time, Paul’s statements drove a further wedge between himself and his bandmates. In the May 14, 1970, issue of Rolling Stone, John Lennon lashed out at Paul. By year’s end, Paul would file suit to dissolve the Beatles’ business partnership, a formal process that would eventually make official the unofficial breakup he announced on this day in 1970.

Kent State Shooting

Four Kent State University students were killed and nine were injured on May 4, 1970, when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd gathered to protest the Vietnam War. The tragedy was a watershed moment for a nation divided by the conflict in Southeast Asia. In its immediate aftermath, a student-led strike forced the temporary closure of colleges and universities across the country. Some political observers believe the events of that day in northeast Ohio tilted public opinion against the war and may have contributed to the downfall of President Richard Nixon.

1971

  • Carly Simon – Carly Simon

  • The Cry of Love – Jimi Hendrix

  • Santana 3 - Santana

  • Humble Pie - Live At The Fillmore

  • Curtis Live At The Apollo - Curtis Mayfield

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education

A landmark United States Supreme Court case dealing with the busing of students to promote integration in public schools. The Court held that busing was an appropriate remedy for the problem of racial imbalance in schools, even when the imbalance resulted from the selection of students based on geographic proximity to the school rather than from deliberate assignment based on race. This was done to ensure the schools would be "properly" integrated and that all students would receive equal educational opportunities regardless of their race.

The 26th Amendment: “Old Enough to Fight, Old Enough to Vote”

The long debate over lowering the voting age in America from 21 to 18 began during World War II and intensified during the Vietnam War, when young men denied the right to vote were being conscripted to fight for their country. In the 1970 case Oregon v. Mitchell, a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress had the right to regulate the minimum age in federal elections, but not at the state and local level. Amid increasing support for a Constitutional amendment, Congress passed the 26th Amendment in March 1971; the states promptly ratified it, and President Richard M. Nixon signed it into law that July.

The Pentagon Papers

The Pentagon Papers was the name given to a top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. As the Vietnam War dragged on, with more than 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam by 1968, military analyst Daniel Ellsberg—who had worked on the study—came to oppose the war, and decided that the information contained in the Pentagon Papers should be available to the American public. He photocopied the report and in March 1971 gave the copy to The New York Times, which then published a series of scathing articles based on the report’s most damning secrets.

EDDIE KRAMER SELECT DISCOGRAPHY:

Jimi Hendrix – Are You Experienced

Jimi Hendrix – Axis: Bold as Love

Traffic – Mr. Fantasy

The Small Faces – Itchy Coo Park 

The Beatles (Singles) - All You Need Is Love The Beatles (Singles) - Baby, You’re a Rich Man 

Graham Gouldman – The Graham Gouldman Thing 

The Animals – Winds of Change 

The Rolling Stones – Between the Buttons

The Rolling Stones – Flowers Album

The Rolling Stones – Their Satanic Majesties Request

The Rolling Stones – Beggars Banquet

Blue Cheer – Outside Inside Jimi Hendrix – Electric Ladyland 

Traffic – Traffic

NRBQ – NRBQ 

Vanilla Fudge – Near the Beginning 

Harvey Mandel - Cristo Redentor

Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin II

John Mayall – The Turning Point 

Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes - Marriage on the Rocks - Rock Bottom Woodstock 

Built Jimi Hendrix’s NYC Electric Lady Studios

Johnny Winter –Johnny Winter

Jimi Hendrix – Band of Gypsys

Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin III

John Mayall – Empty Rooms 

Derek and The Dominoes - In Concert @ The Fillmore East 

Joe Cocker - Mad Dogs and Englishman

Carly Simon – That’s the way I’ve Always Heard it Should Be 

Curtis Mayfield – Curtis/Live! 

Humble Pie – Rockin' the Fillmore 

Jimi Hendrix – Cry of Love

John Sebastian – Four of Us 

Santana III Cactus - One Way or Another

John Mayall – Jazz Blues Fusion 

Led Zeppelin – How the West Was Won (Live)

Led Zeppelin – Houses of the Holy

David Bowie - Stage

Mott The Hoople

Peter Frampton – Frampton's Camel Stories – About Us

Santana

WOODSTOCK

KISS - Love Gun

KISS - Alive

KISS - Rock and Roll All Over