Jack Rieley
American record producer and songwriter (1942-2015)
John Frank Rieley III (November 24, 1942 – April 17, 2015) was an American businessman, record producer, songwriter, and disc jockey who managed the Beach Boys in the early 1970s. He is credited with guiding them back to popular acclaim and was described by New Statesman as "a radio DJ turned career mentor."
Rieley co-wrote a total of ten songs included on the Beach Boys' albums Surf’s Up (1971), Carl and the Passions – "So Tough" (1972), and Holland (1973). He also sang lead on the Surf's Up track "A Day in the Life of a Tree" and narrated Brian Wilson's fairy tale Mount Vernon and Fairway (1972).
Following his work with The Beach Boys, Rieley made the rock book project Western Justice with Machiel Botman in 1975. He would later go on to collaborate with artists such as Kool & the Gang, Ride, and Jaye Muller (recording as "Count Jaye").
In 1995, Rieley, along with Muller, founded e-fax pioneer J2 Global, Inc., which later became Ziff Davis following its $167 million acquisition of the digital publishing company. He died in 2015 at the age of 72.
Background
Rieley was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys met Rieley while promoting their album Sunflower, and hired him as their manager. He wrote and co-wrote lyrics to several of the Beach Boys songs including "Long Promised Road", "Feel Flows", "Sail On, Sailor", "Funky Pretty" and "The Trader".
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This entry incorporates text from “Jack Rieley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.