Bob Ezrin attended Oakwood Collegiate Institute High School in Toronto, graduating in 1967.
As a record producer, Ezrin first attained fame in the
1970s, producing classic albums for
Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, and
Kiss. Perhaps the most well-known work Ezrin produced is Pink Floyd's
The Wall. He has been described as having an intense personality, and as the "
Francis Ford Coppola" of record producers. His production style tends to employ arranging techniques from
classical music. On his first solo album Peter Gabriel felt that the track "Here Comes the Flood" was over-produced by Ezrin and thus Gabriel created a far simpler rendition which can be found on
Robert Fripp's album,
Exposure. He is noted as an innovator and technical groundbreaker having been one of the earliest adopters of multi-machine recording and computer sequencing, sampling, and editing. In the 80's and 90's Ezrin worked with numerous artists including
David Gilmour, Pink Floyd, Lou Reed, Rod Stewart, Heroes del Silencio, Julian Lennon, Bonham, The Jayhawks and
Kula Shaker. Ezrin has continued to produce successfully into the late
90s and
00s working with such artists as
30 Seconds to Mars, Catherine Wheel, Jane's Addiction, The Darkness, Nine Inch Nails, Deftones and
Army of Anyone.
In
1993, he co-founded a computer software company called
7th Level which developed and published educational and entertainment
CD-ROMs including a highly popular and groundbreaking series of
Monty Python games. In
1999, he co-founded Enigma Digital, an
internet radio provider. It was eventually sold to
Clear Channel, where he became vice-chairman of Clear Channel Interactive.
Ezrin co-produced the
documentary film Fade to Black, starring
Jay-Z, which was released in November 2004. Ezrin is currently represented as a producer by Global Positioning Services in
Los Angeles and works with @radicalmedia in
New York on film, television, and theatrical productions.
Ezrin was inducted into the
Canadian Music Hall of Fame during the
Juno Awards in April
2004 and into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame in March, 2006. Ezrin is a trustee of
NARAS, Vice President of the
Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, a member of MusiCan, 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.
In 1982, Ezrin briefly appeared as the host of Enterprise, a City-TV panel show replacing Dr. Morton Schulman's The Schulman File.
Ezrin played piano on the Pink Floyd song "Nobody Home".
Ezrin is married and has six grown children and a dog.
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