Prologue

“Hey fellas...I think we have a take!”  I looked at Harold (co-founder of Rhino Records) and smiled, as Micky came into the control room to listen to his latest vocal take.  The song was Neil Young’s “Sugar Mountain” ¹ and all three of us were pleased with this final piece of the puzzle...a finished recording of a wonderful song that will, hopefully, have a life of its own.

  (Sunburst Recording session with Micky Dolenz, Culver City, California, 1991)

Well before working on Micky’s album in 1991 (as quoted above), it was the songs of the 1950’s and ‘60’s that framed my youth in Los Angeles. This is evident in the abundance of hit records that came out of the West Coast’s various “Temples of Sound.” ² “Temples of Sound” you ask?  By this, I’m referring to the major studios, that by the 1960’s seemed to be cropping up everywhere, especially in New York, Nashville, and Los Angeles. These creative meccas offered many opportunities in the arts, including a burgeoning music scene.

Growing up a huge music fan and a fanatic of great recordings, I became especially interested in how these records were made and by whom.  Listening to Phil Spector’s majestic ‘60’s “Wall of Sound”…“You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” and “Be My Baby,” along with other great L.A. recordings by The Beach Boys, The Turtles and The Byrds, added more fuel to the fire.  The question was...how could I get involved?

What started in the late 1800’s with the invention of capturing sound via metal and wax cylinders,³ evolved into recording on disc, then transitioning to analog magnetic in the 1950’s. Tape formats would expand in the ‘50’s to 2-tracks (stereo) and then to multi-track, first developed by the great electric guitarist / inventor, Les Paul.⁴  Multi-track recording began with 3 and 4-tracks, further increasing in the 1960’s to 8, 16 and, finally, 24-tracks by the 1970’s.

For over four decades, my work with a variety of artists such as George Carlin, Micky Dolenz, El Chicano, The Firesign Theatre, Fishbone, Ruben Guevara (from Ruben & The Jets) and Richie Havens, has allowed me to see many changes in recording technology.  Multi-track recording, which initially provided flexibility in overdubbing (adding additional tracks of instruments or voices) and mixing (compiling the tracks into a final master tape), has dramatically changed in the evolving age of digital recording.

Starting in the late 1970’s, the introduction of digital recording has had, in my opinion, many unforeseen negative consequences.   Yes, digital recording has had welcome advantages, such as lack of tape hiss and endless copies without noticeable degradation.  However, my issue with digital technology is that it has changed how we record...and from my viewpoint, not always for the better.

The proliferation of digital recording and its components - computer workstations, drum machines and other sequencers, synthesizers, samplers, auto-tune and time alignment (quantization) - has made it much easier for individuals to become credible one-man bands in the studio.  Getting lost in this never ending technical onslaught are the human elements of collaboration, spontaneity (and just plain fun!), which I was fortunate to have been a part of. 

Recording musicians live in studio offers a magical synergistic environment that can’t be achieved in any other way. And it all started in Chapter 1 of this book with a cheap portable reel to reel tape recorder….