Record Plant Studios
Encyclopedia
The Record Plant was a series of three famous recording studio
s which were founded by Gary Kellgren
and Chris Stone
, beginning in New York City in 1968. The next year, Kellgren and Stone opened a second studio in Los Angeles
. In 1972, the company expanded again with a third location in Sausalito, California
. Kellgren died in 1977, and in the 1980s, the New York and Sausalito studios ended up under different ownership and management. The New York studio closed in 1987 and the Sausalito studio closed in 2008. The Los Angeles studio continues in business as "The Record Plant".
The Record Plant in New York was the first studio to give the recording artist a comfortable, casual environment rather than the clinical setting that was the norm through the 1960s. Kellgren and Stone brought this same vision to their Los Angeles and Sausalito properties. Stone later said of Kellgren, "He single-handedly was responsible for changing studios from what they were—fluorescent lights, white walls and hardwood floors—to the living rooms that they are today."
at the edge of Times Square
, a drab upstairs office, a single room which held the only 8-track mixing system in New York. There, Kellgren worked with artists such as Frank Zappa
and Jimi Hendrix
, engineering their recordings and also sweeping the floors. In late 1967, Chris Stone was introduced to Kellgren because Kellgren's wife Marta was seven months pregnant, scared of the upcoming birth, and Stone's wife Gloria had just given birth. Mutual friends thought that the two couples could talk about being parents and ease Marta's worry. Though they were "diametrically opposed" in nature, with Stone all business and Kellgren very creative, the two quickly became friends. Seeing him at work, Stone determined that Kellgren was not making full use of his genius for making recordings. Stone noticed that the small studio was charging its clients $5,000 per week, but Kellgren was making $200 per week. Stone suggested Kellgren ask for a raise, and soon he was making $1,000 per week. Stone held an MBA
from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and was at that time employed as the national sales representative of Revlon
cosmetics. Stone convinced Kellgren that the two of them, with $100,000 borrowed from Johanna C.C. "Ancky" Revson Johnson, could start a new recording studio, one with a better atmosphere for creativity. Johnson was a former model who became the second wife of Revlon founder Charles Revson
, then divorced and married Ben Johnson, a male model 21 years her junior. In early 1968 Kellgren and Stone began building a 12-track studio at 321 West 44th Street, creating a living-room
-type of environment for the musicians. It opened on March 13, 1968. As the studio was nearing completion, record producer Tom Wilson persuaded Hendrix producer Chas Chandler
to book the Record Plant from April 18 to early July 1968, for the recording of the album Electric Ladyland
. In early April, just prior to the start of the Hendrix session, the band Soft Machine
spent four days recording The Soft Machine
; their debut album, produced by Wilson and Chandler, with Kellgren engineering. When The Jimi Hendrix Experience
arrived at the studio, Kellgren engineered the first few dates until Eddie Kramer
, the band's familiar engineer, flew in from London.
In 1969, Kellgren and Stone sold the New York operation to TeleVision Communications (TVC), a cable television company that was broadening its portfolio. The purpose of the sale was to gain cash for expansion into Los Angeles with a second studio.
The next big mixing assignment that the studio accepted was to mix the tracks recorded at the Woodstock Festival
. These took more than a month to sort out in the studio, as recording conditions had been primitive, and some tracks contained both voice and instruments, preventing separate processing for each.
In 1970, Studio A became the first recording studio designed for mixing quadraphonic sound.
On August 1, 1971, the studio made its first remote recording
s at The Concert for Bangladesh
, held at Madison Square Garden
.
During the 1970s, house engineers Shelly Yakus
and Roy Cicala
also gave many local bands their start by donating session time and materials to upcoming artists, engineering and producing their demo tapes.
In January 1972, Warner Communications bought the facility from TVC. Head engineer Cicala bought it from Warner.
In late 1973, Aerosmith
began recording Get Your Wings
, their second album. Bob Ezrin
, known for producing hits for Alice Cooper
and the New York Dolls
, was put in charge, but engineer Jack Douglas
put so much into the project that he was called the sixth member of the band. (Douglas's career had started very humbly as janitor at the studio.) The song "Lord of the Thighs
" was written and recorded inside the Record Plant's Studio C during an all-night session, after the band realized they needed one more song for the album. When Aerosmith returned to the Record Plant in early 1975 to record Toys in the Attic
, they named Douglas as sole producer. The song "Walk This Way
" was written after Douglas and the band, without Steven Tyler
, went out to see the film Young Frankenstein
, and they were struck by a humorous line spoken by Marty Feldman
playing a hunchback. They returned to the studio to tell Tyler what the song's title must be, and Tyler wrote the words on the walls of the stairwell at the Record Plant. For the recording of Rocks
in 1977, Douglas brought a truckload of Record Plant remote recording equipment to The Cenacle, a 300-room former convent in Armonk, New York
.
John Lennon
was recording "Walking On Thin Ice" at the Record Plant on December 8, 1980, the day he was shot and killed.
In 1987, the New York studio was sold to Sir George Martin
and closed soon afterward.
and open another one in Los Angeles. To design the studio, they contracted with Tom Hidley who had built TTG Studios
in 1965, and was becoming known in L.A. for answering the high-decibel needs of rock music. Hidley was brought on board as the "third musketeer", according to Stone. On December 4, 1969, the new studio opened its doors on 8456 West Third Street near La Cienega Boulevard. Sometimes known as "Record Plant West", the new studio held a 16-track recorder, larger than the 12-track system in New York (occasionally called "Record Plant East"), and studio time was 20 to 25 percent less expensive than typical studios in New York. In 1970, to stay innovative and retain the prestige of an industry leader, the Record Plant installed a 24-track tape recorder. It was a very large machine assembled by Hidley at the cost of $42,000 but in the next three years it was used on only a few sessions.
Stone and Kellgren had profited enough to buy back their studio from Warner Communications, and at the same time expand into Sausalito. As well, the duo expanded with remote recording dates in 1973 including performances by Alice Cooper
, Vikki Carr
, Sly Stone
, Todd Rundgren
, Joe Walsh
and Rod Stewart
. At the same time, the studio worked on projects by The Gap Band for Shelter Records
, Mary McCreary, a singer being produced by her husband Leon Russell
, and The Partridge Family
in production for Bell Records
under producer Wes Farrell
.
s hosted by the Record Plant, featuring well-known studio drummer Jim Keltner
, a good friend of Kellgren's. The jams were known as the Jim Keltner Fan Club Hour, and famous musicians would show up to play along with Keltner. Pete Townshend
, Ronnie Wood, Billy Preston
, Mick Jagger
and George Harrison
were among those who came and jammed. Harrison jokingly referred to the sessions on the back cover of his album Living in the Material World
. As a jab at Paul McCartney
's self-promotion on the back of the album Red Rose Speedway
where it said "for more information on the Wings' Fun Club send a stamped self-addressed envelope...", Harrison wrote on his own album regarding the "Jim Keltner Fun Club", "send a stamped undressed elephant..." Drummer Marvin "Smitty" Smith
said that there were regular jam sessions of famous musicians at Clover Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard near Vine Street
in Hollywood, but that the increasing number of musicians outgrew the place and the group moved to the Record Plant for more space. Smith was a regular at the Studio C jams, but one Sunday he couldn't make it and he sent his friend David Foster
to play keyboards. Foster was so well received by other musicians that he and three others—Paul Stallworth on bass, Danny Kortchmar
on guitar, and Keltner on drums—formed the band, Attitudes
.
One of the Keltner jam sessions in late December 1973 became known later as "Too Many Cooks". Under the leadership of John Lennon
, an all-star lineup performed an extended version of the blues song "Too Many Cooks (Spoil the Soup)", with Mick Jagger on lead vocals, Keltner on drums, Kortchmar and Jesse Ed Davis
on guitars, Al Kooper
on keyboards, Bobby Keys
playing tenor saxophone, Trevor Lawrence on baritone saxophone, Jack Bruce
on bass and Harry Nilsson
singing background vocals. Jagger was uncomfortable stretching to reach the top of his vocal range, and he grew unhappy with the progress being made on the song. Journalist Lucian K. Truscott IV wrote in 1977 that Kellgren told Jagger to "sit on it", ending the complaints. After Lennon's personal assistant and lover May Pang
brought the master tapes to light, the track "Too Many Cooks" was released in 2007 on Mick Jagger's album Very Best Of.... Musician and journalist Steven Van Zandt
described Jagger's vocals as "ragged but still in control", and the song as "amazing", with "a painful soulfulness [that] hits you and stays with you".
In March 1974 to celebrate the first anniversary of the Jim Keltner Fan Club Hour jam series, Ringo Starr
and Moose Johnson joined Keltner on drums, and on guitar were Lennon, Marc Benno
and Davis. Ric Grech
played bass, Keys played sax, Gene Clark
vocalized, Joe Vitale
played flute, and Mal Evans
supported the large group on percussion. During this time at the Record Plant, Keltner was working on a solo project by Jack Bruce, formerly of Cream
, laying down tracks for Out of the Storm
under the direction of engineer and producer Andy Johns
; Steve Hunter played guitar. Also in the building was Stevie Wonder
shaping the mixes for Fulfillingness' First Finale
, using Studio B which was built specifically for him. Jack Bruce first met drummer Bruce Gary
(later of The Knack
fame) when he showed up at one of the jams, hanging around, hoping to play. Jack Bruce described the youngster as a "wannabe drummer", but befriended him and hired him when they were both back in England. At Burbank Studios on March 28, 1974, a few weeks after the anniversary jam, some of those celebrating at the Record Plant came together again for another jam, also called "The Jim Keltner Fan Club Hour", though it was not hosted or organized by Kellgren, nor did it have Keltner in attendance. Lennon played with Keys, Davis and Wonder, among others, and McCartney joined in part way through. The raw recordings with their uneven performances were issued as a bootleg album called A Toot and a Snore in '74
; the final time that Lennon played with McCartney.
Studio C was destroyed in an electrical fire on January 10, 1978. At the time, rocker Marshall Chapman
was working with producer Al Kooper and bassist Tom Comet in Studio B on her album Jaded Virgin, and she helped other musicians and engineers carry priceless master recordings to safety outside the building. She said: "We might as well have been rescuing Rembrandts from the Louvre ... I remember seeing Hotel California [marked] on one, and 'John Lennon' on another. I nearly fainted when I saw I was holding a box containing the master tape from Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life."
During the next 13 months, Studio C was rebuilt and fitted with radical new gear. In February 1979, Stephen Stills
became the first major-label American artist to record on digital recording
and mastering equipment, a 3M
system installed to replace the previous analog system. With engineer Michael Braunstein at the controls, Stills recorded a new version of the song "Cherokee", previously released on his first solo album, Stephen Stills
.
The L.A. operation expanded further in the early 1980s, equipping more remote recording trucks. In 1982, Stone leased sound stages M and L at the Paramount Pictures
studio lot, for film sound recordings. Soundtracks that the Record Plant tracked and mixed there include ones for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
, Annie
, 48 Hrs.
, and An Officer and a Gentleman
. The studio was outgrowing its Third Street location.
In 1985, the Record Plant's Third Street facility closed with hundreds of its customers and staff taking part in "The Last Jam". In January 1986 the Record Plant reopened at 1032 Sycamore Avenue in Hollywood in the former Radio Recorders "Annex", a historic studio where Elvis Presley
and Louis Armstrong
recorded.
On December 8, 1987, Stone sold 50% plus one share of the Los Angeles studio to Chrysalis Records
under Sir George Martin, with Stone continuing to manage the facility. In 1989 he sold the remainder and left it under Chrysalis management. In 1991, Rick Stevens, ex-president of Summa Music Group publishing, bought the Record Plant; he refurbished it in 1993. Stevens added private lounges and an atrium lit by skylight, holding a jacuzzi and a billiard table.
location in Sausalito, throwing a Halloween party to celebrate Studio A going on line. Ginger Mews, ex-manager of Wally Heider Studios
, was named studio manager of Sausalito Music Factory, doing business as Record Plant, and construction continued on the similarly equipped Studio B with completion expected in February 1973. The 10700 square feet (994.1 m²) building was a former office suite covered with diagonal redwood siding in an industrial park near Sausalito's harbor facilities. Kellgren worked with Hidley to design Studio A and Studio B to have the same size and the same "dead" acoustics, and both were fitted with Hidley-designed Westlake monitors. Studio A was decorated with a sunburst pattern on the wall and white fabric draped from the ceiling. Studio B was more vibrant to the eye, having multi-colored fabric layers on the ceiling and swirls of color on the walls. Kellgren and Stone sent party invitations out on slabs of redwood, and among the guests were John Lennon and Yoko Ono
who both showed up dressed as trees. The first recording on the books was under producer Al Schmitt
who brought in Mike Finnigan
and Jerry Wood as Finnigan & Wood, recording the album Crazed Hipsters. When Studio B went online, engineer Tom Flye came out to California from New York and ran the room; his first customer was New Riders of the Purple Sage
who recorded The Adventures of Panama Red
. Following that, Flye helped Sly and the Family Stone make their album Fresh
.
The expansion into Sausalito was the result of drummer Buddy Miles
and radio pioneer Tom "Big Daddy" Donahue
asking Kellgren and Stone to put a studio in the San Francisco Bay Area
. The intention was to have a getaway studio, far from the pressures of the big city music industry. Miles and Donahue promised that their recording business would go to the new studio and that it would be promoted with a live radio show. "Live From The Plant" was the resulting radio show; it was broadcast on Donahue's album-oriented rock station KSAN (FM) from time to time over the next two years, primarily on Sunday nights, and it featured various artists such as the Grateful Dead
, Jerry Garcia
, The Tubes
, Peter Frampton
, Bob Marley & The Wailers
, Pablo Cruise
, Rory Gallagher
, The Marshall Tucker Band
, Jimmy Buffett
, Bonnie Raitt
, Link Wray
, Linda Ronstadt
and Fleetwood Mac
. KSAN, known as "Jive 95", was the most popular radio station for Bay Area listeners from 18 to 34 years old, and the Record Plant broadcasts were widely heard. Donahue died in April 1975 after which fewer concerts were broadcast. A notable later radio show was by Nils Lofgren
and his band, with a guest appearance by Al Kooper; they performed at the Record Plant's Halloween party in 1975.
The Record Plant in Sausalito soon became known as one of the top four recording studios in the San Francisco Bay Area, the other three being the CBS/Automatt (now defunct), Wally Heider Studios
(now Hyde Street Studios) and Fantasy Studios
in Berkeley. In the first year, the studio worked on projects by Buddy Miles, the Grateful Dead
(who booked the whole building in August 1973 to record Wake of the Flood
), and on Greg Allman's first solo album, Laid Back
.
The quirkiness of the studio extended in many directions: For transporting musicians, Stone owned a limousine with the custom license plate DEDUCT, while Kellgren kept a purple Rolls-Royce displaying GREED on the license plate. As in Los Angeles, the studio contained a jacuzzi, but Sausalito's conference room had a waterbed
floor. For the musicians' meals, there were chefs ready to cook organic food, and for their sleeping quarters there were two guesthouses next to each other, five minutes away in Mill Valley
. In back there was a basketball hoop, and in the nearby harbor a speedboat was kept ready. The studio obtained industrial-grade nitrous oxide
—pure, not mixed with oxygen as it is for dental anesthesia—from a local chemical supply company under the pretext that the gas was critical to the recording process, and fresh tanks were delivered weekly. Gas masks hung from the ceiling for those who wished to get intoxicated on "laughing gas"; the Grateful Dead and their engineer Dan Healy
reportedly made use of this feature. Al Kooper wrote that during the few days that he was helping Lofgren lay down tracks for Cry Tough, Kooper was so taken with the novel drug experience that he wheeled one of the tanks around and kept it next to him for refreshment between takes. He breathed in so much of it that acid collected in his stomach, aggravating his ulcers, and for a few days he was too sick to work. Kooper said that the studio's fun with nitrous oxide was stopped forever when a friend of Kellgren's was found dead from asphyxia
under one of the tanks, the tube still in his mouth.
wrote that "it really was the height of '70s 'over-the-top-ness'." Al Kooper said "it looked like something out of Thunderdome
." Jack Bruce thought it was decorated to look like a human heart, "with all kinds of red, synthetic fur on the walls." Sly Stone recorded in it from time to time but mostly it remained an unused curiosity—a "white elephant", according to producer Jimmy Robinson—a room that new arrivals were shown to elicit an "oh wow, what a trip" response. The separation between engineer and musician frustrated Stone, and he recorded as much as possible down in the actual pit, next to the engineers, lowering a Hammond B3 organ
into the pit for his own use, or positioning the members of a horn section down there. Kellgren said it was like a Ferrari
in that you had to know what you were doing in order to drive it. In late August 1975, Kellgren flew up from L.A. with bassist Bill Wyman
who had just finished a major tour with The Rolling Stones
. In The Pit, Wyman jammed with Van Morrison
who played saxophone, guitarist Joe Walsh (who had just joined the Eagles), drummer Dallas Taylor
, pianist Leon Russell
and the Tower of Power
horn section; some of the tracks contributed to Wyman's solo album Stone Alone. Wyman laid down his vocal tracks from a lying-down position, a bottle of brandy in his hand.
in Sausalito; Sammy Hagar
used The Pit to record tracks for a solo album, and the Tower of Power cut In the Slot
. Pure Prairie League
recorded, Bob Welch's band Paris made Paris
, and America
produced Hearts
. Remote recordings were made by Record Plant crews and gear for Dan Fogelberg
, Sly Stone, Joe Walsh, and the New Riders of the Purple Sage.
In February 1976 for the album that became Rumours
, Fleetwood Mac blocked time at the studio to lay down tracks, bringing in engineers Ken Caillat
and Richard Dashut
. Caillat was responsible for most of the tracking; he took a leave of absence from Wally Heider Studios
in L.A. on the premise that Fleetwood Mac would use their facilities for mixing. Most band members complained about the windowless studio and wanted to record at their homes, but Mick Fleetwood
nixed this. The band used Studio A with its 3M
24-track tape machine
, various studio microphones, and an API mixing console
with 550A equalizers. Although Caillat was impressed with the setup, he felt that the room lacked ambiance because of its "very dead speakers" and large amounts of soundproofing
. Fleetwood remarked of his time at the studio that his band did not go into The Pit as it was usually occupied by strangers who were chopping powdered drugs into lines with razors.
In late 1977, 19-year-old Prince
recorded his debut album in Sausalito while renting a home nearby. He performed every instrument, every track, and produced his own album, For You
. He spent the equivalent of three album budgets to make this first record, and responded defensively when more experienced producers made suggestions in the studio. At the Record Plant he met Sly Stone, Chaka Khan
and Carlos Santana
; three musicians he greatly admired. For You was criticized as over-produced and did not sell well.
Fleetwood Mac's Rumours went Platinum
in 1977. The band Pablo Cruise recorded two Platinum-certified albums at the Record Plant: A Place in the Sun
(1977) and Worlds Away (1978). Cory Lerios
, keyboardist and vocalist for Pablo Cruise, said that, in recording "the better part of four albums" at the Record Plant, drug use enabled jam sessions that could last up to 36 hours: "It was a great time, no question." Another Platinum album that came out of Sausalito in 1978 was Dan Fogelberg's Twin Sons of Different Mothers
, a collaboration with Tim Weisberg
on flute. Other albums did less well: Jimmy Cliff
laid down the tracks for Give Thankx in Jamaica but he came to Sausalito to polish it up, with producers Bob Johnston
and John Stronach giving guidance. Cliff loved the studio's laid-back atmosphere, and he said Give Thankx was his best work yet. However, the album did not chart.
became a fixture at the Record Plant beginning in mid-1981. He recorded all of Street Songs
in Studio B, and it went multiple platinum, driven by its hit songs "Super Freak
" and "Give It to Me Baby
". James was known both for his quick work to create songs in the studio and his high level of cocaine consumption. For a time, James lived in the conference room with the waterbed floor. Jim Gaines said that, with James in residence, "bands that weren't even recording would come by just to see who was there and say 'hi'." James was known for walking through other artists' recording sessions wearing only a towel, and sometimes dropping the towel for effect, "in front of all the women" according to Gaines. Studio manager Shiloh Hobel said that Sly Stone made an appearance, meeting James for the first time. She said, "It was such an incredible moment, these two fabulous forces in music... Each of them was really taken with the other."
In 1981 Stone sold the Sausalito studio to Laurie Necochea. Necochea was a music fan who, as a teenager in 1978, had received a $5.6 million malpractice settlement for being radiated too much during treatment for thyroid cancer, causing paralysis and quadriplegia. Stone said of the sale, "she bought Sausalito because if she owned the studio she could go backstage at concerts."
The Sausalito studio was managed for Necochea by Steve Malcolm and Bob Hodas. The studio business became known as "The Plant Studios" or simply, "The Plant". In 1982, Necochea funded two new Trident TSM
mixing consoles for Studios A and B, and she paid for extensive acoustic work performed by Hidley in Studio B, including louvered panels to control the reverberation characteristics. Studio B's control room was enlarged from 1500 to 1850 sq ft (139.4 to 171.9 ), and a new studio monitor
ing system was installed: the Meyer Sound Laboratories
ACD, John Meyer
's first loudspeaker product. Rick James was the first artist to use the refurbished Studio B. Huey Lewis and the News
made their greatly successful album Sports primarily at the Plant.
veteran and a past manager of The Automatt. The small rehearsal room that had been The Pit was turned into Studio C, first used by John Fogerty
to record Centerfield. Some of the tracks for Aretha Franklin
's Who's Zoomin' Who?
were laid down at The Plant, under the direction of Narada Michael Walden
. Engineer Maureen Droney said that "there was an aura of magic and fun that came from the people who recorded there before." Accompanying famous artists, a series of experienced engineers and producers came through The Plant: Tom Dowd
, Bill Schnee, Alan Parsons
, Ron Nevison
, Mike Clink
and Ted Templeman
. In 1985, with projects in progress by Heart
, Journey
, Starship and Huey Lewis
, the studio was seized by government agents based on an affidavit accusing Jacox of manufacturing methamphetamine
s at his home in Auburn
and investing drug money in the studio. After Jacox's arrest, the Sausalito studio was owned by the federal government, who ran it with a skeleton crew for 14 months. Some observers jokingly called it "Club Fed" during this time, and among the recordings are unreleased tapes made by Buddy Miles known as the Club Fed Sessions. The government sold the studio at auction to recording engineer Bob Skye in 1986, effective on the first day of 1987. In 1988, Skye recruited recording engineer Arne Frager as a partner and Frager bought him out in late 1993. Spending $1 million, Frager remodeled Studio A for Metallica
and producer Bob Rock
in 1993–1995, raising the roof from 14 to 32 ft (4.3 to 9.8 m) high for a bigger drum sound. The remodeling included the installation of an SSL 4000 G series
console. He gave Studio B a vintage desk: a Neve 8068 with 64 inputs and GML Automation, purchased from the L.A. Record Plant. The former Pit/Studio C—renamed Mix 1—was given an SSL 9000 J series board for stereo and surround sound mixes. The sunken control area that had been created for The Pit was fitted with custom subwoofers. Mix 1 was eventually renamed "The Garden," an oval-shaped mix room designed by Frager and Manny LaCarruba. The Garden was a reverse-design studio where the larger tracking room was the new control room, and the old control room was used for overdubs. Metallica's S&M
was mixed in The Garden. Recording artists who worked at The Plant during this period include Sammy Hagar
, Kenny G
, Mariah Carey
, Michael Bolton
, Luther Vandross
, Jerry Harrison
, Chris Isaak
, the Dave Matthews Band
, Papa Wheelie
, Deftones
, and Booker T. Jones
. Santana
's huge comeback album, Supernatural, was made at The Plant, released in 1999. In 2007, Journey returned to The Plant with a new singer, Arnel Pineda
, to create Revelation
, their biggest album in over two decades.
In 2005, vintage guitar collector Michael Indelicato bought the building, with Frager continuing to run the studios. However, large recording studios were no longer profiting from '70s- and '80s-era recording budgets. Bob Welch once observed, "You had to have a major-label budget to afford places like The Record Plant, with all of the perks—the jacuzzi, the decor, the psychedelic atmosphere". By the 2000s, bands were using their smaller budgets to buy their own recording gear. Metallica, formerly an important client, built their own recording studio and did not book any time at The Plant. Frager asked Indelicato to invest in what he saw as a much-needed rejuvenation of the building, but Indelicato was overextended in his finances and could not help. Indelicato shut the doors in March 2008 after The Fray
finished recording in studio B. Shortly thereafter, Indelicato's $5.5 million home in Tiburon
was reclaimed by his mortgage company, and he used The Plant as his residence until early 2009. A few months later, the bank seized the studio, and it remained unused until 2010 when the bank rented studio A to a local film production company for film work. The bank has also rented studio B to Indelicato, the former owner of the building. Frager still legally owns the business name: "The Plant Studios," and has resumed recording in Marin at a new location.
Recording studio
A recording studio is a facility for sound recording and mixing. Ideally both the recording and monitoring spaces are specially designed by an acoustician to achieve optimum acoustic properties...
s which were founded by Gary Kellgren
Gary Kellgren
Gary Kellgren was an American audio engineer and co-founder of The Record Plant recording studios, along with businessman Chris Stone.-Engineering:...
and Chris Stone
Chris Stone (entrepreneur)
Chris Stone is an American music industry businessman and writer, the co-founder with Gary Kellgren of the Record Plant recording studios. Stone founded Filmsonix in 1987, sold the Record Plant in 1989, and is the founder and CEO of World Studio Group...
, beginning in New York City in 1968. The next year, Kellgren and Stone opened a second studio in Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
. In 1972, the company expanded again with a third location in Sausalito, California
Sausalito, California
Sausalito is a San Francisco Bay Area city, in Marin County, California, United States. Sausalito is south-southeast of San Rafael, at an elevation of 13 feet . The population was 7,061 as of the 2010 census. The community is situated near the northern end of the Golden Gate Bridge, and prior to...
. Kellgren died in 1977, and in the 1980s, the New York and Sausalito studios ended up under different ownership and management. The New York studio closed in 1987 and the Sausalito studio closed in 2008. The Los Angeles studio continues in business as "The Record Plant".
The Record Plant in New York was the first studio to give the recording artist a comfortable, casual environment rather than the clinical setting that was the norm through the 1960s. Kellgren and Stone brought this same vision to their Los Angeles and Sausalito properties. Stone later said of Kellgren, "He single-handedly was responsible for changing studios from what they were—fluorescent lights, white walls and hardwood floors—to the living rooms that they are today."
New York
In 1967, Kellgren was a recording engineer working at several New York City studios including Mayfair on 701 Seventh AvenueSeventh Avenue (Manhattan)
Seventh Avenue, known as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard north of Central Park, is a thoroughfare on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is southbound below Central Park and a two-way street north of the park....
at the edge of Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
, a drab upstairs office, a single room which held the only 8-track mixing system in New York. There, Kellgren worked with artists such as Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
and Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
, engineering their recordings and also sweeping the floors. In late 1967, Chris Stone was introduced to Kellgren because Kellgren's wife Marta was seven months pregnant, scared of the upcoming birth, and Stone's wife Gloria had just given birth. Mutual friends thought that the two couples could talk about being parents and ease Marta's worry. Though they were "diametrically opposed" in nature, with Stone all business and Kellgren very creative, the two quickly became friends. Seeing him at work, Stone determined that Kellgren was not making full use of his genius for making recordings. Stone noticed that the small studio was charging its clients $5,000 per week, but Kellgren was making $200 per week. Stone suggested Kellgren ask for a raise, and soon he was making $1,000 per week. Stone held an MBA
Master of Business Administration
The Master of Business Administration is a :master's degree in business administration, which attracts people from a wide range of academic disciplines. The MBA designation originated in the United States, emerging from the late 19th century as the country industrialized and companies sought out...
from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and was at that time employed as the national sales representative of Revlon
Revlon
Revlon is an American cosmetics, skin care, fragrance, and personal care company founded in 1932.-History:Revlon was founded in the midst of the Great Depression, 1932, by Charles Revson and his brother Joseph, along with a chemist, Charles Lachman, who contributed the "L" in the Revlon name...
cosmetics. Stone convinced Kellgren that the two of them, with $100,000 borrowed from Johanna C.C. "Ancky" Revson Johnson, could start a new recording studio, one with a better atmosphere for creativity. Johnson was a former model who became the second wife of Revlon founder Charles Revson
Charles Revson
Charles Haskell Revson was a pioneering cosmetics industry executive who created and managed Revlon through five decades.-Early age:...
, then divorced and married Ben Johnson, a male model 21 years her junior. In early 1968 Kellgren and Stone began building a 12-track studio at 321 West 44th Street, creating a living-room
Living room
A living room, also known as sitting room, lounge room or lounge , is a room for entertaining adult guests, reading, or other activities...
-type of environment for the musicians. It opened on March 13, 1968. As the studio was nearing completion, record producer Tom Wilson persuaded Hendrix producer Chas Chandler
Chas Chandler
Bryan James "Chas" Chandler was an English musician, record producer and manager of several successful music acts....
to book the Record Plant from April 18 to early July 1968, for the recording of the album Electric Ladyland
Electric Ladyland
Electric Ladyland is the third and final album of new material by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, released in October 1968 on Reprise Records, catalogue 2RS 6307. It is the only Hendrix studio album professionally produced under his supervision. It topped the Billboard 200 album chart for two weeks in...
. In early April, just prior to the start of the Hendrix session, the band Soft Machine
Soft Machine
Soft Machine were an English rock band from Canterbury, named after the book The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs. They were one of the central bands in the Canterbury scene, and helped pioneer the progressive rock genre...
spent four days recording The Soft Machine
The Soft Machine (album)
The Soft Machine, as reissue also titled "Volume One", is the debut album by the British psychedelic rock band Soft Machine, one of the central bands in the Canterbury scene....
; their debut album, produced by Wilson and Chandler, with Kellgren engineering. When The Jimi Hendrix Experience
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
The Jimi Hendrix Experience were an English-American psychedelic rock band that formed in London in October 1966. Comprising eponymous singer-songwriter and guitarist Jimi Hendrix, bassist and backing vocalist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, the band was active until June 1969, in which...
arrived at the studio, Kellgren engineered the first few dates until Eddie Kramer
Eddie Kramer
Edwin H. Kramer is an audio engineer and producer who has worked with, among others, Led Zeppelin, Triumph, Kiss , Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Spooky Tooth, Peter Frampton, Curtis Mayfield, Santana, Anthrax, Carly Simon, Loudness, and Robin Trower.-1960s:Eddie...
, the band's familiar engineer, flew in from London.
In 1969, Kellgren and Stone sold the New York operation to TeleVision Communications (TVC), a cable television company that was broadening its portfolio. The purpose of the sale was to gain cash for expansion into Los Angeles with a second studio.
The next big mixing assignment that the studio accepted was to mix the tracks recorded at the Woodstock Festival
Woodstock Festival
Woodstock Music & Art Fair was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969...
. These took more than a month to sort out in the studio, as recording conditions had been primitive, and some tracks contained both voice and instruments, preventing separate processing for each.
In 1970, Studio A became the first recording studio designed for mixing quadraphonic sound.
On August 1, 1971, the studio made its first remote recording
Remote recording
Remote recording, also known as location recording, is the act of making a high-quality complex audio recording of a live concert performance, or any other location recording that uses multitrack recording techniques outside of a recording studio. The multitrack recording is then carefully mixed,...
s at The Concert for Bangladesh
The Concert for Bangladesh
The Concert for Bangladesh was the name for two benefit concerts organised by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, held at noon and at 7 PM on August 1, 1971, playing to a total of 40,000 people at Madison Square Garden in New York City...
, held at Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...
.
During the 1970s, house engineers Shelly Yakus
Shelly Yakus
Shelly Yakus is considered as one of the best engineers and mixers in the music industry. Formerly chief engineer and vice president of A&M Records, Yakus' engineering work has help sell in excess of one hundred million records, equaling over one billion dollars in sales...
and Roy Cicala
Roy Cicala
Roy Cicala is an American producer, engineer, song-writer and musician. His body of work includes over 10 Platinum Records for producing, writing, engineering and management for talent from the 70’s through today...
also gave many local bands their start by donating session time and materials to upcoming artists, engineering and producing their demo tapes.
In January 1972, Warner Communications bought the facility from TVC. Head engineer Cicala bought it from Warner.
In late 1973, Aerosmith
Aerosmith
Aerosmith is an American rock band, sometimes referred to as "The Bad Boys from Boston" and "America's Greatest Rock and Roll Band". Their style, which is rooted in blues-based hard rock, has come to also incorporate elements of pop, heavy metal, and rhythm and blues, and has inspired many...
began recording Get Your Wings
Get Your Wings
-Side two:-Song information:Same Old Song and Dance*Built around a riff Joe Perry came up with while sitting on his amp, Steven Tyler quickly came up with the verse riff. The song appears in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock...
, their second album. Bob Ezrin
Bob Ezrin
Robert Alan "Bob" Ezrin is a Canadian music producer and keyboardist, known for his work with artists including Alice Cooper, Kiss and Pink Floyd. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2004.-Biography:...
, known for producing hits for Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
and the New York Dolls
New York Dolls
The New York Dolls is an American rock band, formed in New York in 1971. The band's protopunk sound prefigured much of what was to come in the punk rock era; their visual style influenced the look of many new wave and 1980s-era glam metal groups, and they began the local New York scene that later...
, was put in charge, but engineer Jack Douglas
Jack Douglas (record producer)
Jack Douglas is an American record producer. He was born in New York City. Starting out as folk musician and performer, he worked on Robert Kennedy's senatorial campaign as a song-writer. Douglas then moved to England and joined a succession of bands before returning to New York to attend the...
put so much into the project that he was called the sixth member of the band. (Douglas's career had started very humbly as janitor at the studio.) The song "Lord of the Thighs
Lord of the Thighs
"Lord of the Thighs" is a song performed by American hard rock band Aerosmith. It was written by frontman Steven Tyler, and released on the band's 1974 album Get Your Wings. Drummer Joey Kramer has said it is his favorite song to perform live. Kramer and singer Steven Tyler have each said that he...
" was written and recorded inside the Record Plant's Studio C during an all-night session, after the band realized they needed one more song for the album. When Aerosmith returned to the Record Plant in early 1975 to record Toys in the Attic
Toys in the Attic (album)
For his review of Toys in the Attic for Allmusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine called the album's style a mix of Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones riffs and was filled with songs about sex with a different style than there ever was before. Greg Kot called the album a landmark of hard rock...
, they named Douglas as sole producer. The song "Walk This Way
Walk This Way
"Walk This Way" is a song by American hard rock group Aerosmith. Written by Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, the song was originally released as the second single from the 1975 album Toys in the Attic. It peaked at Number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1977, part of a string of successful hit...
" was written after Douglas and the band, without Steven Tyler
Steven Tyler
Steven Tyler is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, best known as the frontman and lead singer of the Boston-based rock band Aerosmith, in which he also plays the harmonica, and occasional piano and percussion. He is known as the "Demon of Screamin'", due to his high screams...
, went out to see the film Young Frankenstein
Young Frankenstein
Young Frankenstein is a 1974 American comedy film directed by Mel Brooks and starring Gene Wilder as the title character, a descendant of the infamous Dr. Victor Frankenstein. The supporting cast includes Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars, Richard...
, and they were struck by a humorous line spoken by Marty Feldman
Marty Feldman
Martin Alan "Marty" Feldman was an English comedy writer, comedian and actor who starred in a series of British television comedy shows, including At Last the 1948 Show, and Marty, which won two BAFTA awards and was the first Saturn Award winner for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Young...
playing a hunchback. They returned to the studio to tell Tyler what the song's title must be, and Tyler wrote the words on the walls of the stairwell at the Record Plant. For the recording of Rocks
Rocks (album)
Rocks is the fourth album by American rock band Aerosmith, released May 3, 1976. Allmusic described Rocks as having "captured Aerosmith at their most raw and rocking". Rocks also ranked #176 on Rolling Stones list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time...
in 1977, Douglas brought a truckload of Record Plant remote recording equipment to The Cenacle, a 300-room former convent in Armonk, New York
Armonk, New York
Armonk is a hamlet and census-designated place located in the town of North Castle in Westchester County, New York. As of the 2010 census, the CDP population was 4,330....
.
John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
was recording "Walking On Thin Ice" at the Record Plant on December 8, 1980, the day he was shot and killed.
In 1987, the New York studio was sold to Sir George Martin
George Martin
Sir George Henry Martin CBE is an English record producer, arranger, composer and musician. He is sometimes referred to as "the Fifth Beatle"— a title that he often describes as "nonsense," but the fact remains that he served as producer on all but one of The Beatles' original albums...
and closed soon afterward.
Los Angeles
Seeing the early success of the New York studio, Kellgren and Stone decided to move to the West CoastWest Coast of the United States
West Coast or Pacific Coast are terms for the westernmost coastal states of the United States. The term most often refers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. Although not part of the contiguous United States, Alaska and Hawaii do border the Pacific Ocean but can't be included in...
and open another one in Los Angeles. To design the studio, they contracted with Tom Hidley who had built TTG Studios
TTG Studios
TTG Studios was a recording studio in Los Angeles, California, founded by Ami Hadani and Tom Hidley.-Studio:"TTG" stood for "two terrible guys." The studio was first established in 1965 at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Highland Avenue, in Hollywood section of Los Angeles...
in 1965, and was becoming known in L.A. for answering the high-decibel needs of rock music. Hidley was brought on board as the "third musketeer", according to Stone. On December 4, 1969, the new studio opened its doors on 8456 West Third Street near La Cienega Boulevard. Sometimes known as "Record Plant West", the new studio held a 16-track recorder, larger than the 12-track system in New York (occasionally called "Record Plant East"), and studio time was 20 to 25 percent less expensive than typical studios in New York. In 1970, to stay innovative and retain the prestige of an industry leader, the Record Plant installed a 24-track tape recorder. It was a very large machine assembled by Hidley at the cost of $42,000 but in the next three years it was used on only a few sessions.
Stone and Kellgren had profited enough to buy back their studio from Warner Communications, and at the same time expand into Sausalito. As well, the duo expanded with remote recording dates in 1973 including performances by Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
, Vikki Carr
Vikki Carr
Vikki Carr is an American singer and humanitarian from El Paso, Texas. She has performed in a variety of music genres, including jazz, pop and country, but has enjoyed her greatest success singing in Spanish.-Career:After taking the stage name 'Vikki Carr', she signed with Liberty Records in 1962...
, Sly Stone
Sly Stone
Sly Stone is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, most famous for his role as frontman for Sly & the Family Stone, a band which played a critical role in the development of soul, funk and psychedelia in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1993, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of...
, Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren
Todd Harry Rundgren is an American multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and record producer. Hailed in the early stage of his career as a new pop-wunderkind, supported by the certified gold solo double LP Something/Anything? in 1972, Todd Rundgren's career has produced a diverse range of recordings...
, Joe Walsh
Joe Walsh
Joseph Fidler "Joe" Walsh is an American musician, songwriter, record producer, and actor. He has been a member of three commercially successful bands, the James Gang, Barnstorm, and the Eagles, and has experienced notable success as a solo artist and prolific session musician, especially with B.B...
and Rod Stewart
Rod Stewart
Roderick David "Rod" Stewart, CBE is a British singer-songwriter and musician, born and raised in North London, England and currently residing in Epping. He is of Scottish and English ancestry....
. At the same time, the studio worked on projects by The Gap Band for Shelter Records
Shelter Records
Shelter Records was a U.S. record label started by Leon Russell and Denny Cordell that operated from 1969 to 1981. The company established offices in both Los Angeles and Tulsa, Russell's home town, where the label sought to promote a "workshop atmosphere" with a recording studio in a converted...
, Mary McCreary, a singer being produced by her husband Leon Russell
Leon Russell
Claude Russell Bridges , known professionally as Leon Russell, is an American musician and songwriter, who has recorded as a session musician, sideman, and maintained a solo career in music....
, and The Partridge Family
The Partridge Family
The Partridge Family is an American television sitcom about a widowed mother and her five children who embark on a music career. The series originally ran from September 25, 1970 until August 31, 1974, the last new episode airing on March 23, 1974, on the ABC network, as part of a Friday-night lineup...
in production for Bell Records
Bell Records
Bell Records was an American record label founded in 1952 by Arthur Shimkin in New York, the owner of children's record label Golden Records, and initially a unit of Pocket Books, after the rights to the name were acquired from Benny Bell who used the Bell name to issue risque novelty records. A...
under producer Wes Farrell
Wes Farrell
Wes Farrell was an American musician, songwriter and record producer, who was most active in the 1960s and 1970s...
.
Jim Keltner Fan Club
In March 1973 when a third studio—Studio C—was installed at Third Street, Kellgren initiated a series of Sunday night jam sessionJam session
Jam sessions are often used by musicians to develop new material, find suitable arrangements, or simply as a social gathering and communal practice session. Jam sessions may be based upon existing songs or forms, may be loosely based on an agreed chord progression or chart suggested by one...
s hosted by the Record Plant, featuring well-known studio drummer Jim Keltner
Jim Keltner
James Lee "Jim" Keltner is an American drummer known primarily for his session work. He has contributed to the work of many well-known artists...
, a good friend of Kellgren's. The jams were known as the Jim Keltner Fan Club Hour, and famous musicians would show up to play along with Keltner. Pete Townshend
Pete Townshend
Peter Dennis Blandford "Pete" Townshend is an English rock guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and author, known principally as the guitarist and songwriter for the rock group The Who, as well as for his own solo career...
, Ronnie Wood, Billy Preston
Billy Preston
William Everett "Billy" Preston was a musician who gained notoriety and fame, first as a session musician for the likes of Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and The Beatles, and later finding fame as a solo artist with hits such as "Space Race", "Will It Go Round in Circles" and "Nothing from...
, Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
and George Harrison
George Harrison
George Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...
were among those who came and jammed. Harrison jokingly referred to the sessions on the back cover of his album Living in the Material World
Living in the Material World
Living in the Material World is a studio album by George Harrison, released in 1973.-Background:As a follow-up to 1970's greatly received All Things Must Pass and his mammoth charity project, The Concert for Bangladesh, Living in the Material World was among the most highly anticipated releases of...
. As a jab at Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
's self-promotion on the back of the album Red Rose Speedway
Red Rose Speedway
-Additional tracks:-Original LP Recording:Originally planned as a double album, this is the tracklisting from the acetates of the early incarnation of the album dated 13 December 1972...
where it said "for more information on the Wings' Fun Club send a stamped self-addressed envelope...", Harrison wrote on his own album regarding the "Jim Keltner Fun Club", "send a stamped undressed elephant..." Drummer Marvin "Smitty" Smith
Marvin Smith
Smith, an alumnus of Berklee, has recorded 200 albums with various artists, as well as two solo albums.In addition, he also has toured with Sting, Dave Holland, Sonny Rollins and Willie Nelson. He is a former member of The New York Jazz Quartet, and is in a band with Kevin Eubanks, fellow Berklee...
said that there were regular jam sessions of famous musicians at Clover Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard near Vine Street
Vine Street
Vine is a street in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California that runs north-south from Melrose Avenue up past Hollywood Boulevard. The intersection of Hollywood and Vine was once a symbol of Hollywood itself...
in Hollywood, but that the increasing number of musicians outgrew the place and the group moved to the Record Plant for more space. Smith was a regular at the Studio C jams, but one Sunday he couldn't make it and he sent his friend David Foster
David Foster
David Walter Foster, OC, OBC , is a Canadian musician, record producer, composer, singer, songwriter, and arranger, noted for discovering singers such as Michael Bublé, Josh Groban, and Charice Pempengco; and for producing some of the most successful artists in the world, such as Céline Dion, Toni...
to play keyboards. Foster was so well received by other musicians that he and three others—Paul Stallworth on bass, Danny Kortchmar
Danny Kortchmar
Danny "Kootch" Kortchmar is a guitarist, session musician, and songwriter. Kortchmar's work with singer-songwriters such as David Crosby, Carole King, Graham Nash, Carly Simon and James Taylor helped define the signature sound of the singer-songwriter era of the 1970s...
on guitar, and Keltner on drums—formed the band, Attitudes
Attitudes (band)
Attitudes was a pop/rock quartet from Los Angeles made up of producer/composer/arranger David Foster on keyboards, guitarist Danny Kortchmar , bassist Paul Stallworth, and noted session drummer Jim Keltner...
.
One of the Keltner jam sessions in late December 1973 became known later as "Too Many Cooks". Under the leadership of John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
, an all-star lineup performed an extended version of the blues song "Too Many Cooks (Spoil the Soup)", with Mick Jagger on lead vocals, Keltner on drums, Kortchmar and Jesse Ed Davis
Jesse Ed Davis
Jesse Edwin Davis was an American guitarist. He was well regarded as a session artist. His death in 1988 is attributed to a drug overdose.-Biography:...
on guitars, Al Kooper
Al Kooper
Al Kooper is an American songwriter, record producer and musician, known for organizing Blood, Sweat & Tears , providing studio support for Bob Dylan when he went electric in 1965, and also bringing together guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills to...
on keyboards, Bobby Keys
Bobby Keys
Bobby Keys is an American saxophone player, and has performed with other musicians as a member of one of the notable horn sections of the 1970s. He appears on albums by The Rolling Stones, The Who, Harry Nilsson, Delaney Bramlett, George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, Eric Clapton and Joe...
playing tenor saxophone, Trevor Lawrence on baritone saxophone, Jack Bruce
Jack Bruce
John Symon Asher "Jack" Bruce is a Scottish musician and songwriter, respected as a founding member of the British psychedelic rock power trio, Cream, for a solo career that spans several decades, and for his participation in several well-known musical ensembles...
on bass and Harry Nilsson
Harry Nilsson
Harry Edward Nilsson III was an American singer-songwriter who achieved the peak of his commercial success in the early 1970s. On all but his earliest recordings he is credited as Nilsson...
singing background vocals. Jagger was uncomfortable stretching to reach the top of his vocal range, and he grew unhappy with the progress being made on the song. Journalist Lucian K. Truscott IV wrote in 1977 that Kellgren told Jagger to "sit on it", ending the complaints. After Lennon's personal assistant and lover May Pang
May Pang
May Fung Yee Pang is best known as the former girlfriend of John Lennon. She had previously worked as a personal assistant and production coordinator for Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono....
brought the master tapes to light, the track "Too Many Cooks" was released in 2007 on Mick Jagger's album Very Best Of.... Musician and journalist Steven Van Zandt
Steven Van Zandt
Steven Van Zandt is an Italian-American musician, songwriter, arranger, record producer, actor, and radio disc jockey, who frequently goes by the stage names Little Steven or Miami Steve...
described Jagger's vocals as "ragged but still in control", and the song as "amazing", with "a painful soulfulness [that] hits you and stays with you".
In March 1974 to celebrate the first anniversary of the Jim Keltner Fan Club Hour jam series, Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...
and Moose Johnson joined Keltner on drums, and on guitar were Lennon, Marc Benno
Marc Benno
Marc Benno is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.Benno was a member of The Asylum Choir with Leon Russell in the late 1960s, and launched a solo career in the early 1970s, with his 1972 effort Ambush being the most commercially successful...
and Davis. Ric Grech
Ric Grech
Richard Roman Grech was a British rock musician.-Career:Grech originally gained notice in the United Kingdom as the bass guitar player for the progressive rock group Family. He joined the band when it was a largely blues-based live act in Leicester known as the Farinas; he became their bassist in...
played bass, Keys played sax, Gene Clark
Gene Clark
Gene Clark, born Harold Eugene Clark was an American singer-songwriter, and one of the founding members of the folk-rock group The Byrds....
vocalized, Joe Vitale
Joe Vitale (musician)
Joe Vitale is an American musician primarily known as a drummer but also a flautist, keyboardist and singer. He has played with many of the top names in music during a career dating back to the 1970s.-Biography:...
played flute, and Mal Evans
Mal Evans
Malcolm Frederick 'Mal' Evans was best known as the road manager, assistant, and a friend of The Beatles: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr....
supported the large group on percussion. During this time at the Record Plant, Keltner was working on a solo project by Jack Bruce, formerly of Cream
Cream (band)
Cream were a 1960s British rock supergroup consisting of bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce, guitarist/vocalist Eric Clapton, and drummer Ginger Baker...
, laying down tracks for Out of the Storm
Out of the Storm (album)
Out of the Storm is the fourth studio album by British bassist Jack Bruce. The album, Bruce's first solo effort in over three years, was recorded and released in 1974, following the dissolution of Bruce's power trio West, Bruce and Laing....
under the direction of engineer and producer Andy Johns
Andy Johns
Andy Johns is an engineer and producer who worked on well-known rock albums such as Led Zeppelin's IV and The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street. His sound is exemplified by Free's album Highway, which he engineered and produced....
; Steve Hunter played guitar. Also in the building was Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris , better known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist...
shaping the mixes for Fulfillingness' First Finale
Fulfillingness' First Finale
-Side One:#"Smile Please" – 3:28#*Stevie Wonder – lead vocal, background vocal, Fender Rhodes, drums#*Michael Sembello – electric guitar#*Reggie McBride – electric bass#*Bobbye Hall – congas, bongos#*Jim Gilstrap – background vocals...
, using Studio B which was built specifically for him. Jack Bruce first met drummer Bruce Gary
Bruce Gary
Bruce Gary was best known as the drummer for the music group The Knack. He was nominated for two Grammy Awards as a stage performer, producer, and recording artist....
(later of The Knack
The Knack
The Knack was an American New Wave rock quartet based in Los Angeles that rose to fame with their first single, "My Sharona", an international number one hit in 1979.-Founding :...
fame) when he showed up at one of the jams, hanging around, hoping to play. Jack Bruce described the youngster as a "wannabe drummer", but befriended him and hired him when they were both back in England. At Burbank Studios on March 28, 1974, a few weeks after the anniversary jam, some of those celebrating at the Record Plant came together again for another jam, also called "The Jim Keltner Fan Club Hour", though it was not hosted or organized by Kellgren, nor did it have Keltner in attendance. Lennon played with Keys, Davis and Wonder, among others, and McCartney joined in part way through. The raw recordings with their uneven performances were issued as a bootleg album called A Toot and a Snore in '74
A Toot and a Snore in '74
A Toot and a Snore in '74 is a bootleg album of the only known recording session in which John Lennon and Paul McCartney played together after the break-up of The Beatles. Mentioned by Lennon in a 1975 interview, details were brought to light in May Pang's 1983 book, Loving John, and it gained...
; the final time that Lennon played with McCartney.
1977 and beyond
In July 1977, Kellgren drowned in the swimming pool at his Hollywood home. Guitarist Ronnie Wood wrote that Kellgren died while trying to fix some underwater speakers in his pool, and that a girlfriend of his drowned trying to help him. Both bodies were discovered floating in the pool by Kellgren's wife Marta, a flight attendant. The loss of his friend and business partner hit Stone hard. Stone was suddenly responsible for keeping all three studios operating, but he concentrated his attention on Los Angeles. He slowly began to lose interest in the Sausalito location.Studio C was destroyed in an electrical fire on January 10, 1978. At the time, rocker Marshall Chapman
Marshall Chapman
Marshall Chapman is an American singer-songwriter and author.Chapman, the daughter of a cotton mill owner, was taken to an Elvis Presley concert in 1957 and says the experience changed her from a southern debutante to a nascent rock and roller...
was working with producer Al Kooper and bassist Tom Comet in Studio B on her album Jaded Virgin, and she helped other musicians and engineers carry priceless master recordings to safety outside the building. She said: "We might as well have been rescuing Rembrandts from the Louvre ... I remember seeing Hotel California [marked] on one, and 'John Lennon' on another. I nearly fainted when I saw I was holding a box containing the master tape from Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life."
During the next 13 months, Studio C was rebuilt and fitted with radical new gear. In February 1979, Stephen Stills
Stephen Stills
Stephen Arthur Stills is an American guitarist and singer/songwriter best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash . He has performed on a professional level in several other bands as well as maintaining a solo career at the same time...
became the first major-label American artist to record on digital recording
Digital recording
In digital recording, digital audio and digital video is directly recorded to a storage device as a stream of discrete numbers, representing the changes in air pressure for audio and chroma and luminance values for video through time, thus making an abstract template for the original sound or...
and mastering equipment, a 3M
3M
3M Company , formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation based in Maplewood, Minnesota, United States....
system installed to replace the previous analog system. With engineer Michael Braunstein at the controls, Stills recorded a new version of the song "Cherokee", previously released on his first solo album, Stephen Stills
Stephen Stills (album)
Stephen Stills is an eponymous rock album by Stephen Stills, famous for his long-time membership in Crosby, Stills, & Nash. It consists of songs written by Stills and is one of four high-profile albums released by each member of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the wake of their 1970 chart-topping...
.
The L.A. operation expanded further in the early 1980s, equipping more remote recording trucks. In 1982, Stone leased sound stages M and L at the Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
studio lot, for film sound recordings. Soundtracks that the Record Plant tracked and mixed there include ones for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is a 1982 American science fiction film released by Paramount Pictures. The film is the second feature based on the Star Trek science fiction franchise. The plot features James T...
, Annie
Annie (1982 film soundtrack)
Annie is a soundtrack album for the 1982 film of the same name.-Track listing:# "Tomorrow" – 1:37# "Maybe" – 2:00# "It's the Hard-Knock Life" – 3:42...
, 48 Hrs.
48 Hrs.
48 Hrs. is a 1982 American action comedy film directed by Walter Hill, starring Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy as a cop and convict, respectively, who team up to catch a cop-killer. The title refers to the amount of time they have to solve the crime. This was Eddie Murphy's film debut , and Joel...
, and An Officer and a Gentleman
An Officer and a Gentleman
A Officer and a Gentleman is a 1982 American drama film that tells the story of a U.S. Navy aviation officer candidate who comes into conflict with the Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant who trains him. It was written by Douglas Day Stewart and directed by Taylor Hackford...
. The studio was outgrowing its Third Street location.
In 1985, the Record Plant's Third Street facility closed with hundreds of its customers and staff taking part in "The Last Jam". In January 1986 the Record Plant reopened at 1032 Sycamore Avenue in Hollywood in the former Radio Recorders "Annex", a historic studio where Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
and Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
recorded.
On December 8, 1987, Stone sold 50% plus one share of the Los Angeles studio to Chrysalis Records
Chrysalis Records
Chrysalis Records was a British record label that was created in 1969. The name was both a reference to the pupal stage of a butterfly and a combination of its founders names, Chris Wright and Terry Ellis...
under Sir George Martin, with Stone continuing to manage the facility. In 1989 he sold the remainder and left it under Chrysalis management. In 1991, Rick Stevens, ex-president of Summa Music Group publishing, bought the Record Plant; he refurbished it in 1993. Stevens added private lounges and an atrium lit by skylight, holding a jacuzzi and a billiard table.
Sausalito
On October 28, 1972, Kellgren and Stone opened the Northern CaliforniaNorthern California
Northern California is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The San Francisco Bay Area , and Sacramento as well as its metropolitan area are the main population centers...
location in Sausalito, throwing a Halloween party to celebrate Studio A going on line. Ginger Mews, ex-manager of Wally Heider Studios
Wally Heider Studios
Wally Heider Studios was a recording studio in San Francisco, California between 1969 and 1980, started by recording engineer and studio owner Wally Heider.-History:...
, was named studio manager of Sausalito Music Factory, doing business as Record Plant, and construction continued on the similarly equipped Studio B with completion expected in February 1973. The 10700 square feet (994.1 m²) building was a former office suite covered with diagonal redwood siding in an industrial park near Sausalito's harbor facilities. Kellgren worked with Hidley to design Studio A and Studio B to have the same size and the same "dead" acoustics, and both were fitted with Hidley-designed Westlake monitors. Studio A was decorated with a sunburst pattern on the wall and white fabric draped from the ceiling. Studio B was more vibrant to the eye, having multi-colored fabric layers on the ceiling and swirls of color on the walls. Kellgren and Stone sent party invitations out on slabs of redwood, and among the guests were John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
who both showed up dressed as trees. The first recording on the books was under producer Al Schmitt
Al Schmitt
Al Schmitt is a recording engineer and record producer.-Early career:Schmitt grew up in New York City. After serving in the U.S. Navy he began working at Apex Recording Studios at the age of 19. In the late 1950's Schmitt moved to Los Angeles and became a staff engineer at Radio Recorders on Santa...
who brought in Mike Finnigan
Mike Finnigan
Mike Finnigan is an American keyboard player and vocalist, his specialty being the Hammond Organ.-Career:Finnigan has toured and sessioned for the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Etta James, Sam Moore, Crosby Stills and Nash, Dave Mason, Buddy Guy, Manhattan Transfer, Taj Mahal, Michael...
and Jerry Wood as Finnigan & Wood, recording the album Crazed Hipsters. When Studio B went online, engineer Tom Flye came out to California from New York and ran the room; his first customer was New Riders of the Purple Sage
New Riders of the Purple Sage
New Riders of the Purple Sage is an American country rock band. The group emerged from the psychedelic rock scene in San Francisco, California in 1969, and its original lineup included several members of the Grateful Dead. Their best known song is "Panama Red"...
who recorded The Adventures of Panama Red
The Adventures of Panama Red
The Adventures of Panama Red is the fourth country rock album by the New Riders of the Purple Sage, released in 1973. It is widely regarded as one of the group's best efforts, and reached number 55 on the Billboard charts....
. Following that, Flye helped Sly and the Family Stone make their album Fresh
Fresh (Sly and the Family Stone album)
Fresh is the sixth album by American funk/soul/rock band Sly & the Family Stone, released by Epic/CBS Records on June 30, 1973...
.
The expansion into Sausalito was the result of drummer Buddy Miles
Buddy Miles
George Allen Miles, Jr. , known as Buddy Miles, was an American rock and funk drummer, most known as a founding member of The Electric Flag in 1967, then as a member of Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys from 1969 through to January 1970.-Early life:George Allen Miles was born in Omaha, Nebraska on...
and radio pioneer Tom "Big Daddy" Donahue
Tom Donahue
Tom "Big Daddy" Donahue , was a pioneering rock and roll radio disc jockey, record producer and concert promoter....
asking Kellgren and Stone to put a studio in the San Francisco Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
. The intention was to have a getaway studio, far from the pressures of the big city music industry. Miles and Donahue promised that their recording business would go to the new studio and that it would be promoted with a live radio show. "Live From The Plant" was the resulting radio show; it was broadcast on Donahue's album-oriented rock station KSAN (FM) from time to time over the next two years, primarily on Sunday nights, and it featured various artists such as the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
, Jerry Garcia
Jerry Garcia
Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead...
, The Tubes
The Tubes
The Tubes are a San Francisco-based rock band, whose 1975 debut album included the hit single, "White Punks on Dope". During its first fifteen years or so, the band's live performances combined quasi-pornography with wild satires of media, consumerism, and politics...
, Peter Frampton
Peter Frampton
Peter Kenneth Frampton is an English musician, singer, producer, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist. He was previously associated with the bands Humble Pie and The Herd. Frampton's international breakthrough album was his live release, Frampton Comes Alive!. The album sold over 6 million copies...
, Bob Marley & The Wailers
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Bob Marley & The Wailers were a Jamaican reggae, ska and rocksteady band formed by Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in 1963. Additional members were Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso, Cherry Smith and Aston and Carlton Barrett...
, Pablo Cruise
Pablo Cruise
Pablo Cruise is a pop/rock band currently composed of David Jenkins , Cory Lerios , Steve Price and Larry Antonino . Formed in 1973, the band released eight studio albums over the next decade, during which time four singles reached the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart...
, Rory Gallagher
Rory Gallagher
William Rory Gallagher, ; 2 March 1948 – 14 June 1995, was an Irish blues-rock multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and bandleader. Born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland, and raised in Cork, Gallagher recorded solo albums throughout the 1970s and 1980s, after forming the band Taste...
, The Marshall Tucker Band
The Marshall Tucker Band
The Marshall Tucker Band is an American Southern rock band originally from Spartanburg, South Carolina. The band's blend of rock, rhythm and blues, jazz, country, and gospel helped establish the Southern rock genre in the early 1970s...
, Jimmy Buffett
Jimmy Buffett
James William "Jimmy" Buffett is a singer-songwriter, author, entrepreneur, and film producer. He is best known for his music, which often portrays an "island escapism" lifestyle. Together with his Coral Reefer Band, Buffett's musical hits include "Margaritaville" , and "Come Monday"...
, Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Lynn Raitt is an American blues singer-songwriter and a renowned slide guitar player. During the 1970s, Raitt released a series of acclaimed roots-influenced albums which incorporated elements of blues, rock, folk and country, but she is perhaps best known for her more commercially...
, Link Wray
Link Wray
Fred Lincoln "Link" Wray Jr was an American rock and roll guitarist, songwriter and occasional singer....
, Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt is an American popular music recording artist. She has earned eleven Grammy Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award, an ALMA Award, numerous United States and internationally certified gold, platinum and multiplatinum albums, in addition to Tony Award and Golden...
and Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac are a British–American rock band formed in 1967 in London.The only original member present in the band is its eponymous drummer, Mick Fleetwood...
. KSAN, known as "Jive 95", was the most popular radio station for Bay Area listeners from 18 to 34 years old, and the Record Plant broadcasts were widely heard. Donahue died in April 1975 after which fewer concerts were broadcast. A notable later radio show was by Nils Lofgren
Nils Lofgren
Nils Hilmer Lofgren is an American rock music recording artist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist...
and his band, with a guest appearance by Al Kooper; they performed at the Record Plant's Halloween party in 1975.
The Record Plant in Sausalito soon became known as one of the top four recording studios in the San Francisco Bay Area, the other three being the CBS/Automatt (now defunct), Wally Heider Studios
Wally Heider Studios
Wally Heider Studios was a recording studio in San Francisco, California between 1969 and 1980, started by recording engineer and studio owner Wally Heider.-History:...
(now Hyde Street Studios) and Fantasy Studios
Fantasy Studios
Fantasy Studios is a recording studio in Berkeley, California at the Zaentz Media Center, known for its recording of award-winning albums such as Journey's Escape and Green Day's Dookie. Built as a private recording studio for artists on the Fantasy Records label in 1971, it was opened to the...
in Berkeley. In the first year, the studio worked on projects by Buddy Miles, the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
(who booked the whole building in August 1973 to record Wake of the Flood
Wake of the Flood
Wake of the Flood is the sixth studio album by the Grateful Dead. It was recorded between August 4 and September 1, 1973 and originally released on October 15, 1973. It was the first release under the band's own label, Grateful Dead Records, after fulfilling their contract with Warner Bros. Records...
), and on Greg Allman's first solo album, Laid Back
Laid Back (Gregg Allman album)
Laid Back is a 1973 album by Gregg Allman and was released on the Capricorn Records label. It peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Pop Albums charts in 1974....
.
The quirkiness of the studio extended in many directions: For transporting musicians, Stone owned a limousine with the custom license plate DEDUCT, while Kellgren kept a purple Rolls-Royce displaying GREED on the license plate. As in Los Angeles, the studio contained a jacuzzi, but Sausalito's conference room had a waterbed
Waterbed
A waterbed, water mattress, or flotation mattress is a bed or mattress filled with water. Waterbeds intended for medical therapies appear in various reports through the 19th century...
floor. For the musicians' meals, there were chefs ready to cook organic food, and for their sleeping quarters there were two guesthouses next to each other, five minutes away in Mill Valley
Mill Valley, California
Mill Valley is a city in Marin County, California, United States located about north of San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge. The population was 13,903 at the 2010 census.Mill Valley is located on the western and northern shores of Richardson Bay...
. In back there was a basketball hoop, and in the nearby harbor a speedboat was kept ready. The studio obtained industrial-grade nitrous oxide
Nitrous oxide
Nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas or sweet air, is a chemical compound with the formula . It is an oxide of nitrogen. At room temperature, it is a colorless non-flammable gas, with a slightly sweet odor and taste. It is used in surgery and dentistry for its anesthetic and analgesic...
—pure, not mixed with oxygen as it is for dental anesthesia—from a local chemical supply company under the pretext that the gas was critical to the recording process, and fresh tanks were delivered weekly. Gas masks hung from the ceiling for those who wished to get intoxicated on "laughing gas"; the Grateful Dead and their engineer Dan Healy
Dan Healy (soundman)
Dan Healy is an audio engineer most famous for his work with the American rock band the Grateful Dead. He succeeded Owsley "Bear" Stanley as the group's chief sound man...
reportedly made use of this feature. Al Kooper wrote that during the few days that he was helping Lofgren lay down tracks for Cry Tough, Kooper was so taken with the novel drug experience that he wheeled one of the tanks around and kept it next to him for refreshment between takes. He breathed in so much of it that acid collected in his stomach, aggravating his ulcers, and for a few days he was too sick to work. Kooper said that the studio's fun with nitrous oxide was stopped forever when a friend of Kellgren's was found dead from asphyxia
Asphyxia
Asphyxia or asphyxiation is a condition of severely deficient supply of oxygen to the body that arises from being unable to breathe normally. An example of asphyxia is choking. Asphyxia causes generalized hypoxia, which primarily affects the tissues and organs...
under one of the tanks, the tube still in his mouth.
The Pit
To satisfy the wishes of Sly Stone, one of the office spaces at the studio was turned into an unusual recording studio dubbed "The Pit". The Pit was a 140 square feet (13 m²), acoustically dead room that had the engineer's controls sunk 10 feet (3 m) into the foundation of the building, this pit surrounded on all sides by a ground level area intended for the musicians. Its appearance was futuristic, with bright maroon plush carpet on the floors, walls, ceiling, and stairs. Psychedelic murals and embroidery added to the visual atmosphere. There were no windows between the control room and the main studio area, previously considered a fundamental method of sound separation; instead, there was a partial cowling circling the control pit, also carpeted. A loft bed was accessible from the perimeter of The Pit, reached only by climbing through a giant pair of red lips. At the head of the bed, audio jacks allowed for microphones to be connected to the console in The Pit so that an artist could vocalize from under the covers. Guitarist Bob WelchBob Welch (musician)
Robert Lawrence "Bob" Welch, Jr. is a former member of Fleetwood Mac, who had a briefly successful solo career in the late 1970s. His singles included "Hot Love, Cold World", "Ebony Eyes", "Precious Love", and "Sentimental Lady"....
wrote that "it really was the height of '70s 'over-the-top-ness'." Al Kooper said "it looked like something out of Thunderdome
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is a 1985 Australian post-apocalyptic film directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie, written by Miller, Doug Mitchell and Terry Hayes, and starring Mel Gibson and Tina Turner. It is the third installment in the action movie Mad Max franchise...
." Jack Bruce thought it was decorated to look like a human heart, "with all kinds of red, synthetic fur on the walls." Sly Stone recorded in it from time to time but mostly it remained an unused curiosity—a "white elephant", according to producer Jimmy Robinson—a room that new arrivals were shown to elicit an "oh wow, what a trip" response. The separation between engineer and musician frustrated Stone, and he recorded as much as possible down in the actual pit, next to the engineers, lowering a Hammond B3 organ
Hammond organ
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, in the 1960s and 1970s it became a standard keyboard...
into the pit for his own use, or positioning the members of a horn section down there. Kellgren said it was like a Ferrari
Ferrari
Ferrari S.p.A. is an Italian sports car manufacturer based in Maranello, Italy. Founded by Enzo Ferrari in 1929, as Scuderia Ferrari, the company sponsored drivers and manufactured race cars before moving into production of street-legal vehicles as Ferrari S.p.A. in 1947...
in that you had to know what you were doing in order to drive it. In late August 1975, Kellgren flew up from L.A. with bassist Bill Wyman
Bill Wyman
Bill Wyman is an English musician best known as the bass guitarist for the English rock and roll band the Rolling Stones from 1962 until 1992. Since 1997, he has recorded and toured with his own band, Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings...
who had just finished a major tour with The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
. In The Pit, Wyman jammed with Van Morrison
Van Morrison
Van Morrison, OBE is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician. His live performances at their best are regarded as transcendental and inspired; while some of his recordings, such as the studio albums Astral Weeks and Moondance, and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, are widely...
who played saxophone, guitarist Joe Walsh (who had just joined the Eagles), drummer Dallas Taylor
Dallas Taylor (drummer)
Dallas Woodrow Taylor Jr. was born in Denver, Colorado, 7 April 1948. He is a session drummer who has played on several rock records of the 1960s and 1970s...
, pianist Leon Russell
Leon Russell
Claude Russell Bridges , known professionally as Leon Russell, is an American musician and songwriter, who has recorded as a session musician, sideman, and maintained a solo career in music....
and the Tower of Power
Tower of Power
Tower of Power is an American R&B-based horn section and band, originating in Oakland, California, that has been performing for over 43 years. They are best known for their funky soul sound highlighted by a powerful horn section...
horn section; some of the tracks contributed to Wyman's solo album Stone Alone. Wyman laid down his vocal tracks from a lying-down position, a bottle of brandy in his hand.
Mid- to late-1970s
In 1975, the Record Plant's hourly rate was $120. Stevie Wonder worked on Songs in the Key of LifeSongs in the Key of Life
Songs in the Key of Life is the 13th album by American recording artist Stevie Wonder, released September 28, 1976, on Motown Records. It was the culmination of his "classic period" albums. An ambitious double LP with a 4-song bonus EP, Songs in the Key of Life became among the best-selling and...
in Sausalito; Sammy Hagar
Sammy Hagar
Sam Roy "Sammy" Hagar , also known as The Red Rocker, is an American rock singer, guitarist, and songwriter. Also sings Country Music....
used The Pit to record tracks for a solo album, and the Tower of Power cut In the Slot
In the Slot
In the Slot is a Tower of Power album released in 1975. It was their last studio album for Warner Bros. Records. It also marked the debut of new vocalist Hubert Tubbs...
. Pure Prairie League
Pure Prairie League
Pure Prairie League, sometimes abbreviated PPL, is an American country-rock band whose roots began between 1964 and 1969 in Waverly, Ohio with Craig Fuller, George Powell, Tom McGrail, Jim Caughlan and John David Call. In 1970 McGrail named the band after a 19th century temperance union mentioned...
recorded, Bob Welch's band Paris made Paris
Paris (Paris album)
Paris was an eponymous album, the first of the two albums recorded by the power trio Paris, which was active from 1975-1977.Paris comprised guitarist Bob Welch, formerly with Fleetwood Mac, bassist Glenn Cornick, formerly of Jethro Tull and drummer Thom Mooney, formerly of Nazz...
, and America
America (band)
America is an English-American folk rock band that originally included members Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell and Dan Peek. The three members were barely out of their teens when they became a musical sensation during 1972, scoring #1 hits and winning a Grammy for best new musical artist...
produced Hearts
Hearts (album)
-Track listing:#"Daisy Jane" – 3:07#"Half a Man" – 3:33#"Midnight" – 2:41#"Bell Tree" – 2:32#"Old Virginia" – 3:28#"People in the Valley" – 2:43#"Company" – 3:23...
. Remote recordings were made by Record Plant crews and gear for Dan Fogelberg
Dan Fogelberg
Daniel Grayling "Dan" Fogelberg was an American singer-songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist, whose music was inspired by sources as diverse as folk, pop, rock, classical, jazz, and bluegrass music...
, Sly Stone, Joe Walsh, and the New Riders of the Purple Sage.
In February 1976 for the album that became Rumours
Rumours
Rumours is the eleventh studio album by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac. Largely recorded in California during 1976, it was produced by the band with Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut and was released on 4 February 1977 by Warner Bros. Records. The record peaked at the top of both the...
, Fleetwood Mac blocked time at the studio to lay down tracks, bringing in engineers Ken Caillat
Ken Caillat
Kenneth Douglas "Ken" Caillat is an American record producer. He is best known for producing the Fleetwood Mac albums Rumours, Tusk, Mirage, Live, and The Chain Box Set....
and Richard Dashut
Richard Dashut
Richard Charles Dashut is a record producer who produced several Fleetwood Mac albums including their popular Rumours and Tusk, and later an album by Matthew Sweet, Altered Beast. Dashut also co-wrote several songs with Lindsey Buckingham during his time with Fleetwood Mac...
. Caillat was responsible for most of the tracking; he took a leave of absence from Wally Heider Studios
Wally Heider Studios
Wally Heider Studios was a recording studio in San Francisco, California between 1969 and 1980, started by recording engineer and studio owner Wally Heider.-History:...
in L.A. on the premise that Fleetwood Mac would use their facilities for mixing. Most band members complained about the windowless studio and wanted to record at their homes, but Mick Fleetwood
Mick Fleetwood
Michael John Kells "Mick" Fleetwood is a British musician and actor best known for his role as the drummer and namesake of the blues/rock and roll band Fleetwood Mac. His surname, combined with that of John McVie, was the inspiration for the name of the originally Peter Green-led Fleetwood Mac...
nixed this. The band used Studio A with its 3M
3M
3M Company , formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation based in Maplewood, Minnesota, United States....
24-track tape machine
Multitrack recording
Multitrack recording is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole...
, various studio microphones, and an API mixing console
Mixing console
In professional audio, a mixing console, or audio mixer, also called a sound board, mixing desk, or mixer is an electronic device for combining , routing, and changing the level, timbre and/or dynamics of audio signals. A mixer can mix analog or digital signals, depending on the type of mixer...
with 550A equalizers. Although Caillat was impressed with the setup, he felt that the room lacked ambiance because of its "very dead speakers" and large amounts of soundproofing
Soundproofing
Soundproofing is any means of reducing the sound pressure with respect to a specified sound source and receptor. There are several basic approaches to reducing sound: increasing the distance between source and receiver, using noise barriers to reflect or absorb the energy of the sound waves, using...
. Fleetwood remarked of his time at the studio that his band did not go into The Pit as it was usually occupied by strangers who were chopping powdered drugs into lines with razors.
In late 1977, 19-year-old Prince
Prince (musician)
Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of...
recorded his debut album in Sausalito while renting a home nearby. He performed every instrument, every track, and produced his own album, For You
For You (Prince album)
-Music:The album opens with the title track, an a cappella recording that states: "All of this and more is for you. With love, sincerity, and deepest care, my life with you I share." This would foreshadow Prince's career of speaking mostly through his music, rather than conventional interviews...
. He spent the equivalent of three album budgets to make this first record, and responded defensively when more experienced producers made suggestions in the studio. At the Record Plant he met Sly Stone, Chaka Khan
Chaka Khan
Chaka Khan , frequently known as the Queen of Funk, is a 10-time Grammy Award winning American singer-songwriter who gained fame in the 1970s as the frontwoman and focal point of the funk band Rufus. While still a member of the group in 1978, Khan embarked on a successful solo career...
and Carlos Santana
Carlos Santana
Carlos Augusto Alves Santana is a Mexican rock guitarist. Santana became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered rock, salsa and jazz fusion...
; three musicians he greatly admired. For You was criticized as over-produced and did not sell well.
Fleetwood Mac's Rumours went Platinum
Music recording sales certification
Music recording sales certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped or sold a certain number of copies, where the threshold quantity varies by type and by nation or territory .Almost all countries follow variations of the RIAA certification categories,...
in 1977. The band Pablo Cruise recorded two Platinum-certified albums at the Record Plant: A Place in the Sun
A Place in the Sun (Pablo Cruise album)
A Place in the Sun is the third album by the California soft rock group Pablo Cruise. The album marked an entrance into the mainstream for the band, and the first single from the album, "Whatcha Gonna Do?" reached number 6 on the Pop Singles charts...
(1977) and Worlds Away (1978). Cory Lerios
Cory Lerios
Cory Lerios is an American pianist and vocalist noted for his fast and flowing style of playing. He is one of the founding members of the platinum-record selling rock and roll band Pablo Cruise, and for the past 30 years has scored music for film and television.-History:Cory Lerios got his first...
, keyboardist and vocalist for Pablo Cruise, said that, in recording "the better part of four albums" at the Record Plant, drug use enabled jam sessions that could last up to 36 hours: "It was a great time, no question." Another Platinum album that came out of Sausalito in 1978 was Dan Fogelberg's Twin Sons of Different Mothers
Twin Sons of Different Mothers
Twin Sons of Different Mothers is the fifth album by American singer/songwriter Dan Fogelberg, released in 1978 . The album was the first of Fogelberg's two collaborations with jazz flautist Tim Weisberg; for the second, see No Resemblance Whatsoever.-Track listing:All songs written by Dan...
, a collaboration with Tim Weisberg
Tim Weisberg
Tim Weisberg is an American jazz/rock fusion flutist, composer, producer, and vocalist. In high school, at his first music class, because his last name was at the end of the alphabet, he was last to pick an instrument. All that was left was the flute and the bassoon...
on flute. Other albums did less well: Jimmy Cliff
Jimmy Cliff
Jimmy Cliff, OM is a Jamaican musician, singer and actor. He is the only currently living musician to hold the Order of Merit, the highest honour that can be granted by the Jamaican government for achievement in the arts and sciences...
laid down the tracks for Give Thankx in Jamaica but he came to Sausalito to polish it up, with producers Bob Johnston
Bob Johnston
Donald William Robert 'Bob' Johnston is a noted American record producer, best known for his work with Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, Willie Nelson and many Nashville recording artists, as well as Simon and Garfunkel.-Early days:Johnston was born into a professional musical family...
and John Stronach giving guidance. Cliff loved the studio's laid-back atmosphere, and he said Give Thankx was his best work yet. However, the album did not chart.
1980s
Singer, composer and producer Rick JamesRick James
James Ambrose Johnson, Jr. , better known by his stage name Rick James, was an American singer, songwriter, musician and record producer. James was a popular performer in the late 1970s and 1980s, scoring four number-one hits on the U.S. R&B charts performing in the genres of funk and R&B...
became a fixture at the Record Plant beginning in mid-1981. He recorded all of Street Songs
Street Songs (album)
-Track listing:All tracks composed and arranged by Rick James; except where indicated# "Give It to Me Baby" # "Ghetto Life" # "Make Love to Me" # "Mr...
in Studio B, and it went multiple platinum, driven by its hit songs "Super Freak
Super Freak
"Super Freak" is a 1981 hit single produced and performed by Rick James. The song, co-written by James and Alonzo Miller, was first released on James' album Street Songs and became one of James' signature songs. It features background vocals from Motown labelmates The Temptations, in which the bass...
" and "Give It to Me Baby
Give It to Me Baby
"Give It to Me Baby" is the title of a 1981 song by American R&B / funk singer Rick James. Taken from his album Street Songs, the song charted on the Billboard Hot 100, spending two weeks at #40 in July of 1981. However, the song proved to be more successful with R&B and dance club audiences...
". James was known both for his quick work to create songs in the studio and his high level of cocaine consumption. For a time, James lived in the conference room with the waterbed floor. Jim Gaines said that, with James in residence, "bands that weren't even recording would come by just to see who was there and say 'hi'." James was known for walking through other artists' recording sessions wearing only a towel, and sometimes dropping the towel for effect, "in front of all the women" according to Gaines. Studio manager Shiloh Hobel said that Sly Stone made an appearance, meeting James for the first time. She said, "It was such an incredible moment, these two fabulous forces in music... Each of them was really taken with the other."
In 1981 Stone sold the Sausalito studio to Laurie Necochea. Necochea was a music fan who, as a teenager in 1978, had received a $5.6 million malpractice settlement for being radiated too much during treatment for thyroid cancer, causing paralysis and quadriplegia. Stone said of the sale, "she bought Sausalito because if she owned the studio she could go backstage at concerts."
The Sausalito studio was managed for Necochea by Steve Malcolm and Bob Hodas. The studio business became known as "The Plant Studios" or simply, "The Plant". In 1982, Necochea funded two new Trident TSM
Trident Studios
Trident Studios was a British recording facility, originally located at 17 St. Anne's Court in London's Soho district. It was constructed in 1967 by Norman Sheffield a drummer of former 1960's group The Hunters and his Brother Barry....
mixing consoles for Studios A and B, and she paid for extensive acoustic work performed by Hidley in Studio B, including louvered panels to control the reverberation characteristics. Studio B's control room was enlarged from 1500 to 1850 sq ft (139.4 to 171.9 ), and a new studio monitor
Studio monitor
Studio monitors, also called reference monitors, are loudspeakers specifically designed for audio production applications such as recording studios, filmmaking, television studios and radio studios where accurate audio reproduction is crucial....
ing system was installed: the Meyer Sound Laboratories
Meyer Sound Laboratories
Meyer Sound Laboratories is an American company based in Berkeley, California that manufactures self-powered loudspeakers, multichannel audio show control systems, electroacoustic architecture, and audio analysis tools for the professional sound reinforcement, fixed installation, and sound...
ACD, John Meyer
John Meyer (audio engineer)
John Meyer is a pioneer in the sound reinforcement industry. In 1979 he founded founded Meyer Sound Laboratories with his wife, Helen Meyer.John Meyer grew up in Berkeley, California. His earliest involvement with audio was in the late 50s hanging out at the local radio station KPFA...
's first loudspeaker product. Rick James was the first artist to use the refurbished Studio B. Huey Lewis and the News
Huey Lewis and the News
Huey Lewis and the News is an American rock band based in San Francisco, California. They had a run of hit singles during the 1980s and early 1990s, eventually scoring a total of 19 top-ten singles across the Billboard Hot 100, Adult Contemporary and Mainstream Rock charts...
made their greatly successful album Sports primarily at the Plant.
Changes in ownership and management
In early 1984, the Necochea Trust determined that the money going to the Plant was being mishandled, and they sold the property to Stanley Jacox. Necochea died a year later at age 23. Jacox selected Jim Gaines as general manager; Gaines was a Stax/VoltStax Records
Stax Records is an American record label, originally based in Memphis, Tennessee.Founded in 1957 as Satellite Records, the name Stax Records was adopted in 1961. The label was a major factor in the creation of the Southern soul and Memphis soul music styles, also releasing gospel, funk, jazz, and...
veteran and a past manager of The Automatt. The small rehearsal room that had been The Pit was turned into Studio C, first used by John Fogerty
John Fogerty
John Cameron Fogerty is an American rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist, best known for his time with the swamp rock/roots rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival and as a #1 solo recording artist. Fogerty has a rare distinction of being named on Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 Greatest...
to record Centerfield. Some of the tracks for Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Louise Franklin is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Although known for her soul recordings and referred to as The Queen of Soul, Franklin is also adept at jazz, blues, R&B, gospel music, and rock. Rolling Stone magazine ranked her atop its list of The Greatest Singers of All...
's Who's Zoomin' Who?
Who's Zoomin' Who?
Who's Zoomin' Who? is the ever first million-selling, Platinum-certified album by Aretha Franklin, originally released in the summer of 1985. It was the first of four Platinum records in Franklin's 50-plus year recording career....
were laid down at The Plant, under the direction of Narada Michael Walden
Narada Michael Walden
Narada Michael Walden is an American producer, drummer, singer, and songwriter. He was given the name Narada by guru Sri Chinmoy in the early 1970s and his musical career spans three decades, in which he was awarded several gold, platinum and multi-platinum awards...
. Engineer Maureen Droney said that "there was an aura of magic and fun that came from the people who recorded there before." Accompanying famous artists, a series of experienced engineers and producers came through The Plant: Tom Dowd
Tom Dowd
Tom Dowd was an American recording engineer and producer for Atlantic Records. He was credited with innovating the multi-track recording method. Dowd worked on a virtual "who's who" of recordings that encompassed blues, jazz, pop, rock and soul records.- Early years :Born in Manhattan, Dowd grew...
, Bill Schnee, Alan Parsons
Alan Parsons
Alan Parsons is a British audio engineer, musician, and record producer. He was involved with the production of several significant albums, including The Beatles' Abbey Road and Let It Be, as well as Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon for which Pink Floyd credit him as an important contributor...
, Ron Nevison
Ron Nevison
Multi-platinum record producer Ron Nevison, throughout his career, has operated much like a surgeon, brought in during a critical point in a band's career to bring them back to the top from the commercial brink...
, Mike Clink
Mike Clink
Mike Clink is a record producer who started his career as an engineer at Record Plant Studios, recording such bands as Triumph, Guns N' Roses, Mötley Crüe, Megadeth, UFO , Jefferson Starship, The Babys, Heart, Eddie Money and many others.Clink began producing in 1986...
and Ted Templeman
Ted Templeman
Ted Templeman is an American record producer.-Career:He began his career in the mid 1960s in the Santa Cruz area as a drummer in a band called The Tikis. At the suggestion of Lenny Waronker, the group decided to change their name. Harpers Bizarre was born in 1966, with Templeman switching to...
. In 1985, with projects in progress by Heart
Heart (band)
Heart is an American rock band who first found success in Canada. Throughout several lineup changes, the only two members remaining constant are sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson. The group rose to fame in the 1970s with their music being influenced by hard rock as well as folk music...
, Journey
Journey (band)
Journey is an American rock band formed in 1973 in San Francisco by former members of Santana. The band has gone through several phases; its strongest commercial success occurred between the 1978 and 1987, after which it temporarily disbanded...
, Starship and Huey Lewis
Huey Lewis
Huey Lewis is an American musician, songwriter and occasional actor.Lewis sings lead and plays harmonica for his band Huey Lewis and the News, in addition to writing or co-writing many of the band's songs...
, the studio was seized by government agents based on an affidavit accusing Jacox of manufacturing methamphetamine
Methamphetamine
Methamphetamine is a psychostimulant of the phenethylamine and amphetamine class of psychoactive drugs...
s at his home in Auburn
Auburn, California
Auburn is the county seat of Placer County, California. Its population at the 2010 census was 13,330. Auburn is known for its California Gold Rush history.Auburn is part of the Greater Sacramento area.- History :...
and investing drug money in the studio. After Jacox's arrest, the Sausalito studio was owned by the federal government, who ran it with a skeleton crew for 14 months. Some observers jokingly called it "Club Fed" during this time, and among the recordings are unreleased tapes made by Buddy Miles known as the Club Fed Sessions. The government sold the studio at auction to recording engineer Bob Skye in 1986, effective on the first day of 1987. In 1988, Skye recruited recording engineer Arne Frager as a partner and Frager bought him out in late 1993. Spending $1 million, Frager remodeled Studio A for Metallica
Metallica
Metallica is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1981 when James Hetfield responded to an advertisement that drummer Lars Ulrich had posted in a local newspaper. The current line-up features long-time lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo ...
and producer Bob Rock
Bob Rock
Robert Jens Rock, , is a Canadian musician, sound engineer, and record producer best known for producing bands such as Aerosmith, The Cult, Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe, 311, Metallica, Our Lady Peace, The Offspring and most recently Bush.-Payola$ and Rock and Hyde:Rock began his music career in Langford,...
in 1993–1995, raising the roof from 14 to 32 ft (4.3 to 9.8 m) high for a bigger drum sound. The remodeling included the installation of an SSL 4000 G series
Solid State Logic
Solid State Logic is a manufacturer of high-end mixing consoles and recording studio hardware headquartered in Begbroke, Oxfordshire, UK.- Company information :...
console. He gave Studio B a vintage desk: a Neve 8068 with 64 inputs and GML Automation, purchased from the L.A. Record Plant. The former Pit/Studio C—renamed Mix 1—was given an SSL 9000 J series board for stereo and surround sound mixes. The sunken control area that had been created for The Pit was fitted with custom subwoofers. Mix 1 was eventually renamed "The Garden," an oval-shaped mix room designed by Frager and Manny LaCarruba. The Garden was a reverse-design studio where the larger tracking room was the new control room, and the old control room was used for overdubs. Metallica's S&M
S&M (album)
-Video release:Metallica also filmed and released the concert in DVD and VHS with direction by Wayne Isham. The VHS set has only the concert video, while the double DVD set has 5.1 sound , 41 minute documentary about the concert, and two "No Leaf Clover" music videos: "Slice & Dice" version and the...
was mixed in The Garden. Recording artists who worked at The Plant during this period include Sammy Hagar
Sammy Hagar
Sam Roy "Sammy" Hagar , also known as The Red Rocker, is an American rock singer, guitarist, and songwriter. Also sings Country Music....
, Kenny G
Kenny G
Kenneth Bruce Gorelick , better known by his stage name Kenny G, is an American, adult contemporary and smooth jazz saxophonist. His fourth album, Duotones, brought him breakthrough success in 1986...
, Mariah Carey
Mariah Carey
Mariah Carey is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress. She made her recording debut with the release of her eponymous studio album in 1990, under the guidance of Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola, whom she later married in 1993...
, Michael Bolton
Michael Bolton
Michael Bolton is an American singer and songwriter. Bolton originally performed in the hard rock and heavy metal genres from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s, both on his early solo albums and those recorded as the frontman of the band Blackjack...
, Luther Vandross
Luther Vandross
Luther Ronzoni Vandross was an American singer-songwriter and record producer. During his career, Vandross sold over twenty-five million albums and won eight Grammy Awards including Best Male R&B Vocal Performance four times...
, Jerry Harrison
Jerry Harrison
Jerry Harrison is an American songwriter, musician and producer...
, Chris Isaak
Chris Isaak
Christopher Joseph "Chris" Isaak is an American rock musician and occasional actor.-Early life:Isaak was born in Stockton, California, the son of Dorothy , a potato chip factory worker, and Joe Isaak, a forklift driver. Isaak's mother is Italian American, originating from Genoa...
, the Dave Matthews Band
Dave Matthews Band
Dave Matthews Band, sometimes shortened to DMB, is a U.S. rock band formed in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1991. The founding members were singer-songwriter and guitarist Dave Matthews, bassist Stefan Lessard, drummer/backing vocalist Carter Beauford and saxophonist LeRoi Moore. Boyd Tinsley was...
, Papa Wheelie
Papa Wheelie
Papa Wheelie is a punk rock/heavy metal supergroup formed in 1996 by former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted.The band emerged from a mountain biking-based friendship between Jason and his neighborhood bike shop owner. Early in the project, Newsted played the drums and fellow Michigan-native Steven...
, Deftones
Deftones
Deftones are an American alternative metal band from Sacramento, California, founded in 1988. The band consists of Chino Moreno , Stephen Carpenter , Chi Cheng , Frank Delgado , and Abe Cunningham . Currently Sergio Vega is standing in on bass while Cheng recovers from a car accident...
, and Booker T. Jones
Booker T. Jones
Booker T. Jones is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, record producer and arranger, best known as the frontman of the band Booker T. and the MGs. He has also worked in the studios with many well-known artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, earning him a Grammy Award for lifetime...
. Santana
Santana (band)
Santana is a rock band based around guitarist Carlos Santana and founded in the late 1960s. It first came to public attention after their performing the song "Soul Sacrifice" at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, when their Latin rock provided a contrast to other acts on the bill...
's huge comeback album, Supernatural, was made at The Plant, released in 1999. In 2007, Journey returned to The Plant with a new singer, Arnel Pineda
Arnel Pineda
Arnel Pineda is a Filipino singer-songwriter who has served as the lead singer of the American rock band Journey since 2007. Pineda has had a successful musical career in the Philippines for the last 25 years.- Biography :...
, to create Revelation
Revelation (Journey album)
-DVD:#"Sky Light" #"Any Way You Want It" #*Originally from Departure, 1980#"Wheel in the Sky" #*Originally from Infinity, 1978#"Lights"...
, their biggest album in over two decades.
In 2005, vintage guitar collector Michael Indelicato bought the building, with Frager continuing to run the studios. However, large recording studios were no longer profiting from '70s- and '80s-era recording budgets. Bob Welch once observed, "You had to have a major-label budget to afford places like The Record Plant, with all of the perks—the jacuzzi, the decor, the psychedelic atmosphere". By the 2000s, bands were using their smaller budgets to buy their own recording gear. Metallica, formerly an important client, built their own recording studio and did not book any time at The Plant. Frager asked Indelicato to invest in what he saw as a much-needed rejuvenation of the building, but Indelicato was overextended in his finances and could not help. Indelicato shut the doors in March 2008 after The Fray
The Fray
-Literature:*Fray, a phenomenon in Terry Pratchett's The Carpet People*Fray , a comic book series by Joss Whedon**Melaka Fray, titular character of the comic book series-Music:*"Fray", a song from the album 14 Shades of Grey by Staind...
finished recording in studio B. Shortly thereafter, Indelicato's $5.5 million home in Tiburon
Tiburon, California
Tiburon is an incorporated town in Marin County, California. It occupies most of the Tiburon Peninsula, which reaches south into the San Francisco Bay. The smaller city of Belvedere occupies the south-east part of the peninsula and is contiguous with Tiburon...
was reclaimed by his mortgage company, and he used The Plant as his residence until early 2009. A few months later, the bank seized the studio, and it remained unused until 2010 when the bank rented studio A to a local film production company for film work. The bank has also rented studio B to Indelicato, the former owner of the building. Frager still legally owns the business name: "The Plant Studios," and has resumed recording in Marin at a new location.
Selected list of albums recorded at Record Plant New York (by year)
- The Soft MachineSoft MachineSoft Machine were an English rock band from Canterbury, named after the book The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs. They were one of the central bands in the Canterbury scene, and helped pioneer the progressive rock genre...
: The Soft MachineThe Soft Machine (album)The Soft Machine, as reissue also titled "Volume One", is the debut album by the British psychedelic rock band Soft Machine, one of the central bands in the Canterbury scene....
– 1968 - The Jimi Hendrix ExperienceThe Jimi Hendrix ExperienceThe Jimi Hendrix Experience were an English-American psychedelic rock band that formed in London in October 1966. Comprising eponymous singer-songwriter and guitarist Jimi Hendrix, bassist and backing vocalist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, the band was active until June 1969, in which...
: Electric LadylandElectric LadylandElectric Ladyland is the third and final album of new material by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, released in October 1968 on Reprise Records, catalogue 2RS 6307. It is the only Hendrix studio album professionally produced under his supervision. It topped the Billboard 200 album chart for two weeks in...
– 1968 - Sly and the Family Stone: There's a Riot Goin' OnThere's a Riot Goin' OnThere's a Riot Goin' On is the fifth studio album by American funk and soul band Sly & the Family Stone, released November 20, 1971 on Epic Records. Recording sessions for the album took place primarily throughout 1970 to 1971 at Record Plant Studios in Sausalito, California...
– 1971 - John LennonJohn LennonJohn Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
: ImagineImagine (album)Imagine is the second album by John Lennon. Recorded and released in 1971, the album tended toward songs that were gentler, more commercial and less avant-garde than those on his critically acclaimed previous album, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. The album is considered the most popular of his works...
– 1971 - Don McleanDon McLeanDonald "Don" McLean is an American singer-songwriter. He is most famous for the 1971 album American Pie, containing the renowned songs "American Pie" and "Vincent".-Musical roots:...
: American PieAmerican Pie (album)American Pie is the title of a 1971 music album by Don McLean, best known for its title track about The Day the Music Died. The third track, "Vincent," is a tribute to the famed artist Vincent Van Gogh....
– 1971 - Alice CooperAlice CooperAlice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
: School's OutSchool's Out (album)School's Out is the fifth studio album by Alice Cooper, released in 1972. The album's title track has remained a staple song in Alice Cooper's live setlist and receives regular airplay on many "Classic Rock" radio stations....
– 1972 - Return to ForeverReturn to ForeverReturn to Forever is a jazz fusion group founded and led by keyboardist Chick Corea. Through its existence, the band has cycled through a number of different members, with the only consistent band mate of Corea's being bassist Stanley Clarke...
: Hymn of the Seventh GalaxyHymn of the Seventh GalaxyHymn of the Seventh Galaxy is Return to Forever's third studio album.This was the group's first album with a rock influenced sound and without any vocals...
– 1973 - New York DollsNew York DollsThe New York Dolls is an American rock band, formed in New York in 1971. The band's protopunk sound prefigured much of what was to come in the punk rock era; their visual style influenced the look of many new wave and 1980s-era glam metal groups, and they began the local New York scene that later...
: New York DollsNew York Dolls (album)New York Dolls is the first album released by the American rock band the New York Dolls. The album's protopunk sound is mixed with influences of glam rock and rock & roll. It was produced by ex-Nazz guitarist Todd Rundgren....
– 1973 - The Allman Brothers BandThe Allman Brothers BandThe Allman Brothers Band is an American rock/blues band once based in Macon, Georgia. The band was formed in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1969 by brothers Duane Allman and Gregg Allman , who were supported by Dickey Betts , Berry Oakley , Butch Trucks , and Jai Johanny "Jaimoe"...
: Brothers and SistersBrothers and Sisters (album)Brothers and Sisters is the fifth album by The Allman Brothers Band, released in 1973.The group's first album recorded completely after the death of leader Duane Allman, and mostly after the death of bassist Berry Oakley, Brothers and Sisters saw the Allmans reach a commercial peak. The album...
– 1973 - Jonathan Edwards: Have a Good Time for MeHave a Good Time for MeHave a Good Time for Me is the third studio album released by singer-songwriter Jonathan Edwards in 1973. Different from his previous two albums, Have a Good Time for Me contained no original new material from Edwards, rather covers from musical artists Jimmie Rodgers, Joe Dolce, Malcolm McKinney...
– 1973 - Flo & EddieFlo & EddieFlo & Eddie are a comedic musical duo.The two were the original founding members of the Top 40 rock group the Turtles. After the Turtles dissolved, Volman and Kaylan first joined the Mothers of Invention as "Phlorescent Leech & Eddie"...
: Flo & EddieFlo & Eddie (album)Flo & Eddie is the second album from Flo & Eddie. After being out of print since the 1970s, it was released on CD for the first time in 2008 in a package that includes their first album, The Phlorescent Leech & Eddie....
– 1972 - AerosmithAerosmithAerosmith is an American rock band, sometimes referred to as "The Bad Boys from Boston" and "America's Greatest Rock and Roll Band". Their style, which is rooted in blues-based hard rock, has come to also incorporate elements of pop, heavy metal, and rhythm and blues, and has inspired many...
: Get Your WingsGet Your Wings-Side two:-Song information:Same Old Song and Dance*Built around a riff Joe Perry came up with while sitting on his amp, Steven Tyler quickly came up with the verse riff. The song appears in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock...
– 1973–74 - Three Dog NightThree Dog NightThree Dog Night is an American rock band best known for their music from 1968 to 1975. During that time the band charted 21 Billboard top 40 hits in America, three of which reached Number One...
: Hard LaborHard LaborHard Labor is the eleventh album by American rock band Three Dog Night, released in 1974 .- Cover Artwork :The original album cover, depicting of the birth of a record album , was deemed too controversial and was soon reworked with a huge bandage covering the "birth". The cover also includes an...
– 1974 - Return to ForeverReturn to ForeverReturn to Forever is a jazz fusion group founded and led by keyboardist Chick Corea. Through its existence, the band has cycled through a number of different members, with the only consistent band mate of Corea's being bassist Stanley Clarke...
: No MysteryNo MysteryNo Mystery is the fifth studio album by influential jazz-rock fusion band Return to Forever.Return to Forever's fifth album is their most varied. While the production is similar to the album's predecessor, Where Have I Known You Before, the sheer variety of compositions gives this record a...
– 1975 - Bruce SpringsteenBruce SpringsteenBruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...
: Born to RunBorn to RunThe album's release was accompanied by a $250,000 promotional campaign by Columbia directed at both consumers and the music industry, making good use of Landau's "I saw rock 'n' roll's future—and its name is Bruce Springsteen" quote. With much publicity, Born to Run vaulted into the top 10 in its...
– 1974–75 - Artful DodgerArtful Dodger (US band)Artful Dodger are an American power pop rock band, noted for their tight rock compositions, deft lyricism, vocal harmonies, and live shows. The group was heavily influenced by The Beatles, Faces, and The Rolling Stones and drew frequent comparisons to Raspberries...
: Honor Among Thieves – 1975–76 - AerosmithAerosmithAerosmith is an American rock band, sometimes referred to as "The Bad Boys from Boston" and "America's Greatest Rock and Roll Band". Their style, which is rooted in blues-based hard rock, has come to also incorporate elements of pop, heavy metal, and rhythm and blues, and has inspired many...
: Toys in the AtticToys in the Attic (album)For his review of Toys in the Attic for Allmusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine called the album's style a mix of Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones riffs and was filled with songs about sex with a different style than there ever was before. Greg Kot called the album a landmark of hard rock...
– 1975 - The Outlaws: Outlaws – 1975
- KISSKISS (band)Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973. Well-known for its members' face paint and flamboyant stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid to late 1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting,...
: Destroyer – 1976 - Patti Smith GroupPatti SmithPatricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....
: Radio EthiopiaRadio EthiopiaRadio Ethiopia is an album by the Patti Smith Group, released in October 1976 on Arista Records.- History :Radio Ethiopia was the followup record to Smith's widely acclaimed debut Horses. In interviews surrounding the album's release, Smith explained that she chose producer Jack Douglas in hopes of...
– 1976 - Artful DodgerArtful Dodger (US band)Artful Dodger are an American power pop rock band, noted for their tight rock compositions, deft lyricism, vocal harmonies, and live shows. The group was heavily influenced by The Beatles, Faces, and The Rolling Stones and drew frequent comparisons to Raspberries...
: Babes on Broadway – 1977 - MoxyMoxy (band)Moxy was a Canadian hard rock and heavy metal band, formed in Toronto, Ontario in 1974, from previous members of the rock group, Leigh Ashford — which included singer Douglas "Buzz" Shearman Earl Johnson , Bill Wade Moxy was a Canadian hard rock and heavy metal band, formed in Toronto, Ontario in...
: Ridin' HighRidin' High (Moxy album)# Nothin' Comes Easy - 4:22 # Rock Baby - 4:48 # Sweet Reputation - 3:54 # I'll Set You on Fire - 3:17 # Ridin' High - 4:03...
– 1977 - Cheap TrickCheap TrickCheap Trick is an American rock band from Rockford, Illinois, formed in 1973. The band consists of members Robin Zander , Rick Nielsen , Tom Petersson , and Bun E...
: Cheap TrickCheap Trick (1977 album)Cheap Trick is the first studio album released in 1977 by the American rock band Cheap Trick. It was their debut album for Epic Records, produced by Jack Douglas.- Overview :...
– 1977 - KISSKISS (band)Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973. Well-known for its members' face paint and flamboyant stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid to late 1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting,...
: Love GunLove GunLove Gun is the sixth studio album by American hard rock band Kiss. It was certified platinum on June 30, 1977, just two weeks after the album's release....
– 1977 - Bruce SpringsteenBruce SpringsteenBruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...
: Darkness on the Edge of TownDarkness on the Edge of TownDarkness on the Edge of Town is the fourth album by Bruce Springsteen, released in the late spring of 1978. The album marked the end of a three year period of forced hiatus from recording brought on by contractual obligations and legal battling with former manager Mike Appel...
– 1977–78 - Patti Smith GroupPatti SmithPatricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....
: Easter – 1978 - BlondieBlondie (band)Blondie is an American rock band, founded by singer Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. The band was a pioneer in the early American New Wave and punk scenes of the mid-1970s...
: Parallel LinesParallel LinesParallel Lines is the third studio album by American New Wave band Blondie, released in 1978 by Chrysalis Records. Their most popular and best-selling effort, Parallel Lines was the first Blondie album to be produced by Mike Chapman. The album reached number one in the United Kingdom in February 1979...
– 1978 - Garland JeffreysGarland JeffreysGarland Jeffreys is a part African-American, and Puerto Rican American, singer and songwriter, transversing the musical genres of rock and roll, reggae, blues and soul.-Career:...
: American Boy & Girl – 1979 - David BowieDavid BowieDavid Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
: LodgerLodger (album)Lodger is an album by British singer-songwriter David Bowie, released in 1979. The last of the 'Berlin Trilogy' recorded in collaboration with Brian Eno , it was more accessible than its immediate predecessors Low and "Heroes", having no instrumentals and being somewhat lighter and more pop-oriented...
– 1979 - KISSKISS (band)Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973. Well-known for its members' face paint and flamboyant stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid to late 1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting,...
: Dynasty – 1979 - KISSKISS (band)Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973. Well-known for its members' face paint and flamboyant stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid to late 1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting,...
: Unmasked – 1980 - John LennonJohn LennonJohn Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
and Yoko OnoYoko Onois a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
: Double FantasyDouble FantasyDouble Fantasy is an album released by John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, in 1980. Though initially poorly received, the album is notable for its association with Lennon's murder three weeks after its release, whereupon it become a worldwide commercial success, and went on to win the 1981 Album...
– 1980 - Iggy PopIggy PopIggy Pop is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Though considered an innovator of punk rock, Pop's music has encompassed a number of styles over the years, including pop, metal, jazz and blues...
: Soldier (mix)Soldier (album)Soldier is a 1980 album by proto-punk musician Iggy Pop. David Bowie and Simple Minds provide backing vocals on "Play it Safe"....
– 1980 - Cyndi LauperCyndi LauperCynthia Ann Stephanie "Cyndi" Lauper is an American singer, songwriter, actress and LGBT rights activist. She achieved success in the mid-1980s with the release of the album She's So Unusual and became the first female singer to have four top-five singles released from one album...
: She's So UnusualShe's So UnusualShe's So Unusual is the debut studio album by American pop singer-songwriter Cyndi Lauper. Released in 1983 by Portrait Records, the album catapulted Lauper to stardom with such hits as "Girls Just Want to Have Fun", "Time After Time", "She Bop", "All Through the Night", and "Money Changes...
– 1983 - Cock RobinCock Robin"Who Killed Cock Robin" is an English nursery rhyme, which has been much used as a murder archetype in world culture. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 494.-Lyrics:...
: Cock RobinCock Robin"Who Killed Cock Robin" is an English nursery rhyme, which has been much used as a murder archetype in world culture. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 494.-Lyrics:...
– 1985 - Beastie BoysBeastie BoysBeastie Boys are an American hip hop trio from New York City. The group consists of Mike D who plays the drums, MCA who plays the bass, and Ad-Rock who plays the guitar....
: Part of Paul's BoutiquePaul's BoutiquePaul's Boutique is the second studio album by American hip hop group Beastie Boys, released on July 25, 1989, on Capitol Records. Featuring production by the Dust Brothers, the recording sessions for the album took place in Matt Dike's Apartment and the Record Plant in Los Angeles from 1988 to... - Guns N' RosesGuns N' RosesGuns N' Roses is an American hard rock band, formed in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, in 1985. The band has released six studio albums, three EPs, and one live album...
: Use Your Illusion IUse Your Illusion IUse Your Illusion I is the third studio album by the American rock band Guns N' Roses. It was the first of two albums released in conjunction with the Use Your Illusion Tour, the other being Use Your Illusion II. The two are thus sometimes considered a double album. In fact, in the original vinyl...
and Use Your Illusion IIUse Your Illusion IIUse Your Illusion II is the fourth studio album by the American rock band Guns N' Roses. It was one of two albums released in conjunction with the Use Your Illusion Tour, and as a result the two albums are sometimes considered a double album...
– 1991
Producers and engineers associated with Record Plant New York
- Gary KellgrenGary KellgrenGary Kellgren was an American audio engineer and co-founder of The Record Plant recording studios, along with businessman Chris Stone.-Engineering:...
(co-founder, producer and engineer) - Shelly YakusShelly YakusShelly Yakus is considered as one of the best engineers and mixers in the music industry. Formerly chief engineer and vice president of A&M Records, Yakus' engineering work has help sell in excess of one hundred million records, equaling over one billion dollars in sales...
(house engineer) - Roy CicalaRoy CicalaRoy Cicala is an American producer, engineer, song-writer and musician. His body of work includes over 10 Platinum Records for producing, writing, engineering and management for talent from the 70’s through today...
(house engineer) - Ray ColcordRay ColcordRay Colcord is an American film and TV composer living in Los Angeles, most famous for TV series such as 227, The Facts of Life, Silver Spoons, My Two Dads, Dinosaurs, Big Brother, and Boy Meets World...
(producer) - Jack DouglasJack Douglas (record producer)Jack Douglas is an American record producer. He was born in New York City. Starting out as folk musician and performer, he worked on Robert Kennedy's senatorial campaign as a song-writer. Douglas then moved to England and joined a succession of bands before returning to New York to attend the...
(producer) - Jimmy IovineJimmy IovineJames "Jimmy" Iovine is an American music producer, entrepreneur and chairman of Interscope-Geffen-A&M.-Biography:...
(engineer and producer) - Jay MessinaJay MessinaJay Messina is an American audio engineer, mastering and mixing engineer and music producer. He started out recording sessions for legendary arranger Don Ellion and quickly promoted to A&R Recording. He later moved to the Record Plant when it opened in 1968...
(engineer) - Tom Anderson (engineer)
- Lillian Davis Douma, also known as Llyllianne Davis, (house engineer)
- David Thoener (engineer, producer)
- Sam Ginsberg (engineer)
Selected list of albums recorded at Record Plant Los Angeles (by year)
- James GangJames GangThe James Gang was a rock band formed in Cleveland, Ohio in 1966. Though the band was not a huge commercial success, except in the Northeast Ohio area, the fame garnered by guitarist Joe Walsh has since made the group more notable.- History :...
: Rides AgainJames Gang Rides AgainJames Gang Rides Again is the second album by American band James Gang, released in 1970 . This was the first album after Dale Peters replaced Tom Kriss.-Reception:...
– 1970 - B.B. King: Indianola Mississippi SeedsIndianola Mississippi SeedsIndianola Mississippi Seeds is a 1970 album in which B. B. King mixed elements of blues and pop/rock. Producer Bill Szymczyk decided to follow up on the success of the hit "The Thrill Is Gone" by matching King with a musical all-star cast...
– 1970 - Black SabbathBlack SabbathBlack Sabbath are an English heavy metal band, formed in Aston, Birmingham in 1969 by Ozzy Osbourne , Tony Iommi , Geezer Butler , and Bill Ward . The band has since experienced multiple line-up changes, with Tony Iommi the only constant presence in the band through the years. A total of 22...
: Master of RealityMaster of RealityMaster of Reality is the third album by the British heavy metal band Black Sabbath, released in July 1971. It is sometimes noted as the first stoner rock album...
– 1971 - MountainMountain (band)Mountain is an American hard rock band that formed in Long Island, New York in 1969. Originally comprising vocalist and guitarist Leslie West, bassist Felix Pappalardi and drummer N. D. Smart, the band broke up in 1972 before reuniting in 1974 and remaining active until today...
: Flowers of EvilFlowers of Evil (album)Flowers of Evil is the third album by American hard rock band Mountain. It was their first live outing, with the second vinyl side consisting of material recorded on October 10, 1971 at the Woods-Brown Amphitheater of American University, Washington DC....
– 1971 - Black SabbathBlack SabbathBlack Sabbath are an English heavy metal band, formed in Aston, Birmingham in 1969 by Ozzy Osbourne , Tony Iommi , Geezer Butler , and Bill Ward . The band has since experienced multiple line-up changes, with Tony Iommi the only constant presence in the band through the years. A total of 22...
: Black Sabbath Vol. 4 – 1972 - AmericaAmerica (band)America is an English-American folk rock band that originally included members Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell and Dan Peek. The three members were barely out of their teens when they became a musical sensation during 1972, scoring #1 hits and winning a Grammy for best new musical artist...
: Homecoming – 1972 - The Isley BrothersThe Isley BrothersThe Isley Brothers are a highly influential, successful and long-running American music group consisting of different line-ups of six brothers, and a brother-in-law, Chris Jasper...
: 3 + 33 + 33 + 3 is a 1973 album released by The Isley Brothers for the Epic label under their T-Neck imprint. Their first album for the label after several years in Buddah Records, it was also the first time the family group, which had consisted of founding members O'Kelly Isley, Jr., Rudolph Isley and...
– 1973 - BeeGees: Life in a Tin CanLife in a Tin CanLife in a Tin Can is the Bee Gees' eleventh studio album, released in January 1973. The Bee Gees moved their base of operations from England, UK to Los Angeles, California to record Life in a Tin Can. However, it was unable to prevent a commercial decline with the album criticized for a lack of...
– 1973 - AmericaAmerica (band)America is an English-American folk rock band that originally included members Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell and Dan Peek. The three members were barely out of their teens when they became a musical sensation during 1972, scoring #1 hits and winning a Grammy for best new musical artist...
: Hat TrickHat Trick (album)__notoc__Hat Trick is the third original studio album by American folk rock trio America, released by Warner Bros. Records in 1973 ....
– 1973 - Billy JoelBilly JoelWilliam Martin "Billy" Joel is an American musician and pianist, singer-songwriter, and classical composer. Since releasing his first hit song, "Piano Man", in 1973, Joel has become the sixth best-selling recording artist and the third best-selling solo artist in the United States, according to...
: Piano ManPiano Man (album)Piano Man is a rock album by Billy Joel, released in 1973. Piano Man, Joel's second album and his first with Columbia Records, emerged out of legal difficulties with his former label, Family Productions, and became his breakthrough album...
– 1973 - Eagles: On The BorderOn the BorderOn the Border is the third studio album by the Eagles, released in 1974. During the making of the album, the band experienced significant changes. As the band tried to lean towards a more hard rock sound, they felt that producer Glyn Johns emphasized too much on their country sound. After recording...
– 1974 - Joe WalshJoe WalshJoseph Fidler "Joe" Walsh is an American musician, songwriter, record producer, and actor. He has been a member of three commercially successful bands, the James Gang, Barnstorm, and the Eagles, and has experienced notable success as a solo artist and prolific session musician, especially with B.B...
: So What – 1974 - Tom WaitsTom WaitsThomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
: Nighthawks at the DinerNighthawks at the DinerNighthawks at the Diner is a 1975 album by Tom Waits, released on Asylum Records. The title was inspired by Edward Hopper's 1942 painting Nighthawks....
– 1975 - The TubesThe TubesThe Tubes are a San Francisco-based rock band, whose 1975 debut album included the hit single, "White Punks on Dope". During its first fifteen years or so, the band's live performances combined quasi-pornography with wild satires of media, consumerism, and politics...
: The TubesThe Tubes (album)The Tubes is the debut album of The Tubes. Songs from this album which received significant airplay include "What Do You Want From Life" and "White Punks On Dope"...
– 1975 - The Allman Brothers BandThe Allman Brothers BandThe Allman Brothers Band is an American rock/blues band once based in Macon, Georgia. The band was formed in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1969 by brothers Duane Allman and Gregg Allman , who were supported by Dickey Betts , Berry Oakley , Butch Trucks , and Jai Johanny "Jaimoe"...
: Win, Lose or DrawWin, Lose or Draw (album)Win, Lose or Draw is the sixth album by The Allman Brothers Band, released in 1975. The record was the end of the line for the band at the time. After the very successful Brothers and Sisters two years previously, the group had fallen prey to internal tensions...
– 1975 - BostonBoston (band)Boston is an American rock band from Boston, Massachusetts that achieved its most notable successes during the 1970s and 1980s. Centered on guitarist, keyboardist, songwriter, and producer Tom Scholz, the band is a staple of classic rock radio playlists...
: BostonBoston (album)The album soared, with three singles becoming Top 40 hits. All eight of the songs on the album still receive regular airplay on classic rock radio to this day, across the country...
– 1975–76 - Fleetwood MacFleetwood MacFleetwood Mac are a British–American rock band formed in 1967 in London.The only original member present in the band is its eponymous drummer, Mick Fleetwood...
: RumoursRumoursRumours is the eleventh studio album by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac. Largely recorded in California during 1976, it was produced by the band with Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut and was released on 4 February 1977 by Warner Bros. Records. The record peaked at the top of both the...
– 1976 - Dave MasonDave MasonDavid Thomas "Dave" Mason is an English singer, songwriter, and guitarist from Worcester, who first found fame with the rock band Traffic...
: Let It FlowLet It Flow (album)Let It Flow is the third solo album by Southern rock/Blues-rock/Country rock musician Elvin Bishop. The album was recorded in 1974 at Capricorn Studios in Macon, Georgia, several years after he left The Butterfield Blues Band...
– 1977 - SupertrampSupertrampSupertramp are a British rock band formed in 1969 under the name Daddy before renaming to Supertramp in early 1970. Though their music was initially categorised as progressive rock, they have since incorporated a combination of traditional rock and art rock into their music...
: Even in the Quietest Moments... – 1977 - Cheap TrickCheap TrickCheap Trick is an American rock band from Rockford, Illinois, formed in 1973. The band consists of members Robin Zander , Rick Nielsen , Tom Petersson , and Bun E...
: Heaven TonightHeaven TonightHeaven Tonight is Cheap Trick's third album, released in 1978. The album was remastered and released with bonus tracks on Sony's Epic/Legacy imprint in 1998. The album cover features lead singer Robin Zander and bassist Tom Petersson....
– 1978 - Moody Blues: OctaveOctave (album)Octave is the ninth album by The Moody Blues, and their first release after a substantial hiatus following the success of the best-selling Seventh Sojourn in 1972. The album proved to be the last for the group with keyboardist Mike Pinder, who departed during the album's sessions, and declined an...
– 1978 - Cheap TrickCheap TrickCheap Trick is an American rock band from Rockford, Illinois, formed in 1973. The band consists of members Robin Zander , Rick Nielsen , Tom Petersson , and Bun E...
: Dream PoliceDream PoliceDream Police is a 1979 studio album by Cheap Trick. It was their fourth studio release, and third in a row produced by Tom Werman. It is the band's most commercially successful studio album, going to No...
– 1979 - REO SpeedwagonREO SpeedwagonREO Speedwagon is an American rock band. Formed in 1967, the band grew in popularity during the 1970s and peaked in the early 1980s. Hi Infidelity is the group's most commercially successful album, selling over ten million copies and charting four Top 40 hits in the US...
– 1979 - Rod StewartRod StewartRoderick David "Rod" Stewart, CBE is a British singer-songwriter and musician, born and raised in North London, England and currently residing in Epping. He is of Scottish and English ancestry....
– 1979 - Blue Öyster CultBlue Öyster CultBlue Öyster Cult, often abbreviated BÖC, is an American rock band, most of whose members first came together in Long Island, NY in 1967 as the band Soft White Underbelly...
: Mirrors – 1979 - Jefferson StarshipJefferson StarshipJefferson Starship is an American rock band formed in the early 1970s. The group is a spin-off from the iconic 1960s psychedelic/folk group Jefferson Airplane. The band has undergone several major changes in personnel and genres through the years while retaining the same Jefferson Starship name...
: Freedom at Point ZeroFreedom at Point Zero-Personnel:*Paul Kantner – vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards on "Things to Come"*Pete Sears – bass on "Things to Come", "Awakening", "Girl with the Hungry Eyes", "Rock Music", and "Freedom at Point Zero", keyboards on "Jane", "Lightning Rose", "Awakening", and "Just the Same", organ on "Fading Lady...
– 1979 - SurvivorSurvivor (band)Survivor is an American rock band formed in Chicago in 1978. The band achieved its greatest success in the 1980s with its AOR sound, which garnered many charting singles, especially in the United States. The band is best known for its double platinum-certified 1982 hit "Eye of the Tiger", the theme...
: SurvivorSurvivor (Survivor album)Survivor is the eponymous debut album by the American rock band Survivor, released in 1979. It is the group's only album with drummer Gary Smith and bassist Dennis Johnson. The recording sessions, overseen by A&R executive John Kalodner, were not without difficulties...
– 1980 - Ozark Mountain DaredevilsOzark Mountain DaredevilsThe Ozark Mountain Daredevils are a Southern rock/country rock band formed in 1972 in Springfield, Missouri, USA. They are most widely known for their singles "If You Wanna Get To Heaven" in 1974 and "Jackie Blue" in 1975....
: Ozark Mountain Daredevils – 1980 - ChicagoChicagoChicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
: Chicago XIVChicago XIVChicago XIV is the 14th album by American rock band Chicago and was released in 1980. Recorded at a time of waning interest in the band, Chicago XIV remains one of Chicago's poorest selling albums and was a commercial flop...
– 1980 - Rod StewartRod StewartRoderick David "Rod" Stewart, CBE is a British singer-songwriter and musician, born and raised in North London, England and currently residing in Epping. He is of Scottish and English ancestry....
: Tonight I'm YoursTonight I'm YoursTonight I'm Yours is a 1981 album by Rod Stewart. It features hints of Classic Rock, Pop and New Wave. The album had two hit singles with, title track "Tonight I'm Yours " , "Young Turks" and "How Long?" .-Album information:Tonight I'm Yours saw Rod Stewart further adopting current musical...
– 1981 - Black SabbathBlack SabbathBlack Sabbath are an English heavy metal band, formed in Aston, Birmingham in 1969 by Ozzy Osbourne , Tony Iommi , Geezer Butler , and Bill Ward . The band has since experienced multiple line-up changes, with Tony Iommi the only constant presence in the band through the years. A total of 22...
: Mob Rules – 1981 - Jefferson StarshipJefferson StarshipJefferson Starship is an American rock band formed in the early 1970s. The group is a spin-off from the iconic 1960s psychedelic/folk group Jefferson Airplane. The band has undergone several major changes in personnel and genres through the years while retaining the same Jefferson Starship name...
: Modern TimesModern Times (Jefferson Starship album)- Personnel :* Craig Chaquico – lead guitar, rhythm guitar, synthesizer on "Find Your Way Back", "Mary", and "Free", steel drums on "Mary"* Aynsley Dunbar – drums, percussion, marimba on "Mary", synthesizer on "Free"...
– 1981 - QuarterflashQuarterflashQuarterflash was an American rock group formed in 1980 in Portland, Oregon. The band was made up of Rindy Ross , her husband Marv Ross , Jack Charles , Rick DiGiallonardo , Rich Gooch , and Brian David Willis...
: QuarterflashQuarterflash (album)Quarterflash is the 1981 debut album by the band Quarterflash. It had a number 3 hit with the song "Harden My Heart", followed by "Find Another Fool", which reached number 16....
– 1981 - DevoDevoDevo is an American band formed in 1973 consisting of members from Kent and Akron, Ohio. The classic line-up of the band includes two sets of brothers, the Mothersbaughs and the Casales . The band had a #14 Billboard chart hit in 1980 with the single "Whip It", and has maintained a cult...
: New TraditionalistsNew TraditionalistsNew Traditionalists is the fourth studio album by the New Wave rock band Devo, released in 1981. It features the minor hits "Through Being Cool" and "Beautiful World." The sound continued in the vein of the previous album Freedom of Choice, with synthesizers moved to the forefront and guitars more...
– 1981 - KissKISS (band)Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973. Well-known for its members' face paint and flamboyant stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid to late 1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting,...
: KillersKillers (KISS album)Killers is the second compilation album by American hard rock group Kiss. The album was released only outside the United States, but quickly became available as an import. Of the twelve songs on Killers, four were new compositions recorded specifically for the album...
– 1982 - Fleetwood MacFleetwood MacFleetwood Mac are a British–American rock band formed in 1967 in London.The only original member present in the band is its eponymous drummer, Mick Fleetwood...
: MirageMirage (Fleetwood Mac album)Mirage is the 13th studio album by Fleetwood Mac, released in June 1982.Following a hiatus of over a year after the completion of the worldwide Tusk tour, the band temporarily relocated to Château d'Hérouville in France to record this 12-track collection...
– 1982 - Tom Petty And The HeartbreakersTom Petty and the HeartbreakersTom Petty And The Heartbreakers are an American rock band from Gainesville, Florida. They were formed in 1976 by Tom Petty , Mike Campbell , Benmont Tench , , Ron Blair and Stan Lynch...
: Long After DarkLong After DarkLong After Dark is the fifth album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, released in November 1982 on Backstreet Records. Notable for the major MTV hit "You Got Lucky", the album was also the first to feature the late Howie Epstein on bass and harmony vocals. Epstein's vocals are evident throughout...
– 1982 - KissKISS (band)Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973. Well-known for its members' face paint and flamboyant stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid to late 1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting,...
: Creatures of the NightCreatures of the NightCreatures of the Night is the tenth studio album by Kiss. It is the band's last album for Casablanca Records, the only label the group had ever recorded for up to that point...
– 1982 - Rod StewartRod StewartRoderick David "Rod" Stewart, CBE is a British singer-songwriter and musician, born and raised in North London, England and currently residing in Epping. He is of Scottish and English ancestry....
: Body WishesBody WishesBody Wishes is a studio album released by Rod Stewart on June 10, 1983 . It was Stewart’s 12th studio album and was released on Warner Bros. Records . The tracks were recorded and mixed at The Record Plant, Los Angeles...
– 1983 - Brian MayBrian MayBrian Harold May, CBE is an English musician and astrophysicist most widely known as the guitarist and a songwriter of the rock band Queen...
+ Friends: Star Fleet ProjectStar Fleet ProjectStar Fleet Project is a project of Brian May, most famous as the guitarist from Queen, which resulted in an album with the same name. The project was released as the work of "Brian May + Friends", consisting of May, guitarist Eddie Van Halen, drummer Alan Gratzer , Phil Chen , and Fred Mandel Star...
– 1983 - QueenQueen (band)Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1971, originally consisting of Freddie Mercury , Brian May , John Deacon , and Roger Taylor...
: The WorksThe Works (Queen album)-Radio Ga Ga:"Radio Ga Ga" was composed on keyboards, after Roger Taylor heard his son Felix saying "radio ca ca". He wrote it in Los Angeles and locked himself in the studio with a Roland Jupiter 8 and a drum machine. Afterwards John Deacon came up with a suitable bass line. Mercury reconstructed...
– 1984 - DevoDevoDevo is an American band formed in 1973 consisting of members from Kent and Akron, Ohio. The classic line-up of the band includes two sets of brothers, the Mothersbaughs and the Casales . The band had a #14 Billboard chart hit in 1980 with the single "Whip It", and has maintained a cult...
: Shout (Devo album)Shout (Devo album)Shout is a 1984 album by the New Wave rock band Devo. It was their sixth album for Warner Bros. Records and retained the synth-pop sound of their previous records with a heavy focus on the new Fairlight CMI computer synthesizer. Despite the popularity of synth-pop in 1984, the album was a critical...
– 1984 - SurvivorSurvivor (band)Survivor is an American rock band formed in Chicago in 1978. The band achieved its greatest success in the 1980s with its AOR sound, which garnered many charting singles, especially in the United States. The band is best known for its double platinum-certified 1982 hit "Eye of the Tiger", the theme...
: Vital Signs – 1984 - Yngwie J. MalmsteenYngwie J. MalmsteenYngwie Johann Malmsteen is a Swedish guitarist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and bandleader. Malmsteen became known for his neo-classical playing approach in heavy metal music which became a new musical style in the early 1980s.- Early life :...
: Rising ForceRising ForceRising Force is the first studio album by guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen, released in 1984 through Polydor Records. An article in Guitar World magazine ranked the album as first in the all-time top ten list of shred albums.-Track listing:-Personnel:...
– 1984 - Rough CuttRough CuttRough Cutt was an American heavy metal band from San Diego, California in the 1980s. They were based in Los Angeles after signing a recording contract with Warner Brothers...
: Rough CuttRough Cutt (album)Rough Cutt is the self-titled debut album of the 80's hard rock/heavy metal band of the same name. It was produced by Tom Allom who is most famous for producing Judas Priest.The song "Take Her" was co-written by Ronnie James Dio....
- 1984 - HeartHeart (band)Heart is an American rock band who first found success in Canada. Throughout several lineup changes, the only two members remaining constant are sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson. The group rose to fame in the 1970s with their music being influenced by hard rock as well as folk music...
: HeartHeart (Heart album)Heart is the self-titled eighth studio album, but ninth album overall, released by Heart. Released in 1985, the album completed the band's transition into a pop group, a genre that yielded the band its greatest success by far, marking the band's Capitol Records debut, and it spent 92 weeks on the...
– 1985 (also in Sausalito) - Twisted SisterTwisted SisterTwisted Sister is an American heavy metal band from Long Island. Musically, the band implements elements of traditional heavy metal bands such as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, along with a style that is similar to early glam metal bands...
: Come Out and PlayCome Out and Play (Twisted Sister album)Come Out and Play is the fourth album by the American heavy metal band Twisted Sister, released by Atlantic Records. It was less successful than its predecessor Stay Hungry both critically and commercially.- Overview :...
– 1985 - AutographAutograph (American band)Autograph was an American hard rock band from Los Angeles, California.-Formation:Autograph began in late 1983 originally as a solo project for singer, songwriter & guitarist Steve Plunkett, who had recently left the band Silver Condor, due to his frustration with their lack of interest in recording...
: That's the StuffThat's the Stuff-Musicians:*Steve Plunkett - Vocals and rhythm guitar*Steve Lynch - Guitars*Randy Rand - Bass and backing vocals*Steven Isham - Keyboards and backing vocals*Keni Richards - Drums...
– 1985 - Judas PriestJudas PriestJudas Priest are an English heavy metal band from Birmingham, England, formed in 1969. The current line-up consists of lead vocalist Rob Halford, guitarists Glenn Tipton and Richie Faulkner, bassist Ian Hill, and drummer Scott Travis. The band has gone through several drummers over the years,...
: Turbo - 1985 - 1986 - Andy TaylorAndy Taylor (guitarist)Andy Taylor is an English guitarist, singer, songwriter, and record producer, best known as a member of Duran Duran and The Power Station....
: Thunder – 1987 - Suicidal TendenciesSuicidal TendenciesSuicidal Tendencies is a U.S. crossover thrash band founded in 1981 in Venice, Los Angeles, California by Mike Muir, its leader and only permanent member. The band is sometimes credited as one of "the fathers of crossover thrash"...
: Join The ArmyJoin the Army* "War Inside My Head", "Human Guinea Pig", and "You Got, I Want" were originally written by previous guitarist Jon Nelson. He traded the rights for "War Inside My Head" for a Flying V guitar after he left the band....
– 1987 - Rod StewartRod StewartRoderick David "Rod" Stewart, CBE is a British singer-songwriter and musician, born and raised in North London, England and currently residing in Epping. He is of Scottish and English ancestry....
: Out of OrderOut of Order (Rod Stewart album)Out of Order is the 15th album by Rod Stewart, released in 1988. It features the hit singles "Lost In You", "Forever Young", "My Heart Can't Tell You No" and "Crazy About Her"...
– 1988 - Jet Boy: Feel the Shake - 1988
- Jefferson AirplaneJefferson AirplaneJefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
: Jefferson AirplaneJefferson Airplane (album)Jefferson Airplane is the reunion album of San Francisco rock band Jefferson Airplane, released on Epic Records in 1989.-Overview:Marty Balin, Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, Jorma Kaukonen, and Jack Casady, who had played together on Surrealistic Pillow, After Bathing at Baxters, Crown of Creation and...
– 1989 - Crosby, Stills & Nash: Live It Up – 1990
- Stephen StillsStephen StillsStephen Arthur Stills is an American guitarist and singer/songwriter best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash . He has performed on a professional level in several other bands as well as maintaining a solo career at the same time...
: Stills AloneStills AloneStills Alone is an album released in 1991 by Stephen Stills. As its title suggests, it features only Stills on an acoustic guitar.Contemporary singer/songwriter Ray Lamontagne has noted in interviews that track ten on this album, "Treetop Flyer," is the song that convinced him to pursue a career in...
– 1991 - DanzigDanzig (band)Danzig is an American heavy metal band, formed in 1987 in Lodi, New Jersey. The band serves as a musical outlet for the singer/songwriter Glenn Danzig. Danzig can be seen as the third stage in Glenn Danzig's musical career, preceded by the horror punk bands The Misfits and Samhain...
: Danzig III: How the Gods KillDanzig III: How the Gods KillDanzig III: How the Gods Kill is the third album by Glenn Danzig's band Danzig, and the highest to chart at the time of its release in 1992 on Def American Recordings. It was reissued in 1998 by Def American's successor, American Recordings...
– 1992 - Damn YankeesDamn Yankees (band)Damn Yankees was an American hard rock supergroup.-History:The band was formed in 1989, consisting of Tommy Shaw of Styx, Jack Blades of Night Ranger, Ted Nugent of The Amboy Dukes and a successful solo career, and Michael Cartellone...
: Don't TreadDon't TreadDon't Tread is the second and last studio album released by Rock supergroup Damn Yankees. It features their second highest charting single, the power ballad "Where You Goin' Now"...
– 1992 - Nine Inch NailsNine Inch NailsNine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction...
: The Downward SpiralThe Downward SpiralThe Downward Spiral is the second studio album by American industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails, released March 8, 1994, on Interscope Records. It is a concept album detailing the destruction of a man, from the beginning of his "downward spiral" to his climactic attempt at suicide...
– 1994 - Luis MiguelLuis MiguelLuis Miguel Gallego Basteri is a Mexican singer. He is widely known only by the name Luis Miguel and is often referred to as "El Sol de México"...
: Segundo RomanceSegundo RomanceSegundo Romance is the 13th studio album released by Mexican singer Luis Miguel on August 30, 1994 by Warner Music Group. The album was produced by Miguel himself and co-produced by Armando Manzanero, Juan Carlos Calderón, and Kiko Cibrian...
– 1994 - Tears for FearsTears for FearsTears for Fears are an English new wave band formed in the early 1980s by Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith.Founded after the dissolution of their first band, the mod-influenced Graduate, they were initially associated with the New Wave synthesiser bands of the early 1980s but later branched out into...
: Raoul and the Kings of SpainRaoul and the Kings of SpainDue to the band's label switch to Sony in 1995, none of the B-sides from the album's singles are included on the Tears for Fears B-sides collection Saturnine Martial & Lunatic, which was released in 1996 by PolyGram, the band's old record company.-Personnel:* Roland Orzabal: Lead Vocals, Guitar,...
– 1994 - Marilyn MansonMarilyn MansonMarilyn Manson may refer to:* Marilyn Manson , an American rock musician* Marilyn Manson , the American rock band led by the singer of the same name...
: Portrait of an American FamilyPortrait of an American FamilyPortrait of an American Family is the debut full-length studio album by American rock band Marilyn Manson. It was released on July 19, 1994 in the US through Nothing and Interscope Records. It was produced by the band's frontman and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails...
– 1994 - Elton John & Tim RiceTim RiceSir Timothy Miles Bindon "Tim" Rice is an British lyricist and author.An Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Tony Award and Grammy Award-winning lyricist, Rice is best known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom he wrote Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus...
: The Road to El Dorado (soundtrack)The Road to El DoradoThe Road to El Dorado is a 2000 American animated adventure comedy film by DreamWorks. The soundtrack features songs by Elton John and Tim Rice, the music team from Disney's The Lion King....
– 2000 - MushroomheadMushroomheadMushroomhead is an American industrial metal band from Cleveland, Ohio. Formed in 1993 in Cleveland Warehouse District, the band's music can be described as a synthesis of alternative music, heavy metal, and electro-industrial...
: XXXX (album)XX is the fourth major label album by industrial metal band Mushroomhead, released in 2001. Originally released through Eclipse Records, where Mushroomhead took classic tracks and re-recorded them. XX was entirely re-recorded and re-released on Universal Records later in the year...
– 2001 - Robbie WilliamsRobbie WilliamsRobert Peter "Robbie" Williams is an English singer-songwriter, vocal coach and occasional actor. He is a member of the pop group Take That. Williams rose to fame in the band's first run in the early- to mid-1990s. After many disagreements with the management and certain group members, Williams...
: EscapologyEscapology (album)-Background:In 2002, Williams signed a record-breaking £80 million contract with EMI. The contract featured a number of provisos, including the label ceding greater creative control to the artist and a commitment to breaking Williams in the American market...
– 2002 - Vanessa CarltonVanessa CarltonVanessa Lee Carlton is an American singer-songwriter and musician. Upon completion of her education at the School of American Ballet, Carlton chose to pursue singing instead, performing in New York bars and clubs while attending university. Three months after recording a demo with producer Peter...
: HarmoniumHarmonium (Vanessa Carlton album)Harmonium is the second album by American pop singer-pianist Vanessa Carlton, released by A&M Records in the United States on November 9, 2004 . Carlton co-wrote some of the album with Stephan Jenkins, her then-boyfriend and the lead singer of Third Eye Blind, who produced the album. Harmonium...
– 2004 - Kanye WestKanye WestKanye Omari West is an American rapper, singer, and record producer. West first rose to fame as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records, where he eventually achieved recognition for his work on Jay-Z's album The Blueprint, as well as hit singles for musical artists including Alicia Keys, Ludacris, and...
: Late RegistrationLate RegistrationLate Registration is the second studio album by American hip hop artist Kanye West, released August 30, 2005, on Roc-A-Fella Records. Recording sessions for the album took place over the course of a year at various recording studios located in New York City and Hollywood...
– 2005 - EvanescenceEvanescenceEvanescence is an American rock band founded in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1995 by singer/pianist Amy Lee and guitarist Ben Moody. After recording private albums, the band released their first full-length album, Fallen, on Wind-up Records in 2003. Fallen sold more than 17 million copies worldwide...
: The Open DoorThe Open DoorThe Open Door is the second studio album by the American rock band Evanescence. It was first released in Poland on September 25, 2006, through Wind-up Records and subsequently in more than 20 other countries worldwide...
– 2006 - Ayumi HamasakiAyumi Hamasakiis a Japanese singer-songwriter, record producer, model, lyricist, and actress. Also called "Ayu" by her fans, Hamasaki has been dubbed the "Empress of Pop" because of her popularity and widespread influence in Japan and throughout Asia. Born and raised in Fukuoka, she moved to Tokyo at fourteen to...
: SecretSecret (Ayumi Hamasaki album)Secret is the eighth studio album by Japanese pop singer-songwriter Ayumi Hamasaki, released by Avex Trax on November 29, 2006 in Japan. Hamasaki herself wrote all of the album's lyrics...
– 2006 - Danzig: Danzig 4p – 2007
- Kanye WestKanye WestKanye Omari West is an American rapper, singer, and record producer. West first rose to fame as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records, where he eventually achieved recognition for his work on Jay-Z's album The Blueprint, as well as hit singles for musical artists including Alicia Keys, Ludacris, and...
: GraduationGraduation (album)Graduation is the third studio album by American hip hop artist Kanye West, released September 11, 2007 on Roc-A-Fella Records. Recording sessions for the album took place during 2005 to 2007 at Chung King Studios and Sony Music Studios in New York City and at Chalice Studios and The Record Plant...
– 2007 - Ayumi HamasakiAyumi Hamasakiis a Japanese singer-songwriter, record producer, model, lyricist, and actress. Also called "Ayu" by her fans, Hamasaki has been dubbed the "Empress of Pop" because of her popularity and widespread influence in Japan and throughout Asia. Born and raised in Fukuoka, she moved to Tokyo at fourteen to...
: GuiltyGuilty (Ayumi Hamasaki album)Guilty is the ninth studio album by Japanese pop singer-songwriter Ayumi Hamasaki, released by Avex Trax on January 1, 2008 in Japan and started appearing in stores on December 26, 2007. Hamasaki herself wrote all lyrics of the album, which went to sell over 400,000 copies its first two weeks of...
– 2008 - Lady GagaLady GaGaStefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta , better known by her stage name Lady Gaga, is an American singer and songwriter. Born and raised in New York City, she primarily studied at the Convent of the Sacred Heart and briefly attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts before withdrawing to...
: The FameThe FameThe Fame is the debut studio album by American recording artist Lady Gaga. It was released on August 19, 2008 through Interscope Records. After joining Kon Live Distribution and Cherrytree Records in 2008, Gaga began working on the album with different producers, primarily RedOne, Martin...
– 2008 - Ayumi HamasakiAyumi Hamasakiis a Japanese singer-songwriter, record producer, model, lyricist, and actress. Also called "Ayu" by her fans, Hamasaki has been dubbed the "Empress of Pop" because of her popularity and widespread influence in Japan and throughout Asia. Born and raised in Fukuoka, she moved to Tokyo at fourteen to...
: Next LevelNext Level (Ayumi Hamasaki album)Next Level is the tenth studio album by Japanese pop singer-songwriter Ayumi Hamasaki, released by Avex Trax on March 25, 2009 in Japan. It was released as a CD only version, a CD+DVD version, and a limited edition 2CD+DVD version with the second CD containing live songs taken from her New Year's...
– 2009 - Lady GagaLady GaGaStefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta , better known by her stage name Lady Gaga, is an American singer and songwriter. Born and raised in New York City, she primarily studied at the Convent of the Sacred Heart and briefly attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts before withdrawing to...
: The Fame MonsterThe Fame MonsterThe Fame Monster is the third EP by American recording artist Lady Gaga. It was released on November 18, 2009 through Interscope Records. Initially planned to be included on a re-release of Gaga's debut studio album, The Fame, she announced that the eight tracks would be included on a standalone...
– 2009 - Beyoncé: 44 (Beyoncé Knowles album)4 is the fourth studio album by American recording artist Beyoncé Knowles, released through Columbia Records on June 24, 2011. Three weeks before its scheduled release, 4 leaked in full. The twelve-song set marks the first release by Knowles since separating professionally with father and manager,...
– 2011
Selected list of albums recorded at Record Plant Sausalito (by year)
Some notable albums recorded and/or mixed at The Plant Studios include:- Pharoah SandersPharoah SandersPharoah Sanders is a Grammy Award–winning American jazz saxophonist.Saxophonist Ornette Coleman once described him as "probably the best tenor player in the world." Emerging from John Coltrane's groups of the mid-60s Sanders is known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on...
: ThembiThembiThembi is a 1971 album by free-jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders.In this album, named after Sanders's wife, the saxophonist moved away from the intense, lengthy, percussion-heavy jams he'd been pursuing in his solo work up to that point, and produced a record made up of shorter tracks, often with a...
– 1971 - New Riders of the Purple SageNew Riders of the Purple SageNew Riders of the Purple Sage is an American country rock band. The group emerged from the psychedelic rock scene in San Francisco, California in 1969, and its original lineup included several members of the Grateful Dead. Their best known song is "Panama Red"...
: The Adventures of Panama RedThe Adventures of Panama RedThe Adventures of Panama Red is the fourth country rock album by the New Riders of the Purple Sage, released in 1973. It is widely regarded as one of the group's best efforts, and reached number 55 on the Billboard charts....
– 1972 - Sly and the Family Stone: FreshFresh (Sly and the Family Stone album)Fresh is the sixth album by American funk/soul/rock band Sly & the Family Stone, released by Epic/CBS Records on June 30, 1973...
– 1972–73 - The Wailers: Talkin' BluesTalkin' BluesTalkin' Blues is a live album by Bob Marley & The Wailers, released in 1991. It contains live studio recordings from 1973 and 1975 intercut with interview segments of Bob Marley. The majority of tracks are taken from the recordings Bob Marley & The Wailers did on October 31, 1973, at The Record...
– 1973 - Buddy MilesBuddy MilesGeorge Allen Miles, Jr. , known as Buddy Miles, was an American rock and funk drummer, most known as a founding member of The Electric Flag in 1967, then as a member of Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys from 1969 through to January 1970.-Early life:George Allen Miles was born in Omaha, Nebraska on...
: Booger Bear – 1973 - Buddy MilesBuddy MilesGeorge Allen Miles, Jr. , known as Buddy Miles, was an American rock and funk drummer, most known as a founding member of The Electric Flag in 1967, then as a member of Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys from 1969 through to January 1970.-Early life:George Allen Miles was born in Omaha, Nebraska on...
: Chapter VII – 1973 - Greg Allman: Laid BackLaid Back (Gregg Allman album)Laid Back is a 1973 album by Gregg Allman and was released on the Capricorn Records label. It peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Pop Albums charts in 1974....
– 1973 - AmericaAmerica (band)America is an English-American folk rock band that originally included members Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell and Dan Peek. The three members were barely out of their teens when they became a musical sensation during 1972, scoring #1 hits and winning a Grammy for best new musical artist...
: HeartsHearts (album)-Track listing:#"Daisy Jane" – 3:07#"Half a Man" – 3:33#"Midnight" – 2:41#"Bell Tree" – 2:32#"Old Virginia" – 3:28#"People in the Valley" – 2:43#"Company" – 3:23...
– 1975 - Fleetwood MacFleetwood MacFleetwood Mac are a British–American rock band formed in 1967 in London.The only original member present in the band is its eponymous drummer, Mick Fleetwood...
: RumoursRumoursRumours is the eleventh studio album by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac. Largely recorded in California during 1976, it was produced by the band with Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut and was released on 4 February 1977 by Warner Bros. Records. The record peaked at the top of both the...
by – 1976 (tracked at The Village, W. Los Angeles, California) - Stevie WonderStevie WonderStevland Hardaway Morris , better known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist...
: Songs in the Key of LifeSongs in the Key of LifeSongs in the Key of Life is the 13th album by American recording artist Stevie Wonder, released September 28, 1976, on Motown Records. It was the culmination of his "classic period" albums. An ambitious double LP with a 4-song bonus EP, Songs in the Key of Life became among the best-selling and...
– 1976 - Dan FogelbergDan FogelbergDaniel Grayling "Dan" Fogelberg was an American singer-songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist, whose music was inspired by sources as diverse as folk, pop, rock, classical, jazz, and bluegrass music...
and Tim WeisbergTim WeisbergTim Weisberg is an American jazz/rock fusion flutist, composer, producer, and vocalist. In high school, at his first music class, because his last name was at the end of the alphabet, he was last to pick an instrument. All that was left was the flute and the bassoon...
: Twin Sons of Different MothersTwin Sons of Different MothersTwin Sons of Different Mothers is the fifth album by American singer/songwriter Dan Fogelberg, released in 1978 . The album was the first of Fogelberg's two collaborations with jazz flautist Tim Weisberg; for the second, see No Resemblance Whatsoever.-Track listing:All songs written by Dan...
- 1978 - PrincePrince (musician)Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of...
: For YouFor You (Prince album)-Music:The album opens with the title track, an a cappella recording that states: "All of this and more is for you. With love, sincerity, and deepest care, my life with you I share." This would foreshadow Prince's career of speaking mostly through his music, rather than conventional interviews...
– 1978 - Rick JamesRick JamesJames Ambrose Johnson, Jr. , better known by his stage name Rick James, was an American singer, songwriter, musician and record producer. James was a popular performer in the late 1970s and 1980s, scoring four number-one hits on the U.S. R&B charts performing in the genres of funk and R&B...
: Fire It Up – 1979 - Rick JamesRick JamesJames Ambrose Johnson, Jr. , better known by his stage name Rick James, was an American singer, songwriter, musician and record producer. James was a popular performer in the late 1970s and 1980s, scoring four number-one hits on the U.S. R&B charts performing in the genres of funk and R&B...
: Garden of LoveGarden of Love-Track listing:All tracks composed by Rick James; except where indicated#"Big Time" 6:27#"Don't Give Up On Love" 6:15#"Island Lady" 4:07#"Gettin' It On " 3:03#"Summer Love" 6:19...
– 1980 - Rick JamesRick JamesJames Ambrose Johnson, Jr. , better known by his stage name Rick James, was an American singer, songwriter, musician and record producer. James was a popular performer in the late 1970s and 1980s, scoring four number-one hits on the U.S. R&B charts performing in the genres of funk and R&B...
: Street SongsStreet Songs (album)-Track listing:All tracks composed and arranged by Rick James; except where indicated# "Give It to Me Baby" # "Ghetto Life" # "Make Love to Me" # "Mr...
– 1981 (tracking also at Motown/Hitsville, W. Hollywood, California) - MazeMaze (band)Maze a soul / quiet storm band, also known alternately as Maze featuring Frankie Beverly and Frankie Beverly and Maze, was established in San Francisco, California in the early 1970s.-Career:...
: Joy and PainJoy and PainJoy and Pain is the fourth album by Bay Area-based R&B group Maze, released in 1980 on Capitol Records. A version of the title track by Donna Allen made the top 10 in the UK in 1989.-Track listing:All Songs Written by Frankie Beverly...
- 1980 - Marty BalinMarty BalinMarty Balin is an American musician. He is best known as the founder and one of the lead singers of the psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane.-Early life:Martyn Buchwald was born in Cincinnati, Ohio...
: BalinBalin (album)Balin is Marty Balin's 1981 album. Two top-40 singles were released, "Hearts" and "Atlanta Lady" . The album rose to #35 on the Billboard charts.-Side One:#"Hearts" – 4:32...
– 1981 - Huey Lewis and the NewsHuey Lewis and the NewsHuey Lewis and the News is an American rock band based in San Francisco, California. They had a run of hit singles during the 1980s and early 1990s, eventually scoring a total of 19 top-ten singles across the Billboard Hot 100, Adult Contemporary and Mainstream Rock charts...
: Sports – 1983 (one track recorded at The AutomattThe AutomattThe Automatt was a sound recording studio in San Francisco, California, promoted for its early mix automation system. During its eight active years, 1976 to 1984, it was one of the top recording studios in the region...
, San Francisco, California) - Grace SlickGrace SlickGrace Slick is an American singer and songwriter, who was one of the lead singers of the rock groups The Great Society, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship, and was a solo artist, for nearly three decades, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s...
: SoftwareSoftware (album)-Singles:*"All the Machines " – 3:34 b/w "All the Machines" – 4:47 *"Through the Window" b/w "Habits" -Personnel:*Grace Slick – lead vocals, background vocals*Peter Wolf – keyboards, linn programming, synth bass...
– 1984 - Jefferson AirplaneJefferson AirplaneJefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
: Nuclear FurnitureNuclear Furniture-Personnel:*Donny Baldwin – drums, percussion, vocals*Craig Chaquico – lead guitar, rhythm guitar*David Freiberg – vocals, keyboards*Paul Kantner – vocals, electric rhythm guitar, acoustic rhythm guitar, banjo*Pete Sears – bass, keyboards*Grace Slick – vocals...
– 1984 - HeartHeart (band)Heart is an American rock band who first found success in Canada. Throughout several lineup changes, the only two members remaining constant are sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson. The group rose to fame in the 1970s with their music being influenced by hard rock as well as folk music...
: HeartHeart (Heart album)Heart is the self-titled eighth studio album, but ninth album overall, released by Heart. Released in 1985, the album completed the band's transition into a pop group, a genre that yielded the band its greatest success by far, marking the band's Capitol Records debut, and it spent 92 weeks on the...
– 1985 (also in Los Angeles) - John FogertyJohn FogertyJohn Cameron Fogerty is an American rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist, best known for his time with the swamp rock/roots rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival and as a #1 solo recording artist. Fogerty has a rare distinction of being named on Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 Greatest...
: CenterfieldCenterfieldCenterfield is an album by musician John Fogerty, released in 1985. It was his most popular post-Creedence album, containing the hit singles "The Old Man Down the Road", "Rock and Roll Girls" and the title track "Centerfield". Fogerty played all the instruments on this album himself, thanks to...
– 1985 - KBC BandKBC BandThe KBC Band was formed in 1985 by former Jefferson Airplane members Paul Kantner , Marty Balin and Jack Casady . Other members included Keith Crossan , Tim Gorman , Mark "Slick" Aguilar and Darrell Verdusco...
: KBC BandKBC Band (album)KBC Band is KBC Band's only album, featuring Paul Kantner, Marty Balin, and Jack Casady from Jefferson Airplane. The single "It's Not You, It's Not Me" was released shortly before the album's release...
– 1986 - Todd RundgrenTodd RundgrenTodd Harry Rundgren is an American multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and record producer. Hailed in the early stage of his career as a new pop-wunderkind, supported by the certified gold solo double LP Something/Anything? in 1972, Todd Rundgren's career has produced a diverse range of recordings...
: Nearly HumanNearly HumanNearly Human is a 1989 album by Todd Rundgren, and his second for Warner Bros. Records. His first release in four years time - the longest break in Rundgren's discography up to that point, although he had been active as a producer in the intervening years - the album has a soulful, searching,...
– 1989 - Mother Love BoneMother Love BoneMother Love Bone was an American rock band that formed in Seattle, Washington in 1988. The band was active from 1988 to 1990. Frontman Andrew Wood's personality and compositions helped to catapult the group to the top of the burgeoning late 1980s/early 1990s Seattle music scene...
: AppleApple (album)- Personnel :Mother Love Bone* Jeff Ament – bass guitar, art direction and concept* Bruce Fairweather – lead guitar* Greg Gilmore – drums* Stone Gossard – rhythm guitar* Andrew Wood – vocals, pianoProduction...
- 1990 - Mariah CareyMariah CareyMariah Carey is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress. She made her recording debut with the release of her eponymous studio album in 1990, under the guidance of Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola, whom she later married in 1993...
: Emotions – 1991 (co-tracked at Tarpan Studio, San Rafael, California) - Mariah CareyMariah CareyMariah Carey is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and actress. She made her recording debut with the release of her eponymous studio album in 1990, under the guidance of Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola, whom she later married in 1993...
: Music Box – 1993 - MetallicaMetallicaMetallica is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1981 when James Hetfield responded to an advertisement that drummer Lars Ulrich had posted in a local newspaper. The current line-up features long-time lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo ...
: LoadLoad (album)Load is the sixth studio album by the American heavy metal band Metallica. Released on June 4, 1996 through Elektra Records, it sold 680,000 units in its first week and debuted at #1 on Billboard 200. The album has sold over 5 million copies worldwide and is certified 5x platinum by the RIAA...
– 1996 - MetallicaMetallicaMetallica is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1981 when James Hetfield responded to an advertisement that drummer Lars Ulrich had posted in a local newspaper. The current line-up features long-time lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo ...
: ReLoadReLoadReLoad is the seventh studio album by the American heavy metal band Metallica. It was released on November 18, 1997 through Elektra Records. The album is a sequel or counterpart to the band's previous album, Load. It debuted number 1 on the Billboard 200, selling 417,000 copies in its first week....
– 1997 - Dave Matthews BandDave Matthews BandDave Matthews Band, sometimes shortened to DMB, is a U.S. rock band formed in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1991. The founding members were singer-songwriter and guitarist Dave Matthews, bassist Stefan Lessard, drummer/backing vocalist Carter Beauford and saxophonist LeRoi Moore. Boyd Tinsley was...
: Before These Crowded StreetsBefore These Crowded StreetsBefore These Crowded Streets is the third studio album by Dave Matthews Band, released on April 28, 1998. It is the last official album by the group to be produced by longtime producer Steve Lillywhite and their first album recorded at The Plant Recording Studios in Sausalito, California...
– 1998 - Carlos SantanaCarlos SantanaCarlos Augusto Alves Santana is a Mexican rock guitarist. Santana became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered rock, salsa and jazz fusion...
: Supernatural – 1999 (also tracked at Fantasy Studios, Berkeley, California) - DeftonesDeftonesDeftones are an American alternative metal band from Sacramento, California, founded in 1988. The band consists of Chino Moreno , Stephen Carpenter , Chi Cheng , Frank Delgado , and Abe Cunningham . Currently Sergio Vega is standing in on bass while Cheng recovers from a car accident...
: White PonyWhite PonyWhite Pony is the third studio album by American alternative metal band Deftones. Released in 2000, it marks a significant growth in the band's sound, incorporating New Wave and shoegaze influences with the alternative metal edge the group had become known for...
– 2000 - Dave Matthews BandDave Matthews BandDave Matthews Band, sometimes shortened to DMB, is a U.S. rock band formed in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1991. The founding members were singer-songwriter and guitarist Dave Matthews, bassist Stefan Lessard, drummer/backing vocalist Carter Beauford and saxophonist LeRoi Moore. Boyd Tinsley was...
: Busted StuffBusted StuffBusted Stuff is the fifth album by Dave Matthews Band, released by RCA Records on July 16, 2002.Nine of the eleven tracks on this album are re-recorded versions of songs that first appeared on 2000's abandoned project now known as The Lillywhite Sessions. "Where Are You Going" and "You Never Know"...
– 2002 - Papa WheeliePapa WheeliePapa Wheelie is a punk rock/heavy metal supergroup formed in 1996 by former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted.The band emerged from a mountain biking-based friendship between Jason and his neighborhood bike shop owner. Early in the project, Newsted played the drums and fellow Michigan-native Steven...
: Live Lycanthropy – 2002 - The FrayThe Fray-Literature:*Fray, a phenomenon in Terry Pratchett's The Carpet People*Fray , a comic book series by Joss Whedon**Melaka Fray, titular character of the comic book series-Music:*"Fray", a song from the album 14 Shades of Grey by Staind...
: The FrayThe Fray-Literature:*Fray, a phenomenon in Terry Pratchett's The Carpet People*Fray , a comic book series by Joss Whedon**Melaka Fray, titular character of the comic book series-Music:*"Fray", a song from the album 14 Shades of Grey by Staind...
– 2009