Preface:

I need to issue a bit of a disclaimer here. This is a very big story of which I can only endeavor to tell a small part and that is because my part was very small. Inevitability conspires with the march of time to guarantee that details will be wrong or left out entirely. So many huge and profoundly unique personalities make it a sure bet that some will be neglected or even forgotten here. Rest assured that my nearly nine years inside this asylum masquerading as a recording studio is worth as much to me as any other experience in my life thus far.

I was first allowed in the door to provide janitorial services and walked out of it a multiplatinum recording engineer and producer. It would not have been remotely possible without the most amazing collection of brutal, ugly, inspiring, crazy, insane, magical, thoughtful, compassionate and even nurturing individuals that I can’t help but wonder could have existed in any other place in that space and time.

The art and science of sound is something I’ve had an appreciation for longer than I remember. Within in those walls, I learned almost everything I ever wanted to know on the subject as well as how to manipulate it in almost any way I ever dreamed of. For over ten years I was a kid in a candy store. I came back often after leaving it’s employ.

Sound has it’s own language and mindset. By the time I’d made my last record, I spoke it fluently and understood it intuitively. It was a magic castle I worked in.

I grew up the first time in Carson City Nevada.

I moved to Atlanta to study music and engineering. A kid from a small town in the desert. Culture shock and humidity. I worked very hard and never scored below 99% on anything I did. I blew the the curve consistently.

I came home for a summer before moving to Los Angeles to be a recording engineer. I spent that summer working in the only record store in town. I remember getting our first shipment of compact discs. That October, I packed up my shitbox VW and drove it to LA.

Somehow, I got this guy who went to the same school I did, to meet me at a pub called the Cat & Fiddle. He was the other best grauduate they’d ever seen. We had a few drinks and went to his car, a piece of shit mustard Monte Carlo, to smoke pot out of a quarter inch jack housing. He told me he’d put my resume in the right hands and that was all he could do for me. I would later understand that his makeshift pipe was the reason that no faucet at A&M Recording Studios ever had a screen in it.

His name was Bob Vogt. May he rest in peace. One of the smartest and funniest people I’ve ever met.

On January first, nineteen eighty eight, I began a job at A&M Recording Studios as a ‘runner’. I quit my job at the bookstore, the clothing store and the weird mug shop in the mall. I’d lived on my own in a galaxy far away but I was still fresh off the mothership. Your average dipshit.

Then I grew up again at A&M Studios. If can call myself a man, it was there that I became one.

Twenty one years old. The third or fifth time in my life I ever set foot in Hollywood was the day I started that job. One other day was for the interview. I had a perfect 4.0 and recieved an oustanding graduate award. The first time I walked through that monolithic wooden door and down those long halls I understood I had no business doing anything but taking out the trash in a place like this.

The technology was awesome. The studio itself was still under construction. I stole glimpses into the edges of the known universe as I walked down the hall to my interview with a man named Mark Harvey. What I’d seen intimidated me so much I’m sure I was a deer in the headlights by the time I sat in front of him for the interview.

That’s all I remember.

I was selected out of twenty plus candidates. I found out pretty fast that I was a janitor unless I was picking up some rockstar’s food, parts for their bathroom sink or taking the Porsche for a bath. I didn’t mind, I knew I was in over my head. I bought a Thomas Guide. Remember those? Before Computers?

I would concentrate on the job at hand. I would be an excellent runner.

The first year of my life was spent in fear of being fired. The culture was pure bootcamp. People, particularly runners, got fired every week. The guy who showed me the ropes the first day, I was his replacement. They called him G-Joe. Much later his cousin and I would partner up and make records together.

Within just a few weeks I got a call on a Saturday evening from this horror show of a woman in the front office telling me I was fired. Sherry Lazurus. Recording studios ran 24/7. I’d worked the front office phones that day and a guy named Paul Hewson called for Jimmy Iovine. Jimmy wasn’t in so I took a message and put it in his slot. I had no idea how important Jimmy Iovine was and no idea that Paul Hewson was actually Bono from U2. No way of knowing they were in negotiations for Jimmy to produce U2’s next record.

I didn’t understand the facility I was employed by was among the finest on the planet. Not yet anyway.

I survived, but that kinda shit hung over your head for a while.

It was awful. Every face you even looked at was your boss. Not only were we janitors but we worked for the janitors. Every morning starting at eight, the runners would brew some fifteen or sixteen pots of coffee, the same number of thermoses of both hot and icy water and deliver them all over the lot. Seven ice chests stocked with ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, half & half and milk plus whatever special requests the band or artist had. No refrigerators in control room to avoid the inevitable sixty cycle hum. Seven fruit baskets at least, with fresh fruit from the Mayfair market down the street purchased with money from petty cash. Five studios and two mastering suites.

Hand pick the fruit, get good stuff, if the grapes look good, get them, apples and oranges and make sure they’re ripe. Bananas. Green stems meant they’d last more than a day. Strawberries. Strawberries were very important. Select them one by one for at least seven baskets. Then there was a list of condiments etc. to gather. Eight bags of groceries in my ’69 Beetle.

It’s where my future partner met his wife, that Mayfair market. Her name is Xantipa. His is name is Alex.

As soon as that was done we began to fetch and deliver breakfast to the early arrivals and/or those needing a boozemop. We also had a concierge who showed up around nine. Her job was to tour the studios and lounges and find things for us to clean or fix or make better somehow.

I’m not sure if we ever had a decent concierge other than Nicole. There was a woman named Rita.

If you were adept at all, you stayed on the best side you could of the concierge. All but a handful were clueless women there to amuse the clients and make us miserable, thus amusing management. After a time, we organized and no bubble headed bleach blonde was able to last long against eight to ten testosterone leaking phalluses dangling between the legs of some pretty determined and competitive young Greeks. Geeks.

Before we were done we managed to get the bad ones fired fairly easily.

Drinks for my friends.

45 Responses to “A&M chapter one”