The former Record Plant studios in New York and California are the stuff of music legend, places where a mind-blowing number of hit albums and singles were recorded, and mind-bending shenanigans took place. A new book, Buzz Me In: Inside the Record Plant Studios, is a detailed look into an era where rock music and audio technology exploded into thrilling and uncharted new realms – and where sex, drugs, rock and roll, debauchery, and creative genius collided to create some of the greatest music ever recorded.
An extremely incomplete list of artists who recorded at Record Plant studios includes John Lennon, Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, Bruce Springsteen, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Eminem, The Rolling Stones, U2, Prince, Blondie, KISS, Frank Zappa, Lady Gaga…you get the idea.
Buzz Me In: Inside the Record Plant Studios was co-written by Martin Porter and David Goggin (aka Mr. Bonzai), two audio and music industry veterans who have written for publications like Rolling Stone, Billboard, The New York Times, GQ, Hollywood Reporter and many others. The book is written in a you-were-there style, not surprising considering the vast insider experience of the two authors, and the fact that they interviewed former Record Plant co-founder Chris Stone and more than 100 former employees, engineers, producers, and artists. (Extensively researched, the book contains nine pages of credits.) It’s fascinating reading.
The first Record Plant was founded in Manhattan in 1968 by Stone and Gary Kellgren. Stone was the businessman, Kellgren the bohemian engineering wizard. After establishing the first Record Plant in New York, Stone and Kellgren saw the opportunity for expansion and opened a facility in Los Angeles in 1969 and in Sausalito, California in 1972, the latter partly as a means for the staff and musicians to get away from the out-of-control excesses of the LA scene at the time. (One of the three bedrooms in the LA studio was the S&M-themed Rack Room, complete with ropes and other accoutrements.)
Buzz Me In focuses on the events of the late 1960s through the early 1980s, largely because the story of the book is also the story of Stone and Kellgren, who had built Electric Lady Studios, the world’s first living room-style recording studio for Jimi Hendrix. This and the Record Plant’s kind of more informal environment, where musicians could hang out, play pinball, relax in a Jacuzzi, crash, and engage in…other activities, shattered the previous template of recording studios being sterile and impersonal places in which to make music. I don’t want to be a spoiler for the book, so I won’t elaborate on why the authors chose their particular time frame to focus on. It isn’t a Cinderella story.
Gary Kellgren with Jimi Hendrix at the Datamix console in the original Studio A at Record Plant NY, August 22, 1968. Photograph by Jay Good, courtesy of Frank White Photo Agency.
Gary Kellgren transformed a television production studio on Third Street into Record Plant LA. Courtesy of Chris Stone Archive.
The control room of Record Plant Sausalito featured a Tiffany-glass ceiling. Courtesy of Chris Stone Archive.
Always driven to provide the best-equipped facilities to attract rock stars and enable them to produce state-of-the art recordings, the New York Record Plant was one of the first studios to install a 16-track tape recorder, and in 1970 was the first to be equipped for quadraphonic sound. LA’s Studio B room was specially built for Stevie Wonder. In 1979 Studio C provided a 3M digital recording system that enabled Stephen Stills to become the first major-label artist to record digitally. Tom Hidley designed custom studio monitor loudspeakers for the Record Plant. John Storyk designed rooms.
In addition to implementing the latest hardware like API and Spectra Sonic mixing consoles (some equipped with mirrors on which to snort cocaine), and then-new Dolby noise reduction, the Record Plant pioneered the use of remote recording trucks, beginning with the “White Truck” in 1970 and followed by the “Black Truck” in 1978 (see our article on remote recording pioneer David Hewitt in Issue 178 and Issue 179) and eventually expanding into a fleet.
The Record Plant hired the best engineers and producers, or those who would become the best, as the Record Plant gave many their start. Jimmy “Shoes” Iovine, who started his career sweeping floors, became a producer for Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Tom Petty, U2 and Stevie Nicks, and co-founded Interscope Records and Beats. “Record Plant formed 100 percent who I am,” he notes in Buzz Me In. Bill Szymczyk made four records with the Eagles, including Hotel California. Phil Spector shot a gun inside the LA studio. Bob Ezrin worked on Alice Cooper’s smash, Billion Dollar Babies as one of his first projects at the Record Plant. Jimi Hendrix engineer Eddie Kramer was Stone and Kellgren’s first hire. Jack Douglas, Ken Caillat, Roy Cicala, Dennis Ferrante, Tom Wilson – the list goes on.
Bruce Springsteen and the East Street Band photographed on the tenth-floor roof of Record Plant NY. Photograph by Frank Stefanko, courtesy of Frank Stefanko.
George Harrison with Phil Spector at a mixing session for The Concert for Bangladesh album in August, 1971. Photograph courtesy of Barry Feinstein Photography.
Gary Kellgren posed with his prized client, Stevie Wonder, for a photograph accompanying an article about Record Plant LA in the August 11, 1975 issue of People magazine. Photograph by Elyse Lewin.
For many, the music making was intertwined with the partying and general mayhem, and Buzz Me In crackles with examples of the craziness of the time. In fact, you’d need to write a book to capture it all…oh wait…
As Mick Fleetwood (Fleetwood Mac) noted: “The [LA] studio was designed to fulfill the expectations of the music industry at the height of excess.” Just to name a few examples: an engineer once drove his motorcycle onto the Record Plant elevator and crashed through the New York Record Plant’s glass front door on the way out. There was a rule that artists had to check their guns at the reception desk. Jack Douglas was once duct taped to an office chair and rolled out into traffic in the middle of Forty-Fourth street.
Engineers who were asleep at the job (the result of marathon recording and mixing sessions) were awakened with fire extinguishers as a rite of passage. One soon to be ex-engineer decided to speed up Billy Joel’s voice to “dial in the perfect tempo.” When Joel heard a test pressing of his Chipmunk-like voice, “he was so embarrassed that he snatched the acetate off the turntable, ran outside and flung it like a Frisbee down the street.”
A member of KISS once interrupted a recording session to solicit a sex act. He left the studio, came back with three women he’d found on Times Square, asked the rest of the band to leave…and afterward, the band came back and KISS did the take. A nitrous oxide tank was installed in Sausalito’s Studio A. Artists were billed for studio time whether they were actually working in the studio or playing pinball. Keith Moon recorded an ill-fated solo album – twice, with the Record Plant billing MCA Records an extra $200,000 for studio time.
Sly Stone liked to look in an upward direction when he worked, so the Record Plant built him a sunken studio, nicknamed “The Pit.” No one liked the sound of it and it was occupied mainly for partying. That is, until one day Stevie Nicks wandered into the room, sat down at a Fender Rhodes electric piano, turned on a cassette recorder and, fresh off her breakup with Lindsey Buckingham, wrote the mega-hit “Dreams” in less than 10 minutes.
Sadly, the Record Plant entered the public eye when John Lennon was shot after leaving the New York studio on December 8, 1980. He and Yoko Ono had been working on the single, “Walking on Thin Ice” and Lennon was assassinated within minutes of leaving the studio. It was the beginning of the end of an era.
It was inevitable that the excess of the 1970s and 1980s excess could not continue. The New York Record Plant closed in 1987, but engineer Roy Cicala’s mixing room is still in operation by Sony Music. After moving to a couple of different locations, Chris Stone sold the LA Record Plant to Beatles producer George Martin in 1989, after which it had several owners before finally closing in 2024. Record Plant Sausalito reopened in 2024 as 2200 Studios.
But, As Buzz Me In: Inside the Record Plant Studios poignantly notes, the music made at all three locations lives on.
Mick Jagger dropped by the NY studio to jam with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1972. © Bob Gruen/www.BobGruen.com.
At Record Plant NY during a 1974 recording session for Walls and Bridges, Elton John stopped by the studio and ended up playing on John’s single, “Whatever Gets You thru the Night.” © Bob Gruen/www.BobGruen.com.
The signed photograph that Frank Zappa gave to engineer Michael Braunstein shows them both at the console during a Grand Funk Railroad recording session that took place in Studio A in May, 1976. Courtesy of Michael Braunstein.
A Partial List of Record Plant Recordings
The Eagles – Hotel California
Fleetwood Mac – Rumours
Sly and the Family Stone – Fresh
Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life
Blue Öyster Cult – Agents of Fortune
James Gang – Rides Again
Frank Zappa – Lumpy Gravy
The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland
Todd Rundgren – Runt
Jackson Five – ABC
Bruce Springsteen – Born to Run
Patti Smith – Easter
Stephen Stills
Billy Joel – Cold Spring Harbor
Alice Cooper – School’s Out
David Bowie – Young Americans
Dan Fogelberg – Souvenirs
KISS – Destroyer
Tom Waits – Nighthawks at the Diner
Aerosmith – Get Your Wings
Meat Loaf – Bat Out of Hell
Neil Young – Rust Never Sleeps
John Lennon and Yoko Ono – Double Fantasy
Prince – Purple Rain
Beastie Boys – Paul’s Boutique
Heart
Nine Inch Nails – The Downward Spiral
Lady Gaga – The Fame
Justin Bieber – Purpose
Gregg Allman – Laid Back
Carlos Santana – Supernatural
Book cover image courtesy of Thames & Hudson.
