Allen Rice, Mike Stevens, Robin  Yeager. Tres Virgos with the wind at our back, singing

"On A Foggy Foggy Beach, You Can Hear The Foghorns Preach

Sermons To Ships Out On The Seas"

From "Fog Song" by R. Yeager, all right reserved Loose iD Mind Productions 1976

 Below: 1219 West California Ave, Mill Valley, CA The first Tres Virgos Studio

 Narada Michael Walden w/ Robin

                            ”ROLLING”

THE TRES VIRGOS STUDIO YEARS

By

Robin Yeager

 “If I had it all to do over again, I’d run for President of the United States. My chances of winning the Presidency are better than being successful in the record business” –  anonymous

INTRO

Christmas 2000 was fun. First, my kids (Larkin, Melody and Jake), and my 18-month-old Grandson, Romeo, came to visit Sonja and me here in the town of Sonoma. We opened our presents (everybody got a Compact Disc and a Book from Santa this year) and had some pastry and scrambled eggs.

From Sonoma we got in the car and drove west to Cotati to have Xmas with my folks, brother Steve and Sister Marion (Doug’s still in Louisville). My Dad is ailing and has a live in nurse named Al from Figi. What a nice guy! He enjoyed his first US Xmas with us. There was lots to eat and laughter. Once again, more books and CD’s for everyone. More of a custom in my family than others perhaps, but always a good gift.

My Sister Marion gave me a different gift. Actually, gifts. I first opened a unique pair of wooden salad servers, which are enjoyable. But she also gave me six cassette tapes. These were tapes that I had given to her over the years some dating back to the mid 70’s. Tapes that I had recorded, perhaps produced or even sang and played on. Tapes I’d sent to her while she was in South America, New York, Petaluma and yes, even Sebastopol! I’ve got a box of cassettes from my years in a recording studio. Much of it downright hits that wouldn’t see the light of day in the competitive world of the record biz. I call this box “Robin’s Vault” and have spent the last 10 years knowing that someday I would release a box set of the material I recorded. I’ve threatened to buy some gear and remaster much of the material and release it on the Internet at garageband.com or something like that. I would include wording to the effect of “If I have used your material illegally, call me! We’ll settle up!” on the liner notes. Keep the blood-sucking attorneys out of it!

I put the tapes in the glove box of my truck (I do my serious listening in the truck. I put in a great sound system.), planning to listen to them soon. I write this three days after Xmas (Happy Birthday Ted Straton, by the way) and want to let you know the impact these tapes had on me.

I left the house at 5:00 AM to meet the delivery truck for Boar’s Head Deli Provisions in San Rafael. (It’s what I do for a living now. The glory days are gone.) I frequently have to make some of the deliveries to the various markets and deli’s as part of my Sales position. My Territory is a familiar one ranging from Sausalito to Healdsburg just north of Santa Rosa. This morning I decided to listen to some of the tapes and picked up the first one labeled “What We Did The Summer of ’82. The “A” side as all Tamarin Productions compositions, a sampler, of the commercials we wrote and produced at Tres Virgos Studio, San Rafael.

After the commercial sampler played snippets from Joseph Magnin, AAA, Gisselle’s Jewelry (sung by Fee Waybill of the Tubes) and Bank of America spots, it continued to a 25 minute soundtrack for a Bank of America management training video (Doug Boyd’s soaring tenor singing a hard sell “We’re part of the future. Part of the future. We’re Bank of America and we’re making the future now”). One of the scenes of the video showed heavy industry footage and we needed to make music for some pretty fearsome images of smoking stacks and heavy Cats. We chose a drum pattern from the early Roland Drum Machines (I believe it was a model 707) that had a bass drum sound that sounded more like a solid rubber ball being hit with 9 Iron (the defacto sound today of Hip Hop and Rap kick drums). The pattern was five 1/8^th  notes followed by two 1/16^th notes then an quarter note rest.  Like this, _ _ _ _ _ -- ,  _ _ _ _ _ -- . We needed a good screaming guitar, for which we called Terry Medeiros (I think he was the only guitarist that would get up that early in the morning. Satriane politely declined the early call). Terry set up his rig and I miked him in my usual way; the famous “waterfall” technique taught to me by Dr. Richie Moore. It’s done by wrapping the mic cable around the amp handle (snap the mic into the cannon connector AFTER this is done. It’s nearly impossible to get the cable AND the mic thru an amp handle) and suspend a quality dynamic mic, pointed at the floor, in the middle of the grill cloth. If you can place the mic directly in front of the cone of one speaker, you’ll get a really great sound. I also set up two room mics, probably early Crown PZM’s (as we had been doing Beta test for Crown on the mics, and I didn’t want to give them back.) and mixed the three together for a big sound. In any case, the sleepy eyed Terry (clutching a cup of coffee) was instructed by Pete Scott to “Get as outside as you can. No holds barred.” Terry suddenly had the look of an Offensive Lineman with a football in his hands. His eyes fairly blazing with the opportunity to become unrestrained in the studio at this hour of the day. I rolled the 2” with the drum pattern (a matching bass synth pattern had been added) to Terry’s headphones. We must have recorded about 12 takes straight thru. We reviewed the tracks and used pieces of each to create a single monster track (not an unusual technique). At the end of the piece  (or “Outro) is a long feedback note. During mixdown I dumped it hard into the plate reverb and Lexicon Primetime and blistered the iron oxide on the tape as I watched the stereo meters on my Ampex ATR 100 cease their struggle for movement on the pins and give into outright welded paralysis. The trick was monitoring the record head of the deck instead of the output of the console so I could ride that fine edge before outright distortion. As I listened for the first time in 20 years to the cassette tape, the dynamic peak of that guitar note still blows me away. I am estimating here, but I’m sure that the signal was in excess of +20dB. No distortion. Headroom is great stuff (so is tape compression)!

A Little History

Tres Virgos Studio was the studio I was a General Partner in, along with original founding partners Allen Rice and Mike Stevens. Mike and I were playing guitar and singing as acoustic solo acts on the “Steak & Ale” circuit in the early to mid ‘70’s. Allen had done everything from serve in the army (where he learned electronics) to warehouse olives and race Café Racers (Superbikes as they are now known). Mike and I met thru a lifetime friend by the name of Deborah Hutchinson or “Hutch” as I always called her. She lived in a rental home on the side of Mt Tamalpais in Mill Valley. Mike and I were introduced to each other by Hutch and we threatened to do gigs together and perhaps even some recording. Mike had the latest in state of the art multitrack recorders available. A Teac 3340 4 track. Of course, no console was necessary as Mike would simply plug the mic into each track as he needed it to overdub a new part. When mixing was actually necessary to combine or “bounce” tracks, he pulled out a crazy mess of “Y” connectors and individually controlled the output of each track to the new combined track. GO MIKEY!!! His Hawaiian heritage drove his music style and lyrics. Mike has a tremendously easy sense to his music much like Hawaiian music in general. He had written a beautiful tribute to Mt. Tamalpais (translated from Olompali Indian, it means “Sleeping Princess” due to it’s silhouette against the sky) called “Rise, Sleeping Lady” (“Come Down From The Mountain Where You’ve Lain So Long”). An old high school friend by the name of John McKindle (great bass player and all around musician) once said of Mike’s right hand finger picking style “I’d give my left nut just to have his Pinky!”

In 1974 I was collecting unemployment while making a living (cash only) playing clubs and cafés and dinner houses as an acoustic guitar singer and musician. To supplement that income I had a very prosperous business selling pot and other recreational combustibles, powders and organic hallucinogens. I was weighing out “Z’s” (ounces of pot. The term came form the abbreviation for ounce OH_ZEE.) one day and listening to the local Marin Radio station KTIM. A man by the name of Norman Dayron was being interviewed. He had produced many of the Mike Bloomfield records and several other artists at Chess Records in Chicago. He was inviting interested listeners to join his recording arts class that he would be giving from his home and from a studio.

It was the first time that I realized that a window to the universe was opening for me. I called and booked myself a berth immediately for a cruise that would last 15 years.

We met at Norman’s house in the spring of ‘74 for the first time. When I arrived there was a group of 8-10 people in the living room of his Mill Valley house. I dutifully stuck out my hand and introduced myself to each of the people in the room. Among them, Allen Rice, Penny Jacob and David Schwartz. Before long we were rehearsing a song (of my own composition called “Colombia”) to record at His Masters Wheels on Otis St in San Francisco. HMW Studios was Elliott Mazer’s studio where he produced Crosby Stills and Nash as well as many other artists. It was also the home of Alembic Guitars made popular by bass player Stanley Clark. The engineer was Jim Furman, later to become the President of Furman Sound.

Allen and I hit it off right away. We were very similar in appearance and as it would turn out, we share the same birthday, ten years apart! Allen had natural Producing instincts and enjoyed working with me on my songs to make them more marketable and polished. He played some guitar, but wanted to learn more. He lived on his boat in Alameda, which made the decision to trade guitar lessons for sailing time a no brainer.

Penny and I started singing together. She grew up in Michigan and moved out to California with her husband Jerry, a radio advertising salesman. Penny had a great voice, boy could she sing! We worked so hard together on my songs and hers. The blend of our voices was quite good.

Jerry started to ask us to do some demos for commercial clients of his. We started with a local hardware named Goodman’s Lumber. Charley Goodman was a man that was very hard to please. Penny and I must have done 10-12 versions of music for him, trying our best to please him. We never did sell old Charley on our talents. To this day, one of the funniest moments in my life was the last of the last versions of his stupid commercial. I was so desperate that I told Penny I could click my teeth together and make the melody to the William Tell overture (something I can still do today). I put my guitar down and started clicking my teeth into the mic while Penny was supposed to sing “Fencing Lumber Paneling, Hammers and Garage Door Springs….”, etc to the tune of Wm Tell.  It started moderately well and ended in the biggest giggle fest I can remember.

This would be the start of Tamarin Productions.

I introduced Allen to Mike that same spring.  We were (are) all born in September, making us born under the sign of Virgo (hence Tres Virgos). The three of us were trouble with a capital “T” when we would get together. We always intended to make some serious music (with Allen’s technical and producing guidance), but these sessions dissolved into dope smoking, beer drinking, coke tootin’ marathons that yielded little tangible results. Mike had a great idea. We would use the spare bedroom downstairs as a studio. It even had a closet that could be used as a sound booth! Hutch had been exposed to our antics for long enough. When she heard of our plan, the hands hit the hips and then the right arm extended with the index finger clearly indicating the direction of our future. She said, “Not down here next to my bedroom, no way! I’m not going to listen to you guys at 3:00 in the morning carrying on like you do. GO TO THE GARAGE!”

This would be the start of Tres Virgos Studios.

The garage was nearly 100 years old. It had a distinctive tilt towards the downhill side. Outside of it was a mill saw with a 24” blade once driven by a 6” wide belt and spindle. It was full of antiques and storage items of the property owner, Norman Quadros. He allowed us to move along with our plan to sheet rock the walls and build a small studio inside. We found 4x10’ sheets of sheetrock (so old it was tough to work with) and scrounged many of the construction supplies, including all redwood wall studs!! There’s a fortune in Redwood inside those walls.  We equipped the control room with Mikes Teac 3340 and a Teac Model 10 mixer (horrible sounding board!) we’d bought from a fellow named Dick Darling (poor guy!). Allen sourced speakers (Kliptsch Heressy), amps (BGW 750), a Mastering deck (Pioneer 10” Reel, 15 IPS RT 1050. I still have it) and some outboard equipment from a home stereo supply dealer he worked for. He wired up two 48 point ¼” patch bays and we mounted the entire studio equipment package in a 7’ equipment rack. We were up and running!

I was the only one without a day gig. Mikey was working for an equipment lease company as their controller and Allen was getting more involved with pro-audio sales as a rep for several very good companies, among them AKG Microphones and Phillips. (Throughout the history of Tres Virgos, we were always a little heavy on the AKG mics and headphones). Having been born in Marin I knew lots of musicians that would be interested to know of the studio, to use as a pre-production and/or demo studio. I lobbied for a telephone to be installed and started to look for business, “beating the bushes looking for musicians with money in their pockets” I called it. We were soon recording more than just our own material. With Allen’s exceptional technical expertise and leadership, we blossomed into a darn good sounding garage studio.

I hadn’t a clue as to what I was doing technically. Allen would carefully and patiently instruct me on the finer points of phase coherency, attenuation, equalization, compression and reverb. I would spend the week finding these things out in painful and embarrassing dosages liberally applied into my ears and to those poor unsuspecting souls wearing the headphones in the other room. God! When I think of what those folks endured it makes me cringe. But they actually paid me (sometimes) for the early masterpieces I recorded, in spite of the hearing loss they suffered.

Tamarin Productions was recording yet another Goodman’s demo (or was it Alco Stereo?) one day. David Schwartz, Penny, Mikey and I were in the throws of creating our next big attempt. Penny and David had told me about a fantastic talent that played piano, fiddle and mandolin. He had a great voice they said. They invited him to the studio on this day. As I was doing a vocal overdub and Allen was at the helm, I saw a Stetson Hat walk in the door. I realized that I had jammed with this guy a few months earlier at a guy named Steve Goldberg’s house. I’d been up in the Gold Country of California where it had been particularly hot. I left my guitar in its case in the car, not giving it a second thought. I returned the next day and went to Steve Goldberg’s house to jam with this new crowd.  I don’t think we played more than 16 bars of some kickass country progression when the bridge of my guitar separated from the top in a hail of strings and splinters (not to mention a unique boing sound I hope I never hear again!). The Stetson looked at me smiled and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen ANYONE do that before with a guitar!! You must be GOOD!”

The man belonging to the Stetson was the one and only Pete Adams (known only to his friends and alas, not a household name). When I saw the hat as I was doing my overdub, I said (in the middle of the take) “Hey I know you!” PA, as he was affectionately known, didn’t realize it right then, but he just got the gig.

We toiled endlessly at the perfection of our own music, technical knowledge of recording and mixing and occasionally made a buck or two. Allen and Mike were such huge contributors to the partnership, the music and the education of Robin Yeager, Engineer. They worked their day gigs, just to be able to walk thru the sound lock door (a retired meat locker door) into the control room and studio. PA, Penny and David were in attendance on a daily basis as we tried to get Tamarin Productions off the ground. Penny’s husband Jerry would feed all the demo and final commercial work to us that he possibly could.  Our first commercial success was Sweet Adeline Bakery …”Cakes and Pies and Fancy Pastries, a Cup of Coffee and Something Tasty. Come to Our Bakery (for something sweet) Sweet Adeline’s”. I wrote a spot for Don Sherwood’s Golf & Tennis Store that we were paid $1500 for. It played for nearly 20 years!! Clearly, we were not striking gold, but our hearts were soaring with the success of our collective talents. We truly loved what we were doing, and we were getting pretty good at it.

During the drought of the 70’s here in Northern California (we were sending all of our water resources to Southern Cal. Good idea!) we worked on a series of spots promoting water conservation. “Use Only What You Need” was the line we came up with. We had done several versions of the spot hoping to generate some excitement from somebody so that they would buy the idea. David came in during one of these sessions and was very excited about an idea he had. He wanted to start a magazine for the professional sound industry, about the people and technologies that drive the industry. He asked Penny if she would be interested in taking this idea to the next step. And so it was that PA and I lost half of our daily talent team, but more importantly the MIX MAGAZINE was founded. Over the ensuing 5 years, MIX became the magazine of the industry, the undisputed resource (I believe it still is). I have always been intensely proud of David and Penny’s courage and determination as well as grateful for their long lasting friendship.

As I honed my chops as a recording engineer, I realized how amazing my job was. Few are privy to the challenge of summoning up a performance in front of a microphone with no audience. An audience drives an artist and pushes them to new extremes of performance. But in the studio it’s just a couple of people on the other side of the glass who will frequently interrupt you to tell you that you need to play it or sing it differently. Your artist self is destroyed as your professional self-battles to understand and effect the changes being requested in undefined terms. A producer will likely say, “that was good but I want it more gut wrenching (emotional, refined, pitched higher, sounds better, etc.) very subjective comments. The artist tries to interpret this direction. Very subjective.

I would frequently be treated to the most incredible performances by an artist. It was my job after all. No audience, just me and perhaps my assistant, one or two others. This was the case when PA brought in a mother and daughter team he had heard out in West Marin. I was introduced to them by PA as Naomi and Christina Judd. PA and I played several gigs in West Marin with them and I must say, they were incredibly good. Christina was only 12 or 13 years old at the time (Wynona became her name later in life). Soon, members of Jesse Collin Young’s Band and a producer by the name of Pete Charles were bringing the two into the newly expanded Tres Virgos (we added to the two ends of the garage and equipped the control room with an Otari 7308 1” 8 track tape recorder and Soundcraft Series II console. A very sweet sounding pair). I engineered four songs, Kentucky, Hillbilly Boogie, Oatmeal Cookies and Let Me Be Your Baby (as I listen to this still, Christina’s 12 year old voice is so sultry and convincing) and mixed them. As was customary back then, we recorded the rhythm tracks first then added the voices and lead guitar or piano. When I asked Christina to go out in front of the mic to do her vocals, she was uncomfortable. It didn’t take long before I asked what the problem was. She asked, “Can Mama be out here with me?” You betcha', no prob. As soon as Naomi was at her side, the two of them recorded all of their vocals (including back up tracks) like the professionals they are today. I can still hear in my head, the sound of their incredible vocal blend.

They got pretty comfortable in the studio, going on to do lots of backing tracks for a gifted artist by the name of Dave Shorey. We met Dave when he played Bass with Mike Bloomfield (Mike’s last recordings were done at my studio, engineered by PA, me and Allen). Allen engineered the first album to be released from Tres Virgos. It was Bloomfield’s last record and was put out on Count Talent Records, Norman Dayron’s label. All of the other tapes were lost due to poor tape storage techniques. Shorey was the original Blues Brother. He lived in a 65 Ford parked outside the studio. He smoked endless joints all day and night. He definitely had a Blues man’s Funk about him. But what a talent! Naomi and Christina did yeoman’s duty on those recordings. Dave was last seen in LA doing his Gas House Dave gig on Sunset.

The little studio was starting to gain notoriety as a great pre-production studio. We were starting to see significant talent that would song write and demo with us before going to the big studios (Wally Heiders, The Record Plant, The Automat, Different Fur and Fantasy). It was busy almost 24 hours a day, thanks in part to a crazy guy by the name of Dr. Richie Moore. Richie had engineered some early Beatles, Led Zep, Delaney and Bonnie…even The Associations “Cherish”, Blood Sweat and Tears, etc. His reputation and discography attracted more business than a one room studio could book. I learned a great deal technically from Richie as his assistant. But he had a major problem, DRUGS. Holy cow! I was no angel, but this guy was seemingly determined to self-destruct. In spite of many near misses and some direct hits (the light pole at 19^th and Noriega I always refer to as the Richie Moore Memorial Light Pole. That one set him back $2800 for the pole and he totaled Annie’s car!), Richie is alive and well and living in the San Juan Islands in the Northwest. He and Annie are the computer brains behind a very interesting children’s museum and learning center.

Richie’s fame brought lots of great acts to the studio. Most of the time I would do my engineering during the day and assist Richie’s gig’s at night. But he taught me tricks of recording that were brilliant. The awesome subtlety of compression thru a UREI LA-2 (or “The Deuce” as it affectionately known). Mic technique. A Harp is miked over the harpist’s head. A Hammond Organ’s Leslie speaker in stereo from about 10’ up and 15’ out, etc. The nuances of the sounds of microphones, quality of sound, ability of the mic to withstand excessive sound pressure level and still deliver tonality. (Great joke from PA at this time…How do you capture the sound of one hand clapping? Mic ‘em in stereo and drop out the left side!) I will always be grateful to Richie for the education and his friendship.

In about 1978, PA invited a young woman to the studio to do her demo. He met her in a Family Light Music Camp (run by the late Jan Tangen). She was very talented and wanted to record a demo tape to submit for any studio work, live work, WORK PERIOD! She wanted to sing for a living. She selected Jan to be her producer and when she came to the studio on the appointed day, she brought her folks with her. The session started out alright, until Jan lit up a joint. Mom and Dad were bristling at this. Yet Jan continued oblivious to their anger. Clearly, the young woman was more tuned into her parents’ feelings and was getting pretty nervous. She did a great job in spite of her producers’ oblivion. The tape landed her work with Tamarin (no surprise) and today Annie Stocking is considered the Grand Dame of commercial music in Northern California. I hear her voice many times a day for major national clients. Annie, if you ever read this, I LOVE YOUR VOICE! And you’re a very special person.

In 1978 Allen enlisted himself in a seminar about acoustic technologies. He listened to Ed Long, Puddy Rogers and a young man from Vegas (owner of Las Vegas Recorders) Chips Davis for a couple of days. The group of people were referred to as SYNAUDCON (I think it stood for Synergistic Audio Conference. I’m probably mistaken, like the time I told somebody that MCI stood for Many Confused Individuals). He was so excited by the new information that he raced back to the studio, on the way stopping for several rolls of Corning Insulation. I was in the middle of a session when he came busting thru the door and asked me to stop the session and the clock. He had some work he needed to do. I COULD NOT BELIEVE HE WAS DOING THIS! Rather than set up a major battle over the finer points of studio ownership, reputation and how it is coupled to respecting the clients’ privacy and money…I opted to take a break and let Allen at it. After all, there was no doubting him at times like this. He would just go ahead and do it ANYWAY! Well, whoever the session was with, they witnessed history in the making. In about 45 minutes, Allen had transformed our control room (known as the “Out of” Control Room for this reason among others) into a Live End Dead End environment by stuffing the walls and ceiling of the front of the control room with the Corning Insulation. When he finished he proudly asked me to do some playback of the material we had been recording. The UREI 813 monitors sounded like I’d just clapped them to my head like a giant set of headphones. In spite of the lingering fiberglass particles floating in the room, the experiment worked! I knew better than to mistrust or doubt Allen. Hell, the last time I did was when he told me that Video was going to be the next big thing. I laughed in his face.

In late ’78 the studio had reached it’s apex in the neighborhood and was asked to get out. It had been a messy affair leaving me angry that some idiot neighbor could derail my future just because we kept him up all night with raucous music and comings and goings. Plans were started for a new studio to be built in San Rafael. A brand new theory and acoustic design for control rooms would be borne out at our expense. Live End Dead End (LEDE) would be the way. Chips Davis would be the guy. He designed the world’s first LEDE studio to be built from the ground up

Fortuitous Break

Without a studio and without an income I heard from a childhood friend that he could use my help. Steve Irey owned a prospering dental equipment refurbishment business. He would take out old dental chairs, lights, spittoons, drills, etc and replace them with new equipment. He would resell the old equipment in its refurbished condition around the world. He had been awarded the contract to completely demolish the UC Medical Center Dental School as it would be getting it’s own new building. The school occupied two floors of the UC Med Center. I signed on the crew and was introduced to the foreman, Bob Missbach. Bob would be in charge of making sure that the demolition was done in an orderly fashion. I was given a Sawzall and a 6’ pry bar and was unleashed on the unsuspecting school. The anger that I had pent up inside of me from losing my studio was released in enormous doses over the ensuing 12 weeks. I was known as “Sir Sawzall” and there was no wall, sterilizing enclave or 100 seat teaching theater that would not be spared my wrath. Essentially, I took the place out! There were about 10 guys running after me at all times with steel wheeled carts catching the usable debris that I left behind. Frequently I would be sawing away and would cut thru the electrical, air and water service ways that were laid beneath the floor. Some poor guy would run out and find the shut off while I stuck my fingers in the air or water lines and tried mightily to stay away from the electric conduit I’d just severed. One time, I was lying on the floor in just such an instance. I was cussing my fuckin’ head off. I noticed that there was a pair of wingtips standing nearby. As I followed them up a blue suited man was standing in front of me. The decibel level of the escaping air under my thumb was about 110-115dB. So, I yelled at him, “Who the Fuck are you?” I inquired. I couldn’t hear him at first, so I said, “I don’t care if you’re the fucking President! I got a big problem here”. He raised his voice mightily and responded. “Yes, you do have a big problem. I AM the President, and there is water leaking thru the ceiling and onto my DESK!!!!”  ooops! Missbach was located and while I fitted a new blade into my Sawzall and continued thrashing the place, Bob was asked to finish the job ASAP.

Bob and I became very good friends (still are. When I get a chance to see him!! Sorry Bob). Turns out that he had spent many years in Hawaii, and in fact, was a drummer and had organized shows for a production company there. We had lots in common. And it was no big surprise that Bob came to work on the crew building the studio (along with fellow UC Med Center crewman Chris Borger). Bob has a mind like a steel trap. Anything technical or mechanical is seemingly effortless for him. When it came time to begin wiring the control room of the new place he took to it like a duck to water. One day I showed up to continue with the building crew and Bob was in the control room at a soldering iron. He was wearing his glasses, which was most unusual. I went in thru the plastic sheet and said hi. He looked up at me and his eyes were the color of a 5 ball. I asked him how long he’d been there and he proudly announced he’d set a new personal record. He’d been there for 56 hours straight soldering connectors. Time to go home Bob.

Missbach started as an assistant engineer to me. Frankly, he knew the system much better than I did at first anyway. He was a skillful and thorough assistant. After a session one night, we were cleaning up and critiquing the session. I told him that unlike some businesses that allow you to advance quickly, recording depended on time. I told him that “One hour behind the console is worth exactly one hour. You cannot speed the process up. It is experience that counts in this business”. About 18 months later, Bob was featured in a Mix article along with his client Huey Lewis. It was their second album together. I should know better than to pontificate.

Once again, Allen (always on the cutting edge) took to the task of building the studio and project managing the feat. He ran the crew very hard. What had started as only Allen by himself, building a studio, with my help when I didn’t have  a session elsewhere, had become shifts running around the clock. Managing the plans, the crew (and the diminishing funds!) and the excessive attention to detail was exhausting. Our wall systems were layer after layer of materials ranging from high-density particleboard and ¾” plywood to Celotex, sheetrock and even stucco! There was not a nail in the entire place. Everything was “screwed ‘n glued”.  I got to the studio one morning and found Allen sound asleep on the old couch upstairs. He’d used insulation as a pillow, poor guy! He didn’t care, he needed the rest.

Penny’s husband Jerry was now on board as a full partner in the business. With the Mix Magazine in our studio family, Jerry set forth a masterful advertising campaign. I still run into to people that remember this campaign 20 years later! All of the ingredients were at hand including photography. My long time friend Bob Morris would come to the studio on a weekly basis and take a few progress shots in Black & White. Jerry hatched the idea to start a monthly ad in the Mix showing a progress shot or some Roman rendering of the Coliseum being built or just a Skill saw cutting wood. He would add copy to the effect of “ Allen’s still building, Robin’s using other studios, and Mikey’s still writing Checks!” People couldn’t wait to see the next iteration of the campaign. And Boy, when the studio finally opened up (18 months later), we had the cover of Mix Mag and the attention of the world. People came from all over to listen to the room. Since it was a revolutionary design, some didn’t like it while others loved it.

Two incidences stick out in my mind during this time. An Australian man had flown all of the way here to just listen. I don’t recall his name, but he was Australia’s answer to Ed Long and Chips Davis. I literally booked time for this gentleman (on the house of course) to ensure that he would be greeted and treated with all of my resources. Upon arrival in San Francisco, he called to tell me he would be on his way shortly, and how could he get to the studio. I said the Ferry service was excellent and I would meet him at the Larkspur terminal. Since we didn’t each know other from Adam, I said, “You’ll be able to spot me. I’m the one in the aloha shirt and cowboy boots, I’m about 6’5”. He said, “Oh, then it’ll be easy. I’m the blind man with the cane!!” And he was. I picked him up and he listened to his own source materials and then to some of the projects I’d done. It was fascinating to watch him as he picked out the particular stereo que points on the left to right panorama.

When we were contacted by Stevie Wonder’s management for a listen, I responded quickly. I booked time for his engineer and manager to come to the studio. The brought with them a reel of 2” 24 track tape and some stereo masters they had recently mixed. I started by putting the 2” up on the MCI 24 track. They quickly assimilated a rough mix and were going thru the motions of selecting and soloing tracks to listen to. I kept hearing a strange metallic whooshing sound. It was driving me nuts! I finally broke down and asked them what that sound was. “Oh, That’s Stevie's beads in his hair! We always have to work on that!” As Stevie listens to or plays music, he is always rocking his head back and forth in time. Silly me.

My God! I was recording an awful lot of music. Tamarin had expanded to include Peter Scott and Jeff Ray with PA and Tom Donald and Dan Newsome as additional arranging and producing talent. The in house company was doing work for Bank of America, Joseph Magnin, AAA, a chain of 19 shopping centers across the US, soft drink companies and many more. The composition and production team was composed of 6 or 7 people. But we were hiring entire orchestras, horn sections, string sections, and singers, singers, singers. The nucleus of the singing was still done by Penny, PA, Jeff and me. But I could always count on seeing Annie Stocking, Bobby Van Der Vort, Doug Boyd, Julie Stafford, Fee Waybill and Glenn Walters. While I was always amazed by the talent of the bands that paid for their own music to be recorded, I am even more astounded at the professionals that would arrive to do the commercial work in the wee hours of the day. We were very good as a team. Exceptionally creative, professional and man would it sound good! We had so much fun that we frequently commented on the similarity between the Dick Van Dyke Show with Morie Amsterdam, Rose Marie and Carl Reiner to Tamarin Productions.

When Pete Scott succumbed to too many Pall Malls and hard living style acquired from his old radio buddie Don Sherwood, he had a heart attack. I knew he was not well yet he kept insisting that he had heart burn from Francine’s split pea soup, or the coffee was too strong. Always something. Pete’s gift for producing great music came form years of being on the radio and knowing what good music is all about. True genius resides in the complexities of the person. Pete is still one of the most creative and opinionated people I have had the pleasure of knowing since 1977. I’ve played some remarkable music that I’ve produced or recorded. I’m excited by it! He shuts me down cold and reminds me that “I’m not shakin’ my ass here!” He’s right of course. But does “Dreamy” George Winston make you shake your ass? Not me, but he sure found a secret to success (and as a result, so did Will Ackerman of Wyndham Hill). But I digress. I was talking about the similarities of Tamarin and Dick Van Dyke.

Pete went in for open heart surgery and survived a quad bypass. To let him know how much we missed him, my assistant (also Pete’s roommate) Gordon Lyon thought it would be fun to make a recording of a song he had begun to pen as a audio get well card. Gordon had never penned a song in his life to this point. When he mentioned the idea to me I thought it was wonderful! Gordon explained that he had verse lyrics but no chorus lyrics as yet, nor a chord progression. I said not to worry, we’ll fix it up and record it that night. I would play guitar, Gordon would speak the verses and we would both "sing" the fine chorus that  I had in mind.

Doc Shafer, our tech, came in to take care of engineering with Mary Ann Zahorsky in the Assistants chair. I determined what we would need was a couple of good stiff martinis before proceeding. I went out and bought a large bottle of Tanqueray  for the occasion. Doc set up the mics (thanks for that great trick Doc of using a stereo mic, introducing a second mic in the center and throwing it out of phase!). My acoustic guitar sounded huge! I used a bottle neck slide in an open D tuning. Since Gordon was a complete lightweight as a drinker, the first four martinis had pretty well done him in. Especially since they weren’t really martinis at all, just slugs from the bottle! He was in perfect fettle for the verses, mumbling so badly I can honestly say I don’t remember the lyrics. When the chorus part came up, we both sang “You Wrinkly old pouch bag, you dirty old Jew” in an obnoxious tone (imagine!). A few more final touches and our get well card was almost complete. Doc had given up on us and left. Mary Ann was doing pretty well interpreting our requests. Gordon passed out on the couch in front of the console, so I mixed it (with Mary Ann’s guidance) and it was delivered the next day to Pete in the hospital. I wasn’t there due to prior session scheduling and a nasty hangover. But from what I hear, Pete was laughing so hard he almost popped all of his stitches. I still have that recording someplace.

Gordon.

Aka Nodrog. While the new place was under construction I was busy trying to maintenance my clientele and build new business. I didn’t realize it at first, but it was a perfect opportunity for me to get out and meet all of the other studio owners and managers in the bay area and Sacramento. Made especially sweet because I would pay their rate out of respect for the business and the position. I did not haggle.

So it was that I was starting a session with my old buddy David Rankin and his hired guns, Ted Straton, Mark Karan, John Condon, Michael White and the indefinable Billy Bop. David had written songs and hired these guys to make them become real. He is still a very dear friend. We booked time for three songs to get under way at Wally Heider’s Studio in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. I was assigned Jesse Osborne at first to be my assistant. Jesse was called away on another session, so they gave me this little scrawny guy who had been painting the walls or something. It was one of his very first assistant jobs. I always give a new assistant enough rope to hang themselves with, and then I take over the entire operation for the remainder of the session. Tomorrow we’ll start again. It’s all about learning. We were downstairs in Studio A and Gordon was doing just fine. A bit nervous, but fine. I don’t think I ever had to take the rope back from him the first session. I was impressed and asked that he join us the following day for more frivolity.

Gordon didn’t know it yet, but he’d just gotten the gig.

Of all of the assistants I trained  (12 in all), Gordon was the most endearing. He worked with me for the longest period of time. As I ‘d listen to a playback in my usual LOUD mode (3000 watts of power can be loud), he would be know exactly what I wanted in the patchbay and outboard rack, before I said anything . Even if I’d said something, chances were slim he’d hear it anyway. The man was exceptionally intuitive. I am intensely proud of those I trained to be engineers. Gordon gets the Class Valedictorian award.

He volunteered to set up a session for me so that I could get a few extra minutes of shuteye at home. He called and was furious that there was some asshole that was trying to tell him how to set up the room and was in his face. I jumped the car and raced to the scene to find Gordon working hard as usual but clearly pissed off. I asked who the asshole was. He pointed to a guy playing soprano sax with long curly hair. I put on my most diplomatic face and strolled out to the studio room to introduce myself and try to do damage control. I found this person to be unbelievable charming and genuine immediately. We hit it off, no problems. Kenny G is a great man who particularly liked the sound I got for his sax. A Sop sax can be pretty thin sounding and I put some bottom (actually low mids in the 700 hz range) to it and made it sound fuller. He loved it. A year or so later, I was working Studio A at the Record Plant in Sausalito. I had just gotten there and was taking off my coat when Kenny came busting through the control room door. He gave me a big hug and we sat and talked for some time. He was working in Studio B that day. Sorry Gordo, I never saw the problem! I believe Gordon went on to record Kenny several more times when Gordon continued to work for Narada Michael Walden.

      Jerry-

 There is not a shadow of a doubt that Tres Virgos Studio, San Rafael could have existed without Jerry Jacob. The new studio cost a great deal of money to build, never mind equip. I had mortgaged my house to the nines, Allen had borrowed from family and friends, Mikey…well, Mikey just wrote checks. But anyway, Jerry was willing to come onboard to a crazy partnership and put money into it. We also had attracted some Limited Partners, but really not too many. David Rankin and Jerome Adams are the two that stick in my mind (and we paid ‘em back!). Jerry mortgaged his (and Penny’s) house and then a long string of cash advances from credit cards pretty much rounded out the equation. The construction of the studio took about 14 months and naturally that was all negative cash flow.

And of course, JJ was still bringing in the lion’s share of Tamarin business. At the time, it was the only income source. What I made as an engineer with my bands was mine to keep during this period. Tom Donald, Dan Newsome and I would continue doing commercials in other studios, most notably the old Heider’s (now Hyde St) and a small studio run by an amazing guy by the name of Kelly Quan. This trickle of income was not nearly enough to support the rising debt of the construction and completion of TVS. Jerry was still working as sales manager for radio station K101, a Jim Gabbert enterprise. He was roping in clients for Tamarin, spending his personal income and borrowing heavily from credit cards to provide completion of his newly found position, General Partner of a (not completed) recording studio.

Anybody wanting to be involved should have been committed post haste. Instead, we did the right thing and welcomed JJ with open arms to our humble drug crazed boys club. The results would end up breaking Allen’s heart, and turning me physically violent to Jerry.

Allen expected to become a daily part of the operation of the studio. He was building himself his future job. For years he had participated from the outside, vicariously proud of his accomplishments through the results of my efforts. He had, after all, taught me just about everything I knew concerning magnetizing iron oxide. Allen and I would talk and plan for the new studio once it opened. The studio was nearly finished and he was so excited to begin achieving his dream. In one cruel statement, Jerry proclaimed that there would be no position for Allen’s talents for fiscal reasons. My heart broke for Allen, he was crushed.

When, at last, the studio construction was complete enough we had little money left over for the important stuff like console and tape decks. Allen played a major role in buying equipment from Sound Genesis at cost and putting it on his credit cards. JJ also. But we were faced with tough decisions. We had just completed the world’s most cutting edge acoustic environment with great publicity and fanfare. We couldn’t put Mikey’s 3340 in again, and I’d run the poor Otari 7308 completely into the ground! Jerry and Allen along with Allen’s boss David Angress worked up a lot of deals to equip the place. But instead of a Neve console, we had to settle for a used MCI 528B (lovingly hot rodded by “Chief” Ed Bannon and Bob Missbach). And we also had to settle for an MCI JH-24 as opposed to the Studer  I wanted. Fortunately, Allen had purchased the first Ampex ATR-100 in Northern California as a mastering deck at the old place in Mill Valley (Ampex would actually bring important potential clients from LA up to see and listen to the ATR). The outboard rack was pretty anemic. The “Deuce” (UREI LA-2), some LA-4 compressors from the old place, A Studio Technologies reverb plate, the Lexicon Prime Time, a wild ass analog device (that only I had mastered) called a Marshall Time Modulator (by Steven St Croix, now known as a government expert on audio), a Delta Lab echo device that was noisy, and a rack of Valley People noise gates and compressors known as a Dynamite Rack. With considerable lobbying, I persuaded the checkbook to cover the expense of an Eventide Harmonizer ($10,000 back then!) and an AMS digital stereo Echo (another 10 grand). The problem was that we would not attract big time producers without the toys de jeur that were expected of world-class studios. We were already in a deficit position with the MCI equipment and I new it was important to have at least a few trinkets (producers and engineers are like ancient civilizations. Bright shiny things attract them) for our prospective clientele.

Jerry, in the meantime, was starting to regret just about everything he’d done so far with TVS. In his zeal to protect his investment and credit rating, Jerry appointed himself as the grand poo-bah. As my clients were many times my dear friends, I would hear about Jerry’s escapades in the office. I was covering the console and the heart of the operation.JJ was really just trying to take control of his investment, but it tended chase business right back OUT THE DOOR!! Terry Haggerty showed up for a session one day and bumped into Jerry. Hag came into the control room just beet red and pissed off telling me to give him his tapes, he was never coming back! I refused hoping to cool Hag down (an Irish Cuban mix is a little tough to cool off!). I followed him out the front door of the studio pleading with him to calm down. He got in his car and started off, I literally grabbed the door handle as he was driving away slowing the small truck from its start. I kept saying, “Hag, don’t leave like this. Let me straighten this out”. Eventually, I convinced Terry to come in. He did so only with the stipulation that he never see Jerry again.  Once I got him back in the control room, he smoked one of his famous joints and we proceeded back to a creative format for the remainder of the evening.

The Studios reputation (locally at least) was tarnishing at this time. I asked him to cease and desist from this practice. To let me take care of the studio. To stop bringing “Tours” thru the control room as we were working. Clients were particularly upset and out of sorts about this. When an artist or production team is in its creative space and that space is violated by outsiders, it causes great consternation. It pops the creative balloon. I spoke to JJ about this frequently, and he would not respect my words. My reputation and that of the studio was taking direct hits amidships and was being eroded.

Mike and Allen were aware of my utter discontent. They were in the studio almost every day and I talked with them about it. I couldn’t watch another prospect be turned away by Jerry.

I may have walked away from the train wreck but I clearly remember feeling as though I had just thrown myself in front of it.

Stuart Hirotsu aka “The Little Samurai”.

Stu came into my office looking for a job. He left his resume with me, he was not really qualified, but he had desire. Frankly, when I hired an assistant I was looking for someone who was a blank page. I preferred to do my own training and teaching. Stu was not exactly extroverted and I thought this to be a good sign. If you’ve never experienced it, being an assistant really sucks. The hours are longer than a Medical Residents hours and the pay is worse. It remains, though’, the most popular way to work into a good First Engineer gig (in fact, my assistants did so more successfully than I!).

I was in a crunch for another assistant just after Stu had come in for an interview. Bob Missbach and Gordon Lyon were keeping too busy with their own schedules never mind keep up with mine. I had a drawer full of resumes, actually stacked in a pile, not in file jackets. So, Stu’s was the top of the file. I was in hurry at the time and when I looked at his address (I always wanted an assistant that lived close by) I thought I saw Kentfield as his town of residence. Perfect!! Kentfield was 5-10 minutes away from San Rafael! I called Stu and asked for him to come back and join the expanding Tres Virgos team. Stu got right to work with me. I taught him the same way as Gordon and Bob, once he’d make a half dozen mistakes during a session, I’d take over. The assistant would observe and ask questions, I would instruct as I went. The system worked.

I started the training and teaching with the 24 track operation. The assistant would be responsible for cleaning and aligning the machine before each and every session (at least 30 minutes if you were really good. 90 minutes if you were just starting). The assistant would then be responsible for operating the machine during the session. This was a pretty hairy responsibility if you weren’t prepared. If you didn’t punch that record button and the band just did their best take yet, you were shit. If you punched the record button and erased the best take the band had done yet, you were shit. If you couldn’t rewind to the right point each and every time before an overdub, you were shit. If you forgot to put the machine into sync mode during overdubs, you were shit.

I had an expression when things got really bad. I got it from a Coroner I once knew. He used it on toe tags occasionally as a joke. The tag would read “AMF YO_YO” and that stands for Audios Mother Fucker, You’re On Your Own. I saved using this expression unless it was really necessary, and it wasn’t very often.

So, Stu is working his ass off. Everything from session ops to Library tapes and make dubs to make coffee and don’t forget to get me another beer. But oddly enough, I noticed that he is sleeping in the tape vault! Well shit, I think. He only lives over the hill. Christ, I’m working 20 hours a day, 7 days a week. I’m burning out three assistants daily and I still make it 15 miles north to crawl into bed most nights! “Stuart, why are you sleeping in the tape vault?” I finally inquire.

It turns out that Stu lived on Kentfield STREET, in the town of REDWOOD FUCKING CITY all the way past the goddamn San Francisco Int’l Airport for chrissakes! A minimum of a 60 minute drive, and when you’re working too many hours already, he couldn’t spend that much drive time. Naturally, he didn’t want to tell me for fear of losing his job. Poor kid, this had gone on for months. He found a cottage for rent in San Rafael shortly thereafter.

Stuart’s first Solo Gig was spent with an irreputable bunch of characters. The session was booked under the name “The Novato Frank Band” truly marketable. I didn’t know who would be in the Novato Frank Band. Turns out the band was comprised of some old friends, among them Quicksilver Guitarist John Cippolina . Stu called me at home sounding alittle rattled. He was having difficulty getting the drum sound that the drummer wanted. After some initial questions (what kind of kit, how many toms how many kicks, etc.) a familiar note was struck. Already knowing the answer to my question, I asked Stu who the drummer was. “Greg Ellmore”. I told Stu I’d be right down.

Greg and I had worked before in some long forgotten sessions in Mill Valley. He is a very particular man, quiet and very attentive to the details of his drums. His drums are clean, he’s always dressed in clean clothes (unlike many drummers I know), even his Harley is cleaner than anybody else’s. But Greg’s drums were not to sound like conventional drum sounds. He wanted them to sound just the way they did while he was sitting at them (Stewart Copeland was the same way). It was good to see some of my old buddies when I walked in the room. Cippolina looked paler and grayer than the last time I’d seen him. I always thought Cip (Chip) looked like the man on the cover of a pack of zigzags anyway!

Stu and I set to work to get the drum sound just right. In about 30 minutes I was done. We had the normal compliment of mics on the kit comprised of 2 AKG D-12’s for the two kicks, AKG 452’s top and bottom of snare, another 452 for the hihat, Sennheiser 421s for the toms (5 of them), 2 each AKG 414 EBs (no pad, no roll off, in the cardioid position) in an XY configuration as overheads (always make sure that your toms are panned the same way as your overheads), along with two PZMS taped to the wall in front of the kit 10’ off the floor and 15’ in front of the kit. A total of 14 mics were wide open beaver in the monitors, with the monitors set at about 2/3 volume (or 1:30 on the volume dial) when one of Franks jail friends came into the studio room with an UZI submachine gun blasting. Brass was flying everywhere and the sound had us all needing new shorts. Turns out the guy was shootin’ blanks. I’ve never been closer to God and heart failure than at that moment. I left Stu a while later when things calmed down and we were all laughing about it. The next day I showed up at the studio at 9:00 as usual and went to the studio room to survey the wreckage. I counted 26 empty cases of beer neatly stacked up, other than that the place was as clean as a whistle. “Stu” I said to myself, “You do good work”. And I told him so the next time I saw him. I know that had to have been a long night for him, especially with no assistant.

Mike Richards- Mike worked with me in Mill Valley. AMF YO_YO

         Bob Morris- Bo’ mo’

I didn’t think that I would write much about Bob, but it seems that I need to dedicate bandwidth to a person who is dear to me and served as a sounding board for important decisions of Tres Virgos.  I relied on Bob’s corporate sense to aid me in my decisions as a General Partner, I played tapes for him of the recent stuff I’d recorded (“Here’s s’more shit that I recorded!”) while we blasted West Marin’s roads with a six pack and a joint. He documented my professional life as an engineer and producer in photos (as did my brother Steve) and was the one responsible for the “Great Campaign” in the Mix.

In 1968 I left for a lengthy stay in South America. Bob and I were friends when I left (in the middle of my Junior year of high school.) Upon my return almost 3 years later, he was there to greet me. I barely even spoke English by this time and it was difficult for my old friends to interpret my “Spanglish”.

Bob chronicled the Mill Valley Studio and the San Rafael studio in photos. He also painted some very cool scenes on the walls of the MV studio. In the Music Room, a rendering of the San Francisco skyline with the Starship Enterprise floating overhead. In the original Control Room he painted a huge tape recorder. Bob has worked in the financial district of SF for 30 years. He started working for Robertson Stephen Investment Management five years ago. On Christmas Eve of 2000 I visited his house to say hi. He told me he’d just been made VP of E-Commerce. Wow! GO BOB!

Mary Ann Zahorsky –

MAZ. At some point Gordon determined he needed an assistant as he was doing more “Firsting”. He asked me if he could look into having an assistant and I agreed with one stipulation. Gordon would train the new person as I no longer had the time.

I’m not exactly sure how MAZ came to us. But she started in the usual way, emptying ashtrays and waste paper cans. Learning the studio by osmosis. She was very bright and caught on fast. She worked with me a few times and I found that she’d learned her lessons well. (She did a great job on Gordon’s get well card to Pete Scott “Bypass Blues”). She has continued to do recording work and raises her 2 kids with husband Jordan.

     Issa –

Issa is the sister of a well known guitarist Terry Hagerty from a great local band known as The Sons of Champlin. She became my secretary in the office and held things together in the front office. Always a sweet and dear person. Issa was the kind of person I’d give the shirt off of my back to. She was also one of the original Flower Children of Fairfax, CA.

RumbleFish-

This project was the apogee of my recording career. Once you’ve done a soundtrack for a major motion picture (or a major director), albums music seems like a small effort. RumbleFish earned an Academy Award Nomination for best soundtrack.( It lost to Barbara Streisand's “Yentil”. Go figure!). The movie was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starred Diane Lane, Mickey Roarke and Matt Dillon.

Pete Scott had been a long time friend of Richard Beggs. Richard had been a very fortunate studio owner in San Francisco. He owned a tiny Studio in the basement of a Flatiron building on the apex of Kearny and Columbus streets. Richard was fortunate because Francis Ford Coppola bought that building in the 70’s (I believe). Richard had a new client, a new business name (Zoetrope Studios) and went on to engineer Apocalypse Now as his first movie soundtrack . Pete’s friendship with Richard is what brought RumbleFish to Tres Virgos. Let there be no doubt. I was definitely ready for my first major motion picture soundtrack.

As luck would have it (and this business is mostly about luck), Richard was too busy with another project to take on the recording of the RumbleFish soundtrack. I would come to find out, it was a very labor intensive and time consuming thing to do. Pete invited Richard to the studio to check it out. We had the bare necessities compared to what it takes to do a film, but Richard agreed Tres Virgos would be adequate. We would need to rent some equipment (48 channels of Dolby, another 24 track to begin with) and we would need to wire it up. I asked Bob Missbach (who had left to become Jim Gaines assistant at The Plant) if he could come back to help with the wiring and interfacing of the system. We didn’t have much time as the movie was wrapping up the shooting phase in Oklahoma.

Francis had selected Stewart Copeland, drummer for the Police, to compose the soundtrack. The method of selecting Stewart was an interesting one. As Stewart told me, Francis wasn’t getting what he wanted from the film as its Director. The movie was closely tied to Time. Clocks were prominent in the movie. Clouds ran overhead at high speed. Surreal, black & white, Time. Francis asked his son, Roman, if he knew of any good drummers. His idea was to have a drummer on the set at all times to help build the importance of time and rhythm. It would help Mickey Rourke, Diane Lane and Matt Dillon (Tom Waits is in there too!) to achieve what Francis was trying to communicate artistically. Roman said sure he knew of a good drummer. If Francis wanted a drummer, his son would recommend only the best. A call was put out immediately to A&M Records in LA (this was before Stewart, Miles and Ian Copeland started IRS Records as the Police’s home record company) to find Stewart Copeland.

Stewart was located at his home England. The Police had just finished the Synchronicity (or was it Ghost In The Machine?) album and there was some time before the tour would begin. Stewart went to Tulsa, OK, set up his drums on the set and played! It was what Francis was looking for.

Stewart began to gently lobby to do the soundtrack for the movie. I believe Francis’ father, Carmine, was expected to do the soundtrack originally. Francis allowed Stewart to go into Zoetrope with Richard to demo a few scenes so he could make a decision on who claimed the composition rights. (The picture of Stewart playing guitar in front of a Marshall amp that came inside the original vinyl album jacket, was taken at Zoetrope as he was demo-ing a fight scene being shown on the screen in the background). Francis gave Stewart the nod, much to Stewart’s pleasure.

We rushed to accommodate all that was needed to transform TVS into a soundstage. Missbach finished up the interfacing of the Dolby and additional 24 track (Ampex ATR 124) and a Q-Lock synchronizing system was also installed (and boy was that thing a pain in the ass!). The Tama drum company started delivering sets of drums. Stewart’s favorite instruments started to arrive. Everything from a banjo to a xylophone!! 

Stewarts personal assistant, Jeff Seitz, arrived to begin coordinating the instruments and setting up the drums and breaking them in. Jeff is one of the nicest people I have had the honor to meet. A graduate of Julliard and a trained timpanist, his New Jersey accent makes one think he’s a prizefighter. But what a gentle and intelligent man.  I learned what a huge job it is to coordinate and assist the life of a major rock performer or movie star. These people require massive amounts of support to continue to operate on the level that they do. Jeff and I became good friends and stayed in touch for several years. Sadly, I’ve lost track of him and Stewart now.

When the day came for Stewart to arrive, we were good to go. He came into the control room with a tape. It was a rough mix of Peter Gabriel’s “Red Rain” on which Stewart had overdubbed the hi-hat pattern. He wanted to listen to the room and get used to it. He was pleased with the sound and the surroundings we provided. Tres Virgos was finished in Pecan Wood paneling and was a warm environment. He and Jeff conferred for a while in the music room. At these times (and purely out of respect for privacy) I always muted the monitors. From the looks of it, Stewart was comfortable and happy to see all of his instruments set up and miked.

The Tama drum kit was set up in the middle of our spacious music room. I had an AKG D12 close to the kick, AKG 452 (top & Bottom) on the snare, a 452 on the hat,  three Roto-Toms were miked by one Neumann U87, a rack of about 4 or 5 Tube Toms ranging in size from 4” to about 8”  with another 87, the three kit mounted toms each had Sennheiser 421s on top and Beyer 201s on the bottom, the two floor toms had Sennheiser 441s, AKG 414EBs 4’ apart overhead and two Crown PZM’s taped to the speaker soffit on the wall 12’ in front of the kit. 18 mics total. Even I thought this was a bit excessive, but wanted to hedge my bet and have fast options should I have needed them.

Also in the room was his Brazilian Gong Drum. A mighty piece of work about 30”  in diameter and fitted to a stand. It had a leather skin on it and the beater was a padded leather ball on a stick. This was miked with a PZM on the floor. Poor Gordon! I will never forget when we were trying to get a level on the drum. I asked Gordo to double check the mic placement and as he did, Stewart (unaware that Gordon’s head was immediately beneath the drum) hit the drum to continue the level check. Gordon looked like he had just suffered an uppercut from Mohammed Ali himself. He stood up erect immediately and I could practically see the little tweety birds circling his head. He staggered back to the control room, assuring me the mic was in place.

Next we had the Xylophone. I used 2 more AKG 414EBs on it. I’ll always remember getting levels set on the Xylo. Jeff Seitz was playing Bach Sonatas on a Xylophone!!! Don’t forget, Jeff was a trained Timpanist from Julliard. Clearly, he’d learned his lessons well. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Jeff was also responsible for allowing me the time to get the drum tones set before Stewart got there. The guy is an awesome musician.

Our house piano (a Baldwin 8.5’ grand that had been in my family for 50 years or so) served its purpose quite well. Two PZM’s under the lid and a Neumann 87 several feet away. Nearly all of the thematic portions of the soundtrack were played by Stewart on that piano. In fact, except for the sax parts played by Mel Martin, the Harmonica played by Stan Ridgeway and the string quartet, Stewart played everything on the soundtrack. The piano themes are very haunting in the movie.

Inside the control room we had the Oberheim Drum Machine (DX?), a Roland Synth of early vintage (and used throughout Police music), a Fender Precision Bass, Fender Telecaster and don’t forget the Banjo. I think we also had a Prophet 5 in there someplace. All of these were DI (Direct Input signal into the console patchbay).

30 inputs on a regular day. The MCI 528 was billed as a 32 input by 24 output console, but when all of the channel inputs were used it was a 64 input console. So I had room to spare. Only six efx send were available, but I could always use buss outs (giving me 32 efx sends) or Direct Outs (DO’s) (another 32). The beauty of inline consoles is that you can monitor everything in the mixdown mode. Each module is its own input and output module (hence the name I/O consoles a.k.a. inline). Whenever I worked on most English consoles I used the Monitor portion of the console for effect returns and tracked in the mixdown mode.

Through the great flexibility of the MCI I was able to handle most everything required in a fairly small space. Most other consoles were two times the size of an MCI. While I have loved other consoles (Trident “A” Range & 80C, API and Neve) for their sound, I truly loved my MCI. Plus, Ed Bannon had gone thru the entire console prior to opening the studio. He replaced all of the DBX VCA’s (Voltage Controlled Attenuators) with higher quality Aphex components. Chief Ed was to consoles what Boyd Coddington is to Hot Rods. Ed is a FREAK for phase coherency, thank God. The MCI had 48-volt power rails also which left plenty of headroom for increased dynamic range.

But I digress.

Stewart started with a couple of basic melodic themes played from the Roland Synth using the Oberheim DX as a rhythm box. He would program a rhythm pattern using the tambourine sound in the DX and add the synth part (usually a string sound). In this manner, he would demo the music and work it to fit the length and the dynamic of the scene. So, what he was doing was creating music for each scene of the movie as a demo track that would later be orchestrated and used as the final product. At the time it was the most logical way to work. With today’s technology it is easier to compose finished scenes all from the computer.

In 1983 automated consoles were not quite the norm they are today. The MCI was not automated, making it seriously interesting to work on each scene. While all of the inputs remained the same, the mix and the effects would change from scene to scene. The de facto method of tracking what is on each input at the console, was to use masking tape and a marking pen . Stretched across the entire length of the console, the engineer would label each input. In a typical setup, I listed the kick drum, snare, toms and overheads, keyboards, guitars, lead vocal, back up vocals and on through ending with Bass This was fine when you worked an album or commercial because you’d pretty much only use one piece of masking tape. A movie has SCENES, many many SCENES. As a result, each scene had it’s own masking tape stuck to the wall, and as we would work on one scene and then the next Gordon or I would grab the corresponding console tape off the wall and put onto the console (make damn sure you’re not one module off!). By the end of tracking the movie, we must have had 30-40 long pieces of tape stuck to the wall, each labeled with the scene name, like “Rusty walks to town” or “Fight Scene”, etc.

There was lots of “Punching In”. In multi track recording it is possible to fix mistakes made during the performance of any piece, because each instrument has its own isolated strip (about 1/16^th of an inch) of the two inch wide tape. By rolling the tape back to a point a few bars before the mistake, the tape is started, the musician hears the music in the headphones and plays along and Bingo! The engineer hits the RECORD button at just the right moment and records an improved performance thereby fixing a mistake (or “Clam” as it is referred to affectionately). The engineer can then Punch Out by hitting the PLAY (or STOP) button saving the remainder of the performance.

Stewart was doing a percussion track. He was using a device that was a rigid wire strung with dozens of finger cymbals and was hitting it with drumsticks in a (fast) 1/32^nd note pattern. He asked to stop the tape and go back so he could punch in and continue recording. Gordon (as always) was responsible for the 24 track operations. He wound back (a feat made exceptionally complicated by the ancient Q-Lock synchronizer) and took a fly at it. Oops, he missed it, please go back. Again…oops. This happened a few more times. Gordo rolled back farther than needed. In a fierce display of concentration, Gordo is now drumming his two index fingers in time to the rhythm pattern, on the face of the Auto locator (remote control for the 24 track) and next to the red RECORD button, Gordon deftly hit the RECORD button to his left. We were in! but now we had to get out! AGGGH! Gordon is fiercely drumming away still and trying to hit the PLAY button. Shit! Shit! Shiiiiit! “Hit it Gordo, hit PLAY!!” says I calmly (yeah right), “I’m t-t- trying” he stutters in time, “I’m t-t-ttrying!” Finally he jams a now numb index finger into the play button. Crisis averted. I open the talk back and ask Stewart if that take will do. Thank God he said yes!

Since we were working “to picture” we had video monitors scattered around the music room and one in the control room. The monitor in the control room was quite small, maybe a 15” or so.

The day had come for Francis to visit the studio to view/listen to the progress of the soundtrack. Bearing in mind that the speakers were UREI 813s (about a 4’x5’ box) and were powered by about 3000 watts of Crown amplification, we proceeded to play the first 20 minutes or so of the movie. Francis sat on the couch in front of the console watching the monitor. When we finished he stood up and said, “Great work! But next time I want (holds out his arms) a big picture and less sound!” oops. Well I guess when you’re Francis Ford Coppola you are more interested in the picture and how sound improves the image. If you’re Robin Yeager, you’re an audio engineer who strives to create an image from sound.

Lesson duly noted for future (if there would be one after that!)

The studio was getting a very “lived-in” look about it. You could practically see the laundry strung across the control room. We would start at about 10:00 AM and work until we were finished, usually between 10:00 PM and midnight. Twelve hour easy were easy back then.

At last, the time came for Stewart to sit down at the drums and start the real stuff (as opposed to the Oberheim DX). I went thru the usual motions of getting the sounds of the kit together. Start with the Kick in quarter note sustained pattern. Snare, the same. Work thru all of it to get a good solid sound.

We’d been working for maybe 15 minutes, when Stewart said, “Could you hurry up! My hands aren’t calloused like they usually are!” Needless to say, I shot through the remainder of the drums. I worked on their sound as we rolled. Stewart started with regular drumsticks, but found that brushes worked well as a sound match to the film. He burned up the old fashioned metal brushes with ruberrized handle in about 10 minutes. Jeff Seitz went out and brought back some new heavier plastic brushes that really made the Toms snap and give great tonality. The plastic handles kept breaking, but we invested in a couple doze sets and made it thru the rest of the soundtrack that way.

I was getting enough sleep and generally arrived rested in the morning to take care of office business for an hour or so before entering the sanctity of the control room for the rest of the day. We always had a nice lunch brought in and probably dinner as well. Stewart was so concentrated on the soundtrack that he would eat very quickly and go back to work. This meant that Gordon and I would follow suit. The studio staff was benefiting nicely from the great food we were brining in. One day I decided to get a food that could not be hurried through. I asked for cracked Dungeness crab to be brought in. It worked! We all sat and patiently ate crab. I enjoyed that.

As the demo work of the film yielded to needing other musicians and/or outside help with orchestration to complete the work, Stewart asked if I knew of a good sax player to fill a Street scene. Mel Martin, sax and flute genius, got the call. Mel is known as a Jazz player, and has many credits for his work. He had done charts and performance for us and I had recorded a few albums for him.He was teaching in the east bay that night but could stop by on his way home after class. Great.

Mel shows up about 9:00PM with the usual compliment of instruments. His curved Soprano (the most kick ass sounding sop sax you’ll ever hear. Sorry Kenny.) his Tenor and I think an alto as well. After introductions were made we rolled the video of the scene with the existing track for Stewart and Mel to discuss. They arrived upon a musical direction for Mel to overdub an improvised Sop Sax part. We rolled back the tape to get the Q-Locks “pre-roll” out of the way and let it fly. Mel started playing, Listening only to the phones and not watching picture. His eyes closed, he shredded the take. When the take was finished, Mel opened his eyes and said “did I do ok?”. Stewart, Gordon and I were still so blown away by what he played, it took a few moments for any of us to respond. Mel said “I mean, I can do it again”. No Mel, that’ll do just fine thanks.

When an arranger was needed for string parts, I called Mel again. There was precious little time and even less notice for Mel to “whip out” string arrangements for an eight piece string section. He was up for several days straight and did a superb job. The normal small changes needed to be made, but the overall arrangements were just what Stewart wanted.

Bob Randles was the music editor of the movie. He pretty much lived with us in the studio operating his invention “Mu-Sync”. Mu-Sync tracked the scenes of the movie and the music as it pertained to each characters actions. It printed all of this information out on computer feed paper. In turn, it would sync to picture and sound helping Bob to identify particular points in the film where he might want to withdraw or change the soundtrack composition. This was Mu-syncs first actual test and it would crash and delay things once in a while. Mu-Sync would have been short lived in any case due to the innovations of computer music and synchronization to picture that were beginning at that time. Companies such as Synclavier and Fairlight changed the entire landscape of how many pictures are scored.

When the tracking was at last complete it was time to mix. For this we would go to Coppola’s Rutherford Zoetrope facilities in the Napa Valley. In what had been the attic of a wine barrel storage house, Francis installed a complete (and beautiful) film mixing room. With the projectors in back of us in isolated quarters, we would view each scene on the large screen and work on its mix. I was particularly grateful to Richard Beggs for allowing me to participate in this aspect of the production. I knew the tapes well and this provided help to Richard. While I was at the console with Richard and worked the soundtrack mix, it was clearly his experience and talent that yielded the final product. I was not involved in the Final Mix of the movie where Dialog, Music and Effects are all brought together for the end product. But I did mix all of the music.

Stewart and I had become good friends during this time. Shortly after our experience together, he and his (then) wife had their first child, a boy. Stewart sent me a card in the mail (which I still have) in his own handwriting announcing the birth. “It’s a Boy! We’re thinking of naming him Jordan Daniel Robin Yeager Copeland! Whaddya think?”

I also had one experience that made me really understand Jeff Seitz’ job just a bit better. Stewart wanted to go into town (San Rafael) to get a stopwatch. I volunteered to take him as I knew a sporting goods store that would have stop watches. We were inside for few minutes and  I noticed people starting to recognize him. I was keeping an eye on them as Stewart scoped out stop watches and then some nice shades. When he handed his credit card to the cashier, he said something to effect of, “I thought that was you. You’re Stewart Copeland!” The store was getting frenzied. I told the cashier to complete his business so we could get out of there. He did, we did. A very small insight to what famous people have to cope with in the public.

When the time came to write the music for the Credit Roll at the end of Rumblefish, Stewart called on Standard Ridgeway of Wall of Voodoo (Mexican Radio). Stan was on tour in Boston when he got the call to fly out to California. He left the stage, went to the Boston Airport caught the red eye and arrived at the studio early in the morning. Armed with Studio Strength coffee, he and Stewart  began to collaborate on the lyrics. “Don’t Box Me In” was written and recorded in one very long day. We put Stan back on the plane for a 7:00 AM flight to meet the band on tour in New Jersey (I think). The mix that is used on the Soundtrack album and the Credit Roll was actually a rough mix of mine to ½” tape done the next day. I don’t recall exactly why this was necessary to use my rough mix, but I believe that the 2” multitrack master tape was damaged in transit at some point. My rough was the only survivor.

Stewart and Jeff, I hope someday you’ll read this. You guys were the peak of my career.

“The most important button in the control room is the one on your lip. Make sure it stays that way” – My first words to a new assistant.

All together I recorded 28 albums, countless commercials, demos and several soundtracks in the 10 years of Tres Virgos.. The first soundtrack was called “Turkey Farmers Revenge”. PA, Penny and I did the entire track in one afternoon in Mill Valley. The last soundtrack was recorded at Pete Scott’s and Penny’s studio (Soundcat) in SF. It was for the Nature company and was called “Water, The Gift of Life”. The video was directed by the original under water monster, Al Giddings.

Heavy Metal bands discovered TVS and I recorded 6 albums of early metal music. Word spread apparently. One of the bands came form Florida!  A young talented man by the name of Mark Whittaker had been involved with Metallica and brought Laaz Rockit, Exodus and others to the studio. I’ll never forget feeling particularly depressed one session. I turned to Stu “The Little Samurai” and mentioned this to him. He said, “Rob, have you listened to the lyrics yet?” uh, no. “Hit your head upon the stage, slit your throat and drink your blood” was cheerily coming thru my monitors at the moment. I tried to finesse the mix of metal music. Isolate the kick, punch up the bass. I finally got frustrated and just pushed all of the faders up. There! That’s perfect!! It sounded great. Just moosh it all together and try to leave alittle room for the vocal, if it doesn’t fit, don’t worry about it! We had to simulate the sound of bones breaking for one of the tender songs. We got a head of Celery and broke it open. Very convincing sound!

I think the very first session at San Rafael Tres was a Punk Band called the Boney Devils. I honestly don’t remember very much of this session, because the music was so incredibly bad. Once I had gotten the rebellious and recalcitrant musicians to complete their level check, I moved on to get a vocal check from the “Chick” singer (she looked like a corpse. Smelled like one too!). I opened the talk back and asked her to sing just a bit so I could make sure the mic was at least HOT! She starts in with this sound like “eeeeoowwweeoowwweeeoowww”. I am perplexed. To her credit she must have read this on my face, because she immediately said “ I’m used to singing with a phase shifter, MAN!” Oh. PA saw me busting with laughter and kicked me under the console.  “Think of Someone Dying” he said trying to get me to control myself.

“Patience is a virtue that I have been FORCED to live with” – RY at any given time.

I recorded six live to two track stereo albums in one year alone. One of them featuring Kenny G playing the religious music of Max Janowsky. A full choir and orchestra were in the studio for a week or so as Max conducted and directed his music. It was a very special performance. The words  were Hebrew so I didn’t understand them very well. The arrangements were very reminiscent of Aaron Copeland. He spread the manuscript across the console and conducted me as well in mixing the event.

Another live album was Bebop and Beyond. My personal best as far as mixing live went. And what a group! Mel Martin on Tenor and Soprano Sax , John Handy on Alto Sax, Warren Gale on Trumpet, Frank Tusa on Stand up Bass, George Cables on piano and Eddie Marshal on drums. I still listen to this tape frequently. This sextet sounds huge. I rehearsed my mixing with them in  Mel’s Third Ear Studios in Novato for three days before we went in to record. I learned the music well and when we recorded, knew my cues. Up til that point I’d been pretty stubborn about my OWN pre-production. I worked hard to get the bands I produced well groomed before we started recording. I think this was a first for me to sit behind a small console to learn the intricacies of Monk, Davis and others, before the final recording. I preached preparedness to clients, yet frequently flew by the seat of my pants.

“ We speak PLAN English, to you”-PA sung in a crokey voice at the end of a Tamarin Sampler

I recorded tons of R&B. One crazy producer by the name of Phil “Mad Dog” Miller discovered TVS and lavished us with exceptional new talent. Most of the talent came from the Sacramento area. Beaugois Tag, Front Row, Love Jones (with Cappy Lewis). My God! What talented young people! A terrific percussionist by the name of Bongo Bob did many sessions with me as a result. The incredible voice of Mr. Vince Ebo.

Vinnie was a beautiful man, with an equally beautiful voice. I first met him when a white Sacramento band was in (don’t recall who it was) to do vocals and mix. Tracking had already been done at Sacramento’s Heavenly Recording by my ole’ buddy Larry Luzon. (Larry and I knew each other thru the notes on our track sheets. It wasn’t until much later that we would meet and become good friends.) They had a black friend with them who was sitting on the back of the control very quietly He knew the songs and would sing along in a very small voice. Mad Dog Miller was trying his damndest to get a performance out of this guy. He kept saying “I don’t know what’s gotten into this guy. He sounded great on the demo and Live n the Club!” Hours passed and Mad Dog was beginning to froth at the mouth. He threw his hands up in disgust. On his way out of the control room he said “Make it a hit Robin, I’m outta here!”

I opened the talkback and excused the anemic artist by saying “Thank you very much. That’ll do.” I turned around and said “ What is your name?”. “Vince Ebo sir”. “Get out there Vince Ebo Sir and sing this piece of shit song like you have been for the past four hours!”

We were done in 45 minutes. Lead vocal and all of the back ups layered expertly by Vinnie as if he’d done it forever. Mad Dog came back from a long drive (and a couple shots I think) and said “Give me the bad news”. I said ok, Gordon punched PLAY and I thought Mad Dog was gonna kiss me! “My Love, My Song” was released as a single and charted to number 20 or so.

Vinnie was the artist of my career. When I produced a song for Dorothy Moore, Vinnie came in to make it a duet. The two of them together were so awesome sounding. They cut the vocals in one afternoon by singing together around a Neuman U-67. He traveled to Nashville to look for work. He hooked up with several prominent artists and toured. His girlfriend Kim was (is) singing back ups for Wynona Judd. He seemed to have the world by the tail and was very happy when I’d see him. He came back to live here and roomed with a song placer and producer by the name of Paul Scott. Paul and Vinnie had a great bachelor life for several years. All seemed happy. But one day Paul came home to find our much loved young man dead of self inflicted gunshot wounds. It was a terrible blow.

Light bulb goes ON.

I was reading Time magazine in the doctor’s office one day. I found out (and thereby deduced) that Hertz Rent-A-Car was owned by RCA. I thought, how clever! RCA was all about SOUND and what is sound anyway but a collection of frequencies; or Hertz. I’ve got a life sized version of the RCA dog here in my office. Oh, what his name. Something equally clever. Shit! Anybody that has read to this point, and knows the dog’s name gets a free autographed copy. (Rimshot? EQ? Freak? Goddamnit what WAS that dog’s name? NIPPER !)

That’s why it’s MY Memoirs! This is an exercise  to free up a few kilobytes of Gray Matter (because that’s the only size my Gray Matter comes in, kilobytes. No Mega or Giga for me thanks!)

Listening further to the tapes my Sister Marion, gave me today. I realized that Gordon took over the Tamarin engineering duties for me, while Stu and I worked some other session. I listened to a Tamarin sampler that I recalled little about. Gordon and Pete Scott were working an album with percussionist Mingo Lewis. Mingo was (is) talented with a capital “T” and Gordon’s engineering was superb. When the opportunity came for me to hear what Gordon and Pete had been working on with Mingo, I was envious. A fresh sound full of energy. I thought it had “HIT” written all over it.

Mingo did several tracks of commercials with Tamarin. It was a pleasant surprise to hear them today, still energetic as hell and sounding great! Later in the sampler is a Spanish version of a Lucky Stores “Lo Encuentra En Su Lucky Store” and then…Pete Scott and Jim Crenna doing a spot for a French import drink called “Orelia”. I was laughing so hard I had to pull over! Laboratory bubbling sounds in the background. They are speaking in German-esque. “Claus, vee have dee oranges indah can, now vat?” “Vee put zee tangerine inside” “How do we do that” . “Ve moosh it up”  “Vhat is dah neme of dis Drink?” one queries, “I callzit ‘Oreluuuea, Orleiiuu” , “Faltten zat A”  “ORELIA!! That is IT. I don’t know what it is, but I like it!”

We always had fun in Tamarin.

Several years after these spots were cut, Mingo came into SoundCat Studios (Pete Scott and Penny’s studio in San Francisco). He’d been living in Bogota’ , Colombia for awhile playing music there. I had live in “Bog” from ’68-’71. I was in a great band there called “Hope”. We were the first rock band to hit the scene down there and played to packed houses all over the country. Bogota’, Medellin, Cartagena, Barranguilla, Santa Marta… now notorious names. I asked Mingo if he happened to know our bass player, one Augusto Martelo. He did indeed! He played in the same band as Mingo. Still a small world.

          Doc Shafer-

My regular daily schedule had me at the studio at 9:00AM (no matter that I had left the studio at 4:00 AM that same day). I would make phone calls and try to tidy up daily business before immersing myself in the inner sanctum. I got a call from a guy in Colorado one day. He introduced himself to me as Doc Shafer. He wanted to get out of the Colorado scene and was planning a trip to California to see what kind of work there would be for a tech. I told him there was no lack of studios and broadcast facilities out here. Could he come by to see me? Sure, sure. Bring a rez, drop it off. Sure, sure.

After Chief Ed left to go back to LA, we went thru a list of In-House techs. We were becoming reliant on Tech Services. The (and I mean this sincerely) great David Carroll was expensive, hard to get when you needed him because he was so busy, and very good (he went on to wire up Coppola’s place and the House of Representatives among others). Dennis Rice always did great work too, but he also was getting very busy. Mac Clark wasn’t around then. If a mic goes bad, use another. If a module gets funky on the console, patch around it. When your 24 track breaks down, you need a tech now!!

I can’t recall what session we were working. But sure as shit, the Mickey (MCI 24track) took a nose-dive. This is not a pretty sight. The Mickey is practically smoldering in the corner, smoke is coming out my ears and the client is perplexed at why he should be paying $150 and hour to observe this!

Zoom! Off comes the engineer hat, on goes the Manager’s hat. I am calling all of my tech services, tech friends…I am looking up “Tech” in the Yellow Pages.

As distracted as I am, I see a beat up ’69 Thunderbird pull into the parking lot outside my office. I watch a very grubby individual emerge as beer cans and fast food wrappers follow his exit of the vehicle. He looks as tho’ he might have been driving for months on end without sleep or a shower. I am wondering to myself, who does this guy play bass for?

With the phone planted to my ear, I am yelling like a floor man at the stock exchange. “When will he be back. No I can’t wait that long!! Can you find him? Well, what CAN you do to help?” useless. I am now watching the individual, yawning, scratching, spitting, stretching. I’m hoping he’s going to the Office Supply warehouse next door, but somehow I know he’s gonna head my direction instead. Yup, here ‘e comes!

With the phone to my ear, this guy walks to my office door and says, “Howdy! I’m Doc Shafer! You ‘n me spoke a couple a days ago…” At that moment, I remembered.

God had sent me a tech! Even if he reeked!

I said, “You’re Hired! I got a sick Mickey in there that needs your attention right now!”

In about 15 minutes, Doc had that Mickey working better than the day I received it from the factory. The magic that Chief Ed had worked on it, had long since tarnished and had worn off. Doc really saved my ass! He went thru the rest of the control room in the following week and re-aligned all of the transports on all of the decks we had. Then he said he was gonna leave for awhile and would return in a couple of weeks.

A couple of weeks passed and here comes Doc, driving a white school bus, with his wife and two girls and all of his worldly possessions. They lived in the bus in the back parking lot for a while until he found an apartment. They moved in, and still live there 20 years later! Doc and I go out fishing on the bay once in a while. We always have a great time, laugh our asses off about old studio stories, and catch a couple of fish…maybe.

Guest engineers-

We had numerous engineers come in to use the studio. Bob Hodas, Tom Anderson, Jim Stern, Stacey Baird, John Knowlin, Jim Gaines, Fred Catero, Jack Leahy. But one stands out clearly in my mind.

This guy was an English engineer. This carried with it a completely different approach to engineering. The English call the console a “Desk”, the like to use tape compression, which is the practice of running the level to tape very high, just before distortion sets in. The guy’s name was Gary Lyon. He’d recorded Queen, Clapton and God knows who else. Gary used TVS as a mix room. So, his sessions were all about the mix process and no tracking of vocals, guitars, etc.

Poor Gordon, once again, was assigned to assist Gary. This was an incredibly boring job for the assistant as once the patchbay was set, and the mastering deck aligned, there was little else to do but sit. House policy was that there was always an assistant on any session.

Gary kept a mirror piled high with coke on one end of the “Desk” and champagne & orange juice on the other. He usually wore very tacky aloha shirts and shades (no matter the control room was usually quite dark). Gary also monitored at exceptionally high volume.

Our UREI 813 monitors actually had a fail-safe built into them to protect the speaker elements from being blown. The current driving the High, Mid and Low frequency speakers was taken directly off of the cross over circuit and routed through small light bulbs (actually automobile taillight bulbs). The lights had different colored lenses of Yellow, Green and Red over them. If you had the volume too high, these lights would sometimes glow a bit, letting you know that you’re starting to ride the edge of the 3000 watts of amplification.

Gary would “lock out” the studio for a few days at a time. Gordon would emerge from the control room with dazed looks. He took to wearing ear protection. He told me that Gary had every available meter completely on the pins, and the speaker lights blazing. This I had to see to believe. I went into the control with Gordon (I preferred to have the appearance of being invited into the control room as opposed to the JJ tour approach) and felt as if I was standing in front of an oncoming Peterbuilt. I didn’t know the system could get this loud. I didn’t know that the speaker fail-safe lights could actually illuminate the entire control room. I didn’t know that the needles in all of my meters on the “desk” and tape decks (nearly 100 meters in all) could LIVE on their pins! I thought I could feel my hair actually slicking back as if I was on a motorcycle.

We fought our way to the control room door through the oncoming rip tide of sound and let ourselves out. Whew! Poor Gordon!!!! Days of this!!!

Sometime later, I had another opportunity to “visit” the control room. There he was, the meter bridge of the “desk” reflected in his shades. Champagne & Orange in one hand, coke straw in the other. He motioned me in to “listen”. I stood behind him to catch the center point of the stereo perspective. But wait! What’s this??? The fail-safe lights are lit, but the Stereo Master Meter is actually performing as it should. It is registering anywhere from –5dB to OdB! Actually indicating AVERAGE LEVEL!

When I brought this to Gary’s attention, by shouting and gesticulating at the meter, he turned down the volume, looked up at me and said:

“It’s alright mate! They’ve already been around once!”

Today, of course, this would not be possible. Meters are not the graceful arching motion they used to be. They are lineal strings of Light Emitting Diodes. AMF-YO-YO.

College For Recording Arts –

Leo de Gar Kulka had been a prominent figure in the San Francisco Sound days of the late 60’s. Leo was from Germany and had been an audio expert in the field of Classical music. When he came to SF he recorded a great deal of music, end even more importantly, mastered many of the early rock albums to acetate disc. The mastering process (back then) was what made a recording sound like a RECORD! I preferred to fly to LA to work with Doug Sax or Bernie Grundman when it came time to master my projects. George Horn over at Fantasy Records in Berkeley did some of my mastering also. I was always most partial to Doug’s and Bernie’s work. 

Nonetheless. Leo had started the College for Recording Arts. It was attended by thousands of young people over the years. All hoping to break into the recording business somehow. Frankly, I had always received so many resumes from its students that I didn’t take Leo or the school very seriously. When my own teacher, Dr. Richie Moore, started to work there I noticed an improved image. Richie was a great teacher and had the PhD to prove it. He taught for Leo for several years while doing other recording sessions at studios and doing tech work for the Plant in Sausalito.

When the time came for Richie to accept his drug habit and seek professional care, he asked if I would sit in for a couple of semesters to teach his classes.  I said sure. I got my license from the State of California to be a private school instructor and was awarded the studio classroom of the school. Sort of the jewel of the school if you will.

For years. Leo touted the school as the latest in State of the Art Recording. Whew Boy! That would require quite an imagination. The year was 1993.

The first image of the control room was circa 1970. I immediately recognized Richard Beggs’ Quad 8 console that he had in the basement Zoetrope studio. Altec Lansing “Golds” were the monitor of choice. What’s this? A genuine Stephens 16 track 2” tape recorder/reproducer (as they were billed), with no remote control! The outboard rack consisted of some Putlec EQ’s, a couple of Dueces, some LA-3 UREI compressors and I think there was a Digital Reverb (boy howdy!) from Yamaha.

The students were there. My mind was racing at how I would make a recording TODAY! It’s time to teach. I took the students through the console explaining how it was laid out. The mic pre-amp at the top lets the signal into the console, it must be attenuated to the correct point to maximize the signal to noise ratio of the circuitry of the console. Next is the Equalization section followed by Effects or Cue sends used for headphone feeds or in mixdown for effects feeds. Then the channel fader which sends signal to the state of the art Stephens. The patchbay links all of the equipment in the control room and the microphone inputs from the music room into one central place allowing access via ¼” patch chord to anything your heart desires. Etcetera.

We proceeded to the microphone selection in the music room. I instructed them on the names, types and uses of each mic. We had a lesson in how to coil cables correctly and incorrectly. I have been known to fire assistants that cannot coil cables correctly.

Thusly we continued. I instructed the class on how to align a machine and that this is to be done on a daily basis before each and every session. Upon putting the Standard Reference Laboratories (actually a dub of an SRL tape!) alignment tape onto the Stephens, I noticed exceptional amounts of “Flagging” in the meters. This usually indicates a transport problem or worn playback head. I said nothing but kept on.

In our next session class, I had invited Vince Ebo to come in. I enjoyed this part of the teaching. To expose the students to friends of mine that were really talented. Vinnie, as always, was the charm champion and was so patient with the students. However, we needed to punch-in and fix a mistake. This was very difficult on the old Stephens and required quite some maneuvering on the part of the recordist (in the days before remote controls, a guy ran the machine. He was the Recordist). When finally we got the punch-in done correctly, we played it back. We heard the former mistake, play back simultaneously with the new take. Uh-oh, Houston we have a problem. We ended up recording a new track of Vinnie’s voice recorded from beginning to end, no punch-ins. Naturally, Vince was so talented that there was no mistake anyway!

The problem with the deck was that the “Head Stack” or all three of the heads (erase record and playback  in that order) were badly worn from years of tape scouring their faces. I told Leo that the heads needed to be lapped (the process of renewing the worn metal of the head if there’s enough metal left) and gave him John French’s name and address as the best in the business. But there was a problem. There was not another 2”  16 track headstack available for the old Stephens (which had long since died as a name brand). What would I do for the next several weeks while there was no headstack? AHA! There is a 1” eight rack head stack for the old Stephens. Okay great! I’ll just teach my State of the art Recording class about multitrack recording using a 1” 8 track format instead of 2” 16 track.

But wait! We don’t have any 1” tape in the house! Well, says I, go buy some! Oh no! We’re not authorizing the purchase off 1” tape for $75.

Dear reader, I know that you will find this unbelievable, but it is so true. I, Robin Yeager, in the interest of completing a recording will do most anything. I’ve even claimed that I would use rocks to monitor instead of speakers, IF I REALLY HAD TO!!

I had a class to teach, and a session to record. I used 2” tape on a 1” headstack. It worked great, because when the next semester came around, I just turned the reel of tape over and fed it thru. Thereby recording two semesters of material on one reel of tape. One semester went one direction. The other semester went the other. I thereby saved the school countless dollars, while impressing my students with the resourcefulness of a true engineer.

Thank you, I think.

DUNCE MUSIC-

I was in my office tending to some of the business that I tried to take care of on a daily basis. The phone rang and Julie (or “Jewels” [because they were]) answered it. She was experiencing difficulty understanding the voice on the other end, but in time, determined that a prospective client was on the line. She gave me a “Here ya’ go” and forwarded the call to my desk.

A man with a middle eastern accent was matter of factly telling me he would like to record some “Dunce Music”. I let it go, trying my damndest to understand him while at the same time pretending I knew what Dunce Music was. He was really yaking it up while I was trying to interpret the actual reason for his call. I asked, “What kind of music?”, he replied “Dunce Music” and kept right on talking.

He inquired as to the rates of the studio, the gear we had and other normal questions of a prospective client. I very politely inquired once again, “You wanna record what kind ‘a music?”, “DUNCE MUSIC”   a litlle stronger of voice as though maybe I couldn’t hear him.  I was racking my brain. You gotcher Rock, yer Soul, yer Country (and back then you added the word “Western” after Country), yer Punk Fusion MOR (Middle of the Road) etc., WHAT THE HELL IS DUNCE MUSIC!!!

I could no longer take the suspense and, thinking it was a Middle East thing or just a NEW thing, I asked the gentleman, “I’m sorry, I am not familiar with Dunce Music. Could you explain it to me?”

(Very frustrated) “DUNCE MUSIC, DUNCE MUSIC. WAHN,TU, TREE, POUR, DUNCE DUNCE DUNCE!!!!

Ah, DANCE MUSIC! Yes I know it well. We have recorded a great deal of Dance Music here at Tres Virgos.

In a related story….

I was working with a very gifted producer of Disco music by the name of Michael Cruz. The  label was called Moby Dick Records. Not coincidentally, it was a record label producing music for the Gay Disco scene of the early ‘80’s. What a wild bunch of guys!

The producer asked me to bring up the “Pea Soup” of the mix. Do you remember many pages back I mentioned that descriptive terms of music are very subjective?

Gordon had a blank look on his face. I’m afraid I had an equally blank look. The Pea Soup of the mix? “Yeah! You know, the hihat!”  “Wassat? The hihat? Pea Soup?” “Yeah. The Hihat sounds like ‘peasoup-peasoup-peasoup-peasoup’” . Okidokey, more pea soup coming up.

TECHNICALLY SPEAKNG…

I referred earlier to the outboard equipment rack we had at Tres Virgos. It was modest, but functional. A few of my favorite tricks:

Using an insert, patch the kick drum into the Dynamite Rack and process it with full on RMS limiting. This has the effect of putting a vacuum cleaner hose between your eyes with each and every beat. Lovely!

The old Lexicon Prime Time (which I still have) was the best device for putting a “Chorusing” effect on a bass. As a stereo unit the engineer can control the left side independently from the right (I think it might have been on of the first true 2 in x 2 out. Actually there were four out, but for purposes of explanation…). By setting the left side to 45 milliseconds (ms) of delay and the right to about 95 ms, then vary the return to each channel via the sliders on the front face of the unit until you get this HUGE chorusing sound.

Steve Evans was playing bass on a session when I discovered this. Naturally, he’d been listening on the phones while cutting rhythm tracks all day. I was bored and was playing with the outboard rack being careful to monitor only in the room (and on the near field monitors [Auratones] to prevent unforeseen disaster). When I found this sound it reminded me of the sound of a B-27 Bomber when the propellers get out of sync. You know what I mean? That phasing sound that happens on multiple propeller aircraft (if the reader is old enough to know what that is!).

When Steve came in to listen to the play back he was unaware of this effect. Gordon hit PLAY and I thought Steve was gonna need new shorts! He couldn’t determine where the sound was originating from in the room! He was running around saying, “It’s everywhere, it’s everywhere!”. And by golly, it was!

The Marshall  Time Modulator was a very dangerous piece of  equipment. It was an all analog multi effects box that could shread your monitors in a heartbeat if you didn’t know what you were doing. I always insisted that anyone using the device be CERTAIN to work it on the “Li’l Shits” or Near Field monitors for this express reason. If it took out the Li’l Shits, it cost less to replace ($100) than the Bigass Monitors (UREI 813, $3000/pr), plus the wattage was considerably less (500w vs 3000w).

Steven St Croix was the mastermind behind the unit.  I could make it ping-pong delay, phase and flange, even sequence a note so that it spiraled up the scale and then back down. It was a very trippy box. The problem with it was that you might think you were finished setting it to do an effect, and contentedly go about your engineering duties. Several moments, or even minutes later a sound would start to appear in your monitors. Maybe something as innocent as chirping birdie, or as dastardly as a T-Rex howl. Thing was, you had no idea of what swamp this thing was crawling from and why the hell it had chosen you to bite! Due to the analog circuitry of the unit, a mis-guided signal would develop in logarithms more complex than their new Digital brethren. There were few of us that had the perspicacity  and daredevil willingness to use the box, lest our reputation might suffer.

THE DUECE-

 Ah, what a miracle piece of equipment is the UREI LA-2. So simple to use with it’s two knobs and one large meter. A warm and wonderful sounding compressor that works equally well for a lead vocal, bass, tambourine. No matter what signal was being fed into it. The processed signal is dynamically compressed ever so slightly when gain reduction of –3dB or less is used. Or, hard limit the signal at –7dB or greater, never allowing it to get up off of the mat (for broadcast this was an acceptable approach.) I wish I had one here in my office just to look at.

With the advent of digital sampling came a crippling problem. Many of the early digital sounds used in Roland, Oberheim and Yamaha keyboards were developed by close miking the source sound. While they impressed us with their uncanny reproduction of the real sound, they lacked what I call “air”. It was like listening to a drum (strings, guitar, etc.) in an anechoic chamber. To recapture the quality of sound traveling through air and vibrating a microphone diaphragm, I frequently would use an old trick. Using an Aux send on the console, I would send the signal(s) needing “air” to the studio room monitors. I would set up  two quality microphones about 15’ back form the monitors and 15’ apart. I would return the room mics back into the console and bring them into the overall mix. This gave the sampled sounds a more believable quality.

Of course, in today’s music no self-respecting engineer or producer wants anything to sound believable. I can’t believe the preamp distortion, phase problems and stupid mix tricks that are in recorded music now. You know why? Few of these people know what their doing with their $299 recording studios in a box! AMF-YO_YO! Knuckleheads.

JUST WHO IS BARRY MANILOW?

I worked a session with some of the guys that back Barry Manilow. We were all involved in what we were doing, but as a matter of course in the control room, there is a constant banter. I don’t know who these guys were or even what they played in Barry’s Band. It would have been an entirely forgettable session if it weren’t for one comment. The fellow was saying that working for Manilow is akin to working in Ray Charles’ Band. Ray used to charge his sidemen for each mistake they made on or off stage. Barry is a perfectionist (most great entertainers are!). When this sideman made a consistent mistake during rehearsals, Barry sliced him to bits by saying “ Do you know why you are working for me? Because I am the talent that the people come to see. It is my name in lights out there on the marquee. It is my music that makes people buy my records and come to see my shows. You will play the music as I have written it, and you will play it perfectly each time. DO YOU KNOW WHY?? BECAUSE I’M BARRY FUCKING MANILOW!! THAT’S’ WHY!!!”

Johnny Colla

A great group of talented musicians known as “SECRETS” had been doing well around here. My friend Mark Karan (now with Bob Weir as guitarist for RatDog) and singer David Pew were the core of the band. At the time, Huey Lewis’ band was kicking around clubs and backing Elvis Costello on his albums. Huey was starting to get some recognition. His sax player , rhythm guitarist and songwriter was Johnny Colla. Johnny is one of the nicest people you’d care to meet, and very talented. He lived in a nice apartment just a block or so away from my house in Novato. He drove an old Camaro that had a habit of stranding him at all the wrong times. He was producing the Secrets recordings that I was engineering as album quality club demos and/or whatever. One night he got to the studio with a large color graphic wrapped in brown paper. He asked if we would like to see the new Huey Album Art in it’s final form. He pulled out the graphic and I recognized the bar at the 2 AM Club in Mill Valley (“The Deuce”) that we had all frequented too many times. At the bar were seated Huey, Johnny, Mario, Bill and keyboardist (?). The title read “SPORTS”. We all admired it and hoped this would be the one to put the band over the top. Presently, we got back to the job of making a multi-track recording by overdubbing vocals.

At the end of the night (about 4:30 AM), the old Camaro was too stubborn to start. I offered Johnny a ride home which he gratefully accepted. On the way he was saying, “I’ve got a couple of good tunes on this album. If it makes it over, I should be set. I am “that” close to having my life change for good. But it’s so weird that I don’t know for sure if it will change. Will it? Or will this be just another attempt that gets some attention, then goes away?”

About six weeks later, Johnny and his wife moved out of the apartment into a very nice yet modest home in the Wild Horse Canyon area of Novato. Whenever I would see him after that, he would always greet me with such enthusiasm and friendship. Thanks Johnny.

Theodore “Teddy” Straton

I honestly don’t know where to start with this guy, accept to say that to this day, we are heartfelt brothers. He and his wife Julie both worked with and for me. Julie was my secretary in the office and had a set of pipes that could sing so sweetly or growl so fiercely. Ted had been regular session cat with us for his expertise at the Hammond B3 organ, as well as other keyboard expertise. He was originally form Atlanta and still had a good thick accent almost 20 years after living here on the west coast. He came out west with fellow southern boy Les Dudek . They recorded an album for Capitol Records in LA and went on to gig around afterwards. Ted and I met through a man by the name of David Rankin. Dave had hired a number of session guys to help him with his songs. He had a beautiful home on the mountainside of Mill Valley and the place was used as pre-production rehearsal hall, crash pad and office for Dave’s Stock Market trading. 

It was one of Dave’s sessions that presented one of the most hilarious moments in my recording career. We were recording a song called “I live in the USA” at John Altman’s Studio on Judah Street in San Francisco. John was the proud owner of the Dead’s old MM 1100 Ampex 24 track. It had been modified to fit in a mobile recording van for live shows and was mounted on a frame made from ½” steel box beam. John had wired up a remote control for the machine allowing the engineer to control the play, FF, and rewind functions of the machine. John was careful to instruct me on the idiosyncrasies of the button placement. You see, he had placed the buttons in an unusual configuration, unlike the “Standard” sequence of (l-r) FF, Rewind, Stop, Play and Record.He told me to be very careful and to look at the remote each time when using it. The transport of an MM1100 (MM stands for Master Muncher in the control room vernacular) was very harsh on tape. If you were to hit Play while Rewinding, the machine would instantly react rather than slowing down and coming to a stop first. This was hard on tape as it stretches it into wire.

We were in a jovial mood as usual, but especially so because this was the final overdub of a 6 song set we’d been working on for many weeks. Rankin and I were in the control room, Teddy was out playing the B3. At last we were done! As Teddy came inn thru the soundlock doors, I was rewinding tape and had my fingers on the buttons using FF to slow the tape from rewind. Now, keep in mind that a reel of 2” tape weighs nearly 50 lbs. The rewind and fast forward motors had probably come from a Maytag washer originally. They were brutishly strong and not “refined”. This was, afterall, an Ampex MasterMuncher 1100!

So it was that Teddy was at the threshold of success and expecting back slaps a beer and probably a line. What he got was an enormous shower of 2” tape! I had done the unthinkable and taken my eyes from the remote. Instinctivley, I placed my finger where I thought the FF button would be. Too bad too! ‘Cause I hit the Play button instead. The reels went from 90 to 0 MPH in an instant resulting in tape flying uncontrollably upwards and outwards in large 2” ribbons resting after it’s flight, on Teddy’s head. He should have had a hard hat is all I can say! He was yelling with his hands covering his head, dancing in the doorway, looking like a modern day tar job ready for the rail out of town!

After a few moments of witnessing this horror, my “cat like” reflexes kicked in and I jumped from the chair and gingerly put my hands on the reel flanges to slow them to a stop. I knew that if I had applied the necessary pressure to actually stop them I would have the hands of a pineapple picker and two broken wrists. At last, the reels came to rest.

With both hands still on the reels, I turned to my right to see Teddy in quite a tangle and trying to extricate himself from it. I turned to my right and saw Rankin with his hands over his face (I could practically see the dollar signs mixed in the smoke coming out his ears!). He stood up and said, “I gonna go get me drink. When I get back this better be fixed” and departed the studio.

Teddy and I set to the task of manually winding about 1000 feet of tape back on the reel. But to do so meant getting all of the twists out if it. The good news was that the tape had not stretched too badly…the bad news was that it looked like wrinkled tin foil. Teddy and I set lengths of about 100’ out at a time and straightened and replaced the tape. We were both in a sweat. It took us about 90 minutes to do all of this. I got the reel on the machine and threaded the tape thru the heads and guides. Fortunately for me, the back tension on the MM1100 is quite exceptional and as the tape played thru the first time the back tension acted as a clothes iron might and smoothed the tape fairly well. By the time Dave got back with a good heater and a partial bottle of Jack Daniels, we’d fixed the mess. He was relieved, and boy, so was I.

Would You Like Mustard With That?

“Gordon, Is that a drop out I hear?”

“Seems to be Robin”

“Well, gimme another track and let’s see if it happens again”

It did. We had a bad piece of tape. Something that in the early days was fairly commonplace but by 1984 had all but disappeared. Quality control during manufacture of recording tape was excellent. Even still, and as a precaution to Drop Outs (or sections of tape where the recorded sound denigrates), we would cut the first 12” or so of tape off of each reel and sticky tape it to the inside of the lid of the box that hold the tape for storage. Along with this remnant were the batch numbers.

So I razor bladed the section of tape out of the troubled drop out area and we sent it off to 3M for analysis. Went along out business and forgot about it actually.

Weeks later we got a new roll of tape (at $150-175 we appreciated it) from 3M along with an explanation of the drop out. It seems that it was caused by mustard. We knew that it happened during the manufacturing process as it was a virgin piece of tape. 3M wouldn’t elaborate further, and so, we speculated, that during the slitting process to make the various widths of tape (from ¼” to 2”), Mr. QC must have indulged in a ham sandwich while overseeing the process. Quite illegal as all the work is done in a clean room environment. Oops!

Am I  There Yet?

While working at The Plant Studio, Room A, I had an opportunity to say hello to Bill Graham. I stepped out of the control room into the lobby and there was Bill, finishing a phone call at the pay phone. I’d been in the same room as Bill on several occasions, but it wasn’t like he knew me by name. He held up a finger as if to say to me, “Hang on a Sec, I’ll be right with you.” He hung and said to me, “So YOU are Robin Yeager! I keep hearing about this guy Robin Yeager and I couldn’t put a face to the name. You’re getting some good buzz on the street!”  Aw shucks, Bill. Can you tell me if I’m gonna get over the top soon?

Nonetheless. Leo had started the College for Recording Arts. It was attended by thousands of young people over the years. All hoping to break into the recording business somehow. Frankly, I had always received so many resumes from its students that I didn’t take Leo or the school very seriously. When my own teacher, Dr. Richie Moore, started to work there I noticed an improved image. Richie was a great teacher and had the PhD to prove it. He taught for Leo for several years while doing other recording sessions at studios and doing tech work for the Plant in Sausalito.

When the time came for Richie to accept his drug habit and seek professional care, he asked if I would sit in for a couple of semesters to teach his classes.  I said sure. I got my license from the State of California to be a private school instructor and was awarded the studio classroom of the school. Sort of the jewel of the school if you will.

For years. Leo touted the school as the latest in State of the Art Recording. Whew Boy! That would require quite an imagination. The year was 1993.

The first image of the control room was circa 1970. I immediately recognized Richard Beggs’ Quad 8 console that he had in the basement Zoetrope studio. Altec Lansing “Golds” were the monitor of choice. What’s this? A genuine Stephens 16 track 2” tape recorder/reproducer (as they were billed), with no remote control! The outboard rack consisted of some Putlec EQ’s, a couple of Dueces, some LA-3 UREI compressors and I think there was a Digital Reverb (boy howdy!) from Yamaha.

The students were there. My mind was racing at how I would make a recording TODAY! It’s time to teach. I took the students through the console explaining how it was laid out. The mic pre-amp at the top lets the signal into the console, it must be attenuated to the correct point to maximize the signal to noise ratio of the circuitry of the console. Next is the Equalization section followed by Effects or Cue sends used for headphone feeds or in mixdown for effects feeds. Then the channel fader which sends signal to the state of the art Stephens. The patchbay links all of the equipment in the control room and the microphone inputs from the music room into one central place allowing access via ¼” patch chord to anything your heart desires. Etcetera.

We proceeded to the microphone selection in the music room. I instructed them on the names, types and uses of each mic. We had a lesson in how to coil cables correctly and incorrectly. I have been known to fire assistants that cannot coil cables correctly.

Thusly we continued. I instructed the class on how to align a machine and that this is to be done on a daily basis before each and every session. Upon putting the Standard Reference Laboratories (actually a dub of an SRL tape!) alignment tape onto the Stephens, I noticed exceptional amounts of “Flagging” in the meters. This usually indicates a transport problem or worn playback head. I said nothing but kept on.

In our next session class, I had invited Vince Ebo to come in. I enjoyed this part of the teaching. To expose the students to friends of mine that were really talented. Vinnie, as always, was the charm champion and was so patient with the students. However, we needed to punch-in and fix a mistake. This was very difficult on the old Stephens and required quite some maneuvering on the part of the recordist (in the days before remote controls, a guy ran the machine. He was the Recordist). When finally we got the punch-in done correctly, we played it back. We heard the former mistake, play back simultaneously with the new take. Uh-oh, Houston we have a problem. We ended up recording a new track of Vinnie’s voice recorded from beginning to end, no punch-ins. Naturally, Vince was so talented that there was no mistake anyway!

The problem with the deck was that the “Head Stack” or all three of the heads (erase record and playback  in that order) were badly worn from years of tape scouring their faces. I told Leo that the heads needed to be lapped (the process of renewing the worn metal of the head if there’s enough metal left) and gave him John French’s name and address as the best in the business. But there was a problem. There was not another 2”  16 track headstack available for the old Stephens (which had long since died as a name brand). What would I do for the next several weeks while there was no headstack? AHA! There is a 1” eight rack head stack for the old Stephens. Okay great! I’ll just teach my State of the art Recording class about multitrack recording using a 1” 8 track format instead of 2” 16 track.

But wait! We don’t have any 1” tape in the house! Well, says I, go buy some! Oh no! We’re not authorizing the purchase off 1” tape for $75.

Dear reader, I know that you will find this unbelievable, but it is so true. I, Robin Yeager, in the interest of completing a recording will do most anything. I’ve even claimed that I would use rocks to monitor instead of speakers, IF I REALLY HAD TO!!

I had a class to teach, and a session to record. I used 2” tape on a 1” headstack. It worked great, because when the next semester came around, I just turned the reel of tape over and fed it thru. Thereby recording two semesters of material on one reel of tape. One semester went one direction. The other semester went the other. I thereby saved the school countless dollars, while impressing my students with the resourcefulness of a true engineer.

Thank you, I think.

DUNCE MUSIC-

I was in my office tending to some of the business that I tried to take care of on a daily basis. The phone rang and Julie (or “Jewels” [because they were]) answered it. She was experiencing difficulty understanding the voice on the other end, but in time, determined that a prospective client was on the line. She gave me a “Here ya’ go” and forwarded the call to my desk.

A man with a middle eastern accent was matter of factly telling me he would like to record some “Dunce Music”. I let it go, trying my damndest to understand him while at the same time pretending I knew what Dunce Music was. He was really yaking it up while I was trying to interpret the actual reason for his call. I asked, “What kind of music?”, he replied “Dunce Music” and kept right on talking.

He inquired as to the rates of the studio, the gear we had and other normal questions of a prospective client. I very politely inquired once again, “You wanna record what kind ‘a music?”, “DUNCE MUSIC”   a litlle stronger of voice as though maybe I couldn’t hear him.  I was racking my brain. You gotcher Rock, yer Soul, yer Country (and back then you added the word “Western” after Country), yer Punk Fusion MOR (Middle of the Road) etc., WHAT THE HELL IS DUNCE MUSIC!!!

I could no longer take the suspense and, thinking it was a Middle East thing or just a NEW thing, I asked the gentleman, “I’m sorry, I am not familiar with Dunce Music. Could you explain it to me?”

(Very frustrated) “DUNCE MUSIC, DUNCE MUSIC. WAHN,TU, TREE, POUR, DUNCE DUNCE DUNCE!!!!

Ah, DANCE MUSIC! Yes I know it well. We have recorded a great deal of Dance Music here at Tres Virgos.

In a related story….

I was working with a very gifted producer of Disco music by the name of Michael Cruz. The  label was called Moby Dick Records. Not coincidentally, it was a record label producing music for the Gay Disco scene of the early ‘80’s. What a wild bunch of guys!

The producer asked me to bring up the “Pea Soup” of the mix. Do you remember many pages back I mentioned that descriptive terms of music are very subjective?

Gordon had a blank look on his face. I’m afraid I had an equally blank look. The Pea Soup of the mix? “Yeah! You know, the hihat!”  “Wassat? The hihat? Pea Soup?” “Yeah. The Hihat sounds like ‘peasoup-peasoup-peasoup-peasoup’” . Okidokey, more pea soup coming up.

TECHNICALLY SPEAKNG…

I referred earlier to the outboard equipment rack we had at Tres Virgos. It was modest, but functional. A few of my favorite tricks:

Using an insert, patch the kick drum into the Dynamite Rack and process it with full on RMS limiting. This has the effect of putting a vacuum cleaner hose between your eyes with each and every beat. Lovely!

The old Lexicon Prime Time (which I still have) was the best device for putting a “Chorusing” effect on a bass. As a stereo unit the engineer can control the left side independently from the right (I think it might have been on of the first true 2 in x 2 out. Actually there were four out, but for purposes of explanation…). By setting the left side to 45 milliseconds (ms) of delay and the right to about 95 ms, then vary the return to each channel via the sliders on the front face of the unit until you get this HUGE chorusing sound.

Steve Evans was playing bass on a session when I discovered this. Naturally, he’d been listening on the phones while cutting rhythm tracks all day. I was bored and was playing with the outboard rack being careful to monitor only in the room (and on the near field monitors [Auratones] to prevent unforeseen disaster). When I found this sound it reminded me of the sound of a B-27 Bomber when the propellers get out of sync. You know what I mean? That phasing sound that happens on multiple propeller aircraft (if the reader is old enough to know what that is!).

When Steve came in to listen to the play back he was unaware of this effect. Gordon hit PLAY and I thought Steve was gonna need new shorts! He couldn’t determine where the sound was originating from in the room! He was running around saying, “It’s everywhere, it’s everywhere!”. And by golly, it was!

The Marshall  Time Modulator was a very dangerous piece of  equipment. It was an all analog multi effects box that could shread your monitors in a heartbeat if you didn’t know what you were doing. I always insisted that anyone using the device be CERTAIN to work it on the “Li’l Shits” or Near Field monitors for this express reason. If it took out the Li’l Shits, it cost less to replace ($100) than the Bigass Monitors (UREI 813, $3000/pr), plus the wattage was considerably less (500w vs 3000w).

Steven St Croix was the mastermind behind the unit.  I could make it ping-pong delay, phase and flange, even sequence a note so that it spiraled up the scale and then back down. It was a very trippy box. The problem with it was that you might think you were finished setting it to do an effect, and contentedly go about your engineering duties. Several moments, or even minutes later a sound would start to appear in your monitors. Maybe something as innocent as chirping birdie, or as dastardly as a T-Rex howl. Thing was, you had no idea of what swamp this thing was crawling from and why the hell it had chosen you to bite! Due to the analog circuitry of the unit, a mis-guided signal would develop in logarithms more complex than their new Digital brethren. There were few of us that had the perspicacity  and daredevil willingness to use the box, lest our reputation might suffer.

THE DUECE-

 Ah, what a miracle piece of equipment is the UREI LA-2. So simple to use with it’s two knobs and one large meter. A warm and wonderful sounding compressor that works equally well for a lead vocal, bass, tambourine. No matter what signal was being fed into it. The processed signal is dynamically compressed ever so slightly when gain reduction of –3dB or less is used. Or, hard limit the signal at –7dB or greater, never allowing it to get up off of the mat (for broadcast this was an acceptable approach.) I wish I had one here in my office just to look at.

With the advent of digital sampling came a crippling problem. Many of the early digital sounds used in Roland, Oberheim and Yamaha keyboards were developed by close miking the source sound. While they impressed us with their uncanny reproduction of the real sound, they lacked what I call “air”. It was like listening to a drum (strings, guitar, etc.) in an anechoic chamber. To recapture the quality of sound traveling through air and vibrating a microphone diaphragm, I frequently would use an old trick. Using an Aux send on the console, I would send the signal(s) needing “air” to the studio room monitors. I would set up  two quality microphones about 15’ back form the monitors and 15’ apart. I would return the room mics back into the console and bring them into the overall mix. This gave the sampled sounds a more believable quality.

Of course, in today’s music no self-respecting engineer or producer wants anything to sound believable. I can’t believe the preamp distortion, phase problems and stupid mix tricks that are in recorded music now. You know why? Few of these people know what their doing with their $299 recording studios in a box! AMF-YO_YO! Knuckleheads.

JUST WHO IS BARRY MANILOW?

I worked a session with some of the guys that back Barry Manilow. We were all involved in what we were doing, but as a matter of course in the control room, there is a constant banter. I don’t know who these guys were or even what they played in Barry’s Band. It would have been an entirely forgettable session if it weren’t for one comment. The fellow was saying that working for Manilow is akin to working in Ray Charles’ Band. Ray used to charge his sidemen for each mistake they made on or off stage. Barry is a perfectionist (most great entertainers are!). When this sideman made a consistent mistake during rehearsals, Barry sliced him to bits by saying “ Do you know why you are working for me? Because I am the talent that the people come to see. It is my name in lights out there on the marquee. It is my music that makes people buy my records and come to see my shows. You will play the music as I have written it, and you will play it perfectly each time. DO YOU KNOW WHY?? BECAUSE I’M BARRY FUCKING MANILOW!! THAT’S’ WHY!!!”

Johnny Colla

A great group of talented musicians known as “SECRETS” had been doing well around here. My friend Mark Karan (now with Bob Weir as guitarist for RatDog) and singer David Pew were the core of the band. At the time, Huey Lewis’ band was kicking around clubs and backing Elvis Costello on his albums. Huey was starting to get some recognition. His sax player , rhythm guitarist and songwriter was Johnny Colla. Johnny is one of the nicest people you’d care to meet, and very talented. He lived in a nice apartment just a block or so away from my house in Novato. He drove an old Camaro that had a habit of stranding him at all the wrong times. He was producing the Secrets recordings that I was engineering as album quality club demos and/or whatever. One night he got to the studio with a large color graphic wrapped in brown paper. He asked if we would like to see the new Huey Album Art in it’s final form. He pulled out the graphic and I recognized the bar at the 2 AM Club in Mill Valley (“The Deuce”) that we had all frequented too many times. At the bar were seated Huey, Johnny, Mario, Bill and keyboardist (?). The title read “SPORTS”. We all admired it and hoped this would be the one to put the band over the top. Presently, we got back to the job of making a multi-track recording by overdubbing vocals.

At the end of the night (about 4:30 AM), the old Camaro was too stubborn to start. I offered Johnny a ride home which he gratefully accepted. On the way he was saying, “I’ve got a couple of good tunes on this album. If it makes it over, I should be set. I am “that” close to having my life change for good. But it’s so weird that I don’t know for sure if it will change. Will it? Or will this be just another attempt that gets some attention, then goes away?”

About six weeks later, Johnny and his wife moved out of the apartment into a very nice yet modest home in the Wild Horse Canyon area of Novato. Whenever I would see him after that, he would always greet me with such enthusiasm and friendship. Thanks Johnny.

Theodore “Teddy” Straton

I honestly don’t know where to start with this guy, accept to say that to this day, we are heartfelt brothers. He and his wife Julie both worked with and for me. Julie was my secretary in the office and had a set of pipes that could sing so sweetly or growl so fiercely. Ted had been regular session cat with us for his expertise at the Hammond B3 organ, as well as other keyboard expertise. He was originally form Atlanta and still had a good thick accent almost 20 years after living here on the west coast. He came out west with fellow southern boy Les Dudek . They recorded an album for Capitol Records in LA and went on to gig around afterwards. Ted and I met through a man by the name of David Rankin. Dave had hired a number of session guys to help him with his songs. He had a beautiful home on the mountainside of Mill Valley and the place was used as pre-production rehearsal hall, crash pad and office for Dave’s Stock Market trading. 

It was one of Dave’s sessions that presented one of the most hilarious moments in my recording career. We were recording a song called “I live in the USA” at John Altman’s Studio on Judah Street in San Francisco. John was the proud owner of the Dead’s old MM 1100 Ampex 24 track. It had been modified to fit in a mobile recording van for live shows and was mounted on a frame made from ½” steel box beam. John had wired up a remote control for the machine allowing the engineer to control the play, FF, and rewind functions of the machine. John was careful to instruct me on the idiosyncrasies of the button placement. You see, he had placed the buttons in an unusual configuration, unlike the “Standard” sequence of (l-r) FF, Rewind, Stop, Play and Record.He told me to be very careful and to look at the remote each time when using it. The transport of an MM1100 (MM stands for Master Muncher in the control room vernacular) was very harsh on tape. If you were to hit Play while Rewinding, the machine would instantly react rather than slowing down and coming to a stop first. This was hard on tape as it stretches it into wire.

We were in a jovial mood as usual, but especially so because this was the final overdub of a 6 song set we’d been working on for many weeks. Rankin and I were in the control room, Teddy was out playing the B3. At last we were done! As Teddy came inn thru the soundlock doors, I was rewinding tape and had my fingers on the buttons using FF to slow the tape from rewind. Now, keep in mind that a reel of 2” tape weighs nearly 50 lbs. The rewind and fast forward motors had probably come from a Maytag washer originally. They were brutishly strong and not “refined”. This was, afterall, an Ampex MasterMuncher 1100!

So it was that Teddy was at the threshold of success and expecting back slaps a beer and probably a line. What he got was an enormous shower of 2” tape! I had done the unthinkable and taken my eyes from the remote. Instinctivley, I placed my finger where I thought the FF button would be. Too bad too! ‘Cause I hit the Play button instead. The reels went from 90 to 0 MPH in an instant resulting in tape flying uncontrollably upwards and outwards in large 2” ribbons resting after it’s flight, on Teddy’s head. He should have had a hard hat is all I can say! He was yelling with his hands covering his head, dancing in the doorway, looking like a modern day tar job ready for the rail out of town!

After a few moments of witnessing this horror, my “cat like” reflexes kicked in and I jumped from the chair and gingerly put my hands on the reel flanges to slow them to a stop. I knew that if I had applied the necessary pressure to actually stop them I would have the hands of a pineapple picker and two broken wrists. At last, the reels came to rest.

With both hands still on the reels, I turned to my right to see Teddy in quite a tangle and trying to extricate himself from it. I turned to my right and saw Rankin with his hands over his face (I could practically see the dollar signs mixed in the smoke coming out his ears!). He stood up and said, “I gonna go get me drink. When I get back this better be fixed” and departed the studio.

Teddy and I set to the task of manually winding about 1000 feet of tape back on the reel. But to do so meant getting all of the twists out if it. The good news was that the tape had not stretched too badly…the bad news was that it looked like wrinkled tin foil. Teddy and I set lengths of about 100’ out at a time and straightened and replaced the tape. We were both in a sweat. It took us about 90 minutes to do all of this. I got the reel on the machine and threaded the tape thru the heads and guides. Fortunately for me, the back tension on the MM1100 is quite exceptional and as the tape played thru the first time the back tension acted as a clothes iron might and smoothed the tape fairly well. By the time Dave got back with a good heater and a partial bottle of Jack Daniels, we’d fixed the mess. He was relieved, and boy, so was I.

Would You Like Mustard With That?

“Gordon, Is that a drop out I hear?”

“Seems to be Robin”

“Well, gimme another track and let’s see if it happens again”

It did. We had a bad piece of tape. Something that in the early days was fairly commonplace but by 1984 had all but disappeared. Quality control during manufacture of recording tape was excellent. Even still, and as a precaution to Drop Outs (or sections of tape where the recorded sound denigrates), we would cut the first 12” or so of tape off of each reel and sticky tape it to the inside of the lid of the box that hold the tape for storage. Along with this remnant were the batch numbers.

So I razor bladed the section of tape out of the troubled drop out area and we sent it off to 3M for analysis. Went along out business and forgot about it actually.

Weeks later we got a new roll of tape (at $150-175 we appreciated it) from 3M along with an explanation of the drop out. It seems that it was caused by mustard. We knew that it happened during the manufacturing process as it was a virgin piece of tape. 3M wouldn’t elaborate further, and so, we speculated, that during the slitting process to make the various widths of tape (from ¼” to 2”), Mr. QC must have indulged in a ham sandwich while overseeing the process. Quite illegal as all the work is done in a clean room environment. Oops!

Am I  There Yet?

While working at The Plant Studio, Room A, I had an opportunity to say hello to Bill Graham. I stepped out of the control room into the lobby and there was Bill, finishing a phone call at the pay phone. I’d been in the same room as Bill on several occasions, but it wasn’t like he knew me by name. He held up a finger as if to say to me, “Hang on a Sec, I’ll be right with you.” He hung and said to me, “So YOU are Robin Yeager! I keep hearing about this guy Robin Yeager and I couldn’t put a face to the name. You’re getting some good buzz on the street!”  Aw shucks, Bill. Can you tell me if I’m gonna get over the top soon?

Nonetheless. Leo had started the College for Recording Arts. It was attended by thousands of young people over the years. All hoping to break into the recording business somehow. Frankly, I had always received so many resumes from its students that I didn’t take Leo or the school very seriously. When my own teacher, Dr. Richie Moore, started to work there I noticed an improved image. Richie was a great teacher and had the PhD to prove it. He taught for Leo for several years while doing other recording sessions at studios and doing tech work for the Plant in Sausalito.

When the time came for Richie to accept his drug habit and seek professional care, he asked if I would sit in for a couple of semesters to teach his classes.  I said sure. I got my license from the State of California to be a private school instructor and was awarded the studio classroom of the school. Sort of the jewel of the school if you will.

For years. Leo touted the school as the latest in State of the Art Recording. Whew Boy! That would require quite an imagination. The year was 1993.

The first image of the control room was circa 1970. I immediately recognized Richard Beggs’ Quad 8 console that he had in the basement Zoetrope studio. Altec Lansing “Golds” were the monitor of choice. What’s this? A genuine Stephens 16 track 2” tape recorder/reproducer (as they were billed), with no remote control! The outboard rack consisted of some Putlec EQ’s, a couple of Dueces, some LA-3 UREI compressors and I think there was a Digital Reverb (boy howdy!) from Yamaha.

The students were there. My mind was racing at how I would make a recording TODAY! It’s time to teach. I took the students through the console explaining how it was laid out. The mic pre-amp at the top lets the signal into the console, it must be attenuated to the correct point to maximize the signal to noise ratio of the circuitry of the console. Next is the Equalization section followed by Effects or Cue sends used for headphone feeds or in mixdown for effects feeds. Then the channel fader which sends signal to the state of the art Stephens. The patchbay links all of the equipment in the control room and the microphone inputs from the music room into one central place allowing access via ¼” patch chord to anything your heart desires. Etcetera.

We proceeded to the microphone selection in the music room. I instructed them on the names, types and uses of each mic. We had a lesson in how to coil cables correctly and incorrectly. I have been known to fire assistants that cannot coil cables correctly.

Thusly we continued. I instructed the class on how to align a machine and that this is to be done on a daily basis before each and every session. Upon putting the Standard Reference Laboratories (actually a dub of an SRL tape!) alignment tape onto the Stephens, I noticed exceptional amounts of “Flagging” in the meters. This usually indicates a transport problem or worn playback head. I said nothing but kept on.

In our next session class, I had invited Vince Ebo to come in. I enjoyed this part of the teaching. To expose the students to friends of mine that were really talented. Vinnie, as always, was the charm champion and was so patient with the students. However, we needed to punch-in and fix a mistake. This was very difficult on the old Stephens and required quite some maneuvering on the part of the recordist (in the days before remote controls, a guy ran the machine. He was the Recordist). When finally we got the punch-in done correctly, we played it back. We heard the former mistake, play back simultaneously with the new take. Uh-oh, Houston we have a problem. We ended up recording a new track of Vinnie’s voice recorded from beginning to end, no punch-ins. Naturally, Vince was so talented that there was no mistake anyway!

The problem with the deck was that the “Head Stack” or all three of the heads (erase record and playback  in that order) were badly worn from years of tape scouring their faces. I told Leo that the heads needed to be lapped (the process of renewing the worn metal of the head if there’s enough metal left) and gave him John French’s name and address as the best in the business. But there was a problem. There was not another 2”  16 track headstack available for the old Stephens (which had long since died as a name brand). What would I do for the next several weeks while there was no headstack? AHA! There is a 1” eight rack head stack for the old Stephens. Okay great! I’ll just teach my State of the art Recording class about multitrack recording using a 1” 8 track format instead of 2” 16 track.

But wait! We don’t have any 1” tape in the house! Well, says I, go buy some! Oh no! We’re not authorizing the purchase off 1” tape for $75.

Dear reader, I know that you will find this unbelievable, but it is so true. I, Robin Yeager, in the interest of completing a recording will do most anything. I’ve even claimed that I would use rocks to monitor instead of speakers, IF I REALLY HAD TO!!

I had a class to teach, and a session to record. I used 2” tape on a 1” headstack. It worked great, because when the next semester came around, I just turned the reel of tape over and fed it thru. Thereby recording two semesters of material on one reel of tape. One semester went one direction. The other semester went the other. I thereby saved the school countless dollars, while impressing my students with the resourcefulness of a true engineer.

Thank you, I think.

Outro-

In 1976 I was working on some overdubs with Peter Rowan of the Flying Burrito Brothers. We were in the Mill Valley studio. Peter’s wife was in labor with their child, when he got a creative urge to finish a track. He came over Mt Tam from Stinson Beach, brining his 1” 8 track tape he recorded in Japan while on tour. I put the tape up on the Otari 7308 and pressed PLAY.

As you may be aware, it is customary for the engineer to advise the musicians that the tape is rolling by opening a talk back microphone and saying “Rolling”. The musician(s) will hear in their headphones the track mixed with their performance, or in the case of recording Basic (or Rhythm) tracks, will hear themselves play live.

Peter was sitting next to me while I proceeded to listen for the first sounds from the recorded tape, done in Japan. I have never forgotten what I heard. With all apologies to Japanese people speaking English as a second language. The engineer opened the talkback to “slate” the recording and said:

“Roaring”

Thank you and goodnight.

DUNCE MUSIC-

I was in my office tending to some of the business that I tried to take care of on a daily basis. The phone rang and Julie (or “Jewels” [because they were]) answered it. She was experiencing difficulty understanding the voice on the other end, but in time, determined that a prospective client was on the line. She gave me a “Here ya’ go” and forwarded the call to my desk.

A man with a middle eastern accent was matter of factly telling me he would like to record some “Dunce Music”. I let it go, trying my damndest to understand him while at the same time pretending I knew what Dunce Music was. He was really yaking it up while I was trying to interpret the actual reason for his call. I asked, “What kind of music?”, he replied “Dunce Music” and kept right on talking.

He inquired as to the rates of the studio, the gear we had and other normal questions of a prospective client. I very politely inquired once again, “You wanna record what kind ‘a music?”, “DUNCE MUSIC”   a litlle stronger of voice as though maybe I couldn’t hear him.  I was racking my brain. You gotcher Rock, yer Soul, yer Country (and back then you added the word “Western” after Country), yer Punk Fusion MOR (Middle of the Road) etc., WHAT THE HELL IS DUNCE MUSIC!!!

I could no longer take the suspense and, thinking it was a Middle East thing or just a NEW thing, I asked the gentleman, “I’m sorry, I am not familiar with Dunce Music. Could you explain it to me?”

(Very frustrated) “DUNCE MUSIC, DUNCE MUSIC. WAHN,TU, TREE, POUR, DUNCE DUNCE DUNCE!!!!

Ah, DANCE MUSIC! Yes I know it well. We have recorded a great deal of Dance Music here at Tres Virgos.

In a related story….

I was working with a very gifted producer of Disco music by the name of Michael Cruz. The  label was called Moby Dick Records. Not coincidentally, it was a record label producing music for the Gay Disco scene of the early ‘80’s. What a wild bunch of guys!

The producer asked me to bring up the “Pea Soup” of the mix. Do you remember many pages back I mentioned that descriptive terms of music are very subjective?

Gordon had a blank look on his face. I’m afraid I had an equally blank look. The Pea Soup of the mix? “Yeah! You know, the hihat!”  “Wassat? The hihat? Pea Soup?” “Yeah. The Hihat sounds like ‘peasoup-peasoup-peasoup-peasoup’” . Okidokey, more pea soup coming up.

TECHNICALLY SPEAKNG…

I referred earlier to the outboard equipment rack we had at Tres Virgos. It was modest, but functional. A few of my favorite tricks:

Using an insert, patch the kick drum into the Dynamite Rack and process it with full on RMS limiting. This has the effect of putting a vacuum cleaner hose between your eyes with each and every beat. Lovely!

The old Lexicon Prime Time (which I still have) was the best device for putting a “Chorusing” effect on a bass. As a stereo unit the engineer can control the left side independently from the right (I think it might have been on of the first true 2 in x 2 out. Actually there were four out, but for purposes of explanation…). By setting the left side to 45 milliseconds (ms) of delay and the right to about 95 ms, then vary the return to each channel via the sliders on the front face of the unit until you get this HUGE chorusing sound.

Steve Evans was playing bass on a session when I discovered this. Naturally, he’d been listening on the phones while cutting rhythm tracks all day. I was bored and was playing with the outboard rack being careful to monitor only in the room (and on the near field monitors [Auratones] to prevent unforeseen disaster). When I found this sound it reminded me of the sound of a B-27 Bomber when the propellers get out of sync. You know what I mean? That phasing sound that happens on multiple propeller aircraft (if the reader is old enough to know what that is!).

When Steve came in to listen to the play back he was unaware of this effect. Gordon hit PLAY and I thought Steve was gonna need new shorts! He couldn’t determine where the sound was originating from in the room! He was running around saying, “It’s everywhere, it’s everywhere!”. And by golly, it was!

The Marshall  Time Modulator was a very dangerous piece of  equipment. It was an all analog multi effects box that could shread your monitors in a heartbeat if you didn’t know what you were doing. I always insisted that anyone using the device be CERTAIN to work it on the “Li’l Shits” or Near Field monitors for this express reason. If it took out the Li’l Shits, it cost less to replace ($100) than the Bigass Monitors (UREI 813, $3000/pr), plus the wattage was considerably less (500w vs 3000w).

Steven St Croix was the mastermind behind the unit.  I could make it ping-pong delay, phase and flange, even sequence a note so that it spiraled up the scale and then back down. It was a very trippy box. The problem with it was that you might think you were finished setting it to do an effect, and contentedly go about your engineering duties. Several moments, or even minutes later a sound would start to appear in your monitors. Maybe something as innocent as chirping birdie, or as dastardly as a T-Rex howl. Thing was, you had no idea of what swamp this thing was crawling from and why the hell it had chosen you to bite! Due to the analog circuitry of the unit, a mis-guided signal would develop in logarithms more complex than their new Digital brethren. There were few of us that had the perspicacity  and daredevil willingness to use the box, lest our reputation might suffer.

THE DUECE-

 Ah, what a miracle piece of equipment is the UREI LA-2. So simple to use with it’s two knobs and one large meter. A warm and wonderful sounding compressor that works equally well for a lead vocal, bass, tambourine. No matter what signal was being fed into it. The processed signal is dynamically compressed ever so slightly when gain reduction of –3dB or less is used. Or, hard limit the signal at –7dB or greater, never allowing it to get up off of the mat (for broadcast this was an acceptable approach.) I wish I had one here in my office just to look at.

With the advent of digital sampling came a crippling problem. Many of the early digital sounds used in Roland, Oberheim and Yamaha keyboards were developed by close miking the source sound. While they impressed us with their uncanny reproduction of the real sound, they lacked what I call “air”. It was like listening to a drum (strings, guitar, etc.) in an anechoic chamber. To recapture the quality of sound traveling through air and vibrating a microphone diaphragm, I frequently would use an old trick. Using an Aux send on the console, I would send the signal(s) needing “air” to the studio room monitors. I would set up  two quality microphones about 15’ back form the monitors and 15’ apart. I would return the room mics back into the console and bring them into the overall mix. This gave the sampled sounds a more believable quality.

Of course, in today’s music no self-respecting engineer or producer wants anything to sound believable. I can’t believe the preamp distortion, phase problems and stupid mix tricks that are in recorded music now. You know why? Few of these people know what their doing with their $299 recording studios in a box! AMF-YO_YO! Knuckleheads.

JUST WHO IS BARRY MANILOW?

I worked a session with some of the guys that back Barry Manilow. We were all involved in what we were doing, but as a matter of course in the control room, there is a constant banter. I don’t know who these guys were or even what they played in Barry’s Band. It would have been an entirely forgettable session if it weren’t for one comment. The fellow was saying that working for Manilow is akin to working in Ray Charles’ Band. Ray used to charge his sidemen for each mistake they made on or off stage. Barry is a perfectionist (most great entertainers are!). When this sideman made a consistent mistake during rehearsals, Barry sliced him to bits by saying “ Do you know why you are working for me? Because I am the talent that the people come to see. It is my name in lights out there on the marquee. It is my music that makes people buy my records and come to see my shows. You will play the music as I have written it, and you will play it perfectly each time. DO YOU KNOW WHY?? BECAUSE I’M BARRY FUCKING MANILOW!! THAT’S’ WHY!!!”

Johnny Colla

A great group of talented musicians known as “SECRETS” had been doing well around here. My friend Mark Karan (now with Bob Weir as guitarist for RatDog) and singer David Pew were the core of the band. At the time, Huey Lewis’ band was kicking around clubs and backing Elvis Costello on his albums. Huey was starting to get some recognition. His sax player , rhythm guitarist and songwriter was Johnny Colla. Johnny is one of the nicest people you’d care to meet, and very talented. He lived in a nice apartment just a block or so away from my house in Novato. He drove an old Camaro that had a habit of stranding him at all the wrong times. He was producing the Secrets recordings that I was engineering as album quality club demos and/or whatever. One night he got to the studio with a large color graphic wrapped in brown paper. He asked if we would like to see the new Huey Album Art in it’s final form. He pulled out the graphic and I recognized the bar at the 2 AM Club in Mill Valley (“The Deuce”) that we had all frequented too many times. At the bar were seated Huey, Johnny, Mario, Bill and keyboardist (?). The title read “SPORTS”. We all admired it and hoped this would be the one to put the band over the top. Presently, we got back to the job of making a multi-track recording by overdubbing vocals.

At the end of the night (about 4:30 AM), the old Camaro was too stubborn to start. I offered Johnny a ride home which he gratefully accepted. On the way he was saying, “I’ve got a couple of good tunes on this album. If it makes it over, I should be set. I am “that” close to having my life change for good. But it’s so weird that I don’t know for sure if it will change. Will it? Or will this be just another attempt that gets some attention, then goes away?”

About six weeks later, Johnny and his wife moved out of the apartment into a very nice yet modest home in the Wild Horse Canyon area of Novato. Whenever I would see him after that, he would always greet me with such enthusiasm and friendship. Thanks Johnny.

Theodore “Teddy” Straton

I honestly don’t know where to start with this guy, accept to say that to this day, we are heartfelt brothers. He and his wife Julie both worked with and for me. Julie was my secretary in the office and had a set of pipes that could sing so sweetly or growl so fiercely. Ted had been regular session cat with us for his expertise at the Hammond B3 organ, as well as other keyboard expertise. He was originally form Atlanta and still had a good thick accent almost 20 years after living here on the west coast. He came out west with fellow southern boy Les Dudek . They recorded an album for Capitol Records in LA and went on to gig around afterwards. Ted and I met through a man by the name of David Rankin. Dave had hired a number of session guys to help him with his songs. He had a beautiful home on the mountainside of Mill Valley and the place was used as pre-production rehearsal hall, crash pad and office for Dave’s Stock Market trading. 

It was one of Dave’s sessions that presented one of the most hilarious moments in my recording career. We were recording a song called “I live in the USA” at John Altman’s Studio on Judah Street in San Francisco. John was the proud owner of the Dead’s old MM 1100 Ampex 24 track. It had been modified to fit in a mobile recording van for live shows and was mounted on a frame made from ½” steel box beam. John had wired up a remote control for the machine allowing the engineer to control the play, FF, and rewind functions of the machine. John was careful to instruct me on the idiosyncrasies of the button placement. You see, he had placed the buttons in an unusual configuration, unlike the “Standard” sequence of (l-r) FF, Rewind, Stop, Play and Record.He told me to be very careful and to look at the remote each time when using it. The transport of an MM1100 (MM stands for Master Muncher in the control room vernacular) was very harsh on tape. If you were to hit Play while Rewinding, the machine would instantly react rather than slowing down and coming to a stop first. This was hard on tape as it stretches it into wire.

We were in a jovial mood as usual, but especially so because this was the final overdub of a 6 song set we’d been working on for many weeks. Rankin and I were in the control room, Teddy was out playing the B3. At last we were done! As Teddy came inn thru the soundlock doors, I was rewinding tape and had my fingers on the buttons using FF to slow the tape from rewind. Now, keep in mind that a reel of 2” tape weighs nearly 50 lbs. The rewind and fast forward motors had probably come from a Maytag washer originally. They were brutishly strong and not “refined”. This was, afterall, an Ampex MasterMuncher 1100!

So it was that Teddy was at the threshold of success and expecting back slaps a beer and probably a line. What he got was an enormous shower of 2” tape! I had done the unthinkable and taken my eyes from the remote. Instinctivley, I placed my finger where I thought the FF button would be. Too bad too! ‘Cause I hit the Play button instead. The reels went from 90 to 0 MPH in an instant resulting in tape flying uncontrollably upwards and outwards in large 2” ribbons resting after it’s flight, on Teddy’s head. He should have had a hard hat is all I can say! He was yelling with his hands covering his head, dancing in the doorway, looking like a modern day tar job ready for the rail out of town!

After a few moments of witnessing this horror, my “cat like” reflexes kicked in and I jumped from the chair and gingerly put my hands on the reel flanges to slow them to a stop. I knew that if I had applied the necessary pressure to actually stop them I would have the hands of a pineapple picker and two broken wrists. At last, the reels came to rest.

With both hands still on the reels, I turned to my right to see Teddy in quite a tangle and trying to extricate himself from it. I turned to my right and saw Rankin with his hands over his face (I could practically see the dollar signs mixed in the smoke coming out his ears!). He stood up and said, “I gonna go get me drink. When I get back this better be fixed” and departed the studio.

Teddy and I set to the task of manually winding about 1000 feet of tape back on the reel. But to do so meant getting all of the twists out if it. The good news was that the tape had not stretched too badly…the bad news was that it looked like wrinkled tin foil. Teddy and I set lengths of about 100’ out at a time and straightened and replaced the tape. We were both in a sweat. It took us about 90 minutes to do all of this. I got the reel on the machine and threaded the tape thru the heads and guides. Fortunately for me, the back tension on the MM1100 is quite exceptional and as the tape played thru the first time the back tension acted as a clothes iron might and smoothed the tape fairly well. By the time Dave got back with a good heater and a partial bottle of Jack Daniels, we’d fixed the mess. He was relieved, and boy, so was I.

Would You Like Mustard With That?

“Gordon, Is that a drop out I hear?”

“Seems to be Robin”

“Well, gimme another track and let’s see if it happens again”

It did. We had a bad piece of tape. Something that in the early days was fairly commonplace but by 1984 had all but disappeared. Quality control during manufacture of recording tape was excellent. Even still, and as a precaution to Drop Outs (or sections of tape where the recorded sound denigrates), we would cut the first 12” or so of tape off of each reel and sticky tape it to the inside of the lid of the box that hold the tape for storage. Along with this remnant were the batch numbers.

So I razor bladed the section of tape out of the troubled drop out area and we sent it off to 3M for analysis. Went along out business and forgot about it actually.

Weeks later we got a new roll of tape (at $150-175 we appreciated it) from 3M along with an explanation of the drop out. It seems that it was caused by mustard. We knew that it happened during the manufacturing process as it was a virgin piece of tape. 3M wouldn’t elaborate further, and so, we speculated, that during the slitting process to make the various widths of tape (from ¼” to 2”), Mr. QC must have indulged in a ham sandwich while overseeing the process. Quite illegal as all the work is done in a clean room environment. Oops!

Am I  There Yet?

While working at The Plant Studio, Room A, I had an opportunity to say hello to Bill Graham. I stepped out of the control room into the lobby and there was Bill, finishing a phone call at the pay phone. I’d been in the same room as Bill on several occasions, but it wasn’t like he knew me by name. He held up a finger as if to say to me, “Hang on a Sec, I’ll be right with you.” He hung and said to me, “So YOU are Robin Yeager! I keep hearing about this guy Robin Yeager and I couldn’t put a face to the name. You’re getting some good buzz on the street!”  Aw shucks, Bill. Can you tell me if I’m gonna get over the top soon?

Nonetheless. Leo had started the College for Recording Arts. It was attended by thousands of young people over the years. All hoping to break into the recording business somehow. Frankly, I had always received so many resumes from its students that I didn’t take Leo or the school very seriously. When my own teacher, Dr. Richie Moore, started to work there I noticed an improved image. Richie was a great teacher and had the PhD to prove it. He taught for Leo for several years while doing other recording sessions at studios and doing tech work for the Plant in Sausalito.

When the time came for Richie to accept his drug habit and seek professional care, he asked if I would sit in for a couple of semesters to teach his classes.  I said sure. I got my license from the State of California to be a private school instructor and was awarded the studio classroom of the school. Sort of the jewel of the school if you will.

For years. Leo touted the school as the latest in State of the Art Recording. Whew Boy! That would require quite an imagination. The year was 1993.

The first image of the control room was circa 1970. I immediately recognized Richard Beggs’ Quad 8 console that he had in the basement Zoetrope studio. Altec Lansing “Golds” were the monitor of choice. What’s this? A genuine Stephens 16 track 2” tape recorder/reproducer (as they were billed), with no remote control! The outboard rack consisted of some Putlec EQ’s, a couple of Dueces, some LA-3 UREI compressors and I think there was a Digital Reverb (boy howdy!) from Yamaha.

The students were there. My mind was racing at how I would make a recording TODAY! It’s time to teach. I took the students through the console explaining how it was laid out. The mic pre-amp at the top lets the signal into the console, it must be attenuated to the correct point to maximize the signal to noise ratio of the circuitry of the console. Next is the Equalization section followed by Effects or Cue sends used for headphone feeds or in mixdown for effects feeds. Then the channel fader which sends signal to the state of the art Stephens. The patchbay links all of the equipment in the control room and the microphone inputs from the music room into one central place allowing access via ¼” patch chord to anything your heart desires. Etcetera.

We proceeded to the microphone selection in the music room. I instructed them on the names, types and uses of each mic. We had a lesson in how to coil cables correctly and incorrectly. I have been known to fire assistants that cannot coil cables correctly.

Thusly we continued. I instructed the class on how to align a machine and that this is to be done on a daily basis before each and every session. Upon putting the Standard Reference Laboratories (actually a dub of an SRL tape!) alignment tape onto the Stephens, I noticed exceptional amounts of “Flagging” in the meters. This usually indicates a transport problem or worn playback head. I said nothing but kept on.

In our next session class, I had invited Vince Ebo to come in. I enjoyed this part of the teaching. To expose the students to friends of mine that were really talented. Vinnie, as always, was the charm champion and was so patient with the students. However, we needed to punch-in and fix a mistake. This was very difficult on the old Stephens and required quite some maneuvering on the part of the recordist (in the days before remote controls, a guy ran the machine. He was the Recordist). When finally we got the punch-in done correctly, we played it back. We heard the former mistake, play back simultaneously with the new take. Uh-oh, Houston we have a problem. We ended up recording a new track of Vinnie’s voice recorded from beginning to end, no punch-ins. Naturally, Vince was so talented that there was no mistake anyway!

The problem with the deck was that the “Head Stack” or all three of the heads (erase record and playback  in that order) were badly worn from years of tape scouring their faces. I told Leo that the heads needed to be lapped (the process of renewing the worn metal of the head if there’s enough metal left) and gave him John French’s name and address as the best in the business. But there was a problem. There was not another 2”  16 track headstack available for the old Stephens (which had long since died as a name brand). What would I do for the next several weeks while there was no headstack? AHA! There is a 1” eight rack head stack for the old Stephens. Okay great! I’ll just teach my State of the art Recording class about multitrack recording using a 1” 8 track format instead of 2” 16 track.

But wait! We don’t have any 1” tape in the house! Well, says I, go buy some! Oh no! We’re not authorizing the purchase off 1” tape for $75.

Dear reader, I know that you will find this unbelievable, but it is so true. I, Robin Yeager, in the interest of completing a recording will do most anything. I’ve even claimed that I would use rocks to monitor instead of speakers, IF I REALLY HAD TO!!

I had a class to teach, and a session to record. I used 2” tape on a 1” headstack. It worked great, because when the next semester came around, I just turned the reel of tape over and fed it thru. Thereby recording two semesters of material on one reel of tape. One semester went one direction. The other semester went the other. I thereby saved the school countless dollars, while impressing my students with the resourcefulness of a true engineer.

Thank you, I think.

Outro-

In 1976 I was working on some overdubs with Peter Rowan of the Flying Burrito Brothers. We were in the Mill Valley studio. Peter’s wife was in labor with their child, when he got a creative urge to finish a track. He came over Mt Tam from Stinson Beach, brining his 1” 8 track tape he recorded in Japan while on tour. I put the tape up on the Otari 7308 and pressed PLAY.

As you may be aware, it is customary for the engineer to advise the musicians that the tape is rolling by opening a talk back microphone and saying “Rolling”. The musician(s) will hear in their headphones the track mixed with their performance, or in the case of recording Basic (or Rhythm) tracks, will hear themselves play live.

Peter was sitting next to me while I proceeded to listen for the first sounds from the recorded tape, done in Japan. I have never forgotten what I heard. With all apologies to Japanese people speaking English as a second language. The engineer opened the talkback to “slate” the recording and said:

“Roaring”

Thank you and goodnight.

DUNCE MUSIC-

I was in my office tending to some of the business that I tried to take care of on a daily basis. The phone rang and Julie (or “Jewels” [because they were]) answered it. She was experiencing difficulty understanding the voice on the other end, but in time, determined that a prospective client was on the line. She gave me a “Here ya’ go” and forwarded the call to my desk.

A man with a middle eastern accent was matter of factly telling me he would like to record some “Dunce Music”. I let it go, trying my damndest to understand him while at the same time pretending I knew what Dunce Music was. He was really yaking it up while I was trying to interpret the actual reason for his call. I asked, “What kind of music?”, he replied “Dunce Music” and kept right on talking.

He inquired as to the rates of the studio, the gear we had and other normal questions of a prospective client. I very politely inquired once again, “You wanna record what kind ‘a music?”, “DUNCE MUSIC”   a litlle stronger of voice as though maybe I couldn’t hear him.  I was racking my brain. You gotcher Rock, yer Soul, yer Country (and back then you added the word “Western” after Country), yer Punk Fusion MOR (Middle of the Road) etc., WHAT THE HELL IS DUNCE MUSIC!!!

I could no longer take the suspense and, thinking it was a Middle East thing or just a NEW thing, I asked the gentleman, “I’m sorry, I am not familiar with Dunce Music. Could you explain it to me?”

(Very frustrated) “DUNCE MUSIC, DUNCE MUSIC. WAHN,TU, TREE, POUR, DUNCE DUNCE DUNCE!!!!

Ah, DANCE MUSIC! Yes I know it well. We have recorded a great deal of Dance Music here at Tres Virgos.

In a related story….

I was working with a very gifted producer of Disco music by the name of Michael Cruz. The  label was called Moby Dick Records. Not coincidentally, it was a record label producing music for the Gay Disco scene of the early ‘80’s. What a wild bunch of guys!

The producer asked me to bring up the “Pea Soup” of the mix. Do you remember many pages back I mentioned that descriptive terms of music are very subjective?

Gordon had a blank look on his face. I’m afraid I had an equally blank look. The Pea Soup of the mix? “Yeah! You know, the hihat!”  “Wassat? The hihat? Pea Soup?” “Yeah. The Hihat sounds like ‘peasoup-peasoup-peasoup-peasoup’” . Okidokey, more pea soup coming up.

TECHNICALLY SPEAKNG…

I referred earlier to the outboard equipment rack we had at Tres Virgos. It was modest, but functional. A few of my favorite tricks:

Using an insert, patch the kick drum into the Dynamite Rack and process it with full on RMS limiting. This has the effect of putting a vacuum cleaner hose between your eyes with each and every beat. Lovely!

The old Lexicon Prime Time (which I still have) was the best device for putting a “Chorusing” effect on a bass. As a stereo unit the engineer can control the left side independently from the right (I think it might have been on of the first true 2 in x 2 out. Actually there were four out, but for purposes of explanation…). By setting the left side to 45 milliseconds (ms) of delay and the right to about 95 ms, then vary the return to each channel via the sliders on the front face of the unit until you get this HUGE chorusing sound.

Steve Evans was playing bass on a session when I discovered this. Naturally, he’d been listening on the phones while cutting rhythm tracks all day. I was bored and was playing with the outboard rack being careful to monitor only in the room (and on the near field monitors [Auratones] to prevent unforeseen disaster). When I found this sound it reminded me of the sound of a B-27 Bomber when the propellers get out of sync. You know what I mean? That phasing sound that happens on multiple propeller aircraft (if the reader is old enough to know what that is!).

When Steve came in to listen to the play back he was unaware of this effect. Gordon hit PLAY and I thought Steve was gonna need new shorts! He couldn’t determine where the sound was originating from in the room! He was running around saying, “It’s everywhere, it’s everywhere!”. And by golly, it was!

The Marshall  Time Modulator was a very dangerous piece of  equipment. It was an all analog multi effects box that could shread your monitors in a heartbeat if you didn’t know what you were doing. I always insisted that anyone using the device be CERTAIN to work it on the “Li’l Shits” or Near Field monitors for this express reason. If it took out the Li’l Shits, it cost less to replace ($100) than the Bigass Monitors (UREI 813, $3000/pr), plus the wattage was considerably less (500w vs 3000w).

Steven St Croix was the mastermind behind the unit.  I could make it ping-pong delay, phase and flange, even sequence a note so that it spiraled up the scale and then back down. It was a very trippy box. The problem with it was that you might think you were finished setting it to do an effect, and contentedly go about your engineering duties. Several moments, or even minutes later a sound would start to appear in your monitors. Maybe something as innocent as chirping birdie, or as dastardly as a T-Rex howl. Thing was, you had no idea of what swamp this thing was crawling from and why the hell it had chosen you to bite! Due to the analog circuitry of the unit, a mis-guided signal would develop in logarithms more complex than their new Digital brethren. There were few of us that had the perspicacity  and daredevil willingness to use the box, lest our reputation might suffer.

THE DUECE-

 Ah, what a miracle piece of equipment is the UREI LA-2. So simple to use with it’s two knobs and one large meter. A warm and wonderful sounding compressor that works equally well for a lead vocal, bass, tambourine. No matter what signal was being fed into it. The processed signal is dynamically compressed ever so slightly when gain reduction of –3dB or less is used. Or, hard limit the signal at –7dB or greater, never allowing it to get up off of the mat (for broadcast this was an acceptable approach.) I wish I had one here in my office just to look at.

With the advent of digital sampling came a crippling problem. Many of the early digital sounds used in Roland, Oberheim and Yamaha keyboards were developed by close miking the source sound. While they impressed us with their uncanny reproduction of the real sound, they lacked what I call “air”. It was like listening to a drum (strings, guitar, etc.) in an anechoic chamber. To recapture the quality of sound traveling through air and vibrating a microphone diaphragm, I frequently would use an old trick. Using an Aux send on the console, I would send the signal(s) needing “air” to the studio room monitors. I would set up  two quality microphones about 15’ back form the monitors and 15’ apart. I would return the room mics back into the console and bring them into the overall mix. This gave the sampled sounds a more believable quality.

Of course, in today’s music no self-respecting engineer or producer wants anything to sound believable. I can’t believe the preamp distortion, phase problems and stupid mix tricks that are in recorded music now. You know why? Few of these people know what their doing with their $299 recording studios in a box! AMF-YO_YO! Knuckleheads.

JUST WHO IS BARRY MANILOW?

I worked a session with some of the guys that back Barry Manilow. We were all involved in what we were doing, but as a matter of course in the control room, there is a constant banter. I don’t know who these guys were or even what they played in Barry’s Band. It would have been an entirely forgettable session if it weren’t for one comment. The fellow was saying that working for Manilow is akin to working in Ray Charles’ Band. Ray used to charge his sidemen for each mistake they made on or off stage. Barry is a perfectionist (most great entertainers are!). When this sideman made a consistent mistake during rehearsals, Barry sliced him to bits by saying “ Do you know why you are working for me? Because I am the talent that the people come to see. It is my name in lights out there on the marquee. It is my music that makes people buy my records and come to see my shows. You will play the music as I have written it, and you will play it perfectly each time. DO YOU KNOW WHY?? BECAUSE I’M BARRY FUCKING MANILOW!! THAT’S’ WHY!!!”

Johnny Colla

A great group of talented musicians known as “SECRETS” had been doing well around here. My friend Mark Karan (now with Bob Weir as guitarist for RatDog) and singer David Pew were the core of the band. At the time, Huey Lewis’ band was kicking around clubs and backing Elvis Costello on his albums. Huey was starting to get some recognition. His sax player , rhythm guitarist and songwriter was Johnny Colla. Johnny is one of the nicest people you’d care to meet, and very talented. He lived in a nice apartment just a block or so away from my house in Novato. He drove an old Camaro that had a habit of stranding him at all the wrong times. He was producing the Secrets recordings that I was engineering as album quality club demos and/or whatever. One night he got to the studio with a large color graphic wrapped in brown paper. He asked if we would like to see the new Huey Album Art in it’s final form. He pulled out the graphic and I recognized the bar at the 2 AM Club in Mill Valley (“The Deuce”) that we had all frequented too many times. At the bar were seated Huey, Johnny, Mario, Bill and keyboardist (?). The title read “SPORTS”. We all admired it and hoped this would be the one to put the band over the top. Presently, we got back to the job of making a multi-track recording by overdubbing vocals.

At the end of the night (about 4:30 AM), the old Camaro was too stubborn to start. I offered Johnny a ride home which he gratefully accepted. On the way he was saying, “I’ve got a couple of good tunes on this album. If it makes it over, I should be set. I am “that” close to having my life change for good. But it’s so weird that I don’t know for sure if it will change. Will it? Or will this be just another attempt that gets some attention, then goes away?”

About six weeks later, Johnny and his wife moved out of the apartment into a very nice yet modest home in the Wild Horse Canyon area of Novato. Whenever I would see him after that, he would always greet me with such enthusiasm and friendship. Thanks Johnny.

Theodore “Teddy” Straton

I honestly don’t know where to start with this guy, accept to say that to this day, we are heartfelt brothers. He and his wife Julie both worked with and for me. Julie was my secretary in the office and had a set of pipes that could sing so sweetly or growl so fiercely. Ted had been regular session cat with us for his expertise at the Hammond B3 organ, as well as other keyboard expertise. He was originally form Atlanta and still had a good thick accent almost 20 years after living here on the west coast. He came out west with fellow southern boy Les Dudek . They recorded an album for Capitol Records in LA and went on to gig around afterwards. Ted and I met through a man by the name of David Rankin. Dave had hired a number of session guys to help him with his songs. He had a beautiful home on the mountainside of Mill Valley and the place was used as pre-production rehearsal hall, crash pad and office for Dave’s Stock Market trading. 

It was one of Dave’s sessions that presented one of the most hilarious moments in my recording career. We were recording a song called “I live in the USA” at John Altman’s Studio on Judah Street in San Francisco. John was the proud owner of the Dead’s old MM 1100 Ampex 24 track. It had been modified to fit in a mobile recording van for live shows and was mounted on a frame made from ½” steel box beam. John had wired up a remote control for the machine allowing the engineer to control the play, FF, and rewind functions of the machine. John was careful to instruct me on the idiosyncrasies of the button placement. You see, he had placed the buttons in an unusual configuration, unlike the “Standard” sequence of (l-r) FF, Rewind, Stop, Play and Record.He told me to be very careful and to look at the remote each time when using it. The transport of an MM1100 (MM stands for Master Muncher in the control room vernacular) was very harsh on tape. If you were to hit Play while Rewinding, the machine would instantly react rather than slowing down and coming to a stop first. This was hard on tape as it stretches it into wire.

We were in a jovial mood as usual, but especially so because this was the final overdub of a 6 song set we’d been working on for many weeks. Rankin and I were in the control room, Teddy was out playing the B3. At last we were done! As Teddy came inn thru the soundlock doors, I was rewinding tape and had my fingers on the buttons using FF to slow the tape from rewind. Now, keep in mind that a reel of 2” tape weighs nearly 50 lbs. The rewind and fast forward motors had probably come from a Maytag washer originally. They were brutishly strong and not “refined”. This was, afterall, an Ampex MasterMuncher 1100!

So it was that Teddy was at the threshold of success and expecting back slaps a beer and probably a line. What he got was an enormous shower of 2” tape! I had done the unthinkable and taken my eyes from the remote. Instinctivley, I placed my finger where I thought the FF button would be. Too bad too! ‘Cause I hit the Play button instead. The reels went from 90 to 0 MPH in an instant resulting in tape flying uncontrollably upwards and outwards in large 2” ribbons resting after it’s flight, on Teddy’s head. He should have had a hard hat is all I can say! He was yelling with his hands covering his head, dancing in the doorway, looking like a modern day tar job ready for the rail out of town!

After a few moments of witnessing this horror, my “cat like” reflexes kicked in and I jumped from the chair and gingerly put my hands on the reel flanges to slow them to a stop. I knew that if I had applied the necessary pressure to actually stop them I would have the hands of a pineapple picker and two broken wrists. At last, the reels came to rest.

With both hands still on the reels, I turned to my right to see Teddy in quite a tangle and trying to extricate himself from it. I turned to my right and saw Rankin with his hands over his face (I could practically see the dollar signs mixed in the smoke coming out his ears!). He stood up and said, “I gonna go get me drink. When I get back this better be fixed” and departed the studio.

Teddy and I set to the task of manually winding about 1000 feet of tape back on the reel. But to do so meant getting all of the twists out if it. The good news was that the tape had not stretched too badly…the bad news was that it looked like wrinkled tin foil. Teddy and I set lengths of about 100’ out at a time and straightened and replaced the tape. We were both in a sweat. It took us about 90 minutes to do all of this. I got the reel on the machine and threaded the tape thru the heads and guides. Fortunately for me, the back tension on the MM1100 is quite exceptional and as the tape played thru the first time the back tension acted as a clothes iron might and smoothed the tape fairly well. By the time Dave got back with a good heater and a partial bottle of Jack Daniels, we’d fixed the mess. He was relieved, and boy, so was I.

Would You Like Mustard With That?

“Gordon, Is that a drop out I hear?”

“Seems to be Robin”

“Well, gimme another track and let’s see if it happens again”

It did. We had a bad piece of tape. Something that in the early days was fairly commonplace but by 1984 had all but disappeared. Quality control during manufacture of recording tape was excellent. Even still, and as a precaution to Drop Outs (or sections of tape where the recorded sound denigrates), we would cut the first 12” or so of tape off of each reel and sticky tape it to the inside of the lid of the box that hold the tape for storage. Along with this remnant were the batch numbers.

So I razor bladed the section of tape out of the troubled drop out area and we sent it off to 3M for analysis. Went along out business and forgot about it actually.

Weeks later we got a new roll of tape (at $150-175 we appreciated it) from 3M along with an explanation of the drop out. It seems that it was caused by mustard. We knew that it happened during the manufacturing process as it was a virgin piece of tape. 3M wouldn’t elaborate further, and so, we speculated, that during the slitting process to make the various widths of tape (from ¼” to 2”), Mr. QC must have indulged in a ham sandwich while overseeing the process. Quite illegal as all the work is done in a clean room environment. Oops!

Am I  There Yet?

While working at The Plant Studio, Room A, I had an opportunity to say hello to Bill Graham. I stepped out of the control room into the lobby and there was Bill, finishing a phone call at the pay phone. I’d been in the same room as Bill on several occasions, but it wasn’t like he knew me by name. He held up a finger as if to say to me, “Hang on a Sec, I’ll be right with you.” He hung and said to me, “So YOU are Robin Yeager! I keep hearing about this guy Robin Yeager and I couldn’t put a face to the name. You’re getting some good buzz on the street!”  Aw shucks, Bill. Can you tell me if I’m gonna get over the top soon?

Mix Magazine Ad 1982

Original Logo by Andrew Feskes, aka "The FLying Buttocks"

Bob Morris.Bass, Cody Ryan (KTIM) Foreground. Old TVS Mill Valley

Old TVS Mill Valley Wall, Music Room,
by Bob Morris

Original Line Card '75

Robin Yeager @ Charlie Mize House 1972

 Otari OTR 3808 1" * trk