BUZZ ME IN

Inside one of rock music’s biggest production outfits.

While fans are more familiar with the bold-face musicians who flocked to the Record Plant Studios—which quickly expanded from New York to Los Angeles and Sausalito, California—music journalists Porter and Goggin take us behind the scenes where the sounds were created, sliced, and diced. Co-founders Gary Kellgren and Chris Stone, known to industry insiders but not the public, created an environment where everyone from Frank Zappa to John Lennon, who recorded his last album at the Record Plant in New York, could find a home—sometimes literally. The Sausalito facility was especially successful, recording breakout hits for Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Wonder, and the Eagles. The partners, particularly Kellgren, were fanatical gearheads, offering unparalleled aural support systems. Sex and drugs were inevitably part of the package, with cocaine piled atop amplifiers. Infatuated with Hefner-esque excess, Kellgren had a jet-stream Jacuzzi and an S&M  “Rack Room” installed in the L.A. studio. There are wild tales of Lennon locking horns with Phil Spector in L.A. during the making of “Rock ’N’ Roll” and a DEA raid in Sausalito aimed at busting Sly Stone, who was nowhere to be found. (One of the lawmen was more interested in meeting an inebriated Joe Cocker.) Low-key producers like Bill Syzmczyk, who imposed discipline on the unruly Eagles, delivered the musical goods. With firsthand accounts from many of the players, it’s a cautionary tale. Kellgren and Kristianne Gaines, his secretary and girlfriend, drowned in his swimming pool in 1977. After Kellgren’s death, industry technology changed, with home studios and punk minimalism replacing elaborate production values. By the ’80s, the New York and Sausalito studios were shuttered, and Stone sold his remaining shares of the L.A. franchise.

An entertaining dive into a wild musical world.