Record Plant

Recording studio in Los Angeles, California, United States

The Record Plant is a recording studio established in New York City in 1968 and currently operating in Los Angeles, California. Known for innovations in the recording artists' workspace, it has produced highly influential albums, including the New York Dolls' New York Dolls, Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run, Blondie's Parallel Lines, Metallica's Load and Reload, the Eagles' Hotel California, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP, Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction, and Kanye West's The College Dropout. More recent albums with songs recorded at Record Plant include Lady Gaga's ARTPOP, D'Angelo's Black Messiah, Justin Bieber's Purpose, Beyoncé's Lemonade, and Ariana Grande's Thank U, Next. The studio was founded in 1968 in New York City by Gary Kellgren and Chris Stone, who opened a Los Angeles branch the following year and a Sausalito, California, location in 1972. During the 1980s, they sold the New York and Sausalito studios; the former closed in 1987, the latter in 2008. The Los Angeles studio remains in operation. As of 2024, the Sausalito recording site operates as "2200 Studios". The Record Plant in New York was the first studio to give recording artists a comfortable, casual environment rather than the clinical setting that was normal practice through the 1960s. Kellgren and Stone brought this same vision to their Los Angeles and Sausalito properties, adding a Jacuzzi and billiard table. Stone later said of Kellgren, "He single handedly was responsible for changing studios from what they were—fluorescent lights, white walls and hardwood floors—to the living rooms that they are today." The Los Angeles location has since added VIP lounges.

In 1967, Gary Kellgren was a recording engineer working at several New York City studios, including Mayfair Studios on 701 Seventh Avenue at the edge of Times Square, a drab upstairs office, a single room which held the only professional 8 track recording system in New York. There, Kellgren worked with artists such as the Velvet Underground, who recorded "Sunday Morning" in November 1966; Frank Zappa; and Jimi Hendrix, engineering their recordings and also sweeping the floors. In late 1967, Chris Stone was introduced to Kellgren because Kellgren's wife, Marta, was seven months pregnant and scared of the upcoming birth and Stone's wife, Gloria, had just given birth. Mutual friends thought that the two couples could talk about being parents and ease Marta's worry. Though they were "diametrically opposed" in nature (with Stone all business and Kellgren very creative), the two quickly became friends. Seeing him at work, Stone determined that Kellgren was not making full use of his genius for making recordings. Stone noticed that the small studio was charging its clients $5,000 per week, but Kellgren was making $200 per week. Stone suggested Kellgren ask for a raise and soon he was making $1,000 per week. In early 1968, Kellgren and Stone began building a new studio at 321 West 44th Street, creating a living room type of environment for the musicians. It initially used an unusual and innovative 12 track machine built by Scully Recording Instruments and opened on March 13, 1968. When the Jimi Hendrix Experience arrived at the studio, Kellgren engineered the first few dates until Eddie Kramer, the band's familiar engineer, flew in from London. During the production of Electric Ladyland the studio added a new 16 track machine. In 1969, Kellgren and Stone sold the New York operation to TeleVision Communications (TVC), a cable television company that was broadening its portfolio. The purpose of the sale was to gain cash for expansion into Los Angeles with a second studio. The next big mixing assignment that the studio accepted was to mix the tracks recorded at the Woodstock Festival. In 1970, Studio A became the first recording studio designed for mixing quadraphonic sound. The song "Walk This Way" was written after Douglas and the band, without Steven Tyler, went out to see the film Young Frankenstein and were struck by a humorous line spoken by Marty Feldman playing a hunchback. They returned to the studio to tell Tyler what the song's title must be, and Tyler wrote the words on the walls of the stairwell at the Record Plant. In 1978, David Hewitt (Dir. of Remote Recording) and crew of John Venable, Phil Gitomer, Robert "Kooster" McAllister and Dave "DB" Brown built the Black Truck, a state of the art mobile studio. They recorded everyone from Aretha Franklin to Frank Zappa, also expanding the Record Plant's client list in live radio, television and films. Among these recorded performances were the first live MTV concert, the Tony Awards, the Grammy Awards, Live from the Met Opera and the films Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, the Rolling Stones' Let's Spend the Night Together, Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps, No Nukes and Queen Rock Montreal. John Lennon was recording "Walking on Thin Ice" at the Record Plant on December 8, 1980, the day he was shot and killed. Willie Nile was also recording Golden Down at the Record Plant the night Lennon was killed. American pop singer Cyndi Lauper recorded her debut studio album She's So Unusual, one of the most iconic pop albums of the 1980s, at the Record Plant between December 1, 1982, and June 30, 1983. In 1987, the New York studio was sold to George Martin and closed soon afterward.

Seeing the early success of the New York studio, Kellgren and Stone decided to move to the West Coast and open another studio in Los Angeles. To design the studio, they contracted with Tom Hidley, who had built TTG Studios in 1965 and was becoming known in L. A. for answering the high decibel needs of rock music. Hidley was brought on board as the "third musketeer", according to Stone. One of the first employees of this studio was Chris Stone's nephew, Mike D. Stone, who would also work as a recording engineer. On December 4, 1969, the new studio opened its doors on 8456 West Third Street near La Cienega Boulevard. Sometimes known as "Record Plant West", the new studio held a 16 track recorder, larger than the 12 track system in New York (occasionally called "Record Plant East"), and studio time was 20 to 25 percent less expensive than typical studios in New York. Keyboardist William "Smitty" Smith said that there were regular jam sessions of musicians at Clover Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard near Vine Street in Hollywood, but that the increasing number of musicians outgrew the place and the group moved to the Record Plant for more space. Smith was a regular at the Studio C jams, but one Sunday he could not make it and he sent his friend, David Foster, to play keyboards. Foster was so well received by other musicians that he and three others—Paul Stallworth on bass, Danny Kortchmar on guitar and Keltner on drums—formed the band Attitudes. One of the Keltner jam sessions in late December 1973 became known later as "Too Many Cooks". Under the leadership of John Lennon, an all star lineup performed an extended version of the blues song "Too Many Cooks (Spoil the Soup)", with Mick Jagger on lead vocals, Keltner on drums, Kortchmar and Jesse Ed Davis on guitars, Al Kooper on keyboards, Bobby Keys playing tenor saxophone, Trevor Lawrence on baritone saxophone, Jack Bruce on bass and Harry Nilsson singing background vocals. Jagger was uncomfortable stretching to reach the top of his vocal range and he grew unhappy with the progress being made on the song. Journalist Lucian Truscott IV wrote in 1977 that Kellgren told Jagger to "sit on it", ending the complaints. Keltner was working on a solo project by Jack Bruce, formerly of Cream, laying down tracks for Out of the Storm under the direction of engineer and producer Andy Johns; Steve Hunter played guitar. At Burbank Studios on March 28, 1974, a few weeks after the anniversary jam, some of those celebrating at the Record Plant came together again for another jam, also called "the Jim Keltner Fan Club Hour", though it was not hosted or organized by Kellgren, nor was Keltner in attendance. Lennon played with Keys, Davis and Wonder, among others, and McCartney joined in part way through. The raw recordings with their uneven performances were issued as a bootleg album called A Toot and a Snore in '74, the final time that Lennon played with McCartney.

In July 1977, Kellgren drowned in the swimming pool at his Hollywood home. A business associate of Kellgren was in the house at the time; he called police and reported that Kellgren had recently been in surgery and that he had been swimming in the deep end of the pool. Kellgren's girlfriend and secretary, Kristianne Gaines, also drowned. Gaines, 34, a resident of Los Angeles, was last seen alive sitting on a raft in the pool because she could not swim. Guitarist Ronnie Wood wrote that Kellgren probably died of electric shock while trying to fix some underwater speakers in his pool and that Gaines drowned trying to help him. The loss of his friend and business partner hit Stone hard. Stone was suddenly responsible for keeping all three studios operating, but he concentrated his attention on Los Angeles and slowly began to lose interest in the Sausalito location. During the next 13 months, Studio C was rebuilt and fitted with radical new gear. In February 1979, Stephen Stills became the first major label American artist to record on digital recording and mastering equipment, a 3M system installed to replace the previous analog system. With engineer Michael Braunstein at the controls, Stills recorded a new version of the song "Cherokee", previously released on his first solo album Stephen Stills. The L. A. operation expanded further in the early 1980s by equipping more remote recording trucks. In 1982, Stone leased sound stages M and L at the Paramount Pictures studio lot for film sound recordings. Soundtracks that the Record Plant tracked and mixed there included Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Annie, 48 Hrs., and An Officer and a Gentleman. The studio was outgrowing its Third Street location. In January 1986, the Record Plant reopened at 1032 Sycamore Avenue in Hollywood in the former Radio Recorders "Annex", a historic studio where Elvis Presley and Louis Armstrong recorded. In 2006, American artist Beyoncé recorded the songs "Green Light" and "Kitty Kat", in addition to parts of the song "Déjà Vu", from her second album B'Day at the Plant. In 2010, Beyoncé recorded parts of her 4 album at Record Plant. In 2013, although no songs recorded at Record Plant made it onto her self titled album, she recorded the song "7/11" at the Plant, which she later released on Beyoncé: Platinum Edition. In 2015, Beyoncé recorded parts of her Lemonade album at Record Plant, including the songs "Hold Up" (which she later released as the album's third single) and "6 Inch" featuring the Weeknd.

On October 28, 1972, Kellgren and Stone opened the Northern California location in Sausalito, throwing a Halloween party to celebrate Studio A going online. Ginger Mews, ex manager of Wally Heider Studios, was named studio manager of Record Plant, and construction continued on the similarly equipped Studio B with completion expected in February 1973. The legal corporation was named Sausalito Music Factory, doing business in Los Angeles and Sausalito as the Record Plant. Kellgren worked with Hidley to design Studio A and Studio B to have the same size and the same "dead" acoustics and both were fitted with Hidley designed Westlake monitors. The first recording was under producer Al Schmitt, who brought in Mike Finnigan and Jerry Wood as Finnigan & Wood, recording the album Crazed Hipsters. Miles and Donahue promised that their recording business would go to the new studio and that it would be promoted with a live radio show. "Live From the Plant", the resulting radio show, was broadcast on Donahue's album oriented rock station KSAN from time to time over the next two years, primarily on Sunday nights, and featured various artists such as the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, the Tubes, Peter Frampton, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Pablo Cruise, Rory Gallagher, the Marshall Tucker Band, Jimmy Buffett, Bonnie Raitt, Link Wray, Linda Ronstadt and Fleetwood Mac. KSAN, known as "Jive 95", was the most popular radio station for Bay Area listeners from 18 to 34 years old and the Record Plant broadcasts were widely heard. Donahue died in April 1975 after which fewer concerts were broadcast. A notable later radio show was by Nils Lofgren and his band with a guest appearance by Al Kooper; they performed at the Record Plant's Halloween party in 1975. The Record Plant in Sausalito soon became known as one of the top four recording studios in the San Francisco Bay Area, the other three being the CBS/Automatt (now defunct), Wally Heider Studios (now Hyde Street Studios) and Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. In the first year, the studio worked on projects by Buddy Miles, the Grateful Dead (who booked the whole building in August 1973 to record Wake of the Flood), and on Gregg Allman's first solo album, Laid Back. The quirkiness of the studio extended in many directions. For transporting musicians, Stone owned a limousine with the custom license plate DEDUCT, while Kellgren kept a purple Rolls Royce displaying GREED on the license plate. The Grateful Dead and their engineer, Dan Healy, reportedly made use of this feature. Al Kooper said "it looked like something out of Thunderdome." The separation between engineer and musician frustrated Stone and he recorded as much as possible down in the actual pit next to the engineers, lowering a Hammond B3 organ into the pit for his own use or positioning the members of a horn section there. Wyman laid down his vocal tracks from a lying down position, a bottle of brandy in his hand. Most band members complained about the windowless studio and wanted to record at their homes, but Mick Fleetwood blocked this. The band used Studio B with its 3M 24 track tape machine, various studio microphones and an API mixing console with 550A equalizers. Although Caillat was impressed with the setup, he felt that the room lacked ambiance because of its "very dead speakers" and large amounts of soundproofing. In late 1977, 19 year old Prince recorded his debut album, For You, in Record Plant Sausalito while renting a home nearby. He performed every instrument, every track and produced the album. He spent three times his allotted budget to make this first record, and responded defensively when more experienced producers made suggestions in the studio. At the Record Plant, he met Stone, Chaka Khan and Carlos Santana, three musicians he greatly admired. For You was criticized as over produced and did not sell well. Fleetwood Mac's Rumours went platinum in 1977. The band Pablo Cruise recorded two platinum certified albums at the Record Plant, A Place in the Sun (1977) and Worlds Away (1978). Cory Lerios, keyboardist and vocalist for Pablo Cruise, said that in recording "the better part of four albums" at the Record Plant, drug use enabled jam sessions that could last up to 36 hours. "It was a great time, no question," Lerios said. Another platinum album that came out of Record Plant Sausalito in 1978 was Dan Fogelberg's Twin Sons of Different Mothers, a collaboration with Tim Weisberg on flute.

Singer, composer and producer Rick James became a fixture at the Record Plant beginning in mid 1981. He recorded all of Street Songs in Studios A and B and it went multiple platinum, driven by its hit songs "Super Freak" and "Give It to Me Baby". Stone said of the sale, "she bought Record Plant Sausalito because if she owned the studio she could go backstage at concerts." The studio business became known as "The Plant Studios" or simply "The Plant". In 1982, Necochea funded two new Trident TSM mixing consoles for Studios A and B. In order to accommodate the hard rock band 707, studio manager and chief technician Terry Delsing redesigned and ordered extensive acoustic modifications to Studio A. This included adding louvered ceiling panels to control the reverberation characteristics. Studio B's control room was enlarged from and a new studio monitoring system was installed, the Meyer Sound Laboratories ACD, John Meyer's first loudspeaker product. Necochea died a year later at age 23. Jacox selected Jim Gaines as general manager; Gaines was a Stax/Volt veteran and a past manager of the Automatt. After Jacox's arrest, the Record Plant Sausalito studio was owned by the federal government, who ran it with a skeleton crew for 14 months. Some observers jokingly called it "Club Fed" during this time, effective on the first day of 1987. On June 19, 2021, the Record Plant Sausalito's soft launch, its name was officially changed to the Record Factory. As of 2024, the site is open for business as recording studios under the name "2200 Studios".