I came to know your work mostly through Tim Lawrence’s book about Arthur Russell, Hold On to Your Dreams [Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992].
Tim did a great job on that book. I'm 73 now, so Tim's book came out around retirement age for me. We may look back now at the ‘70s no wave and think, “Wow! That was an important time for music!” But at the time we were on the fringes. I would work on a disco record that would go to sell millions of copies, and at the same time we were in the studio with groups like DNA or Arthur Russell, who were so obscure to the mainstream. But the way it's worked out is that now that’s what people are into.
The scales of time have balanced it out.
Yeah, the art has triumphed!
That’s encouraging to hear. I caught the tail end of the big studio system, and it was very homogenous and sterile. I was at Sony NYC at the turn of the millennium.
Do you know Dominick Costanzo? We worked together at Delta Recording in 1973. That's how we started out.
Get out of town. Really?
Yeah. We’re still friends to this day. As you know, he went on to be a big cheese in the tech world; maintenance, construction, and all of that. But back then, we were both desperate, young, 22 year olds. I certainly understand what the music business was like in the early 2000s; those monolithic places like Sony or Hit Factory, which was probably the zenith of all that. When I was growing up on Long Island, I was a loner kid, I loved to draw. In school I was in the arts program with the art kids; people who eventually became big deals in the commercial art world. Mark Larson was one of my classmates; he was the art director for CBS and Arista Records. Also Guy Trebay, who until about last year was writing the “Style” section for the New York Times.
How did you end up recording music?
I was always into electronics. I had built a radio station out of my house when I was about 12 years old and had been building recording equipment as well. One of my schoolmates and friends was Michael Altshuler. His father, Robert Altshuler, was a big deal at Columbia Records. Mike said, “I have a basement and a band. Let's do stuff.” So, we put together a recording studio with some RCA microphones in his father's record library. We wound up making some recordings, and I said, “This is cool!” I had no musical experience at that time.
You weren't playing music?
No, I wasn't playing.
But you were building gear?
When Michael and I decided to do this, I built a mixer, and we recorded to 2-track. I figured out overdubbing by listening to records from The Beatles and whatnot. It was eye-opening because there I was, doing this stuff; we were just making it up and there was no Tape Op! [laughter] Another one of my classmates was Deborah Walker, and her father was Saul Walker – one of the founders of Automated Processes Inc. [API]. In 1966 or 1967, we went into the city to the AES Show and entered this obscure world, away from the mainstream kids. I thought, “Okay, so this is how they make records!” I saw these 8-track tape recorders there, and they were all shiny and amazing! The first 8-track I saw was a Scully 284, and they would let us move the controls. I saw this world and I said, “This is for me!” I wound up picking up the guitar and learning it, just doing what I could do. The next step was I went to Woodstock, and I had my mind blown. From that, I wound up moving to New Mexico with a friend of mine who's a drummer. We landed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the winter of ’69/’70. I traded my acoustic guitar for a Fender Telecaster and an amp. I had brought a little Ampex 600 [tape deck] with me, as well as two microphones. We started making some records, and I became an engineer over at the local studio. When Bo Diddley came through town and needed to make a demo, I was like, “Oh man!” I joined a group called Fast Eddie – actually named after a guy called Fast Eddie – and eventually I became his roommate. He was from Lubbock, Texas, so one time we drove out to Lubbock and wound up going into Norman Petty Studios [in Clovis, NM] and I engineered some demos. The studio was mostly Ampex MX-10 mixers, and it had one of those green Altec [436C] compressors, which had the world's slowest attack time! Anyway, I was working with these people and wound up in local bands that backed up some traveling musicians. The University [of New Mexico] would have performances – at the time Route 66 was still a thing – and we would get people like Bo Diddley, Carl Perkins, or Chuck Berry. In 1970 or 1971 these artists were already considered “from the past.”
What got you back to New York?
Two things happened that were important: I was broke, and I needed money! [laughter] Also, I realized that I needed to be in a more mainstream place because nobody there considered what they did important. I know that sounds maybe…
…for some of us it's more of a calling than a hobby.
