When were you born?
In 1951. I was born in L.A. and the family moved to Orange County when I was about five. I had an uncle up in L.A., and when I was ten years old, I went up to spend time in the [San Fernando] Valley with him for a couple of weeks. He had a Voice of Music stereo tape recorder. I say he was my uncle, but he was only two years older than me.
More like a brother?
Yeah. He was friends with a bunch of guys from school who played music. We went over to one of these guys' houses and these boys were sitting around playing music. My uncle said, "Let's go get the tape recorder and record what they're doing." So, we went to get it and the mics it came with. I didn't know what to do, because I was ten years old, but we recorded a bunch and it sounded pretty good! Over the two weeks that I was there staying with my uncle, this is what we did almost every day. I loved it. I knew nothing, but it was fun! I went back down to Orange County, and I explained to my mother that it was necessary for me to have a tape recorder.
Necessary.
Necessary! [laughter] My neighbor had almost the exact same Voice of Music recorder, and they didn't use it. They said, "You can't have it, but take it and use it." My brother played drums. He was five years older than me, and he was playing in bands. He would practice. I said, "Mike, can we go in your bedroom and record?" I fell in love with the idea of recording.
Did you end up setting up some sort of studio at home?
I became hungry for technology. I wanted more. In the apartment building where my grandmother lived was a guy named Charlie Weber. He was a professional sound engineer who worked mostly for Disney. I would visit my grandmother and go upstairs to the apartment he lived in. He gave me a foundation on how all this nonsense worked. He taught me about microphones and signal path. I even helped him record the organ at the newly-built Angel Stadium. Within a week or so after that, my uncle called me up and said, "You know those guys that you recorded last summer? They're making a record at a studio called Western. Would you like to come along?"
Wow!
I mean, forget school. Forget life! I was gone. Somebody drove me up there. I was in Western One, which is a great studio. I remember I walked in just totally blown away by the whole scene, and I talked the ear off the engineer. I must have driven him crazy. But the weird thing was, because of the time I'd spent with Charlie, I asked questions as this 11-year-old kid, like, "So, that's the new [Ampex] AG-440?" They had an AG-440 4-track. He said, "Yeah." I said, "Yeah, I've only used the [Ampex] 350." He replied, "What?!"
“Who is this kid?”
Yeah! I spent a couple of days with these guys, watching what was going on, and then I went and talked to the studio manager. I said, "I'd really like to learn about this," and he said, "You're welcome anytime." That's kind of what happened. I don't want to give the impression that I was going to Western every day after school. It didn't work that way.
Well, you didn't live that close!
Instead, what happened is they introduced me to a guy who had a secondhand sound recording business. Jerry Cubbage owned Coast Recording Equipment Supply. The idea was that I should have a recording setup, we should work out how much it was going to cost, and then I’d go out and earn the money to do it. The decision was an Ampex 600 recorder and a couple of mics, one Ampex MX-35 mixer, and a speaker. All of this equipment would cost $500 or $600. For an 11-year-old kid, it might as well have been a million dollars. I needed to get the money! So, I'm Jewish, and the center of our social life in Orange County happened to be the synagogue. I go to the rabbi, and I said, "Do you think any of the people that are getting bar mitzvah-ed would want a recording of their ceremony?" He said, "Yeah, probably." So, I ended up with a business. I was charging $150 per event! I was recording weddings, bar mitzvahs, and speeches at the Kiwanis Club and at the Lions Club. I was at the Anaheim Convention Center, recording conferences, and I was 11 years old! So, it didn't take very long before I had two MX-35s and a bunch of mics. I really didn't know what I was doing, but I had Charlie upstairs from my grandmother. Once every month or two, I would find myself up at Western. I built this portfolio, and that got me money, which allowed me to buy equipment, which allowed me to record bands. Then Western decided to open up a studio in Orange County. I turned up one day just to see what was going on. They said, "Good! An extra pair of hands." For two or three weeks, I was there helping them get the gear in and wiring it up. There was some guy named [Bill] Putnam there doing bits and pieces, although I never had a chance to speak to him in any meaningful way. Now, on top of kind of knowing vaguely how to do things in a recording studio, I got an insight into how the studios were actually put together. I tried to emulate, in my bedroom studio, what I had seen. Interestingly enough, the quality of the recordings went way up!
Was there anyone of note that you recorded in your home studio?
