When did you start and why, and were you schooled or unschooled?
Unfortunately, I'm remarkably unschooled. I actually studied psychology in college, but I should point out that my father was a HAM and I was around this all the time. I had great fun in my childhood blowing stuff up, just because I was playing around with electronics. I had an aptitude toward it but I didn't think it was going to be my profession. I know it's weird how these things work, because I wanted to be a rock star.
Yeah, don't we all...
Well, I'm a has-been. I actually quasi-succeeded. I was in a band called The Heaters and we were on Capitol Records — they put out two albums. I was there for the first one. Actually, I did the second one, but that one wasn't released. The third one, which would be the second one the public saw — I had the brains to be out of the music business by then. We only racked up half a million dollars in debt and were going strong.
No way. Really?
Oh yeah. Well, you know back then the record companies had lots of money to burn on new bands, and they did.
And about what year is this?
I joined the band in 1974 and was out of there by 1980.
What did you play?
I was a guitar player and of course I was tampering with my amps. I built the PA system and before that I was service manager at Shelley's Stereos. I always wound up in electronics. It was my destiny.
Obviously.
I was building Heathkit amplifiers and Dynakits and piddling around with them even back then. I had a friend by the name of Paul Rivera in my Heater days and he didn't want to diddle with my amps himself, he'd just tell me what to do over the phone. So I was tweaking with my stuff even back then. During that period I built and ran a mobile recording studio. I was using a Tascam 8-track and my Tascam board. It was called Tiny Truck Recorders and we basically recorded stuff at the Whisky and places like that for bands that I was friends with, The Heaters or my brother's band. It was kind of fun.
So you basically started more from the amp side?
