How did you come to study electronics?
I saw the Rolling Stones in 1969 on November 24th in Detroit and that's when I knew I wanted to work in the music business. I had taken guitar lessons and I realized I wasn't a musician, but I really wanted to get into the recording or music business. I grew up in Canton, Ohio, and went to college for a year at Urbana University to try and stay out of the draft. After the first two quarters I was going to flunk out. I begged them to keep me in one more quarter and then I flunked out again. Too much partying; not enough studying. I was then almost drafted. This was 1969 -1970. Not knowing if I was going to get drafted or not, I hitchhiked to San Francisco. I was living in the Tenderloin district between Turk and Eddie Streets. Coming home from the grocery store one day, I noticed this one building. It was the only building that looked decent in the whole neighborhood. I knocked on the door to find out what was in there. It was Wally Heider Studios. said, "Give me a job." They said, "You either have to know somebody, or you have to know electronics." I went back to Ohio, and my mother paid for me to go to United Electronics Institute — a two-year technical school that turned out TV technicians. I graduated in January of '72; from there I moved to Florida, where I had friends.
How did you end up working on recording gear for MCI [Music Center Incorporated]?
Around 1973 I got a job at Motorola, in Fort Lauderdale, where they were building pagers at the time. I worked there about a year, but still wanted to get into recording somehow. A friend of mine, Steve Beverly, was working there as well. We found out that there was a recording class at Criteria Studios in Miami given by Karl Richardson, who was a big time guy. He'd later record Saturday Night Fever by the Bee Gees, Average White Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Eric Clapton... and the list goes on. So we went and the first thing out of Karl's mouth was, "We have all MCI equipment here, because they build it in Ft. Lauderdale." Steve and I look at each other like, "They build all that, and we're working at Motorola?" The receptionist took my job application, once a week, for eight months, before MCI hired me. I think she was throwing my
applications away.
You were working on consoles at MCI?
