What got you your start, when this profession was still relatively young?
Well I got out of the Army in 1952, and I went to work for North American Aviation. My cousin was a partner in the studio, Gold Star, and I had known his partner from school days. So I used to hang out there at night because it was a glamorous place to be, although there wasn't much happening at that point — strictly a demos studio.
Is that Stan Ross you're talking about?
Yeah, Stan's my cousin, and Dave Gold is a friend from many years prior. They couldn't afford to hire anyone — they had their wives working as secretaries. After a few months, business was picking up a little bit and they really needed somebody. So we worked out a way where through my GI bill, I could do on the job training, and I could get the money from the government, whatever they could afford to pay me, it was like $30 a week then. It was enough to manage, since I wasn't married or anything... that was the beginning of it.
So were you learning hands-on during demo sessions, on-the-fly? Or was there any experimenting happening at night?
Everything was hands-on. Of course in those days, it was just at the end cycle of recording directly to disc. You know, where you count them down with your fingers, and mouth the numbers and then point at 'em to start playing. So I did some of that.
That was to acetate right? Acetate engraving?
Acetate, yeah. It was generally just a small piano and voice combo, or perhaps with a drum or bass, but nothing of any consequence. Actually, we were doing demos there up until about, oh I guess the middle '50s. The first hit that came out of Gold Star, which Stan did, I believe if I'm not mistaken was [The Champs'] "Tequila". And the first hit record I made there was a little later, with Eddie Cochran.
And that was when the Teddy Bears came in for their first demos right?
Well that was a lot later.
Where did Gold Star stand amongst the other studios in Los Angeles then?
Well up to that point in time, they were at the bottom. Actually, Stan had been working for another studio up until 1950, which is when he and Dave created Gold Star, because his boss at Electro-Vox wouldn't give him a raise. So they started the studio, and that was all dependant on Stan going out and hitting the street and talking to people, you know about coming in and doing it.
Sounds like a pretty classic blueprint for a lot people starting their own studios, after having those types of problems working for someone else. That also really dispels a big misconception of the era. The image of an engineer with a lab-coat was just not really applicable for private recording studios — how people could just come in and start working, without any prior training.
You know, speaking of technical, I always felt that about the process of being a good engineer/mixer, I don't know maybe "engineer" got people into thinking of technical. But I always felt that my job was probably 75 or 80 percent creative, and the rest technical, rather than requiring a large background of training.
What was it about Gold Star that began to attract people?
Part of the reason Herb [Alpert] came to the studio was because of the sound he heard Phil Spector doing. He felt that the studio was going to be more to what he heard the Tijuana Brass being, than Western or United, where he recorded "The Lonely Bull". So yeah, he came there. Those are the things that Herb appreciated at Gold Star, I know that the sound was warmer than the sound at United. Even though Bill Putnam built the console.
He did Gold Star's console right? Was that custom for you guys?
Uh-huh. It was 12-inputs with rotary pots.
Would you say you were you just the house engineer with the storm going on around you in a sense?
That was more or less true, although because of the loyalty to the producer I was working with, there would be some animosity created with other producers who might not feel that way. Phil, as you know, was a very dynamic person, and a lot of people disliked him. After working with him, I grew to love him, but it took a lot of doing to get to that point, and most people didn't get there. Basically the storm was happening around me, I was never involved politically.
Could you describe Gold Star's live room? You've said you wondered how at Motown sessions, they always got the same drum sound, while you had to confront that issue at every session.
Well, in the first place, I've never visited the Motown studio, but Phil told me that they had the drums nailed down in one location, so that they would never be moved. And of course at Gold Star, the room itself was so small...basically we had a 13 or 14 foot ceiling, maybe even 12 feet, a very low ceiling, and the room itself was not big. So the drum sound was always contingent on what the other instruments were doing, 'cause I had leakage that I had to concern myself with. As far as level, a lot of people thought we were running it into saturation. One of the engineers at RCA told me, in trying to go for that sound, he figured it was saturation. And so he ran it in, and it was terrible, obviously! It wasn't saturation — it was just Gold Star. The room itself had the echo chambers in combination with that.
Everything was bleeding into each other in there?
