Walk, Don't Run by Steven Jae Johnson

Author:Steven Jae Johnson [Johnson, Steven Jae]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Memoir, Entertainment
Publisher: Kallisti Publishing
Published: 2015-03-25T13:26:24+00:00

11

He’s So Fine

Joey stood behind the two lead recording engineers wondering how much longer he could stand being low man in the studio. He had confided those feelings to me in his recent letters, and his frustration was clear. He knew everything about recording and was a gifted musician to boot. Now he wanted more.

“I’ll be right back, Dell. We’re out of tape.”

Dell waved his hand as Joey left the studio. Dell Stewart and Glen Cross were busy attending to business over a large recording console. The Hit Factory in New York City, located in the four hundred block of West 54th Street, had become over the years one of the best studios—if not the best studio—to record for the elite of rock and roll show business. The state-of-the-art equipment that occupied this recording castle was the best money could buy. The deep, red-carpeted room was a maze of microphones, a Yamaha Grand Piano, and small portable walls (sound baffles) that could be moved by one person to control loud sound and music bleeding into other microphones. Joey’s letters made it sound so amazing, I could only hope that we might record there one day.

Tonight, the room was crowded with the equipment of a band sent over by RCA Records, one of the Hit Factory’s usual accounts. There was a set of silver Rogers’ drums, a Fender Classic bass, a Gibson hollow-body electric guitar, and a Farfisa portable keyboard that stood on silver legs.

A four-piece blues group was recording. The bass player, Chucky, a two-hundred-and-eighty pound linebacker-gone-musician, was concentrating very hard on not messing up another take.

Joey walked back into the control room carrying a large white box of blank eight-track recording tape. On the side and the top of the fresh new box appeared the word “Ampex.” In a business-as-usual style, he took the tape out of the box and threaded one of the two eight-track machines. One was recording the band while Joey was threading the other. The part Chucky was playing was sounding solid. The other members of the band were sitting at their recording positions, but not playing. Nodding their heads in silence, they were completely mesmerized by the magic of the music they just recorded. Some were smiling, some were concentrating.

Without looking back, Dell, the head engineer, spoke up loudly over the music track where the part was being mixed.

“Joey, turn the highs down two notches on track six.”

Joey turned, took one big step from the tape machine to the recording board, put his right hand out to channel six’s fader switch, and lowered it. He pointed his head toward the double unit of JBLs hanging from the ceiling. Listening for a minute like someone hearing a message from the “other world,” he moved his head to the left and said, “Good.”

Glen, who had both of his hands on fader switches, glanced one quick look toward Joey and grinned. “Primo.”

This procedure had all the earmarks of master surgeons at work in the operating room. The three-man team worked perfectly.

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