Hyde Street Studios

The Early Years

The Summer of Love had passed two years before, and many not-so-subtle changes were happening in the music business that offered a big opportunity for Wally Heider and the San Francisco music business in 1969. What was experimental in 1966 and 1967 became mainstream popular music by 1968, with the Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Grateful Dead showing up on nationwide radio playlists on both AM and the newer experiments in freeform radio on FM.

Before Heider came to town, there were studios in the bay area such as Coast, Golden State and Pacific High but they were not nearly as well equipped or staffed as facilities elsewhere, so the Jefferson Airplane recorded their first 4 albums, Creedence Clearwater their first 2, and the Dead their first at RCA studios in Hollywood. Moby Grape and Big Brother went to CBS in New York.

Heider in 1969 was an established recording legend in popular music recording, recording many big band and pop acts in the early ‘60s. He also owned and ran one of the most successful independent studio facilities and remote recording outfits in the world. Little is known about his early history, however we do know that he came from Seattle WA., went to law school to please his parents, then spent his early adult life chasing after the Woody Herman band in a station wagon with an Ampex 351 Stereo machine in the back and recording every show.

Wally was a disciple of Bill Putnam, “The Father of Modern Recording”, the man who invented the modern control room and console layout, echo chambers, the UA 175 & UA 1176 limiters, custom consoles and console building blocks such as line and mic amps. Putnam also owned Universal Recording Corp. in Evanston, IL., and United Western studios in Hollywood, CA. Wally was reported to have been an assistant and mixer there for a while and must have made many contacts there for his future business.

Most of what happened during Wally’s “salad days” remains to be speculative (and there are few in his small family and friends who seem to know) but regardless by 1969, Wally was definitely on the top of his game and there was no stopping. Two years before, he had witnessed the big changes in music up front and personal when The Who and Hendrix played Monterey Pop. If you get the DVD, you can actually see Wally at the end of “My Generation” when the drums exploded. He’s the ‘gentleman of size’ running out on stage and saving his expensive Neumann microphones from harm (it should be noted that the Hendrix segment later in the film shows no more expensive condenser microphones at all on stage!)

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