Hyde Street Studios

The Early Years - Page 4

CSNY ended up doing most of their tracks and many keeper vocals for the record in San Francisco, although the credits for the album didn’t mention the SF studio at all (and neither did the track sheets). During the CSNY sessions, Studio D opened up in back. D was an exact replica of Studio 3 in Hollywood, and one of the first uses was to record Jerry Garcia’s steel guitar overdub for CSNY’s “Teach Your Children” (keeping the live recording setup intact in Studio C). As the other rooms became double-booked, Studio A saw the installation of it’s new Quad Eight console, supervised by the legendary Deane Jensen.

It is a little-known fact that before CBS records took over Coast Recorders to be their west coast facility, they leased studio D for 12 hours a day for a year on a priority basis, and if it wasn’t needed by CBS it could be booked for use by regular clients. Although we do know that Santana and John Hall used studio D a few times, most of the work done in that room for CBS seemed to be artists we’d never heard of and the mainstream CBS artists would use the studios they always used, with the addition of CBS union ‘minders’.

Meanwhile, 1970 turned out to be a year of diversity for the studio. Studio C hosted Norman Greenbaum with Eric Jacobson producing “Spirit In the Sky”, later Eric would product the cutesy “Mill Valley” with some grade schoolers. Jazz producer Ed Michel brought in Cliff Coulter to record “East Side San Jose”, and later Clifton Chenier - The King of Zydeco and Bill Evans, the late keyboard genius. Nick Gravenities produced Brewer and Shipley’s “Tarkio Road” which included the deliciously infamous “One Toke over the Line”. Steve Miller returned for his “Number 5” album. Paul Butterfield did a few sessions and a studio musician scene started to develop with regulars like Jack Shorer, the late John Kahn, Mark Naftalin, Zakir Hussain and Mike Bloomfield. Ali Akbar Kahn recorded variations on the Prophet for CBS TV and Tom Jans and Mimi Farina recorded 4 songs for their A&M album.

Seals and Crofts came to Studio D in 1970 with producer John Simon and recorded “Down Home” backed by Harvey Brooks and John Hall. Producer Jerry Goldstein and manager Steve Gold brought in their new act into Studio C on a weekend deal this year; Eric Burden and War cut almost two albums worth of songs in two days. The band was obviously well rehearsed and Eric too was quite loose - he was reported to be tripping heavily on LSD when singing the one take live rap in “Spill The Wine.” The Grateful Dead came to record “American Beauty” and stayed around to help David Crosby make “If I Could Only Remember My Name”. This record was the first of many spontaneous events at 245 Hyde Street – with the artists dropping in each other’s sessions - an effect that David Crosby dubbed “cross-pollination”. Later that year, Jerry Williams and Nils Lofgrin both recorded albums in Studio D, produced by Neil Young producer David Briggs.

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