Introduction
The Early Years
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The Next Step
Turnabout
Unusual Tastes
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The Early Years - Page 6
Mix magazine's David Schwartz worked at Heider's in 1973. “I remember
the day I started. The place was a beehive of recording activity, with four
studios and a post-production room. There were 15 albums being produced at
one time: David Rubinson and Fred Catero had Studio A locked out, working
on five albums, Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, the Pointer Sisters' first album,
Lydia Pense and Cold Blood, the Hoodoo Rhythm Devils and an album by Malo,
Santana's brother.”
“Upstairs in C there were a couple of Airplane/Starship projects, Hot
Tuna, Pure Prairie League, Commander Cody. Tower of Power had been in there
for a year working on what became their biggest record with the tracks ‘You're
Still a Young Man’ and ‘Bump City’. Jim Gaines, Mallory
Earl, Steve Jarvis--these guys were recording as fast as they could.”
“But within five months everything changed drastically. The manager,
Mel Tanner, left the studio and within a month the bottom fell out completely.
It went from being booked around the clock to being empty for a couple of
weeks at a time. The oil crisis, the recession of '73, the record companies'
executive staffs crashing all led to real changes in recording budgets. By
the summer of '73 it was a vast wasteland.”
That allowed some “pro-bono” and budget projects to flourish;
the TUBES did their earliest studio recordings and a live KPFA broadcast in
Studio C and the leftover members of R.J.Fox regrouped to create OASIS and
spent three months in Studio C.