Daily Archives: 2009/02/12

Me and Russ did some bookings for them, and waited and waited; I can’t remember if we cut any tracks?

Maybe some of you remember; a new black Lincoln Continental, two-door, all leather. He let me and mygirlfriend use it when he went to LA for the weekend; what a great slide and what a typical Wally
gesture ( which insured showing up and paying attention, which was also a Wally trait).

I must have been to 245 earlier, only Russ and Ginger would remember. I do know in 1969, I worked on Quicksilver Messenger service “Shady Grove” with Dan Healey, and “Baby’s House” with Steve Miller band with the great Glyn Johns. I did some work with Russ; he taught me the basics, and it helped me become a real engineer. I’d known about “slap back” echo and “re-injection”, but Russ made it a signature with Creedence Clearwater.

Now that I’m logged in, I’ll start gathering my thoughts, It was quite some time ago: I was one of the first employees at 245 Hyde, a young rookie from Seattle. I knew about Wally from his LA operation, but 245 as new to me. I applied at every studio in SF, turned down at all of them. Wally’s studio had a stack of applications a mile high, I pretty much gave up on my career change and was getting ready to head back to Seattle, tail between my legs.

The next day the phone where I was staying rang, it was Mel Tanner; a engineer (I think his name was George Hernandiz (sp?) had hurt his back at a Jefferson Airplane date the night before, Wally took my application from the top of the stack and I was hired, knowing nothing about the big time, but my foot was in the door! More later, M

I’m thinking I joined around November of 1969, Al Schmidt was doing the Airplane, with Pat Ieraci as second.

Studio “C” was the only one open, the rest were being completed. What a exciting time! The staff was me,

Russ Gary, George Herdandiz, Ginger Mews, Mel Tanner.