Three weeks after graduating from San Francisco State College in June of 1977 I found myself working at Filmways/Heider Studios in Hollywood. The job paid minimum wage and in those days you could still rent a place in Hollywood on that salary. Ok, a little overtime was required, but we were all young and eager. We couldn’t get enough of it.

While I was ecstatic much of the time, the place was riddled with contention. There were the Heider people and the Filmways people, each having a different view of how the company should move forward. This small family oriented recording studio was now part of a large corporation and people just didn’t like the shift. We had walls lined with certified gold. Ray Thompson was a legend and each week Ray, Biff Dawes, Dennis May and Paul Sandweiss would storm the studio. They would grab all of the best gear and off they would go to record another great live album. Bones Howe was also legendary. He and son Geoff were producing sessions with Ahmad Jamal and Tom Waitts. However, the tide was turning. Filmways wanted to start cutting pre-records for all the television specials. It was a transition few welcomed. It would be fair to say that most of us who had signed on at Wally Heiders were there for the music sessions not television. This tension formed at boundary lines. The television work seemed to live at the recently purchased RCA studios while the records were staying up at studio 3 and 4 where CSN and Wings records had been cut. My first errand run into an actual session was for John Haitt’s Slug Line sessions engineered by Bill Halverson.

My stepfather was amazed I could land a job, move to Los Angeles all without the blink of an eye. He said “now, that can’t be the same Wally Heider who used to record dances around Portland out of the back of his station wagon?” I said with pride, that Wally Heider had studios in both San Francisco and Los Angeles and two trucks that moved coast to coast every week!

I finally moved up to working nights when the studios were in full swing. I still have fond memories of engineers like Mike Lietz, Peter Granet, and of course Geoff and Bones Howe. They would often talk about the good old days “when Wally ran the place”. It was a common phrase “When Wally was here . . .” Wally was a mystery. He was clearly a legend. The younger guys like myself would marvel not only at the stories, but also at the care in which they were shared. Ray Thompson or other members of his crew had the best ones. Wally was always spoken about with enormous respect. He had given all of these guys their start and life around the studio almost seemed unbearable without him.

By 1978 most of these engineers were “freelance” and had started to distance themselves from the Filmways people now taking the company in a new direction. I worried that I had joined the company a few years too late. As the new Filmways folks seized power the mere mention of Wally was fronded upon. I think he was banned from the studios, but somehow, had kept an office on the second floor where some equipment and tapes was stashed.

One night around three in the morning as I sat watching the phones there is a struggle at the lobby door. Yikes, it’s three in the morning and if it was a second, on the hunt for a mic, he would always call first. Anything to get the mic on it’s way as fast as possible. Nobody arrived unannounced. The door bursts open and with a huge grin on his face a man says “ Hello, I’m Wally Heider!” Oh my God, the legend! He said he was just stopping by to drop off some things and he quickly disappeared to the second floor. He returned a few minutes later and we sat down with a fresh pot of coffee.

We began to have this amazing conversation about the studio. He was fully aware of the bad blood between Filmways and Heider and seemed to ease my mind about it. He took great care to remind me that it would all work out and that I could still learn from the experience of working here. He seemed to take an interest in me. I was quizzed about music and what I wanted to engineer one day. I felt like I was receiving free counseling from the Master of all Engineers. He reminded me to do my homework and be patient that somehow the politics would come to pass. I got to share with him about how my stepfather had known him in college and remembered him recording dance bands out of the back of a station wagon. He laughed and said that they had both gone to the same college in McMinnville Oregon. He was inspiring. He helped me to understand that my dreams were within my grasp and I never forgot this lesson. I have my share of warm memories from those days. They are always near and dear to my heart. I never saw Wally again, but I never forgot this conversation we shared.

Sean Fullan
New York City
02.28.08