Overview: In the seventies, Record Plant studios was at the heart of the largest boom in record production in music history. With studios in New York, Los Angeles, and Sausalito, and a fleet of remote recording trucks, Record Plant was everywhere there was music.

In 1976 alone, three #1 albums ― Stevie Wonder’s Songs In The Key Of Life, the Eagles’ Hotel California, and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours ― were all recorded in Record Plant studios.

Based on the memoirs and archives of studio cofounder Chris Stone, and interviews with over one hundred studio employees, music producers, and recording artists, Buzz Me In narrates this previously untold story of classic rock ’n’ roll as the authors received it from industry insiders working behind the iconic studio’s locked doors, alongside the great rock stars of the twentieth century.

Verdict: In what is a rather comprehensive, dutifully detailed, thoroughly engrossing, wonderfully recanting, and therefore insightfully written book, Buzz Me In: Inside the Record Plant Studios is a book that ALL self-professed so-called audiophiles need to have under their collective roofs.

Written and compiled by two seasoned, and at times hard-knocked journalists in both Martin Porter and David Goggin (aka Mr. Bonzai), overall what we get here is an elegantly packaged summary of such an incredible recounting of musical histories that certain chapters strike you as just so absurdly unattainable to the average joe that to read how things went down, how things came together is the equivalent of the reader attempting to put together a large jigsaw puzzle ... blindfolded ... and in a hurricane!

I mean, sure, the big picture is there to be viewed now, all these year later, the pieces all spread around on the sidelines, just waiting to enter the musical fray; the bigger picture, the scene becoming more set with each and every passing historic moment, but just how this incredible story of the evolution of Record Plant Studios, tape by tape, and of the hits that were manufactured there seeps out is as mind-blowing to read today as I can only hope it was to have had been there witnessing it all back then.

The story opens on New York’s West Side in 1968 with the recording of Jimi Hendrix’s third and sadly final studio album Electric Ladyland, and then as Record Plant Studios expands (to LA) so does this story, as next we get to peek into the time when Stevie Wonder produced his greatest hits, before turning left and heading to Sausalito where Sly Stone, Bob Marley, and Fleetwood Mac encamped.

And all this was happening whilst John Lennon made New York his post-Beatles home, and the Eagles conceived Hotel California while working in LA. Indeed, each narrated location showcased the founders’ proven formula of combining state-of-the-art audio, fantasy bedrooms, and group Jacuzzis, with sex, drugs, and celebrity jams.

But I digress, because yes, it all began with Jimi. Gary Kellgren (American audio engineer and co-founder of The Record Plant Studio) built the world’s first living-room-style recording studio on the West Side of Manhattan in 1968, and the success of the album Hendrix worked on their (Electric Ladyland) launched a recording studio empire.

Music industry demands quickly fueled the studio’s expansion out west, and a fleet of concert recording trucks soon followed. The rest, as they say, is history.

We get so many snippets of history here that it boggles the mind at just how many superstars of the day trod the halls of these brick buildings. One time Chris Stone (formerly a regional sales manager at Revlon) went to visit Kellgren at Mayfair Studios, walked right in and came across someone banging away under the lid of a piano. He walked up to him, tapped him on the leg, introduced himself and asked to speak to Gary.

Stone was greeted with a looks-could-kill stare from the hippie with a big head of hair and a Fu Manchu moustache and who demanded to know, Who the hell are you?”and who then added, “Listen I’m Frank Zappa and I’m recording here. So get the hell out!” Stone didn’t know who Zappa was so he continued asking for Gary. Zappa lit a cigarette, took a sip of coffee, shrugged his shoulders and muttered “Get lost”, before diving back into the piano.

Zappa had been working there on the soon-to-be-released third concept album We’re Only In It For The Money. Funnily enough, and even though Stone was only there to look over the studio’s finances, quickly realizing that it was a massively profitable business to be had, Zappa himself used to sit in on some of these meeting and it was he who actually told them both not to do it, and warned them away from making what Gary had any bigger (due to his own personal failings, as we now know).

This book, simply put, is true studio history at its mighty fine finest, of that have no doubt. For as you have hopefully already picked up on, during its most formative years in the 1970’s (and, to a smaller extent beyond), Record Plant Studios was the mecca for one landmark album after another to be created.

About the Authors - Martin Porter is an author, journalist, and publisher who began his career as a technology writer/reporter in the mid-1970s for Rolling Stone, GQ, and Premiere magazines. As editor and publisher of Pro Sound News, EQ, Guitar Player, and Surround magazines, he has been one of the leading chroniclers of this golden period in music and audio technology.

David Goggin, aka Mr. Bonzai, is an award-winning author, photographer, and music journalist. Together the authors manage the popular Record Plant Diaries Facebook page.

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