Ocean Way Recording began in a garage in Santa Monica, California, in 1968, as a place to showcase owner Allen Side's custom monitors. From these humble beginnings the empire expanded to include partnering with Bill Putnam and acquiring his United Recording Studio in Hollywood, and building state of the art recording facilities in Nashville, St. Barths, and nearby Sherman Oaks. The Ocean Way "brand" also includes Allen's high-end (and excellent sounding) monitors, a unique and affordable microphone, excellent UAD plug-ins, drum samples, and even an iPad/iPhone app. Allen is also well known for being a meticulous engineer/producer, having worked with such artists as Phil Collins, Green Day, Eric Clapton, Faith Hill, Wynonna Judd, Beck, Mary J. Blige, Ry Cooder, Joni Mitchell, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, André Previn, Michael Jackson, and Frank Zappa. He's also well known for leading the charge on reclaiming classic tube mics and gear that was being abandoned in the '80s; he has probably listened to, and evaluated, more microphones than most of us ever will. Not long ago Allen sold Ocean Way Recording in Hollywood, where we met for this interview, and it has now reverted back to the original United Recording name.
Ocean Way Recording began in a garage in Santa Monica, California, in 1968, as a place to showcase owner Allen Side's custom monitors. From these humble beginnings the empire expanded to include partnering with Bill Putnam and acquiring his United Recording Studio in Hollywood, and building state of the art recording facilities in Nashville, St. Barths, and nearby Sherman Oaks. The Ocean Way "brand" also includes Allen's high-end (and excellent sounding) monitors, a unique and affordable microphone, excellent UAD plug-ins, drum samples, and even an iPad/iPhone app. Allen is also well known for being a meticulous engineer/producer, having worked with such artists as Phil Collins, Green Day, Eric Clapton, Faith Hill, Wynonna Judd, Beck, Mary J. Blige, Ry Cooder, Joni Mitchell, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, André Previn, Michael Jackson, and Frank Zappa. He's also well known for leading the charge on reclaiming classic tube mics and gear that was being abandoned in the '80s; he has probably listened to, and evaluated, more microphones than most of us ever will. Not long ago Allen sold Ocean Way Recording in Hollywood, where we met for this interview, and it has now reverted back to the original United Recording name.
How many studios did you own a few years back?
At the peak of it, I had a lot of studios. I had what was Cello Studios and is now EastWest. I had the United and Western studios as one complex; we had nine rooms there. Then we had Record One, which had two rooms. We also had Ocean Way in Nashville, which had three rooms, and then Ocean Way St. Barths in the Carribean, which is one very nice room. That was the peak.
What years were those?
I sold off the Western building maybe 12 years ago. I wanted to keep my A and B — Bill Putnam's original classic rooms — intact. That was most important to me, so I kept all the United rooms, Record One, and St. Barths, of course. Ocean Way Nashville was a pretty fabulous place. It's three rooms, about 22,000 square feet. It was an 1850s, pre-Civil War, gray stone church and rectory building. We tied the buildings together with glass corridors and made a big tracking room, which has four huge isos with skylights and windows. You can track an 80-piece orchestra in that room. The other room is a big tracking room, and there's another big room downstairs. On the third floor there's a fantastic roof garden with a nice lounge. It was very successful, and then Mike Curb, one of our good clients, was about to do a big donation to Belmont University to build a new recording center. We were two blocks from the campus. There's never been a studio attached to a university like that, especially with that kind of equipment. We ended up making a deal with them. My staff stayed in place and stayed involved. It was a partnership between the university and myself to continue Ocean Way the same way that it was when I was there. I work there fairly regularly, and my speakers are still there.
So it still runs as a commercial studio, but there are also students working there?
Yeah. Occasionally it's more of a commercial studio, and if there's dead air time, the students can use the place. Because it's so gorgeous, there are a lot of musical events done there. With Ocean Way in Hollywood, I made the decision about a year and a half ago to get rid of the main room there. Our focus is manufacturing high-end speakers and selling them all over the world. We do microphones and sample libraries. We're involved with the UAD Ocean Way Studios [room modeling] plug-ins. We still do studios "to go." For years we've done studios in houses for Rick Rubin. We'd set up a house in Laurel Canyon with discrete Neve consoles. We'd acoustically treat each room so that it sounded good. We still do that. We've done these in Switzerland, and all over the world.
Do you have a huge warehouse or something?
We have a big warehouse. I still have probably one of the largest mic collections in the world. I only collect things if I love the way they sound. I don't collect things because they're rare or esoteric. If they don't do something for me sonically, I'm really not interested.
You started all this by building speakers in your garage?
The music business as we know it has changed. I probably recorded 30 to 50 albums out of my garage studio. The music business then was just ripping. We built the original studio as a demo room for my loudspeakers — I didn't really build it with the premise of being a studio to record music. I needed impressive sounding material to play on my speakers. I needed music that sounded dramatic. Only a handful of recordings sounded like that. At that point, I had been doing recording for five or six years. My first studio was under [Santa Monica's] Pacific Ocean Park amusement park, and I opened that up in 1968. Then I started building the garage around '71 and opened it up in '72.
How big was this garage?
It was a three and a half car garage with beam ceilings. It was a very nice garage. That was out in Santa Monica, on a street called Ocean Way.
Hence the name!
It was a very happening place, but finally the neighbors reached the point where it was too much. We were working into the night. Bill Putnam and I had become close friends, and when [his United Recording's] Studio B here became available I ended up renting that from him. We rebuilt that, and it became our Studio B. It wasn't long before I took over Studio A and Studio D.
This was a period where Bill was starting to focus on building recording equipment as well.
Exactly. Sonically, he and I came from the same place. Bill would come down to my garage, and he loved my speakers.
What was the impetus for making speakers? Were you looking for something that would give you what you wanted to hear?
I was a musician, but I always loved great-sounding speakers. I'd even build my own bass amps, and I had all kinds of various speakers I'd built. I used to buy a tremendous amount of old theater speakers. I started experimenting with tri-amping, building my own crossovers, and different amplifier/driver combinations. I built up some fairly nice sounding speakers. I think my speakers in the garage were pretty shocking-sounding at the time.
People forget how limited the options were back then.
There weren't very many options — a couple of [Altec] 604s? I was running a tri-amplified system that went down to 20 Hz and up to 25 kHz. It wasn't harsh; it was big, open, and airy sounding. Musicians would walk in for playback, guys like [drummer] Harvey Mason, and they'd be shocked. For me, as an engineer, the best part was after I recorded the track and they walked in for the playback. I don't think there's such a thing as a rough mix. It should sound like a finished record from the time that people walk in the door. The 'verbs, effects, delays, and whatever you're going to do; I have it all prepped up while I'm tracking. By the time they walk in, I've got the mix where I think it's in the range.
It feels happening.
With Bruce Swedien [Tape Op #91], when we were doing all of the Michael Jackson records, that's always the way it was. Of course, there were unlimited budgets. When Bruce was at Record One, he'd have both rooms going, and sometimes a room here too. He'd put up a mix. It might have been a triple 24-track mix with all the effects, delays, and everything set up. You'd come in, and they'd overdub on it. Then he'd go to the other room and have the song set up the same way. He'd have them take the one song down and put the next one up. Everything was recalled, and every note was taken. Every time they walked in, it was a finished record that needed one more percussion overdub, or one other little thing. Michael would stand there and tell Bruce what he wanted to add. He was extremely hands-on on delivering content. When we built Record One's Room A; that was really for Michael. I think they were doing Dangerous. They wanted some really interesting speakers that would be very fun to listen to loud, so I built this big system. When they were doing Thriller, they had started at Westlake [Recording Studios]; then they started doing drums, strings, and choirs over at Ocean Way. Once they came over here, they pretty much moved in. Quincy did Back on the Block at Record One, and they started doing all the records there from that point on. So I built this big system for Bruce. I think he won three consecutive Grammys for Best Album of the Year in that room.
Where is Record One located?
It's in Sherman Oaks. After Michael finished, Dr. Dre moved in. 50 Cent, Eminem, and all of those records were done there. That A room is Dr. Dre's. Basically, Record One is his home.
You don't see that much in the industry anymore, where there's that solid, blocked-out booking.
Well, he celebrated his billionaire status on TMZ in the living room of Record One. Record One has two beautiful studios, but there are also big living rooms with fireplaces, kitchens, and office suites. It's more like staying at a lovely private home. Dre's been there for a while.
So you're still the owner?
Yeah. What happened with the studios in Hollywood was Sunset Gower Studios, who owned about $400 million in Hollywood real estate, really wanted my parcel because it sits on the front door of their lot. I'm very good friends with the owner of the lot, and Ocean Way brings a certain thing to the lot that they value. It was a perfect situation for me, where once again I ended up making a deal where I sold them the assets and we have a licensing agreement to maintain Ocean Way. Basically it's an agreement where they pay me so much to still be involved with it. My staff is in place, and really everything stays the same. From my standpoint, I'm cashed out rather comfortably.
At some point you have to think about retiring.
Yeah. I'm still working constantly! I own this building, and the one next door where Canon Film is. I ended up selling the building to Sunset Gower to put Canon in there. I also sold this building to them. My friend, Rickey Minor, was about to build a studio over at the Paramount lot, but I told him that he should take a look at this. He had just finished up the [The Tonight Show with] Jay Leno, and was going back to American Idol. He had done the show during the peak, when it was immensely successful, and then he left to go to ...Leno. On Idol, we'd typically work three 14-hour days where we'd cut 11 songs in one day. We'd do all the overdubs and everything else. Then we'd set up three vocal [tracking] setups at the hotel where the kids stay so that they can do vocals simultaneously — there are three vocal coaches.. We cut tracks, and then when we get really good rough mixes, we send them over, and then they send them back over here [for us] to do backgrounds. We have a room at Ocean Way where we're usually doing backgrounds and strings. We mix it all on Monday, it's mastered at Bernie's on Tuesday, and it's up on iTunes at noon.
That's crazy. I never thought about this end of the process for American Idol.
What we do is the finished album version. They do a live minute and a half version at the show, but the arrangements are worked out here. The tough part is that obviously our versions are pretty slick. Some of these guys are pretty good singers, but they're not necessarily ready to do it 100% live.
I told someone the other day that if they'd been out on the road for two months, the vocal takes would go a lot easier.
Right. How many times have we done the album where we do the album first, and then you hear them out on the road, and it's ten times better than the song that we recorded? They figured out how to make it work.
It's part of the game.
So now our main manufacturing plant is in Burbank, where we manufacture all of our loudspeakers and have a warehouse for all of our equipment. I actually live out in Santa Barbara. Rickey and I work constantly. We had Stevie Wonder in here last week. This album I did with Dave Koz [The 25th of December] is all duets with vocalists. I got a lot of great artists on there.
I assume that many years ago you started picking which things you'd like to work on as an engineer.
Yeah. Of course I've worked on some projects that were like, "Oh, my god. This is as painful as it gets."
We've all been there.
Exactly. I've definitely paid my dues. I've worked two lifetimes worth of hours. Sleep wasn't an issue. But I've worked with some amazing artists and had some real highs, musically.
I looked through your AllMusic credits, and it's ridiculous.
That's probably not even a quarter of it. I think of all those amazing records we did. We never took any pictures.
We're always focused on the music. We're not documenting with photos.
We didn't actually start taking pictures until some years later. I think that we figured there was in excess of a billion albums sold out of those studios. Ocean Way has been here in Hollywood since 1958. Capitol Studios is the same thing. They opened at almost the same time this place did.
There's an insane amount of history.
One time I was walking down the hallway here and Don Was was standing there. I think he was with George Harrison and Ringo, because Ringo was doing his record in B. It was like, "Oh, hi!" It's crazy. We had a couple of Rolling Stones' records, and on one of them I think they went through a thousand reels of 2-inch tape. There were endless slaves so that each [band member] could go off and do their own work on different areas, and then they'd comp it together. 3M used to fly me in this lovely private jet out to their hunting lodge. I think I was the biggest buyer of 3M tape in the United States at one point.
You've seen the arc of this business. We hear all these horror stories of studios closing.
If you look at what the studio scene was in the '80s, in a typical studio, say that the rate was $1,800 or $2,000 a day for the studio. The rate today is about the same as it was then, sometimes less. But with the rooms we have, as well as the mics, we tend to get a better rate because you can't do it anywhere else. There are a finite number of places that can do what we do. Generally they're more than happy to pay the rate, because they're only going to be there for a day or two of tracking, mixes, or strings, or whatever else they're planning to do there. Sometimes we get some long projects that come in. But, back then, we'd have a waiting list. Sometimes there would be four or five holds on a room. It wasn't really a question of being booked. It was only a question of being able to fit everybody in. You'd have certain producers who were your best friends, as well as clients, and they'd be like, "Of course you can get me in, right?" It was a tough thing. I had all these great clients who came through; an endless list. Typically, every session was dual 24-track. It was $500 a day for a 24-track machine [rental]. If they were doing Dolby A or SR, or something, it was another $250 or $500 a day. Before you knew it, including the tape and everything else, it would be $2,000 a day, plus another $2,000 for the studio, so people were paying $4,000 a day. It was a 12-hour lockout, but a lot of time they'd go into overtime, so I'd end up going into two, three, four, five or six hours of overtime. Now you're talking $5,000, or $6,000, a day for one room. Also, if you look at that period of time, the records were making so much money. They were mainly concerned with getting things done right and as quickly as possible. The record companies were kicking ass. Then all that disappeared. Pro Tools came in and the rates started dropping because there was a lot of competition. Budgets got much tighter, and the cost of operating went up exponentially. For instance, say my electrical bills here in 1981 were $1,800 a month. Now they're $8,000 a month. Our insurance, like workers comp and medical, went from $8,000 a year to $55,000 a year. At one point we had a hundred employees. The cost of doing business has quadrupled, but the actual rate is no different than it was in 1981. At a place like Ocean Way, we have huge rooms and important Hollywood real estate. We had six full-time technicians, incredibly well trained seconds [second engineers], two runners for every room, and a fantastic secretarial staff. Our clients expected a very high level of service. It was like staying at the Four Seasons — everything was immaculate. Every mic was perfect. Because we tended to specialize in the more esoteric gear, you'd come into our place and the Fairchilds [limiters], the [Teletronix] LA-2As, or the Pultecs were in perfect condition. Every EMT [plate reverb] was tweezed the right way. It was a different level of performance. The engineers and producers were very demanding. Now people are infinitely less demanding, because most of us don't even have technicians on staff. If something breaks, you just apologize. Because we still do orchestras, we have to have a high level of maintenance.
