Where are you from originally, and how'd you first get into music?
Virginia. I had started playing guitar very early. I was near the age of 11 when my parents bought me an inexpensive Stella guitar. The strings were high above the neck and it was difficult to play, but I had a feel for the instrument and was able to pick easy tunes quickly. I witnessed my first rock 'n' roll show when I joined the auditorium stage crew at Newport News High School, where I worked backstage and in the sound booth for school plays. The stage crew also worked on music shows traveling the circuit performing in the high school auditoriums. Standing in the wings, I saw artists I heard on the radio perform their hits and musicians sporting greasy haircuts, with Fender Stratocasters and cranked-up amplifiers. I couldn't get enough of Scotty Moore's guitar playing, and I attempted to learn all his fantastic licks on my Stella guitar with every subsequent Elvis Presley release on Sun Records. Eventually, my band, the BonneVilles', biggest gig was a live concert/radio broadcast from the Coke Arena in Danville, Virginia, which featured special guests Bobby Rydell and George Hamilton IV. The BonneVilles were good, but we only played hits of the day. In August '62 I decided to go to California; I was determined to form a new band out there and be in the music business.
How'd you get into actual recording?
Sometime after arriving in Long Beach, California, I started recording my new rock 'n' roll band – Lloyd Terry & the Victors, in which I was a guitarist – onto a Sony 2-track reel-to-reel in my small garage that the group used for rehearsal. Using the band's very good-sounding Bogen tube mixer, I could mix four mics at a time.
What was the recording workflow used then?
On the first pass, I would send the mono output of the Bogen to one channel on the Sony. Then, on the second pass, using the sound-on-sound technique, I'd add another three mics along with the other track that had been pre-recorded to track two on the Sony. Later, I got a [Berlant] Concertone tape deck – a Japanese copy of the famous Ampex 350, some better McIntosh consumer gear, and a second Bogen mixer. I saw a schematic for something called a "limiter" in Popular Electronics magazine, and I built one, attached it to the output of the Bogen, and it was a very nice improvement in the sound. My echo was the same 1963 Fender tube reverb unit that I played with my Fender Showman amp.
What was the first nice mic you had back then?
A Philips Norelco condenser mic became my drum mic and was used for most overdubs and vocals.
Was there any acoustic treatment?
A little bit. Mainly hanging blankets and some old carpets. I did build a control room in the corner of my second garage, a 2-car garage, when I had more room.
When was the moment you decided to get serious about recording professionally?
I had a day job selling records at Morey's Music Store on Pine Avenue in Long Beach, where Carol Kaye [bassist from the Wrecking Crew, Tape Op #45] used to teach guitar. She had just graduated up to the big leagues, and of course became well-known for her bass playing. I met my wife there too, who worked in the billing department. It was the beginning of 56 years of marriage! I moved into another place in Long Beach with a larger 2-car garage, and that's where I started to get a little more serious [about recording]. I took all my technical questions down to Les Barcus, and his business partner, John Berry, in a local hi-fi store. They [Barcus and Berry] were developing a recording technique using no microphones, and while it wasn't ideal for vocals, and drums sounded a bit funny, it worked wonderfully for stringed-instruments and piano – a precursor to the modern-day direct box! The line of Barcus-Berry products began at that hi-fi store in Long Beach. I soon became a U.S. Postal Service mailman down by the beach, and I would finish my mail route and be in my garage recording later in the day. We [Lloyd Terry & the Victors] played lots of gigs with the "Never on Friday Club" in those days, whose mission was to rent hotel ballrooms for parties on Friday nights. We played for large audiences until 2 a.m. at various hotel ballrooms up and down the Southern California coast.
Wow.
I lived to play music, but it was the nighttime bar band work during the week that was really dragging me down. At the time, those bars were smoke-filled places, and I would be totally wiped out the next day. I had to get up early – about 6 a.m. to be at the post office by 6:30 a.m. – and most of the time I carried the mail and a headache! I was happy to advance my recording techniques as much as possible. I started recording a lot of other people besides my own band, and when my recordings started to sound a bit more professional in my second garage studio, some good word-of-mouth took over from there.
Were you getting paid?
For the local guys that we knew in the Long Beach scene, there was no charge. We all did it together. However, when people that didn't know us started knocking on the door, they paid the till.
What are some of your favorite sounding recordings from around that time?
Mainly of our band [Lloyd Terry & the Victors] or playing with a couple other good singers – we started to make some good recordings. Some of the [self-produced] recordings we did inspired some producers in L.A. to want to take us up to Hollywood to record there. There was a fellow, Stan Silver, who had long been interested in Lloyd Terry's musicianship and songwriting capabilities. Some of the recordings from my garage caused him to ask us to come up and cut some songs in Hollywood. Lloyd Terry & the Victors went up to do a surf instrumental at United Western [Recorders] – Bill Putnam's place.
And you did a session around that same time at Wally Heider's Hollywood studio?
In 1965, James Decker, the legendary French horn player who had been recorded by Wally many times when the big-bands and orchestras recorded at United Western – and was the father of the Decker brothers [who played in the Victors] – arranged for us to record at Wally's new studio at the corner of Sunset and Cahuenga in Hollywood, with Wally himself as the engineer! I met Wally for the first time during that session.
How did you get more studio experience after all that?
Somehow, I learned that George Fernandez, one of the famous Gold Star studio engineers, had built a brand-new studio on Grand Ave. in Santa Ana, called United Audio Recording Studio. It was just a couple blocks from Don Randall's Fender Sales office. Bill Medley, of the Righteous Brothers, maintained an office next door to the studio. I went to visit George one day, and they were already doing sessions. The top panel of the console was not even installed yet! He said, "Well, I can't pay you, but if you want to come in and learn this, I'll be glad to have you." So, I jumped on that opportunity. One day, Medley was in, recording for MGM. It was my first pro session as I assisted George Fernandez. I did do quite a lot of work at United Audio in Santa Ana, and honestly never got paid for any of it. I got pretty worn out going back and forth from Long Beach to Santa Ana, and then carrying the mail during the day too. I decided I would try to find some paid work on a staff somewhere in Hollywood. The first time I made the rounds up there I found no success. The second time, however, I took along some of my very best recordings from Santa Ana to audition at Wally Heider's and was hired to be on Wally's staff in L.A.! That was in March 1968.
As 1969 rolled around, Wally Heider's San Francisco operation was getting under way.
San Francisco sure had its day, and it was – in my opinion – a small market, but high-volume while it was in full bloom over that time. I had recommended that Wally hire George and bring him up to San Francisco, and I would still be the second engineer to George Fernandez, who would be Wally's heavy – Wally called all of his mixers "heavies." Anybody that had recorded real good music and had a few hits became a heavy. I made several trips up to San Francisco in late '68, helping run cables, solder microphone lines into the different rooms, and work like that. Prior to opening, George Fernandez finally came up and assumed the position of "Head Mixer." Well, in San Francisco it was a totally different recording experience both for George and for me. It was San Francisco in a very liberal environment, and it got very busy. George was used to the L.A. method – you come in, you book three hours, you work hard, session over, mixed. Well, they didn't quite work that way in San Francisco. George did the first sessions in [Wally Heider Studios'] Studio C in March '69, but then something went down between Wally and George – I never knew exactly what – and George was no longer at Wally's. Wally said, "Russ, you're the mixer now." It wasn't too long after George had departed, and then things started with other local bands like Joy of Cooking and Clover – that was a group I worked on for Fantasy Records and my first association with them. Of course, they were very happy to see us up there because Creedence had just started to make big money for them, and we were across the Bay Bridge from Oakland. They could bring over tapes they did in their small Oakland studio to Heider's to be mixed with our much nicer equipment and echo chambers. I started doing a lot of that work, but mostly after I had done my first Creedence session there, in about March 1969.
Studio C had a certain sound on all those records.
Wally was a disciple of Bill Putnam, and built Studio C in San Francisco to the exact dimensions of Studio 3 [United Western] down in Hollywood. Wally had booked time in L.A. at Studio 3 and took measurements of the tracking space, the control room, and everything. That room [Studio C] was upstairs and it had a cement floor; carpeting was spread over the entire floor, and it had some different wall and ceiling treatments than the other studios. And that studio – the acoustic treatments and everything – were designed by a fellow named David Mancini (Devonshire Studios, North Hollywood), and some people thought he was Henry Mancini's son! I learned, later, that he was not. But, that room [Studio C] stood alone, as it had its own little bit of magic. Sometime later, I had recorded Blue Cheer in there, perhaps the loudest band in rock 'n' roll history. They were so loud we could hear them throughout the entire building after they amped up and started playing, so that prompted Wally to re-build Studio C a little bit. He elevated (floated) the floors with some additional airspace. That helped a lot.
When did Creedence come in?
One day we went in to work and there was John Fogerty standing in the hallway. Wally took him around and showed him Studio C. Wally introduced us and we scheduled a single session. I had no idea what song we were going to do, but it turned out to be two instrumental pieces ("Glory Be" / "Broken Spoke Shuffle"). In effect, it was a test session for the band and Fogerty to see how things sounded in that room.
These songs came out years later as bonus tracks on some album re-releases.
During the Green River albums sessions, a short time later, there was one cut that never made it to the album release, and I can't remember what that one was.
