Any music fan who read magazines like Rolling Stone, Creem and Circus during the ‘70s had an idea of what recording sessions were like. A Fortress of Solitude vibe. Lots of drugs. Massive piles of cocaine on glass-topped tables. Kilos of cannabis stacked like cord wood. Groupies lounging about. Naked girls frolicking in hot tubs. You know. Sex, drugs and rock and roll.
Was any of it true? Yes. All of it. Even the hot tubs? Especially the hot tubs.
At least that’s the story that Martin Porter and David Goggin tell in Buzz Me In: Inside the Record Plant Studios (Thames and Hudson, 384 pp., $39.95). The new book tells the story of the three Record Plant recording studios, where everyone from the Rolling Stones to Tom Petty to Bruce Springsteen spent innumerable hours creating hit albums like Innervisions (Stevie Wonder), Toys in the Attic (Aerosmith) and Rumours (Fleetwood Mac).
The team of authors is well-qualified to address the subject. Both began their careers as music journalists during the ‘70s, with Porter writing for Rolling Stone, EQ and Guitar Player, while Goggin (often using his nom de plume “Mr. Bonzai”) was penning articles for The New York Times, Billboard and the Hollywood Reporter. These guys know their way around a recording studio, and this audio erudition is evident in Buzz Me In. The accuracy of the information contained in the book is the result of the pair’s depth of knowledge, coupled with more than 100 interviews and extensive research.
The first Record Plant studio opened in New York on W. 44th St. in 1968. Around that time, a young audio engineer named Gary Kellgren had begun to attract notice for his work with the Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa. Though mutual friends, he met Chris Stone, a national sales rep for Revlon cosmetics, who believed that with his business acumen and Kellgren’s audio wizardry, they could open a recording studio and become fabulously rich.
As it turned out, Stone was correct. The company soon built a facility in Los Angeles, followed by an enclave in Sausalito. Neither man made it a secret that they were in it for the money. “Both Kellgren and Stone had license plates driving around LA,” co-author Porter explains, speaking via Zoom. “Kellgren’s said ‘GREED’ and Stone’s was ‘DEDUCT.’”
The Record Plant’s heyday coincided with a unique period in the music business. Post-Beatlemania, the dollars were flowing in, demand for new product was unprecedented, and nothing was considered excessive, as long as it led to more hit records.
“It couldn’t have happened at any other time,” Porter says. “They built [the New York studio for] for Jimi. They wanted it to be like a living room, where he could invite people in. And he wanted it to be like the nightclub where he was playing nearby in New York City. So they tailored it to his life style and his work style. And as time went on, they repeated it – to the extreme in Los Angeles – where you could stay night and day. They had three themed hotel rooms that you could rent along with your [studio time].”
The bare asses of countless rock stars and their dates soaked in that tub. The room itself had a prism-like skylight and was decorated with flags from cocaine-exporting nations.”
Much like gambling casinos, the Record Plant sought to create an ambience where the passage of time was not a concern.
“There were no clocks at Record Plant studios,” Porter says. “Kellgren threw the clock away the night they opened in New York City. Time is money. And if you could keep the artist there recording, the money kept coming in. And it allowed you to buy the latest equipment, because there was always a fight. ‘You got eight tracks? Well, we’ve got 12.’ ‘Whooaaaa.’ That was a big deal. We don’t understand that today, when you can have 1,000 tracks – if you want it – on your Pro Tools system.”
At the Record Plant facilities, the artists’ comfort was paramount. According to Buzz Me In, “Record Plant L.A. was the first studio to add a canteen with a candy machine selling rolling papers, free pinball and a Coca-Cola machine filled with 25-cent beers.”
But what about that hot tub thing? Porter and Goggin write that Kellgren wanted to install a swimming pool in the L.A. studio’s parking lot but was persuaded by Stone to install an indoor hot tub instead. “Though hot tubs were already common around town, the new jet-stream Jacuzzi was one of the first units large enough for a party. The bare asses of countless rock stars and their dates soaked in that tub. The room itself had a prism-like skylight and was decorated with flags from cocaine-exporting nations.”
Still, even with such shenanigans occurring on a more than regular basis, the authors maintain that what really mattered was the work done at the studios. Fun was fine, but ultimately the Record Plant studios were dedicated to quality, and they set the standard for record production during the ‘70s.
Porter is adamant on this point. “We always talk ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll.’ All three were at the Record Plant, right? It defined all those things. But in that age there was a fourth element that gets under-recognized. It’s ‘sex, drugs, rock and roll and audio.’ Way before Silicon Valley, way before the computer, analog audio was high-tech.
“We can’t underestimate the fact that, despite the number of attractions that the Record Plant offered for the hedonistic lifestyles of the artists, the number one attraction was state of the art audio equipment that was unique at that period and was brand-new. And was revolutionary. That’s evolved over the last 50 years, to where it can all be done on a laptop. But what’s missing is the creative exchange of the artists. If anything has changed besides the ability for anybody to make a record on their laptop, it’s [that] artists aren’t working in the same room like they used to.”
At this point, Goggin, also on the Zoom call, jumps in. “Talking about camaraderie, I think the story of Hotel California – with [producer] Bill Szymczyk – is a good example of that. Because if you still have your original Hotel California album, if you look at the run-out grooves on the actual vinyl, there’s a script thing that they used to do to identify which record it was.” These etchings could be simply matrix numbers, but in some cases they were inside jokes.
“Szymczyk was actually involved in the mastering [of the album], and of course he added something. So he added, in the run-out grooves, ‘Is it 6 o’clock yet?’ Marty, do you want to tell the story about why it’s ‘Is it 6 o’clock yet?’” Porter barely pauses and says, “That’s when they could get stoned!”
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
