Martin Porter and David Goggin’s “Buzz Me In: Inside the Record Plant Studios” traces the extraordinary history of one of the music industry‘s most vaunted and influential institutions. During its heyday in the 1970s and beyond, the Record Plant served as the innovative hub for one landmark album after another. In this thoroughgoing and highly entertaining book, Porter and Goggin provide readers with a guided tour of the studios, along with unforgettable stories about the producers, engineers, and artists who made the Record Plant hum.
Porter and Goggin’s book is especially remarkable for the grass-roots nature of its composition. The authors cut their teeth in music journalism, with Porter notching publications with the likes of Rolling Stone, GQ and Guitar Player. Known as Mr. Bonzai, Goggin has published articles in Billboard, Rolling Stone, EQ, and The Hollywood Reporter. Together, Porter and Goggin have managed the popular Record Plant Diaries Facebook page, which has served as a longstanding hub for witnesses to share their memories of the Record Plant.
The Record Plant was founded in 1968 in New York City by the pioneering audio engineer Gary Kellgren and music businessman Chris Stone. The timing of their vision, which involved creating comfortable studio spaces designed to stimulate artistry at every turn, couldn’t have been better. Acts like The Beatles had virtually reinvented the album. Rock was poised for a period of unparalleled creative expansion. Taking advantage of this momentum, Kellgren and Stone quickly followed suit with West Coast locations in Los Angeles, often referred to as Record Plant West, and Sausalito.
Opening its doors in 1969, Record Plant West was Kellgren and Stone’s showpiece — the music mecca where the industry’s shining stars would come to play, see, and be seen. Within a few years, the complex on Third Street featured three deluxe studio spaces with sixteen-track mixing desks, a jacuzzi, and private hotel–like suites with names like “the Rack Room,” with S&M-style ropes and winches; “the Sissy Room,” with over-the-top flowery décor; and “the Boat Room,” with a nautical theme. The complex even boasted a Las Vegas Room, complete with pinball machines and other games of chance. Record Plant West had also become famous for its regular Sunday night jam sessions, hosted by the Jim Keltner Fan Club, which took its name from the in-demand studio drummer who performed on many of the 1970s’ most famous releases.
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And the releases that flowered from the Record Plant’s vaunted trio of locations would be epoch-defining albums, including Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” Blondie’s “Parallel Lines,” The Eagles’ “Hotel California,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours,” Cyndi Lauper’s “She’s So Unusual” and Guns N’ Roses’ “Appetite for Destruction,” among a host of others.
In its finest moments, “Buzz Me In” draws readers into the epic heights of the rock era, a period uniquely characterized by its celebration of artists as auteurs. At the same time, Porter and Goggin don’t pull any punches, chronicling the outlandish behaviors and self-indulgences that led to the Record Plant’s eventual contraction. But as “Buzz Me In” so powerfully reminds us, the music created at the Record Plant will resound for as long as human beings love music.
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