The Record Plant in Los Angeles is closing; the legendary studio has been open since 1969.
The studio was one of three Record Plant locations in the United States. Founded by Gary Kellgren and Chris Stone, the first location opened in New York City in 1968. The next year, the Los Angeles location opened. The third location in Sausalito, Calif. opened in 1972. Sadly, the New York location shuttered in 1987, and the Sausalito location closed in 2008.
The closing of the Record Plant is another sign of the ever-changing music industry. Technology has greatly evolved to the point where studios aren’t always necessary to record music. It’s a sentiment shared by East/West and Ocean Way engineer Gary Myerberg, who’s quoted by Los Angeles Magazine saying, “There is no money in the recording music business … If you want to go to the studio and spend $2,000 a day, just take that and buy a laptop and a sample library or tell A.I. what song you want to make and it’ll make it.”
In a coincidence that certainly couldn’t have been planned, Variety published a story on July 11 titled “L.A. Recording Studios Are Fading, Despite Manifesting Music’s Greatest Hits.” The story centered on the reopening of Capitol Studios, which was closed for two years due to renovations from earthquake damage. The story even name-checked the Record Plant as among some of the great studios still operating in Los Angeles. That same day, news of the Record Plant’s closure was first reported.
This has been a problem for a number of years now. In a 2009 segment on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Joel Rose explored the shuttering of recording studios in New York City. Even a decade and a half ago, studios were losing money to at-home recording technology. First, it started with losing business from musicians working on demos. Then it started to snowball.
” … Some of the big work dried up, too, as the major record labels slashed their budgets,” wrote Rose. “Add the soaring price of real estate, and it’s easy to see why most of the well-known Manhattan studios closed their doors.”
Each Record Plant location has a unique history. It’s incredibly difficult to decide which location yielded the greatest albums. All three locations had some of the most iconic artists in music history record some of the most memorable releases ever. In tribute to the Record Plant in Los Angeles, here are just five albums that recorded there.
