After more than 65 years, Los Angeles’ legendary United Recording Studios, where Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, as well as the Beach Boys, Sam Cooke, Jay-Z, Green Day, and more recently, Paramore and Kendrick Lamar have recorded, is retooling its operations — to the detriment of its storied history as “the Abbey Road of the West,” not to mention its employees.
Starting April 3, the studio will require “longer minimum booking lengths for recording sessions,” according to Mix Magazine — although this minimum has yet to be determined. Furthermore, artists will need to bring in their own engineers to run United Recordings’ rare vintage equipment, some of which dates to the studio’s beginnings in the late ‘50s. This renowned gear requires expertise that isn’t readily available to the current-day audio engineering school graduates who don’t have the benefit of the studio’s longtime professionals.
The reason for these policy changes is United Recordings’ current owners, real estate investment company Hudson Pacific Properties, laid off almost the entirety of the studio staff on March 6, as per the Los Angeles Times. Instead, Hudson’s plan for “strengthening the studio’s financial position” in order to keep its “heritage intact” is to rent out the studio for film shoots and special events.
Earlier this year, the studio was used to record Jack Harlow’s Super Bowl Doritos commercial, which must have commanded a strong rental fee — presumably significantly more than a music recording session would generate, in a much shorter period and with minimal professional on-site staff.
This type of lucrative return is very attractive for a company whose main source of profit is real estate rather than creative arts. By that same token, the cultural and historical value of United Recording Studios is of far less importance than the well-appointed land the building sits on.
In fact, Hudson owns the Sunset Gower lot where United Recording is located. In 2017, Hudson applied to move the studio, demolish the remaining structures and build multiple high-rise buildings in their place, the Los Angeles Times reports. The City of Los Angeles conducted its own Historic Resources Survey Report of the Hollywood Redevelopment Plan Area in January 2020, which included United Recording Studios. The report made note of the studio’s significant role in “Record Companies Come to Hollywood,” and heralded its founder, Bill Putnam as a “pioneering recording producer.”
This is a sad turn for United Recording Studios, whose state-of-the-art, acoustically treated rooms are as much part of a record’s sound as its creators. The space was named one of the “7 Audio Wonders of the World” by the Audio Engineering Society in 2020 and its collection of top-tier equipment is the stuff of legend.
The studio was established in Los Angeles by Chicago transplant Putnam in 1957, with funding from Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Putnam is a trailblazer in the recording industry, continuously developing new techniques and gear for capturing and processing audio, including the modern recording console. It was Putnam’s innovation that caught the attention of Sinatra, who had established Reprise Records. Sinatra brought Putnam to Los Angeles and set him up at a defunct film studio at 6050 Sunset Boulevard, which is still the home of United Recording Studios today.
Putnam built studios to his expert specifications and fitted them with tech-forward recording equipment. His groundbreaking stereo, multi-track recording and reverb effects are the basis of what is used in modern studio techniques. He also is the godfather of the multi-band equalizer, and the founder of Universal Audio, which continues to be the gold standard in plug-ins and audio interfaces.
As the popularity of his facilities grew, Putnam expanded to Western Studio, another building on the lot, developing more high-tech recording rooms and renamed the complex United Western Recorders. The space went through a few different iterations, owners and name changes, including 15 years as Ocean Way Studios. Hudson Pacific Properties took over the facility in 2013 and changed the name back to United Recording Studios a couple of years later.
Now, with only one studio professional who is familiar with United retained by Hudson, it’s unlikely that the legend of the studio can continue, or that the studio will even be operable, certainly not to its fullest capabilities.
As one former employee said to the Times, “You can’t just turn those consoles off and back on and hope everything works.”
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