Looks like a really nice comfortable space to work in.
In the 1980s up to the mid-90's, except for a stint with SSL from '85-'87, I primarily worked at Dallas Sound Lab in Irving Texas but free-lanced all over town and Austin.
We had a lot of people come through including Phil Collins, Elton, Page and Plant it's kinda a blur now.
When I worked for SSL I got to spend quite a bit of time working with various artists but I think the most relaxing and laid back was with Bryan Adams when he lived in Vancouver.
Bryan had a nice house overlooking Marine Drive in West Vancouver up on a cliff.
He called his room Cliffhanger and he literally was a cliff hanger. A small door behind the console provided access to "something" - not sure why it was there - but when it opened - there was a wall of rock.
The back window of the house, which the console faced, overlooked the bay.
Immediately below him, hanging on the cliff, was a small gauge railroad that made the trip from Vancouver to Whistler.
I offered to take Bryan to dinner a couple of times but he explained how difficult it was to leave the house without being noticed.
He had to wear dark glasses and disguise himself to go to the grocery store.
About the only place he felt safe was at the hardware store where they knew him, and like myself, treated him like a regular guy.
So instead of me taking him to dinner he and his girlfriend,
Vickie Russell (daughter of Director-Write Ken Russell), cooked for me.
Bryan's passion was his roses.
He's moved into photography now and a few years ago did the photos for the Pirelli calendar.
I always found that when working around talent to just treat them like normal people and they will gravitate towards you.
If someone came in and breathlessly exclaimed "OMG you're so and so." (They know who they are duh.)
That's when the walls go up.
Working with Stevie Ray was a bizarre cocaine-influenced nightmare.
Stevie brought his dog and would leave him sitting patiently on the porch outside the hotel for hours at night.
He had water and food fortunately.
When I would leave sometime between midnight and 4AM I would drive by and see him sitting there for hours patiently waiting for him to return.
I felt terrible for the dog and get upset every time I think about it.
SRV grew up about a mile from where I live and I knew of him during High School.
He went to Sunset, I went to Kimball and IIRC he dropped out.
But, even then, he was a guitar legend.
What really pissed me off about SRV was that he agreed to see a kid dying of cancer whose Make A Wish Foundation "wish" was to meet SRV.
The SOB didn't show up.
I lost any respect I had for him.
I didn't get the album credit as maintenance engineer because I left to go to SSL in May before it finished.
Ron Lagerlof made sure his name made it to the credits.
Didn't matter - I was hanging with Colin Sanders who, along with the NY staff, convinced me to join the SSL circus.
Then there was the time I almost knocked down Danny Divito at Glen Glen.
I was going into the theater from bright light, he was coming out from darkness.
We "met" in the vestibule, dimly lit, and he was so damn short, with both of us blind, that I looked right over him.
Fortunately he was cool about it - apparently it happened a lot.
Then there was the time Kris Kristofferson and I kept running into each other in airports and hotels.
It must have happened 5 or 6 times over a period of a few months.
We both thought we were stalking each other LOL.
This was the console area and rear window after the house was sold taken from a real estate listing.
A view of the bay from the ear window. Somewhere I have a photo of a cruise ship passing between the NS-10's sitting on the meter bridge.
Here's a pic of Bryan and Vicky taken by someone else. I never took pics of talent. It was a rule I had.
- Bryan_Adams_Vickie_Russell.jpg (11.39 KiB) Viewed 179 times
