The Record Plant is a recording studio established in New York City in 1968 and currently operating in Los Angeles, California. Known for innovations in the recording artists' workspace, it has produced highly influential albums, including Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run, Blondie's Parallel Lines, Metallica's Load and Reload, the Eagles' Hotel California, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP, Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction, and Kanye West's The College Dropout. More recent albums with songs recorded at Record Plant include Lady Gaga's ARTPOP, D'Angelo's Black Messiah, Justin Bieber's Purpose, Beyoncé's Lemonade, and Ariana Grande's Thank U, Next.
The studio was founded in 1968 in New York City by Gary Kellgren and Chris Stone, who opened a Los Angeles branch the following year and a Sausalito, California, location in 1972. During the 1980s, they sold the New York and Sausalito studios; the former closed in 1987, the latter in 2008. The Los Angeles studio remains in operation.
The Record Plant in New York was the first studio to give recording artists a comfortable, casual environment rather than the clinical setting that was normal practice through the 1960s. Kellgren and Stone brought this same vision to their Los Angeles and Sausalito properties, adding a Jacuzzi and billiard table. Stone later said of Kellgren, "He single-handedly was responsible for changing studios from what they were—fluorescent lights, white walls and hardwood floors—to the living rooms that they are today." The Los Angeles location has since added VIP lounges.
New York
In 1967, Gary Kellgren was a recording engineer working at several New York City studios, including Mayfair Studios on 701 Seventh Avenue at the edge of Times Square, a drab upstairs office, a single room which held the only professional 8-track recording system in New York. There, Kellgren worked with artists such as the Velvet Underground, who recorded "Sunday Morning" in November 1966; Frank Zappa; and Jimi Hendrix, engineering their recordings and also sweeping the floors. In late 1967, Chris Stone was introduced to Kellgren because Kellgren's wife, Marta, was seven months pregnant and scared of the upcoming birth and Stone's wife, Gloria, had just given birth. Mutual friends thought that the two couples could talk about being parents and ease Marta's worry.
Though they were "diametrically opposed" in nature (with Stone all business and Kellgren very creative), the two quickly became friends. Seeing him at work, Stone determined that Kellgren was not making full use of his genius for making recordings. Stone noticed that the small studio was charging its clients $5,000 per week, but Kellgren was making $200 per week. Stone suggested Kellgren ask for a raise and soon he was making $1,000 per week.
Stone held an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and was employed as the national sales representative of Revlon cosmetics. Stone convinced Kellgren that the two of them, with $100,000 borrowed from Johanna C.C. "Ancky" Revson Johnson, could start a new recording studio with a better atmosphere for creativity. Johnson was a former model and the second wife of Revlon founder Charles Revson. She divorced Revson and married Ben Johnson, a model 21 years her junior.
In early 1968, Kellgren and Stone began building a new studio at 321 West 44th Street, creating a living room type of environment for the musicians. It initially used an unusual and innovative 12-track machine built by Scully Recording Instruments and opened on March 13, 1968. As the studio was nearing completion, record producer Tom Wilson persuaded Hendrix producer Chas Chandler to book the Record Plant from April 18 to early July 1968 for the recording of the album Electric Ladyland. In early April, just prior to the start of the Hendrix session, the band Soft Machine spent four days recording The Soft Machine, their debut album produced by Wilson and Chandler with Kellgren engineering. When the Jimi Hendrix Experience arrived at the studio, Kellgren engineered the first few dates until Eddie Kramer, the band's familiar engineer, flew in from London. During the production of Electric Ladyland the studio added a new 16-track machine.
In 1969, Kellgren and Stone sold the New York operation to TeleVision Communications (TVC), a cable television company that was broadening its portfolio. The purpose of the sale was to gain cash for expansion into Los Angeles with a second studio.