Fantasy Studios was a music recording studio in Berkeley, California, at the Zaentz Media Center, known for its recording of award-winning albums including Journey's Escape and Green Day's Dookie. Built as a private recording studio for artists on the Fantasy Records label in 1971, it was opened to the public in 1980 for recording, mixing and mastering. It was permanently closed on September 15, 2018.
History
Fantasy Records
Fantasy Records and its subsidiary, Galaxy, were established in San Francisco, California, in 1949 by Max and Sol Weiss. The first artist on the label was Dave Brubeck. With help from profits earned from his records the label went on to record Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Cal Tjader and Vince Guaraldi. In addition to musical acts, the label recorded beat poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg and comic Lenny Bruce.
Creedence Clearwater Revival and expansion
Saul Zaentz, who joined Fantasy Records as a salesman in 1955, assembled a group of investors in 1967 and purchased the label from the Weiss brothers. In 1968 Fantasy Records signed Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR), who soon became extremely profitable for the label. Within eighteen months, twenty of CCR's singles made Billboard Hot 100 list and nine were consecutive Top 10 singles in the US. The band also earned 21 RIAA-certified gold or platinum records with total sales of over 100 million worldwide. These successes for CCR made Fantasy the most profitable independent record company in the U.S. and directly resulted in the expansion of Fantasy Records.
In 1971 Fantasy Records relocated to Berkeley, California. In addition to a lobby area, the building included a sauna, an exercise room and a lunch room, which until 1981 was catered daily by Narsai's Restaurant in Kensington. The sauna and exercise room were later rebuilt for other purposes.
In the early 1970s, under the leadership of label president Ralph Kaffel, Fantasy Records purchased the catalogs of three independent jazz labels: Prestige, Riverside (established in 1953 by Bill Grauer and Orrin Keepnews) and Milestone, which Keepnews started in 1966 after the demise of Riverside. After the acquisitions the company became known as "Fantasy Inc."
Recording studios
Fantasy Records built Fantasy Studios to accommodate its growing roster, which remained primarily jazz artists but included some in rock, soul and disco. The building went up at 10th and Parker Streets in the western industrial area of Berkeley. Because of the source of funding, it was nicknamed "The House That Creedence Built." Fantasy was the most profitable independent record company in the U.S. Jim Stern, who had served as producer for the Sons of Champlin and Van Morrison, was chief engineer from 1974 until 1981. Jesse Osborn was another early engineer along with Eddie Bill Harris and Don Cody.
Studio expansion
In 1980, Fantasy Records hired a new Studio Director, Roy Segal. One of Segal's first initiatives was to the addition of Studio D, as well as upgrading the acoustical treatment and equipment in the existing studios. Such upgrades included removing carpet from the studio floors and installing bass traps and tiling for the walls in an effort to acoustically tune the rooms. Equipment upgrades included replacing the original consoles in Studios A and C with Neve 8108s and a Trident in Studio B.
In 1982, Segal was asked to manage the three-year-old Saul Zaentz Film Center, at which point he brought in Nina Bombardier to manage the studios. Bombardier started with Fantasy in 1973 as a receptionist, then moved to manage the Record Plant in Sausalito. She served as the director of Fantasy Studios from 1982 to 2007.
In addition to recording music, Fantasy Studios saw clients in the film, television, gaming and audio book industries for additional dialog recording sessions. All studios were ISDN-compatible, providing full-frequency audio and real-time connectivity to other recording studios around the world.
There were two full-time mastering engineers on site: George Horn and Joe Tarantino. Over his career, Horn remixed or remastered albums by artists such as Charles Mingus, The Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Santana. Joe Tarantino mastered albums by artists such as Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.