'There were days where I felt I could never leave': Intimate images of 'the real Hotel California'

BBC News

3 days ago

The legendary Record Plant Studios was where the most iconic rock stars of the 1970s gathered, immersing themselves in the decadent atmosphere. Now a new book offers a glimpse inside – and argues that The Eagles' time there inspired the US band's most famous song.
In 1974, seeking more creative autonomy and a punchier rock sound, The Eagles parted company with their London-based producer, and headed back to their hometown of Los Angeles, California, where Record Plant Studios, founded by legendary audio engineer Gary Kellgren and shrewd businessman Chris Stone, offered a radical alternative. Here – immersed in the studios' relaxed set-up, where every aspect of the rock-star lifestyle was serviced, from hotel suites to hot tubs − they recorded their hit album Hotel California.
Warning: This article contains mentions of drug use.
Even when The Eagles took their partying into the studio, the managers did not mind. As Stone remarks in a revealing new book, published by Thames & Hudson: "The longer we kept them there, the more money we made." With musicians finding it so hard, once checked in, to tear themselves away, it was little wonder that within a year of the title track's release, there were whisperings that the Record Plant was the "real" Hotel California.
Buzz Me In – Inside the Record Plant Studios, by veteran music journalists Martin Porter and David "Mr Bonzai" Goggin, tells the story of one of the US's most successful recording studios during its most decadent years; from its beginnings (in 1968) in New York – where Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland was made – to its wild Californian incarnations in LA and Sausalito, recording rock legends such as Fleetwood Mac, The Who and The Eagles.
Buzz Me In, named after the password used to gain entry to the LA studio, invites the public into a rock 'n' roll world that few have seen. Accompanied by a playlist of the studios' seminal recordings, it draws on Stone's memoirs and archives, behind-the-scenes images, and more than 100 interviews with the artists, producers and studio staff who helped shape Record Plant's success.
In the 1970s, Porter and Goggin got closer than most to the secret world behind the studio's doors. "It took me many years to realise that it was a pretty special time," Porter tells the BBC. Forty years on, one figure who had survived this frenzied period stood out: Chris Stone, who is pictured in the book in front of the bubble-written logo designed by Kellgren.
"Chris Stone was very prominent in the business and told great stories," says Porter, who was convinced that Stone's memories of the Record Plant's wildest decade were a book in the making. Yet Stone kept knocking him back, insisting: "The story dies with me, Porter." But in the last two years of his life (he died in 2016), he relented, uniting Porter with Goggin, his close friend and publicist, to help steer the endeavour.
A blueprint exported worldwide
Record Plant was special. "The major artists, that's where they wanted to go," Goggin tells the BBC. It led the race for the latest technology ("more tracks, bigger speakers…") and "created an environment that was unlike the traditional, [more clinical] recording studios".
It also gave artists more freedom from the record labels, creating a blueprint for a new way of working that was later exported worldwide. The wizard driving this new direction was Kellgren. He was "fun", "creative" and "innovative", says Porter. "He knew how to work the console, make great sounds, but he also knew how to create a party, and a space where artists wanted to make music and hang out and spend time."
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When, in 1969, the duo opened a sister studio in LA (and another in Sausalito in 1972), they supercharged the original concept, creating a sort of rock hotel, with group Jacuzzis, mirror-ceilinged bedrooms, bedrooms with nicknames including "S&M", and, in keeping with the era, a variety of illicit drugs intended to keep these paying guests holed up as long as they could. "Mirrors were embedded in the consoles, and the assistants were instructed to make sure there was a clean blade and a straw there every morning," says Porter.
Unsurprisingly, Record Plant was a magnet for the wildest rockers, including The Who's hot-tempered drummer Keith Moon, who is pictured in the book in 1976 against the tie-dyed sound-absorbing screens of Record Plant's LA studio. During one frustrating vocal session, he smashed a light bulb in the ceiling each time he missed a note, eventually plunging the studio into darkness.
While Stone supplied the business acumen, Kellgren was its creative force: a capricious character who spent most of the 1970s high on drugs, and died tragically young in 1977. He was the brains behind the weighty brick invitations to the LA studio opening, sent to rock royalty far and wide, causing chaos at the post office. On the opening night, the silk-screen-printed invitations were handed to a tuxedoed builder who cemented them together, creating an eye-catching wall of fame.
Parallels with Hotel California
Working alongside producer Bill Szymczyk, The Eagles would spend an intense nine months at Record Plant LA honing their Hotel California album, whose title song spoke of a place where you could "check out any time you like", but could "never leave". John Lennon was a case in point, encamping at the studio for the best part of five years, enjoying the opportunity to jam with Mick Jagger, or have Elton John play on a new record. It was at Record Plant LA that he spent his infamous "lost weekend" phase, and, in 1980, he signed an autograph for the receptionist at Record Plant New York just minutes before he was fatally shot.
Record Plant and its legendary parties drew numerous stars into its vortex, gave them everything they wanted, and held them in its thrall. In Buzz Me In, Ken Caillat, who produced Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album, describes the band's experience at the Sausalito studio as "druggy" and "claustrophobic". In a poignant echo of that famous lyric, he remarks: "There were days where I felt I could never leave." Record Plant had no qualms about catering to every predilection in its quest to sell studio time. On the days Hendrix was expected at the New York studio, a bowl of freshly rolled joints would be placed on the mixing desk.
At Sausalito, a tank of nitrous oxide (laughing gas) was installed by Sly Stone's bed; in the LA studio's canteen, The Eagles' Glenn Frey ran up a $50,000 (£37,000) gambling debt playing pinball. Even clean-living Stevie Wonder "was eating up $175 an hour for Studio C [LA] while he was just playing air hockey". The culture of the place was communicated before you even stepped inside. In the studio parking lot, Kellgren would station his purple Rolls-Royce with the licence plate GREED next to his silver Mercedes-Benz, DEDUCT.
The album Hotel California went platinum in December 1976, and the eerie six-and-a-half-minute title song – with its beguiling mix of rock, country and Latin influences, including a flamenco-style guitar intro – topped the US charts the following May. The parallels between the lyrics and the studio were obvious to Kellgren. "My God, they're writing about Record Plant!" he exclaimed to producer Jimmy Robinson.
The "warm smell of colitas rising up through the air" recalled the marijuana smoke that filled the studios, for example; while the "lovely face" on reception could be attributed to Rose Mann, who would direct visitors down a long open-air hallway into a labyrinth of corridors suggested in the song's opening verse.
Her "Tiffany-twisted" mind may have been inspired by the Tiffany-glass ceiling of the control room at Sausalito, or perhaps the 125 stained-glass windows at "The Castle", a Hollywood mansion off Sunset Boulevard purchased by Record Plant in 1975, where Kellgren had hoped to create a rock palace, and whose spires bear some resemblance to the Beverly Hills Hotel featured on the album cover.
Some Record Plant employees were convinced that the night manager Michael Gately, who buzzed everyone in, was the "night man" in the song; his "master's chambers" denoted the echo chambers just along the hall from Studio C; the studio's walled car park was the "courtyard", where staff liked to party. And might the "spirit" of "1969" hark back to the studio's star-studded opening?
Rumours circulated that the Record Plant was the real Hotel California, encouraged by Kellgren, who saw that the myth-making was good for business and, says Goggin, "certainly didn't try to stop it". The evidence was persuasive. "Pink champagne on ice" might simply be code for Record Plant's extravagances, but the "mirrors on the ceiling" were more literal. There was a mirror over the vocal booth in Studio C, in every back hotel room, and – most significantly – over the king-sized bed of the nautical-themed Boat Room, a space frequented by The Eagles that had a hideaway concealed beneath a panel under the bed where Kellgren would spy on the recording sessions below.
The Eagles, however, batted away such speculation. "It's a song about the dark underbelly of the American Dream, and about excess in America, which was something we knew about," Don Henley told Gayle King in a 2007 interview for CBS.
"There are so many similarities," Porter tells the BBC. "A lot of the lyrics, a lot of the vibe at the time, was inspired by the place where they wrote the song." The question is put to Chris Stone in the book. "Was the Record Plant the real Hotel California?" His reply: "We were anything our customers wanted us to be."
Buzz Me In – Inside the Record Plant Studios by Martin Porter and David Goggin is published by Thames & Hudson.
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