![]() This was also when the San Francisco music scene was starting to explode, so I had the opportunity to work with the likes of Bobby Freeman, The Beau Brummels, Sly Stone, The Great Society ( The Jefferson Airplane), and The Tiki’s ( Harpers Bizarre), as well of heaps and heaps of demos and singles, many of which I still have stashed on my library as lacquer acetate references.įor the most part, I’m self-taught. Oh, the stories I could tell of paddy wagons and arrests of buxom waitresses clutching tablecloths to their ample bosoms! Apparently, they had started a ‘Business Man’s Luncheon’ featuring topless waitresses, so there were more than a few surprise interruptions to our sessions. They hired me and had me doing tape copies for a few weeks in Hollywood, and then they shipped me off to San Francisco to their Coast Recorders studio facility, which was in an old movie theatre, upstairs from the first topless bar in the country. Apparently I had, mostly on my own, learned enough to outrank many of the staff engineers working for the company at the time. At that time, they used a written test created by Bill Putnam. As it turned out, I had an acquaintance that worked for United and Western Studios in Hollywood. When my time in Minneapolis had run its course, I threw everything I owned in my car and headed back to California with the dream of observing a real Hollywood recording session. I was young and strong and had an insatiable appetite for learning the craft. I cut my baby teeth on location recordings. Most of the work they did was recording high school choirs and bands for fundraising LPs. They had a great Ampex 351-2 in a road case, plus a collection of vintage valve microphones that people would kill for today. Ultimately, I left Empire Photosound to work as the recording engineer for what was, as I remember, called Gaiety Recording. Obviously a pattern was starting to emerge! I couldn’t leave my hands off it and before anyone knew what was happening, I was running cables down the hall and up the stairs so I could record various jazz musicians and folk ensembles on their large shooting stage. As it happened, another recording company left their gear in the Empire Photosound Studio. ![]() They also had a sound department, and I ended up doing all of their sound design, long before that term had been invented. Empire Photosound did industrial motion pictures and also produced corporate presentations. After leaving KTCA, I got a job with Empire Photosound in Minneapolis as a photographer. Once again, I found myself in the sound department ‘messing about’ with the gear. When I returned to Minneapolis, I found a job at KTCA TV. I quickly gravitated to the sound booth and spent endless hours messing around and trying, not only to figure out how to make things work, but also sorting, cleaning and trying to create a more efficient department. Near the end of my studies at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California, there was a Motion Picture Unit. I could also be frequently found in my closet with the microphone taped to a music stand, trying to think of something interesting to say so I could discover how to record my voice. It was really quite amazing what you could do with a few cardboard boxes and some lamp cord. My theory then was ‘more is better.’ I’m pretty sure it sounded horrid, as there were speakers strung out all over my bedroom. Every time I found a speaker lying around, I’d stick it in a shoebox and hot-wire it into my hi-fi. I also had an early mono hi-fi and a little tape recorder. Not only was I interested in music, playing accordion and keyboards, I was always active with high school musical ensembles. I suppose like many, my romance with sound started when I was a youngster. In this interview, John talks about his life in music, and his role as a co-developer of the Kramer Master Tape plugin. His work across a stunningly wide array of musical idioms has included work with artists ranging from Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Bobby Darin, Bill Medley (The Righteous Brothers), Jim Morrison (and The Doors), Tom Jones, Kris Kristofferson, Little Feat, Judy Collins, Love, Warren Zevon, and Linda Ronstadt to Weather Report, John Coltrane, Freddie Hubbard, Les Brown and Duke Ellington, to name but a few. Over the course of a career spanning almost half a century, John Haeny has recorded, mixed and produced hundreds of albums.
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