Where the Magic Happens

The recording studio is a mythical place. It is where music that moves us is captured or comes into being — and it is a kind of sonic technological temple. All of this is true of the recording studio in David Adjmi’s Stereophonic. 

The studio onstage, like many of them, appears to have an aura about it. As if the shape and acoustics of the room, the wiring, the vintage gear each has some sort of magical properties. Abbey Road, Muscle Shoals, The Hit Factory in NY, Ocean Way in LA, Motown in Detroit, Sun Studios Memphis, Criterion in Miami. 

There’s a temptation to imagine that the site where music we love originated somehow had some kind of influence on the creation and inherent musical interaction that happened during those performances. I’m as guilty of this as anyone. I’ve walked into a few of these studios, my head filled with knowledge of the amazing records that I know began there — and I’ve wondered if there could be something in the room, some mystical force, that maybe I could partake of, something that might rub off were I to record my own music in that same sacred space. 

There are studios that have a warm sound and whose resonances enhance the sounds of acoustic instruments and guitar amps. But just as often these rooms are sonically dead by design. In order to control the relative levels of the individual instruments the designers of studios have usually opted for silence over character. 

My early experiences of this environment I found very uncomfortable. Everything felt dead and tiny — it was a real effort to play together in a relaxed manner as we’d done in our loft space. It didn’t make for good vibes. Suddenly we were at the mercy of technicians, and to our ears we didn’t sound like ourselves. It’s disruptive and often heartbreaking — one falls in love with the rich and reverberant sound on stage or in rehearsal spaces, and getting back that aural excitement while maintaining the desired level of control is a constant struggle. 

No wonder the musicians in Stereophonic bicker and snap at one another so much. It’s hard enough navigating the family dynamics of a band of often insecure individuals, but put them in this environment and it becomes even harder. And David Adjmi is right — the ridiculous pain and sacrifices we make for our art are sometimes unfathomable, full of self-justifications and cruelties (we've all said or heard some of the play's lines!). Which is why I loved seeing the play with an audience — the collective shudders, groans, and laughter transformed what could have been a painful documentary (some kind of monster!) into something entertaining, funny, and thoughtful. 

And there’s a second myth in Stereophonic: that the artist almost has a duty to behave irresponsibly, to not have a business sense and to adhere to the “vision” at all costs still lingers. We’ve all heard stories about bands who had a full bar and bartender in the recording room with them. Piles of coke alongside the mixing desks. Band members who wouldn’t show up on time — but would expect the engineers to be always on call. Bands who took many many months, or even years, to record an album. Just the other day I heard a story that Mick Fleetwood fired their recording engineer for talking back and expected their road crew to learn how to record and work a mixing desk. That didn’t happen, so the engineer was asked to come back. 

We’d watch as some of our compatriots got sucked into believing those myths — sometimes it even seemed as if they felt like the more free, irresponsible, and carefree they were, the better their art would be. As if living the wild life is a prerequisite for artistic inspiration.

But, as is also true in the play, the live push and pull that happens between a group of musicians playing together is special: one can sense the cohesion and interaction, it breathes. The studio became a place for collective experimentation — a place to make music on the spot and capture it immediately. To use the studio technology to make sounds one could never do otherwise. “It became another instrument,” as Brian Eno has said. 

Nowadays the world of recording and the music business finances have changed radically. Quite a few of the most popular artists don’t play an instrument — their songs are mosaics, patchwork collages of beats, hooks, sounds, and textures. They are not performed live in the studio, as used to happen with a band or with solo artists and session musicians. They are more often created entirely in multiple places and brought together, and the big recording rooms are never used except for vocalists. The songs are often written by everyone who contributed to this patchwork quilt. Songwriter teams have always existed, but the size of the teams has ballooned, and now includes the beat maker and someone who just does hooks. 

When these old-school bands were making records, like the one in Stereophonic, everyone could make a living if they had a few records that sold well. Now, artists mostly have to economize when it comes to spending time in the recording studio. (Add to that the fact that for emerging and mid-level musicians, the income from streaming is not enough to make a living. For example, an artist getting 100,000 streams on Apple gets $1,000 — which is then shared by the record company, manager, etc. A million streams — which used to be called a “gold record” if they were sales — now nets $10,000. If you’re lucky, you can get a van to drive to gigs with that.)

There are still recording studios (I'm going to one tomorrow!). And though I mostly write and create at home now, I stubbornly refuse to completely let go of the myth. I still sense there is some ineffable thing that lingers in the rooms where powerful music was played and recorded.

David Byrne is a musician, performer, writer and multidisciplinary artist whose creative ventures have captivated audiences since 1975 when he co-founded the renowned group Talking Heads. Recent works include Here Lies Love, a musical with music by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim currently on Broadway, Theater of the Mind, an immersive journey co-created by Byrne & writer Mala Gaonkar (2022/23), SOCIAL! at The Park Avenue Armory , the Broadway production of David Byrne’s American Utopia (2019) as well as the Spike Lee directed film version (2020), the launch of his Reasons to be Cheerful online magazine (2019) and the solo album American Utopia (2018). To date, Byrne has published five books including How Music Works (2012).