The inside story of the Record Plant studios – the real ‘Hotel California’ – revealing how the greatest music of the 1970s was recorded and why artists checked out but rarely left. In the 1970s, the Record Plant Studios were the epicenter of the greatest boom in record production in music history. With locations in New York, Los Angeles, and Sausalito, as well as a fleet of recording trucks, the Record Plant was everywhere music happened.

In 1976 alone, the studio produced three number one albums: Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, the Eagles’ Hotel California, and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. Written by two veteran music journalists, this fascinating book tells the incredible story of the evolution of Record Plant Studios, tape by tape. Starting on New York’s West Side in 1968 with the recording of Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland, the Record Plant expanded to Los Angeles, where Stevie Wonder produced his biggest hits, and then to Sausalito, where Sly Stone, Bob Marley, and Fleetwood Mac settled in.

John Lennon made New York his home after the Beatles, and the Eagles conceived Hotel California while working in Los Angeles. Each location featured the founders’ proven formula, combining top-notch sound quality, fantastic bedrooms, and group jacuzzis, with sex, drugs, and celebrities at the jam sessions. Based mainly on the memories and archives of studio co-founder Chris Stone, and supplemented with interviews from over 100 studio employees, music producers, and artists, this is the untold story, in all its glory, of classic rock’n’roll recording as told by the insiders who worked tirelessly behind the closed doors of the most productive recording factory of all time.

Pages: 384, Year of Publication: 0617, Dimensions: 15.3x15.3cm