The Wally Heider Story

This will be a multi-post story, as it really is about my history as a Recording Engineer.

By the time I'd met Steve Barncard (http://www.barncard.com/) in 1977, he was already a hero to me. Why? Because he had a credit on a Grateful Dead album (American Beauty). To a kid like me, who grew up in Foster City, CA (a banal suburb 20 mi south of San Francisco), and who managed to actually sneak backstage at more than one Grateful Dead concert at Bill Graham's Winterland, actually meeting and befriending one of the crew of the Dead (let alone one of their Recording Engineers) was similar to encountering the rainbow at the end of a spiritual pilgrimage.

By '77 I was working at Elektra Sound Recorders, a small in-house studio owned by Elektra Records, which at the time was headquartered in a swanky Mediterranean style building on La Cienega Blvd in West Hollywood, just below Santa Monica Blvd. Elektra was rockin in those days, with the Eagles, Linda Rondstadt, Queen, Jackson Browne, Bread, Warren Zevon, The Cars, etc. I was one of two in-house Recording Engineers, along with my boss, Roger Mayer, an affable Brit who had just fallen into his role as previous Engineers had become famous and moved on. Steve worked across the street in the A&R Department (Artists & Repertoire). A&R was responsible mainly for finding new talent, and for screening the multitudes of demos and wanna-be's that passed over the threshold every day.

Steve was what I would call "breezy". He always seemed appropriately confident, appeared to be take things in stride, and definitely did not take himself to seriously. By then I think I was working with Joe Cocker (who had run out of money so the label let him use the in-house studio), and my days as a Deadhead acolyte were a little bit behind me. But meeting Steve was definitely a high point in my career to-date. Made me feel yet another step towards bona fide membership in the rock n roll literate`. And as a in-house Recordng Engineer, Steve made use of my services, sometimes sending me out to the Valley to cut tracks at The Annex, a funky living-room studio Elektra ran for recording basic song demos and such. I produced and recorded a number of bands there, and one night had the pleasure of meeting the daughter of two famous movie stars (Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis), who actually introduced herself to me by saying, "I'm the daughter of two famous movie stars". She was so sexy and attractive I actually fantasized asking my wife at the time for a divorce. Hubba hubba.