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NEARLY EVERY STUDIO <\/strong>that operated in the peak era of analog recording from the 1950s to the early 2000s has a locker, vault or room dedicated to housing tapes left behind by artists and labels.<\/p>\nHistorically, finished album masters \u2014 held on a single quarter-inch tape reel, from which commercial copies would be manufactured \u2014 were considered the most valued asset. The multitracks \u2014 heavy, cumbersome two-inch reels of tape, containing the individual elements of the recording \u2014 would typically be collected and delivered to the label after a session. But inevitably a small percentage of tapes landed in the studio\u2019s on-site storage, often forgotten completely by the artist and record company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Paul Camarata, who owns Sunset Sound, watched his entire second-story space fill floor to ceiling with tapes like this, more than 1,500 at last count, from the big-band leader Harry James to the 1980s hitmakers Toto, before calling in Master Tape Rescue. \u201cI\u2019m always thinking we gotta get these tapes out of here,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we\u2019re in a strange quandary \u2014 we don\u2019t own the tapes, and I would never just throw them away. We\u2019ve just become an unwitting storage service.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the years, record companies have \u201ccome down and scoured our archives hoping to find some gold,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s kind of like leaving your car at the mechanic for 40 years and just expecting to pick it up one day.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2010, Clay Blair began operating the Boulevard Recording Studio in Hollywood. It came with an illustrious history: Opened as Continental Recorders in 1966, it morphed into Producer\u2019s Workshop in the 1970s (turning out projects by Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac and Steely Dan) and eventually became Westbeach Recorders, the pop-punk stronghold whose clients included Blink-182, Rancid and the Offspring. When Blair took over the space, he inherited a disused echo chamber that had been turned into a tape storage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s at least a couple hundred tapes in there that go all the way back to the \u201960s,\u201d said Blair, who is also working with Master Tape Rescue. \u201cThere are recordings by Liberace and Engelbert Humperdinck, a score for an Evel Knievel film, we found a Jerry Garcia tape from the \u201970s, a soundtrack he did that\u2019s never been released. Just the other day, we found the two-inch reels from Concrete Blonde\u2019s hit \u2018Joey.\u2019 There\u2019s all kinds of stuff hiding in these studios that nobody has any idea about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, numerous recording facilities that have been sold or closed over the years simply threw out their archives. The most famous example is Olympic Studios in London, which in 1987 took its entire tape inventory \u2014 including incredibly valuable multitrack recordings by bands like the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin \u2014 and placed them in a dumpster. Enterprising collectors salvaged as many reels as possible; some were reunited with the artists, others turned up as bootlegs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Historically, multitrack recordings were seen as less valuable than finished master tapes. Back in the 1960s, bands would often roll back over recorded performances for fresh takes, or labels would bulk erase reels after a session and reuse the tape for other projects. \u201cA lot of great, interesting recordings got lost that way,\u201d said Andrew Sandoval, a reissue producer who has specialized in catalog work for \u201960s groups like the Monkees and the Beach Boys.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Sandoval said that even major artists of the era, like the Kinks, have very few of their early multis. \u201cYou\u2019re never going to hear alternate takes of classics like \u2018You Really Got Me\u2019 or \u2018All of the Day,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cNone of those things exist.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the 1970s and \u201980s, multitracks were haphazardly stored, organized and prized, even by major labels. It wasn\u2019t uncommon to walk into a place like Coast Recording Equipment Supply, a pro audio shop in Hollywood, and find used reels being sold for recording that contained multitrack masters by bands like the Doors.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until the CD era and the explosion of deep-dive compilations and boxed sets in the late \u201980s and early \u201990s that record companies started to fully realize the value of their multitracks. \u201cWhen you get into the re-marketing of music and creating reissues, the first thing a label asks is: \u2018Is there something new here?\u2019\u201d Sandoval said. \u201cIn order to find or create something new, you usually need to go back to the multitracks \u2014 that\u2019s your biggest source of alternate takes, outtakes and unreleased material.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, multitracks arguably hold even more value thanks to the rise of remix projects, the development of immersive audio formats like Dolby Atmos, and even TV, film and commercial sync opportunities, which often require use of the original recording elements.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ability to recast an artist\u2019s music, to present it in a new way, usually depends on the multitracks,\u201d said John Jackson, the longtime Sony\/Legacy A&R executive. Now running his own consultancy, advising Billy Joel, Rosanne Cash and the estate of AC\/DC\u2019s Bon Scott, he noted that \u201cif you don\u2019t have the multitracks or have a plan for the multitracks, you\u2019re not recognizing and celebrating the value of that artist\u2019s music fully.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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THERE\u2019S NO QUESTION<\/strong> that the vagaries of the music business have claimed plenty of important recordings over the years.<\/p>\nIn February, the 146-track boxed set \u201cWritten in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos\u201d won best historical album at the Grammys. Chronicling the tunesmiths behind the iconic Memphis soul label, it was a 20-year passion project for its producer, Cheryl Pawelski. A former catalog executive at Capitol and Warner Music who now runs her own label, Omnivore, Pawelski said the original tapes that make up the Stax box had actually been thrown out years earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cFortunately, before they got rid of the tapes sometime in the \u201990s, the publisher that owned the material transferred it all to DAT,\u201d said Pawelski, referring to the now outdated digital tape format. \u201cThat\u2019s because a single DAT could hold 90 or 120 minutes \u2014 it was a space saving measure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pawelski knows that \u201cWritten in Their Soul\u201d is a feel-good story in a business often filled with dispiriting tales of lost history. \u201cGod knows what\u2019s been thrown out. Just thinking about the stuff that probably wound up in landfills in Memphis or Chicago, it makes me very sad,\u201d she said. \u201cAs music lovers, as reissue producers, we\u2019re chasing something that\u2019s very ephemeral in what is essentially a business environment. And I think a lot of music has gotten the raw end of those business dealings.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Corporate neglect and studio closures aren\u2019t the only reasons tapes get lost or go missing; there have been more nefarious forces at work as well. Jackson, who spent years overseeing Sony\/Legacy\u2019s work on the Elvis Presley catalog, noted that even the biggest artists have not been immune from having their recordings stolen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Presley archivist Ernst Jorgensen spent \u201cdecades putting Elvis\u2019s whole tape collection back together,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cAnd a lot of times that involved someone saying, \u2018Meet me at this motel behind Graceland and I\u2019ll sell you the multitracks of this session.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
A few years ago, Kehew worked on a reissue of a 20-times-platinum LP by a big major-label act from the 1990s. He noticed the multitracks were not in the label\u2019s vault, but since those tapes weren\u2019t needed for the project, he thought little of it. A few months later, he was approached by someone who had inherited a store of tapes and wanted him to assess the contents. There, among the mostly worthless reels, were \u201cthe multitracks for this 20-million-selling album,\u201d Kehew said, \u201cjust sitting in a dusty garage in downtown L.A., next to some boots and a bunch of oil cans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Someone had checked out the tapes from the label without a signature, he said, later abandoning them. \u201cThe label was very happy to have them back. The band probably never even knew they were missing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sandoval believes the untapped holdings of studios and private collections could produce a bounty in the coming years. \u201cThere\u2019s recordings people have been sitting on for one reason or another,\u201d he said. \u201cAs those folks pass away, and their families find and inherit the tapes, that stuff is finally going to surface.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kehew and White are counting on that and hope to streamline the process through their efforts with Master Tape Rescue. \u201cI do believe there are hundreds of studios all over the world that have tape vaults that are worth exploring,\u201d Kehew said. \u201cOr that there are producers or engineers, or estates, who might have material of real value for artists or labels. A lot of stuff is still out there \u2014 it\u2019s just a matter of finding it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Audio produced by Parin Behrooz.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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