Mike: “Dave said, ‘I found a studio where we’re going to cut our first single,’ and he gives me the address of the studio: American Recording with [engineers] Richie Podolor and Bill Cooper. I go out there and I see this little guy with a classical guitar out front, he doesn’t look like anything to do with a music person at all. He looks like a guy who’s been out on the street, you know, going into trash cans. I said, ‘Do you work here?’ He said, ‘I’m the owner, my name’s Richie. Come on in.’ He introduced me to Bill and told me how he built that studio. He and Bill Cooper are genius engineers and they understood technology. I said, ‘This guy knows his stuff, no doubt about it. This is gonna be good.’”
James: “Richie was a consummate musician; he could just sit down and play anything. Having a guy behind the board who was a good player inspired me.”
Mike: “Dave said, ‘Let’s just do some covers, just to lay some tracks down and see what you guys think about the playback and how this is gonna work between us all.’ Next thing I know, Dave comes out with this singer-songwriter,
band that day. That was it.”
Mark: “His dad wouldn’t let him sign the recording contract. We signed; we had to go to court with our parents to do it. The judge said, ‘I would never sign this deal, but if you want me to, I’ll approve it.’”
James: “We knew we weren’t walking into a great deal and so Mike had decided he didn’t want to do it and we got Preston Ritter [to replace him on drums].”
Mark: “So we have this single, it doesn’t do dick. And we get dropped by Warner Brothers. Dave comes in and says, ‘We’re not done yet.’ To his credit he didn’t dump us there and then.”
Roger Tillison. The guy looked like Bob Dylan, he had the same curly hair. He had this song called ‘Ain’t it Hard’ and he was eating these sugar cubes. I said, ‘Man, this guy likes sweets!’”
Mark: “We do this song about acid, LSD. We [also] did ‘Little Olive’ as a B-side.”
James: “It was one of the first songs I wrote and the first song I got recorded.”
Mike: “We recorded that, and Dave said, ‘I want to release this.’ Nothing happened, no reaction. It died.”
Mike: “Dave all of the sudden says, ‘We’re going to go out to my attorney’s office,
98
American Recording Studios Top: James Lowe, Dave Hassinger, Richie Podolor Middle: Mark Tulin, James Lowe, Dave Hassinger Bottom: Ken Williams Opposite: James Lowe
bring your families.’ I bring my dad, who’s a businessman and he knows entertainment. The attorney hands each one of us and our parents the contract. My dad looks at the first paragraph, hands the paperwork back to the attorney, looks at me and says, ‘Michael, we’re out of here right now.’ He said, ‘You’re not going to make a dime,’ right in front of all those people. ‘Let’s go.’ I thought, ‘Well, my dad knows what he’s talking about.’ I quit the
Preston Ritter (second Prunes drummer): “My background in music was considerably different from the band; I think I’d had more experience. I was a trained and schooled musician, I could read music. I had already written the first drum instruction book ever published when I was 14. I was in one of the most successful bands in the Valley, called The Dantes. A guy approached me at a gig and said he was the manager and representative of a band that had a record out, The Electric Prunes. I had never heard of them, but the fact that they had a record out, I was interested in what he had to say. He told me that they were looking for a drummer and were holding auditions and would I be interested? I said, ‘OK.’ I did the audition at Mark Tulin’s house, in the converted garage. About a week later I got a phone call saying I was the one they had chosen. I started immediately rehearsing with them, and it wasn’t too much longer after that when I first met Dave Hassinger, and we were given the demo for ‘I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night).’”
TOOMUCHTO DREAM
Under the direction of Dave Hassinger, the band ventured to Leon Russell’s home studio, Skyhill, near Studio City (a stone’s throw from American). Leon at this time was a successful arranger, studio musician and songwriter closely linked with Snuff Garrett and his protégé Gary Lewis. Leon’s home fostered a whole group of musicians from Tulsa including JJ Cale, The Shindogs and Delaney & Bonnie. With Marc Benno, Leon would employ Skyhill to create their studio project Asylum Choir. It was within these unique confines that The Electric Prunes found their sound.
James: “It was a big house, with no furniture, a recording studio in one room and a control room across the hall in the other room. So, you couldn’t see each other. I think he had The Shindogs (who were the house band on the television show Shindig! and also recording artists for Warner Brothers at the time) living there. There were always like 10 motorcycles in the garage, a brand new limousine that was as dingy as anything you would see from the ’40s. It was a pretty loose life, a lot of people wandering in and out all day. And we went up just to get a sense of what it was like to record with Dave on four-track tape.”
Mark: “We went in and cut a couple of demos, and that was an interesting experience. There were guys so sacked out, they’d be unconscious on the staircase. He had this hearse in this garage that hadn’t been driven anywhere in many years.
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