On Tuesday afternoon, Bob Clearmountain was coming back from Apogee Studios in Santa Monica to his house in Pacific Palisades. The revered producer and mixer has helmed information by rock legends similar to Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, Roxy Music and David Bowie, usually from his house studio, Mix This!, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. He may really feel the Santa Ana winds ripping throughout the coast and blowing via the canyons.
“From Sunset Boulevard I may see the flames on the hill and the smoke. I assumed, “Well, I’m certain the hearth division shall be right here very quickly.” The information mentioned the wind was blowing in the wrong way, so I assumed they might comprise it very quickly. But a number of hours later, my daughter known as me and mentioned, ‘You need to get out of there.'”
As Clearmountain, his spouse and assistant loaded three automobiles with instruments and valuables, they nonetheless hoped it was only a precaution. Much of the tools within the studio that he had customized constructed over many years was motionless: the Bösendorfer grand piano or the SSL recording console couldn’t come out in brief order.
“We took every little thing we may consider. I had some issues that Bruce Springsteen had given us; he had made considered one of his little stick determine doodles for my spouse’s fiftieth birthday, and I assumed, “Well, that is one thing actually particular.”
“But we thought we’d be again in a number of days,” Clearmountain continued. “That as soon as the evacuation order was lifted we’d merely deliver every little thing again indoors. It simply did not happen to us that this could possibly be the tip of our world.”
They returned to Apogee Studios in Santa Monica, the place Clearmountain and his spouse, Apogee founder Betty Bennett, stayed in a visitor condominium often reserved for passing bands. Helpless, they watched the scene via their doorbell digicam because the Palisades Fire superior down the hill towards their neighborhood.
“We may see that our neighbor’s fence was catching fireplace and that our rubbish cans had been on fireplace. The cameras went off at a couple of quarter to eight and we thought, “Well, I do not know, possibly it’s going to blow up our home in some way as a result of our partitions are all stucco.” We did not know something about it till Wednesday, then we heard that every one the homes on our avenue besides one had been utterly gone.”
“Finally this morning, considered one of our new neighbors in some way got here in and took an image of our driveway with nothing behind it,” he mentioned. “Just a driveway and a few ashes.”
The scale of destruction brought on by this week’s fires is overwhelming, with no less than 10 lives misplaced and greater than 9,000 constructions broken or destroyed in Pacific Palisades, Altadena and different neighborhoods. Amid that devastation are irreplaceable cultural websites, together with beloved recording studios the place artists made a few of their beloved albums.
The rustic recording studio retreat is a visible icon of Los Angeles’ music historical past. In the Los Angeles recording neighborhood, Clearmountain’s house is an nearly sacred place. Several different studios are additionally believed to be broken or misplaced within the space and in Altadena, which has grow to be house to Los Angeles’ indie music neighborhood.
Clearmountain is simply starting to get up to the fact that it has misplaced its house and a recording studio essential to its era, constructed over many years to its exacting designs and crammed with devices and tools that produced a few of rock’s best music. well-liked of our time. He mentioned he’ll proceed to work in a method or one other within the wake of this.
“I have a look at it as a problem, the subsequent chapter,” he mentioned. “I can not actually look again. I can not spend an excessive amount of time getting discouraged about this. I’ve to say, ‘OK, what can I do?’ I’ll change the type of what I do. I’m going to do what I do, however I’m going to do it otherwise, and hopefully it goes nicely, possibly higher than what I used to be doing. That’s all I can take into consideration proper now.”
He worries about different studios and residential recording websites that do not have the sources to rebuild elsewhere. The lives and houses misplaced are numerous and devastating, however cultural loss and the shortcoming of musicians to work are additionally a part of the tragedy.
“Maybe there ought to be a fund. Not for me, as a result of I’m superb, however for different research,” Clearmountain mentioned. “There are lots of people who will not be so nicely off. I can survive, however there are people who find themselves going to undergo actually onerous instances and need assistance. I’d be prepared to intervene and assist them.
