"Mike bought the PortaStudio, a pair of SM57's and a pair of mic stands. It was a simple, straight-ahead machine - perfect for what Bruce wanted to do. It seems that around January of '82, he'd enlisted his guitar roadie, Mike Batlan, telling him 'go find me a little tape machine - nothing too sophisticated, just something I can do overdubs on.' So Mike walks into a local music store and the clerk sells him a Teac (Tascam) 144, which had been out for a year or two.
"Now, in those days it wasn't so common for an artist to have tunes demoed before going into the studio, and I asked Bruce where he'd put those demos together. (In fact, it turned out some of the songs really didn't fit with the album overall, and they eventually decided those should end up on a different record.) "At the beginning of the project Bruce came into the studio with a cassette and said, 'I've got a bunch of song demos here.' He said some were rock songs he wanted to cut with the band, but others were quieter tunes that might not be appropriate for the whole band. Soon afterward, Bruce decided he wanted to move the process to New York and commence work on what would become Born in the USA. "Around 1982 he was producing an album with Steve Van Zandt for Gary US Bonds, and he called me in to mix that record. "I'd gotten involved with Bruce in 1980, mixing The River, and subsequent to that he asked me to mix some live shows for him" recalls Scott. Here's the story as told by Toby Scott, Bruce's long-time recording/mix engineer. Although most people know the album was recorded on a Tascam PortaStudio with a pair of Shure SM57's, few are aware of the almost impossible circumstances under which the album was born.
This was hardly the stuff of the personal studio revolution.Ī far more appropriate example of overcoming technical limitations might be the story of Bruce Springsteen's critically acclaimed dark horse epic, Nebraska. But let's be clear - the four-tracks at Abbey Road were professional-grade machines, linked together and run by some of the world's brightest, most innovative engineers, at one of the world's most technically advanced studios. Pepper was recorded on a four track this to inspire us to make the most of our semi-pro gear. In the early days of the home recording revolution, it was an oft-cited fact that the Beatles' legendary Sgt. The story of a home recording that became an album, as told by Bruce's long-time engineer Toby Scott