CITIZINE NEWS
Westbeach
Turns Twenty

by Thom White

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. March 1, 2005 -- Westbeach Recorders of Los Angeles is celebrating 20 years of making rocking records by countless rising and soaring stars of ‘90s-style punk. Many of the biggest names in 1990s Southern California punk got their start and made their first impression on the world with Westbeach sounds and sessions.

With the release in 1988 of Bad Religion’s Suffer, a co-production of Brett Gurewitz and present Westbeach Recorders owner Donnell Cameron, a new wave of punk began to explode. The original Westbeach studio was in fact much closer to the beach when it opened shop in 1985, off Venice Boulevard in the Mar Vista area of West L.A. In 1987-88, the studio moved to Hollywood and that is when Cameron began working with original Westbeach owner, L.A. band manager and producer Brett Gurewitz.

Gurewitz had reformed his high school band Bad Religion and was now intent on recording a punk rock record with the full-bodied multi-textured sound blasts that were now possible with all the advances of 1980s heavy metal production. Even Maximumrocknroll would say that the band’s 1988 return Suffer was pretty good compared to other punk albums that came out that year. This record and the three or four succeeding Bad Religion discs (all recorded at Westbeach) ignited the band’s popularity, and set the stage for the new sound and industry of 1990s California punk rock -- fast, melodic, satiric, sometimes serious, multi-tracked, with metal-influenced guitar and vocal effects, and a very well-mic’ed drumkit.

NOFX, Rancid, Bad Religion, Pennywise (all of Brett Gurewitz’s Epitaph Records) recorded their seminal releases at Westbeach in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Later, other bands destined for corporate rock stardom such as Blink 182, MxPx, Face to Face, and Avenged Sevenfold, put out their earliest records using Westbeach recordings.

A golden disc of The Offspring’s 1994 album (the one with “Keep ‘em Separated”) hangs on the wall -- is this the top-selling release ever recorded at Westbeach?
“No,” says Westbeach Recorders studio manager Seth Hum. The biggest mover ever may be Mazzy Star’s 1993 adult-alternative sensation featuring super-hit “Fade into You.”

Westbeach has been at its present Hollywood location (6035 Hollywood Bl.) since 1991, in a building that has long been used as a recording studio (known as the Producers Workshop) and the location where they mixed Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album Rumours (see Derf Scratch interview).

Before becoming a studio guru, Don Cameron owned a record shop on the Caribbean isle of Montserrat. During the 1970s, Montserrat was the site of a big reggae scene which even attracted Beatles maestro George Martin to open an AIR recording studio on the island.

westbeachrecorders.com

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