Eddie Van Halen and his home studio: 5150

5150 Studios

Introduction

In 1983 Eddie Van Halen started building his very own home studio. Never again dependent on others, no more hangers-on and finally being able to experiment and try out to his own will. A dream that was finally coming true.

Frank Zappa

In the spring of 1982 Eddie Van Halen was invited by Frank Zappa to come over and hang out and jam at his home. Zappa was impressed by Van Halen’s “reinventing” the guitar. That afternoon Zappa, Van Halen, Steve Vai and another band member of Zappa’s band at that time jammed. The 12 year old Dweezil Zappa listened along.

Eddie Van Halen witnessed first hand what owning your own studio could provide. To Zappa’s request whether Van Halen would produce Frank’s son Dweezil’s first single with Donn Landee (Van Halen’s engineer), both men agreed wholeheartedly. In May and June 1982 they recorded the song My Mother Is A Space Cadet at the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen, as Zappa’s home studio was called. The idea that Van Halen had been pondering over, was getting stronger with the minute. Zappa had gained independence by using his own studio, where he could experiment, record, try and play whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. No interference of producers, record companies or others, like annoying singers.

5150 Studios – Studio and contol room layout

His own studio

In 1982 the Van Halen album Diver Down was released, an album Eddie didn’t agree with. The band had agreed on taking a break and recorded the cover (Oh) Pretty Woman as a single-only release for 1982. However, after its success, the record company demanded a new album and the band caved. The resulting album contained 5 covers. Eddie Van Halen felt pressuered into it by producer Ted Templeman and singer David Lee Roth. A very own studio would give Eddie far more control over the music and the way it was recorded and produced.

While Van Halen was out on the Hide Your Sheep Tour, promoting the Diver Down album, Donn Landee started searching and buying equipment needed for the home studio. Early 1983 construction on Eddie Van Halen’s private property commenced.

Van Halen – Guitar World February 2014

Guitar World, februari 2014

In The February 2014 edition of Guitar World Eddie Van Halen was interviewed on the occassion of the 30 year anniversary of the 1984 album. The construction of the 5150 Studios was mentioned as well. Below the bits and pieces surrounding the studio.

[…]

But perhaps the most noteworthy attribute of 1984 is that it is likely the only Diamond-certified (sales of 10 million or more) album that was recorded entirely in a home studio.

Of course, the facility now known as 5150 Studios is not the ordinary home studio. From the very beginning, 5150 was a fully professional facility, starting off as a 16-track studio equipped with classic gear that, while it seemed outdated during its time of installation in 5150, was more than up to the task of capturing Ed’s ideas in a polished, finished state that was suitable for release.

1984 was the first album to come from 5150 Studios, and the studio has remained Van Halen’s home base for all of the albums the band has recorded since then. The studio was built during a particularly fertile period of creativity for Ed that was also marked by his desire to protect his creative vision and oversight of how Van Halen’s records should be made.

Fortunately, engineer Donn Landee, who had recorded all of Van Halen’s previous five albums, saw eye to eye with Ed’s thinking and played an instrumental role both in building 5150 Studios and recording the 1984 album.

Landee even came up with the studio’s name, adopting 5150 from the California Welfare and Institutions Code for involuntary confinement of a mentally instable person deemed to be a danger to themselves and/or others.

Donn overheard the code number one night while listening to police broadcasts on a scanner, and Ed and Donn jokingly called themselves “5150s” after many around them said that they were crazy to build their own studio. Both agreed that 5150 was the perfect name for their new “asylum.”

[…]

What inspired you to build your own studio at your home?

I used to have a back room in my house where I set up a little studio with a Tascam four-track recorder to demo songs. I really wanted to record demos that sounded more professional than what I was doing.

I used to spend so much time getting sounds and writing. I have a tape of me playing in the living room at five A.M., and you can hear Valerie [Bertinelli, Ed’s ex-wife] come in and yell that she’s heard enough of that song. That was another reason why I built the studio.

The bottom line is that I wanted more control. I was always butting heads with [producer] Ted Templeman about what makes a good record. My philosophy has always been that I would rather bomb with my own music than make it with other people’s music. Ted felt that if you re-do a proven hit, you’re already halfway there.

I didn’t want to be halfway there with someone else’s stuff. Diver Down was a turning point for me, because half of it was cover tunes. I was working on a great song with this Minimoog riff that ended up being used on Dancing In The Street.

It was going to be a completely different song. I envisioned it being more like a Peter Gabriel song instead of what it turned out to be, but when Ted heard it he decided it would be great for Dancing In The Street.

Fair Warning‘s lack of commercial success prompted Diver Down. To me, Fair Warning is more true to what I am and what I believe Van Halen is. We’re a hard rock band, and we were an album band. We were lucky to enter the charts anywhere.

Ted and Warner Bros. wanted singles, but there were no singles on Fair Warning. The album wasn’t a commercial flop, but it wasn’t exactly a commercial success either, although for many guitarists and Van Halen fans, Fair Warning is a hot second between either Van Halen or 1984.

The album was full of things that I wanted, from Unchained to silly things like Sunday Afternoon In The Park. I like odd things. I was not a pop guy, even though I have a good sense of how to write a pop song.

How did 5150 go from being just a demo studio to a fully equipped pro facility?

When we started work on 1984, I wanted to show Ted that we could make a great record without any cover tunes and do it our way. Donn and I proceeded to figure out how to build a recording studio. I did not initially set out to build a full-blown studio. I just wanted a better place to put my music together so I could show it to the guys. I never imagined that it would turn into what it did until we started building it.

Back then, zoning laws disallowed building a home studio on your property. I suggested that we submit plans for a racquetball court. When the city inspector came up here, he was looking at things and going, “Let’s see here. Two-foot-thick cinder blocks, concrete-filled, rebar-reinforced… Why so over the top for a racquetball court?” I told him, “Well, when we play, we play hard. We want to keep it quiet and not piss off the neighbors.” We got it approved.

Donn was involved with the design. I certainly didn’t know how to build a studio. It was all Donn’s magic. We built a main room and a separate control room. When we needed to find a console, Donn said that United Western Studios had a Bill Putnam–designed Universal Audio console that we could buy that he was familiar with.

We went to take a look at it, and it was this old, dilapidated piece of shit that looked like it was ready to go into the trash. Donn said, “Let’s buy it,” and I was going, “What the hell are you thinking?”

He said that he could make it work, so we paid $6,000 for it and lugged it up here. He rewired the whole console himself using a punch-down tool. Donn used to work for the phone company, so he was an expert at wiring things.

We also needed a tape machine, so we bought a 3M 16-track. Slowly, the studio turned into a lot more than I originally envisioned. Everybody else was even more surprised than I was, especially Ted. Everybody thought I was just building a little demo room. Then Donn said, “No man! We’re going to make records up here!” When Ted and everybody else heard that, they weren’t happy.

It sounds like Donn wanted as much creative freedom as you did.

Oh, definitely. We had grown really close and had a common vision. Everybody was afraid that Donn and I were taking control. Well…yes! That’s exactly what we did, and the results proved that we weren’t idiots.

When you’re making a record, you never know if the public is going to accept it, but we lucked out and succeeded at exactly what my goal was. I just didn’t want to do things the way Ted wanted us to do them. I’m not knocking Diver Down. It’s a good record, but it wasn’t the record I wanted to do at the time. 1984 was me showing Ted how you really make a Van Halen record.

[…]

You also mixed the album at 5150. Was that a challenge?

The funniest story about the whole record was near the end, when Donn and I were mixing it. Ted seemed to think that we were already done, and we had a deadline to meet.

The original plan was to release the album on New Year’s Eve of 1984, but Donn and I weren’t happy with everything on it. Donn and I would be in there mixing and the phone would ring. It would be Ted at the front gate to my house, wanting to come in.

To this day, I don’t think that Ted knows what actually went on. My whole driveway is like a big circle. So Donn would grab the master tapes, put them in his car, go out the back gate, and wait as Ted was coming through the front gate because Ted wanted the tapes. He’d ask where Donn and the tapes were, and I’d say that I had no idea.

This went on for about two weeks. Little did he know that Donn was sitting outside the back gate, waiting for him to leave. We had walkie-talkies and I would tell Donn when Ted was leaving. Then Donn would drive down the hill and come back in through the front gate, and Ted never saw him as he was going out behind him. It was a circus!

Nobody was happy with Donn and me. They thought we were crazy and out of our minds. Ted thought that Donn had lost it and was going to threaten to burn the tapes. That was all BS. We just wanted an extra week to make sure that we were happy with everything.

Ted just didn’t see eye to eye with the way I looked at things. That was my whole premise for building the studio. I wanted to make a complete record from end to end, not just one hit. As soon as “Jump” was done, he looked at the rest of the album as filler. It wasn’t that to me. It’s a good record because it was different.

© February 2014 Guitar World

5150 Studios Inside