This week, a collage of 54 album covers — from rock to rap to funk to punk — was mounted on the alley wall of an otherwise nondescript warehouse in the Tenderloin.
The Art Deco frontage remains otherwise unmarked but it will soon boast a bronze plaque recognizing Hyde Street Studios as a legacy business in San Francisco for its contributions to the history and identity of the neighborhood — and to the pantheon of pop music.
“For one year, every important album in the country came out of that studio,” said music historian Dennis McNally. The year would have bridged 1969-70, when “Deja Vu,” by Crosby, Stills Nash and Young, “American Beauty” by the Grateful Dead, “Volunteers” by Jefferson Airplane, “Tupelo Honey,” by Van Morrison and “Green River” by Creedence Clearwater Revival were all recorded here. At the time, the studio was known as Wally Heider Recording.
San Francisco’s Small Business Commission, which designates legacy businesses with input from the public and the Historic Preservation Commission, does not honor achievement for a single year’s work. It requires at least 30 years of operation without substantive change or interruption and that is all thanks to Michael Ward, who took over the space and proceeded to not change a thing about the interior.
Heider, who operated studios in San Francisco and in Los Angeles, sold the San Francisco business to Filmways, a TV and production company in 1978, and took his recording equipment with him.
Filmways operated the studios until 1980 when Ward, a 75-year-old who fronts the jam band “Michael Ward with Dogs and Fishes” took over the empty space and replaced Heider’s equipment with gear of the same vintage or older. The sound is still mixed manually by knobs on a recording console and artists have the option of having it fed from there onto magnetic tape through a reel-to-reel recorder. They can leave a session with a cardboard box holding a metal reel, just like the 1970s.
“Michael is a true believer,” said local rocker Chuck Prophet. “When studios were tearing out the old gear and putting in the new gear, Hyde street stuck with what it had.” The last time Prophet recorded here he was offered use of a newly purchased microphone — a German Telefunken U47 made in 1955, the model Frank Sinatra preferred.
The famed recording studios A, C and D (mysteriously, there is no studio B) still have the original acoustic tiles, wooden flooring and baffles on the walls, and double-paned window separating the studio form the control room. If anyone wants to verify the authenticity, a black and white picture outside the door of Studio A shows Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Neil Young and David Crosby inside working.
The kitchen is still there awaiting all-night customers, and the ashtray stand that John Fogerty is pictured using is still in use on the alley where bands take their breaks.
“There is a community there. You are going to see people in the halls,” Prophet said. “Everybody is treated with respect, even bike messengers trying to make a demo.”
If you ring the buzzer, it takes a while to get an answer because there is just one full-time employee — Jack Kertzman, the studio manager. He got the job 10 years ago when he was 23 and straight of the University of Wisconsin with a bachelor of science degree in music industry and recording technology. “It was here or Nashville,” he said, “and I didn’t want to work in ‘new country.’”
Walking the long dark corridors, Kertzman passed 17 framed gold and platinum records that all came out of here, including three by Train, two each by Cake, Chris Isaak and Joe Satriani and one each by Green Day and Dead Kennedys. There wouldn’t be enough wall space if Heider hadn’t taken his own gold and platinum records with him.
“Hyde Street is as good as it gets in terms of the mission, which is creating music that means something,” said Sonny Climes who was laying down tracks with his jazz trio on the day the album mural was being completed in back. He’s aware that pianist Vince Guaraldi recorded many of his “Peanuts” albums in this room. Also that Herbie Hancock made the monumental fusion record “Head Hunters” in Studio D upstairs.
“It’s the source of reverence and inspiration absolutely,” Climes said. As he spoke, sound engineer Eric Glauser was in the control room doing a sound check at a Neve 8038 mixing console, the 1974 model.
“It’s a colorful network of artists and musicians,” said Climes while watching Glauser work the knobs, “and we record beautiful music.”
Late last year, David Crosby came to Hyde Street to record a podcast. The first thing he asked Kertzman was “Is the echo chamber still here?” Kertzman guided Crosby up the stairs and past Studio C where, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young bickered their way through the making of the seminal “Deja Vu.”
Behind a locked door at the end of the hall is a high-ceilinged room no larger than a walk-in closet. The walls were built at odd angles so the sound ricochets around. It looks exactly as Crosby left it in 1971. You can hear its effect in the last song on “If I Could Only Remember My Name,” Crosby’s first solo album. A worn copy in vinyl version is sitting in the lounge next to a record player.
“Everyone is coming back to analog,” said Prophet. “but Hyde Street was always there.”
Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@samwhitingsf
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