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As a teenager, producer Tony Bongiovi was captivated by the sound of Mowtown records. Experimenting with acoustics at home, he discovered their signature sound was created by adding a short reverb time in an echo chamber.

 

“My father had a funeral home. Down under the garage was where he stored all the boxes, so if you pushed them all out, it would decay about four and a half seconds. I started wheeling the boxes in and opening them up to absorb the sound until I got to two seconds. I said, 'This must be what they're doing.'" 

 

Impressed by his discovery, Motown President Barry Gordy invited Bongiovi, then 17, to engineer at Hitsville USA studios in Detroit. Returning to New York in 1966, Bongiovi soon became a sought-after engineer and producer and, in 1975, decided to use the income from his production royalties to open his own studio.

 

He purchased an abandoned Con Edison electrical substation in Hell’s Kitchen and named the studio after it - Power Station.

The design for Power Station was radically different than that of other studios at the time. "They had rugs on the walls, ceilings, and floors," says Bongiovi. "Musicians complained - ‘it's too dead. I can't hear. I can't play in tune.' So I designed the studios for musicians."

 

Bongiovi devised a system of pine slats and burlap panels in oddly shaped rooms with high ceilings to create a ‘live’ sound.  “I had enough high school physics to be able to calculate those primitive equations that tell me what the reverberation time is, and what the resonant frequency is,” says Bongiovi. “The whole room is a bass trap.”

 

With 2500 sq ft of floor space, and a domed ceiling rising to 35 feet, Studio A has a natural reverberation time of three-quarters of a second. It is widely considered one of the best spaces in the world for recording drums, with a pair of mics permanently mounted at the highest point of the ceiling to capture the room's unique ambiance. 

 

“Power Station had more hit records than any other studio in the history of pop music,” says Bongiovi. “Ever since I built this, I didn't have to change a single thing in here. I got it right the first time. It wasn't easy, but I got it right.“

The Born in the USA Sessions at Power Station spanned a two-year period from May 1982 to February 1984. The first day didn't go well, according to engineer Toby Scott. “Nothing came together... the sound was just a mish-mash.” Scott reconsidered the layout of the musicians in the studio, specifically the placement of drummer Max Weinberg, adding room mics on boom stands at the far end of the room, pointing up towards the ceiling.

 

Power Station had many options to create reverb, including chamber one - a six-story brick and concrete stairwell, and The Ladies' Room, formerly a tiled bathroom. There were also several EMT plates, but Scott’s assistant told him one was broken.

 

“I said, 'What's wrong with it? Let's hear it,' so he plugged it in, I ran a drum into it, and the decay boomed and rattled and kept on going for about three or four seconds. I said, 'Perfect, I'll take it!'”

 

A combination of drummer Max Wienberg hitting the snare, the mic placement picking up the acoustics in the room, and the four‑second plate reverb, created an explosive snare drum sound that is the backbone of the album. "I remember listening to it and going, 'Wow!' recalls Scott, “It was totally, revolutionarily different-sounding to anything else at that time.”

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in session at Power Station, August 1979. © Joel Bernstein.

On the second day, May 3rd 1982, Springsteen began the session playing "Born In The USA" on acoustic guitar, singing it for the band.

 

Keyboard player Roy Bittan remembers pulling a six-note motif from the chorus. “When I heard him sing it, I said, ‘That’s a riff,'” Bittan says. “A very succinct, simplistic riff.” As Bittan played the riff, Max Weinberg began slamming his snare drum along with it.

 

“Bruce heard Max and me, and he said, “Wait, wait, wait. Stop. Okay. Roll the tape.‘Does everybody have the chords? Okay, roll the tape. Boom. There it was.”

 

Springsteen and the E Street Band played ten takes live. Take 9 was used as the master, with some editing to shorten the jam session at the end.

 

Released on 4th June 1984, Born In The USA sold more than 15 million copies in America and 30 million worldwide.  It was not only the best‑selling album of 1985 in the US, but spent the most ever weeks on the Billboard Top 10.

Bruce Springsteen on the corner of 53rd St. and 11th Ave, August 1979. © Joel Bernstein.

Despite Reagan's attempt to use the song for his 1984 re-election campaign, "Born In The USA" does not embody the flag-waving patriotism that many perceive. Although the chorus reflects American pride, the verses are critical of the way the country treated Vietnam veterans.   "It's a complex picture of the country," Springsteen says, "You can both be very critical of your nation and very prideful of your nation simultaneously."

 

The iconic album cover featuring Springsteen from behind against the backdrop of the US flag prompted some to suggest that he was pissing on the Stars & Stripes. Springsteen dismisses this, saying "We took a lot of different types of pictures, and in the end, the picture of my ass looked better than the picture of my face.”

The Power Station entered bankruptcy in 1996 and was put up for auction. The new owners changed the name to ‘Avatar’ and continued to operate the studio, but by 2015 it was no longer financially viable and was again put up for sale.

 

It was feared the building would suffer the same fate as The Hit Factory just a block north, which was sold to real estate developers in 2006 and converted into his 27 luxury apartments.

 

However, in 2017 the studio found new life through an unexpected partnership between hedge fund manager Peter Muller, who purchased the building for $20 million, and Berklee College of Music.

 

Berklee partnered with the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment to invest $25 million in renovating the building, upgrading the studio technology, and adding a new rehearsal and performance space equipped with cutting-edge audio, video, and virtual reality technology.

 

“We want to try to reinvent music education,” says Stephen Webber, Executive Director at Berklee NYC. “We’re looking at this place as a laboratory to figure out new methods of helping musicians and artists realize their creative and career potential.” 

 

The newly named “Power Station at BerkleeNYC” will continue to operate as a commercial studio and an educational space. It will offer a one-year Master’s program in Creative Media and Technology, specializing in songwriting and music production.

 

“I turned over all the blueprints to the studio to them and explained how I did what I did,” said Bongiovi  “I’d never done that before because I didn’t want anybody to know. They now will have the most comprehensive acoustics program of any university teaching recording science.”

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