Wayne Wadhams

Written by Joe Viglione Written by Joe Viglione Wednesday, 13 May 2009 13:29 Though his group, The Fifth Estate, found fame in June of 1967 when a hit version of "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead" (Jubilee Records) from The Wizard Of Oz circled around the Top 10, Wayne Wadhams is better known in Boston circles as a Berklee Professor who has produced rock and jazz for major labels as well as re-releasing classical music forgotten by some of those same major recording companies, successfully packaging and selling that important art on his Boston Skyline imprint. Professor Wadhams has many great stories - recently discovered footage of his pioneering 60s band capturing the spirit of their mission. It should do much to insure their legacy alongside Peter Wolf's Hallucinations, Barry Tashian's Remains and Victor "Moulty" Moulton's Barbarians as the guys who helped build the vital New England music scene. But as essential as that work was and still is, the foundation it created is equally important, if not as visible. You see, Wayne Wadhams is the man who developed six recording studios at the Berklee College of Music in Boston - which constitute the Music, Production & Engineering Department. Studios where producers from the late Jimmy Miller (Rolling Stones) to George Massenberg (Linda Ronstadt) and many other artists have lectured and held master classes while working on their own projects. Wayne Wadhams founded Studio B, a commercial Boston facility, before his work at Berklee, and Arts Media Magazine asked him how all this developed back in the day. A.M.M.: Wayne, what gave you the idea for Studio B? W.W.: "That was really just an accident. The Orson Welles Film School, of which I was one of the founders and Vice President, had a recording studio in it, which I put together for narration and music recording - just a 4 track room at the time. At some point in the early 1970s we bumped it up to 8 track, which was pretty good for that time. In 1974 the school itself went out of business, so the owner of the complex said "Make me an offer". I did. I bought the entirety in one lump and put it in a van, and it sat in my backyard for a year, till we decided what we wanted to do. During that time I met Allen Smith, who became our head engineer. We rented the space on Boylston Street - between Arlington and Berkeley (the street, not the school) in Boston, where we were for more than a decade." During that time the studio upgraded from 16 track and then 24 track at the end. Studio B's business consisted of commercial clients doing ads, tv work, the kind of projects now mostly done by the facility known as Soundtrack (where Allen Smith has worked since Studio B), and other clientele such as local artists and regional bands. In mid-1982 Berkelee College hired Wadhams to do research and consultancy and decided to go ahead with the new MP&E department later in 1982. Towards the end of 1983 Wayne effectively closed Studio B taking most of his staff and putting them all to work at Berklee installing the studios and developing curicculum. "Even Allen Smith became a teacher there," Wadhams explained, "but he didn't like teaching much. That's when he got an offer from Soundtrack and took it in 1984." Wayne also explained the Berklee philosophy at the time: "the core was always the performance division -people teaching players to play, that was the central part of it - arranging, songwriting, film scoring and other things of that sort. I designed the recording studios, not all of them, because there are eleven. I designed the first six." The work included basic acoustic design, layout... "they've been renovated since then, I've had little to do with that. They are still in the same configuration, the basic design for Studios A - F (is the same)." What happened was that Berklee asked Wayne to write up a report. "They asked me "should we be teaching recording techniques or anything related and if so, what - and how should it be oriented?" "I interviewed students, a lot of faculty, alumni here in NY and L.A., interviewed the heads of CBS studios, Atlantic studios, you name it, to ask if they thought it viable and worthwhile for a college to be teaching engineering and/or technical areas of recording. They said "Absolutely" because recording itself was getting so much more technical" and so said my report." Wadhams was in the middle of a motion picture audio mix with the famous screenwriter/director John Sayles in New York, the 1983 picture "Lianna", when he was surprised to receive a phone call (within a month of his turning in the report) asking "How quickly can you get all this up and running?" He replied "If you want this done within six months you have to give me full control of the whole thing." They said OK. "They set it up so that I was working with the Provost, and the new president, then Lee Berk (the school was, in fact, named after Lee Berk), who was just taking over from his father, who had founded the school in 1945. Everything was done in direct concert with the president's office." This accelerated the closing of Wadhams' own "Studio B", helping them make the decision not to move, but to work on the Berklee project. "This was also a time when the industry itself was so rapidly increasing in technical detail and complexity" Wayne told Arts Media Magazine. Moreover, at this point in time, an "audio" version of the "Oscars" was created by Mix Magazine - the "TEC Awards" for Outstanding Technical Achievement. Berklee won the first, second and third "TEC" Awards. The AES (Audio Engineering Society) also awarded Berklee top honors as an educational institution, and held their executive meeting at Berklee, which they had never done at any school before. This signified to the industry that the school had done the right thing. Although Wayne intended the Berklee job to be a turnkey operation in his career, the college had different ideas. They said "Now that you've built the MP&E department, don't you want to teach?" Wadhams reflected: "The next thing I know, I'm a full professor." Today Wayne is still busy, currently producing a CD of Bach organ music with organist David Carrier at the Wellesley Congregational Church. He's written a number of books including a three volume set called "Sound Advice", and most recently "Inside The Hits", a wonderful exploration of what makes many well-loved Top 40 hits tick. It is published by Berklee Press and is worth seeking out. Originally published October 18, 2005 Read more about Wayne here Last Updated on Wednesday, 13 May 2009 18:14