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"SIMON ANDREWS: STAYING ON THE RIGHT TRACK"
Mix Magazine, September, 1997
Simon Andrews, owner of New York City's Right Track Recording Studios, was managing
a couple of regionally successful acts in the early 1970s when he realized that it
just wasn't the career for him. "I didn't enjoy it, I lost money at it, it just
wasn't working for me," he says. "But I saw a tremendous need for a
mid-level studio
in Manhattan for acts such as mine - midrange acts. There were basically just a couple
of major studios in New York, and if you weren't a top star, you didn't get good treatment.
So when my act broke up in 1975, I put together a studio down on 24th Street. It opened
at the beginning of 1976.
"In retrospect, I think the hardest part was the very beginning, when you pretty
much have to do everything yourself and you can't make a mistake," he continues. "I did
everything from engineer to maintenance, the bookings, everything. Being the kind of
guy who thinks he can do anything he sets his heart to, I just learned how to do it."
Convinced he was on the right track, Andrews upped the ante in 1979. "I was offered a
premises in midtown Manhattan - a run-down old Times Square building that had been
used as an opera
house. It was about 6,000 square feet, and I was offered it at a very
reasonable rent. At about the same moment, Frank Filipetti became affiliated with
Right Track, and I was then able to leave him in charge of the engineering aspect of the
studio, so I could concentrate full-time on the ownership duties."
Right Track crossed the hump into the big-time studio world in about 1983, according
to Andrews. "We were one of the first in New York to install an SSL console, in 1982, and
immediately it became a huge success. We added a second one in 1983, when we opened our
second room on 48th Street. By 1984, we were recording so many stars that by May of 1985
we had four of the Billboard Top 10 that had either been recorded or mixed at
our studio."
Andrews' formula for survival in the studio business shows no surprises, just good client-oriented
business sense. "It sounds fairly simplistic, but you have to have the right equipment,
the right acoustical environment, the right support services, the right atmosphere whitin
the premises....and they all have to work 100 percent. If you keep doing that
consistently, you'll do okay. But it's much easier said than done."
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