Power Station at BerkleeNYC
441 West 53rd Street | Hell's Kitchen | built 1927
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1977
Tony Bongiovi and Bob Walters open the Power Station studio in an old Con Ed building
Producer Tony Bongiovi and engineer Bob Walters found an abandoned former Consolidated Edison power station at 441 West 53rd Street, which Bongiovi bought from the city for $360,000 under a rehabilitation program. They opened the Power Station recording studio in 1977, named for the building's past. It was known as Avatar Studios from 1996 to 2017, when Berklee College of Music acquired it.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1979
Ian Hunter records with E Street Band members, and Springsteen arrives to work on The River
In 1979 Ian Hunter recorded You're Never Alone with a Schizophrenic here, backed by members of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. Springsteen himself came to the Power Station that year to work on The River. In 1980 sessions at the studio included David Bowie's Scary Monsters, Carly Simon's Come Upstairs, a Suicide album produced by Ric Ocasek and Dire Straits' Making Movies, which a young Jimmy Iovine co-produced.
“In 1979 Ian Hunter recorded his album You're Never Alone with a Schizophrenic at the studio with members of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1982
Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart is cut live in Studio A and mixed on the Fourth of July
Jim Steinman produced the track in Studio A, with Neil Dorfsman and John Jansen as engineers. His regular rhythm section of Max Weinberg on drums, Roy Bittan on piano and Steve Buslowe on bass played it live, while Bonnie Tyler sang in a separate isolation booth from backup singer Rory Dodd. The team ran roughly 20 takes. Mixing took place on the evening of July 4, 1982, in Studio B and lasted about 12 hours, with almost every reverb send pushed to the maximum.
Source: mixonline.com
- 1982
David Bowie and Nile Rodgers cut Let's Dance in 17 days, with Stevie Ray Vaughan on guitar
After a 1982 holiday in the South Pacific, David Bowie met Nile Rodgers at the bar of the Carlyle Hotel and told him he wanted hits. The two recorded the album Let's Dance at the Power Station in only 17 days. Stevie Ray Vaughan, an unknown Texas blues guitarist whom Bowie had seen at the Montreux Jazz Festival, played on the sessions. Bowie said Vaughan became a midwife to his idea of European-sounding music with roots in the blues.
Source: Internet Archive
- 1984
Springsteen and Madonna record Born in the U.S.A. and Like a Virgin here
Bruce Springsteen recorded The River (1980) and Born in the U.S.A. (1984) here, David Bowie completed Let's Dance in 1982, and Madonna recorded Like a Virgin in 1984. After a full renovation, the studio reopened in 2020 as Power Station at BerkleeNYC.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1984
Robert Palmer and members of Chic and Duran Duran record an album and take the studio's name
In 1984 a supergroup of Robert Palmer, Chic drummer Tony Thompson and the Duran Duran members Andy and John Taylor came to the studio to make a one-off album. They named both the band and its debut record The Power Station, after the place where it was made.
“…subsequently naming both the group and its debut album The Power Station after the studio where it was recorded…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1995
Power Station mixes nine of the year's thirteen major Grammy winners
By 1995 more than 400 gold and platinum records have been made at the studio inside the former Consolidated Edison power station on West 53rd Street. That year alone, engineers there record or mix nine of the thirteen major Grammy Award winners, building on the studio's reputation from earlier work with Chic, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen and Madonna.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1996
New owners rename the studio Avatar Studios after a bankruptcy sale
Chieko and Kirk Imamura buy the building at a bankruptcy auction for $5.4 million and rebrand it Avatar Studios under their Avatar Entertainment Corporation. The space keeps operating as a recording studio for another two decades before a 2017 sale to Pete Muller and Berklee College of Music restores the Power Station name.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Power Station (recording studio)Wikipedia
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