Chapter 2 — Opening Night, October 28, 1972
The Halloween masquerade that became rock-and-roll legend.
By Tom Proctor
Kellgren and Stone knew how to throw a party.
For the Sausalito opening, they mailed invitations carved into slabs of redwood — those slabs still hang in the lobby today. The date was October 28, 1972, a Saturday, and the theme was Halloween. Studio A was online. Studio B was still under construction.
Among the guests who arrived that night were John Lennon and Yoko Ono. They came dressed as trees.
The masquerade became part of rock-and-roll legend almost immediately. From that first night, the Plant established itself not only as a recording studio but as a cultural destination — a place built deliberately against the sterile feel of traditional facilities, where artists could live, collaborate, and disappear into the work. Chris Stone's limousine carried the custom plate DEDUCT. Kellgren drove a purple Rolls-Royce reading GREED.
The studio had been designed by acoustician Tom Hidley. Studio A was decorated with the now-iconic sunburst wall pattern — a motif that remains in the room today — and white fabric draped from the ceiling. Studio B's ceiling was another matter entirely. Kellgren had commissioned panels of plywood cut into cloud shapes and draped in velvet, so that engineers and artists looking up saw what appeared to be a slow, permanent California sky. He wanted his rooms to look different from every other studio in the country, and they did.
The amenities were already in place: a jacuzzi, a game room, a kitchen with a chef, guest houses in Mill Valley five minutes away, a conference room with a waterbed floor, and a speedboat moored at the nearby dock for artists who needed a quick exit. Wally Heider, upon learning the Record Plant was coming to Sausalito, had drawn up competing plans for a studio in Mill Valley. When the Plant opened, those plans were abandoned entirely.
Studio manager Ginger Mews, recruited from Wally Heider Studios, ran the floor from the beginning.