Apostolic Studios was an American independent

recording studio A recording studio is a specialized facility for sound recording, mixing, and audio production of instrumental or vocal musical performances, spoken words, and other sounds. They range in size from a small in-home project studio large en ...

located at 53 East 10th Street in New York City's

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

. Established in 1967 by

John Townley John Townley (born 1945) is a musician, astrologer, and naval historian who was a member of the folk-rock group The Magicians and founder of New York City's Apostolic Recording Studio. Townley performs and releases maritime music, and is a pro ...

, Apostolic was the first 12-track studio in New York. Artists recording at the studio included

Frank Zappa Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. His work is characterized by nonconformity, free-form improvisation, sound experiments, musical virtuosity and satire of A ...

and

The Mothers of Invention The Mothers of Invention (also known as The Mothers) was an American rock band from California. Formed in 1964, their work is marked by the use of sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Originally an R&B band ...

Larry Coryell Larry Coryell (born Lorenz Albert Van DeLinder III; April 2, 1943 – February 19, 2017) was an American jazz guitarist. Early life Larry Coryell was born in Galveston, Texas, United States. He never knew his biological father, a musician. He w ...

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Genera ...

, and

The Fugs The Fugs are an American rock band formed in New York City in late 1964, by the poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, with Ken Weaver on drums. Soon afterward, they were joined by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of The Holy Modal Rounders. Kupfer ...

History

Townley, who had moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

to study guitar with

Reverend Gary Davis Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis (born Gary D. Davis, April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972), was a blues and gospel singer who was also proficient on the banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a f ...

, was immersed in the mid-1960s

music community, associating with

Peter La Farge Peter La Farge (born Oliver Albee La Farge, April 30, 1931 – October 27, 1965) was a New York City-based folksinger and songwriter of the 1950s and 1960s. He is known best for his affiliations with Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. Early life and educ ...

David Crosby David Van Cortlandt Crosby (born August 14, 1941) is an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Crosby joined the Byrds in 1964. They got ...

Fred Neil Fred Neil (March 16, 1936 – July 7, 2001) was an American folk singer-songwriter active in the 1960s and early 1970s. He did not achieve commercial success as a performer and is mainly known through other people's recordings of his material& ...

, and Vince Martin, and working with various artists, including

Peter Tork Peter Halsten Thorkelson (February 13, 1942 – February 21, 2019), better known by his stage name Peter Tork, was an American musician and actor. He was best known as the keyboardist and bass guitarist of the Monkees and a co-star of the TV ...

, David Blue, and

Jay Ungar Jay Ungar (born November 14, 1946) is an American folk musician and composer. Life and career Ungar was born in the Bronx, New York City. He frequented Greenwich Village music venues during his formative period in the 1960s. In the late 1960s, ...

before becoming a member of The Magicians in 1965. In August 1966 Townley turned 21 and came into an inheritance of $85,000. Inspired by two DMT-facilitated psychedelic visions, he decided to leave The Magicians and establish an independent recording studio in Greenwich Village that would be very different from what he previously experienced recording under the somewhat rigid corporate practices of

Columbia Recording Studio Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the Ame ...

. Townley invested in a building at 53 East 10th Street and partnered with Matt Hoffman and Weiss jewelry fortune heirs Michael and Danny Weiss to remodel its 2-story loft space into a recording studio. Lou Lindauer, who would go on to co-found

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

with Saul Walker, not only advised the construction of the new studio, but designed and built the recording console, which featured a separate performers' cue system that provided the monitoring necessary for facilitating overdubs--a feature not common on mixing consoles at that time. Townley convinced Scully to produce a prototype 1" 12-track

tape recorder An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present ...

. Four additional tracks allowed for more recording flexibility than the 1" 8-track recorders that were state of the art at the time. Apostolic Recording Studio opened in 1967, its name alluding to its capabilities as the first 12-track studio in New York City. Access to the studio was via a freight elevator, whose 6-story elevator shaft was painted with a blacklight mural by Nic Osborn, who dressed in a Viking costume and worked as the studio's elevator operator. The building's six-story stairwell was utilized as a live reverb chamber in addition to the studio's plate reverb. Apostolic Studios' independent, non-corporate style attracted numerous artists to record there, including

and

, the

Grateful Dead The Grateful Dead was an American rock music, rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. The band is known for its eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, Folk music, folk, country music, country, jazz, bluegrass music, bluegrass, ...

, and

. In 1968, the studio produced ''The Family of Apostolic'', a two-disc LP composed of performances from a variety of artists affiliated with the studios. Townley's daughter Diedre is pictured on the front cover of the album, and a young

Aida Turturro Aida Turturro ( ; born September 25, 1962) is an American actress. She is best known for her portrayal of Janice Soprano on the HBO drama series ''The Sopranos''. Early life and education Aida Turturro was born in Buffalo, New York, daughter o ...

is pictured among a collage of numerous pictures of children on the back album cover. In March 1969, Townley returned to his original musical inspiration when he persuaded Reverend Gary Davis to his first recording studio session in five years. The resulting album, ''O, Glory – The Apostolic Studio Sessions'' would be Davis' final studio album, released posthumously in 1973. In 1968, Townley opened Pacific High Studios in San Francisco as a West Coast counterpart to Apostolic. Apostolic Recording Studio and Pacific High Studios both went out of business in the early 1970s as a result of over-expansion and an economic recession.

Legacy

Tony Bongiovi, who would go on to found the

Power Station A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid. Many p ...

, worked as a recording engineer at Apostolic in 1967. Other engineers who began their career at Apostolic Studios include

Gary Kellgren Gary Kellgren (April 7, 1939 – July 20, 1977) was an American audio engineer and co-founder of The Record Plant recording studios, along with businessman Chris Stone. Career Engineering Kellgren was a successful and well respected audio ...

and John Kilgore.

References

{{coord missing, New York City Recording studios in Manhattan 1967 establishments in New York City Greenwich Village