Page 13 - Love-of-Music-Magazine-winter-2019

Tony Bongiovi: From Motown to

Power Station and Beyond

Drew St. John LOMM Reports
New York City, NY—Wednesday, October 17, 9:30 am With every studio in New York City wanting to get their
Tony Bongiovi’s pledge to sharing knowledge and expertise hands on the Motown sound, he could have his pick of any
with younger generations continued with his presentation studio and chose work instead of school. One example
at the 145th Audio Engineering Society show. The stu- of how he showed off his Motown influence was when he
dent/career event entitled “If I Can do it, You Can do it: had switches installed on the console at Media Sound that
Tony Bongiovi’s Career at Motown, the Power Station, and turned on or off channels, echo or other effects, the first
Beyond” took place at the Javitz Center in New York City, time such innovations appeared in NYC.
NY less than a mile and a half from the studio where the In 1975, Bongiovi began building Power Station, his New
legendary producer gained the majority of his notoriety.
York City studio that would incorporate ideas from his time
at Motown like sight lines between musicians and calculat-
ed acoustical measurements in the design process. Just as
technical aspects fueled Motown’s success, the results were
historic. “Power Station had more hit records than any
other studio in the history of pop music,” states Bongiovi.
Those who were there back Bongiovi’s claim. At an award
presentation honoring Bongiovi, industry elite members of
the crowd chimed in with the number of millions of albums
they had sold that Tony had produced. After 1.5 Billion

albums, people just stopped counting.
That famed studio, newly rechristened as Power Station at
Berklee NYC, is introducing a new generation of students to
world-class audio recording through a combination of
Tony Bongiovi sharing his expertise with future recording industry players. Bongiovi’s world renowned acoustical design and a 25
Photo Credit: Bobby Bank million dollar investment from Berklee Music and 6 million
Taking students back to the 1960s, when Motown Records from the City of New York for upgrading the space with
in Detroit owned the most technologically advanced studio the state-of-the-art technology available today. Just as he
at the time and 75% of the studio’s songs were ending up benefited from exposure to the process of innovation as
on the pop chart, Bongiovi’s presentation highlighted the a teenager visiting Hitsville U.S.A., a new generation of
importance of innovation driving technology to influence students will benefit from Bongiovi’s studio legacy
the mainstream market. As a teenager growing up in and design.
New Jersey, he experimented with acoustics and simple
electronics to calculate the formula for the amount of reverb
that Motown was using as opposed to every other major
studio of the day. With his formula in hand, he called the
chief engineer at Motown and told him that he had learned
their secret. That phone call landed him an invitation to
the famed Motown studio Hitsville U.S.A. while still in high
school.
The experience Bongiovi gained during his trip to Motown
and subsequent return visits garnered attention from studios
back in New York City.
At seventeen, he had to choose between the engineering LOM’s Music Director Drew St. John behind the mixing console at
program at Rutgers and jumping straight into studio work. Power Station, NYC.

Photo Credits: LOMM Staff
www.LoveofMusicMagazine.com | 11