The Six settled into life in Los Angeles, renting a house in the hills of Topanga Canyon. They prepared to begin recording their debut album. Teddy, along with a team of technicians, including lead engineer Artie Snyder, set up shop at Sound City Studios, a recording studio in Van Nuys, California.


Karen: The day we moved into that house I thought, This place is a dump. It was this rickety old thing with the front door off the hinges and chipped stained-glass windows. I hated it. But about a week or two later, Camila got to L.A. She drove down the long driveway through the woods and she got out of the car and she went, “Wow. This place is bitchin’.” Once she said the house was cool, I started to dig it.

Camila: The house was surrounded by rosemary bushes. I loved that.

Billy: Man, it felt good to have Camila back. It felt so good to have that woman in my arms again. We were gonna get married and I was in L.A. and I was making a record with my brother and everything felt like it was gold.

Warren: Graham and Karen each had a bedroom off the kitchen. Pete and Eddie took the garage. Billy and Camila wanted the loft. So I got the only bedroom with a bathroom in it.

Graham: Warren’s bedroom had a toilet in it. He used to say he had his own bathroom but he didn’t. His room had a toilet. Just in the corner of the room.

Billy: Teddy was a night owl. So we would all head out to the studio in the afternoon and stay pretty late into the night, sometimes into the morning.

When we were recording, the rest of the world didn’t exist to us. You’re in that dark studio, thinking of nothing but the music.

Me and Teddy … we were knee-deep in it. Speeding up tempos and recording in different keys, trying out everything. I was playing around with new instruments. I was lost to it all at the studio. But then I’d come home and Camila would be asleep, the sheets around her. I’d be a little drunk, usually, and I’d slip into bed right next to her.

It was always the mornings that I got to spend with Camila back then. The way most couples go out to dinner at the end of a long day, Camila and I would go out to breakfast. Some of my favorite mornings were the ones where I wouldn’t even bother going to sleep. Camila would wake up and the two of us would drive on down to Malibu and have breakfast along PCH.

Every morning, she’d order the same thing: an iced tea, no sugar, three lemon slices.

Camila: Iced tea, three lemons. Club soda, two limes. Martini with two olives and an onion. I’m particular about my drinks. [Laughs] I’m particular about a lot of things.

Karen: You know, people think of Camila as following Billy everywhere, taking care of Billy all the time, but it wasn’t like that. She was a force to be reckoned with. She got what she wanted. Almost all the time. She was persuasive and kind of pushy—although, you never really realized you were being pushed. But she was opinionated and knew how to get her way.

I remember this one time she and Billy came down into the living room one morning, just a bit before noon, maybe. We were all in last night’s jeans, that kind of thing. We weren’t going into the studio until much later. Camila said, “You all want to make a big breakfast? Pancakes, waffles, bacon, eggs, the whole nine?”

But Billy had heard that Graham and I were about to get a burger and he wanted to go with us.

So Camila said, “I’ll just make you all burgers here.”

And we said fine. So she sent Billy out for hamburger meat and told him to get bacon, too. And eggs for tomorrow.

Then she fired up the grill and came in to tell us the burger meat Billy got didn’t look so good. So she’d just make bacon. And while she was making bacon, might as well make eggs, and if she had the eggs out, might as well make some pancakes, too.

Suddenly, it was 1:30 and we were all sitting around the table to eat a brunch and there wasn’t a single burger in sight. All of it tasted great and no one even noticed what she had done except me.

That’s what I loved about her. She was no wallflower. You just had to be paying attention to see it.

Eddie: The rest of us were always gone, most of the time at least, and I just assumed Camila might help around the house, might clean a bit, you know what I mean? I said one time, “Maybe while we’re gone, you could tidy up or something.”

Camila: I said, “All right.” And then I proceeded to not clean a single thing.

Graham: It was a busy time. Billy was always writing. We were always working on some element or another. In and out of the studio, sleeping there sometimes.

So many nights Karen and I would stay up until the sun came up, working on a riff or a melody.

Warren: That was when I grew my mustache. See now, some men just can’t pull off a mustache. But I can. I grew it when we were recording our first album and I have never shaved it.

Well, I shaved it one time and I looked like a skinned cat so I grew it back.

Graham: Recording an album, especially a debut, it takes a lot out of you. Billy became a little obsessive. I think that’s why—when the rest of us might have done a bump in the studio—I think that’s why Billy started doing lines every day. He was staying in the zone.

Billy: I was intent on making sure that album was the greatest album anyone had ever released since the dawn of time. [Laughs] Let’s just say I wasn’t known for keeping things in perspective back then.

Eddie: Billy took a lot of control over that album. And Teddy let him.

Billy would write the songs, write almost everybody’s parts. He’d come in and he’d know the guitars and the keys and what he wanted on the drums. He wasn’t on Pete as much, he let Pete have a little bit more leeway. But the rest of us, he dictated the sound and we all went along with it.

I kept looking at everybody else, wondering if someone was going to say something. But no one did. It seemed like I was the only one that cared. And when I’d push back, Teddy would back Billy.

Artie Snyder (lead engineer for The Six, SevenEightNine, and Aurora): Teddy thought Billy was the real talent of The Six. He never said that to me directly. But he and I spent a lot of time in the control room over the years. And we’d go out sometimes after the band went home, have a drink or two, get a burger. Teddy was a guy who could eat. You’d say, “Let’s get drinks,” and Teddy would say, “Let’s get steaks.” What I mean is, I knew him well.

And he really singled Billy out. He asked his opinion when he didn’t ask anyone else’s, looked at Billy when he was talking to the whole band.

Don’t get me wrong, all of them were talented. I once used one of Karen’s tracks as an example to another keyboardist of what he should be doing. And I once heard Teddy tell another producer that Pete and Warren were going to be the best rhythm section in rock one day. So he believed in all of them. But he homed in on Billy.

One night as we were walking to our cars Teddy said Billy was the one that had what you can’t teach. And I think that’s true. I still think that’s true.

Graham: Billy was always wondering if we should lay it down one more time, if we should mess with the mix more. Teddy kept telling us that he wanted to leave it as raw as possible. Teddy spent some real energy trying to get Billy to just be Billy.

Billy: Teddy told me once, “What your sound is, is a feeling. That’s it. And that’s a world above everything else.”

I remember saying, “What’s the feeling?”

I was writing about love. I was singing with a little bit of a growl. We were rockin’ hard on the guitars with some real blues bass lines. So I was thinking Teddy might say, you know, “taking a girl home from a bar” or “speeding with the top down,” or something like that. Something fun, maybe and a little dangerous.

But he just said, “It’s ineffable. If I could define it, I wouldn’t have any use for it.”

That really stuck with me.

Karen: It was pretty boss, recording an album with a real studio. There were techs around to tune everything, people around getting lunch, somebody to go grab you a dime bag. Every day, there was a large spread for lunch that got changed out for dinner.

This one time, we were recording and in comes a dozen chocolate chip cookies delivered by some dude. I said, “We have enough cookies.”

And the kid said, “Not this kind.” They were laced. I have no idea who sent them.

Eddie: “Just One More” was written and recorded in one day when somebody sent over a batch of grass baked into cookies. The whole song, written mostly by Billy with my help, seems like it’s about wanting to sleep with a girl one time before you hit the road. But it was about how we’d eaten all the grass and just wanted one more cookie.

Warren: I took three of the cookies myself and I hid one of ’em for later and as Billy is writing this song about wanting one more, I thought, Shit! He knows I have one more!

Graham: It was just a great time. We had a great time back then.

Billy: It did have that kind of feeling where … you know you’re in a time of your life you’ll remember forever.

Graham: The night before we finished recording, I came home from somewhere or other and found Karen sitting up on the railing of the deck, looking out into the canyon. Warren was in a patio chair, whittling what looked like a skinny Christmas tree out of a plastic spoon.

Karen turned to me and said, “It’s a shame the water’s up to my ankles. I wanted to go for a hike.”

And so I said, “What are you guys on and is there any more?”

Karen: It was mescaline.

Warren: That night, when Graham, Karen, and I did peyote, I remember telling myself that if the album was shit, I was gonna be okay. Because I could make spoons for a living. That logic wasn’t sound, obviously. But the thought did stick with me. You can’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Graham: We finished recording everything in November, I think.

Eddie: We finished up around March.

Graham: Now, it was probably another month, maybe two, that Billy and Teddy were in the studio going over the mixes.

I would go in some days, listen to what they were doing. I had some thoughts and Billy and Teddy always heard me out. And then they played us the final mix and I was blown away.

Eddie: No one was allowed in the studio except Teddy and Billy. They were working on that thing for months. And then finally we were all allowed to hear it.

But it was dynamite. I said to Pete, I said, “We sound fuckin’ great.”

Billy: We played it for Rich Palentino in the conference room over at the Runner offices. I was tapping my foot so hard underneath that table. I was nervous. This was our shot. If Rich didn’t like it, I was thinking I might explode.

Warren: To us back then, Rich was this old guy in his suit and tie. I thought, This corporate fucker is judging me? He looked like such an agent of the man.

Graham: I had to stop watching Rich and just close my eyes and listen. And when I did, I thought, There’s no way this guy isn’t gonna dig this.

Billy: The last note of “When the Sun Shines on You” played and I was staring at Rich. Graham and Teddy are staring, too—we’re all staring at him. Rich gets this small smile on his face and he goes, “You’ve got a great album here.”

And when Rich liked it, that was it. It was like the last bit of me that was grounded down to earth just flew off, like someone had pulled the rip cord and I was flying.

Nick Harris (rock critic): Their self-titled debut was a respectable entrance into the rock scene. It was straitlaced and economical, sort of a no-frills blues-rock album from a band that knew how to write a decent love song and had really perfected the art of the drug innuendo. A little bit folky, very catchy, lots of swagger, big riffs, hard drums, and that great Billy Dunne smooth growl.

It was an auspicious start.