Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/908098
24 Ed was a terrific storyteller and had a range of experi- ences that were unmatched. A few years ago, we were doing a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memo- rial. It was cold all week, very cold. At one point while Ed and I were drinking a welcome cup of coffee, he told me that the weather reminded him of the inau- guration that required him to go back to his studio to remix the music because it was too cold for the musi- cians to play. I stood there trying to do the calendar math in my head and finally asked him, "Which inau- guration?" "Kennedy." Everyone has great stories of working with Ed. Many are humorous. Some brief reminiscences are recorded on the rack room walls at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. My favorite, a quote from a PL conversa- tion: "I can't talk! I can't talk! I can't even listen!" Even in chaos, there was humor. Andy Strauber recounts these memories: I will always remember two things about our Mr. Greene. When we first met, sometime last century, I was al- ways amazed by the fact that he never seemed to label his console. No matter what show it was, there were no Ed Greene labels on however many desks he was using for that particular show. If there were any labels at all, it was because the truck engineer had started patching the show based on the paper- work (from some other version of the same show) that Ed would produce. The other thing was how we would end music. We never just cut it off. When the producer or director wanted the music to end, we always took it out as if there was a band playing. "Wait for it," Ed would say. Most directors did not even notice what we were doing. They just wanted the music to end. But Ed wanted it right. And it made a difference. Long hours, short turnarounds and red-eye flights were all part of Ed's work life. Mark Weber remembers: In the eighties, we were doing a shoot for a week with sixteen-hour days. I was amazed to find that, even though I arrived a half-hour before the call, he had beaten me to work. He did the next two days as well. I remarked to Joe Kendall that I got in early to beat traffic, and no matter how early I came in, Ed always beat me to work. He said, "That's because he's sleeping underneath the console." I said, "Oh." That thought hadn't occurred to me. Patrick Baltzell shares this story: One of the many interesting projects that I did with Ed Greene was the Opening and Closing Ceremonies for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. We were on site rehearsing and record- ing the musical elements for three weeks. These types of projects are primarily track playback- ing, including the performances, underscores, announcements and voice-overs. The Opening Ceremony was four hours of continuous tracks. During the rehearsal process, dozens of edits are required to correct timings of cast movements, etc. Ed was using a brand-new Akai DR16 digi- tal recorder for this project. The night before the Opening Ceremony, Ed was making some final ed- its and the Akai DR recorder failed. The memory limit had been reached and the music files over- wrote the operating system files. No warning and no protection of the OS had been written into the software. Ed Greene and his assistant, Dave Far- ragher, stayed up all through the night to rebuild the four-hour show from the source reels and all of the edits and "pull ups" done from memory. The rest of us mortals would have written this off as a career ender. Not Ed Greene. When I asked a few people to contribute these memo- ries, it was clear that the personal relationships forged were deep and true. Working in the Wally Heider truck, 1979. (Courtesy Dave Hewitt)