Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1524863
134 M PS E . O R G CM: John, can you tell our readers a bit about your superhero origin story? JPF: I was born in San Francisco, and grew up in the small town of Kentfield just north of the city in Marin County. I was that kid who took things apart and later put them back together with varying degrees of success. I built models, and later, would destroy them with a BB gun or blow them up with firecrackers. I also played every sport depending upon what the season was. At the same time, I cycled through several different musical instruments until finally, when my parents brought me a guitar back from a European trip, I was hooked and played it incessantly for years to come. CM: And that led to your discovering sound recording as well? JPF: My sister had a "portable" record player with a built-in amplifier and speaker. When it was my turn to get one, I researched things and decided that I had to have a component system with separate turntable, amp, and speakers—it was the first manifestation of being a gear head. Not long after, my father had the divine inspiration to bring me back a Sony TC-355 sound-on-sound reel-to-reel tape recorder from a business trip to Japan, and my recording and sound design career was launched! If you've never experienced sound- on-sound recording, it is a one trick pony with only one shot at making an overdub track. As a result years later, my college roommate would yell down the hall for everyone to shut up and then stand guard at the door to make sure no one came by and spoiled my take! CM: By this time, you were doing a lot of music also? JPF: Yes, in high school I got my first electric guitar and amp and started playing music with friends and recording on my Sony recorder. I also got roped into working on a car restoration with a buddy and got hooked on learning about that as well—each would end up playing a roll in my future career. College was a mélange of playing music both solo and in bands, doing photography, film and theater, driving and working on cars and motorcycles and occasionally studying. I ended up graduating with an independent major titled "Non- Verbal Communication" which was more prescient than I ever could have imagined at the time. After college, I returned to Marin and continued all of the same pursuits. My day job was doing medical photography at my father's hospital in the city and music filled most of the rest of the time. I started recording my own projects on a 4-track recorder and spent many hours in a friend's 8-track studio learning about mics, outboard gear, and overdubbing with local recording engineers. I was also performing with friends and doing a solo lounge gig on weekends while taking weekly vocal lessons from famed Bay Area coach Judy Davis. Of course, there were still the occasional engine or transmission rebuilds or swaps on my daily drivers, and my pet project, which was restoring and then driving my 1962 Austin-Healey 3000 which still sits in my garage. Eventually, I joined a group as a band and cast member in a cabaret- style rock musical in San Francisco entitled Breakfast in Marin and starting writing songs with one of the authors, Brenda Warren, which led to putting together an 8-track studio to record our song demos wherever we could. My girlfriend was also an actress and we all decided at the end of the show's run that it was time to move to Los Angeles and pursue our respective careers there. Luck again played a big part in my journey because when I moved to LA, it was at a moment when the music industry had peaked, and record companies were not spending the way they once had. Landing a record deal with my songwriting partner, though we came pretty close a couple of times, was proving difficult. My girlfriend had gone to high school in San Francisco with Gregg Barbanell, who at the time owned a post sound business named Mag City on Seward Street in Hollywood. When the subject of work came up one weekend when we were together he said, "Look, I know you're into recording sound and music, and I need someone to run my transfer bay." I went in to meet with him, and when seeing the bay, I thought (when seeing the 35mm dubbers), "Yeah, this is like a big tape recorder, but it's got sprockets, that's cool." And Gregg showed me everything—how to load it, bias it, lock the dubber and recorder and it all made perfect sense. They also had a bi-phase synchronizer which allowed them to lock up with an Ampex recorder to run dailies and reprints. At that time, sound editing was still being done on mag-coated film, so I would transfer dailies and reprints, music cues, 1,000-foot rolls of sound FX copies, and whatever else was needed. At Mag City, I