At Electric Lady Studios — the influential Greenwich Village recording venue founded by Jimi Hendrix — artists from David Bowie and Lou Reed to Beyoncé and Taylor Swift have laid down tracks.
But, insiders say the space is filled with more than just good vibes and great music. Many say it’s haunted.
“Pretty much every assistant I know has had some kind of sighting late at night when they are alone,” Grammy-Award winning mixer Michael Brauer, who has worked with Coldplay and John Mayer, told The Post.
One time he saw, in his peripheral vision, what he thought was his assistant going to the lounge.
“I called out to him because I needed him to patch something, but he didn’t respond,” he said. “I called out again, nothing, so I got up and as I was heading to the door, [my assistant] came walking in from the other direction. I [investigated] the live room; it was empty. My assistant had been in the bathroom.”
An anonymous engineer recalled a similar story. He and a colleague saw what they assumed was another engineer walk past a studio and into the live room.
“I proceeded to walk into the live room after this ‘person’ only to find no one in there but the TV on playing static,” he told The Post.
Another spooky time, he said, “I turned around to see a split second of a what I can only describe as a silver dress shimmering next to the patch bay.”
Probably the most unsettling experience the engineer had was when he slept in the studio.
“I have a vivid memory of an old man staring right in my face as I slept,” he said. “It startled me when I half woke up for a moment.”
The studio is the subject of a new documentary “Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision,” in theaters August 9.
The space was a defunct nightclub when Hendrix and his manager, Michael Jeffrey, began renovating it in 1968. But the rock star’s producer, Eddie Kramer, and soon-to-be studio manager. Jim Marron, felt that it was better suited to be a recording studio.
It officially opened as Electric Lady Studios in August of 1970 and was reportedly the only artist-owned recording in existence at the time.
“He wanted a studio that would essentially be like a home to him, a place where he could record any style of music with musicians of any type of background,” Anthony DeCurtis, Contributing Editor for Rolling Stone, told The Post. (The venue’s current managing partner Lee Foster, who did not respond to request for comment, has worked to preserve the studio.)
Lead architect John Storyk designed the space to have curved walls to help artists achieve a truly unique sound.
“Jimi once said, ‘In nature, God doesn’t make anything with corners and edges. Everything’s rounded.’ ” his sister, Janie Hendrix, told The Post.
Hendrix only got to see the facilities in action for a short time. He died in September 1970, just a few weeks after the grand opening, but the music went on.
The space has remained mostly unchanged for the past five decades. (Current co-owner Lee Foster, who did not respond to a request for comment, has worked to preserve the space.)
Kramer, who is featured heavily in the documentary, told The Post he felt chills when asked about the space being haunted.
“There is a spirit of Jimi Hendrix in the studio, somewhere, whether it’s in the walls or the ceilings … in the atmosphere … it’s embedded in there, somehow,” he said. “His spirit is very strong. I truly believe that. I think any artist who has graced the presence of Electric Lady … has felt that. I would say 99.9% of the people walk in and say, ‘I’m feeling something.’”
Hendrix’s sister, Janie, is quick to note that just because musicians feel some sort of connection to her late, legendary brother in the studio doesn’t mean it’s filled with ghosts.
“You do have this presence, but it is a very spiritual, sweet presence,” she told The Post. “It’s not haunted in any way.”
Whether the space simply has Hendrix’s presence or actual ghosts, many say it’s a benevolent phenomenon that has helped the studio be the site of the recording of such legendary albums as Patti Smith’s “Horses” and Britney Spears’ “Oops!…I Did It Again.”
“Musicians have always spoken of the ghosts that reside in that space,” said DeCurtis. “Those ghosts set a standard that musicians feel the need to live up to, and the studio enables them to do so.”