A recording studio was a magnet for those possibly on their way to stardom as it was for those simply following their men. Some of the followers fell in Fergus’s lap. They were around his cluttered office waiting, hoping, while some young man, isolated from his band in a small glassed-in room, wailed again and again into a microphone. The sound engineer—Fergus sometimes—and the producer, their ears clamped between headphones, sat in a larger booth facing both the singer and the band in another room adjoining. There microphones sprouted in front of guitars, drums, a bass fiddle, and wires looped around the floor like long gray ropes dropped by careless cowboys. In the darkened booth, lights, and sometimes candles, glowed. Fergus didn’t use candles, however some of the sound engineers liked them. They transformed the sound booth into a strange modern altar, one dedicated to making a perfect song, to be sent out to disk jockeys who might, or might not, like it and play it for listeners who might or might not request it again and again; a lucrative contract might follow.
