From Lennon to Punk, a Life in Music
Arlene Reckson could not have known, when she accepted a position at Record Plant Studios in Manhattan’s Times Square, that John Lennon would soon invite her into the control room for the first-ever listen of his just-completed “Imagine” album. Or that she would later work for Lennon and Yoko Ono, or join Lennon in Los Angeles during his so-called “Lost Weekend,” or tell a young assistant engineer at the Power Station studios named John Bongiovi that he would one day be a star.
But that is how things played out for the New York native, who lives in Amagansett and Manhattan. “It was a time that everybody wanted to be in a band,” she remembered. “Of course, the only talent I had was to be behind the scenes. I decided, ‘I heard about this thing called a recording studio; that’s where everybody hangs out.’ ”
An agency sent the former shoe designer to two potential employers, both of which offered a position: the William Morris Agency, the renowned entertainment talent firm, and Record Plant, which had opened in 1968. “The trajectory of my career was decided that day,” she said.
Ms. Reckson worked for Roy Cicala, a producer and the studio’s chief engineer, initially as a night receptionist, and later booking manager and studio manager. “I thought that I had the best job in the world,” she said. Record companies, for which she later worked, offered a better title and higher salary, “but it just wasn’t as fun, because it was corporate. In those days rent was cheap, you didn’t worry about that so much. There was nothing better than working in a recording studio.”
One day, Mr. Cicala, who died last year, asked her to come to work on a Sunday. “I said sure,” she recalled. “I didn’t ask who or why. It was the kind of job where even if you weren’t working, everybody hung out, everybody was there the whole time.”
The session was for orchestral overdubs for “Imagine,” and soon she met Lennon and Ms. Ono. During the sessions, she said, “I was reading an Edgar Cayce book on Atlantis, and John had to go to the bathroom, and said, ‘Can I borrow what you’re reading?’ I said sure, and he took the book in there, and came out and asked if he could have it.”
Soon, she was doing errands for the couple, shopping for clothes or fetching a guitar from the hotel where they lived for a time after arriving, in 1971, from England. Ms. Reckson’s contributions to the couple’s art was acknowledged on both the inner sleeve of the “Imagine” album, where she is pictured and credited for “this and that,” and on their 1971 single “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” the cover of which also pictures her.
Lennon and Ms. Ono wanted a choir on the song, so Ms. Reckson went to Harlem, found a children’s choir, prepared a release form for their parents, hired a bus, bought lunch, and arranged a donation to the church. After the session, Lennon turned to Al Steckler, director in the United States of the Beatles’ label, Apple Records, and said, “Great job!”
“Al said, ‘Yeah, thank you,’ ” Ms. Reckson remembered, to which Mr. Cicala said, “ ‘He didn’t get them, Arlene got them!’ That’s why I’m in the picture on the cover.”
Through Lennon and Ms. Ono, Ms. Reckson met May Pang, an assistant to the couple and later Lennon’s companion during their separation. “We became quick friends,” she said. “Between the two of us, I don’t think there was a concert or a backstage pass we didn’t get, because if she didn’t know some- body, I knew them, and if I didn’t know somebody, she knew them. We had a lot of fun.”
Ms. Reckson left Record Plant in 1973 and moved to Woodstock, N.Y., but soon got a call from Ms. Pang, asking that she join her and Lennon in Los Angeles. “I had no idea about the affair,” she said. “I kind of figured it out the next morning.” In California, “I was teaching May to drive,” she said. “He didn’t want to have the limousine. I was a terrible driver — now I think, ‘Oh my God, I had his life in my hands!’ ”
Back in New York, she worked as a personal assistant to Ms. Ono. “I think many times, it was just company they wanted,” she said. “Somehow, you get into an accepted inner sanctum. And everybody’s always looking for me to say something mean about her, but she was always extremely kind to me, and very generous.”
Several years later, working at the Power Station, Mr. Bongiovi, now known as Jon Bon Jovi, “would sit and have lunch with me at my desk and want to hear my Record Plant stories,” Ms. Reckson said. “He wanted to know anything anybody could tell him about John Lennon. I would tell him different stories. I remember telling him, ‘You have it. Whatever it is, you’ve got it.’ ” Ms. Reckson was also the first female A&R (artists and repertoire) director at the U.S. affiliate of British label Pye Records, where she had a huge hit with “Kung Fu Fighting.” She also produced the “Pye History Of British Pop Music” compilation series.
Her stories could fill a book. On a recent afternoon at the Corcoran Group’s Amagansett office, where she works, Ms. Reckson recalled experiences with many classic rock ’n’ roll bands including the Who and T. Rex. In 1973, the rock journalist Ben Fong Torres, then of Rolling Stone magazine, came to Record Plant to interview a new band called the New York Dolls. “He saw me, knew I’d been sitting there for three years, and said, ‘What do you think of them?’ And I said, ‘Kind of like punk rock.’ Ben said, ‘Can I use that?’ I meant it like the ’50s kind of word — the punks that hung around on the street corner. Here was a guy” — David Johansen, the Dolls’ singer — “who had no record deal, and he came in with the swagger of a Mick Jagger.”
In the summer of 1993, Ms. Reckson remained on the South Fork beyond Labor Day due to the New York City schools’ delayed opening after the discovery of asbestos. “We would always come out for the summer,” she said, “and I had worked in real estate a little bit in New York. But in New York you have to work on weekends and at night. So I did the reverse commute, and it was a lot easier to come out here, have my daughter ride horses, not work nights, and basically work weekends and a couple days here and there.” She commutes back and forth for about half the year.
Ms. Reckson remains close with Ms. Pang, and through her became close with Lennon’s first wife, Cynthia, who died in April. She is, perhaps, the only person to have enjoyed a warm relationship with the three most significant women in Lennon’s adult life.
The decision to accept a position at Record Plant did indeed decide the tr jectory of her career. “It was fun,” she said. “We used to think of it as a sitcom. We were a weekly sitcom, and these people who came to record were just the guest star of the week.”
“And then” she added dryly, “I sell real estate.”