The Brill Building

Years ago in another life and another job (as noted in a previous blog) I got to go to New York City frequently for work. Usually a day or two at a time and then back home again. I always enjoyed the trips but would come home exhausted. The NYC pace was always a lot faster than wherever home was at the time.

In the mid 80s, we rented and outfitted a recording studio in the Brill Building, which if you follow music history at all – was and still may be an iconic place.

Many, many years ago the halls would have been filled with famous songwriters and musicians. The halls even in the 80s were one wooden and glass door after another with obscure sounding names of publishing companies. In the olden days of the music business, people wrote songs first. Then they sold them and then somebody else played and sang them. But things started in places like the Brill Building. Walking down the halls you could still hear music of all sorts emanating from the various rooms.

Denizens of the Brill Building included: Carole king, Burt Bacharach, Neil Sedaka and hundreds of others over decades dating back to the 1930s.

The Brill is on Broadway not too far from Times Square. Back when I was going there, Times Square had not yet been “Disney-fied” and cleaned up. We were always careful walking out late at night. And we had to walk by some places that were interesting.

There used to be a TV series (Exec. Produced by Spielberg) called Amazing Stories. I had an idea back then for an episode that would have a budding musician walking the halls trying to sell his music. At each door he’d walk in and in one office might be the big band-types of the 40s banging out a demo of their latest tune. Or at another door, Bobby Darin trying out ‘Mack the Knife.’ A few doors later Carole King playing on a piano in her cubicle in the 60s before her own career took off.

Each door would take our time-travelling musician to another decade. I have no idea how to end it and where he would be but the concept always intrigued me. the movie "Corrine, Corrina" with Whoopi Goldberg and Ray Liotta reminded me of the Brill.

I have no idea what the Brill Building is like today but I always felt like I was stepping back in time whenever I went inside.