Brett had been working as a studio engineer and, in 1987 he set this studio up with partner Donnell Cameron. It would also become the early home of Epitaph.
Brett wrote most of Suffer and No Control between recording sessions at Westbeach, where he worked 70 - 90 hours a week. 16 hour days, 7 days a week.[1]
Over the years the location of Westbeach changed several times.
The first location was just a room inside another studio on Pico Boulevard. Albums recorded there were Thelonious Monster (1986), Little Kings, Spaghetti Western (1986) and probably also the first L7 record (1988).
The second location was on Vista del Mar where Suffer through Generator were recorded. Most of the bands on Epitaph did their early work there. It was situated behind a club called Raji's (6160 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, Ca)). It was also the first physical incarnation of an "Epitaph office", which meant there was a phone and a desk. It was actually Pennywise doing late night work on their self-titled record that got that studio closed and forced the move to the third location.
Brett: "The studio itself was a house. It was a tiny little – not even a house, it was like a little duplex – and so we turned it into a recording studio but we didn’t have any iso booths so the guitar sound was derived by putting a halfstack into a tiny coat closet and throwing a mic on it and filling the coat closet with dampening foam. So that’s what we used to do back then. It gave a really tight close guitar sound."[2]
In 1991 Westbeach moved to a third and final location, in a building that has long been used as a recording studio (known as the Producers Workshop). It's located at 6035 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA and Generator was the first album recorded there in May 1991.
This studio is also where Pink Floyd finished The Wall and Fleetwood Mac recorded Rumours.
On May 12 2010 Westbeach Recorders went out of business[3] and nowadays it's the home of Boulevard Recording.
In 2019, Westbeach One is under construction. Westbeach Two is a murder museum.
