Jan 1, 1999 12:00 PM, DAN DALEY

Fletcher was brought up in Brooklyn and Queens, until he was old enough to run away to the circus, which is how he describes the neighborhood around Avenue A and East Houston Street in the East Village, where he learned his freak fundamentals in the early 1970s. Since then, he has been a fixture on the professional audio scene, easily recognizable by a mohawk of varying dimensions ("goes between six lanes and ten lanes," he explains), a Harley Davidson, extremely pronounced opinions expressed in a loud voice between drags on an unfiltered Camel (though he recently quit after 25 years) and occasional threats of physical violence.

Despite the menacing exterior and sometimes gruff manner, Fletcher (the only name he reveals) is a regular guy-friendly, devoted to his family and dedicated to what he calls "good sound."

After stints as a guitarist in New York bands, he came to the realization that he could make more money behind the scenes. "These guys hired me to move equipment and balance their sound one night for 20 bucks," says Fletcher. "At the end of the night, they each got paid $17.50 for the gig and I had $20. I figured being on the crew was a better racket than being in the band."

After a move to the Boston area, where he married Sue, he worked as a freelance engineer. Boston in the mid-'80s, however, was past its entertainment prime. He and two other engineers decided to pool their equipment for rental to make extra money. "But one night Sue comes home and says, 'Honey, you better sell one of those things in your rack or else we're not eating dinner tonight,'" Fletcher recalls. "I hadn't worked in four months, and I was becoming an 'Oprah'-ologist."

Fletcher's first pro audio sale, in 1989, was a pair of his prized LA-3A compressors to Ed Evans, then chief engineer at Power Station Studios in Manhattan. The deal went down only after Fletcher had gone through every previous letter of the alphabet cold-calling studios from Mix's Northeast studio directory. He and his partners in the rental pool then started Mercenary Audio, named for their freelance engineering careers.

Mercenary and Fletcher became advocates of analog, mainly, he says, because digital didn't live up to its promise. But he did it with a certain, shall we say, flair for the conspicuous. At the 1996 AES convention in New York, he hot-rodded a 1975 stock Harley-Davidson golf cart (the motorcycle maker was then owned by AMF Industries, which manufactured golf carts under the HD brand), adding reclining bucket seats from a wrecked Chevy Chevelle and removing the single-jug panhead gas motor and replacing it with an EZ-Go electric motor, which made it acceptable to drive around the show floor. It carried a banner emblazoned "Analog's Back And It's Pissed."

The following year, at the L.A. AES convention, Fletcher created a piece of alleged artwork-a battered Alesis ADAT and a Mackie mixer impaled on a 4-foot spike-entitled "Shit on a Stick" and displayed it in his booth. It was his artistic interpretation of the meatballing of pro audio equipment, as the age of low-cost mass manufacturing kicked into high gear. Alesis didn't agree with his aesthetic vision. AES officials threatened to close his booth down and eject him from the show if he didn't take it down. After some bluster about First Amendment rights and possible retaliation, Fletcher dismantled the display.

Mercenary occasionally operates a recording studio, depending upon what gear is on hand and how Fletcher feels on a given day. The company took a shot at manufacturing its own pro audio gear several years ago. "We lost a phenomenal amount of money and figured that it was better to kick the plug out and let that patient die," he says of the venture.

But Mercenary now handles digital gear as well as analog equipment, now that digital is beginning to approach its real potential, says Fletcher. "I'm even mixing to digital these days," he adds. "I was never really just an analog guy-I was someone who simply fought for good audio. They were telling us back in 1978 that digital was the greatest thing around, and here it is 1999 and they're just starting to get it right."

Fletcher continues to live and work in the Boston area. He has quit smoking but continues to voice his strident views. The only argument he ever really lost, he admits, is one to his wife on the naming of their second daughter. "My first is named Sydney, and we call her Syd," he says. "I wanted to name the second one Nancy. I couldn't get that one past my wife."

Mix Books

Modern Recording and Mixing

This 2-DVD set will show you how the best in the music industry set up a studio to make world-class records. Regardless of what gear you are using, the information you'll find here will allow you to take advantage of decades of expert knowledge. Order now $39.95

Mastering Cubase 4

Electronic Musician magazine and Thomson Course Technology PTR have joined forces again to create the second volume in their Personal Studio Series, Mastering Steinberg's Cubase(tm). Edited and produced by the staff of Electronic Musician, this special issue is not only a must-read for users of Cubase(tm) software, but it also delivers essential information for anyone recording/producing music in a personal-studio. Order now $12.95

Newsletters

MixLine

Delivered straight to your inbox every other week, MixLine takes you straight into the studio, with new product announcements, industry news, upcoming events, recent recording/post projects and much more. Click here to read the latest edition; sign up here.

MixLine Live

Delivered straight to your inbox every other week, MixLine Live takes you on the road with today's hottest tours, new sound reinforcement professional products, recent installs, industry news and much more. Click here to read the latest edition; sign up here.