From Liverpool To Ragley

Chris Huston Knew Lennon Before Beatle Fame, Worked On The Led Zeppelin II Album, And Met Charles Manson 

CHRIS IN THE STUDIO, 1967

CHRIS AT HOME IN RAGLEY, 2026.

By Todd C. Elliott

Chris Huston, 82, now of Ragley, has gold and platinum records to his credit, and is always happy to share the story of his incredible life and journey, which features both famous and infamous legends and tales of a bygone era in the music industry.

Before the world developed Beatlemania and Liverpool was famous as the home of the Beatles, it was simply Huston’s home. In Huston’s early days, the Beatles were just another sharp-suited local band hauling amps through narrow streets and smoky clubs. 

In that same charged atmosphere, Huston formed his own group, The Undertakers, riding the wave of that distinctive Mersey sound while it was still being invented.

THE UNDERTAKERS IN 1960.

The Undertakers never became a household name, but they were part of the machinery that made the era move: relentless gigs, sweat-soaked stages, and the unspoken understanding that music was a passport out.

As the decade turned and the industry hardened, Huston stepped away from performing, trading the spotlight for something quieter but no less consequential. 

Huston said that he was born an orphan in a decimated Liverpool, a port city relentlessly bombed by Nazi Germany from 1940 to 1942. By 1943, Hitler had scaled back the bombings. Huston says he cannot recall the sounds of dropping bombs, of course. The “bombies,” as children of England would call them, were part of daily life, and the park was dotted with statuesque anti-aircraft guns. 

Huston claims to have been born in the right place at the right time. The “Mersey sound” popularized by The Beatles offered a way out of Liverpool for any young man lucky enough to be in a band at the time. 

“The Beatles didn’t really get going as a band until 1960, and we formed our band, which would eventually become The Undertakers, around the same time,” Huston said. “I had met John Lennon as an art school student. He was leaving art school as I was joining art school; I only went for a little bit. John and I met, and we shared some similarities in that he was in a band and I was in a band. But The Silver Beatles, as they were first known, were not an influence on me or The Undertakers at the time. They were another local band with their own style. And we all played cover songs.”

After achieving some moderate, mainstream success, The Undertakers saw a bright moment in their career when they were signed to Pye Records, a studio that attempted to sign The Rolling Stones and would go on to sign The Kinks. 

Signed by a British record label, The Undertakers would break up in America, leaving Huston “stranded” in the United States.

“I had an American girlfriend in the UK, and I ended up following her to America, to Hollywood,” said Huston. “My mother sent me a letter from England, and she would also send me music magazines from England like Mersey Beat magazine along with the Mars bars that I loved. And one day I was reading a magazine from England and noticed a want ad that read ‘WANTED: BRITISH BANDS TO TRAVEL TO AMERICA.’ I answered the ad.

They picked two bands from England. One was my group, The Undertakers, and one was Pete Best’s group. Now, Pete Best was the original drummer for The Beatles. Since I was already in America, I contacted my bandmates and convinced them to meet me in New York. So, The Undertakers regrouped in New York in 1965. After recording some songs and a disastrous tour of Canada, we broke up at the end of 1965. I was left behind in New York. 

“But I was in contact with a studio in New York City. And I told the owner, Bob Gallo of the Talent Masters studio, that I wanted to learn sound production, recording and engineering. Bob offered to teach me sound engineering and let me learn the business and sleep in the back of this New York studio. My bed was a couch, and the studio was a converted fur loft, or fur coat warehouse.”

On Feb. 17, 1966, Huston recorded James Brown, and it changed his trajectory in life. Huston’s earliest studio production work can be heard on Brown’s hit It’s A Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World at the Talent Masters studio, where Huston made huge decision to stay behind the scenes in the music industry.

“After recording James Brown and seeing the energy that he and other black musicians like Ben E. King, The Drifters and Patti Labelle brought into the studios, I decided that I would never be in another band again,” he said. “I made up my mind to stop playing music. What was the point? I could never match what black artists were doing in the studio or on the stage. But I was very interested in making great music sound even better. The first gold single I ever worked on with the song Sock It to Me, Baby by Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels.”

HUSTON RECEIVING A GOLD SINGLE FROM ATLANTIC WITH GENE CORNISH OF THE YOUNG RASCALS FOR THEIR HIT SONG “GROOVIN’”

In the New York of 1966, Atlantic Records was a looming record label giant. And even though Atlantic had their own recording studios, artists wanted to record with Chris Huston over at The Talent Masters studio, on West 42nd Street in Manhattan, because of the great sound the studio produced. 

That year, Huston’s first year of engineering, The Who stopped by to record a single called I Can See for Miles. Huston turned the knobs and turned a song into a classic. The flipside of that single, Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand, was also recorded and engineered by Huston. 

The rest of The Who Sellout album was done by other engineers in various studios, but Huston was a part of the biggest single to be featured on that album. Atlantic then purchased the Talent asters Studio.

The music industry of the 1960s, especially in New York, garnered the attention of organized crime family members, who had influence and financial interests in artists, producers and heads of studios. The mafia would profit from rock and roll and R&B in the form of copywriting, song credits, licensing and jukeboxes, which would carry the latest vinyl singles.

Huston acknowledges a figure from the criminal underworld, who shall remain nameless in this article. facilitated a transfer of power from Bob Gallo and his ownership of Talent Masters Studios. Bert Berns was championed by a consigliere of the Genovese crime family and thus paid money that was owed him via his publishing deal with Atlantic Records for such songs as Twist and Shout and Piece of My Heart, just to name a couple. 

Berns was a chart-topper. According to Huston, Berns was paid tens of thousands of dollars and given the Talent Masters studio on 42nd Street. The previous owners were out, but Huston stayed on as an engineer for the studio. The giant Atlantic Records acquiesced to the Genovese family on behalf of Berns as Atlantic signed the studio over to Berns.

“I met Bert Berns at the time he had been given the money and the studio from Atlantic,” said Huston. “And Berns was a fabulous, creative person. Berns had already written songs for Them and Van Morrison. So, one of the first people he brought into the studio was Van Morrison. So, that’s how I got to work with Van Morrison.”

During 1967, Huston, now under employment of a mafia-owned recording studio, was turned on to a group by the name of The Young Rascals, who had been recently signed by Atlantic Records. 

Huston, once again, turned the dials on the mixing board and turned yet another single into a gold record. The single from Atlantic was Groovin’ by The Young Rascals (later renamed The Rascals), which went gold that same year. It was arranged and recorded at the studio in which Huston worked. The song Groovin’, which was considered one of the top 500 songs that shaped rock music, still lives on. However, toward the end of 1967, studio owner and mafia golden boy Bert Berns died in New York.

Huston recalled that a friend in the industry phoned him to tell him the news of Berns’ death. His friend warned him that the studio and everything in it was now solely owned and controlled by the Genovese crime family. Huston said that his friend stressed that the mafia was never going to let him go. 

Huston was advised to attend Berns’ funeral and let them know that he was going to take some time off. He was warned to take nothing from the studios — no guitars, microphones or any piece of equipment — or the mob would search for him. 

Huston said that he took only his reel-to-reel master tapes of his old band, The Undertakers, lest he be subject to an actual undertaker. Huston took one look back at the studio, the place that had launched him into a charmed life, and made his way west, disappearing into California, never to work again in New York.

Upon landing in California in January 1968, Huston rented a house on Coldwater Canyon surrounded by Hollywood celebrities. Huston formed Mystic Studios and Mystic Records. He met all the right people. He even befriended Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys, who were set to record a new song by an up-and-coming singer songwriter in the Los Angeles area. 

Wilson asked Huston to go out and meet with this guy named Charles Manson just to hear some of his original music and consider recording Manson at Huston’s studios and thus possibly signing Manson to Huston’s label.

“Manson was a weird guy, living on an old movie set called Spahn Ranch,” said Huston. “So, I drove out to the ranch to hear Charlie (Manson) play some of his original music. And Manson really wasn’t a bad singer-songwriter. He was actually pretty good. The Beach Boys had recorded one of his songs.

“ So, when I show up to the ranch with my then-girlfriend, Charlie and another guy start playing the guitar. Charlie starts singing as I am sitting on a bed across from him and then all of the Manson girls start singing the chorus parts of Charlie’s song. There was a woman in the kitchen playing violin with a baby on her back. It was actually kind of amazing. But it started getting dark and I left Spahn Ranch and the Manson family behind. 

“The reason I didn’t sign Charles Manson or agree to record him was the fact that he requested that he be allowed to sleep on our couch at the studio. That wasn’t going to happen. And then he fancied my girlfriend and offered to trade her for two of his girls. I laughed it off, but this was about four months before the Tate-LaBianca murders. My partner in the record label at the time told me to never answer any phone calls or questions from the media or press.”

Enter 1969, and Led Zeppelin plays California for the first time on a tour for their first, self-titled album. As the band toured the U.S. from January to August of 1969, they stopped off at Mystic Studios to visit the British expatriate Chris Huston.  It was not uncommon for acts to tour and record while on the road. 

Huston can proudly claim that he recorded the Led Zeppelin songs Moby Dick and The Lemon Song, which would go on the platinum-selling album Led Zeppelin II, which would be an instant classic and launch the band’s career with the song Whole Lotta Love.

Eventually, the rock and roll life would lead Huston to work with the group War, a band Huston would produce and work with up until the early 1980s. 

Huston would go on to marry, have children, and lead a family life that would lead him to Oregon and eventually to Tennessee. As he began to configure the engineering layout for recording studios such as the now-famous Sound Kitchen Studio in Nashville, he found himself building and designing studios and spending less time working in them as a producer. 

He met his future wife, Cynthia, in Nashville. Cynthia was the key to Ragley, La. Cynthia had a daughter who would serve 10 years in the military flying Apache helicopters. Her daughter would eventually marry a 20-year military veteran from Louisiana. When Cynthia’s daughter gave birth to her first child, Cynthia and Chris Huston found themselves grandparents. Unable to decide whether or not they should relocate to Oregon, Cynthia suggested that they relocate to a place called Ragley. 

 “My daughter went on three deployments and met her would-be husband on one of those deployments,” says Cynthia. “We were outside of Franklin, Tenn. All of the land was being bought up by developers, and I told Chris that it was time to list the house and sell. Chris suggested Oregon. But as my daughter and son-in-law began having kids, I suggested Ragley. Beth, my daughter, had seven children and needed help. And I wanted to help and be a part of my grandchildren’s lives. Chris still works all over the world building home theaters, listening rooms and studios to this day.”

Huston considers himself many things. He’s a guitarist who gave up the guitar as he found more comfort in recording consoles as his instrument of choice. He’s a scouser with a now-faded accent like some Americanized Beatle. He’s a father and husband. He’s a grandfather.  But he also considers himself lucky to have been in the right place in the right time, to have known the right people. By his own admission, he’s a hearing-impaired victim of loud music brought on by the 60s and 70s, tinnitus and old age. 

Huston is a survivor of a life that many did not survive. He considered himself a supporting actor in his own epic story, grateful for his role as a footnote in popular music, never hungry for the spotlight. He’s a fan of Beethoven and the quiet life in Ragley. Among all these things, including his recollections, he is still a producer, an engineer in what he would call a sound life.