The Street Seen: Street Legal
2219 Main Street @ Strand
No, no, no, it ain't our fine print. We are on Main Street looking for Bob Dylan - well, actually for Rundown Studios where he recorded the album “Street Legal” in 1978.
The 2-story part of 2219 Main St (there are existing buildings) is built in 1960 as light industrial for John S. Adkins (1915 - 1999) of Elmico Productions. The building is leased in 1966 to Dashew Business Machines (who invented embossing and imprinting machines that helped usher in the credit card industry) by then a subsidiary of Hughes Tool Co.
After Dashew goes bankrupt, Music Touring Company, who produces Dylan’s tours and concerts, leases 2219 Main Street for 5 years (from 1977 to 1982) as office and rehearsal studio. Dylan, who is living in Malibu, names the facility “Rundown Studios.”
Dylan has a European tour scheduled for June 1978,1 and with an expanded pop-based band makes the Street Legal album - renting a mobile truck with a 24-track to do the recording over the course of just four days at the end of April. "I didn't want to do it there," Dylan later recalls. "[I] couldn't find the right producer, but it was necessary to do it. So we just brought in the remote truck and cut it, [and] went for a live sound."
It is often stated that the Street Legal album cover photo2 is taken at the entrance of the studio where it was recorded. Dylan, who is very committed to privacy, would not use a photo of his actual studio as an album cover.3 The actual location of the album cover photo is 26 Arcadia Terrace behind the old Hotel California just south of the Santa Monica Pier.
No, no, no, it ain't me, babe. It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe.
In November 1979, Dylan opens a four-night Los Angeles area run of the Gospel Tour at the Civic Auditorium (also on Main Street). Dylan, who has a house in Point Dume, is last seen in Santa Monica in May 2021. Dylan owns a complex on Broadway in Santa Monica that includes The 18th Street Coffee House and a sort-of-secret boxing gym.
Numerous online sources claim that the album photo and Rundown Studios are located at 2501 Main Street - but there ain’t no 2501 Main St.
In a sad side note, Howard Alk (1930 - 1982), the album cover photographer, dies of a heroin overdose at the Rundown Studios in early January 1982.