Going Out of His Way to Help Young Punks : Producer Chaz Ramirez was important to the local rock scene because he delighted in working with raw, unknown.

Newspaper stories are supposed to be timely. I’m sorry to say that this one about Chaz Ramirez comes too late.

Chaz owned and operated Casbah, a funky little recording studio in an anonymous, nondescript row of offices and industrial suites on Commonwealth Avenue in Fullerton. Casbah isn’t big, and at 16 tracks, non-digital, it certainly isn’t state of the art. But under Chaz’s auspices as producer, engineer, and resident character, a good deal of the most significant Orange County rock music of the past 10 or 12 years has taken shape there.

There was Berlin’s career-launching techno-pop hit, “Sex (I’m a . . . ),” for which Chaz provided a crucial audio mix.

There was Stryper, the Christian heavy-metal band that fleshed out its hot-selling sound with Chaz at the control board. Stryper didn’t actually make its albums at Casbah, but it used the studio for all its preliminary work, with Chaz engineering sessions that produced working drafts of albums in progress.

Most of all, there was punk rock. Along with Dick Dale’s surf guitar sound and the Righteous Brothers’ blue-eyed soul, punk and its alternative-rock off-shoots are Orange County’s signature contribution to the larger world of rock music, and Chaz helped develop most of O.C. punk’s most significant musicians. He worked particularly closely with Social Distortion, the band that more than any other has put Orange County on alternative rock’s cultural map.

I wish Chaz could have read this roll-call of his contributions and pasted it in a scrapbook, tacked it on a wall, or used it to line a bird cage--whatever it is people do when they get written about. It’s too late for that, though, because his family and many friends buried Chaz last Saturday. I think it’s safe to say that his death at 39, from head injuries sustained in an accidental fall, shocked and grieved the local rock music community in a way it has never been shocked and grieved before. That’s because Chaz touched so many corners of that fractured community and because he touched it not only with his musical acumen, but with his uncommon generosity and vibrant, funny manner. Every musician I’ve interviewed for this story attests to that.

“He was always a fun guy, probably one of the most well-liked guys I ever met,” said Social Distortion’s leader, Mike Ness. “I don’t think he had an enemy in the world.”

The first time I ever talked to Chaz, I wanted to interview him about another record producer, Jon St. James. St. James and Chaz were old band mates who had launched Casbah together in the late ‘70s (Chaz came up with the name). St. James had moved on to found a studio of his own, Formula One in La Habra, and at the time I wrote about him he was riding a hot streak of Top 40 hits with two local dance-pop acts, Stacey Q and Bardeux.

Chaz answered questions politely, if not effusively. “How about writing a story about me?” he wondered at one point. I had no answer, because at the time, early in 1988, I’d been on the beat here less than two months and didn’t know whether Chaz Ramirez was worth writing about or not. It didn’t take me long to find out. Later that year, Social Distortion released “Prison Bound” and the Adolescents issued “Balboa Fun Zone,” two distinguished albums that marked the maturation of Orange County punk rock. Chaz produced them both.

After that, I’d have occasion to call Chaz every so often. One day in 1989, he and Rikk Agnew, one of the original local punk rockers, spent hours at Casbah filling me in on the history of the Orange County punk movement for a story marking the 10th anniversary of O.C. punk. Chaz made a long interview even longer by peppering it with off-beat witticisms and funny digressions. I wasn’t complaining; the guy could tell a joke.

“It’s the cool new folk music, the new music of the people,” Chaz said, summing up punk rock with typical enthusiasm. “People equate folk music with nylon string guitars, but folk music is folk music, and this is it.”

He said he had just one regret about producing local grass-roots punkers: “I’ve made way more money than the people in the bands. I feel guilty.”

A few years ago, I called Chaz at Casbah, figuring that if he had some interesting project going, it might be time to do that feature on him. He spoke, in upbeat tones, about how busy he was with very young bands who came to him to make demos, the calling-card tapes that might help them get out of the garage and into their first club gigs. It didn’t sound that sexy to me; I was hoping to sit in on a session with Social Distortion or some other heavy hitter and use that as a point of departure to write about Chaz. There’d be time to “do” Chaz later, I figured.

Now, too late, I realize I’d completely missed the point. Chaz was most important to the Orange County rock scene precisely because he delighted in working with the raw, the unschooled, the unknown. He helped scores of bands take their baby steps into the world of public music-making. Chaz helped them find and develop whatever promise they might have. A story focusing on that aspect of his work would have been the real story.

Chaz grew up in Whittier, where he did very well in school, according to his mother, Sally Ramirez. She and Chaz’s father, Charles, bought him his first guitar when he was about 13. “We wanted so much for him to go to (college),” Mrs. Ramirez said. “He never wanted to stay in school that way. He got out and did his own thing.”

His own thing, from his teens on, was playing in bands, and fixing amplifiers at Whittier Music. On slow days, recalls St. James, who worked at the same music shop, “he’d get all the instruments and do a one-man show. He’d have a foot-pedal drum and tambourine, harmonica, and a banjo or guitar. Chaz could pick up anything and at least play a tune on it. And he could fix almost anything.”

Throughout his life, Chaz would seek out things that needed fixing. Friends say that he would scour the swap meets and yard sales, looking for busted electronic gear that he could repair or cannibalize for parts he could use to make musical gadgets of his own. In fact, Chaz’s fatal fall from the attic of a Santa Ana warehouse occurred while he was foraging for a supply of otherwise unwanted audio wire that he could rig for use at Casbah.

“The last thing I remember him saying was, ‘This wire is great,’ ” said David Bay, a friend who accompanied Chaz to the warehouse.

Casbah was apt to be clogged with stuff to fix, exotic electronic objects that Chaz liked to gather, and antique toys, gadgets and housewares that he loved to collect--including a dozen or more old Kirby vacuum cleaners, complete with a daunting assortment of attachments.

“His studio was a cross between ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and ‘Sanford and Son,’ ” said James (Falling James) Moreland, leader of the Leaving Trains, the long-running Los Angeles alternative-rock band that Chaz produced and had recently joined for a series of live gigs.

Chaz’s early musical love was British progressive rock--Genesis, Pink Floyd, Yes, King Crimson. Dan van Patten, a veteran local drummer and record producer, remembers seeing Chaz playing keyboards in the mid-’70s band, French Lick, ensconced, like the classically influenced keyboardists Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson, in a cockpit of organs and synthesizers. It’s a long way from prog-rock to punk rock, but Chaz’s tastes were broad enough to encompass the raw, and he was able to bring to bear on simple, rough-hewn music the knowledge he’d gained playing complex, refined music.

One longtime friend, Debbie Stone, says she could hardly believe it when Chaz began first to produce punk bands, and then play in one (he was the bassist in the early-’80s band, Eddie and the Subtitles). “I was shocked. It was like, ‘Charles, what’s going on here? What about the old stuff?’ He’d say, ‘I still love it,’ but he wanted to be innovative and keep up with the times. They needed him, and he was there.”

The Orange County punks needed Ramirez for his technical expertise, for his encouragement, and for his generosity.

“He really made it possible for Orange County bands to get into a studio and record. He gave us good rates,” said Steve Soto, the former Adolescents bassist who now plays in Joyride. “When a record company was paying for it, it was $35 an hour. When we were paying for it, it was whatever you could afford.”

“He always gave everyone too good of a deal,” recalled Chris Colbert, who was Ramirez’s partner at Casbah from 1989 to 1991. “His asking price was always $35 an hour, but he’d settle for a beer on good days.”

Colbert says he learned about recording from Ramirez, and these were Chaz’s cardinal rules: “To get a good performance out of a band by being encouraging, and to not mess with a band--let them be themselves.”

Tony Montana was in deep need of encouragement when he came to Casbah in the mid-’80s. On the Adolescents’ 1981 debut album (Ramirez engineered early demos for the band but didn’t work on the album), Montana had tapped a deep well of adolescent spleen and fire, and mustered memorable performances, both funny and fearsome. But a few years later, resuming work with the bands Abandoned and Flower Leppards, he felt rusty and uncertain, having been out of rock for a few years.

“My self-esteem was pretty low,” Montana recalled. “It was the first time I had been in the studio in five years, and I was afraid. Chaz keyed in on the fact I felt unsure of myself. He would just bombard me with compliments and support. ‘You have style, a lot of pizazz and charisma; it really comes through.’ He did a lot in helping me to gain confidence.”

“He really got into putting a piece of himself into your work,” said Rikk Agnew, who did numerous sessions at Casbah with the Adolescents, D.I., and as a solo artist. “He’d make suggestions and get all inspired.”

Frank Agnew, another former Adolescent, recalls Ramirez’s ingenuity in the studio. “I wanted a big drum sound, without it sounding booming. He said, ‘I’ve got an idea.’ He got these wood platforms and set the drums on that, and sure enough, that was the drum sound I was looking for. If I was stuck on something, if I wasn’t sure how I wanted it to go or sound, he would come up with something. It was almost as if he was in my head.”

Social Distortion’s Ness credits Ramirez with “helping us shape ourselves, helping us achieve our sound, achieve our character.” At least nine or 10 years older than most of the punk rockers he was working with, Ramirez was nevertheless able to work on their wavelength. Ness has a simple enough reason for that: “He was one of us.”

At the same time he was working with bands of heathen punk youth infamous for indulging in virtually every extremist behavior they could think of, Ramirez also was forging a lasting professional bond with Stryper, the Christian rock band that became famous for melding heavy metal sounds to a clean-living image and lyrics that sang the praises of Jesus.

Stryper started coming to Casbah in the early ‘80s because it was cheap and convenient, according to Michael Sweet, the band’s former singer. It kept coming, rehearsing there for each album, because Chaz became a friend and a valued sounding board.

“He’d toss out musical ideas. He always gave his opinion, and he’d tell us whenever a song stunk,” Sweet said. “He’d always voice his opinion in a nice way, and it usually counted. We learned a lot from Chaz. I’m not saying Chaz was into Stryper or a big fan of Stryper, but he was a big supporter, because he was a friend. He gave us a lot of (encouragement), and that will do more for you than all the technical stuff. A lot of times things are said because someone dies. But I’d be saying everything the same if he was alive today. He was a great guy, and I’m very sad that he’s dead.”

A further mark of Chaz’s versatility was his work on several tracks from “Pleasure Victim,” the 1983 album that provided a commercial breakthrough for the Orange County techno-pop band Berlin. According to Dan van Patten, the album’s producer, Ramirez’s most important contribution was a remix of “Sex (I’m a . . . ),” the band’s first hit. (A mix is the final balancing of musical elements that have been placed on tape and is crucial to a recording’s actual sound.)

“We didn’t know what he did on that mix, but he brought some magic out of that track,” Van Patten said. The basic recording “was just a jam in the studio, not a planned song at all. It didn’t strike anyone as being anything too special until Chaz did that mix. He did treatments on the vocals that really made the difference.”

Nearly every person I interviewed described Chaz as a fundamentally happy person (notwithstanding the occasional moody period, sometimes brought on by overwork), who was fortunate enough to spend his life pursuing his passions. But friends say he did run into problems with alcohol. Some rockers tell of sessions that ended with the participants, Chaz included, too crocked to continue. Some say that it eventually became apparent that his drinking was hurting his performance in the studio.

“Several years ago, he slipped,” said one musician who worked frequently with Chaz. “He’d lost the drive. It’s not like he’d screw up, but he just wasn’t that man full of ideas.”

Ramirez evidently came to the same conclusion. About a year and a half ago, friends say, he gave up alcohol.

“I never saw him take another drink,” said Van Patten, who runs a vintage-drum repair shop in the same complex as Casbah. “He said, ‘I got sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.’ ”

“He’s been back in top form,” said the same source who, asking not to be named, spoke of Ramirez having “lost the drive” a few years back. “The last two years are the happiest I’ve ever seen him. When he got off (alcohol) he again became a real great, innovative producer-engineer.”

While Chaz claimed in 1989 that he already had produced 70 albums, only the Berlin album gave him a major-label credit. After Social Distortion signed a big-label deal with Epic, the band continued to prepare for its albums in demo sessions at Casbah, but the final versions of both “Social Distortion” (1990) and “Between Heaven and Hell” (1992) were produced by Dave Jerden, who had made his name producing hit albums for Jane’s Addiction. It’s commonplace for big record companies to want their acts to work with producers with hit sales records, and most of Ramirez’s accomplishments, including the two albums he had produced for Social Distortion, had been smaller-selling independent label projects.

“I think he was really hurt on a personal level. On a professional level, he understood that larger companies want them to work with people (the companies) know,” said Van Patten. “One time, Chaz was saying, ‘I don’t understand why (Social Distortion) didn’t just hire me. I would like to work in L.A.’ But he didn’t make a big thing of it.”

“I thought he was really underrated,” said Moreland, the Leaving Trains leader who recorded an album and an EP at Casbah, and, for a work currently in progress, had enlisted Ramirez not only as producer but as a full-fledged, multi-instrumentalist band member. Moreland compares Ramirez to Jack Endino, the producer hailed in alternative-rock circles for shepherding the earliest recordings by a slew of now-famous Seattle rock bands.

“What Chaz did was at least as good, but he never got the reputation, perhaps because Orange County is off the beaten track for music,” Moreland said. “I felt that for the kind of work he did, the kind of stuff he did for so long, if he’d been in a more popular city like Seattle, he would have stood out.”

Friends say Ramirez was not the sort of creative personality who required a great deal of ego stroking or material baubles to attest to his achievements. He always lived in rented homes, with his constant companion of more than 17 years: a beloved house cat named Rollo that, according to one friend, is so fat, “he’s like a stuffed pillow.”

“He didn’t want to get into that Hollywood producer glamourama,” said Debbie Stone, who knew Chaz from his high school days. “He wasn’t like that. He was proud of his projects. He didn’t care if anyone knew it or not. He didn’t make an effort to work with the so-called name bands.”

Others think that Chaz did have hopes of moving up to work with bigger bands--he had plans eventually to upgrade Casbah’s recording machine from 16 tracks to 24 tracks, which might have brought some bigger-ticket, higher-profile business. But it apparently was not a driving, constantly irritating ambition that, if not satisfied, would have left Chaz feeling failed or unsatisfied.

“I don’t feel there was any unfulfilled dream, because he was a pretty happy guy,” said John Kallas, a longtime friend who runs a music store in La Habra. “He was just constantly plugged in to doing what he wanted to do, just in the thick of doing what he wanted to do all of the time.”

“He never seemed too concerned with money. He never had aspirations to be Quincy Jones,” said another musician friend, John Mello. “He made a living. He was one of the most successful businessmen I’ve ever known, because he was happy in what he did.”

What we have left are the records, the best evidence that Ramirez, regardless of the size of his studio or his reputation, was a big-time rock producer. Listen to Social Distortion tracks like “1945” and “Playpen,” from 1981, or “Mommy’s Little Monster” and “The Creeps (I Just Wanna Give You),” from 1983, which captured the band in all its brash, careening early glory.

Try the moving title track from SD’s 1988 album, “Prison Bound,” a magnificent piece of recording in which Ramirez helped the band reach for elegiac grandeur without sacrificing its grit or its searing guitar sound. Or check out “Balboa Fun Zone,” the overlooked 1988 album that brought the Adolescents to adulthood, again without losing their edge or blunting their sizzling attack.

The Pontiac Brothers’ 1986 album, “Doll Hut,” is as rough and ready a straight-ahead rock album as you could want to hear. “Johnny’s Got a Problem,” a mid-’80s song by D.I., is a definitive piece of hard-core punk. If it’s possible for a rock song to scare some drug-dabbling kid straight, this roaring, sarcastic, anguished track from the album “Horse Bites Dog Cries” might be the one.

As I said at the start, all of this could and should have been said weeks or months or years ago, but the time has slipped away. We tend to focus on the people who sing and play and write rock ‘n’ roll, rather than the ones behind the scenes. These records I’ve mentioned are among my favorites. From now on, when I hear them, I’ll make sure not to forget the amiable, enthusiastic and capable record man who helped bring them into being.