Richard is a film composer and music producer with over 60 film credits, including “Dr. Dolittle,” “Big Momma's House,” and “Queen of the Damned” along with TV series such as “Battlestar Galactica” and “The Simpsons.” He was also the keyboard player for the new wave band Oingo Boingo and a session player on over 150 albums. In 2005, Richard and Linda opened The Woodshed recording studio behind their Malibu home; since then, the studio has attracted a Who’s Who of music clientele including Coldplay, U2, Lady Gaga, Barbra Streisand, Kanye West, and many more.
“The night before the Woolsey Fire hit Malibu, we knew it was a possibility,” Richard said. “We had friends in Calabasas that evacuated to our place, so we had a houseful. The next morning, we lost power. We had what I jokingly called ‘The Last Breakfast’ and laid out a feast for eight or nine people.
“Linda and I began packing the cars with our photos. We’d done this before, I don’t know for which fire, 20 years ago. I grabbed three guitars that were irreplaceable – two of mine and one of Chris Martin’s (of Coldplay), because of their vintage. But nobody really thought Point Dume would burn.
“Then we started looking around the property. It’s all kind of a blur. We thought we should move the wooden furniture inside, and put the propane heaters and a motorcycle with a full gas tank in the garage. We’re running around like crazy trying to decide how to make the place fire resistant. Then we saw people gathering at the next door lot looking at the fire, which was cresting the hill and appeared to be heading west to Zuma Beach.
“Later in the afternoon, I rode my bike to Big Dume (the neighborhood park overlooking the ocean), and I could see a huge bloom of smoke going over Zuma. I thought the fire would follow the path of the smoke, and it looked like it would miss us by a couple miles. That’s when smoke and ash started falling on me and the wind shifted, and I thought, ‘Uh-oh.’ What little confidence I had evaporated. I called Linda and said, ‘We’re going to have to get out of here.’
“I went to the front gate, which had no power, and had to use a manual lever to open it. I told Linda to take Jackson, our dog – and as I pulled the gate open, we saw the fire below our house and immediately realized it had breached PCH (Pacific Coast Highway, which had always saved the neighborhood by acting as a fire break). I could see a 40 foot high wall of smoke coming up our normal exit route, so we went the back way. Our neighbor runs a Venice B&B and texted me to stay there. He saved us a room, and we made a beeline to go there.
“That night, our son, Keegan, texted to say the house was gone. He forwarded a video of a TV news reporter standing in front of our house as it burned. We went to bed thinking ‘That’s it, everything is gone.’ I’m starting to think maybe it’s time to collect the insurance and move to New Zealand or something. I was in shock. I couldn’t feel anything. We had a hard time going to sleep. The next morning, we were still in shock. It was like a nightmare – like something that wasn’t real. It didn’t happen.
“Saturday morning, we were sitting in the lobby of the B&B and didn’t know where to go. Venice was filled with smoke and Linda didn’t want to breathe it. We were sitting on the couch and I was looking at a photo sent by Keegan, who went back into Malibu just to help out. He was a big part of the ‘Point Dume Bombers,’ a group of about two dozen young men who were still extinguishing spot fires throughout the neighborhood and refusing to leave.
“He sent this surreal photo of the front of the house, which was completely levelled and with the gate entirely gone. So I’m looking at the photo down along the side and back of the house past the coral tree. Through the branches, I could see this shadow – and I said, ‘Linda, I think that’s the roof of the studio!’ I’m thinking maybe there are some timbers left standing, but then I got another photo and text from Keegan: a selfie of he and his friends standing in front of the studio wearing gas masks, and his eyes were brimming with joy. And I collapsed with waves of relief.
“My emotional ride was an interesting experience for me, how your brain protects you. It wouldn’t let me feel the depths of despair. Then it was like ‘Okay, now you can feel.’ It was this wild mixture of grief and joy: the studio had survived untouched by the fire. It had some smoke damage with fire damage all around and over it. I got back into Malibu the next morning to help out in our area. It was mind-blowing to see all of the destruction on Dume Drive leading up to our property.
“As for the survival of the studio – so many people communicated to me via Facebook, phone, text, saying, ‘It’s a miracle.’ At first, I thought, ‘Maybe it was. Maybe all the great music there saved it.’
“Then I finally realized it wasn’t a metaphysical force: it was the construction of the studio itself. That idea was reinforced by a friend of mine with a recording studio near Mulholland/Kanan (an area in the Santa Monica Mountains north of Malibu which also burned). His studio was also untouched, but his whole house burned down.
“There were thousands of black embers lying around the perimeter of the studio, and clearly they had bounced off. I realized they simply couldn’t get in. The studio was built quite well and air can’t get in or out, so there was no place where an ember could have gained purchase. Even with a 1/30 inch hole along a baseboard - the temperature differentials move like crazy through these little holes and the house will explode into flames. It’s the same dynamic of getting a fire going in the fireplace.”
In closing, Richard advised that “It’s not the materials; it’s the care that’s taken in construction. Build your house with double insulated windows and fill every single gap everywhere. We also had a permaculture garden all around the studio building that acted like a wet sponge.
“When a fireman came by two days later, I explained my theory and he said, ‘You’re exactly right.’ Getting rid of healthy green vegetation can be short-sighted and exacerbate the problem.”
