Swept up in Sound: the life and too early death of Ian Petersen
Ian Petersen, a recording engineer immersed in the South Bay punk scene, died last month while traveling abroad. Photo courtesy Garrett Thompson
Ian Petersen followed his passion for South Bay punk into the recording studio before passing away while traveling
In April 2013, Pennywise guitarist Fletcher Dragge had one ticket to spare to the hottest show in town. FLAG — the version of punk legends Black Flag featuring Keith Morris and Chuck Dukowski but not Greg Ginn — was playing a secret gig at the Moose Lodge in Redondo Beach, site of the band’s first show some 35 years earlier. Dragge, whose decades in the South Bay punk scene meant he knew “a couple thousand people” who were dying to see the group, agonized over his choice. Eventually, he settled on Ian Petersen, a producer at Screaming Leopard Studios, a Hermosa Beach recording spot co-owned by Dragge.
Though he had only known Petersen for a few years, Dragge chose him because he knew how passionate Petersen was about music.
“I don’t know if there was anyone that would have been more stoked by it than Ian,” Dragge said.
Petersen, a South Bay native who combined a passion for the area’s music with a searching spirit that would propel him around the globe, died June 29 while traveling in Thailand. He was 40. An official with the U.S. Department of State confirmed Petersen’s death and said the U.S. consulate in Thailand had reached out to his family, but declined to provide further information.
Friends hosted a memorial at Hermosa’s Screaming Leopard Studios on Sunday, where bands Ian Petersen had worked with played. Photo
Petersen’s sister Summer said Petersen was an adventurous and restless traveler, frequently visiting and eating in places tourists avoided. He had gotten sick the month before, while in Indonesia, and she speculated that he may have become ill again in Thailand, then aggravated his condition by not resting. She said the family had spoken to a doctor there who said Petersen had antibiotics in his system. Several authorizations from both the U.S. and local government are required to autopsy or return the remains of a citizen who dies abroad, and Summer said her brother’s body will likely be in Thailand for at least another month.
Petersen had traveled widely in recent years, and the trip on which he passed away had begun more than a year before. He documented his travels extensively on social media, filing brightly colored photos of exotic architecture, jungle animals and lively street scenes. In posts in the weeks leading up to his death, Petersen comes off as introspective, happy, and completely absorbed in the places through which he passed.
“My life absolutely [expletive] rules. Not that I don’t ride that wave of misery and hard times here and there. But what an absolute gift for those times in my life. Otherwise, I would never be able to tell the difference of what I’m able to see just taking a walk down the street right this moment. Sometimes, I might pretend to live like a vampire but I know I’m not immortal; so I’m sucking the blood out of every place and moment when I feel like I do right now. Grateful,” Petersen wrote June 3.
On Sunday, more than 100 people gathered outside Screaming Leopard in Hermosa’s light-industrial area off Cypress Avenue for a memorial sendoff of Petersen, featuring three bands that he had worked with: Special C, Neckbreaker and Chaser.
Neckbreaker singer Matt Rees said that he met Petersen some two decades ago while managing Toe’s Tavern in Redondo Beach. Petersen played in a band, the Abductees, and Rees loved hearing them. But since everyone in the band at that point was underage, Rees always tried to get them on stage and off at Toe’s before it got too late. Decades later, he would tap Petersen to record Neckbreaker, describing him as a “perfectionist in the studio.”
Ian Petersen in the studio with Minutemen bass player Mike Watt
The band’s drummer was out on tour with another act, so for Sunday they had found someone to sit in: El Segundo native Luke May. Rees discovered in the course of a Saturday night practice session that May had grown up with Petersen, and that May had known the engineer even longer than he had.
The two were neighbors growing up, and shared an early love for skateboarding and punk rock. May recalled that the two first experimented with recording music back in 1991. Using a four-track recording machine, they covered “Minor Threat” and “Straight Edge” by Washington, D.C. hardcore band Minor Threat. Every now and then the recording will pop up on someone’s computer, and it still makes May laugh.
“We sounded like chipmunks singing Minor Threat,” he said.
The early four-track foray was a sign of things to come. Those who knew Petersen described him as both detail-obsessed and frantically energetic. At shows, he could lose himself in music and forget about whatever was bothering him; the focus of recording and engineering provided a way for him to channel and harness that feeling, a kind of on-the-clock transcendence.
“He had a technically oriented, scientific mindset. Record engineering was perfect for him. His brain was wired for this,” May said, gesturing at the covered mixing console inside Screaming Leopard. “His mind was moving 1,000 miles per minute. It could go awry if it wasn’t focused on something.”
Petersen grew up in El Segundo and Westchester. His sister Summer, a year older, said they were on their own often as children. Petersen began experimenting with drugs at a young age, and left high school to go to rehab.
Although experiencing addiction at a young age is often associated with negative health outcomes, Summer said it may have been better for Petersen to encounter it earlier than later. Petersen would go on to work as a counselor at a rehabilitation center in Venice.
In recent years, Ian Petersen had traveled widely. Bali, in Indonesia, was one of his favorites. Photo courtesy Garrett Thompson
“In a way I think he did win some kind of lottery. He went through his rehabilitation at such a young age, it allowed him to build himself from the ground up, not wrecking his life in middle age and then try to fix it,” she said.
While in recovery, Petersen met a member of seminal Long Beach punk band TSOL. The connection eventually led to an offer to go on tour with the band as a roadie, an experience that Summer said showed Petersen a way that he could turn his love of music into a career.
“That’s what inspired him to realize that if he was adventurous and dedicated to what he was doing, he could make a living doing music. That was the thing that made him see that, if he had a dream, he should pursue it,” Summer said.
Petersen attended school for audio recording, production and engineering in Arizona. When he returned to Southern California, he found work doing production at Westbeach Recorders, a studio in Hollywood founded by Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz. The studio recorded famed Epitaph Records acts like NOFX and Rancid, and it brought Petersen even deeper into the punk world.
Among the acts he worked with there was South Bay punk band False Alliance. Danny McElwain, who sang and played guitar with the band, said Petersen, whom he also counted as a friend, could be a perfectionist in the studio.
Ian Petersen with former girlfriend Scarlett Curtis amid the backdrop of Monument Valley. Photo courtesy Scarlett Curtis
“He was meticulous. He would do so many takes of just one song, and he knew what a song needed on a psychological level,” McElwain said.
It was while working at Westbeach that Petersen became close with Pennywise, which recorded some of their classic ‘90s albums there. Later, Dragge and several other South Bay musicians would open Screaming Leopard. He was looking “for someone I would be able to trust doing punk the way I liked it,” he said, and decided to bring on Petersen.
He produced the band’s 2014 album “Yesterdays,” which was based around older songs that the band had performed in backyard shows or nightclub gigs, but which had never made it onto albums, including some written by deceased bass player Jason Thirsk. Putting the album together involved digging through old, often poorly recorded tapes, and Petersen’s zeal for the South Bay’s musical heritage made him a perfect fit to produce the record.
Petersen was “a sponge” when it came to learning about recording, Dragge said, always open to exploring new ideas, and sometimes even surrendered a bit of his notorious perfectionism. Dragge recalled working on a record by Special C with Petersen. At one point, the two clashed over how a particular guitar part should sound. Dragge was convinced that the track was perfect as it was, but Petersen wanted to refine it further. Petersen somewhat angrily conceded, but later admitted to Dragge that he had been right.
“I tried to talk him off that a little bit. He would always like things to be just right, but sometimes you’ve got to let stuff go. You’re not necessarily searching for that perfect guitar sound; things that are spontaneous, in the moment, can be cool.”
Firmly ensconced at Screaming Leopard, Petersen met Scarlett Curtis in August 2015. They would eventually date for more than two years, but started out as friends.
Curtis said Peterson was “very adventurous,” and her stories about him suggest a person who tried to bring out the same in others. For one of their first dates, Petersen took her to Westchester High School. He showed her how to climb over a fence and onto the roof of one of the buildings. From there, they ascended to the roof of the school gymnasium. Well above ground level, they sat back and watched the stars.
Curtis grew up in the South Bay and was familiar with many of the bands that Petersen idolized and worked with, and they often went to shows together. But it was not punk per se that they bonded over. Rather, it was what the music brought out in Petersen that drew her in. She recalled a show they went to together featuring the Misfits, one of Petersen’s all time favorites.
“When the music hit and the pit started, Ian said, ‘Alright, I’m not going to see you again ‘til the end of the show. Take care of yourself, and stay on the perimeter,’” Curtis said with a laugh.
Curtis said she was independent enough that she did not mind being left alone. And she got great pleasure from simply watching Petersen reacting to what was happening on stage.
“He would get so swept up in the music it was like he wasn’t in his body. He was connected to the divine, if you want to get spiritual about it. He wanted to be able to feel the music fully express himself,” she said.
Petersen had not had a chance to travel much as a kid, but Curtis, who had journeyed widely before meeting Petersen, helped encourage a nascent passion. They took extended trips to Nicaragua and Peru. When Petersen realized how cheaply one could live in developing-world countries, he wanted to do it more and more.
“Once he understood that, it became an escape for him. He sometimes struggled with feeling down or depressed, not really feeling like he fit in. When he was travelling, he felt free. He sometimes said that when he was here, he felt more confined, but when he was travelling, he felt he could express all the parts of his personality,” Curtis said.
Travel for Petersen became a way for Petersen to express his preference for simplicity and authenticity. Summer said that he had come to idolize Anthony Bordain, for the way the former chef found treasures in the unlikeliest of places.
Petersen set out on his most recent journey last summer, and planned to be gone for as long as two years, Curtis said. Indonesia had become his favorite place to visit, his sister said. The country’s laws, however, allow visitors to stay there for only 30 days at a time, and like many long-term travelers he left for Thailand when his visa expired.
Though black was the dominant color at Petersen’s memorial on Sunday, the crowd could hardly be called mournful. They ate barbecue, mingled with friends not seen in years, and listened to bands play in the sunny outdoors, drums and distortion echoing off the garage doors of the area’s other tenants, many of whom were also there. It was a scene, they said, that Petersen would have appreciated, and the pain of his passing was dulled slightly by knowing that he lived doing exactly what he wanted to do. In an older Instagram post that Petersen recently reposted, he wrote “When I was a teenager and a kid all I wanted to do was listen to music and go to shows. Now all I do is listen to music and go to shows.”