Uncle Sam Gets Out of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Sells Recording Studio Seized in S.F.

SAN FRANCISCO — Uncle Sam got out of the rock ‘n’ roll business Friday after auctioning off one of the top recording studios in the country.

Robert Skye of Dover, Del., owner of Skye Labs Inc., a mobile recording unit, was high bidder at $585,000.

Plant Studios had been seized by the U.S. marshal’s office last year when owner Stanley Forbes Jacox was arrested on drug charges.

Jacox had taken the studios from near bankruptcy to recognition as one of the top 10 recording operations in the nation. But authorities said he used drug dealing profits to purchase the facility.

Jacox has pleaded guilty to four counts of narcotics violations and is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 26.

Although the marshals do not have much expertise in the music business and their expenditures have been limited to fixing a storm-damaged roof, bands have continued to record at Plant Studios, among them Huey Lewis and the News, Carlos Santana, and the Kantner-Balin-Cassady band.