Mix Book Review: ‘My Life As a Studio Wife,’ by Bea Swedien

It takes only a few chapters of My Life As a Studio Wife to realize that Bea Swedien would live an extraordinary life no matter what path she chose or what hand fate dealt her. She could have been a North Dakota farmer, a nurse and single mom in Boston, the owner of a wildlife sanctuary bordering the Everglades— doesn’t matter, it would all be extraordinary.

But one day, a young man named Bruce Swedien cruised by a Baptist youth picnic in St. Paul, Minnesota, in “a big blue Plymouth,” and, recognizing Bea from school, asked her out for ice cream. They dated, married and over the next 68 years, until Bruce’s death in 2020, they created and shared a life that became both extraordinary and magical, with a front-row/control-room seat for some of the greatest moments in music history.

In that sense, the book can be read as a simple love story, what Bea calls “a lifetime of laughing and loving.” It’s about living a well-balanced life together. The title itself is a tongue-in-cheek jab at the cliché where being married to an engineer means unpredictable schedules, interrupted vacations and lots of nights alone while the husband is on a five-week project in London. And a studio wife never, ever hangs out at the studio.

From page one, Bea makes it very clear that she is not that wife. After they married and Bruce was spending late hours as a disc jockey and hot new engineer on the Minneapolis scene, she started bringing dinners to the studio and hanging out. She didn’t know about any rule, and nobody questioned it.

She also says, “I was never a typical housewife. I never really learned to cook.” She could, however, run a ranch and train show horses while raising three children and, after Bruce became one of the industry’s first independent engineers, acting as his business manager, scheduler, accountant and travel agency.

The book can also be read as part travelogue. After opening with her childhood in rural India as one of five children born of first-generation Swedish-American missionaries, Bea returns to Minneapolis and marries Bruce. From there, the young couple heads to Chicago, then L.A., Connecticut and, finally, Ocala, Fla., where Bea still lives on their ranch, with horses and Great Danes, at age 90.

Ultimately, however, the book is a memoir, with a chronological narrative spanning the years. There’s energy and excitement to the Chicago years, when the couple is just starting out. Soon, they’re in the control room or out on Rush Street with the likes of Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Oscar Peterson, the Stan Kenton Band, Lesley Gore, Muddy Waters and so many others. One day, on a Dinah Washington session, Bruce meets a young musician named Quincy Jones. “Quincy,” Bea says, “changed our lives forever.”

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If the Chicago years are exciting and energetic, then the Los Angeles years, although written in the same voice and tone, depict comfort and joy, a humble sense of achieving success and enjoying a bit of the freedom it brings. Then, one day Quincy Jones shows up and introduces them to Michael Jackson, and once again, their lives change forever. There are hundreds of names sprinkled throughout the book, from Count Basie to Diana Ross to J Lo, but it’s clear that Quincy and Michael are special.

That’s part of the book’s charm: The author writes in a voice that describes being the lone spectator in an Orlando arena, seated at mid-court, during rehearsals for the Bad tour, in the same way she recounts a harrowing night out on Lake Michigan during a storm, certain that the entire family will drown. Yes, she mentions the day Bruce asked Michael to step up on a box to sing the vocal for Thriller; she also talks about nights on the control room couch, snuggling with Bubbles the Chimp.

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There’s an overriding sense of wide-eyed innocence and genuine wonder at the heart of My Life As a Studio Wife, and it has nothing to do with famous artists or historic events. It’s about the way Bea Swedien looks at the world around her, a way of treating each moment with a reverence that made it clear from the beginning she would live an extraordinary life.