accorded him no royalties, but a tremendous amount of artistic freedom. "I wanted to keep on working, to be there. I think for a while I had more hours [of studio experience] for any producer my age. I used to practically live in the studio. And I used to work until I fell over. It was like an addiction. In 1966 he formed the group The Ballroom with Sandy Salisbury, Michele O'Malley, and Jim Bell. The quartet recorded an album's worth of material, but other than two songs on a 1967 Warner Bros. 45 rpm single, the sessions remained unreleased until 2001. In 1966, he produced two hit singles for Tommy Roe, "Sweet Pea" and "Hooray for Hazel". Production on both was credited to Boettcher's Our Productions partner, Steve Clark, but Boettcher subsequently claimed that he himself produced these recordings. The following year, Boettcher produced Roe's album It's Now Winter's Day (ABC Records). The Millennium and Sagittarius Boettcher is said to have met both producer Gary Usher and Beach Boy songwriter Brian Wilson while producing and mixing the first single by Lee Mallory, "That's the Way It's Gonna Be", issued on Valiant Records in 1966. Usher in later years insisted that Boettcher influenced Brian Wilson during the development of the Beach Boys' perennial album Pet Sounds (1966), leading him to "abandon surfing music." Usher's statements are contradicted by session date logs and contemporary publications, wherein band members suggested to news publishers that they were looking beyond the confinements of surf rock as early as November 1964. Usher bought Boettcher's contract and signed him as a staff producer for Columbia Records. In 1967 he enlisted Boettcher to collaborate on a personal project, a studio band called Sagittarius, under whose name he had produced a single, "My World Fell Down", which became a minor hit. (It was sung by Glen Campbell, who at the time was working as a session musician in Los Angeles, with Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys on backing vocals.) Because of the modest chart success of the single, Columbia requested a full album, only to discover there was no group. Usher and Boettcher became the studio group, and an album was completed and released in 1968 under the title Present Tense. (Usher and Boettcher are pictured on the cover.) Some of the songs were adapted from the unreleased Ballroom sessions, while others were re-recorded with new arrangements.