Did you ever play any instruments?
I played the violin a bit for a couple of years, and then it was probably too much hard work. I was about nine and my father took me to see [Yehudi] Menuhin in Croydon, and that sort of finished it!
Yeah. Was it a feeling of, "I'm not going to get there"?
Pretty much, yeah. It was way before the ideas of the Suzuki method or anything like that. When I first learned the instrument, I was just playing pizzicato on open strings. They wouldn't let me touch a bow. It was very formal, and the idea of ever getting a tune out of anything at the end of the day was very remote.
I know you were considering being a metallurgist.
Yeah.
How old were you when you first applied to, and ended up, at Decca?
Nobody would be employed that way now. I would have been about 19 or 20. I was going to be a metallurgist and it just didn't work out at all. It was a stupid thing to do in the first place, but there you are! [laughter] I was brought up in the era when, to some extent, the ambitions of your parents were foisted upon you, careerwise. Metallurgy didn't work out, and I didn't really know what to do. I had an interest in a hi-fi, in record collecting, and I used to go to a lot of classical concerts. I thought, "Maybe I can get a job listening to music and twiddling knobs." I wrote to Decca [Studios], I wrote to Abbey Road [EMI Studios], and I wrote to Philips [Studios]. I didn't know anything about independent studios at all – not that there were probably many in those days. I went to Abbey Road and Decca for interviews. There were extraordinary differences between the two. At Abbey Road, I was probably there for an hour and a half. They took me everywhere and I saw all the studios. I remember walking into Studio One, and they were rearranging after a break. It's like the whole of the LSO [London Symphony Orchestra] was in there, and I thought, "This is it. This is what I want to do."
That room is quite large.
I think [Edward] "Chick" Fowler was the studio manager in those days. He asked me loads of questions, and then he said, "Well, we haven't got anything at the moment, but if something turns up we'll be in touch." Off I go, thinking, "Oh, well, I'll probably never hear another word." About three weeks later I got a letter from Decca, went to Broadhurst Gardens, and it's completely the opposite. I had this ten-minute whirlwind tour, and five minutes with Arthur Haddy, who was the studio manager of Decca. I can't even remember the questions, but he turned around and said, "Well, boy" – he used to call everybody boy – "would you like to work here?" I said, "Why, yes, Mr. Haddy." He said, "All right. Start the first Monday in January." That was how I started.
Were you mostly in the cutting room at that point?
It was the early days of stereo mastering. They had two Neumann stereo lathes, and I was on the second one. It was being run by Peter Attwood, and I was put with him. I'd been with him about a week, and then he said, "Oh, I'm off to my clarinet lesson this afternoon." And that was it. They left me to it in the room. Decca did a lot of licensing in those days. They licensed RCA, and there was a label called London American, which was a conglomeration of the likes of Liberty and Atlantic. I used to do the monthly releases for RCA and Atlantic and – I can't remember them all. If you got through that, you might do a Decca one if the guy upstairs doing the Decca releases was getting behind time. If I got through that, I'd maybe get sent off to do editing. These were the days when they used to do mono and stereo separately.
Would you have to match the edits on different reels?
Oh, yeah. I'd go with the classical A&R guy, and they'd already done the stereo, so we'd be doing the mono.
That's difficult to do with classical edits.
Yeah, that's all done with scores. It is interesting that people don't realize the consistency of classical recording, certainly at Decca, in that we would be editing between takes sometimes that had not even been done in the same week.
But hopefully in the same hall!
Yeah, some of their operas – some of the famous Wagner recordings – they were recording them months apart. One act would be one month, and they'd come back and do another act later. I mean, that's consistency for you.
And the Decca trees [three omnidirectional microphones arranged in a "T" pattern], of course!
Oh, yes.
So, a week after starting you were cutting vinyl?
Yeah. It wasn't long.
Were they worried about you blowing out cutter heads?
Well, we used to have to do everything at half speed.
Really? Do you think that improved the quality?
No, it was because it was the only way we could get the level up. There were basically two systems, if you go back to that era. You either used Westrex heads and Scully lathes, usually if you were an American. Or you went the Neumann and Teldec route [Telefunken/Decca]. The Teldec cutters, in fact, were lateral hill and dale, 90 degree coils. They weren't 45 degree coils even. We had to sum-and-difference everything to put it into the 45 degree mode. They wouldn't take a lot of current. So, as the HF [high frequency] goes up, the current increases. If you chop the HF in half by going at half speed, then you effectively could get more level. Or you'd just blow the heads up.
Throwing somebody into this seems pretty crazy!
I think the reason that they did it was to get our ears attuned. How would you get your ears attuned to working unless you were in that environment?
Mastering songs coming from the United States must have been a great ear-opening experience; to hear different productions.
Well, yes. Sometimes I'd think, "What on earth is this?" The RCA label was interesting because there was RCA classical as well. Decca used to license RCA in those days. In fact, Decca used to record for RCA in Europe. Anyway, that's how it all started. Then I got frustrated because sitting and listening to music at half speed all day can get a bit boring. One of the classical A&R guys had moved to the Rank Organisation. Rank had a record label; they were going to put in their own Neumann lathe and do their own mastering. They were talking about doing their own mastering and their own mixing, because, by this time, 4-track had just about arrived. I thought that might be a bit more interesting, and they offered me more money. I took the job. When I went to Rank's, the lathe was in boxes. I put this whole Neumann system together. I actually cut one single that was produced by Joe Meek [Tape Op #100], which ended up on EMI.
Oh, wow.
I met Joe Meek.
What did you think of the Joe Meek production?
I remember him going on about the artist, John Leyton. I don't remember a lot about it. It wasn't particularly memorable. But after four weeks, Rank decided they were going to fold the whole Rank Records and I was out of a job. I got approached by Levy's Sound Studios, who'd also bought a Neumann off the shelf. The Decca Neumanns weren't straightforward at all; it was only the lathe they bought. They built their own amps, EQs, and all the rest of it.
Which was common back then.
Yeah. But Neumann also did an off-the-shelf, complete Neumann/Telefunken kit. Levy's had bought the same package, and they didn't understand it or know what to do with it. I ended up working there, and I sort of got trapped for the next few years. The interesting thing then was, in those days, there were loads of small labels. I was doing a lot of custom, turnkey label work for Westminster classical and Riverside jazz. They were two of the more interesting ones. Levy's was an associate company with a record company called Oriole. They were pretty hopeless pop records. At this time, I was not particularly interested in popular music at all, I have to say. I was just doing the job and earning a crust.
What were you listening to? Were you still a fan of classical music?
Oh, yeah. And some quite interesting jazz. I started cutting Reprise [Records], because Pye had their own system, but they didn't use it. I used to do all the Reprise catalog for Pye. It was quite interesting and very varied. Then, through the turnkey work, I started doing sessions for people as well.
How were you learning mic'ing up instruments and singers?
I don't know. To some degree, from what I'd seen. In other ways, intuitive and observational. One of the other bizarre things about Levy's was this associated company, Oriole, had a sideline, which was making soundalike pop records for Woolworth's [Department Store].
These are like The Sounds of Today, and then it's a bunch of covers of current hits?
They used to do it as singles, even. Oriole had this A&R man who tried to predict what was going to be in the charts in two or three weeks, and they would go in and do covers. That was the most frustrating. The covers were always engineered by the guy that ran the studio, Jacques Levy, who hadn't frankly had a clue about popular music. Why would he have had? He was 20 years out of date. I would be given the original version and the tape of what he'd done that afternoon, and I was then expected to somehow make the tune in some way compatible.
You'd be listening to the original song that they covered?
Yeah. I'd be getting a Phil Spector single, and they haven't even got a bass guitar in the band there because the guy that did the arranging didn't like bass guitars. So, it's got a double bass.
Wow. That sounds frustrating.
Obviously, you learn a lot from it, if nothing else. Then the associate record company, Oriole, in a move to catch up with the 20th century, employed this A&R man, John Schroeder, who'd been responsible for writing hits for Helen Shapiro, an EMI artist and quite a big deal in whenever this was – '63, '64. The one thing that he'd brought to the party was he negotiated a deal to release Motown Records. For a year, Oriole, as well as their own label, which didn't produce many hits and the Woolworth's stuff, were also releasing Motown. I don't know why, but I really did find that was interesting.
Like the production of the music?
Yeah. The first three records I cut were "Beechwood 4-5789" by The Marvelettes, "Please, Mr. Postman," and Mary Wells' "Does He Love Me?" It's just so different, and I suppose in some way that's what got me interested in it. I've never been a much of a fan of English pop music. I think there's only ever been one great English pop record that can hold its head up against the Americans. It's Dusty Springfield's "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me." Listen to that, and it sounds as good as anything that was coming out of America.
She had a heck of a voice.
Oh, yeah. She knew what she wanted.
You were also doing bands like Downliners Sect at that time.
Yeah, the first album I ever did.
That's kind of garagey R'n'B, right?
That was a second division R'n'B band at the time, hoping to be like the Pretty Things or the Rolling Stones. I did some people like Richard Rodney Bennett. The sessions that I did do were quite wide. I did an album [Alone with My Friends] with Memphis Slim [John Chatman], believe it or not.
When I first opened a studio, and I started tracking people day after day, my understanding of where to put the mics and set levels got so much better and quickly. Did you feel that growth in your own skills?
Well, you learn by the seat of your pants a bit, don't you? On the Memphis Slim session, I can't remember who played bass on it, but the guy who it was for was Ed Michel; he was running Interdisc in London. It was very jazz and blues oriented. He was an American, and he said, "Memphis Slim's in town. We're going to make an album with him." I don't know why, but I remember taking the lid off the piano. When it came to mic'ing the bass, Ed said, "You should get that [Neumann KM] 56." He said, "This is what I do in America. Wrap it up in a scarf and wedge it into the bridge." That's been my go-to way of recording double basses ever since – when you can get hold of an KM 56. But [John Martyn's] Solid Air, which everybody raves about the bass sound, that's all I did. By that time, I was using a bit of sponge rubber and stuffed it into the bridge of Danny's bass. All you need is Danny Thompson, and then a decent-sized booth! [laughter] But that's the other thing people don't understand: Players and instruments.
And singers, like we mentioned earlier.
Oh, yeah.
If I look back at early recordings I did, the ones people love are usually because the songs are good and the players are good. It's not that I was a great engineer.
And the fact that you're capturing a performance.
For sure.
Yeah. Well, don't get me going about that!
This is the place to talk about that.
I just do not understand it. I probably do about three or four projects a year at most now. But of those, at least two will be mixing other people's recordings. It seems that the way that the industry – if you call it an industry – works now is that people like me are in this sort of no man's land between a producer and an artist where we're trying to sort it out afterwards. I've just been working on an album for an American country artist – god knows why he got me to mix it. But anyway, he's really happy. Funny enough, I've got a couple of English guitarists overdubbing on it. But if I'm not there at the beginning, I don't really have a plan of how it should sound, or what I want to do with it. If I'm working with music that I'm recording, when I hear the song, I've got a sonic blueprint. Which, of course, I don't get, coming in to do all that afterwards, unless I'm very lucky. Sometimes it works well.
We're trying to make production moves at the end of the session, as opposed to being on the floor, going, "Take that up an octave," or, "Play quieter."
Or just, "Do it again, with feeling." I'll say to people, "It really doesn't matter. Just because there's a mistake, or you're ending up at a faster tempo than you started, I don't care." I used to just say, "That's the one." But that's out the window.
It's a different era now. Speaking of eras, when you were working at Levy's, you met Geoff Frost.
Yeah. We got more and more frustrated with it, particularly with the amateurism of Jacques Levy. We thought, "What the fuck can we do?" In the end, his mother put up £10,000, and we started our studio. You wouldn't dare do it these days, probably.
But you'd been exposed to these independent studios, and you were working with independent labels.
Yeah, there weren't that many studios, really. There was IBC, Olympic, Lansdowne, and Star [Sound]. That that was about it. Anyway, we made the leap. The arrogance of youth! Geoff had always been very smart about making gear. When we were at Levy's, I remember he took a Pultec [equalizer] home one weekend, stuck it in the oven, and melted all the wax out of the coils! We'd always pushed the envelope. When we were at Levy's, they put in this mixer made by EMI Broadcast Division, and it was a load of rubbish. It was still valve [vacuum tube]. We got hold of an early Fairchild transistor – germanium, I suppose, in those days – and that sounded great. Geoff had always had a very inquiring mind. When we got to do Sound Techniques, everything we could do ourselves, we'd do, like make a mixer. Before we'd finished our own, we'd made one for somebody else.
Where did that first one go to?
It went to Freddie Baker. I think he used to do mobile recordings. A bit of an eccentric character. Years later, I did a remote recording for a track on the second Fairport album, What We Did on Our Holidays. They said, "Oh, we want to record this in a church." They organized the mixer, and it was this bloody mixer that we'd built for Freddie Baker! So, that's how it started. Then the usual thing: You start the business, get it going, and all these people say, "Oh, we'll come," and then none of them bloody show up. We spent a year chewing our fingernails. Luckily, we were saved by a contract recording background music for 3M America. We were doing 60 titles a day of this.
Library music?
Yeah, 3M had come up with some hardware that they wanted to put out for background music.
Like Muzak?
Yeah, to put in the banks, lifts, or whatever. We had months of recording that, which kept the wolf from the door.
How big was the live room at Sound Techniques?
Around 1000 square feet. Nobody thought that you recorded anywhere that was much less than that.
Were there isolation booths or gobos?
Well, we had gobos. And when we started, we had two floors: The first floor and the floor above it. We chopped out the middle third, so the middle of the studio was double height. In one end where we hadn't chopped it out, we had the control room. The other end was the workshop where we were making mixers for the two years we were building them there. We made one for Sunset Sound, and the one for Trident we made in the workshop over the top of the back half of the studio. We had to have a red light in there to shut everybody up when we were doing takes.
No drilling!
Yeah. But that's the way it was. After a couple of years, we moved the manufacturing side out to Suffolk, and Geoff went off and stayed in Suffolk. I then changed the acoustics. I killed the studio down a bit. We made it so the back third could be completely shut off if we wanted.
Oh, wow. Like doors that would close?
Yeah, it wasn't a hundred percent, but it was enough. When we started, the idea of the double height was going to be for strings and orchestral sessions. But we discovered that it was better putting the rhythm section in there. We were recording with the rhythm section in the middle, brass and woodwinds at one end, and strings in the other. That was the way we used to work it. The highest number of people we ever put in there was 47. That's actually quite a famous recording. That's Judy Collins doing songs from Marat/Sade.
On the In My Life record? That's a beautiful sounding record.
That was a turning point for us. A turning point for me in my life, really. We'd already done a couple of sessions for Jac Holzman [the head of Elektra Records], with arranger Mort Garson, and it was great. He was lovely to work with. Judy Collins wanted to make a record in England, and we got the gig. She came over with [producer] Mark Abramson and [arranger/conductor] Josh Rifkin. It was a groundbreaking record, but nobody in Britain ever picked it up. We never got any reputation in the UK through it.
Then through Elektra you had the Joe Boyd connection.
It started with Elektra, and then Joe turned up. I don't know why Joe and I got on, but we always have, in one way or another. That started me off on whatever career I've had.
Working with Joe brought in a whole cache of great artists.
Yeah. We learned a lot from one another. Joe was ambitious, but hardly experienced. The great times that I spent with Joe usually were in America. With Kate and Anna [McGarrigle's self-titled] album, Geoff Muldaur [Is Having A Wonderful Time], and living there in the summer. It wasn't so much that I enjoyed doing that, it's just the people who played on them. I don't think the current generation even realizes what it's like to work with the stature of musicians that we had on some of these projects.
Like Steve Gadd?
Gadd, yeah. Or Tony Levin [Tape Op #33], Cornell Dupree, and Benny Carter. I'm just so lucky.
This was also a flush time for the music industry, like being able to fly to L.A. to mix a record.
What was the first session that you did with Joe at Sound Techniques?
I think the first thing we ever did was Alasdair Clayre from Cambridge [Alasdair Clayre]. Joe says it was a record with [David] Swarbrick and Martin Carthy, so it might have been Swarb' and Carthy's Rags, Reels and Airs. Then we did the Incredible String Band [their debut self-titled album].
I remember the first Incredible String Band album we did was when there were three of them; they stood in a line on a Sunday afternoon, and we just recorded it. Interestingly enough, the Incredible String Band was special because they were what liberated Joe from Elektra. Joe went into management with the Increds, and, on the back of that, he became independent. Of everything I did with Joe, I don't think they've stood the test of time in the way that everything else has.
It feels more of the era, maybe.
Oh yeah, it does. Whereas the Nick [Drake] music is obviously timeless. Kate and Anna's first album, same thing. I remember when we did the first Kate and Anna album, which we did in A&R [Studios] in New York. There's a waltz, "My Town," a song of Anna's. We did a take, we listened to it, and it sounded pretty good to me. Then Anna said, "Well, I'm not sure. It doesn't really make me want to dance." And [drummer] Steve Gadd said, "Oh, maybe I should just lay back a fraction on the one on the bass drum." I thought, "He's full of shit." They went out, did another take, and of course it sounded wonderful. If you want to make records, work with people like that. It makes me redundant!
[laughs] It makes you look good.
One of the bands that Joe brought to you, that you probably never had to see live, was the early Pink Floyd.
I did see Pink Floyd live.
Did you see them at the UFO [Club]?
Yeah, we went to UFO one night. Taking my first wife to UFO one night, and…
How different was that from when they recorded the singles?
Completely different, yeah. I thought, "What's going on here?" Joe had rented the Blarney Club, just off Tottenham Court Road. I remember taking my wife, Sheila, and Yoko [Ono] was trying to get people for her film with bottoms [Film No. 4 (Bottoms)].
Oh, yeah!
She was trying to recruit people for that. Lava lights, Pink Floyd playing, and so what? I didn't get it. But when we were recording them, it was very interesting. Joe had always been friendly with the American producer that did The Doors [Paul Rothchild]. He'd said to Joe that they'd been DI'ing guitars. Joe said, "I've been talking to him, and he said about this." I said, "Oh, I'll see what we can sort out." I spoke to Geoff, and Geoff came up with this idea of not, in fact, doing it the way you would normally expect to do it, which was straight off the guitar itself. But we did it off the back of the amps on the speaker. We clipped on clips.
Oh, like off the speaker?
Yeah. We'd got these old GPO 600 ohm transformers. We used a mixture of the two [with the mic] – and I don't think anybody'd ever done it in the UK before.
On Syd [Barrett's] guitar?
