I joined the newly opened Island Studios on the 25th of June, 1970, on a wage of £25 for a 40 hour week. For the first few days I assisted Frank Owen on his sessions. This was to give me time to adjust to where everything was, to understand how the Helios desk worked and to meet the rest of the studio staff. The majority of this staff were aged between 18 and 26 years old, and were a great collection of characters. The atmosphere and working conditions appeared extremely relaxed.
Once I started to engineer on sessions, events happened very quickly. My first session at Basing Street was with Third World War, produced by John Fenton, who also wrote many of the band's lyrics. John was about 5' 10" in height, 28 years old, and was bright, speedy, and anti-establishment. He had a skin-head hair cut — a style that was extremely unfashionable in the music scene of 1970. He had made money, both from his involvement with Seltaeb (the Beatles merchandising company of the mid '60s), and from Eran Schroeder Publishing. Third World War had been formed in 1968, at the height of "flower-power", with Fenton eager to work on something he described as "new, positive and aggressive". On day one of the recording sessions, with a joint in his hand, he looked me straight in the eye and announced, "I'm fed up with all that love and peace shit and then having them massacre four at Kent State University. Look at the deaths of Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Otis Redding and Hendrix — it's all the Rock 'n' Roll/CIA/Johnson/Vietnam conspiracy. I want a no-bullshit, working class band — I've had enough of all this pseudo-peace crap."
I thought, "Ah. Here's a calm, reasonable fellow who has a definite opinion, smokes dope, is left-field and obviously likes to control situations. This could be fun." I liked John immediately and we got on very well.
The band set up in Studio 2 with instruments all over the place. I used a selection of microphones that I was familiar with from my work in Canada. These included AKG D12, AKG 224, Neumann U87 and Shure 57. John did not believe in screening people off, so they just set up wherever they felt comfortable. The band consisted of Fred Smith — drums, Jim Avery — bass, Terry Stamp — singer and "chopper" guitar, and Mick Lieber — lead guitar. In addition there were some heavyweight session musicians including Jim Price and Bobby Keys — brass, Tony Ashton — piano, and "Speedy" — percussion. Terry, the singer and band leader, was a 15-stone lorry driver. He played the guitar by smashing the strings with his fist. The music was raw, noisy and uncomfortable to listen to, but at the same time I found it strangely addictive. The band were a real bunch of characters, dedicated to having a good time. They also, whenever possible, liked to shock. The songs they recorded had such titles as "Preaching Violence", "Shepherds Bush Cowboy", "Toe-Rag", "Ascension Day" and "Teddy Teeth Goes Sailing". I thought John's general approach, and particularly his lyrics, were excellent. With hindsight, Third World War were probably the first "punk" band — unfortunately six years too soon — but with more melody, coherent lyrics and musicianship than would have been required in the punk era.
I got into the sessions easily — I loved the material and John's attitude. There was a large amount of drink and drugs around, and the sessions went on all night. We would start at 2 PM and often work through till 6 or 7 in the morning. I would take a cab home to Hammersmith and play mono copies on my Brennel tape before sleeping and returning to the studio for 2 PM. My tape assistant, Clive Franks, fell asleep at the wheel of his car while driving home one morning and crashed. Fortunately he was unhurt, and was back at work by 2 PM — what a trooper. In a matter of days we had cut all the backing tracks for the whole album. It had a great atmosphere. The whole approach was extremely live — talking and mistakes were left in and, with the raw sound and the content of the lyrics, the overall effect was complete anarchy. With references to queens, poofters, the Monarchy's arse, unions and violence, the songs were in complete contradiction to the ethos of the times. Twenty years later they would have been described as "politically incorrect" — in the extreme.
We had recorded most of the lead vocals live at the same time as the backing tracks. For this reason there was very little overdubbing, which mostly consisted of brass and string arrangements. By the middle of August the album was overdubbed, mixed and finished, all within two weeks. At the time we all thought it would be massively successful, but unfortunately it received little or no airplay and the press didn't like it. The album all but disappeared.
At the beginning of September '70, I found work was going very well. I recorded albums with the band Axiom, and Tim Rose, both produced by Shel Talmy, followed by a couple of tracks with Mott the Hoople for their album Wildlife. With the line up of lan Hunter — piano and vocals, Mick Ralphs — guitar and vocals, Overend Watts — bass, Verden Allen — organ, Buffin — drums, and guest singer Jess Roden, we set up in Studio 2. Because of a large drum kit, 4 x 12 speaker cabinets for the guitar amplifiers and additional screens, space was at a premium. I had now progressed to using two Neumann U87s on drum overheads, to give a better stereo picture, but I still did not mic the hi-hat separately. Being new to the studio rooms I was still finding out about the possibilities for different sounds. Most sessions were fast and efficient with engineers, assistants and maintenance staff all geared up to making things run smoothly. In those days at Island studios we tended to talk in terms of making something sound "brighter", "fatter", "fuller", "more ballsy" or "less honky", and we did not talk about frequencies. It was more common to change the position or sound in the studio room and adjust microphones accordingly, rather than attempt to boost frequencies in the control room.
During the recording of the song "Lay Down", Producer Guy Stevens was so stoned he rolled off the desk riser in his chair and crashed to the floor. He was right in the middle of explaining to the band what sounds would be best to use for the backing vocals on "Lay Down". "It'll be great" he was saying, "We'll make the voices warm and lush, y, y, you know — fat, but with strength. We can get Jess [Roden] on the top line". He hardly faltered, just carried on talking, on his side, on the floor. The band and I were all in fits of laughter. It really was a great atmosphere to record in.
The studios were now working 24 hours a day, with two 12-hour sessions in both rooms. The name was now changed from Island to Basing Street Studios. During October we took on more staff, including junior engineer Tony Platt, who came from Trident Studios in St Anne's Court, Soho, and assistant engineer Jerry Russel from America. Tony and I had a very similar approach to sessions and eventually worked on many of each other's projects, including Bob Marley and the Wailers .
