It's always so gutting to hear that yet another historic studio is biting the dust. What's happening to The Bunker?
Andrew: We think this whole complex of little businesses is going to be reduced to a block of flats, which seems to be the way of the whole world. Every space in London seems to be turning into two bed flats, and it's really depressing. We noticed they had some guys out measuring stuff with theodolites. We thought, "Oh, there's something going on." A couple of months later the people who own the property said we'd be getting thrown out in about a year's time...
Bobby: Yeah, it's fucking awful. I can't get my head 'round it to be honest. I was getting really sentimental last week because all the music's in the walls. There are so many great memories and I'm really sad about it. I keep telling myself that we're not going to have to move and the guy hasn't got planning permission yet. It's such an incredible place; loads of other musicians have recorded with us and played in here too. Bernard Sumner [New Order], Kevin Shields [My Bloody Vanentine], Will Sergeant [Echo & the Bunnymen], Mark Stewart [The Pop Group], Paul Weller, and Linda Thompson have all been through. We've had half The Clash here [Mick Jones and Paul Simonon]. Robert Plant's recorded here with us a couple of times.
A: And Joey Ramone came 'round...
B: Oh, that was the best. Joey Ramone came down one night when we were mixing a track called "When The Kingdom Comes." He really dug it and he complimented us on the track. I think he said something like, "It's really great to hear people playing real rock'n'roll!" Or in my mind, that's what he said! We were fucking humbled because he's a real fucking hero for us guys.
Andrew, I understand that you got interested in recording almost as soon as you first started playing music...
A: Yeah, when I was a kid I got an old Grundig tape recorder from the jumble sale for £1.50 with a "magic eye" and a microphone, and I started to record on that. Then I got a 2-track Tensai cassette recorder. You recorded onto the left-hand side of the cassette, then the right-hand side, and then you could mix — it also has a built-in drum machine. I've still got it here. I got that in about 1980. Then I graduated from there to reel-to-reels with sound on sound and, again, I've still got them. I'm a collector of junk. I never throw anything out!
Do you still use them?
A: [The Tensai two-track] is on Vanishing Point. It's on the track "Star," which has got that sort of Sly Stone thing going on. That's why it's good keeping everything, because you never know. We've used it on this new record for something too. It's great with the beats because it's all the old-fashioned cha chas and mambos. It's got its own sound, really.
So when did you start recording Primal Scream material yourselves?
A: Well, I used to do my own music, as well as later Primal Scream demos. I was experimenting. After the sound on sound reel-to-reel, I went to 4-track TEAC, or Tascam, and then we got an 8-track Tascam in the mid- '80s. That was still in my bedroom, in a block of flats on the Isle of Dogs. I was annoying the neighbours with drum kits and horn sections in the bedroom.
Was that where you made the demos for Screamadelica?
B: No. Then we got a studio space in Hackney on Tudor Road. It was in this tiny set of industrial units, and it sat beside this big council estate...
A: Nobody bothered you there! Nobody came to visit you because it was in such a bad place.
B: That was Hackney, before Hackney became trendy — if you can call it trendy — but it was a single room, which we soundproofed. It had a tiny vocal booth. But at first it was just for writing, wasn't it?
A: But then we got to the sampler stage, which was great. To me, everything changed musically when we got an Akai [S1000] sampler in about 1990, because I could do the drums and I could take tablas from an Indian record. Suddenly, instead of being in black and white, music was colour. That's why I love the digital medium, because it allowed us to express ourselves.
So it completely changed your approach to songwriting?
A: Yes! Suddenly we wouldn't just write with an acoustic guitar. We'd get a mad sample off a record and start looping it, singing over it, or making up stuff; that changed our songwriting.
B: When Andrew got his first computer, with Cubase and the Akai sampler, we started being able to start records. They weren't just demos anymore.
A: Most of those sounds on the [Screamadelica] demos ended up on the record. We could use our demos to build our record.
B: Up until acid house, we were always writing with melody in mind; but after acid house it was more rhythmic. I think that's what separated us from most rock 'n' roll bands. It's always a rhythmic thing with Primal Scream. When we started working with people like [Andrew] Weatherall, it opened our minds up to the possibilities of making rock 'n' roll music a bit freer, and also a bit more modern. Early on we got into the idea of hip-hop and rap, like what The Bomb Squad were doing. Andrew picked up on all that pretty quickly — he really listened hard to those records and started trying to apply some of that to our music.
You guys have worked with loads of great engineers, producers and remixers over the years.
A: We've been spoilt over the years. We've made records with George Clinton, Jimmy Miller — who did the Stones — and Tom Dowd, who did many Atlantic Records sessions. If you're sitting in a room with people who are that good and you fail to learn anything, then you're an idiot! If you're working with someone like Jimmy Miller, you should ask him, "How do you do that? How do you make that sound?" And, generally, people are quite happy to tell you.
What kind of things did you learn?
A: Well, Tom Dowd put the guitar amplifiers on their backs, off the floor. He was trained as a nuclear physicist; he said that cancelled out the waves hitting the ground and coming back up into the mic. I don't do that because I'm too lazy half the time, but technically that's how to get better sounds! I'll tell you what him and Jimmy Miller were both great at; getting us to leave space on our records. Guitar players will play from bar one to bar 150 but those guys were like, "Shut up while there's singing! Always answer the singing, whether it's with a guitar line or a horn line or whatever. But don't go on top!" Jimmy was also great with percussion and how to mix. If you're in the presence of greatness, you should learn something. Andrew Weatherall, who wasn't a trained engineer or anything, has this great gift for arranging music — dropping tracks out and bringing tracks in so there's space. It's hard to get 24-tracks all sounding good at the same time. Yeah, we've been spoilt by the people we've worked with.
Was 1997's Vanishing Point the first album you recorded here?
A: We actually moved to this complex of little businesses in '94 or '95, and we had a different room down at the bottom. We didn't have two separate rooms, like we do here with a control room. We had one room with a mixing desk in it; we recorded most of Vanishing Point down there. We moved in here in '98. The other place had been a dance studio when we moved in.
B: It had mirrors everywhere.
A: Mirrors all the way 'round. It was probably terrible for sound with all those mirrors, but we just got on with it.
What made you decide to cut that album yourselves, in your own space?
A: It was our friend Brendan Lynch, who's mixed a lot for us. He said, "You can do this yourself. Just get a mixing desk, a couple of mics and do it yourselves! You don't need to go to a studio." Obviously we were a bit nervous about it all, but he was right. So we got a really old, terrible 16 into 4 Studiomaster mixing desk, which cost about £300, but I liked the sound of it. We got a few old mics, which Brendan told us to get: an AKG D25 mic for the bass drum, which is still the bass drum mic to this day, a Neumann U-87 for the vocals, and a couple of [Shure SM]57s... and then off we went!
And was that on tape?
A: No, that's when we started recording digital. We had two Tascam DA-88s — I thought they sounded great. We basically made Vanishing Point on 16-track. We made two LPs on those until the computers got better. I'm not a Luddite when it comes to tape — I'm more about capturing a good performance. To me, getting a good performance is better than having it perfectly recorded. I find computers are really good for that. You can get up in the morning, get in here, open the door and press record without having to set up a tape machine and go through all that.
B: But in those days, when we did Vanishing Point, bands didn't really record themselves as such. Now, because technology's so advanced, everybody can record themselves. Back then bands were still paying a lot of money to go into the big studios with huge consoles. We had the luxury of Andrew engineering. It was great that he took it upon himself to do that, and learn about it from other people like Brendan. That place was garagey; but that album was recorded down there. We had people like Augustus Pablo, The Memphis Horns, and Michael Karoli and Jaki Liebezeit from Can coming down.
