- Place – Various
- Time – 1960- 2006
- Artist – Various
Barry Gibb and Blue Weaver – Saturday Night Fever
Blue Weaver was a founder member of Amen Corner, a Welsh rock band.
He has also played with many great artists including Family, T-Rex on Get It On and Telegram Sam, Lou Reed on Berlin, Alice Cooper on Billion Dollar Babies, Chicago, Stephen Stills, The Osmonds, Stevie Wonder, Art of Noise, Duran Duran, The Damned and Swing Out Sister.
He joined the Bee Gees, staying with them from 1975 to 1980.
On one occassion Blue Weaver and Barry Gibb were in the studio, staying late into the night. They were working one of the songs to be included on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack album.
During the early hours of the morning Blue was in some pain from an on-going health problem so Barry offered to take him to the local hospital.
On arriving in the out-patients department and before he could see a doctor, a standard questionnaire form had to be completed by a nurse.
Name, Date of Birth, Medical history – the usual stuff.
One of the questions she asked was
“Have you ever been a practicing homosexual?”
Before Blue could answer Barry chirped up saying.
“Practicing? He’s got it perfect.”
Roy Orbison
On a British tour Orbison’s pickup band, like most musicians, enjoyed a drink before the show.
A pick-up band was a group of musicians local to the area that you could “pick up” and use instead of bringing all your own musicians with you, It saved a great deal of money and red tape.
The piano player was the leader of the pack in this division.
The whole band, except the piano player, left the bar to take their positions on stage.
The curtain rising to a thunderous applause, the band noticed the piano player rushing from the wings to his instrument as Orbison appeared on stage.
Before the first chord was struck the piano player threw up all over the piano, Orbison looking back at this, turned to the audience and simply said, “Mercy!”
Little Richard
Whilst performing in Hamburg, Germany at the legendary Star Club in 1962, Little Richard received a proof of his new album cover.
Looking at the photograph of him on the front cover he proceeded to throw the sleeve across the room proclaiming,
“This is shit, I’s much prettier than that.”
Chris Thompson
If You Remember Me – The title theme song from the 1979 movie, The Champ.
Chris Joined Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in 1976 as lead vocalist and with them recorded the re-working of the Bruce Springsteen song, Blinded by the Light.
They were rewarded almost immediately with a hit record, reaching number One on Billboard’s Hot 100 and top twenty chart positions in several other countries.
In 1979 when Chris was on tour in Europe with The Earth Band, he was offered the opportunity to fly to New York and sing the lead vocal on If You Remember Me.
So, between gigs Chris flew down to London and boarded Concord bound for New York, from there it was straight into a taxi and into the studio to record his performance.
The producer was Richard Perry.
Being on such a tight schedule to record this vocal, Chris decided to remain in the studio vocal room throughout the session. He could be given directions by Perry from the control room.
As Chris was performing he couldn’t help but notice that Perry kept ducking under the recording desk.
After a while it became apparent that Perry was taking telephone calls and sinking beneath the desk to disguise it.
As a true professional Chris ignored this and continued to perform admirably.
Little did he know what was coming next and was totally dumfounded when, as he was close to the end of the song, he watched a pretty young girl appear in the control room, who then proceeded to throw a cape over Perry and start to cut his hair.
Chris finished the vocal and made the return journey to Europe and join the band for the next live gig.
Richard Perry had a cut and blow dry and looked lovely.
Dick Rowe Record Producer and MD of Decca Records
Although many did, Dick Rowe was the only record company A&R man that actually owned up to turning down The Beatles.
Although the stories below portray Dick Rowe as perhaps the non-archetypal record producer, he was actually much the same as many other producers of his day.
A few days after turning the Beatles down he signed Brian Poole and the Tremelos and a few months later signed The Rolling Stones so he didn’t do too bad as an A&R man.
I worked with Dick many times and found him to be a very likeable kind guy and a genuine human being.
Whilst recording the hit record Diamonds with bass player Jet Harris and drummer Tony Meehan, Dick was very unhappy with one particular drum part.
He told Tony Meehan down the talk back mic,
“When you get to the bridge, change the hi-hat rhythm and play eights.”
Dick started to describe the rhythm
“Tish tish tish tish – have you got the idea?”
Tony then started hitting the hi-hat just by itself with no other drums or instruments playing so indication of where the bar actually started.
All you could hear was the hi-hat going “tish tish tish tish”.
Dick said,
“That’s fine but you are doing it on the off-beat, you should be doing it on the on-beat.”
It was impossible to tell where off and on where!
Whilst remixing a track, Dick asked the engineer to turn up the orchestra’s strings.
The engineer told Dick that the strings are tacet at that point, tacet meaning silent or not playing.
Dick replied, “OK could you turn the tacet up then?”
By the mid 70s Dick had changed his image in an attempt to imitate the legendary American record producer Jerry Wexler.
He now sported a beard, wore the hat and smoked the mandatory pipe.
As a producer Dick was renowned throughout the industry for his classic faux pars during recording sessions.
On one such recording featured a large orchestra and, during the practice run through, one of Dick’s entourage who was sitting in the control room said to him,
“Dick, I think that sounds out of tune.”
Dick immediately hit the talk back mic to stop the run through, remarking to the conductor,
“Stop, stop, stop… it’s out of tune.”
The conductor simply asked,
“Where?”
Dick, pausing for a moment whilst puffing on his pipe then pointed into the recording room where the orchestra were playing and said,
“In there.”
Barry Mason Songwriter Extraordinaire
Barry wrote songs for artist as diverse as Tom Jones, The Drifters, Rod Stewart, Perry Como, Barbra Streisand and many more, they have all benefited from Barry’s talent.
The Last Waltz was an enormous hit for Englebert Humperdink.
Barry’s credits included three UK singles chart number ones, Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes), The Last Waltz and I Pretend.
Along with other Here It Comes Again with There Goes My First Love, A Man Without Love and Delilah he had quite a success rate.
Barry Mason was a wonderful lyric writer with countless gold and platinum awards for his songs.
He once told me a great story.
The Last Waltz, one of Barry’s songs, was in the charts and being played everywhere.
One evening he was in a night club and had to make a visit to the men’s room.
He found himself standing next to a guy who was whistling the tune to The Last Waltz.
Barry feeling rather proud just couldn’t resist the opportunity to say,
“I wrote the lyrics to that song.”
The guy turned to Barry and said,
“I’m not whistling the fucking lyrics.”
Dave Cousins – The Acoustic Strawbs
Album Title – Baroque and Roll
The Acoustic Strawbs have three very talented performers in Dave Cousins, Dave Lambert and Brian Willoughby
Their 2001 album Baroque and Roll was a wonderful album to work on.
The three guitars were always recorded live straight to tape and most of the time the lead vocal was also recorded live.
Whilst recording Dave Cousins could, at times, be very intense, this could lead to a less than cheerful atmosphere in the studio.
Whenever I felt this happening, I would try to lighten the mood with a quip to restore a calmer and happy ambience.
Dave was the only one who wasn’t sure if I was being sarcastic or humorous, with David I was always trying to be funny.
On one such occasion Dave removed a Banjo from its case, tuned it and to our delight played it absolutely beautifully.
When he had finished, he said ,
“Do you know that’s the first time I have played the banjo in thirty years?”
“Surely it must be longer than that!” I quipped.
When we were recording Not All the Flowers Grow, A song which reflects on the Aberfan tragedy, David grew more and more frustrated with each take until finally he said, “I just can’t sing this song now, I have to be in such a down and miserable mood to perform it.”
I said down the talkback mic into the headphones, “Dave I have an idea, come back into the control room and I will play you the previous track we recorded.”
Miller Anderson and Jon Lord
Miller Anderson has been on the cutting-edge of rock for more than three decades. The Scottish guitarist and vocalist has been involved with many influential musicians. He has been a member of such bands as the Keef Hartley Band, Savoy Brown, T. Rex, Mountain, The Spencer Davis Group and in groups led by Deep Purple’s Jon Lord as well as folk-rock balladeer Donovan.
Album Title – Bluesheart
Whilst I was recording the Bluesheart album, Miller’s old friend Jon Lord arrived at the studio to play Hammond organ on a couple of tracks. Jon was the original keyboard player and co-founder of the band Deep Purple.
To Jon’s dismay, we discovered the organ volume pedal was broken.
Not to be put off and ever practical, Jon asked for some masking tape and a couple of thin wooden sticks.
Armed with these materials this majestic figure, sartorially elegant and adorned with beautiful jewellery hanging around his neck headed for the organ.
He was soon laying on his back rolling around under the organ grunting, groaning and swearing.
This went on for some fifteen minutes after which he arose and in a triumphant voice said,
“OK, that’s fixed that!”
I shook his hand and replied,
“Thank you for coming, Miller told me how good you were with Hammonds and if you could leave your card at reception, I’ll call you should the organ ever need fixing again.”
Lucky for me Jon, who was a very large man, was renowned for his great sense of humour.
Studio Booking
A client once called the studio and wanted to book one hour of studio time to record forty-five minutes worth of music.
The studio bookings manager taking the call said, “You don’t want to listen to all of it played back then.”
It takes all kinds.
TV Jingles
Most music recording engineers will tell you that working on radio or TV Jingles is a real nightmare.
It’s not the artist, the voice-over’s, the musicians or writers but the bloody agency staff.
The agency would usually send along three or four staff members who all had their own views on how the end result should sound. A successful meeting of minds was never the order of the day.
I, like most engineers at CTS in Wembley, did my fair share of these micro movies or persuasive radio messages.
One night I was watching TV and noticed that every advert that came on in commercial break had been recorded by me and the turmoil of each recording session came flooding back.
From that moment on I did everything I could to be unavailable for jingle work.
Should I be unlucky enough to be booked on a jingle session, the only way I could get through it was to try and find some humour amongst the mayhem.
I was booked to record a Persil ad, the music went down reasonably free from interruption.
Then the voice-over guy arrived.
Whilst I was being directed by all of the agency staff at the same time and trying to extract the impossible from the poor obliging professional, I noticed that the word Persil was causing a pop on the microphone.
I had put a pop shield on the mic to eliminate this problem but it was still popping despite this.
I asked the reader to move his head slightly to the side so the spoken P would not blast straight at the mic.
This didn’t remedy the problem immediately and before we could find the right position complete pandemonium broke out amongst the producers.
They were carrying on like it was the end of the world, there was a cacophony of voices shouting,
“What are we going to do?”
“Oh my God, this is awful.”
“This is just not working, what can we do?”
Keeping my cool I tried to calm them down by saying,
“It’s not a problem, I can solve this easily.”
The control room went quiet instantly, everyone hanging on my next words, I said,
“Instead of saying Persil, why doesn’t he say Dreft or Daz?”
This is when I discovered that humour was not a strong component amongst the clients.
On the next run through the voice over artist put a little less emphasis on the P and everyone was ecstatic.
Bumming Around Europe
A guitarist I knew was traveling around Spain holidaying and was playing a few gigs to earn some spending money.
He would find a bar, set up and sing whatever the audience would request.
One night towards the end of the gig a beautiful young German girl came up to the stage and said,
“Take me home.”
He whispered to her off mic,
“I don’t finish for another 30 minutes.”
In astonishment she replied,
“No, Take me home country roads.”
Charlie Katz – Fixer and Booker for Sessions Players
On one session a sax player turned up late and apologised for his tardiness by saying he had been held up by a delayed Woolwich ferry.
Chalie Katz, very well-known fixer turned to him and said,
“How dare you come to my sessions by boat!”
On another of his sessions a cellist failed to arrive.
Charlie asked his secretary to phone the cellist and find out WTF was going on and why was she not at the session on time.
His secretary returned with the tragic news that she had failed to arrive because she had actually passed away the night before.
Charlie’s self-obsessed response was, ‘Why does everything always happen to me?”
Thank you to Alan Hawkshaw for the above story, taken from his book The Champ The Hawk Talks
Kenny in Park Studios, Sweden
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related