Who’s In Charge of The Chaos, Indulgence & Ego
- Place – De Lne Lea Studios Wembley England
- Time – Mid 70’s
- Artist – Jimmy Webb
Jimmy Webb is an American songwriter, composer, and singer.
He has written numerous platinum selling classic songs.
Artists such as, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley Barbra Streisand, have performed his songs, some of his hits include “Galveston” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “MacArthur Park.”
Webb is the only artist ever to have received Grammy Awards for music, lyrics and orchestration.
Let the session begin
Jimmy Webb had booked studio one for a day to record a large orchestra consisting of around 150 people.
Normally this would be no big deal, but a new Neve desk was still being fitted into the control room some 6 hours before the session was about to start.
Webb had requested that no sound separation screens were to be placed in-between the instruments.
He wished to recreate a Phil Spector type sound.
The instrumentation that was booked for the morning session was for 2 drummers, 4 bass players, 6 guitarists, 3 piano players and 5 percussionists.
They were too rehearse before the full orchestra plus a choir of 30 arrived in the afternoon.
The rhythm section
The whole rhythm section had been flown in from America and were on the USA musician rates with the exception of Nigel Olson (Elton John’s drummer).
Last minute stand in
The engineer that was booked to do the session suddenly went ill the night before, so Dave Hunt had been asked to replace him.
I had been engineering for sometime but Dave was slightly apprehensive about this session and knowing he could rely on me, as we had worked on many sessions together, asked if I would assist him, which of course I did.
Webb had asked for Robin Cable, an engineer he had been working with at another studio to oversee the recording.
Dave asked Robin if he would like to record the session, but Cable not knowing the desk or the studio took one look and declined.
Cable was checking that we had mic’d up the instruments OK and went into a panic when standing in front of the brass section.
Looking at the trumpets and trombones etc, he said, why haven’t you mic’d the French horns?”
“Robin If you look they are mic’d,” I replied.
I then realised he didn’t understand that you mic French horns from the back.
The rehearsals started at 10.am.
Let the party begin
Webb had invited what seemed like everyone he ever knew.
The control room was filling up by the hour.
His sister was following him around filming his every move with a huge video camera on her shoulders.
The chaos continued
At 1.30 the orchestra and choir had arrived.
With no separation between the instruments and 2 drummers thrashing out the rhythm, with all respect to Dave, it sounded awful. Dave kept trying to speak with Webb but the party atmosphere had taken over.
when we did occasionally try to record something, Robin Cable would jump to the talk back mic and say take one or two etc.
I think this was to ensure that Webb would hear Robin’s voice and think that he was heavily involved up in the control room.
The control room had more people pro rata per square metre than the 150 people down in the studio.
The sixties revisited
There were people laughing and joking around, sitting crossed legged on the floor smoking joints and drinking champagne and enjoying all the food that had been laid on.
It was hard to believe we were supposed to be working on a serious session.
Each time Webb came up to the control room for a playback someone new had arrived.
There would be another break, whilst a meet and greet would take place.
Looking down at the studio while this was going on, the musicians had left their positions to go and talk to someone they knew across the other side of the room.
When Webb would go back down it would take about 10 minutes to get everyone back to their seats.
The arrival of sanity ?
Around 6pm when the wonderful Derek Taylor the head of WEA records arrived with Harry Nilsson we still had recorded nothing worth keeping.
Derek Taylor, who I had worked with a couple times before, was one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet.
Derek had made his name in the 60’s working as the Beatles press officer and went onto to be a major figure in the industry.
Unfortunately not even with the arrival of Derek would the session take a turn for the better.
The entourage of the spectacle outnumbered him, so once he had joined in, Dave and I decided to partake in the festivities.
As there was an open bar in the lounge, rather than take advantage of the free drinks, we asked the bar manager to write off our bar bill for the last month.
The fiasco continues
The fiasco was booked until 10pm and at 9.30 with still nothing worth keeping on tape, Derek and Webb started a friendly argument as to who would pay for yet another 3-hour session for all the musicians taking us until 1 am the next morning, I think Derek won.
When the session finished at 1am, we had 2 pieces of music on tape that Robin cable took away to mix at another studio.
Every musician had a blank cheque that had to be filled in at the reception as they left the building, which took another 2 hours.
The final decision
Some months later we heard that both recordings had been scrapped.
In the 70’s this sort of wastage and expenditure wasn’t that unusual.
I think a lot of engineers witnessed albums that cost fortunes and were never released for one reason or another.
In this instance I think this session was down to pure ego and indulgence for Mr. Webb.
Once again, There Ain’t No Rules In Rock n Roll.
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