Post by rockinronnie on Feb 28, 2014 21:14:56 GMT
John Eden was a producer for Status Quo. From here on in, the following is written by John Eden himself.
Good Morning from Nashville, Tennessee.
Let me first say that I became a fan of S.Q. at the time of P.O.M.M. and never imagined in my wildest dreams that I would work with them for so many albums. (3 with Pip and 2 on my own).
I'd like to start by giving a little background on how Pip and I started together before we worked on the R.A.O.T.W. (Rocking All Over The World) album. In the early 70's I was an engineer at The Marquee Studios, London and worked on a session that Pip was doing the arrangements and playing guitar on. We got on really well together and subsequently I began to work as engineer with Pip on most of his early Productions. One of the albums we did together was with Graham Bonnet. I had previously worked with Graham when he was signed to DJM Records and was very enthusiastic when this opportunity came up. G.B. at the time was managed by Quarry Management who also managed S.Q. so that's how it began.
In my opinion Pip is a great Producer, gifted arranger and guitar player. Add to this his down to earth personality and generosity I can honestly say it was brilliant to work alongside him in these early years. There are certainly things I'm sure we would both wish to change on R.A.O.T.W. but despite all it was a very successful album sales wise and brought in many new fans.
Our last project together that I started but did not continue was The Long Distance Voyager album with The Moody Blues.
Shortly after beginning this album my manager Simon White had been approached by S.Q.s management with an offer for me to Co Produce with the Band the next couple of S.Q. Albums. At first it was not an easy decision to leave the T. M.B. project until David Walker (Pip's manager at the time) arrived at the studio one day and gave me a right bollocking about business matters. After this incident there was no way I wanted to have any involvement with him and I left the project and accepted the offer to work with S.Q. on what became the J.S. and N.T.L. albums.
It was a certainly not the best way to end my working relationship with Pip as we had spent many hours together and became a great team but relations with D.W. had really soured.
From this point on I became a Producer in my own right. For those of you that are interested in other albums I've worked on I've been putting together a site at www.johneden.us .
" Don't Drive My Car" - Brilliant track I think everyone put in 110% on this one. It was a special moment when this made it to tape. All pretty live with very few o/dubs. Richard's vocal sat well on this and a great solo from Francis.
"Wild Ones" and "Name of the Game" - We probably spent more time on these two tracks than others on J.S. and so glad to read your comments.
Alan - I've had no contact with since N.T.L.
Richard - Shortly after N.T.L. we produced a single for Marietta but no contact since.
John - In 1984 I Produced the Partners in Crime album "Organised Crime". I was brought in by Muff Winwood Head of A&R at CBS. A year earlier I'd worked with Muff on The After The Fire single "Der Kommisar" which became a top 5 US Hit so I think the hope was the magic would work again ! This was the last time I saw John.
Francis - Seen him a couple of times since NTL, occasional chat on the phone and email.
I've lived in the States now collectively for 16 years so not quite the same as when I was in England for keeping in touch.
The Producer's role can be pretty wide ranging but will entail many of the following: song selection, supervising the recording sessions, guiding the artist through the process, budgeting, booking studio time, musicians and arrangers, mixing and mastering.
The Engineer's role is capturing the artists performance and taking direction from the Producer as to how he or she envisages the recorded sound should go onto tape (oops sorry showing my age now) - hard disk as accurately as possible. Making the right choice of microphones, positioning, and separation of instruments is key to all of this.
In both roles having great patience and a degree in Psychology can be most helpful!
My personal views on Just Supposin' and Never Too Late.
In essence I think J.S. came out a pretty good album with all the right elements to satisfy all. With N.T.L. we did not come out of Windmill Lane Studios with enough material. We did record additional songs but the board used did not have enough headroom and I think sonically a couple of tracks suffered.
Rockin all over the world
There's many areas that contributed to how R.A.O.T.W. turned out and certainly looking back I have to own up and accept some blame for the way it sounded. I think that as far as listening to the vinyl album your description is pretty accurate. It sounds thin and lacking in a low end and I sincerely apologize to all that had trouble with the sound of the vinyl album. However I think the singles sounded great especially when heard on Radio 1 AM at the time. From the sales point of view I'm glad it did well (I personally was on a flat fee!) but it launched the band into a new area of fans but I realize now alienated many dedicated fans from the earlier albums. To be quite honest I was oblivious to the impact it would have at the time. I was just lucky to be in chair next to Pip and working with a brilliant band.
Anyway I'd like to give background on how the album started, my memories and detail points along the way which when you consider the whole context may provide a better understanding.
In 1977 I was a 21 year old Pup and had been working mainly as Pip's engineer for a couple of years. Our 1st meeting with Status Quo was at Alan Lancaster's house in Coulsdon, Surrey. It was a good meeting, demos of the songs were played and I spent quite a bit of the meeting talking with John about drum sounds and how he wanted to add additional toms to his kit. I think at this point there were definitive writing camps within the band and newer technology had enabled the writer demos to start to get quite well produced - something IMO that became a bit of a problem as time progressed. The meeting ended great and I remember being very impressed on leaving seeing Rick drive away in a gorgeous Rolls Royce Silver Shadow. I still have this image of him in faded jeans getting into this car and thinking bloody hell I'd love to have a car like that. I was young and at a very impressionable time of my life and I was very chuffed to be about to start to work on a S.Q. album.
Well the studio that had first been booked for us to record in was in Dublin, Ireland.
This had come about because Rory Gallagher had just done an album there and he was at the time with the same management as S.Q. In 1972 I'd worked on an album as tape op with Rory Gallagher (Blueprint) at The Marquee Studios and because of this experience I really didn't question the studio. The band's gear went out by road and ferry to Ireland, and we flew out and checked into Jury's Hotel, an interesting place full of American Tourists.
The 1st morning upon arriving at the studio it was a shock. The studio had a very low ceiling height and was pretty small. We started to set up sound here but it just wasn't working, it was not a great monitoring environment or recording area for Quo. After the 2nd day of frustration we decided to call it a day and after looking around for other studios in town drew a blank.
The gear went back by road to England and we flew back to London to look for another studio somewhere outside the UK as the band had been advised by accountants for tax reasons to record outside of England. There were certainly many great London Studios we could have used but it just wasn't an option.
Prior to Quo, Pip and I had previously been working at The Manor in Oxfordshire which was a Tom Hidley Westlake Audio Studio, in fact the 2nd Westlake Audio Room in the U.K. after Threshold Studios in West Hampstead.
The great thing about these control rooms at the time was symmetry of monitoring and room design. There was a consistency of design between each room like nothing we had seen before. We both felt that it would be best to find another Hidley room in Europe because of the consistency. We would at least then a have a known standard that we had worked to before.
I had discussions with Tom Hidley about other studios he had designed in Europe that would be a short flight from London. He came up with a brand new studio in the South of France that had just been completed and it sounded perfect. Discussion took place with the studio and we looked pretty set to go there until the question of connecting the main power supply lines to the studio posed a problem. Apparently the French Power company was going on holiday for the month of August and they would not make the new connection until they returned in September!!
Well we were already to go and we needed to find another studio quickly. After a further discussion with either Hidley or Dave Hawkins (his European agent) Studio Bohus in Kungalv, Gothenburg, Sweden was put forward and became the studio that the album would be recorded in. This studio at the time was owned by a band call Streaplers a very popular cover band in Sweden. Just wonderful people there and everyone made us at feel at home.
This studio worked out great although it was a bit isolated. It was quite a distance from the hotel and the only other problem was that Sweden is one of the most expensive places I've been to and eating out every night was very expensive.
Thankfully Dale, Alan's wife came to the rescue and together with Lyne cooked some great meals for us at the studio which saved us from going out. Bohus was technically top notch, a Harrison board, good compliment of microphones and Ampex Machines. We had a great iso room to the left of the control room for drums and a main studio area for the rest of the Band. The only thing I would have changed was a weird red carpet in the main recording room. It would have been much better with a hardwood floor but apart from that it had a great sauna for late night relaxation! (seem to remember a beautiful Swedish blonde studio manager – any Sauna pictures Bob Y.?)
As Pip has said in interviews he was brought in to clean up the sound. At this point in time with studio design and recording there was a move towards isolation of individual instruments during recording. Recording areas where a lot deader in sound and had heavily trapped sections. This made it possible to drop in a guitar track without the sound changing because the guitar track did not have spill of the drums, bass or 2nd guitar on it. It was really a complete reverse in a way from how the earlier albums at IBC had been recorded where I had understood they all set up in the same room, the marshall stacks, bass, drums and sound went everywhere. (With hindsight arguably a better way for Quo and we did move back towards this after R.A.O.T.W.)
Well first day we spent setting up, tuning and micing John's kit and started to run through the first song to be recorded. It started out great then all of sudden a huge clatter came over the monitors and John came storming through the control room and he walked out. Something had upset him, either the arrangement, his headphone mix, him being separated from the others it was not easy to tell at first. This was my first introduction to how John would communicate when he became frustrated by something. Well it turned out he was not happy with the new tom toms we'd added so we changed the kit arrangement and on we went. I want to say that John and I spent many hours together during this album and those that followed and I always felt we got on well. Long after he left Quo we made the "Partners In Crime" album together and whilst totally unrelated in any Quo sense the album went really well with none of the walk out situations we ever experienced when he was in S.Q. He was a great drummer for Quo when he was on form and into the song. I think though it was the inconsistency over time that frustrated Francis. On 1-9-8-2 from what I've read it was the same situation John got frustrated about something and walked out. I've sometimes wondered if I'd been there if it would have been the same outcome. In the past I was able to smooth things out and spend time with John and on we'd go but Alan I guess was really the driving force in wanting them to produce themselves at the point of 1982.
Oops I'm jumping on a few years, back to R.A.O.T.W. As has been well written doing J.F.s R.A.O.T.W. was Rick's idea and came late in the recording. It was a brilliant idea of his to do this song and suddenly the title and marketing campaign was formed.
After recording all the bands parts and we then headed back to London to continue with overdubs with other musicians in preparation for mixing.
When we got back to the UK we started to work even longer hours especially during mixing. R.A.O.T.W. was mixed at Threshold Studios and we finished this at around 8am in the morning. The board was an API with 3M M79 machines.
Great tape machines for dropping in because of a very narrow head gap between the erase and record heads but an awful transport. Tensioning went weird whilst we were mixing and almost chewed up the 24 track.
We then moved onto the Marquee Studios and continued mixing there and for a while, so there was a change again.
Around this time I'd also gone on a diet with a Harley Street Doctor to lose weight!
Yeah right... Well I wasn't the only one at the time. I think the effects of the tablets made more mids and hi's go on the mixes. Next we really placed emphasis on mixing mono for Radio One and used a small Auratone speaker for this which was like a good radio speaker. Now add to this at mastering we ended up with around 24 minutes of time per side it was no wonder low end was lost. Okay well I'd better explain that a bit more. With Vinyl there is always a restriction on the length of songs on the side. In essence more bass/level on a mix, less time you have on the disc. So in order to get 24 minutes on a side, bass and or level has to be rolled off. An optimum running time max would be 19 minutes per side. Hence why I always felt the vinyl singles sounded better than the vinyl album.
Now at mastering a production master was made that reflected all the e.q. and level changes that had been made and this tape was then copied and used by Phonogram's mastering rooms around the world to cut further masters. I don't know Tim Turan but understand he did a great job of remastering for CD but I do wonder if he got back to all the source tapes and not just production masters? I think at the time this was done it would have been a really great opportunity to remix R.A.O.T.W. for CD. and call it "The Raw Mix Version". Pip and I could certainly have mixed it in a completely different way with emphasis on the basic tracks we came out of Sweden with.
In my opinion there should have been only 10 songs on this album, but we have a publishing issue on the writers (within the band) getting there equal share - something Francis has written about. So with the outside songs it was 12 tracks - just too much for vinyl. That’s about it... - Now don't ask so many questions next time you get my tail wagging too much!
Hi Per: This would be an excellent question for J.C.'s "An Audience With" or "Hot Dog" John's drum roadie at the time. Although I know he had endorsements with both I can't remember anything regarding specific Paiste or Zildjan albums. It was whatever sounded best in the studio at the time. I always looked for the quietest hi hats he had just to improve separation (or bleed) onto the snare microphones. These may have been Zildjan as the Paiste 2002's were pretty loud.
Marietta Sessions
Well we're now 6 years on from R.A.O.T.W. and pretty much at the end of my period of involvement with S.Q.
The tracks for Marietta were recorded at Richard and Marietta's 24 track home studio in Hambledon, Godalming, Surrey. The studio was originally a Games Room on the left wing of there home. Gorgeous views overlooking the South Downs and an inspirational place to record. Kevin Godley (from 10cc) played drums and to the best of my aging memory it was Gary Twigg on Bass.
Before this period Marietta had done some work with Francis at his 24 track home studio in Purley after which Richard put his together.
Marietta was friendly with Bill Latham, Cliff Richard's manager which led to Cliff visiting one day for a superb lunch she cooked and afterward Cliff doing the background vocals on "You're Only Lonely" the J.D. Souther song we cut. We did many tracks of vocal harmony and layering, it was a special time to be there with Cliff and Richard - sorry couldn’t resist that!
This was though a very difficult period from both Marietta and Richard after the sad loss of Heidi and I hoped that our time together helped with the healing process. It was certainly good to see her creatively involved. Marietta always wanted for her recordings to stand on there own and not be seen as the wife of R.P. in S.Q. She did not want to be managed by the S.Q. office which ended up in me getting more involved than normal in the record company process. In my lack of understanding of politics at the time this did not go down to well with the S.Q. management. This was the period that Richard and I spent the most time together outside Quo. We had trips to the pub together, think nothing of driving down to Southampton to party with Dave Watson for the night. Plus thanks to all you fans out there who bought "Just Supposin'", I'd made just enough to buy a used Porsche which was accepted by Richard as a real car!
I do hope Marietta is doing well she is such a beautiful person. I've not seen her since this time. Well that's my thoughts that your questions brought up tonight, never spoken about this period till now.
Sorry to say but don't recall any video footage being done in the studio during this period. Just the still shots you already know about.
Whatever you want
I no longer have the track sheets that would trace title history however they do exist in some 2" multi-track boxes somewhere. There were no tracks left over from these sessions in Holland and as Bob Y. has said every song had many outtakes. I kept the machine running pretty much all the time and we ended up with in excess of 70 rolls of 2" tape from these sessions.
Sometimes a "master take" was constructed from several takes of the song, a verse from one take edited to the chorus of another etc. and spliced together. All the final 2" masters were extracted and compiled onto separate reels from the outtakes. Before we returned to England I made 2" safety copies of the original masters. These were packed in flight cases (thank you Hot Dog) and together with dozens of reels of outtakes taken by road with the rest of the bands gear back to England. The idea being that we would always have a backup in case anything happened to the masters! I carried all the masters with me when we flew back to England and got in a spot of trouble with customs at Heathrow who were trying to make a case that VAT should be paid on the entire cost of the recording sessions we did in Holland! The tapes were confiscated for a while but later released after the lawyers got involved. I've seen pictures in some of the books showing Phonogram Studios in London listing the titles from this album. None of the tracks were recorded there. These boxes are from production copy masters that Phonogram made up from the original quarter inch production masters to ship to various overseas countries who in turn used these tapes for the vinyl mastering process.
We did all the tracks at Studio 2 Wissleloord Hilversum, so this was a constant as far as the tracking studio was concerned. The studio had a drum booth and live iso room and we did use each area. We may have done this track in the drum booth which gave a much tighter sound. John had a selection of snares including I think a 6 1/2" Black Beauty and other smaller 5" snares. We would try different set ups depending on what Pip was hearing for the song. For recording I always preferred John use a remo ambassador coated head (white with a rough surface) on the snare. They produce very crisp dynamics; the only problem is that when J.C. was on form they didn't last long.
John is a heavy player and depending on the song we could go through many heads. Replacing and retuning heads, putting back any dampening we'd used took time and sometimes we lost the moment, this was frustrating for him as well as the rest of the band - but it was just part of the process at the time. The snare would not always keep tension and so the sound could change through an otherwise perfect take. If this became a problem at mixing I would sometimes take a parallel feed from the original snare send it to an external eq. roll off the low end and then put it through a noise gate and produce a click. This click would then be used to trigger a sample (which gave a consistent sound) in the new wonderful toy (in 79) we had named the AMS 1580. This unit was a digital delay pitch shifter and the very early form of a sampler. Blending the output of this snare sample with the original in varying degrees usually worked pretty well and could create a more tighter dryer sound on the snare. That's the best possible explanation from what you describe I have. In addition there may be other mixes out there that have been done I'm just referring to the original album mix.
W.Y.W. US Remix came about because of vocal levels. I think either Billy Gaff (Riva Records) or other execs. at the time had the notion that the original mix needed the lead vocals to be higher in the mix for US FM radio. It was one of those ideas at the time, can't say it worked but it does provide another collectable S.Q. piece of history.
Personally I would love to have gone to Criteria Studios in Miami for the experience of seeing this studio but on reflection not much point as the idea was to have a different set of ears do the job.
Francis, Richard and Management went and came back with few good stories of meeting Yanks around the pool but leave that to them.
Now onto the re mastering. I've not heard the Tim Turan re mastered series but would say this and it's also linked to remixing. At this point in time Radio One was still in mono and the C.D. was not commercially available. When mixing we placed a great emphasis on Mono compatibility for Radio 1 and the dynamic limitations of vinyl. So we always mixed with these considerations, given the opportunity again it would be a different approach for CD.
To best take advantage of the CD the only way is to go back to the original 2" multitracks and remix the albums to both a digital format and 1" analogue. The question is would this process justify the cost with the general decline of sales of CD, MP3s, illegal downloads etc. we have in the industry today?
From a Production/Engineering standpoint it would be interesting to remix these vinyl albums pre CD - just a cost v. sales equation and just what state the original 2" tapes are in after 30 years of storage!
Just Supposin' and Never Too Late
My personal views on Just Supposin' and Never Too Late.
In essence I think J.S. came out a pretty good album with all the right elements to satisfy all. With N.T.L. we did not come out of Windmill Lane Studios with enough material. We did record additional songs but the board used did not have enough headroom and I think sonically a couple of tracks suffered.
Francis' lead vocals were double tracked. Bernie certainly complimented well Francis's vocal character on the top parts. Used AKG414 mic with 1176 for limiting most of the time. Physical balance between them on mic. Very little Eq. I never thought we did a huge amount of vocal overdubs on this album just kept it to what was needed for the songs. Everything was recorded 24 track analogue, no locking multiple machines and certainly no pro tools at this time to go to "infinity and beyond".
I had a couple of room mics on John's drums so that helped with the live sound of the track plus any other amp spill they brought in. I used a multi delay effect on Alan's Vocal and fed Johns tom tom fills into the same delay. Can't remember if I used a digital delay or 1/4" tape machine on varispeed to get the timing of the delay.
Regarding Riverside:
It was not a programmed drum machine but I recall around mixing working with Francis (as at this stage John had left having finished all the basic drum tracks months earlier ) and we added additional snare and tom fills using pretty dry sampled sounds that gave the drums a machine like sound but manually played. Also we had no room ambience on these dubs which again changed the character from other tracks. There were feel issues on the basic track that these dubs were an attempt to smooth out. That's my recollection of it. With today's technology I could have done a better job and made it sound less machine like. I think remixes of this track exist which I was not involved with so hard for me to comment on other versions you may have heard.
The story behind the song A.B. Blues, the b-side to WHAT YOU'RE PROPOSIN':
I recall several reasons this came about:
Seemed like a good idea to have the band jam and see what came up. It did not use up an album track and offered the fans a track that wasn't on the vinyl album (Although I realize it became part of the CD reissue later on). It solved any issue about who had the "B" side writer/publisher split as everyone had equal credit.
The story behind Francis singing all of the tracks on "NEVER TOO LATE":
I was not involved directly with the label on this album. S.Q. hired me and management dealt with all label communication. I think any label input was relayed through management directly to band members. I did start to work with Alan on a lead vocal (just the two of us) one day but that's as far as it got. It just turned out that Francis sung lead on this album be it due to the Bands, mine, label or management input its hard for me to pin this down with a very definitive answer.
Favourite track on JS and NTL:
What You're Proposin', but Don't Drive My Car is pretty close. Never Too Late.
Co-producing albums:
At tracking stage it was a combined effort but as dubs progressed I worked with Francis the most. When Richard was on top form it was really great from him and Andy to. Alan always pulled towards not forgetting old Quo. If John was into the song then all the Quo magic was complete. However it didn't always happen that easy.
Also worth a mention that Francis and I worked with another Band "Flying Squad" signed to CBS after RAOTW. Francis wore the Producer badge and me the Engineer. We recorded this at Wissleloord Studios in Hilversum and this experience had an influence after discussions with Pip and the Band/Management in choice of studio for S.Q. albums that followed.
Francis and I also Produced Graham Bonnet's single "Night Games" which the basic track we laid at Red Bus Studios. So we did work pretty closely together in this period.
Views on "IN SEARCH OF THE FOURTH CHORD":
Yes I have the CD of ISOTFC (b/d gift from my Dad). It's the 1st album I've really listened to in great depth since my years with the Band.(Not for any specific reason other than working on other projects and not living in England). Can't seem to get "Figure of Eight" out of my brain. Good to see Bob writing with Francis again and Pip back in the chair.
And to finish...
I'm very, very proud to have been (in 77 thru 81) a small piece in the puzzle of the long continuing journey of Status Quo.
Francis, Richard, Alan, John and Andy - Thank You.
Good Morning from Nashville, Tennessee.
Let me first say that I became a fan of S.Q. at the time of P.O.M.M. and never imagined in my wildest dreams that I would work with them for so many albums. (3 with Pip and 2 on my own).
I'd like to start by giving a little background on how Pip and I started together before we worked on the R.A.O.T.W. (Rocking All Over The World) album. In the early 70's I was an engineer at The Marquee Studios, London and worked on a session that Pip was doing the arrangements and playing guitar on. We got on really well together and subsequently I began to work as engineer with Pip on most of his early Productions. One of the albums we did together was with Graham Bonnet. I had previously worked with Graham when he was signed to DJM Records and was very enthusiastic when this opportunity came up. G.B. at the time was managed by Quarry Management who also managed S.Q. so that's how it began.
In my opinion Pip is a great Producer, gifted arranger and guitar player. Add to this his down to earth personality and generosity I can honestly say it was brilliant to work alongside him in these early years. There are certainly things I'm sure we would both wish to change on R.A.O.T.W. but despite all it was a very successful album sales wise and brought in many new fans.
Our last project together that I started but did not continue was The Long Distance Voyager album with The Moody Blues.
Shortly after beginning this album my manager Simon White had been approached by S.Q.s management with an offer for me to Co Produce with the Band the next couple of S.Q. Albums. At first it was not an easy decision to leave the T. M.B. project until David Walker (Pip's manager at the time) arrived at the studio one day and gave me a right bollocking about business matters. After this incident there was no way I wanted to have any involvement with him and I left the project and accepted the offer to work with S.Q. on what became the J.S. and N.T.L. albums.
It was a certainly not the best way to end my working relationship with Pip as we had spent many hours together and became a great team but relations with D.W. had really soured.
From this point on I became a Producer in my own right. For those of you that are interested in other albums I've worked on I've been putting together a site at www.johneden.us .
" Don't Drive My Car" - Brilliant track I think everyone put in 110% on this one. It was a special moment when this made it to tape. All pretty live with very few o/dubs. Richard's vocal sat well on this and a great solo from Francis.
"Wild Ones" and "Name of the Game" - We probably spent more time on these two tracks than others on J.S. and so glad to read your comments.
Alan - I've had no contact with since N.T.L.
Richard - Shortly after N.T.L. we produced a single for Marietta but no contact since.
John - In 1984 I Produced the Partners in Crime album "Organised Crime". I was brought in by Muff Winwood Head of A&R at CBS. A year earlier I'd worked with Muff on The After The Fire single "Der Kommisar" which became a top 5 US Hit so I think the hope was the magic would work again ! This was the last time I saw John.
Francis - Seen him a couple of times since NTL, occasional chat on the phone and email.
I've lived in the States now collectively for 16 years so not quite the same as when I was in England for keeping in touch.
The Producer's role can be pretty wide ranging but will entail many of the following: song selection, supervising the recording sessions, guiding the artist through the process, budgeting, booking studio time, musicians and arrangers, mixing and mastering.
The Engineer's role is capturing the artists performance and taking direction from the Producer as to how he or she envisages the recorded sound should go onto tape (oops sorry showing my age now) - hard disk as accurately as possible. Making the right choice of microphones, positioning, and separation of instruments is key to all of this.
In both roles having great patience and a degree in Psychology can be most helpful!
My personal views on Just Supposin' and Never Too Late.
In essence I think J.S. came out a pretty good album with all the right elements to satisfy all. With N.T.L. we did not come out of Windmill Lane Studios with enough material. We did record additional songs but the board used did not have enough headroom and I think sonically a couple of tracks suffered.
Rockin all over the world
There's many areas that contributed to how R.A.O.T.W. turned out and certainly looking back I have to own up and accept some blame for the way it sounded. I think that as far as listening to the vinyl album your description is pretty accurate. It sounds thin and lacking in a low end and I sincerely apologize to all that had trouble with the sound of the vinyl album. However I think the singles sounded great especially when heard on Radio 1 AM at the time. From the sales point of view I'm glad it did well (I personally was on a flat fee!) but it launched the band into a new area of fans but I realize now alienated many dedicated fans from the earlier albums. To be quite honest I was oblivious to the impact it would have at the time. I was just lucky to be in chair next to Pip and working with a brilliant band.
Anyway I'd like to give background on how the album started, my memories and detail points along the way which when you consider the whole context may provide a better understanding.
In 1977 I was a 21 year old Pup and had been working mainly as Pip's engineer for a couple of years. Our 1st meeting with Status Quo was at Alan Lancaster's house in Coulsdon, Surrey. It was a good meeting, demos of the songs were played and I spent quite a bit of the meeting talking with John about drum sounds and how he wanted to add additional toms to his kit. I think at this point there were definitive writing camps within the band and newer technology had enabled the writer demos to start to get quite well produced - something IMO that became a bit of a problem as time progressed. The meeting ended great and I remember being very impressed on leaving seeing Rick drive away in a gorgeous Rolls Royce Silver Shadow. I still have this image of him in faded jeans getting into this car and thinking bloody hell I'd love to have a car like that. I was young and at a very impressionable time of my life and I was very chuffed to be about to start to work on a S.Q. album.
Well the studio that had first been booked for us to record in was in Dublin, Ireland.
This had come about because Rory Gallagher had just done an album there and he was at the time with the same management as S.Q. In 1972 I'd worked on an album as tape op with Rory Gallagher (Blueprint) at The Marquee Studios and because of this experience I really didn't question the studio. The band's gear went out by road and ferry to Ireland, and we flew out and checked into Jury's Hotel, an interesting place full of American Tourists.
The 1st morning upon arriving at the studio it was a shock. The studio had a very low ceiling height and was pretty small. We started to set up sound here but it just wasn't working, it was not a great monitoring environment or recording area for Quo. After the 2nd day of frustration we decided to call it a day and after looking around for other studios in town drew a blank.
The gear went back by road to England and we flew back to London to look for another studio somewhere outside the UK as the band had been advised by accountants for tax reasons to record outside of England. There were certainly many great London Studios we could have used but it just wasn't an option.
Prior to Quo, Pip and I had previously been working at The Manor in Oxfordshire which was a Tom Hidley Westlake Audio Studio, in fact the 2nd Westlake Audio Room in the U.K. after Threshold Studios in West Hampstead.
The great thing about these control rooms at the time was symmetry of monitoring and room design. There was a consistency of design between each room like nothing we had seen before. We both felt that it would be best to find another Hidley room in Europe because of the consistency. We would at least then a have a known standard that we had worked to before.
I had discussions with Tom Hidley about other studios he had designed in Europe that would be a short flight from London. He came up with a brand new studio in the South of France that had just been completed and it sounded perfect. Discussion took place with the studio and we looked pretty set to go there until the question of connecting the main power supply lines to the studio posed a problem. Apparently the French Power company was going on holiday for the month of August and they would not make the new connection until they returned in September!!
Well we were already to go and we needed to find another studio quickly. After a further discussion with either Hidley or Dave Hawkins (his European agent) Studio Bohus in Kungalv, Gothenburg, Sweden was put forward and became the studio that the album would be recorded in. This studio at the time was owned by a band call Streaplers a very popular cover band in Sweden. Just wonderful people there and everyone made us at feel at home.
This studio worked out great although it was a bit isolated. It was quite a distance from the hotel and the only other problem was that Sweden is one of the most expensive places I've been to and eating out every night was very expensive.
Thankfully Dale, Alan's wife came to the rescue and together with Lyne cooked some great meals for us at the studio which saved us from going out. Bohus was technically top notch, a Harrison board, good compliment of microphones and Ampex Machines. We had a great iso room to the left of the control room for drums and a main studio area for the rest of the Band. The only thing I would have changed was a weird red carpet in the main recording room. It would have been much better with a hardwood floor but apart from that it had a great sauna for late night relaxation! (seem to remember a beautiful Swedish blonde studio manager – any Sauna pictures Bob Y.?)
As Pip has said in interviews he was brought in to clean up the sound. At this point in time with studio design and recording there was a move towards isolation of individual instruments during recording. Recording areas where a lot deader in sound and had heavily trapped sections. This made it possible to drop in a guitar track without the sound changing because the guitar track did not have spill of the drums, bass or 2nd guitar on it. It was really a complete reverse in a way from how the earlier albums at IBC had been recorded where I had understood they all set up in the same room, the marshall stacks, bass, drums and sound went everywhere. (With hindsight arguably a better way for Quo and we did move back towards this after R.A.O.T.W.)
Well first day we spent setting up, tuning and micing John's kit and started to run through the first song to be recorded. It started out great then all of sudden a huge clatter came over the monitors and John came storming through the control room and he walked out. Something had upset him, either the arrangement, his headphone mix, him being separated from the others it was not easy to tell at first. This was my first introduction to how John would communicate when he became frustrated by something. Well it turned out he was not happy with the new tom toms we'd added so we changed the kit arrangement and on we went. I want to say that John and I spent many hours together during this album and those that followed and I always felt we got on well. Long after he left Quo we made the "Partners In Crime" album together and whilst totally unrelated in any Quo sense the album went really well with none of the walk out situations we ever experienced when he was in S.Q. He was a great drummer for Quo when he was on form and into the song. I think though it was the inconsistency over time that frustrated Francis. On 1-9-8-2 from what I've read it was the same situation John got frustrated about something and walked out. I've sometimes wondered if I'd been there if it would have been the same outcome. In the past I was able to smooth things out and spend time with John and on we'd go but Alan I guess was really the driving force in wanting them to produce themselves at the point of 1982.
Oops I'm jumping on a few years, back to R.A.O.T.W. As has been well written doing J.F.s R.A.O.T.W. was Rick's idea and came late in the recording. It was a brilliant idea of his to do this song and suddenly the title and marketing campaign was formed.
After recording all the bands parts and we then headed back to London to continue with overdubs with other musicians in preparation for mixing.
When we got back to the UK we started to work even longer hours especially during mixing. R.A.O.T.W. was mixed at Threshold Studios and we finished this at around 8am in the morning. The board was an API with 3M M79 machines.
Great tape machines for dropping in because of a very narrow head gap between the erase and record heads but an awful transport. Tensioning went weird whilst we were mixing and almost chewed up the 24 track.
We then moved onto the Marquee Studios and continued mixing there and for a while, so there was a change again.
Around this time I'd also gone on a diet with a Harley Street Doctor to lose weight!
Yeah right... Well I wasn't the only one at the time. I think the effects of the tablets made more mids and hi's go on the mixes. Next we really placed emphasis on mixing mono for Radio One and used a small Auratone speaker for this which was like a good radio speaker. Now add to this at mastering we ended up with around 24 minutes of time per side it was no wonder low end was lost. Okay well I'd better explain that a bit more. With Vinyl there is always a restriction on the length of songs on the side. In essence more bass/level on a mix, less time you have on the disc. So in order to get 24 minutes on a side, bass and or level has to be rolled off. An optimum running time max would be 19 minutes per side. Hence why I always felt the vinyl singles sounded better than the vinyl album.
Now at mastering a production master was made that reflected all the e.q. and level changes that had been made and this tape was then copied and used by Phonogram's mastering rooms around the world to cut further masters. I don't know Tim Turan but understand he did a great job of remastering for CD but I do wonder if he got back to all the source tapes and not just production masters? I think at the time this was done it would have been a really great opportunity to remix R.A.O.T.W. for CD. and call it "The Raw Mix Version". Pip and I could certainly have mixed it in a completely different way with emphasis on the basic tracks we came out of Sweden with.
In my opinion there should have been only 10 songs on this album, but we have a publishing issue on the writers (within the band) getting there equal share - something Francis has written about. So with the outside songs it was 12 tracks - just too much for vinyl. That’s about it... - Now don't ask so many questions next time you get my tail wagging too much!
Hi Per: This would be an excellent question for J.C.'s "An Audience With" or "Hot Dog" John's drum roadie at the time. Although I know he had endorsements with both I can't remember anything regarding specific Paiste or Zildjan albums. It was whatever sounded best in the studio at the time. I always looked for the quietest hi hats he had just to improve separation (or bleed) onto the snare microphones. These may have been Zildjan as the Paiste 2002's were pretty loud.
Marietta Sessions
Well we're now 6 years on from R.A.O.T.W. and pretty much at the end of my period of involvement with S.Q.
The tracks for Marietta were recorded at Richard and Marietta's 24 track home studio in Hambledon, Godalming, Surrey. The studio was originally a Games Room on the left wing of there home. Gorgeous views overlooking the South Downs and an inspirational place to record. Kevin Godley (from 10cc) played drums and to the best of my aging memory it was Gary Twigg on Bass.
Before this period Marietta had done some work with Francis at his 24 track home studio in Purley after which Richard put his together.
Marietta was friendly with Bill Latham, Cliff Richard's manager which led to Cliff visiting one day for a superb lunch she cooked and afterward Cliff doing the background vocals on "You're Only Lonely" the J.D. Souther song we cut. We did many tracks of vocal harmony and layering, it was a special time to be there with Cliff and Richard - sorry couldn’t resist that!
This was though a very difficult period from both Marietta and Richard after the sad loss of Heidi and I hoped that our time together helped with the healing process. It was certainly good to see her creatively involved. Marietta always wanted for her recordings to stand on there own and not be seen as the wife of R.P. in S.Q. She did not want to be managed by the S.Q. office which ended up in me getting more involved than normal in the record company process. In my lack of understanding of politics at the time this did not go down to well with the S.Q. management. This was the period that Richard and I spent the most time together outside Quo. We had trips to the pub together, think nothing of driving down to Southampton to party with Dave Watson for the night. Plus thanks to all you fans out there who bought "Just Supposin'", I'd made just enough to buy a used Porsche which was accepted by Richard as a real car!
I do hope Marietta is doing well she is such a beautiful person. I've not seen her since this time. Well that's my thoughts that your questions brought up tonight, never spoken about this period till now.
Sorry to say but don't recall any video footage being done in the studio during this period. Just the still shots you already know about.
Whatever you want
I no longer have the track sheets that would trace title history however they do exist in some 2" multi-track boxes somewhere. There were no tracks left over from these sessions in Holland and as Bob Y. has said every song had many outtakes. I kept the machine running pretty much all the time and we ended up with in excess of 70 rolls of 2" tape from these sessions.
Sometimes a "master take" was constructed from several takes of the song, a verse from one take edited to the chorus of another etc. and spliced together. All the final 2" masters were extracted and compiled onto separate reels from the outtakes. Before we returned to England I made 2" safety copies of the original masters. These were packed in flight cases (thank you Hot Dog) and together with dozens of reels of outtakes taken by road with the rest of the bands gear back to England. The idea being that we would always have a backup in case anything happened to the masters! I carried all the masters with me when we flew back to England and got in a spot of trouble with customs at Heathrow who were trying to make a case that VAT should be paid on the entire cost of the recording sessions we did in Holland! The tapes were confiscated for a while but later released after the lawyers got involved. I've seen pictures in some of the books showing Phonogram Studios in London listing the titles from this album. None of the tracks were recorded there. These boxes are from production copy masters that Phonogram made up from the original quarter inch production masters to ship to various overseas countries who in turn used these tapes for the vinyl mastering process.
We did all the tracks at Studio 2 Wissleloord Hilversum, so this was a constant as far as the tracking studio was concerned. The studio had a drum booth and live iso room and we did use each area. We may have done this track in the drum booth which gave a much tighter sound. John had a selection of snares including I think a 6 1/2" Black Beauty and other smaller 5" snares. We would try different set ups depending on what Pip was hearing for the song. For recording I always preferred John use a remo ambassador coated head (white with a rough surface) on the snare. They produce very crisp dynamics; the only problem is that when J.C. was on form they didn't last long.
John is a heavy player and depending on the song we could go through many heads. Replacing and retuning heads, putting back any dampening we'd used took time and sometimes we lost the moment, this was frustrating for him as well as the rest of the band - but it was just part of the process at the time. The snare would not always keep tension and so the sound could change through an otherwise perfect take. If this became a problem at mixing I would sometimes take a parallel feed from the original snare send it to an external eq. roll off the low end and then put it through a noise gate and produce a click. This click would then be used to trigger a sample (which gave a consistent sound) in the new wonderful toy (in 79) we had named the AMS 1580. This unit was a digital delay pitch shifter and the very early form of a sampler. Blending the output of this snare sample with the original in varying degrees usually worked pretty well and could create a more tighter dryer sound on the snare. That's the best possible explanation from what you describe I have. In addition there may be other mixes out there that have been done I'm just referring to the original album mix.
W.Y.W. US Remix came about because of vocal levels. I think either Billy Gaff (Riva Records) or other execs. at the time had the notion that the original mix needed the lead vocals to be higher in the mix for US FM radio. It was one of those ideas at the time, can't say it worked but it does provide another collectable S.Q. piece of history.
Personally I would love to have gone to Criteria Studios in Miami for the experience of seeing this studio but on reflection not much point as the idea was to have a different set of ears do the job.
Francis, Richard and Management went and came back with few good stories of meeting Yanks around the pool but leave that to them.
Now onto the re mastering. I've not heard the Tim Turan re mastered series but would say this and it's also linked to remixing. At this point in time Radio One was still in mono and the C.D. was not commercially available. When mixing we placed a great emphasis on Mono compatibility for Radio 1 and the dynamic limitations of vinyl. So we always mixed with these considerations, given the opportunity again it would be a different approach for CD.
To best take advantage of the CD the only way is to go back to the original 2" multitracks and remix the albums to both a digital format and 1" analogue. The question is would this process justify the cost with the general decline of sales of CD, MP3s, illegal downloads etc. we have in the industry today?
From a Production/Engineering standpoint it would be interesting to remix these vinyl albums pre CD - just a cost v. sales equation and just what state the original 2" tapes are in after 30 years of storage!
Just Supposin' and Never Too Late
My personal views on Just Supposin' and Never Too Late.
In essence I think J.S. came out a pretty good album with all the right elements to satisfy all. With N.T.L. we did not come out of Windmill Lane Studios with enough material. We did record additional songs but the board used did not have enough headroom and I think sonically a couple of tracks suffered.
Francis' lead vocals were double tracked. Bernie certainly complimented well Francis's vocal character on the top parts. Used AKG414 mic with 1176 for limiting most of the time. Physical balance between them on mic. Very little Eq. I never thought we did a huge amount of vocal overdubs on this album just kept it to what was needed for the songs. Everything was recorded 24 track analogue, no locking multiple machines and certainly no pro tools at this time to go to "infinity and beyond".
I had a couple of room mics on John's drums so that helped with the live sound of the track plus any other amp spill they brought in. I used a multi delay effect on Alan's Vocal and fed Johns tom tom fills into the same delay. Can't remember if I used a digital delay or 1/4" tape machine on varispeed to get the timing of the delay.
Regarding Riverside:
It was not a programmed drum machine but I recall around mixing working with Francis (as at this stage John had left having finished all the basic drum tracks months earlier ) and we added additional snare and tom fills using pretty dry sampled sounds that gave the drums a machine like sound but manually played. Also we had no room ambience on these dubs which again changed the character from other tracks. There were feel issues on the basic track that these dubs were an attempt to smooth out. That's my recollection of it. With today's technology I could have done a better job and made it sound less machine like. I think remixes of this track exist which I was not involved with so hard for me to comment on other versions you may have heard.
The story behind the song A.B. Blues, the b-side to WHAT YOU'RE PROPOSIN':
I recall several reasons this came about:
Seemed like a good idea to have the band jam and see what came up. It did not use up an album track and offered the fans a track that wasn't on the vinyl album (Although I realize it became part of the CD reissue later on). It solved any issue about who had the "B" side writer/publisher split as everyone had equal credit.
The story behind Francis singing all of the tracks on "NEVER TOO LATE":
I was not involved directly with the label on this album. S.Q. hired me and management dealt with all label communication. I think any label input was relayed through management directly to band members. I did start to work with Alan on a lead vocal (just the two of us) one day but that's as far as it got. It just turned out that Francis sung lead on this album be it due to the Bands, mine, label or management input its hard for me to pin this down with a very definitive answer.
Favourite track on JS and NTL:
What You're Proposin', but Don't Drive My Car is pretty close. Never Too Late.
Co-producing albums:
At tracking stage it was a combined effort but as dubs progressed I worked with Francis the most. When Richard was on top form it was really great from him and Andy to. Alan always pulled towards not forgetting old Quo. If John was into the song then all the Quo magic was complete. However it didn't always happen that easy.
Also worth a mention that Francis and I worked with another Band "Flying Squad" signed to CBS after RAOTW. Francis wore the Producer badge and me the Engineer. We recorded this at Wissleloord Studios in Hilversum and this experience had an influence after discussions with Pip and the Band/Management in choice of studio for S.Q. albums that followed.
Francis and I also Produced Graham Bonnet's single "Night Games" which the basic track we laid at Red Bus Studios. So we did work pretty closely together in this period.
Views on "IN SEARCH OF THE FOURTH CHORD":
Yes I have the CD of ISOTFC (b/d gift from my Dad). It's the 1st album I've really listened to in great depth since my years with the Band.(Not for any specific reason other than working on other projects and not living in England). Can't seem to get "Figure of Eight" out of my brain. Good to see Bob writing with Francis again and Pip back in the chair.
And to finish...
I'm very, very proud to have been (in 77 thru 81) a small piece in the puzzle of the long continuing journey of Status Quo.
Francis, Richard, Alan, John and Andy - Thank You.