13. Five Go Mad in Farnham - PART ONE

 

I had a pretty good friend who was an A&R man over in Tokyo. Let’s call him Mr. S. He immensely enjoyed coming over to England (and other places) to record his projects. On this particular occasion he decided to bring his latest signing, a hot young Japanese rock band over to England to record with me, but he needed to do it in a setting where he could keep track of the guys in the band. It was just too dodgy (not to mention expensive) to put a bunch of 20-somethings into a hotel in the middle of London for about a month. These boys had never been outside of Japan before and Mr. S wanted me to find a residential studio where everyone could live (and groove) together. We chose Jacobs Studios in Farnham, Surrey. An English country manor in a really lovely location with two great studios. It had one cozy SSL room, (Robin Trower was using it while we were there), and the larger room that we used, which featured a Neve VR desk and a large live studio. There was also a pool, extensive grounds and was fully staffed with catering and other folks to generally assist. We were planning to be in there for a month.

JACOBS, THE COURT STUDIO

For this gig, I am also the official Production Coordinator as well as engineer. That meant from the moment the band landed at the airport to the last mixdown, the logistics were all on me. So all things considered, I decided to bring in a “wing man” to help me stay on top of everything. I called my mate Mark Tucker, a good friend who was engineering and managing Presshouse Studios for Martin Barre from Jethro Tull, to see if he would be interested in getting involved. He jumped at it. Mark had serious guitar player chops, extensive knowledge of the genre (Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin et al), and above all his temperament and mine worked together perfectly.

So, here comes the first challenge. The band has an equipment manager who looks after all their gear when they’re touring. The decision was made that for one reason or another his services were not required on this album project in England, and boy, was he pissed! He convinced the band to send me a list of equipment requirements for the recording that would make most professional bands hugely envious. It really was a list of dream gear: the very best guitars, amps and drums that this guy figured we could never put together to rent, therefor sabotaging us before we even begin.

He figured wrong. Someone on my team (my wingman Mark) “knew a guy who knew a guy”, and he made available to us a vast collection of rare and vintage amps,  guitars and effects, all coming from the likes of Martin Barre from Tull, Pink Floyd, the Who and others who were not adverse to charging us for the rental of said awesome equipment.  

Picture it: When the limo from the airport dropped these kids off at this large manor house in the English countryside, their eyes are already popping out of their heads. Then we show them into the studio where they find a large room filled with pretty much every item on their wish list, much of it vintage and all of it awesome. Welcome to England, lads!

 Just a few of the amps we collected for the session. Strictly vintage and from the requested era. Much gratitude to famous guitar tech Alan Rogan, also to Martin Barre and Mark Tucker.

The rest of the day was spent acclimatizing to the new base of operations, and part of that involved decorating the control room. For inspiration, the band created a “shrine” to their heros (Floyd and Zep, plus James Brown and others) and put posters up on the walls. At one point the inscrutable Mr. S opened his briefcase and took out a large lump of Hashish (don’t ask me how he got that)!  He sat down at the producer’s desk, sat the band down along the length of the console and proceeded to teach everyone how to roll joints. (This, of course, was all part of learning the English Experience). If they tried that in Japan they would all be in prison!

The adventure in recording continued, young guns making their first album in such over-the-top conditions. We were cutting a guitar solo on one song, and after many tries it just wasn’t happening. Something must be done.  Mr S, the calm-but-always-in-charge Executive Producer makes an executive decision and a pronouncement came down the talkback. “Now we try with Hashish!” The guitarist comes in to refuel, and before long he nails the perfect solo.

We got into some strange experimental stuff. At one point Mark came up with an idea to create a weird phasing-like effect using a mic spinning in front of a speaker. He went out in the studio with an SM57 on a lead, and spun it around in front of a speaker playing a guitar solo we had recorded earlier, while I recorded what the mic was picking up. We then did it a second time, and combined the effect of the two signals with the original solo to get a very strange sound for sure. No crazy ideas were off-limits.

(SEE THE REST OF THE ADVENTURE IN PART TWO)