Actually In The Studio

As a musician, I get to travel around which is sometimes a bit tiresome, but there are occasions when my Beatle soul is lifted when my quest to visit as many of the sights I've read about collides with my everyday job. In the last year I've been lucky enough to "be required" to be in New York and at a London studio by the name of Abbey Road! (You know, even as I write that down I get a feeling of excitement!)
At the tail end of 2007, I packed up my guitar and headed out to New York to play a couple of engagements. I'd been there once before, but never to play my own music - so, a scary prospect indeed. Walking around in Manhattan is a bit overwhelming, so I thought I would add a couple of ticks to my "places visited" list and head up to West 72nd Street to the Dakota, out of the centre of the city. It's quite a walk from Times Square but a pleasant one heading up towards Central Park, past Carnegie Hall and the Plazza Hotel. These are sights on their own merit and as I've said previously, it's sometimes like the colour drains from your view to reveal some black and white movie!..Looking at these places you realise that the Beatles were indeed a long way from home and the Cavern! You know they must have found all that stuff hard to take in at a personal level. As I said, overwhelming enough when you're just there to do a couple of small gigs and no one knows who you are! Eventually, I get to the Dakota and it's then you realise where you are....this is the place that the late great Johnny Rhythm lived and died..."died" being the word which echoed around my head....the Beatle fan in me began to shrink somewhat as the straight forward member of the human race took over and I began to think why am I here?... looking at this place, what am I? some sort of ghoul? There was an (unexpected) impact on me. I suppose as the time has passed since that news broke in 1980, time has taken over and there is now some kind of "historic" significance at that spot...I mean is it much different from visiting say, Dealy Plaza? Maybe it's because I remember the impact of the news like it was yesterday that I feel a bit "odd", because it's unlikely that I'd feel that way about Dealy Plaza...that in fact would perhaps be number one on my to do list if I was visiting Dallas. Soon though, the thoughts pass and I decide to go visit the Strawberry Field remembrance garden across the road. It's there that I find a bit of space to think and reflect, to gather my thoughts and send good vibes skyward to Johnny Ace. It was a great idea to have this peaceful spot just there.
It's time to head back to the madness of Manhattan.
On the way back I'm pleasantly surprised to unexpectedly come across the Ed Sullivan Theatre and all I can think of is the Maysles Brothers film which so brilliantly captures the moment of Beatle impact in the States. All of it inside that building. Because it was inside that building the Beatles came face to face with the inevitability of their destiny...and somehow, in doing so, my own and perhaps yours too. All of that said, I still had a gig to do...and just because of what I'd discovered during my visit, I thought I'd just throw in a couple of Beatle related tunes for the hell of it....so I played If I Needed Someone and threw in Besame Mucho at the end with a dedication to George and John...the audience (thankfully!) seemed to like it and all was well. The gig was a success and it was mission accomplished.

So it's back to the UK and time to work on the latest project.

I can barely believe my luck. I'm going to record in Abbey Road Studios and better still, it's going be in Studio Two!
As you walk up to the studios, it's like walking straight into an album cover - nothing has changed. You walk up the steps to enter the building and it's hard not to remember the interviews with the boys on "that very spot" during the Pepper period.
I'd been to the studios on a number of occasions before, but never to record there, to set up my Vox amp and Rickenbacker on the floor and watch it being set up for recording by the studio engineers. As I walked through big blue doors downstairs the Beatle fan in me just wanted to scream like a kid at a concert, but the "cool" musician in me soon took control and I walked in trying very hard not forget that "it's just another studio". Fundamentally, that is what it is. But the room has got an atmosphere all of it's own. First of all, it's quite a tall room with a pretty high ceiling, and although quite big, it's also quite intimate at the same time...As I set up my gear, every now and then I'd remember what I was doing, where I was and try to take it in. Looking over my shoulder at the drummer who'd set up in the corner at the back wall with the doors and the big clock where Ringo set up. Looking at the famous staircase and thinking about the incredible range of legendary individuals who walked up and down them. 'Tis mad! Then a sound which was hard to comprehend. The studio engineer's voice boomed out of the big studio monitors whilst my back was turned and I got this bizarre experience...the dreamer in me woke up realising that I wasn't listening to some tape here...I was "actually in the studio!" Being very familiar with a lot of the out takes from that studio, one gets used to hearing phrases like "take 7", "take 48" booming across the room and so on. It's got a sound all of its own. It's the sound of that room. So to hear that sound... er...LIVE! in that room at your session, well...the shivers went down my back! It was like transporting yourself into those out take tapes but without the hiss. As the band went through some sound checks and run throughs, I quickly settled down and the professional in me came out to play.
A consequence of being in that room with a band, is that I can really hear the ambiance of the room on all of the Beatle tracks I hear that were recorded there. I now really appreciate, and with startling clarity I might add, the importance of that room and how it helped to shape their sound... At the end of the session, it struck me that this studio is a working studio and not a museum. It's a place of great importance. It's a roomful of ghosts....but above all, it's a great studio where amazing music has been born.