Diary of a touring musician: day 11 - part one
In September & October 2023, we took to the road in the UK to introduce our new album STARLITE.ONE. This is part 11 of the warts-and-all-account featuring our visit to Abbey Road Studios, London.
If you happened upon this episode for the first time, we suggest you check out the other articles in the series by heading over to:
Excited…
Do you remember that feeling you get when you wake up full of excitement and anticipation when something extra special is planned? Well, this was one of those days - our grand day out.
We sprung out of bed as if forcefully ejected by a fiendish, clunky mechanism from a Wallace and Gromit movie! Today was the day we were off to have a guided tour of Abbey Road Studios in London, the oldest purpose-built recording studio in the world.
There is more. We also had plans to have lunch with some very special friends. Jon Astley and his wife Judy, legendary recording engineer Phill Brown, and our great friend, musician and studio owner Mark Cleator accompanied by his partner Sharon Bridgens from the Isle of Man.
And there is still more. In the evening we were playing a concert at the Eel Pie Club in Twickenham where Jez and Pauline Levy, with whom we were staying, plus the St. Albans massif would be joining us for a great night out - detailed in the next episode - Day 11, part two.
It was time to get on with the day - but first, coffee!!
Abbey Road Studios
Yes! The Abbey Road Studios, recording home to The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Shirley Bassey, Yehudi Menuhin, Ella Fitzgerald, Fela Kuti, Kate Bush, Oasis, Radiohead and The Smile, plus many, many others.
Unless you book the studio to record there, tours are impossible, but we have been working for many years with the wonderful and talented Miles Showell who is based at Abbey Road and our go-to man for cutting our vinyl lacquers.
What is a vinyl lacquer?
It’s probably a good idea to expand on this as the process is important.
We make our records with the vinyl format in mind and once mixed are sent for mastering, a process where our final work is processed to make it sound great across all listening media, from high-resolution digital, Compact Disc and of course vinyl.
We have always worked with Jon Astley as our mastering engineer and has a crazy discography of rock ‘n roll excellence. You will hear more about him in the next edition!
Vinyl requires a different treatment than digital with less compression and equalisation. Many people skimp on this part of the process using the same files for all media.
As you would expect we don’t skimp and have masters specifically created for vinyl where there are no individual tracks, just side A and side B.
For our last record STARLITE.ONE - we decided to make these ‘sides’ available digitally to our Bandcamp subscribers, but of course, you can buy in whatever format you choose!
Once Jon has worked his magic, the high-resolution digital files are sent to a specialist - in our case Miles Showell - who cuts a lacquer which is then sent off to the vinyl manufacturing plant for pressing. It’s a specialist process and very tricky.
Now, on with the story!
Abbey Road Studios, London
We set off at some unearthly hour from St. Albans not knowing what traffic conditions would be like. The Waze App informed us it would take a good hour to get close to the building.
Driving into London in the early morning is a strange affair. It’s an endless conveyor belt cyclorama of shops with flats above. A heady mix of activity from the worker humans all off at speed to earn their crust and spend the day doing who knows what.
It’s almost too much to comprehend - take one house and imagine who lives there, what their day-to-day life is like, then multiply that by a zillion - each box, each person you see is a whole other world. A mind trip for sure!!
London bus
There is something quite comforting about seeing the wonderful red double-decker buses that are such an iconic symbol of London town. You almost don’t mind sitting in traffic behind one of these reassuring historical legacies and a relief to see that the ‘powers that be’ haven’t over-modernised the shape, melting it into a Terminator-style globular metallic travel pod.
RingGo - yes, that really is what it is called
It’s London and we were in the 6-meter-long Van of Rock so the first problem is finding somewhere to park.
It must have taken us 20 minutes to find a space, driving up and down roads and back again. Tick tock!! We had to hurry now as we didn’t want to be late.
We found one space, parked, hastily looked around for the pay and display meter and saw a sign instructing us to pay via the cashless App RingGo.
We were on our way to Abbey Road, the home of the Beatles and the App is called RingGo - crazy shit.
Simon downloaded the App, registered an account, added the location code and… BinGo NoGo!! It just wouldn’t work!
This was not funny and now we were going to be late. The excitement of anticipation was slowly sinking into a pit of doom!!
Fuck it, it’s Abbey Road, so we started the short walk towards the studio but kept trying, finally managing to get a result - the only problem was we were now a whole nine minutes late.
Miles to the rescue
We rushed through the gates, past two burly security men who checked our passes, leapt up the famous steps to Abbey Road and into reception in a whirlwind of hope and slight distress.
“Hi, it’s Simon Campbell - we’ve booked to meet Lucy Launder for a studio tour - apologies, we are a few minutes late - the parking was a nightmare.”
The burly security man at reception acknowledged our presence in a calm efficient manner, looked at his computer screen then promptly informed us without a hint of remorse. “I’m sorry your visit was cancelled earlier this morning.”
Simon “What do you mean cancelled? It can’t be!! We arranged this weeks ago.”
Burly security man: “I’m sorry but there’s nothing I can do!”
Simon: “But we’ve come all the way from Portugal!!”
Burly security man: “I’m sorry there’s nothing I can do. The whole of the building is booked out for a major corporate event.”
Simon: “But we have also come to see Miles Showell - our vinyl lacquer cutting engineer. We are one of his clients. Is he around?”
Burly security man: “Let me check - he’s not in yet but I believe he’s due in any moment - in fact, there he is…”
Up the steps and into reception bounced a gentle grey-haired figure of a man with a kind sparkle in his eyes.
Although they had never met, Simon introduced himself and Miles greeted us with a joyful smile.
“Miles, it’s Simon Campbell. Are we glad to see you... We were supposed to have a tour this morning but it’s been cancelled. Can we hang out with you for a bit?”
He said “Bear with me one minute” and chatted to the receptionist then to our great relief, we were off, following Miles along a network of corridors.
We passed what seemed like tens upon tens more burly security operatives complete with comms systems looking like agents from The Matrix.
The building was totally locked down but what for? Who was in the building? Was it a billionaire Prince from Saudi or Elon Musk? Either way, it didn’t feel very welcoming.
But, we didn’t complain and made our way through more fire doors, down more stairs until we arrived at a small, modern, trendy-looking canteen bustling with activity and chatter.
The food and drink offerings looked top notch and coffees were bought courtesy of Miles. We made our way up more stairs and along labyrinthine corridors to finally arrive in his small studio - a place of magic where the dark arts of music mastering and vinyl cutting were practised.
And there it was!! A room of mechanical majestic beauty. A treasure trove of knobs, dials and meters that had been used to create all of our vinyl albums along with hundreds of other musicians who care about quality.
“Using a mix of both vintage analogue and digital technologies, Miles is skilled in mastering all genres including dance, ethnic, folk, pure pop, guitar-based indie or crossover classical.
He's worked his magic on many of the world's best-known artists, including Underworld, The Beatles, Disclosure, Iggy Azalea, Queen, Gareth Malone, Dido, ZHU, Eric Clapton, Faithless, The Staves, CeeLo Green, The Who, Lana Del Rey, The Rolling Stones, Gallant and The Sugababes.” | Abbey Road
Miles played us a track from a project he was working on. It sounded fantastic but we can’t tell you who it was.
We can say is that he recently cut the latest Beatles box set - so he is a pretty big cheese.
Take a look around….
We stayed for a good hour and Simon chatted to Miles in ‘gear-talk-eese’ whilst Suzy and Hugo sat on the sofa taking everything in.
Sadly due to the lockdown, we didn’t see any of the iconic studios we had hoped to visit, but were inside Abbey Road, the fountainhead of popular music recording. What do you do with that? Savour every moment and hope it doesn’t end too quickly.
On our way out, like chevrons on a motorway bend, we passed frame upon frame of iconic Beatles album covers adorning the walls. Everywhere you went there was a moment of history telling a story - it was almost too much to take in.
As we left reception Starlite took a photograph of David Bowie and Oasis on the wall, to be promptly informed by security that photos were not permitted. Holy shit, it was all a bit full-on! What a whirlwind mix of stuff and protocol to process!
Well, the photo was already taken so here it is - top left - sorry - not sorry.
Is it cool?
Naturally, we took photos on the steps and walked past even more security, then out of the gates where throngs of tourists were checking out if we were somebody they should recognise.
Later, over coffee around the corner, we chatted about the experience.
Abbey Road is a multi-million-pound business, owned by the Universal Music Group and it felt just like that, a business.
We understand there was a special corporate event on the day we arrived, but that’s the point. They probably make more money from events like that than recording music.
We have heard horror stories from friends who have worked there, where Producers are not even allowed to touch the recording console, as everything is so tightly controlled.
Recently, we saw The Smile - one of our favourite bands of the moment - were recording in studio two. Also, Christian Madden, a good friend and keyboard player with whom Simon has worked for 25 years, recently recorded there with the Liam Gallagher Band. He also tours with Liam and the Liam Gallagher and John Squire collaboration.
The boy from Burnley done good…
Vibe
Is the history and vibe worth it? They clearly think so, but we are not so sure.
Of course, if someone offered to pay for us to go in there for a couple of weeks we certainly wouldn’t say no, but there would be ugly scenes if Simon wasn’t allowed to get onto the console, fiddle with the compressors or move microphones. Perhaps it’s all about how famous you are?
Making music is about vibe and back in the days of Pink Floyd and the Beatles things may have felt a little different, or not.
All the books we have read about the ‘60s era indicate a strict regime, where only white coats (sound engineers) could reposition microphones and mess with gear and brown coats (maintenance engineers) move reposition and repair equipment - but this is 2023?
We may be wrong, legendary studio’s one and two may elevate the performance and give an extra something, but from our perspective, if you are self-funded your eye is always on the clock and the freedom to be creative is vital. We are the client right?
Simon has worked in many of the top UK studios: Strawberry and Peter Gabriel’s Real World being the coolest and when in Nashville we both visited the top of the tree: Ocean Way, Blackbird and Quad Studios where we were welcomed as artists without a feeling of not being worthy.
We are lucky in that we live in a cool recording studio that technologically isn’t a million miles from any we have mentioned. Yes, it’s important to have cool gear and great engineers, but the magic happens when you feel good, relaxed, and enjoy a great vibe - something we do have at Supertone.
If we didn’t have the studio, or wanted a change of atmosphere and had the budget, a place like La Fabrique based in Saint-Rémy de Provence, France would do us just fine. It’s a residential recording facility housed in an old country chateau, which naturally means long lunch breaks, fabulous French red wine and delicious food.
SWAG
Overall, we had a lovely time but it felt like we had experienced just the tip of the iceberg, so to soothe our musical souls, we did a bit of retail therapy in the Abbey Road retail shop next door, coming away with a few gifts and goodies in the form of mugs, hoodies and record deck mats for our friends and family.
It was kind of tacky, but in a cool un-tacky way if you get the drift.
The zebra crossing - do we or don’t we?
We couldn’t resist…
That’s it for this episode - next up details the second part of the day where we have lunch with legends, a gig at the legendary Eel Pie Club, a long drive and very little sleep.
What a fun day out. So glad you did at least get to visit. Great photos ( oops sorry security 🤪). And of course the zebra crossing.