Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Paul Rodgers, Simon Kirke, and Studio Drama [Highlight From Episode 341]

Transcript

Paul Rodgers, Simon Kirke, and Studio Drama [Highlight From Episode 341] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Here's a highlight from a recent episode of Booked on Rock.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: He is the author of the book one, two, three four,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: The Life and Times of a Recording Studio Engineer. It
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: is Digby Smith. His career spans four decades, beginning at
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: nineteen years old when he joined Island Studios in London
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: as a staff engineer. You mentioned Free, such an underrated band.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Paul Rodgers later of Bad Company fame the late great
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Paul Kasoff on guitar, Simon Kirk of Bad Company as
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: well on drums, Andy Fraser on Base. You're a big
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: fan by the time you worked with them on Free
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: at Last, the album from seventy two. Talk about your
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: experience working with Free. Paul Kossoff had your back in
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: one incident where things got heated with you and Paul Rodgers.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah again, just quick briefly dipping back into the late
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: sixties there, I I'd caught a number of Island records
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: in my record collection at home, and amongst them with
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: the first couple of Free albums, so I was a
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: massive fan. And then yeah, zoom forward a couple of
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: years and I'm actually in the studio with these guys
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: and those it's those pinch yourself, moments that you remember,
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: and a great bunch of guys. We were all about
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: the same age, late teen's early twenties, had an affinity
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: to their music straight away. I assisted initially. My first
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: involvement with Free was on the Highway album as an
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: assistant engineer to the late great Andy Johns. When they
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: came back to do their next album, Free at Last,
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: they asked if I'd sit behind the desk and be
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: the main engineer, and you know, invariably late night sessions,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: working right through the nights of summer. A couple of
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: weeks into the album, everybody's getting a bit, you know,
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: it's the pressures on. We can sense from the label
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: that they want this record to so it can get
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: very emotional in the creative atmosphear of the recording studio
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: and I don't know what is it. Two three o'clock
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: in the morning. Paul Rodgers is by the microphone and
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: he's about to do a vocal on one of the tracks,
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: and I'm fiddling around on the desk getting the headphone
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: balance for him. That he's happy. Always had plenty of drums,
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: plenty of bass, and worth noting Cossy would never put
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: his lead guitar solo work on until the vocal was recorded.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: That was his golden rule, he said, I never I
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: always want to wait till the lead vocal has been sung.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Then I'll put my guitar parts on and work my
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: weave my way around it. Which was that's how Costy was.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Interesting.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So Paul's out there at the microphone. We're getting
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: ready to run the tape, checking the mic level, and
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: I'm filling around, maybe with a bit of reverb in
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: the headphones. Anyway, I obviously made the mistake of putting
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: too much reverb on Paul's voice, so he flung the
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: headphones off his head, threw them onto the floor, came
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: storming into the control room and eyeballed me and finger
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: pointed me, and he just lost it. He said, Digby,
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: don't and I won't repeat the language, but essentially what
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: the message was, Digbi, don't ever put that much riverb
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: on my voice in the headphones again. I can't sing
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: with that much reverb. And he was quite aggressive, would
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: be too strong a word, but he was vehement in
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: his protestations. Little Paul coss Off literally stood between me
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: and Paul Rogers and COSSI said to Paul, he said,
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: don't ever talk to Digby like that again. He said,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Digby is the most important man in the room. He's
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: capturing what we play and what we feel and how
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: we go about it, and he's encouraging us. So don't
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: ever do that again, Paul Rogers, I mean, I mean
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: short of us, but all well enough. It was like
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: point made, and I said, oh, sorry, Paul, I want
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: I want to do that with the river beginning. He said, oh,
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: that's okay. I didn't mean to share. So we had
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: group hugs and and everything was great, and Paul went
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: back out to the vocal microphone. I switched all the
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: rever Buffy's vocal just to be sure, and Paul then
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: delivered the definitive vocals.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: And all was, well, yeah, that just shows, you know,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: the pressure that everybody is under to come up with it,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: to come up with just a good recording, and the
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: artists want to make make sure everything sounds good. You
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: want to make sure everything sounds good, and those things
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: can happen. Credit to all three of you guys, or
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: actually Cass mostly right, I mean he's the one who
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: came in.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Absolutely what a what a what a gentleman he was.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: I had another time with Simon the drummer. He was
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: just to say, after that instance, it's amazing. Sometimes, you know,
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: like with any relationships, sometimes you know, words are said,
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: it breaks, it breaks the tension, and it sometimes it's
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: like a release fell and everyone's the better for it.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: There was another time on a track that had sort
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: of two sections to it, and when it was at
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: the end of the first section, it was a sort
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: of a two bar paurs or one bar pause, and
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: then Simon's drum fill and then we go into the
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: outro section of the song. I forget the title. The
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: name escapes me, but we got the track all recorded
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: and all the guitar overdubs and the vocals, and it's
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: all good to mix. The idea was we were just
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: going to overdub some tambourine on the track. Rather than
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: one person played the tambourine, the idea was that three
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: people were going to play a tambourine each out in
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: the live room. So I had to set up like
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: three or even a couple of ambient mics, three or
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: four microphones and record this orchestral tambourine performance in stereo.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: So such was the desk and the routing of the
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: signal path that there was only groups one and two
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: that you could patch into the stereo. But I didn't
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: want to record on tracks one and two because that
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: was Simon's drums. So what I was supposed to do
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: is come out of the patch baying out of groups
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: one and two and plug into I don't know tracks
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: thirteen and fourteen or something. Of course I did all that,
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: but mistakenly, again it's probably four or five o'clock in
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: the morning, we're all a bit the worse for wear.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: I put tracks one and two into record, and of
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: course when it came to that part of the song
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: and there were two, three and four, and I hit
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: record to record, the tambourines and Simon's drums disappeared. Because
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: I did I did, I erase the base trum and
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: the snare. Oh my god, I hit I hit stop
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: on the table shoes as quickly as I could, and
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: saw my life flash before me. I'm dead. I am dead.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: This is it's been nice working here lasted. It's going
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: to be back back to the bedroom and the cello
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: tape and the scissors, and and I think it was
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: something said, why do you stop tape? Digby? I said,
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: I just didn't know. I thought, well, you just got
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: to Sometimes in the world of engineer, and if if
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: you make a mistake, if it's pilot error, you can
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: sometimes bluff your way around it and say, oh the
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: channel switch cut out, or it's it didn't go and record,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: you know, the button's faulty, or but this there was
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: no way out, Eric, there was no ad to fess.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: So I called them up. I said, can you come
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: back into the control room, guys, And Simon said, what's happened?
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: And I just said to Simon, I thought, I just
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: got to tell him. I said, I've erased your drums.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Oh boy. And I thought, he's a tough looking guy, Simon,
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: you know, and he's fit, you know, behind the kit there. Yeah,
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: I just thought, this is it, man, this is it.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Simon said, the drum mics still set up, Dickwie and
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: I looked out into the into the live room and
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: I said, yeah, they are. And I looked on the desk. Yeah,
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: all the drum faders were still where they were. Simon said,
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: I'll rerecord him. He said, I wasn't very happy with
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: the drumming. On the outro of the track. Anyway, he says,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: I don't worry about it, Dickwie, It's fine, he said,
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: we all make mistakes, man, And he just walked out,
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: put his headphones on. I wind back it recording. Simon
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: just replaced the drums effortlessly, faultlessly.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: One take a huge sigh of relief, A huge sigh
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: of relief.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: And uh and and I kind of, if I wasn't already,
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: I felt a bonding with with Simon from then, and
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: I've kept in touch with him, you know, casually, over
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: the years. And he's still working and playing and teaching
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: and stuff. And he's another what a what a gentleman,