Once it's done, it's done and this can get back to being a dusty and infrequent blog about tits trying to peck my ears out while I'm DJ'ing on Friday nights in Telfords.
Having said that, Friday night went very well.
A man -- perhaps a little older than myself -- came up to the DJ booth all hot and sweaty from dancing.
"This is the best disco I have ever been to!"
He then implored me to play some My Bloody Valentine or Big Star, but there wasn't time. Next time, though.
Maybe he will explode.
I saved up and bought myself a Rickenbacker just before Christmas 1993. I spent the whole festive period holed-up in my room at my mum and dad's in Nannerch, delighting in the tone of my new love. I would just play it acoustically and it was so easy. Lovely neck. Lovely action. I wish to heck that I still had it. Anyway, I wrote a lot of songs that fortnight. I can even remember the black notebook I wrote them down in. It was a happy period. I may even have slept with that guitar, trying to make Rickenbacker babies.
In January 1994, we recorded a session for my radio show at the Tannery Studios in Oswestry. Nepotism, or what? The other bands who recorded sessions were: Catatonia [with Clancy, their keyboard player still in tow], Girohead [or whatever the hell they were calling themselves then], Billy Shot [or, Billy Shit as we used to delight in calling them. I think we were jealous!] and Dr Phibes. There might have been others, I can't remember. Fishbreath? Well, some RHCP rip off merchants.
We'd not been into a 'proper' studio as 'The Immediate' before. Well, we had been fucked around chronically at The Pharmacy in Blaenau Ffestiniog for what felt like the entirety of our adult lives [by Gordon, the seven-toed wizard who 'ran' the place]. And we had been to some studio in Liverpool where our master DATs had been seized [for recordings we hadn't even made in their studio] for having the audacity to cancel a studio booking a fortnight before we were due to go in. Actually, what kind of utter bastards would do that to a band? I wish I could remember the name of the studio! I'm sure the word 'Black' was in the name. It was run by a couple of goth types in their 30's. Imagine nicking a band's master tapes when that band have had to scrape together the money to record their shit while on the dole. It doesn't get much lower than that.
I'd forgotten about that incident.
I feel very angry indeed now.
< Deep Breath >
So, we went to the Tannery with little real studio experience. And, to exacerbate matters, we decided to record two songs we hadn't even performed live up until that point. One, 'The Boy Who Tried to Change the World' will crop up here soon, no doubt. The other was a song called 'Girl' which was a rather complicated, snaky thing [for us]. I still don't really know where it came from. I remember that I was listening to Bringing It All Back Home a lot at the time. But, musically, I have no idea, really. Maybe George Harrison was an inspiration. It doesn't matter, really.
We rehearsed this song a few times in our rehearsal room in Penyffordd [we will get to that story one day. Betcha can't wait! It's good, though. Gangsters and everything] and then recorded it.
One thing I hadn't really taken into account when I bought my Rickenbacker was how, relatively, shit they sound through a Marshall stack [JCM 900]. You need an AC30 or an Orange, I reckon, to do justice to a Rickie. So I remember being a little on the frustrated side as we set up in the studio. This wasn't the sound I'd saved up for eons to have!
But I'd have to make the most of it.
The studio engineer for the sessions was a very good, intuitive man called Ken Nelson. It came as no surprise to me at all that Ken went on to great things. He has produced all of the Coldplay albums. He had a way about him that made us feel a confidence that wasn't really there, in all honesty.
The sessions were recorded and mixed in a day. The backing tracks were put down live, with just enough time to record the vocals and a hundred guitar overdubs before we got down to mixing.
The lead vocal was done in one take. And you can tell. I sound like a Bono impersonator. It doesn't help that the lyrics are the worst kind of pretentious, lovey dovey bullshit. But I do like this song. The bridge bit -- the "hearts beat as one" bit is my favourite bit of any song we ever recorded.
To the best of my knowledge, we never performed this live. I think we all suffered a collective amnesia as to how to play the instrumental bit towards the end. Even the intro eluded me a couple of days after the recording. Still, the intro section eluded our drummer during the actual recording! :0)
I should say this, just in case any nascent bands are reading this. I would like you to learn from our many, many, many mistakes.
Record with no ego, if you can. Try and record with the best interests of the band at heart. I would enter a studio and all I was bothered in [I recognise this now; would have disputed it until my eyes fell out my head at the time] was recording my guitar parts. I wanted to get as many down as possible. What this meant was that the foundations of the tracks went down with little mistakes that have, over the years, morphed into Tyrannosaurus-sized aberrations that stalk these recordings and almost make them unlistenable to me.
Make sure that the drum track is down as tight as possible. If the drums are right, you can get away with murder. Duncan didn't even get a chance to warm up. There was no quality control on my behalf and I bullied us on towards the double tracking of the guitars at the expense of everything else.
It also helps if you mix things so that you can hear the bass.
In a three-piece, this is pretty key.
Final sanctimonious rule is this: don't ever form a band with me and you'll be okay.
Download 'The Immediate - Girl'
©Adam Walton
2010
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