by Glyn Johns
I had met Georgie several times before when he was the keyboard player for Billy Fury, England’s answer to Elvis. So we knew each other and had always got on well. After the show I told him of my new arrangement at IBC and asked if he would care to come one evening with the band and record two or three songs on the understanding that we may be able to get him a record deal. He agreed to the idea and we made arrangements for the session to be in a few days’ time. When he turned up, he brought Shel Talmy with him. Shel had evidently approached him, showing interest in producing him, so Georgie decided to kill two birds with one stone. I was not best pleased, to say the least. I had never met Shel and I had no idea who he was. I explained in no uncertain terms that it was my session and I was producing it. Shel remained calm and very politely suggested that, as we were both there, why did we not just get on with it and see how it goes. I begrudgingly agreed and it turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. I quickly came to realize that Shel knew what he was doing, and seemingly, he felt the same about me. We became great pals and started what was to become a very successful partnership, with me engineering most of the records that he produced over the next few years. These included “My Generation” by The Who, and “All Day and All of the Night” and “You Really Got Me” by The Kinks.
As far as I know, Georgie Fame never used the tapes to get himself a record deal. George Clouston let that one slip through his fingers as well, so I brought my arrangement with him to an end.
Late in 1963 I was to record Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames’ first album, Rhythm and Blues at the Flamingo, with Sammy Samwell producing. Sammy knew I was a big fan of the Blue Flames, and as IBC had the only independent remote recording unit in England, I was an obvious choice for the job. The problem was, the Flamingo’s band room was a rat-infested hole-in-the-wall next to the stage, and it was the only place I could set up the gear. By the time the 3-track Ampex machine, a console, and three large speakers were stuffed in there, there was barely room for me. I remember we hung a blanket in the doorway, as there was no door between the hole and the stage. From where I was sitting I could lean through it and touch Georgie sitting at the organ.
Unfortunately, Johnny McLaughlin and Speedy were not available that night. Johnny was so cool in his sharkskin suit and pencil tie with a button-down shirt. He would lean on the pillar on the left side of the stage, barely moving, while playing the most incredible guitar. So his place was taken at the last minute by Big Jim Sullivan, who, considering he did not know the material, did a wonderful job. Speedy, the conga player in the band, was in jail, having been busted for drugs, so his place was taken by a friend of Georgie and a regular at the Flamingo, Tommy Thomas. He did his best but it was not quite the same. Red Reece and Boots Slade were on drums and bass, and what an incredible rhythm section they were. The snare drum sound that Red got on that stage at the Flamingo was certainly one of the best I have ever heard. This is a great record and a fine example of Georgie Fame’s extraordinary talent as a musician, bandleader, and singer.
Georgie Fame, or Clive Powell, which is his real name, went on to become a great friend, with me producing him in later years for Chris Blackwell’s Island Records. He came and played with Charlie Watts and Eric Clapton at my second wedding. Now that was quite a band.
Nowadays he plays with his two talented sons as a trio and is a permanent member of Bill Wyman’s band, The Rhythm Kings. I consider him to be one of the finest musicians I have ever had the pleasure of working with. He is an exceptional Hammond B3 player with a rare complete understanding of the instrument, and I love the sound of his voice, his jazz roots facilitating the most wonderful phrasing. He and Andy Fairweather Low are my two favorite bandleaders. Both have the extraordinary ability to seamlessly take control of a group of musicians without appearing to be bossy or superior in any way and within minutes have them all pointing in the same direction, with remarkable results.
Going Freelance
I made two more singles, in a dying attempt to become a successful singer. They were both produced by Tony Meehan, the ex-drummer of Cliff Richard’s group The Shadows, the first massive pop group in the UK.
I did a cover of “I’ll Follow the Sun” for Pye Records. Terry Johnson, who by then had left IBC for a job at Decca Studios, did a marvelous engineering job. Tony Meehan did a great arrangement, with strings, a French horn, woodwind, a great rhythm section, and the Mike Sammes Singers. No expense spared. I remember getting up on the day of the session and driving the hour and a half to Decca Studios without uttering a word, as I was convinced that my voice had a much better edge to it having not been used all night.
Once again it was a strange experience being on the other side of the glass with an orchestra and vocal group that I was used to seeing daily as an engineer. They were all very kind and encouraging, but yet again it came to nothing.
The second song, called “Mary Anne,” was released on Immediate Records, and I decided to turn professional as a singer on its release. I left my job at IBC, believing that I’d gone as far as I could go. I had been the senior engineer at the studio for at least a year and the only other promotion I could expect would be to manage the place, which had no appeal whatsoever. Anyway, the whole idea of working at the studio in the first place was to learn about the business and to try to get discovered as a singer.
The reviews were quite encouraging. I did the usual promotion, a couple of TV shows and a handful of interviews in the music press. All to no avail. The record did not sell and within five or six weeks I was back at home twiddling my thumbs, realizing, among other things, that in order to be a successful singer you had to be able to remember the lyrics to a song. Something I had serious trouble with.
I had been very fortunate to acquire some really successful clients in the previous couple of years at IBC, the foremost of these being Shel Talmy. He had arrived in London and convinced the powers that be in the English record business that he was an established producer from Los Angeles. How accurate this was I never found out. I think he may have had a somewhat menial job at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. The fact is, he had a string of hits straight out of the bag, so he was doing something right.
I was sitting at home one morning, wondering what would become of me, when the phone rang, and it was Shel. He said that he was having trouble finding anyone to replace me as an engineer and asked if I would consider going back to work at IBC. I told him I wouldn’t under any circumstances, so he then suggested that he would pay me an hourly rate as a freelance.
I should point out that there was no such thing in the industry at the time, and the immediate question was whether the studios would even consider allowing an outsider to come in and use their facilities, putting out the noses of their employees. I rang George Clouston and put the idea to him. He tried to persuade me to take my old job back, without success. It seemed that business at IBC had subsided since I had left, so it didn’t take much to convince him that I could return as a freelance, with the studio paying me by the hour for the clients that I brought in. So it is thanks to Shel that I returned to the fold and continued my career as an engineer, being paid both by the client and the studio and becoming the first freelance engineer in the business. I would most certainly never have come up with this concept myself and it was only Shel, pointing out the opportunity and facilitating it, who made it happen.
After a few months, the rest of the staff at IBC quite understandably rebelled and threatened to walk out if I was allowed to continue, as they were getting very little work. So I had to go and find another studio to use. As I was fortunate enough to have a very successful string of clients and artists, initially Pye Studios in Marble Arch and eventually Olympic Studios welcomed me with open arms.
The original Olympic Studios was just behind Baker Street. I only went there once or twice before the new Olympic opened in Barnes, south of Hammersmith Bridge in London. The first session I did there was for
Andrew Oldham with Marianne Faithfull. I immediately fell in love with the place and it was to become my studio of choice in England for many years. And very happy years they were. Studio 1 became my second home and I was to record many of my favorite albums in this hallowed room. It was quite an amazing space. Incredibly versatile. You could record anything from a sixty-piece orchestra to the loudest rock and roll band in there and somehow it would adapt.
It was originally a cinema, and the conversion to a recording studio had been designed and built on a very small budget by Keith Grant, who ran the place until it was eventually sold many years later to Richard Branson. Keith was a fine engineer and was responsible for creating one of the best recording facilities in the world. Coincidentally, it was he who vacated his position at IBC that made way for me starting there in 1959. So I am indebted to him in more ways than one.
The other main contributor to the success of Olympic was Dick Swettenham. He designed all the recording consoles and so was responsible for the extraordinary recorded sound that the studio became famous for. Sad to say that both Keith and Dick are no longer with us. Certainly their passing represents the end of a wonderful era.
STONES SESSION AT OLYMPIC STUDIOS.
Andrew Oldham
About a year went by after the debacle of the first sessions with the Stones at IBC involving George Clouston and Andrew Oldham. I had maintained a firm friendship with the band and would go with them in the van with Stu to the odd gig, time allowing. They were already showing signs of the greatness to come as a rhythm section, with Mick and Keith having more influence and slowly taking the reins away from Brian.
Stu and I were living together by this time, and I had got over the fact that they had dumped me and IBC and gone with Andrew Oldham. This proved to be a very smart move on their part. As far as I am aware, Andrew had absolutely no knowledge of the process whatsoever, other than the Sunday session of mine that he had visited a couple of years before. But he had more front than Harrods and bluffed and barged his way through the bullshit of the business, having a complete disregard for the way things were normally done. His expertise was PR and it was this ability, in my opinion, that made him almost entirely responsible for the Stones’ initial success. Mind you, he did have some extraordinary subjects to work with. The way they looked, played, and behaved making the job much easier.
I was working late one afternoon in studio A at IBC when I got a call from Angela who ran the booking office, saying that they had an emergency. She asked if I would do the studio a favor and stay after my session to do a vocal overdub for a new client who had just rung to make the booking. By now I had turned freelance and was always booked by the client, so this was most unusual. I asked who it was and she told me it was Andrew Oldham. My opinion of Andrew was still that he had no idea what he was doing and was riding his luck with the Stones, as far as producing records was concerned. So, coupled with the fact that he had stolen them from under my nose, I was not disposed to have anything to do with him. Angela explained that there was no one else left in the building to do the session, so could I, on this one occasion, do them a favor? As I had a huge crush on her, she used her well-oiled female wily ways, and I begrudgingly agreed.
My session finished at 10:30 p.m., and at 11:00 p.m. sharp Andrew arrived. I told him that I was not at all happy about doing the session, but as I had been coerced into it we had better get on with it and get on home.
It was a vocal overdub onto an existing backing track. I do not recall who the artist was, but I have to say that, much to my surprise, I was really impressed with Andrew’s production. At the end of the session, when asked, I reluctantly told him so.
He went to the phone and called his secretary and told her to put copies of the last couple of records he had produced in a cab to be delivered to IBC. Poor girl, it was one o’clock in the morning. The records arrived. He played them for me and asked sarcastically if he had passed the test. I hated to admit it but I owned up to being surprisingly impressed. So he asked if I would engineer for him in the future and I agreed.
This led to several years of work for me, as Andrew started his own label, Immediate Records, with me recording many of its releases throughout its existence from 1965 to 1970. However, by far the most significant outcome was my recording the Stones from then until I quit during Black and Blue many years later.
I so very nearly declined that session with Andrew. Who knows what would have happened to my career if I had. Thank God for dear Angela’s persuasive ways.
EARLY DAYS WITH ANDREW LOOG OLDHAM AT IBC.
WITH BILL WYMAN IN MADRID, FEBRUARY 1967.
Bill Wyman, Spain, 1966
In 1965, Bill Wyman suggested that he and I form Freeway Music, a company to produce and manage artists. In 1966, he found a group called The End, and having produced a single with them, we set about trying to get them work. I say “we” but this is not an area I had much expertise in and anyway I was working flat out and had very little time to spare, so getting them work was left to Bill when he was not recording or gigging with the Stones.
The End introduced us to an Englishwoman who said she was working in Madrid and had made friends with two brothers who had a magazine publishing empire. They wanted to expand into the music business so had started their own record label in Spain. She said that they were serious players and felt sure that they would be interested in signing The End, particularly as they were managed by a member of The Rolling Stones. So a meeting was set up and I hopped on a plane to Madrid to check them and their company, Sonoplay, out.
They could not have been more charming and hospitable. The offices were most impressive and it looked like they were serious about their entry into the music business.
I played the single we had cut with The End and they agreed to release it on the condition that the band would come to Spain to promote it, hopefully bringing with them their famous manager.
As I was leaving, they asked if I had anything else that might interest them. It just so happened that, completely by chance, in a pocket of my briefcase, I had an acetate of a redundant single I had cut a few weeks earlier of me singing the Jagger/Richards song “Lady Jane.”
I had recorded the original as an album track with the Stones and thought it would be a good song for me to cover for my next record. My producer Tony Meehan did a great arrangement for a string quartet and Spanish guitar and I got Brian Jones to play sitar. It was an interesting combination of instruments, and having finished the session at IBC we were all really pleased with the result, only to find out a couple of days later that someone else had covered it and was already booked on the weekly TV show Ready Steady Go! It was essential to get this plug if you were to have a hit in those days. So having been beaten to it, we dropped the idea of releasing it, with poor Tony having to swallow the cost of the session.
So I played Sonoplay the acetate, without saying that it was me in case they thought it was awful. They listened to the record, and much to my relief they loved it and asked if they could release it. So I had to confess. That did not put them off, and we negotiated a deal on the spot. I returned to England, feeling very pleased with myself, having got a check for the cost of the session to repay Tony Meehan, and thought no more about it.
Some months later The End had a tour of Spain booked to coincide with their record being released, and Bill and I decided it was time for him to go to Madrid to get some publicity for the band. Sonoplay was informed and the trip was booked.
Bill had been trying for some time to date a young Swedish lady he had met at the Bag O’ Nails, a popular club he frequented in the West End of London. She was having none of it, which made him all the more determined to succeed. In one last attempt he asked her if she would like to come to Madrid for a few days. Initially she declined, and having spurned all previous attempts to get her attention, she finally capitulated and agreed to join him.
We met at Hea
throw and he introduced me to the girl, telling me that as he was married, it would have to appear as if she was with me, should anyone ask in Madrid. That was all I needed. It was going to be busy enough without having her round our necks.
When the plane came to rest on the tarmac at Madrid airport, it was immediately obvious that Sonoplay had done a great PR job for Bill’s arrival. The Rolling Stones had never played in Spain, so this was quite an event. The rooftop of the airport building was covered with screaming girls and the tarmac at the bottom of the stairs from the aircraft was littered with a heaving mass of journalists, photographers, film and TV cameramen, all jostling each other to get a better view of the passengers’ exit from the plane.
I decided to go ahead of Bill, with the girl in tow behind me, and having got to the bottom of the aircraft steps, we moved away from the melee and stood under the wing of the plane. When I turned in order to watch Bill’s exit, I realized that the paparazzi had followed me and were furiously snapping away, taking pictures of me and the girl. I figured that they had mistaken me for Bill, as I had long hair. At the back of the crowd I picked out the rep from Sonoplay and shouted to him to tell these idiots they were taking pictures of the wrong guy and that Bill was coming down the steps as I spoke. He called back, saying, “No, no, they are taking pictures of the right guy. Your record ‘Lady Jane’ is number one.” This came as quite a shock as I had no idea that it had even been released, and in fact I had forgotten all about it.
We fought our way out of the airport and drove to a hotel in the middle of Madrid, checked in and went to our respective rooms to settle in and unpack. After about ten minutes, my phone rang. It was Bill. “’Ere, she wants her own room. She’s locked herself in the bathroom and won’t come out.” I said that there was little I could do about it, and suggested he put her on a plane back to London, as it was obvious that she was just going to be a complete pain in the arse.