Inside Out

by Nick Mason

  Lindy came back to England after finishing her dance training in the States and saw us at an event called ‘Freak Out Ethel’. She can still remember her surprise at our swift transformation from student covers band to psychedelic frontiersmen. In Andrew’s words, ‘We didn’t realise it, but the tide was coming up the beach, and the Pink Floyd were right on top of the wave.’ In his view, what we actually played, and whether we could play, was much less important than being in the right place at the right time.

  As well as running UFO, Joe Boyd was still involved in A&R and production, but his former boss at Elektra, Jac Holzman, only offered us a rather grudging one and seven-eighths percent. We would not go with this because at the time Elektra was known only as a small folk label – though they would go on to sign the Doors. We wanted a proper company. Joe was still desperate, as we were, to see us signed somewhere. Polydor were prepared to offer quite a good deal, which would allow Joe to act as an independent producer. As the deal looked like closing, Joe set up his own company, Witchseason Productions, to make it happen.

  A recording session was arranged for us in January 1967 at Sound Techniques in Old Church Street off the Kings Road, with Joe producing and the studio owner John Wood engineering. All the recordings – including ‘Arnold Layne’, a song we’d been playing live for a while, and a version of ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ – were made on a four-track tape machine, for mono reproduction. We recorded bass and drums on one track, guitar and the trembly Farfisa Duo keyboard on two other tracks. Any effects such as the drum repeats on ‘Arnold Layne’ were added as these three tracks were bumped down onto a fourth track, and the vocals and any guitar solos were added as an overdub. A final mix of the song was then mastered onto a mono tape.

  A professional recording studio always made you sound great. At the studios in West Hampstead, the first time we heard ourselves in playback, with some echo on the drums and vocals, and a decent mix, had sounded terrific. Sound Techniques was a step up again. The studios boasted the then state-of-the-art Tannoy Red speakers, the definitive speaker of the period. Clad in a veneered walnut finish, they stood about five feet tall, and compared to what we were used to, packed an incredible bass punch.

  Listening back to ‘Arnold Layne’ now, and other songs from the same phase, I notice that I do not find myself cringing. I am definitely not embarrassed by our juvenilia. It all sounds pretty professional, even though it would have been recorded relatively quickly. With a limited number of tracks, you had to make decisions early on about which instrument would go on which track and then you mixed down. But the music genuinely doesn’t seem to have suffered.

  ‘Candy And A Currant Bun’ was originally called ‘Let’s Roll Another One’, including the lyric ‘I’m high, don’t try to spoil my fun’. Since this was deemed to be pushing our luck on a tape due to be taken into the still very conservative record industry, a complete alternative set of lyrics had to be cobbled together.

  For some reason we were also convinced that we needed a promotional film for ‘Arnold Layne’. Although TV programmes like Top Of The Pops rarely used film unless it was for some American act that couldn’t possibly make it over to England, we already saw ourselves as a multimedia band. Derek Nice – an acquaintance of June Child, and the only film director anyone knew – was commissioned to make the film, and we set off to the Sussex coast to start work.

  I think we chose Sussex because my parents lived nearby and rather conveniently were away. This sorted out the accommodation, and provided the suitably bizarre setting of the English seaside in the middle of winter. Although crude by the video standards of today, and borrowing the feel of A Hard Day’s Night, the black and white film is surprisingly undated and relatively humorous, featuring the four of us on the beach with a fifth band member who turns out to be a shop-window dummy. We shot the whole thing in one short grey day and in fact were leaving the car park of East Wittering as the police car drew up to put an end to the fun. Given the notoriety of another local resident, a Mr Keith Richards, and his pals, I think the law were hoping for another big bust. With our most innocent middle-class faces we maintained that we had seen nothing of a suspicious nature, but would of course inform them immediately should we note anything in the least untoward. It’s lucky really that they didn’t search the car. In it was the mannequin, nude save for a policeman’s helmet.

  Everything seemed set. We had an offer from Polydor, a producer, some recordings, even a promo. However, as frequently happens in the music business, someone had to be ejected from the lifeboat. And in this particular instance, it was Joe Boyd who lost out. The reason was that Bryan Morrison had intervened. Bryan, who ran his own booking agency, had hired us – although he had never heard or seen us perform – for a gig at the Architectural Association, having seen the coverage and the feedback we were getting. He wanted to see this hot new band for himself, and had turned up at one of our rehearsal sessions for ‘Arnold Layne’. Joe remembers that his heart sank immediately, because Bryan started asking about the deal with Polydor and saying that we ought to be able to get a better one. Bryan, who had good contacts with EMI, funded the Sound Techniques recording, took a copy of the demo tape, and talked us up to the EMI executives, who didn’t know much about us other than that we were the current buzz word. But Bryan had a way with words. They decided they wanted to sign us.

  The insurmountable problem – certainly for Joe – was that EMI disliked using outside studios or producers. They owned Abbey Road after all. They wanted their own man, Norman Smith, who had recently been promoted from being the Beatles’ engineer, to be our producer. That was the deal on offer, and we acquiesced – partly because the deal was better than Polydor’s, and also because EMI were the big label, courtesy of the Beatles. There was no question about whether to go with EMI or not. They were the UK’s dominant record company of the period, along with Decca – Polygram was not yet coming up on the rails. And Peter got on well with Beecher Stevens at EMI and his colleagues. They were offering a £5,000 advance, a serious deal – or in Andrew’s words, ‘a shit deal, but a thousand times better than the Beatles’ [deal]’ – and studio costs.

  Peter Jenner was given the disagreeable task of breaking the news to Joe Boyd. Peter professes some guilt to this day about blowing Joe out, and behaving with a certain amount of insensitivity. Andrew says ‘The alacrity with which Peter and I left Joe standing was shameless.’ But in those days you did not sign with the company and then bring along your pet producer. So we were now EMI recording artists – and unlike most bands we came with a ready-made recording.

  Shortly after signing we headed to a gig at the Queen’s Hall in Leeds, formerly the garaging depot for the city’s trams, and now the venue for 5,000 loon-panted Northern fans, seeing what all the fuss was about at a ten-hour rave headlined by Cream and Small Faces, and described by the Daily Express as ‘the night Carnaby Street moved north’.

  Our own progress north proved sluggish. We left London in the early afternoon since we didn’t really know where Leeds was, the M1 stopped at Coventry – Britain’s first stretch of motorway had only opened in 1959 – and we had Andrew King’s old Renault as our unreliable transport. By the time we got back in the early hours of the morning I couldn’t even make it into college just to sign the register. (At the Queen’s Hall I decided to experiment with stage names. I thought Noke Mason would be a rather entertaining variant, and announced this to the local paper who duly printed it below our picture. This is not a ploy I have ever repeated.)

  After that particular gig, I knew I couldn’t continue combining course work and band life. I was still ostensibly studying architecture, but of course I was spending virtually all my time rehearsing, performing or on the road. Even with Jon Corpe doing all my class work for me, I was falling behind. Apparently degrees were not handed out on the basis of signatures in the register alone. Jon also remembers that I gave the impression of never being particularly interested in architecture. According to Jon, I a
lways felt it was a job best left to architects. But help was at hand.

  To my eternal gratitude my year tutor, Joe Mayo, suggested it would actually be a good idea for me to take a year’s sabbatical from college. He assured me that he would let me back in the following year if I wanted. He didn’t say it, but I think he recognised that I was shaping up to be a really mediocre architect. I’m sure he felt time spent living a different life would either provide me with a better career or at least make me a better designer. The head of school was less helpful, and wrote me a letter full of dire warnings about giving up a promising training, so I didn’t bother to show that one to my mum and dad. I left college, expecting to return one day, but I haven’t managed to make it back yet.

  I was the last of the band to spot the writing on the wall. Roger was only too anxious to give up his job with Fitzroy Robinson and Partners designing vaults for the Bank of England. I believe he was required to sign the Official Secrets Act and promise not to reveal the specifications of the amount of concrete required to protect the money. It would be nice to feel that the designs he did were even now sheltering our ill-gotten gains. Rick had long decided to devote himself to music full-time, and Syd had stopped turning up at Camberwell College of Art.

  EMI had one particular concern about this band they’d just signed, a concern that was to exercise their press department all year. They had acquired a band with a ‘psychedelic tag’, and although we could deny any knowledge of a drug connection, albeit in a rather shifty way, and maintain that the pretty lights were no more than all-round family entertainment, there was no doubt that the whole movement that had launched us could not be sworn to secrecy. Indeed some of them were filled with an evangelical zeal to turn on the world. This was a period where the idea of some crazed hippie putting LSD in the water supply was a popular nightmare – or dream, depending on your point of view.

  We did various mealy-mouthed interviews denying we really even understood the meaning of the word ‘psychedelic’. There clearly was a lot of confusion out in Top Rank land, because in one interview we felt it necessary to explain that a ‘freak out’ should be relaxed and spontaneous, rather than ‘a mob of geezers throwing bottles’, in Roger’s words. A typical response of mine in a Melody Maker interview was, ‘You have to be careful when you start on this psychedelic thing. We don’t call ourselves a psychedelic group or say that we play psychedelic pop music. It’s just that people associate us with this and we get employed all the time at the various freak-outs and happenings in London.’ To which Roger added, ‘I sometimes think that it’s only because we have lots of equipment and lighting, and it saves the promoters from having to hire lighting for the group.’

  We also had to fulfil one more EMI obligation by performing a 30-minute ‘artist test’ or audition. This was something every new act had to do, but was a futile exercise in our case, since we had already signed. Our next task was to provide the company with a single, and of course we just happened to have one we’d prepared earlier. On 11th March, ‘Arnold Layne’ (b/w ‘Candy And A Currant Bun’), from the original pre-EMI Sound Techniques sessions produced by Joe Boyd (an attempt to re-record it had not improved on the original) was released. Just six months after our summer break, and the start of our involvement with Peter Jenner and Andrew King, we were professional recording artists.

  A couple of months after we signed with EMI we had been treated to a full-scale record company shindig with a host of EMI luminaries, including Beecher Stevens who actually signed us (and shortly afterwards parted company with EMI – no connection I’m sure). A stage was erected at corporate headquarters in Manchester Square, our light show brought in, and we mimed ‘Arnold Layne’. Everyone had canapés and champagne in quantity, and a few of the guests enjoyed a small side order of chemicals.

  I clearly remember riding up in the lift with Sir Joseph Lockwood, the chairman who was only in his sixties, but seemed a nonagenarian to our eyes. He seemed unflappable at yet another quirk of the music industry. He did rather alarm Derek Nice, the director of our ‘Arnold Layne’ promo, when he suggested that they should install a backdrop of the Tower of London upstairs and then all the bands could simply come in and mime their hits to a camera before sending them out worldwide. Sir Joseph was years ahead of his time.

  The requisite signature ceremony had been conducted with photographic evidence, apparently a requirement of the suspicious legal department in case any awkward musicians later claimed the signatures were a fake. We were genuinely excited and pretty full of ourselves. We had been propelled to a position that a few months before had been just a fantasy. So when asked to pose for photographs, our sense of euphoria meant that we gleefully fell into gambolling about in the most shameful way.

  FOLLOWING THE exuberant celebrations after signing with EMI it was time to get down to some serious work. Unlike many other bands, we had not paid our musical dues. In fact, we had barely put down a deposit. We had invested no serious time on the road, nor spent a year playing the clubs on the Reeperbahn. Our performances through the autumn of 1966 had taken place at a few favoured venues and within the comforting cocoon of a largely partisan audience. We had yet to confront the unknown civilisations that lurked beyond the confines of the psychedelic village.

  Transportation was – and probably still is – a major problem for new bands. Borrowing a parent’s car was an option with limited scope, especially with the almost immediate depreciation caused by cramming it full of drum kits and band members. Acquiring a van represented by far the biggest capital outlay – yet had none of the glamour of spending a student grant on a new guitar or bass drum. But though it was possible to muddle through a show with a mishmash of less than perfect or borrowed equipment, the band – and the ever-increasing pile of equipment – still had to get to the gig, and safely back home afterwards.

  Before landing the record deal, travelling outside London had usually been restricted by the limitations of our Bedford van. We had become the proud owners of this vehicle back in the days of the Tea Set, when we bought it for twenty quid off a dealer’s forecourt late one Saturday evening. The salesman couldn’t believe his luck – the van was probably awaiting delivery to the scrapyard. In a fit of generosity he announced that he would sell it ‘wiv new boots and blood’, used-car parlance for a fresh set of tyres and road tax. The Bedford was unbelievably slow (my old Austin ‘Chummy’ could have overtaken it); its lack of speed was only surpassed by its unreliability.

  We did encounter an additional obstacle when our equipment disappeared. Rick often used to earn an extra fiver by unloading our equipment at Blackhill’s offices after gigs, but on one occasion he shirked his duties after a particularly late night, simply leaving the van overnight in Regent’s Park. By the morning, all the expensive, portable gear, such as the PA amp (the one bought for us by Andrew King) and the guitars had been liberated. The management had no funds left, and no charitable institution stepped forward to bail us out, so it must be recorded for posterity that my mum, to her eternal credit, lent us the £200 we needed to replace the most important elements. Rick used to suffer an occasional, momentary twinge of guilt about the incident, although he never actually offered to make any reparation.

  Shortly after the EMI deal, we acquired a Ford Transit, which was seen as a serious status symbol, the Rolls-Royce of band transportation. When the Transit was introduced by Ford in October 1965, it was in such demand that it was not unknown for thieves to unload a band’s equipment and then steal the van. The Transit’s specification included a three-litre engine, twin rear wheels and a modified cabin to take all the equipment in the rear compartment while roadie, lighting man and four band members travelled in considerable discomfort up in first class. By this time, running a decent van was imperative – because at last we were getting substantial amounts of work through our agent Bryan Morrison, who’d been so influential in setting up the EMI deal. Our first encounter with Bryan had taken place during a rehearsal session for ‘Arnold
Layne’ at Studio Techniques. Peter and Andrew had warned us to expect a visit from a music industry heavyweight, and we awaited his arrival with some trepidation. The door to the studio swung open, revealing Bryan and his two henchmen. These three characters were clearly part of London’s underworld rather than underground. No loon pants or kaftans here, but Italian suits and camel-hair coats with velvet collars. Hands in pockets, the trio fixed us with an impassive gaze – they looked singularly unimpressed at what they saw.

  Andrew and Peter had talked to a number of agencies before deciding who to go with, including the well-established Noel Gay Agency in Denmark Street, where the bookers all wore morning suits. They, however, were asking for 15 per cent to represent us, while Bryan only wanted 10 per cent. Bryan got the job.

  Although Bryan’s sartorial appearance suggested an apprenticeship with a motor dealer, he had in fact attended the Central School of Art. His office opened as the management for the Pretty Things – whose members included Dick Taylor (who had been in the embryonic Rolling Stones) and Phil May, two other art school students – and then expanded into publishing and agency work. By the time we joined he had a substantial roster of artists, among them the Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation and Herbie Goins and the Night-timers, and later he added all the Blackhill acts, including Fairport Convention, the Incredible String Band, the Edgar Broughton Band, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Keith West and Tomorrow, a band which included Steve Howe, later of Yes.

  Bryan had a proper music business office at 142 Charing Cross Road, the Tin Pan Alley district. Situated above an all-day drinking club (a device to circumvent England’s then draconian licensing laws), I think it cost him all of £8 a week. The walls outside were covered with graffiti professing undying love for one or all of the Pretty Things and inside there was constant pandemonium. Bryan had dispensed with an intercom and just shouted at his secretary through the partition walls of his inner sanctum. In fact, everyone shouted, either down telephones or at each other. It was a far cry from the gentle, genteel world of Blackhill, which was decked out with kaftans and flavoured with the aroma of patchouli oil.