Inside Out

by Nick Mason

  Steve O’Rourke also listened to the demos: he was the only one able (or honest enough) to remember selecting Pros And Cons as his favoured piece. This continued the time-honoured tradition of allowing us to sneer at the management’s musical taste, but in Steve’s defence it must be remembered that the demos of The Wall did not yet contain any of the well-known songs, such as ‘Run Like Hell’ or ‘Comfortably Numb’.

  The level of contributions by other members of the band would become a bone of contention. Perhaps the very completeness of Roger’s demo made it difficult for David or Rick to contribute much. But certainly David later felt that his musical contribution, especially to ‘Run Like Hell’ and ‘Comfortably Numb’ was not being fairly recognised. This potential volcano of future discord was, however, still dormant when we started making rough versions of some of the tracks for The Wall at Britannia Row during the autumn of 1978.

  When work began we were short of an engineer. I think we felt that Brian Humphries was now completely exhausted, and suffering an extreme case of Floyd burn-out. Alan Parsons was now the Alan Parsons Project and Nick Griffiths was felt to be still a relatively unknown quantity, so we started looking and asking round for a young but talented engineer with a track record who could bring a different approach to our sound. In the end Alan recommended James Guthrie, who had been producing and engineering a number of bands including Heatwave, The Movies and Judas Priest as well as a band called Runner. James’s track record, particularly an instantly identifiable shimmering audio edge he had brought to his work with Runner, suggested that he could add a fresh, brighter feel to our work.

  Steve O’Rourke asked James to come in to his office. James had little knowledge of who Steve managed or what he wanted to talk about. He says that Steve had two projects he wanted to discuss. One was Tom Robinson, the other Pink Floyd. ‘I calmly picked my jaw up from the ground, composed myself and nodded professionally, but my heart was racing. Steve said that the band had listened to some of my work and were interested in meeting me. He stressed that this would be a co-production. I thought, “These guys have been producing themselves since I was in school. I have no problem with that.”’ James met Roger whom he recalls as ‘courteous and serious, carefully analysing my every word and gesture’. They discussed Roger’s concept for The Wall and James was sent a copy of the demo.

  The infinitely patient James was a complementary counterbalance to the extremely energetic and often irascible Bob Ezrin. Although we had produced Dark Side and Wish You Were Here ourselves, Roger had decided to import Bob as a co-producer and collaborator. Bob was an established producer who had worked on a number of Alice Cooper albums and Lou Reed’s Berlin. He had been introduced to us via Roger’s second wife Carolyne, who had worked for Bob, and in fact had taken him along to the show in Hamilton, Ontario, where we exploded the scoreboard.

  On the same occasion Bob had also brought along a friend who was a psychoanalyst as well as a fan of the band. After seeing Roger cut his foot after the show in a mock fight with Steve, the psychoanalyst had suggested it might be a good idea if he joined the tour as a permanent crew member… James Guthrie has astutely remarked that once he had been deemed trustworthy, it was like becoming accepted in a family, ‘albeit a very dysfunctional family’, as he recalls me once saying.

  Bob clearly remembers his first visit to meet us at Britannia Row. He was late, because not thinking to lay on a car from the airport for him, we had simply told him to rent a car and fight his way across central London. Eventually locating the studios, the first person Bob met was a haggard Brian Humphries, coming down the stairs. Brian looked awful; he saw Bob and said, ‘They did this to me…’ When Bob entered the room we were in, he was greeted by the sight of Roger pointedly tapping his watch. Bob maintains he later took Roger to one side and said, ‘I already have a father; don’t ever do that to me in public again.’ Steve O’Rourke arrived to find a somewhat tense atmosphere, a whole conference of producers, and Bob threatening to walk out. Oil was poured and Bob placated.

  As we settled into recording, we started looking for new ambiences. We tried to achieve something of a live auditorium sound, by recording some of the drums in a vast open space at the top of Britannia Row, the glass-roofed, wooden-floored room which housed Roger’s precious billiards table. Since the room was totally lacking in any soundproofing or noise deadening, the other occupants of the building may not have totally appreciated the experience. Not only could they hear nothing but the drums, deprived of any backing track and out of any musical context, but once the drums started, they had no idea of how long this devilish racket would last.

  Still, unlike early rehearsals, we owned the building and so were not receptive to grievances, rather like the guy in the Continental Hyatt House in Los Angeles (known as the ‘Continental Riot House’) who after a request to his neighbour to turn down the noise found three men trying to break down his door in order to kill him. A phone call down to reception elicited the rather unhelpful advice that, ‘This hotel caters to the music business. We don’t accept complaints.’

  For the first time the drum sound on The Wall was kept intact throughout the recording process. The drums and bass were initially recorded on an analogue 16-track machine, and mixed down to two tracks on a 24-track machine for the overdubs, retaining the original recording for the final mix. This avoided the inevitable degradation that occurs with the tapes being constantly played for the addition of the other instruments and vocals.

  However, although Britannia Row had been adequate for recording Animals, it now became clear that it was not up to the task for The Wall. We had already installed a large quantity of replacement equipment. This was primarily due to Bob and James wanting to upgrade it to their own demanding standards, and it seemed that everyone who arrived to work on the production side also brought along their own preferred piece of kit. We soon had a new Stephens 24-track in place, and the existing monitors were also swiftly replaced.

  After all this work and respecification, we had to up sticks and change our recording venue anyway, as external events overtook us. This was the period when our business affairs outside the band exploded. We had brought in a financial adviser in the shape of Norman Lawrence to administer the Britannia Row studios at the suggestion of Norton Warburg, the company who had been handling our investments. Norman, although ostensibly a Norton Warburg man, began to notice that there was something very wrong in the whole set-up, and started to investigate.

  The truth that emerged was that Norton Warburg had been siphoning off funds from their investments company, an apparently gilt-edged set-up, to underwrite the disastrous venture capital side, all those skateboards, pizzas and dodgy cars. Eventually the company founder Andrew Warburg fled to Spain, returning to England in 1982, where he was arrested, charged, and served three years. A lot of people lost their money. Because Norton Warburg had been approved by reputable organisations such as American Express and the Bank of England many people had put their entire life savings or pensions in. The widows and pensioners were not going to have any further opportunities to go back to work. We were lucky that we still had the potential to work again.

  All of these business problems had little to do with our music. But the ramifications had a significant impact on the decisions we had to make about our next album. We discovered that we had lost in the region of £1 million between the four of us. The losses in the venture capital companies were frighteningly large, and since we had been investing pre-tax funds – the whole point of the exercise – we now had a huge tax exposure, which, according to our financial advisers, could have been anywhere between £5 million and £12 million.

  The problem was exacerbated by the fact that rather than having a single venture capital company, we had decided that each of us would have our own individual one. The ramifications of that decision quadrupled – at the very least – the tax implications. The suggestion was put to us that we should become non-resident in the UK for one year so that we
could earn some money and replenish the dwindling coffers, and provide some time for our accountants and tax specialists to salvage something from the wreckage. The whole experience cast an enormous cloud over us. We had always prided ourselves on being smart enough not to be caught out like this. We saw ourselves as educated, middle class, in control of everything. We had been utterly wrong.

  The answer was exile. Showing an alacrity that the Great Train Robbers might have admired, within two or three weeks we were packed and on the way. It seemed by far the best option. The tax residence rules meant we had to leave the UK before 6th April 1979 and not come back until after 5th April the following year, not even for the briefest of visits. This exile option was actually seized on with glee by a number of rock bands, who were grateful to benefit from the government’s apparent largesse. In our case, it was simply essential. On later tours we were able to take advantage of a rule that involved staying abroad for at least 365 days, but with some visits back allowed (a wheeze originally introduced by the Labour government of the 1970s to encourage exports and benefit oilmen working out in the Middle East).

  The prospect of not only one year of tax-free income to pay the debts, but also the opportunity to make a new start on our music without the distractions of lawyers and accountants, was irresistible. In any case Bob felt that the comfortable family home life that we were all enjoying in the UK was another factor in slowing down the process of making a hard-edged rock opus. We almost welcomed the chance to go overseas to escape. Like naughty children abandoning an untidy playroom, we were able to leave the financial mess behind for the professionals to clear up.

  While we worked abroad, our advisers dismantled the partnership we had for touring – a throwback to the ideals of Blackhill – and restructured everything in negotiation with the gentlemen and ladies of the Inland Revenue. At one point, Nigel Eastaway remembers, we had 200 sets of accounts on hold, waiting for agreement with the revenue, an indication of the size of the problem. We could hardly get into Britannia Row for the serried ranks of accountants – but the deal they structured just about covered their costs. Steve O’Rourke and Peter Barnes also negotiated a major publishing deal with Chappell’s to help provide additional revenue.

  The studio in France we started working in, and where most of the groundwork for The Wall was carried out, was called Super Bear. Both Rick and David had worked there on solo projects the previous year and liked the atmosphere. It was located high up in the Alpes-Maritimes about thirty minutes’ drive from Nice, set apart from a small village, with its own tennis court and pool and plenty of lounging space. We interspersed recording with tennis and occasional trips to the fleshpots of Nice – the lengthy drive there discouraged too frequent trips.

  While Rick and I stayed at Super Bear itself, Roger and David rented villas nearby. Meanwhile Bob Ezrin installed himself at the sumptuous Negresco Hotel in Nice. An invitation to dinner with Bob was like dining with royalty. In the hotel restaurant, Bob was on first-name terms with the maitre d’, who was all over Bob, as the expression goes, like a cheap suit in the rain. After savouring magnificent Michelin three-star cuisine, we would thank Bob effusively as he generously signed the bill. It was only halfway through the drive back into the hills, subdued probably by the effect of the vintage wines proffered by the sommelier, that we realised that we were in fact the ones picking up the tab.

  Bob’s timekeeping was, to say the least, erratic, but in a strange way his constant lateness – each day he had another more elaborate and increasingly less credible excuse – served to focus our energies as he became the target for our tongue-in-cheek resentment. It was great, just like being on tour again.

  I had laid down the drum tracks early on at Super Bear, and so spent most of the time as an interested observer. Roger had rented a large villa above Vence – and I moved in, since the studio accommodation, although delightful, was a curious mix of boarding school and Espresso Bongo. Each day we used to drive the forty miles from the villa to the studio. Between us, Roger and I used two sets of tyres on my Ferrari Daytona in eleven weeks.

  With the drum parts complete I was excused boots to go to Le Mans. I gave Roger my gold Rolex – a present from EMI after ten years’ not-so-hard labour – for safe keeping (he did return it) and Steve and I set off on a boy’s own mission for the weekend. Actually, it was quite a big adventure. This was my first real experience of motor racing, and as deep ends go it was Captain Nemo territory. Earlier in the year I had managed a brief test session in the two-litre Lola that I was to drive with the Dorset Racing Team, but had never got to the sort of racing speeds achievable on the five-mile Mulsanne straight, or experienced racing at night. It is, to say the least, exciting to be travelling at around 200mph, and then to be passed by a Porsche doing another 40mph more.

  The fact that a number of my competitors were world-class sports car champions added to the experience, and the paddock was a motorsport equivalent of backstage at Woodstock. Le Mans is an extraordinary race, one of the last opportunities for the amateurs to compete with the big boys, and still have the chance of a result. The Lola ran faultlessly, and my only real scare was during qualifying when I poked my head too far above the windscreen. The slipstream caught the edge of my helmet and I thought my head was about to be wrenched off. Fortunately the only ramification was neck ache for the following week. We not only ended up with a finish – deemed an achievement in itself – but also gained a 2nd in class and won the index of performance. Steve’s Ferrari finished a few places ahead. This was without doubt the best form of rejuvenation prior to returning to Berre-les-Alpes.

  While I had been let off quite lightly, Rick had a much harder time of it. At some point in the summer, shortly after Le Mans, Dick Asher at Sony/CBS had proposed a deal, offering to increase the percentage points we would earn if we could deliver a completed album in time for an end-of-year release. Roger, in consultation with Bob, did a quick calculation and critical path, and said it might just be possible. The decision was taken to use another studio fifty miles or so away called Miraval. This was owned by the jazz pianist Jacques Loussier, and was in a faux château. Apart from anything else you could dive off the walls and swim in the moat. Although all studios trumpet their unique features, this facility had to be one up on any number of jacuzzis. Recording was divided up between both studios, with Bob oscillating between the two locations. As well as dealing with the physical divide, Bob was grappling with the job of bridging a developing rift between David and Roger. Yet somehow he managed to ensure that as well as handling this role, he also got the best work out of both.

  The keyboard parts, however, were still to be recorded. The only way to achieve the proposed release date was for Rick to curtail his summer vacation; we had previously agreed to record through the spring and early summer and then have a break. As my drum parts were laid down early this was not an issue for me. But when Rick heard, via Steve, that he had to do his keyboard parts in the summer holidays, he refused point blank. When this was relayed back to Roger, he was stunned and furious. He felt he was doing an enormous amount of work, and that Rick was not willing to make any effort to help.

  The situation was made worse by the fact that Rick had wanted to be a producer on The Wall – as if we didn’t have enough already – and Roger had told him that was OK as long as he made a significant contribution. Alas, Rick’s contribution was to turn up and sit in on the sessions without doing anything, just ‘being a producer’. This had not gone down well with Bob either, who felt this particular broth already had too many cooks, and Rick had been relieved from production duties. Nonetheless Bob volunteered to help Rick with the keyboard sections, but for any of the many possible reasons, Roger was never satisfied with Rick’s performances.

  Whatever bond Rick had enjoyed with Roger in the previous fifteen or so years was terminally broken, and Rick’s downfall was swift. Steve was happily cruising to America on the QE2 when he was called by Roger and told to have Rick out of the ban
d by the time Roger arrived in LA, where the album was due to be mixed. Rick, said Roger, could stay on as a paid player for the Wall shows, but after that he was no longer to be a band member. If this was not done Roger threatened to pull the plug on the whole enterprise. This sounded like a madman with a gun pointed at his own head.

  However, rather than fight, Rick acquiesced, perhaps with relief. I think a number of factors contributed to this decision. The demotion from production responsibilities, along with the difficulties, even with Bob’s help, of providing keyboard parts that satisfied Roger were exacerbated by the crumbling of his marriage to Juliette, and like all of us he was worried about the financial implications if we did not finish the album. As it transpired Rick’s decision was quite beneficial for him: as a salaried performer on The Wall he was the only one of us to make money from the live shows. The remaining three of us shared the losses…

  I still find it hard to really cover some of the events of this period properly. Roger was probably still my closest friend, and we were able to enjoy each other’s company. But our friendship was increasingly put under strain as Roger struggled to modify what had been an ostensibly democratic band into the reality of one with a single leader.

  After the initial recording was completed, operations were transferred to Los Angeles for the mixing phase. Orchestral overdubs had been arranged and conducted by the composer and arranger Michael Kamen. Brought in by Bob Ezrin, Michael recorded the arrangements at the CBS studios in New York, only meeting the band at the end of the sessions. In the car park outside the Producer’s Workshop in LA where the mixing was being carried out, various effects were recorded including the screech of tyres for ‘Run Like Hell’. This involved Phil Taylor slewing a Ford LTD van around the car park with Roger inside, screaming at full volume.

  Meanwhile, back in Britannia Row, Nick Griffiths was getting on with a long list of other sound effects he had been asked to gather together, ranging from the Brit Row staff chanting ‘Tear down the wall!’ to the sound of trolley-loads of crockery being smashed. For one SFX Nick had travelled around the country for a week to record buildings being demolished. He was rather disappointed to find that the demolition companies were so professional that they were able to bring down huge buildings with small amounts of explosive at the weak points and there really wasn’t much noise to record. In the middle of this, he took a call from the States at two in the morning London time. Roger and Bob were on the line, and Nick felt rather fearful, in case he had messed up the effects. However, they only wanted to ask if he could record two or three kids singing some lines from ‘Another Brick In The Wall’ in a rather pathetic voice. Nick said, ‘Of course’ but also remembered a favourite album by Todd Rundgren, which featured an audience in each of the stereo channels. He suggested recording a whole choir of children. Yes, he was told, but do the three kids too.