TO ALL THOSE WHO HAVE KINDLY PLEDGED THEIR MONEY TO BUY MY BOOK AND ALBUM. Although my book covers my time spent working at PWL, don’t forget I have been working in the music industry a long time and seen a lot of things. FYI The first 21 chapters of the book deal with my time in bands on the road, my time working at TMC Studios and my time working as the co-owner of The Workhouse Studios. I hope PWL fans will enjoy reading about all my pre PWL experiences; all of which are very interesting, very funny and explain how I came to end up at PWL. Here is another book snippet taken from period when I was at TMC Studios, around 1980. If you haven’t already done so, you can order my book and CD at the Pledge Music link below: pledgemusic/projects/petemixmasterhammond Bernie Proctor’s TMC Studios, Tooting, SW 17 - about 1980: TMC and I suddenly found ourselves extremely busy! New Musik, The Nick Straker Band, The Piranhas and the Lambrettas, all needed albums recorded A.S.A.P. Plus there was still the Reggae sessions and The Glitter Band demos to do. Once again I found myself working long hours, but still only earning £4.00 an hour from Bernie. Meanwhile Bernie was starting to see some considerable financial improvement. My work was filling the studio by day (and night a lot of the time) and Andy was now covering the Reggae sessions, plus doing some of the recording with Nick when I wasn’t available. Bernie was convinced that, like Motown, his studio had, “A Sound;” It was true…a crap sound! In fact, “The Sound,” that we had created was purely down to the musicians and the way I was using the gear. The reality of it was that I was constantly nursing along the ailing 16 track tape recorder and struggling to get clear, undistorted sounds out of the rubbish equipment – that was provided the multi-track hadn’t already chewed up the 2inch master tape! To add to my engineering problems, the mixer only had 20 channels with very basic, two-band, equalization (tone controls for the uninformed) per channel. I urgently needed more channels with four-band, parametric equalization. I was desperate to see the back of both Tape Machine and mixer, but especially the Tape Machine! I explained to Bernie that he would be able to charge a lot more per hour if he invested in a new 24-track machine and a more up-to-date mixer - he could always sell, or part exchange, the old equipment. I did some research and explained what I needed. The current volume of work, not to mention the scent of cash, motivated him and he started looking around for deals on new gear. A week or two later he called me into his office. “Eh hem, Peter,” he started, hoisting up his trousers yet again, “er, well the ole point is this: I’ve, managed t’get us a new 32 channel MCI mixer an’a new 24-track 3M multi-track, all on finance. I’ve part-exchanged the old mixer, but they didn’t want to know about the old 16-track. However, we’ve ad a bitta luck, guess wat? Glitter Band’s (he never called them, The Glitter Band) bass player, John Springate, is starting his own studio in Goodge Street, London. He wants to buy the old 16-track off us! We’ve agreed a price, on condition you’ll install it and look after it for him!” I could have murdered him; how could he do that to me? He knew how much I hated the thing! I was trapped. One the one hand, how could I tell John the machine was crap and no one wanted it? On the other hand, if I didn’t agree to install and maintain it for him I wasn’t going to get the new 24-track that I desperately needed? I reluctantly agreed, whilst wondering where I was going to find all the time…
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 13:06:57 +0000
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