Stir It Up - Sessions & Solo:

When Bronco folded, I took a bit of a break – actually, thinking back, it was probably only a few weeks; I was writing stuff and hanging around Island’s offices and studios which, at that time, were still housed at Basing Street.

Notwithstanding the fact that Island’s offices were housed above the studios, Basing Street was something of a melting pot for musicians; part home-from-home and part the place to record at that time. Set within an old deconsecrated church in Notting Hill, it was as state-of-the-art as it gets.

Phill Brown - who started out as a tape-op at Olympic Studios in November 1967, working under Glyn Johns and Eddie Kramer and with artists such as the Rolling Stones, the Small Faces, Traffic and Jimi Hendrix was one of the house-engineers between 1970 and ’76 and recalls: ‘In Studio Two, from '70 to '73, we had the first Helios desk, originally built for Olympic by Dick Swettenham. In fact, Island was all Helios, as was the mobile studio, the Stones' mobile and the Who's Ramport. The original Helios in Studio Two was 24 in and eight out, whereas when they brought in the next model in late '73, early '74, it was 32 in and 16 out’.

‘Helios, Cadac and Trident were all very similar during that era — just beautiful desks — yet they didn't have a lot of effects: two echo sends and maybe two foldbacks. That's all we had, so mixing was always about plugging in particular sounds from particular tracks. We didn't have aux sends where you could send every channel to all kind of things, and we therefore had to think ahead about what we were going to do. The Helios was a lovely desk for two people to operate in a mix environment on 16-track. Once it got to 24-track, things got hairy, but 16 was perfect.

‘A lot of what we did was down to miking technique and getting sounds in the room that we liked or we wanted. Rather than change it later, you had to be pretty close to what you wanted to have on the record. We used largely the same mics from session to session. I guess we had our favourites and know that Tony Platt and Richard Digby Smith — who tw of the other house engineers — both fancied Shure 57s and the old Electrovoice RE20s. They weren't the conventional mics, but they were getting great results. The monitors in Studio Two were 15-inch Tannoy Red drivers inside Lockwood cabinets suspended from the ceiling, while the tape machines were a 3M 24-track, 3M 16-track and an Ampex eight-track that was used to make transfers.

A list of albums recorded at Basing Street reads like a who’s who of stellar recordings from not just that era but throughout modern musical history - not only Island acts such as Traffic, Free, Bad Company, Robert Palmer, Spooky Tooth, King Crimson, Mott The Hoople, Roxy Music, Sparks and Cat Stevens but also Led Zeppelin IV, The Rolling Stones - who were ensconced in the studio at the same time as Bob Marley; indeed, Marley also lived for nearly a year in a flat above the studios. Queen’s We are the Champions was recorded there as was the cathedral organ part on George Micheal's Faith; The Clash recorded there as did Pet Shop Boys, The Eagles, Depeche Mode and Paul McCartney while Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Relax, Radiohead’s Amnesiac & OK Computer and Madonna’s Music all came straight-outta Basing Street. However, perhaps the most famous session of all took place on November 25th, 1984 between 11am and 7pm when Band Aid’s Do They Know Its Christmas was spawned.

At this point, I was occasionally sitting in on other peoples sessions and it was around this time that I worked with Carol Grimes on her album 'Warm Blood' (Carol lived pretty close to Basing Street) and I also contributed to the Keef Hartley album 'Lancashire Hustler'. 

Richard Digby Smith and I would occasionally record bits and pieces at night in one of the studios if it wasn't being used. Amongst other things, we recorded 'Ferry Cross' which was eventually used on my first solo album. 

When the time arrived to start recording proper for my album, CB introduced me to John 'Rabbit' Bundrick. He originally hailed from Texas and had been touring Europe with Johnny Nash - they'd eventually tipped-up in London and Rabbit had a mind to make it his home. 

The tour had come about since Nash had scored throughout Scandinavia with Bob Marley's song Stir It Up; Bob himself was back in Jamaica at the time working on the basics for what was to become The Wailers’ first Island album - the legend that would become 'Catch A Fire' still (at this point) to be delivered from Jamaica to be textured and mixed at Basing Street.

CB thought Rabbit and I would work well together and so we started recording probably three nights a week for several weeks. 'Diga' was engineering and Rabbit played keyboards, sang back-up and was the official producer. The songs were country / folk tinged - in fact, not a million miles from the Bronco template.

A lot of musicians played on those sessions and I regret to say that I can't remember all of them... but I do remember that Barry Dransfield, a very fine folk fiddler, played on a couple of songs as did steel guitar player BJ Cole. I’m pretty sure that the Fairport’s Dave Mattacks would have drummed as did Free’s Simon Kirke. Pat Donaldson - another from the Fairport camp - definitely played some bass. There must have been guitar players, I think Jerry Donahue was one and me... oh, I strummed acoustic guitar. 

Anyway, when it was all done, we had about eight or nine songs and Rabbit and I played the mixes to CB.

He didn't say he didn't like them but he did say that he thought that the direction of the music was not right for me. 

So it was back to the Drawing Board!

That material may be tucked up and snoring on a shelf somewhere or the tape may even have been re-used. Sad to say that I don't even have a cassette of rough mixes and so I couldn't say whether any of it was up to much. 

I did a bit more drifting, more guesting on other artists records and, generally, shifted my musical gaze away from Folk and back to Blues and Soul. 

I was invited to join a couple of bands - one of which was with Wayne Perkins, Trace (the bass) and Yan (the drummer) who had been members of Smith, Perkins and Smith, an American band that Island had signed. We hung out together a lot and talked about music but never really got down to making any.

Smith Perkins and Smith, in fact, recorded just the one Island album (released in 1972) and toured England at the same time on a quasi-package bill that also featured Free, Fairport Convention, Uriah Heep and Vinegar Joe. Their eponymous album featured Wayne Perkins (guitars); Steve Smith (keyboards); Tim Smith (piano / guitars) along with the (already legendary) Muscle Shoals musical-heavy-squad of Barry Beckett (keyboards); David Hood (bass) and Roger Hawkins (drums) - the latter three would go on to become key players during Traffic’s ‘middle period’ while Wayne Perkins would add (at the time) uncredited guitar licks to Marley’s Catch A Fire.

I also played some music with Chris Stainton, the late Jimmy McCulloch and Mick Feat - a band was proposed but nothing came of it. 

That band eventually became Tundra and featured all of the above together with Henry Spinetti (drums). They released just the one album - entitled Glen Turner’s Tundra on Goodear Records (following Turner replacing McCullouch leaving to join Wings in 1974). Stainton, of course, was a world-renowned session player and fresh out of the Grease Band - Joe Cocker / Mad Dogs and Englishmen circus and would later go on to work with Eric Clapton et al; Mick Feat had arrived from US combo, Runner and McCulloch, formerly of Thunderclap Newman and Stone The Crows, died aged 26, from a heroin overdose in London during 1979.

Then… I hooked up with Philip Chen, an old friend from back in the Alan Bown days - he was perenially out on the road with Jimmy James & The Vagabonds. Phil was and is a magnificent bass player his idols being the likes of James Jameson, Chuck Rainey and Willie Weeks. So… I teamed up with some of the musicians that he'd been playing with and had recommended, and booked a couple of sessions in Basing Street.

The first two songs we recorded were On Broadway and I'm On Your Side.

With those two under my belt the time had come to play them to CB.

This time his face lit up. 'Fantastic!' he said.

CB drafted in Harry Robinson to write some string charts - which he did magnificently.

Harry Robinson had a pedigree as long as anyone’s arm - he was formerly the musical director of the BBC’s Six-Five Special and ITV’s Oh Boy! as well as a score composer of note, his credits including Hammer House Of Horror’s bodice-ripping yarns: Countess Dracula, Twins Of Evil, The Ghoul, The Vamoire Lovers and Lust For A Vampire as well as - at that time - scoring for Sandy Denny, Nick Drake,, Spencer Davis Group and Marianne Faithfull.

He (Chris) was now firmly behind the mixing console with 'Diga' engineering and in no time at all both of these song were mixed and finished off. 

Still, nothing ever runs that smoothly and following an invitation from The Doors’ Robbie Krieger and John Densmore to 'come and say hello' - On Broadway and I'm On Your Side remained in their box on the shelf marked ' Unreleased Jess Roden' for about another 10 to 12 months.