Early pic of me again. Eden.

When I was in my early teens and started to get the listening bug, I went on a huge British pop/rock spree. Records by Elvis Costello, Squeeze, Lene Lovich, The Undertones and the Nick Lowe/Dave Edmunds/Rockpile camp were some of my favorites. Then I noticed they all listed an engineer/producer named Roger Bechirian in the liner notes. Some of these albums were destined to become groundbreaking pop classics (Elvis Costello's Armed Forces, Nick Lowe's Jesus of Cool, Squeeze's East Side Story) and they all had an appealing, unfussy, clean, and natural sound that ran against the grain of the gated reverbs of the day. The recordings always sounded like an amazing band was playing tracks like their lives depended on it. The drums were clear and dry-ish, with a perfect combination of tone and impact. The guitars and vocals sounded loud and close. The bass lines always popped through the mix, without being cloudy. And keyboards served to support the song, never getting gimmicky. No small feat in 1981! "Tempted" by Squeeze is a prime example. Listen to that today and try to tell me it sounds dated. It doesn't. It's a great song, arrangement and performance committed to tape in a completely appropriate, timeless way.

Roger was kind enough to provide Tape Op with an extensive catalog of archival photos capturing some truly candid moments from the making of these classic records. Please enjoy them, as well as some additional conversation from our interview in print issue #90!

Pete, Bruce and EC at Ampro studios.

Steve Nieve with me making adjustments to monitoring.
Control room view of Rampart with the custom Neve.
Nick Lowe in the control room at Eden studios original studio 1 with Terry Williams (drummer) to his right.
Flaming Groovies session at Eden.
Undertones. Damiens birthday cake at Eden studios, with Mickie. (My mum made the cake!)
Rare photo of Jake Riveria - (at the time manager to Lowe, Costello, me) dropped by to the studio to wish Damien happy birthday.
Dave Edmunds at the desk, Eden.
Nick Lowe makes an entrance, obviously just nailed a take!
Nicks usual stance to listen to a take playback.
Nick Lowe.
Steve Goulding drum setup.
Custom Phillips desk at Wissellord Studios A.
Wissellord Studios B, drum setup - Undertones.
Graham Parker, Eden.
Me taking a break while the above work out parts. Looks like I'm about to say something...

Terry Williams, drum setup for Dave Edmunds session. AKG 451 in snare and overheads, U87 on toms and D25 on kick.

Looking back into the studio at Eden.
Nick always played his bass in the control room and from his chair. Terry looks on.
George Peckham, aka Porky Prime Cut. Mastering Elvis Costellos Armed Forces.
The original desk configuration was 20 channels with a 16 track Ampex.
Me producing at Wissellord, Undertones. Has Ronson stolen my look?
Looking into the studio from the drum stage, at Wissellord.
Studio setup at Wissellord for the Undertones.
Me working on the Philips desk.
Look at the patch bay, no gpo or bantams for the Dutch. They used those large video spec plugs for studio to control room and machine tie lines
Room setup for Costello.

The building of Eden. Within the warehouse shell you can see the control room being built up. The workman is in what became firstly an office, then a tape and mic store room.

Entrance into the building site. The cabin on the left is where, for over a year, we built the desk!
Davy Jones and Peter Tork, Cherokee Studios B.
Inside the cabin, with the desk being assembled.
Me and Pete Marsh, singer with Blanket of Secrecy, at Rockfield.
Peter Tork, studio A Cherokee.
Micky, Peter and Davy, on one of the rare occasions they were together in the studio.
Me on the phone, just opened Eden, circa '73?
Me at AmPro.
Me at Rockfield, Trident TSM.
Me tuning drums. I'm pretty good!
Outboard on mixing session, studio B Cherokee B.
Carlene Carter working with me at Ampro Studios, note the pics of her then husband, Nick Lowe, behind her.
I used this thing as my click to send to bands who were not quite good enough at staying in time!
Jake at Rockfield, just after listening to Blanket of Secrecy monitor mixes. "It's a hit!"
You can see the Ampex, Dolby rack and the ubiquitous Revox tape delay machines on the right.
Rockfield, "Is there enough top on that?"
One of the two 3M 24 track machines, and their 1/4"
Nice pic of Steve Nieve of the Attractions at Ampro.
Steve and Bruce working something out at Ampro.

My favourite speaker at the time. Rockfield still has them, and they are surprisingly good.

Around 1986 you produced The Monkees' comeback album called Pool It...

This is not one of my favorite stories. [laughter] Yes. Disastrous. The record label and I had an idea to sort of recreate the shaky garage band sound that they kind of had from the '60s. The band, especially Davy Jones, wanted a very polished, middle of the road record. It was a constant tugging of the two. I was getting flack from the label because it wasn't what they wanted to hear and I was getting flack from the band because they wanted to go another way. 

Was this the original four? 

Mike Nesmith wouldn't partake, very sensibly. Actually Micky Dolenz was great. He was living in England at the time. He actually called me out of the blue. "Hi, this is Micky Dolenz. Can I come over?" What in the heck? I grew up with these guys and their TV show. I was like, "Heck, you can come over now!" [laughter] He and Davy Jones showed up one day and had coffee in my home. They'd heard the Squeeze album, East Side Story. Micky loved it and wanted to make a record like that. I thought I could see it, but we made an album that was really middle of the road. Davy Jones brought in all these schmaltzy ballads. The sessions ended with us having a big row in the studio one late afternoon. Davy was calling me every name under the sun. I really lost it. I told him to get out of my studio. Anyway, there were two songs on the album that could've been big hits. "Heart and Soul" was one. The other was a version of a Wreckless Eric song ["(I'd Go The) Whole Wide World"]. The album was not great.

Did they play on it?

Yeah, Micky played some drums and some guitar, although we had session drummers and whatnot. You know who was good? Peter Tork was an amazing multi-instrumentalist. I had no idea! He had a bunch of songs that would've made a great album. But of course they wouldn't have it — Jones wouldn't have it. Peter was great. I was really, really taken with him. He was full of life and had loads of ideas. He'd had a really rough time since they broke up, but he'd really come out of it all. He still plays around New York. The record came out but it bombed. There was a single that did fairly well, but they lost opportunities. It was distributed through Rhino; they lost a lot of money, which is a shame. It was a chance for me to work with childhood heroes, which is something that probably shouldn't be done. It's like actors — you love them on screen, but you really don't want to know about their private lives. It ruins the myth. That was definitely the shame about it. 

How do you approach listening to music recreationally when you work so closely to it? And what have you been listening to lately that you've been particularly digging?

It's hard! I find it really difficult. I tend to listen to stuff as I'm working in my office. I make mental notes as I listen. If something really takes me, I'll follow up on it. The last Radiohead and Kings of Leon albums, in particular, are great sounding albums. Nigel Godrich is very good.

Do you have any favorite mastering engineers?

Bob Ludwig, certainly. He's one of my heroes!

He's a busy guy. [laughter]

Yes, a busy guy and very expensive! But it just sounds fantastic.

He's able to make loud records that you can actually turn up louder with no problem. 

I know. It's fabulous. I also like Stephen Marcussen's work. Another American mastering engineer. He's the one for me right now. Chris Parmenides at Unity Mastering Studio is my go-to guy in London.

You've dabbled in mastering, right?

Yeah, I tinker. But I like to leave it to the guys who do it for a living. Mastering is becoming more and more important. That's why you can play things as MP3s and...

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