You started off as a tape op at Olympic?
Yes, in 1967. My brother, Glyn, who was, like, the first freelance engineer in England, ended up doing a lot of work at Olympic and got me an interview there. I was lucky to start off at Olympic because it was extremely popular with rock 'n' roll bands. In the course of a week there would be sessions with Joe Cocker, Jimi Hendrix, Manfred Mann, Mick Jagger producing something. At the same time during the day there would be orchestral sessions because they did a lot of movie soundtracks. I learned a lot from that, too.
Did you move quickly to engineering?
Yes. Now it's awful. I see guys now — they're janitors, then they're assistant engineers after a year or something and then they can stay doing that forever and ever and ever. Back when I started it was, "Hello", sit in on a session and then in two days they were putting you on dates. There wasn't as much to know back then and the engineer did a lot of the patching and stuff, where nowadays assistant engineers really do everything, which is fine with me! So, as soon as they saw you could get away with it, they'd put you on sessions as an engineer. Back then when new clients called up they wouldn't ask for a specific engineer, they'd just book time. They would show up and you would say, "Hello my name is __ and I'm your engineer," and they were none the wiser. Then, if you impressed them they would ask for you again. So, because the competition wasn't very strong back then, within a year of me starting to do engineer sessions I had a pretty solid clientele. I had already done some pretty big bands — Blind Faith and Humble Pie — so I was able to go out on my own and make a little bit of money, which was great at 19 years old — to have some cash. At 19 you don't have any responsibilities, but then I spent 360 days of the year in the studio!
So you didn't have much social life...
The only people I met were people at the studio. In fact, my first wife, I married her because she was about the only girl I saw for two years! She was the receptionist at a studio, so that's how glamorous it all was!
It's funny you say that, because one could credit you and your brother for making engineering a glamour profession!
Well, let's not forget Uncle Eddie Kramer as well! He made sure that he was noted. When I came along they had just started putting the engineer's name on album covers. Because, as much as anything, of Sgt. Pepper's... The general public realized there was a lot of hocus-pocus that went on in the studio and it kind of validated that part of the profession, and you got your name on the record and you didn't have to ask. But I used to like to get my picture on, too, if possible. That's how awful I was back then!
Did you meet Eddie Kramer at Olympic?
Eddie Kramer sort of trained me on the Axis: Bold as Love sessions. And he was somewhat of a taskmaster. But I learned a lot from him. Eddie is very clever.
Now, did you work on Physical Graffiti together?
Well, no.
You're both in the credits...
The reason I'm on there is probably the reason Eddie is too. They [Led Zeppelin] were working with Ron Nevison at this point. I'd had my falling out with them but there was stuff left over from previous sessions. There were two or three tracks that were credited to me as engineer but they were probably from the third or fourth album. Maybe they did work with Eddie in New York.
I heard a rumor you did a mix of Tommy at the age of 19.
No, I'd been actually engineering things for about three months and I hadn't got a clue. Kit Lambert shows up wanting me to mix "Pinball Wizard". I put the tape up and it didn't sound very good. The studio that I worked at, you know, sometimes the tape didn't sound very good because sometimes you take a tape from one place to another and its not compatible. So I put Tommy up and it didn't sound very good and I said, "This is ghastly work! Who did this? I can do much better. Bring the band tomorrow and we'll see what a real engineer can do!" or something dreadful like that. [laughs] And they showed up the next day, and it was the worst session I've ever done. I couldn't get a sound on fucking anything! It was a total and utter nightmare. And then it started snowing and we all got snowed in. While we were waiting for them to dig us out, I was the butt of all the jokes. So that was a good learning experience about ego and how you shouldn't do things when you don't know what you're talking about! I did little bits with them later — Keith Moon liked me so he'd row me in on a few things — but The Who were my brother's territory.
But you worked with your brother a lot.
Yeah, there were several albums from about '69-'73. I would do some and he would do some. That's how it was back then.
What kind of gear are we talking about in the Olympic era?
