How did you originally come across the Astoria? Why a boat?
The boat was five minutes away from David's house, and it was for sale. So just out of interest, we went and had a look at it. When we drove away from it having been shown around, David turned around and said, "What do you think?" to me, and I said, "Well, I think it's fantastic." Then he said to Warrick, a friend of his who used to be the Floyd's personal roadie, "What do you think?" "I think you've got to buy it!" David said, "Yeah, what are we going to do with it?" And it was almost one of those Spinal Tap moments. It seemed, for what it was, a very inexpensive, fabulous place. David thought that it would be a good place; conducive to being creative and writing music.
Before that, David had had different home studios, but was currently living in a house where there wasn't room for a studio and his equipment was in storage. We were bowled over by what a wonderful place it was; not only the boat, but the riverbank grounds and buildings.
What kind of shape was the boat in? It obviously wasn't in the pristine shape that it's in now?
It was in pretty good condition. It was a beautiful, furnished houseboat, with a caretaker living on board. David thought he could use it for songwriting; he didn't have anywhere else available. David's brief was to get his equipment out of storage and put it in the large end room while he was away for six weeks in the summer. When he got back, we'd start doing some work. Well, having worked for the band for a while at that time, I thought, if I do that, they're going to want to change it, and I could see how it would work out better. I took it upon myself to change the plan somewhat. I converted the next room along, the master bedroom, into a machine room, where we put power amplifiers, all the tape machines, camera supplies and that sort of stuff. And I converted the room at the other end of the boat so it could be used as a live room if required, running mic lines, red lights, foldback, CCTV, etc. And then I had air conditioning systems put in the machine room and control room. The control room I had secondarily glazed. We had an old Soundcraft 2400 desk from David's old home studio. It was all right, but pretty noisy; too noisy, in my opinion, to put into a new place. I phoned David in Greece, and said "I want to change this desk to a DDA AMR 24 I've got a great deal, and a really good price." David was of course very reluctant over the phone to change the desk as he was very hands-on and knew how it worked. I assured him that the layout was fairly similar but it was actually much quieter with a cleaner signal path. So he said, "Okay." I had Nick [Whittaker] in to do some acoustic tests and design work for the room. I had to get it completed before David came back six weeks later. The logistics were unusual; I had to get a crane barge and a tug to get both the tape machines in through a window opening in to the master bedroom on the far side of the boat and the air conditioning unit for the control room on to the roof. The last two days of construction, I think I just stayed there, having barely slept at all, trying to get 20 workmen out of there who had been doing the whole installation getting in each other's way in a fairly confined space with desk installation, wiring, electric, woodwork, glazing, air con, CCTV, decorating, etc., with the floors up and all going on at the same time and I had to get the place finished and running to be ready for use. [laughs]
Did David know the scope of what you were trying to achieve while he was away?
No, I didn't tell him. The whole thing, including the desk, to put the air conditioning in, do secondary glazing, do the acoustic work, have things custom built such as racks and monitor stands, putting in the CCTV system, mic lines, wiring — it cost 50-60,000 pounds. With all things considered and the facility now available, it was very inexpensive, really. He flew back in from Greece and immediately came to the boat. He walked around, went up to the control room, walked round some more, came up the other end and found me. The only thing he said was, "Well, how much did it cost?" [laughs] And that was really the start of it all here. We then started work on the Momentary Lapse... album and everybody really liked being here. The whole thing worked very well. As time went on, the studio and grounds went through many different stages of being upgraded and changed.
So this was since 1986?
Yes.
Who did you involve getting the boat up to snuff? Did you get a serious team together?
