your Abbey Road years

[brill bedroom]

John,

You're my favorite album credit! I'll buy any album with your name on the back and it's on all the ones in my top 10 that don't say George Martin. There's a spot in audio heaven saved for you just for the Dukes and the Posies.

Could you regale us with tales of your early years? I know you were at Abbey Road early on and worked with Lennon a bit, but not sure what period/albums. Is that where you got your start?

Thanks for doing this.

[johnleckie]

Hi Mr Brill Bedroom

Wow! Thats some praise. Thanks for the compliment.
I started at Abbey Road Feb 15th !970 after writing a letter and getting interview with Ken Townsend who was manager at the time. I already done a Film & TV course at college and was working in small dubbing theatre in West End London so I had bit of equipment operational training before I went in. I'm not a musician so although I'd been going gigs since I was 14 (Stones/Yardbirds/Who/JohnMayall/GrahamBond/Nice/Family/Floyd etc) I had never met a musician nor attempted to play instrument...so I had a lot to learn! First session that morning was Procol Harum and Edgar Broughton Band in afternoon. It was pretty full on after that working 7 days a week with lots of overtime so the later the sessions better for the pay packet. Worked on all types of sessions and was introduced to the world of classical music working on Beethoven Symphonies and lots of solo piano or violin. As tape ops if there was no urgent banding to be done and if a studio was free we could go to the library in the disused squash court of a block of flats opposite and select four or even eight track tapes that hadn't been mixed stereo and do our own mixes referencing the mono. I mixed Cilla Black, Gerry and Pacemakers, Johnny Kid and Pirates and many Freddie and Dreamers B sides in stereo often in Room 65 (the four track reduction room). First summer was spent tape oping for Phil McDonald on George Harrison's All Things Must Pass with Mr Spector who was always screaming for "more tape echo!" and millions of musicians in the room all going down to eight track. Later I was with Phil and Phil again with John and Yoko. I did the edit on Working Class Hero. Can you hear it? I did all the edits on Yoko's album! Got to end of first year Phil McDonald asks if I'll come down to Ascot to John's new studio at the house and tape op album that would become Imagine. I'd already booked myself in to do a month of Pink Floyd which would become Meddle so I missed Imagine. At Abbey Road you still had to be in 9am Monday morning to do banding or tape op Bob Gooch on classical session even after a week of nights with Pink Floyd or Roy Harper. One of tedious tape ops job was being on a 9 to 5.30 week of Classical Playback in Room 42 or 43 which are at front of building facing car park so you could always daydream out the window and watch the weather change. The job entailed playing back quarter inch classical masters, often on split reels, on old BTR4 tape machines with dangerous rewind. The producer would ask for Take 83 from huge pile of tapes and you had to spool it, find it, play it. Then, "Take 43" and you'd have to find it. Every take was announced before the start and a 50Hz tone was recorded over the announcement so you could hear it as it went spooling past. The producer couldn't handle master tapes and there were no copies done as no cassettes or CDs so this was the only way of listening. The producer would follow on score and provide editing instructions for an expert team of tape editors who'd put it all together and next week you'd have to listen to it all again. I lot about music and scores and listening.
So that was early years. I still had to do tape op duties as I progressed and got more sessions as balance engineer.
Cheers
JL

[costis]

Amazing story. Thanks for sharing John. I am sure your story can inspire every 'runner' or assistant in the studio business.

Costis