XTC anecdotes?

[juniorhifikit]

Hi John,
XTC were a huge influence for me as a teenager. White Music and Go2 were in constant rotation and Andy's angular playing was especially influential. It's a shame Andy stopped touring, but I'm glad I got to see them live supporting the Police. Do you have any anecdotes you can share about working with XTC?

[juniorhifikit]

I just wanted to bump this up top and hopefully get a few words about XTC before you go!

[feyshay]

Also, there was the stuff from the Dukes of Stratosphear. Was that related to a license issue or was XTC wanting to do something different without having it with the XTC name.
I vaguely recall (although I'm not at home), that John Leckie worked with the Dukes, no?
Great stuff.

[johnleckie]

Hi Juniorhifikit
Sorry about delay in responding on XTC. Leaving the best to last..
Yes XTC are my favourite group I've worked with. Sessions often finished with stomach pains from laughing so much cos there was always plenty of wit flying around! They were excellent musicians and every track I did with them was exciting to do and I dont think we ever had a bad day. White Music (originally band wanted to call it Black Music but Virgin said no because it would be too confusing to the buyers..) was done at Manor Studios (Helios/Ampex/Eastlake Acoustics) in two weeks including mixes. I was still on staff at Abbey Road and bunked off for two weeks hols as EMI engineers at time could not be hired out. The band were in on mixing including extra tracks like Fireball XL5. This was all hands on desk and no automation etc. When the record company heard mixes they said there nothing wrong with them but you must have rushed it having done all that work, so go mix it again. So I mixed the whole thing once again alone in 5 days at Advision downstairs (Quad 8 desk) and thats the record. Go2 was done at Abbey Road 3 because we were originally booked in as first session in Townhouse 1 but couldn't start on time due to technical problems installing the big red Helios. The band were tight and inventive and always had unique parts going on. I did no rehearsal with them, they just came in and off we went. The fun part of Go2 was making Go+ which was the 'dub' ep with the lp. We took 5 tracks and turned them inside out to make them as unrecognizable from the original. Some severe stuff going on and all done with a certain sense of playfulness and humour. Me and Andy continued the experiments on Mr Partridge: Lure of Salvage later known as XTC Explode. It was all tape manipulation and keyed gates cos thats all we had.
Check other posts for Dukes.
Cheers
JL

[juniorhifikit]

Thanks John! Big fan of both the Barry Andrews and Dave Gregory era's, as well as the Dukes. All in all, you're all over my record collection!