Mott/Gryphon

[Slipperman]

Holy Cow John!!!

I just checked your discog again and saw you engineered Mott the Hooples "Mott" record.

I'll bet you have a funny story or two about those sessions!!! I know those guys were not the most stable bunch. BTW. I absolutely love that record. I find it the most endearing of any they did for some reason I couldn't begin to explain.

ALSO.

Gryphon in the SAME YEAR huh? That musta been culture shock! Another record that made a big dent in my teenage noggin way back when for ENTIRELY DIFFERENT reasons...

So I guess my questions would be:

1.) Any stories about the making of those 2 discs?(would be greatly appreciated).

2.) Do you think rock music is as diverse a genre as it was 30 years ago both from a musical and production standpoint?


Best regards,

SM.

PS. Thanks for the kind and generous response in the BeBop thread.

[johnleckie]

Thats right. I was at Abbey Road and trying to get as many engineering jobs I could. I had to do Mott as I had all their records. We were in studio 3 and band producing themselves. We cut All Way From Memphis, Drivin Sister, with cranky EMI sound fx of car starting up and a few others. It was good fun and they loved it but went to AIR to finish. I remember them being real pro and Buffin's kit being biggest in size I'd ever recorded. We also got out the Maltese Cross guitar which was awesome and heavy.
Gryphon was produced by Mike Thorne who was an EMI house producer and also wrote for Studio Sound mag. We heard his job at EMI was to recommend what studios their bands should use, even though he hadn't made a record yet and EMI had its own studios full of talented engineers lying empty. He did Live At Roxy and later Soft Cell Tainted Love. We did most of sessions in big Studio 1 and mixed in 3. It was pretty quick and played live with 9ft Steinway and bassoon.
The answer to last question is yes. Its now more diverse and spread wide but somehow its all got diluted and predictable.
Cheers
JL