My Exciting Life In ROCK (part 1): In The Studio

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If you've kept a close eye on the dates for the last few entries you might have noticed that there were suddenly less gigs going on. You would be CORRECT to think this, and there were several reasons for the sudden Rocking Downturn, not least of which was the fact that I had started COURTING! And let me tell you ladies, when I am courting, I go to COURT!

Does that sound sexy or just weird? I can never tell.

Anyway, there were plenty of other Other Things taking up my time too - for instance, I absolutely HAD to go JAPAN for a week on Work Business to do a webpage. You may not know this, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to do a webpage without being in the actual physical offices of the people who own it, and there is certainly NOBODY in Japan who knows about that sort of thing. My boss was quite surprised to hear this, but agreed that, in that case, I should go over and help out. I thought I was DEAD CLEVER until it turned out our flight was on the VERY DAY that Afghanistan was invaded by the USA. On the plus side, I DID get a whole row of seats to myself, though remember realising that the only other person nearby was a NUN, and suddenly saw the news reports saying "Even... a NUN... was caught in the cross fire" just as we DIRECTLY ABOVE THE BATTLEZONE.

More happily I also went to see two great British Legends: the Loch Ness Monster and David Essex. Both of them were disappointing. One had a massive museum dedicated to whether they were real or not, the whole THRUST of which was "No. It isn't. It's probably a STURGEON" (although there weren't many cuddly STURGEONS or STURGEON mugs on sale in the gift shop), whilst the other did disappointingly flat versions of the Old Classics and a LOT of terrible new material. But which was which? CLUE: when I went to see David Essex I a) didn't buy any merchandise and b) got EJECTED from the AUDITORIUM for standing up - ROCK AND ROLL!

The MAIN thing that was going on, however, was recording sessions for our second album. That's right - we had a SABBATICAL from LIVE WORK in order to concentrate on THE STUDIO, and it was BLOODY GRATE! The sessions for what would become "This Is Not A Library" took a long long time because I'd decided that THIS time around if there was a sound I wanted then I would GET it, and not give up just to make things go a bit quicker. This led to a LOT of overdubs - one time I was asking our Engineer/Producer Mr Kev Reverb if he didn't think the electrical guitar was a bit quiet. "No", he said, "I think it's just being hidden by the acoustic guitar. And the lead guitar. Also the bass, drums, 3 violin tracks, 3 backing vocal tracks, the lead vocal and the EUPHONIUM."

Kev was BRILLIANT throughout these lengthy sessions, and his immense PATIENCE was an inspiration. He put up with ANYTHING I could throw at him, especially my singing. "I think you have set yourself a challenge there" was one of his MANY codes for "bloody hell, NO", and once he even ended up having to SING one of the BALLADS for me, like a GRUNGE SINATRA, so I could copy the Proper Notes.

His GRATEST moment came when we recorded "One Last Party", the EPIC track that was to become the album closer. In my MIND I saw this as performed on a parade ground by a MASSIVE marching band, accompanied by The Women's Royal Naval Service, a Welsh Voice Choir and hundreds of schoolchildren so, in accordance with the new RULES, that's what we set out to record.

I explained to Kev that we'd need to record the sound of hundreds of people marching and he looked at me long, hard, and silently. It was a look I knew meant (because he'd VERBALISED it enough times) "For fuck's sake Hibbett", but which was always followed by ACTION. After a lengthy pause he said "Right. I've got a bit of marble I like to use for that sort of thing" and out of the Cupboard of Unusual Equipment came a huge slab of marble which did indeed make it sound like a huge CROWD when we marched on it.

We double tracked EVERYTHING for that song, including huge banks of us all singing in various silly voices to sound like WRENS, xylophones, trumpets and euphonium and... well, you get the idea. The night we did that was also Emma's first night in the studio with us, so I guess everything since may have been seemed a bit calm, which was lucky really as a LOT of other sessions involved my Phil Spector-ish Record Production style: opening the door and shouting "Do it again, but LESS SHIT." In my defence I had just started drinking STELLA and as soon as I realised this was happening I STOPPED, but not until I had leaned through and shouted the above at Emma, who was eight months pregnant at the time.

The guilt has not diminished over time.

Other little bits of the sessions stick in the mind, like Tom FEEDING BACK on his electronic violin for the first time and not realising what it was, or him and Rob being physically restrained from doing Harmonies when they were supposed to be shouting, or the night we spent an HOUR getting Emma to sing ONE LINE a certain way and, when she did, me and Kev looking at each other and doing THE NOD, like you see in FILMS, when The Producer thinks "It's a HIT!"

There were plenty of other reasons, apart from The Quest For Perfection, that prolonged the sessions. Kev's studio was part of a complex whose reception staff were PUNK KIDS - not OLD PUNKS, who are THE MOST RELIABLE PEOPLE YOU WILL EVER MEET, but annoying teenage "punks" who think The UK Subs were the best band EVER and have pierced ELBOWS, and feel that WRITING DOWN a BOOKING in THE BLOODY BOOKING BOOK is, like, boring, and who cares anyway? It got to the point where we'd book sessions in The Booking Book and then go upstairs to interrupt OTHER sessions to tell Kev himself.

There was also Kev's DELUXE ROADYING sideline - one time he rang me to say he couldn't do a session because, and I quote, "I've got to go and buy some Limes for Andy Williams." You can't really argue with that can you? The studio itself was slightly less deluxe, with several sessions seeing me and he CROWDED over a single heater in the control room whilst a BEGLOVED Tom froze in the live room, one time even BLOWING UP the electric socket. There were ACTUAL FLAMES! ROCK!

By the time it was all over I had read about five year's worth of Viz, the complete Alan Moore Swamp Thing and most of the Asterix Books, all of which lived behind The Disgustingly Stinky Sofa which became a second home to me, and we'd recorded an hour long MASTERPIECE of lunacy and ROCK KRAZINESS. I thought a few people would like it and, eventually, I'd be proved right, but there were a LOT of ridiculous gigs to get through first.

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