Prior to 2012, brothers Howard and Guy Lawrence were, by their own admission, best described as just one of many up-and-coming electronic dance outfits, but their act, Disclosure, was about to go global…

During their latter school years, Howard and Guy had both studied music and music technology, but had different influences.

Guy was in thrall to the classical greats, particularly JS Bach and Debussy, but also developed a passion for Detroit-based production and rap. Meanwhile, Howard was drawn to funk and soul for his own listening pleasure.

Armed with a copy of Logic Pro, the two brothers started deconstructing tracks that they had heard, creating their own unique sonic brand with further influence from Detroit techno, garage and 2-step.

It was to prove a mighty combination, particularly when combined with their meeting a then-barman and part-time singer called Sam Smith.

Their first collaboration proved it to be a winning partnership. The single Latch launched all involved into the stratosphere. Its success made the Disclosure brothers major players, both in their own right and as hired hands for remixing and production duties. Sam Smith fared fairly well too, launching an incredibly successful solo career.

One of the most extraordinary facts about Latch is that the entire track was produced and created using Logic Pro, and for the most part, Logic plugins.

That means Logic compressors, Logic synths, Logic delays…you get the idea!

As Guy explained via the Disclosure YouTube channel, this feat proves that you can make a hit using just the core content from a package like Logic. Some users can be a little ‘snobby’ about bundled DAW plugins, but let’s be honest: when put to work by professional users, they’re as good as anything else.

The drums of Latch are a case in point; Guy’s drum production weapon-of-choice was the exceptionally flexible drum plugin called Ultrabeat. A drum synth of sorts, Ultrabeat allows the creation of unique drum sounds, using on-board oscillators and modulatory architecture, with the added capacity to employ samples.

The kick drum is generated by an oscillator within Ultrabeat. The snare and claps alternate within the song (snare on beat two, claps on beat four) and are both sample-orientated, but still triggered within Ultrabeat.

“We thought Latch was too weird for the radio and not clubby enough for the clubs,” Guy told Billboard “It’s in 6/8 time — not even 4/4, which is house’s tempo.”

There are also lots of strange and unique sounds, which Guy played around with in order to make them more unique. Some of this was just simple transposition, but nonetheless, it moves a sample away from its original form, giving it an entirely fresh quality.

While Ultrabeat provides its own onboard sequencer, all the drum sounds were triggered over MIDI, in the context of Logic’s main arrange page.

The drums were then treated, both individually and as a bussed sum, with nothing more than Logic’s own compressor plugin, although some other plugins have been adopted, such as the Logic Space Designer reverb; this convolution reverb plugin provides the long reverberated tail for one of the claps, thanks to the stock ‘Gymnasium’ setting, which was further tweaked to Disclosure’s taste.

The carefully conceived rises and falls work to create the impact of the climaxes and the rising intensity of the builds.

For this, Guy used a humble Korg Monotron - a synth of sorts which is so cheap, it may well have been a Christmas stocking present one year!

Essentially just an oscillator in a small box, it is responsible for the pitch tremolo sound that we hear just before we hit the chorus.

Moving to the sample domain, the classic opening vocal sample, is often described as the word ‘Never’. It's actually culled from Fairplay by Zed Bias, and is a stretched form of the word ‘Another’. Who knew?

One area of the song that has often been the subject of intense debate online is the overall key of the song, as well as descriptions of the chords.

The brothers were even slightly confused about this themselves, which is hardly surprising, because there is a lot to unpick. So, they got in touch with musical supremo Jacob Collier to get his view. He came back to them, revealing that the song was in the key of ‘Banger’!

Nice compliment, but not much use!

The brothers seem convinced that the song is in F minor, however there is an association between this key and Bb minor, which is the overall key that we will put our money on if we had to hazard a guess for a diatonic home.

This isn't based on speculation, but the fact that while much of the song doesn't have a bassline or sound (which would provide some very useful clues about key and tonality) when the bass sound does appear in the chorus, it always returns to Bb, with a familiar pull toward a II-V-I cadence point, which is a time-honoured device that has been used for many hundreds of years, from Bach to the Beatles!

The use of Cb in the bass line, at the end of each 4-bars in the chorus, could be considered a replacement for chord V (Fm), using a technique drawn from jazz described as tritone substitution. As the name suggests, the note Cb is a substitute for F, which is a tritone away.

Turning our attention to the chords, and particularly the chords in the verse section, this is far more complicated to describe.

Thanks to Guy’s video breakdown, we are able to see the exact notes being played on a MIDI grid, which (in preparation for this article) we took the time to notate, in the hope that we could shed some light.

The chords themselves were written by Howard, and – by his own definition – are unplayable. He composed them while placing Logic in Cycle mode, and playing around with notes-on-screen, moving them around, until he had something that he felt was unique and exceptional. We have to agree, although the important ingredient here is that there are lots of note clusters.

Using a fairly broad brushstroke, we could describe the four chords in the verse as: Bbm7 - Fsus7 - Ab69 (no 3) - Gbsus#4 add9. Phew!

“We’re trying to bring class and soul into the songwriting … using jazz chords that have emotion instead of boring, stabby EDM triads,” Howard said to Billboard. “You can play Latch in a massive nightclub or cover it in a jazz ensemble”

However, and we need to make this very clear, there are so many notes in these chords, it’s difficult to place them all in a concise chord symbol setting, so if you were going to try and replicate this tune, you would want to notate it perfectly on a score, rather than rely just on chord symbols, simply for accuracy. However, this could be considered a starting point. It's important to note that this is not to be regarded as gospel! As with so much music theory, it is open to debate.

One thing that we can say for sure though, is that we love the lusciousness of the pad synths that are playing these chords, particularly as the filter gradually opens up during the build towards the chorus.

The sounds used here are a composite of two layers; firstly, they use the Logic synth plugin called ESP Polysynth. We have to say, this is one of our favourites too, despite being quite an old synth in the Logic arsenal. Its adopted architecture is very similar to a Roland Juno, which might also explain why it is doubled by a real Juno, both of which employ Logic’s Chorus plugin to thicken the texture.

One of the most surprising sounds in the track is the enormous bass sound which enters as we hit the chorus.

This probably won't come as a surprise now, but this sound is also generated by Logic’s ESP polysynth, albeit with a healthy dose of compression and sub. Once again, it just goes to show what you can do with basic plugins, and a little bit of creative inspiration.

Of course, we cannot leave this song without mentioning the exceptional vocal performance from Sam Smith. Captured using a fairly high-end microphone (Telefunken or Neumann, according to Guy), the vocal is tracked-up considerably as the song builds. It helps that Sam Smith has quite an exceptional vocal range, shifting into very high vocal territory, particularly during the chorus.

Given Disclosure’s obvious talents for writing and production, it was clearly a matter of time before they made it big, but Latch acted as a springboard. Its heavy radio and club play, coupled with YouTube and streaming popularity, secured Disclosure a position in the big leagues.

“We weren’t trying to make a hit, but it became one,” Guy said in a Twitch stream to fans. “I almost felt like I had impostor syndrome - people would be telling me how great the mix is, and how analogue it was, and in my mind I’m thinking… it’s definitely just Logic plugins.”

Although their cultural impact is sometimes understated, those who lived through the era remember that, from 1996 onwards, the Spice Girls were the dominant force in chart music. As Britpop lost its momentum, Sporty, Posh, Ginger, Scary and Baby Spice reminded millions of the joyful, life-affirming fun of pop.

But what some might have perceived as a carefully planned phenomenon was no contrivance. Without a series of tough decisions from the five, the Spice Girls might have been nothing more than a half-forgotten name, lost in an ocean of underperforming ‘90s pop acts.

Initially though, the assembly of the group that would become the Spice Girls was, in fact, entirely directed by the father-and-son management team of Bob and Chris Herbert.

Their company, Heart Management, was looking for a troupe of girls that could go toe-to-toe with the seemingly endless slew of boy bands that appeared to be popping up out of the ground every other week.

“At the time, boy bands saturated the market. The formula worked. Dad and our backer wanted to go down that route, but I wanted to reverse it,” Chris told Clic. “I thought a girl band – sassy, sexy and well put-together – could be more successful because it would appeal to female and male listeners. You’d double your audience.”

Uniformity wasn’t the objective. The Herberts planned to put together a team of girls that would each have a distinctive, standalone character and thus intrigue different sections of the market.

Eventually, after upwards of 400 hopefuls tried out for a place, the final selection of Geri Halliwell, Victoria Adams, Melanie Brown and Melanie Chisholm was locked in. Emma Bunton would replace the team’s initial pick of Michelle Stephenson as the fifth and final member.

Originally called Touch, the group would later be rechristened as Spice and then, eventually, the Spice Girls.

The five girls were all in. Moving in together to a three-bedroom house in Maidenhead just outside of London, the soon-to-be Spice Girls spent every day learning and revising a roster of pre-prepared songs and tightening up their dance routines.

Crucially though, the house-share forged an unbreakable friendship.

Being the oldest, Geri soon became the head of the household…

“[It] was lots of fun, albeit at times tricky,” Geri told Marie Claire. “I was the oldest at 22 and had already experienced living away from home, so the other girls probably found me to be quite bossy. Emma was the youngest at 18; she was like the little sister I never had, and I adored her immediately. Mel B and I became partners in crime, always getting into trouble together. Victoria and I had an equal, quite adult relationship. And Melanie C and I shared a childlike fascination for pop music and had big dreams of making it.”

Out of everything, it was this bond that was the most important outcome of the girls' time living together. They soon realised that their collective strength was more than a mere marketing ploy. And so, a formidable decision-making machine was born.

Before long, the five girls seized the reins themselves, and began to dictate to their management what they wanted from them.

The road to Wannabe began when the girls pushed Heart to put on a showcase for the industry, in the hopes of securing a label contract and reeling in new songwriters.

The showcase was held at Shepherd’s Bush’s Nomis Studios in December 1994. Fortuitously, songwriter and producer Richard 'Biff' Stannard - then riding high after the success of his recently-penned Steam for East 17 - was also at Nomis that day for a scheduled meeting with Jason Donovan.

Catching wind of the showcase, and being intrigued by the chaotic energy of Melanie Brown (aka Scary Spice), he was lured into Spiceworld…

“When I got there I bumped into Chris Herbert who was the Spice Girls’ original manager,” Stannard told Music Week. “Next thing I know, Mel B was there, like, ‘Who are you?’ and she jumped on my back, and that was it! I mentioned I’d done Steam and the girls all sang it, dragged me into a room and did a three-song set just for me [Laughs]. It was love at first sight. As a gay man, too, what I saw in them wasn’t sexual, which I think was refreshing for them.”

Stannard was besotted by the Spice Girls, and rushed to tell his songwriting partner Matt Rowe that he had landed their dream project. The girls were promptly invited to Stannard and Rowe’s studio at London’s Strongroom to start working on new material. It was here that the group’s explosive first single was penned.

The first song the group worked on was the R&B-leaning Feed Your Love. However, the girls began to feel that the track was too adult in tone to serve as their launch single. Biff would have to bring something fresher to the table…

Stannard had noted the girls’ fierce and unashamed confidence. After all, it was one of the very things that had sold them to him in the first place. Watching them closely across the three-day writing session, he began to understand that their friendship was core to what the Spice Girls were.

The launch single, he concluded, should express the unstoppable power of the five when united.

“I think the only pre-planned thing with Wannabe was wanting to represent them as a band as well as the essence of what they were: that fearless, headstrong, fantastically intimidating essence,” Stannard told The Telegraph. “They were outspoken, right from the start.”

With this in mind, Rowe and Stannard conjured a backing track to try something out with. With a relatively straightforward chord sequence in B major, a staccato, Summer Nights-inspired central piano riff was built atop a 110bpm drum loop sequenced on Matt’s Akai MPC3000. Presented to the girls, they were given carte blanche to work out their respective lyrics and vocal melodies.

“They made all these different bits up,” Rowe told David Sinclair for his 2004 biography Wannabe. “Not thinking in terms of chorus, bridge or what was going to go where - just coming up with all these sections of chanting and rapping and singing. And then we just sewed it together. Kind of a cut-and-paste method.” By all accounts, the writing of Wannabe's lyrics took under 30 minutes.

Wasting no time at all, Wannabe kicked off with the abrasively infectious ‘I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want’ section, welded to the jaunty riff. This tight, groove-driven intro then blossomed into the verse. A relatively stripped-back arrangement allowed the spotlight to be firmly held on the girls themselves.

As well as specifically introducing the five’s personalities and attitudes, the song expressed strongly the broader value of friendship over romance. The chorus stated directly to a prospective partner that their friendship was more important - and was something that no boy could get in the way of…

If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends
Make it last forever, friendship never ends
If you wanna be my lover, you have got to give
Taking is too easy, but that's the way it is

As a song, Wannabe did two things: it cemented that the Spice Girls were essentially a five-headed hydra – they were a singular entity that was, almost paradoxically, made up of unique but inseparable individuals. On top of that, the song had a message that would resonate strongly with children.

While the more teenage-angled end of pop and R&B was often too complex and perhaps too sexually-charged, 8-year-old girls (and boys!) could directly relate to Wannabe's straightforward expression of the value of friendship. After all, for kids, having loyal friends was the most important thing in the world.

It was also confidently female, and the very opposite of submissive. Here were five girls demanding prospective partners meet their requirements. The Spice Girls' adoption of the feminist slogan of 'Girl Power' as a central mantra (which the world would become very familiar with over the next few years) was imbued within the lyric.

As the song neared its conclusion, Mel B devised a rap which directly introduced the Spice Girls’ particular quirks and focused the lens of the song’s bigger theme directly onto this friendship group…

So, here's a story from A to Z
You wanna get with me, you gotta listen carefully
We got Em in the place who likes it in your face
You got G like MC who likes it on a
Easy V doesn't come for free, she's a real lady
And as for me, ha you'll see

“I think [the lyrics] of Wannabe were written in about 15 minutes, we were just dicking around and as soon as we heard it we were like ‘This is us,’” Mel C told Vevo. “It's an introduction to who we are as a band and the kind of chaos and mayhem that we create everywhere we go. So once we had that song we kind of knew we found our identity.”

By all accounts, the energy in the studio when making Wannabe was similar to the spontaneity of punk, as Stannard told The Telegraph, “It’s quite anarchic. There are a lot of critics who consider it a punk record because it’s quite wild, and the way it was recorded and written was like a punk song. It was in no way a contrived, crafted pop masterpiece that we sat down and specified. It was nothing like that – just a case of ‘these girls are bonkers and I love them. Let’s just record and listen and write a song and see what happens.’”

For the iconic ‘Zig-a-zig-ah’ line, Mel C told Billboard that “You know when you're in a gang and you're having a laugh and you make up silly words? Well we were having a giggle and we made up this silly word, zig-a-zig-ah. We were in the studio and it all came together in this song.”

Ahead of the completion of Wannabe, things were moving quickly behind the scenes. Growing industry buzz gave the girls the confidence to finally leave Heart Management and instead sign with artist manager Simon Fuller. Fuller was a shrewd tactician and, in July 1995, a five-album deal with Virgin Records was secured.

Virgin were sceptical, however, about the girls’ insistence that Wannabe should be their first single.

Its very unusualness – which would, in part, be a factor in its success – was too much of a gamble.

Perhaps a tweak to the mix would resolve their issues?

American producer David Way had a stab at remixing, but Way’s mix pivoted the track into R&B territory, far removed from the anarchic, stripped-back sound that the group had loved about the original demo. It was, in Halliwell’s words, “Bloody awful.”

Thankfully, Mark ’Spike’ Stent was able to corral the original mix into the version we now know and love.

“When they asked me to mix the Spice Girls’ Wannabe, others had already mixed it about five times,” Stent told Sound on Sound. “The problem was that the vocal balance hadn't been quite sussed. It's a very quirky pop record, and there's not a lot going on with it, and my work was all about getting the vocals to sound right. It was quite tough to do, even though it only took six hours."

Although still dubious, Virgin relented to overwhelming pressure from the group, held their breath, and put Wannabe out first.

They wouldn't second-guess them again.

“Wannabe was either a hit or a miss, love or hate. It would either do everything or nothing. We felt, well, if nobody likes it then we have got other songs up our sleeves, but that was the one we wanted to release,” Halliwell was quoted as saying in Spice Girls: Real Life, Real Spice.

“I don’t think the label understood Wannabe, they wanted something else as the first single but the Spice Girls’ deal meant they had creative control,” Stannard told Music Week. “That’s quite a profound bit of information that I don’t think has been mentioned an awful lot. But I always loved Wannabe. I’m always eternally proud of it, but I ended up worrying I was going to be defined by it. For a few years, I was literally having A&R people say, ‘We want Wannabe 2’ – that’s not A&R! What they meant was they wanted something unique and special.”

A key ingredient in Wannabe’s success was its immediately iconic, Johan Camitz-directed video, in which the girls terrorise the upper-class guests of the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras, London. The one-take video was the definition of chaotic. It showcased the punk-like ferocity of the Spice Girls unchained, and perfectly matched the song’s spirit.

“The idea for the video was to recreate the same energy and dynamism that we showed when we crashed into record companies and did the frenetic hard sell,” Geri said. “We invaded places and left people breathless. We had to bounce through the place singing Wannabe and sweeping away the cobwebs.”

Following its release on July 8th 1996, Wannabe would eventually top the charts in 37 countries, becoming the biggest-selling debut single for a girl group in chart history. Virgin breathed a sigh of relief, before going back to counting their earnings.

Selling seven million copies, Wannabe spent an incredible seven weeks at number one in the UK and four weeks atop the US charts. The Spice Girls had well and truly landed, and pop would never be quite the same again.

Wannabe’s enduring legacy has resulted in continual radio play in the three decades since its release, instantly recognisable as the Spice Girls’ signature song.

In 2014, research involving the University of Amsterdam and Manchester's Museum of Science & Industry ranked Wannabe as the most instantly recognisable song in its study. More than 12,000 participants took part in the Hooked On Music experiment, with listeners recognising the track in an average of just 2.29 seconds. Not bad for a song written in under 30 minutes. More information on how they were able to do that can be found here.

Thirty years on, and Wannabe is still as popular as ever.

“Wannabe was catching a moment and sharing it,” Halliwell told Marie Claire. “From the minute I met the other girls, I knew I had found my tribe. My passion for music and success was ignited and amplified; it was unified and strengthened with four other girls into world domination. We all had different strong points and personalities, yet we were so similar. This must be what girl power feels like.”

As one of his best-known compositions outside of The Police, 1993 track Fields Of Gold by Sting is a romantic pop ballad that showcases his more tender side.

It would serve as one of seven singles from his fourth solo album Ten Summoner’s Tales, which was recorded at Lake House – an Elizabethan country manor built for wealthy clothier George Duke in 1578. The tracks, featuring a core band of Dominic Miller on guitar, David Sancious on keyboards and Vinnie Colaiuta on drums, were then mixed at The Town House in London and then mastered at Masterdisk in New York.

The lyrics to Fields Of Gold were inspired by a house bought by Sting and the harmonious countryside surrounding it. The single was released the year after he married actress, director and producer Trudie Styler, who he would have four children with.

“So about 35 years ago, I did a cliché, ” he once told an audience from the stage. “English rockstar makes some money. I bought a little house in the English countryside. It was more of a castle, really. What’s nice about this house is that it’s quite close to Stonehenge.”

He continued: “The other nice thing about this house is that it’s surrounded by barley fields and at harvest time it looks like you are surrounded by a sea of gold. One day I thought, ‘You know what, there’s a song here’.”

In his 2007 book Lyrics By Sting, he explained that “there’s something inherently sexy about the sight, something primal, as if the wind were making love to the barley.”

He added: “Lovers have made promises here, I’m sure, their bonds strengthened by the comforting cycle of the seasons.”

In 2023 he told People magazine that he always thinks about “Trudie and the kids when they were younger when I sing that song”, describing it as “a lovely memory for me”.

He also explained how its romantic nature would often lead him to inviting a couple on stage to dance along during live performances.

The lyrics are semi-autobiographical – telling the story of a couple who fall in love so strongly that they “forget the sun in his jealous sky” and eventually “see the children run as the sun goes down”.

Some fans also believe the lyrics touch on the subject of death, with the narrator telling his lover that “you’ll remember me when the west wind moves upon the fields of barley”, as if to say their shared love is more powerful than life itself.

The song is in the key of D major and performed at around 104bpm. On his official website guitarist Dominic Miller confirmed he used a Guild Paloma nylon-string electro-acoustic for the recording, as well as a touch of chorus. The same guitar was also used on follow-up single Shape Of My Heart from the same album.

Miller’s higher-string arpeggios can be heard very faintly during the intro and then match the vocal melody after the second verse with a more pronounced space in the mix. The volume increases just after the two minute mark where Miller’s guitar effectively replaces Sting’s voice by delivering the main melody.

The guitarist also chose to rerecord the track for his 2017 solo album Silent Light and regularly performs the track live with his band.

“I have been playing Fields Of Gold in my solo set for a few years mainly because I like it and because it sits well in my repertoire,” Miller told All About Jazz in 2017. “Also I felt it was important to include a Sting song because my career has kind of been defined by that association so it's a way of acknowledging and thanking him.”

In a 1998 interview with Guitarist magazine’s David Mead, Miller admitted that he was “playing more with fingers now” because “it’s like you’re working the guitar” and ultimately “you get a better sound”.

He also added: “I think a nylon string cuts through much more than an electric. The only dilemma I have on stage is where to use nylon strings. I have to ask, ‘Does this song really need it? Am I just using it because this is what I do?’ I play it when I think it needs to be there.”

Despite becoming one of Sting’s most popular solo tracks, Fields Of Gold only reached No 16 in the UK charts and peaked at No 23 in the US.

The song’s influence, however, stretches far indeed – as demonstrated by cover versions from artists as varied as Eva Cassidy, Ellie Goulding, Katie Melua, Pink, Cliff Richard with Sir Barry Gibb and Michael Bolton as well as Tommy Emmanuel with Mike Dawes.

It was the best of times, it was the best of times. Truly. Spirits were high on the Starship as the Elton John Band were awaiting take-off, literally and figuratively.

It was the fall of 1974. Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy had been recorded over the summer at Caribou Ranch, Colorado, scheduled for release the following May. This audacious, high-concept roman-à-clef told the story of Elton John and his lyricist Bernie Taupin’s friendship and collaboration, their rise from nowhere to everywhere. It was special and they knew it. They all knew it.

Elton John was already the biggest rock act of the 1970s. He was Captain Fantastic, Taupin the Brown Dirt Cowboy, and this was their story in song. The sessions also saw the Elton John Band track non-album singles and future classics Philadelphia Freedom and Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, their Beatles cover going one better than anyone else by actually featuring a former Beatle, John Lennon. But all this could wait.

The Starship was the Elton John Band’s own private jet and it was headed to Dallas, Texas, for the opening show in their North American Tour. Caribou, Elton’s eighth studio album, had been launched in June and the record-buying public could not get enough of it. This was the Elton John Band’s biggest US tour yet, John’s eighth jaunt across the States in just four years. Davey Johnstone, the band’s guitarist and long-standing musical director, can remember it as if it were yesterday.

“We went back to LA after Caribou for about a week and got ourselves together, and then started the massive, iconic tour,” says Johnstone, joining MusicRadar over Zoom. “We were on the plane, on the Starship, all excited and having fun.”

If younger readers need a visual for understanding just how big Elton John was in 1974, then the Starship is as good as any. This heavily modified Boeing 720 had a red-white-and-blue paint job with white stars on a blue undercarriage, “ELTON JOHN BAND TOUR 1974” painted on the side. Inside, there was a fake open fireplace, a 15-foot bar trimmed with brass and a Thomas electric organ. There was a Club Room with plush maroon carpets, a divan, swivel chairs and a TV. You could also watch movies in the Gallery.

The Starship’s flight plan often read like who’s who of ‘70s pop culture. Cher and Elizabeth Taylor flew on it. Led Zeppelin flew on it, as did Alice Cooper, Peter Frampton and Deep Purple. Elton John often roller-skated down the aisle. Drummer Nigel Olsson liked to slide down the aisle and into the bar, and you can be sure that bartender John Ross kept it well-stocked.

That day, Kiki Dee, the opening act and later John’s partner on Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, had just boarded. “Kiki Dee was there, and we were all having a lot of fun there,” says Johnstone. “Bernie, everybody was there.”

The flight from LAX to Dallas was a party flight. Onboard was Dee’s band, the Muscle Shoals Horns, wives, girlfriends, and crew. Elton John was master of ceremonies in a white safari suit and a boater hat, star-shaped sunglasses, brandishing a cane.

But bad news arrived.

“It was kind of a damper because we were on the plane and we heard that Robbie McIntosh from the Average White Band had passed away,” says Johnstone. “It was such a shock to us, because it was one of those moments where a young guy [died], brilliant drummer, and we loved the Average White Band, obviously. Hamish [Stuart, AWB co-founder] is a good friend of mine to this day. It was so tragic to hear about that.”

McIntosh’s death hit them hard. He had taken what he thought was cocaine but it was heroin laced with morphine. The tragedy remains fresh in Johnstone’s mind. This was still an uncommon occurrence.

“It was one of those things. It’s almost like how much has changed, now we’ve got fentanyl, it’s killing people, and killed quite a few rock stars in the last 10 years or whatever,” says Johnstone. “That was the first glimpse we got of somebody getting a dodgy supply of whatever it was he did, and dying from it. So it was a damper on the tour at that point.”

The tour, however, was an unconditional success. Fans queued overnight for tickets. Venues were packed. The set was so strong and yet they still had all those Captain Fantastic tracks in reserve. The band did take the opportunity to play Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds; that always went down well.

But it went over especially well during their Thanksgiving performance at Madison Square Garden when John Lennon joined them onstage. Lennon and the Elton John Band took the opportunity to perform I Saw Her Standing There and Whatever Gets You Thru The Night, before returning for the show-closing encore of The Bitch Is Back.

Lennon was there having lost a bet that Whatever Gets You Thru The Night wouldn’t go to number one (it did), but he had been an early champion of Elton John anyway, and was a friend of the band.

When the Elton John Band took the cruise across the Atlantic to New York in lieu of the Captain Fantastic sessions, Cynthia Lennon had entrusted them to look after Julian before handing him over to his father, John.

“He thought that we were the best stuff that he had heard since the Beatles,” says Johnstone. “And for us to hear that from John Lennon was like, ‘What?’ It was a wonderful compliment.”

There was a touch of serendipity about how Lennon ended up recording Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. They knew Lennon intended to visit Caribou Ranch for a week during the Captain Fantastic sessions. But nobody was sure exactly when. Lennon wanted to see how the band worked.

The story of Elton John's Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds cover tells us a lot about what that was like to play in the band. Johnstone often found himself in the studio with John, Olsson, bassist Dee Murray, and he would often play around with the song.

“During the odd session when Elton and I, and Dee and Nigel were together, one of the things that I would do is I would start playing the riff from Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” he says. “It was just one of those things, and it was like, ‘Oh, we must record that one day.’ Well, when John came up, it was a no-brainer. I started playing that in the studio, it was like, ‘Let’s do that!’”

Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy went gold before its release and stayed at number one for seven weeks. It was all systems go. But there was change in the camp. A month before the album was released, John wanted to shake up the pack. Olsson and Murray were out. Roger Pope joined on drums, Kenny Passarelli on bass. Caleb Quaye rejoined on guitar, while James Newton Howard was hired as keys player.

As band leader and musical director, Johnstone helped assemble the new band. Although he appreciated the responsibility, it was not an easy task. He was close to Murray and Olsson.

“All that transition – I’ve got to be honest – it was difficult for me because suddenly I was thrust into that situation of being band leader, music director,” he says. “Before, it was just four or the five of us, and now it was all these other guys.”

Captain Fantastic had been out for four weeks. This new band had only been together since April, and yet on June 22, 1975, they were scheduled to make their live debut together at Wembley Stadium, performing the album in its entirety. Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter, then of the Doobie Brothers, joined them as a guest guitarist. It was a true baptism of fire. Johnstone lets out a hearty laugh at the memory.

“Yeah, it’s funny, because we always note to this day that it was just, like, ‘Really!? We played the whole of that album and it wasn’t even out?’ Or maybe it was just out,” he says. “You know? Like, why did we do that? We would laugh about it now and go like, ‘Fuck no!’”

It was crazy, but it blooded the new lineup, and just as well, because the road was calling, and the tours were just getting bigger. The Rock of the Westies Tour was one for the ages. The Elton John Band were now as big a draw as Major League Baseball and the NFL.

A string of warm-up sets at the Troubadour in Los Angeles helped them get their game faces on. It gave John the opportunity to introduce the band and to celebrate the fifth anniversary of his residency at the West Hollywood institution. It was a real event. Just as he did in 1970, Neil Diamond took to the stage to introduce them.

But Rock Of The Westies will always be remembered for Elton John in full sparkly LA Dodgers kit and ballcap at Dodger Stadium, 100,000 fans in attendance, taking to the stage unaccompanied to open with Your Song, then I Need You To Turn To, before the band join him for Border Song. Johnstone put on a show too, allowing John to play his Flying V during Hercules. It was one of those days in rock history, and as day turned to night, and the sun fell to the horizon, they played Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me. Only Elton John could make the Earth’s rotation part of his show.

Onstage, Johnstone would have been lost in the moment, but even now there’s part of him that wishes he got to play those Captain Fantastic tracks with Olsson and Murray on that tour.

“When Elton asked me would I stay and help them put the band together, we did all that together,” says Johnstone. “We’d talk about people who we wanted the band. But always, in that whole year of 1975 and part of ’76, I was missing Dee and Nigel because we had become brothers, and we had created this great thing. And suddenly I was working with these other guys, and it was a different dynamic in every way. It was just a different thing.

“It was hard for me, but we made it happen. I must admit, when we were at Dodger Stadium at the end of 1975 – and also, of course, when we did it famously at Wembley, as the first gig for that band – I kept thinking, ‘It should be Dee and Nigel doing this.’ Times change. Things happen. We got through it. We did it.”

Johnstone, Murray and Olsson had to wait five years before they returned to the Elton John Band in 1980, making their comeback together onstage on September 13 at Central Park. Murray passed away in 1992. But Olsson finally got his opportunity to play Dodger Stadium with Johnstone in 2022 during a three-night stint during the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour.

“I know Nigel, in the back of his mind, he always thinks, ‘I should have been on that Dodger Stadium gig’ because it was so iconic,” says Johnstone. “Even though we did all finish together again – as much as we could – when we ended the Farewell tour in Dodger Stadium. But yeah, it was quite a tough time.”

Musically, the lineup change presented the band with opportunities to expand their sound. They stretched out on Rock Of The Westies and Blue Moves. They tried new ideas. Johnstone had options with a second guitar player. Having Caleb Quaye to play off in concert was a blessing.

“I was able to get Caleb to play double guitar on things like Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting or [The] Bitch Is Back, or Funeral For A Friend, where it was great to hear the two guitars instead of just one,” he says. “So there were a lot of great moments in that big band. And recording with those guys was fun as well. It was a different thing. The type of player I am, I tend to be a very generous musician, where I’ll sit back and make sure everybody gets the chance.”

As Johnstone sees it, there was no need to fill “every nook and cranny” with his guitar playing. Let the songs breathe, he says. The importance of space was something Johnstone learned when it was just the four of them – and those were good times. Those were the best of times.

• Rock of the Westies 50th Anniversary Edition is out November 20 via UMR; Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy 50th Anniversary is out now via UMR
• Read more about about Davey Johnstone and Elton John: “There was a guy checking out people who were coming in, and he’d go over the microphone, ‘Now here’s Elton John and his band!’”: Davey Johnstone on guitar shopping with Elton John – and how he ended up with his iconic Les Paul Custom

At around 5pm on Wednesday 28 August, 1968, The Beatles arrived at Trident Studios in the heart of Soho, London, to begin work on the song Dear Prudence, a John Lennon composition written during their time in Rishikesh in India while studying Transcendental Meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

There was one noticeable absence that day. Ringo Starr had walked out, tired of the relentless tensions and arguments within the band and feeling increasingly undervalued and isolated within it.

Starr took his family for a holiday in Sardinia where they sailed on a yacht owned by his actor friend Peter Sellers. By the time The Beatles arrived at Trident to record Dear Prudence, the most famous four-piece in the world were, for the time being at least, a trio.

Over the next three days, with Paul McCartney on drums, the remaining band worked on Lennon’s new composition. The result was a shimmering and bucolic track with a powerful hypnotic edge. Almost six decades on, Dear Prudence stands as one of John Lennon’s finest songs.

Of the 30 songs that appeared on The White Album, 19 of them were written in Rishikesh and 10 of them were written by Lennon.

The Beatles weren’t the only celebrities at the Maharishi’s ashram. Donovan was there, as was Mike Love of The Beach Boys and the actress Mia Farrow, who had just completed filming for the hugely successful 1968 psychological horror Rosemary’s Baby.

Like The Beatles, Farrow had travelled to the ashram seeking spiritual enlightenment and a retreat from Western materialism. Accompanying Farrow was her 19-year-old sister, who would become the subject of the song Dear Prudence.

Prudence Farrow arrived in Rishikesh against the backdrop of an extremely disturbing experience with LSD. According to Kenneth Womack’s 2014 book The Beatles Encyclopedia: Everything Fab Four, she became intensely serious about meditating, refusing to venture out of her bungalow for days on end.

The Maharishi reportedly assigned John Lennon and George Harrison as Prudence’s ‘team buddies’. They were asked to try and coax Prudence out of her seclusion to socialise with other students on the course.

In a 1980 interview with author David Sheff, Lennon spoke of the song Dear Prudence and the person who inspired it.

Prudence Farrow seemed to “go slightly barmy,” recalled Lennon bluntly, “meditating too long, and couldn't come out of the little hut that we were living in. They selected me and George to try and bring her out because she would trust us. If she’d been in the West, they would have put her away ... She’d been locked in for three weeks and was trying to reach God quicker than anybody else. That was the competition in Maharishi’s camp: who was going to get cosmic first. What I didn’t know was that I was already cosmic.”

In many ways, the accepted narrative of events at the ashram has always seemingly cast Prudence Farrow as a victim, but the reality seems to be that Farrow was also simply more dedicated to Transcendental Meditation.

“They were trying to be cheerful, but I wished they’d go away,” Farrow told MOJO magazine in 2008. “I don’t think they realised what the training was all about.”

Farrow elaborated on events in Kenneth Womack’s 2014 book. “I knew that I must have stuck out because I would always rush straight back to my room after lectures and meals so I could meditate. John, George and Paul would all want to sit around jamming and having a good time and I'd be flying into my room. They were all serious about what they were doing, but they just weren’t as fanatical as me.”

Lyrically, there is a blissful simplicity and innocence to Dear Prudence, which reflects the purity and slow pace of their environment at the ashram, amid lush riverbank forest overlooking the sacred River Ganges. The tone is childlike as Lennon peppers his lyrics with references to nature.

“Dear Prudence, open up your eyes/Dear Prudence, see the sunny skies/The wind is low, the birds will sing/That you are part of everything.”

But as is the case with many Lennon songs, the simplicity and beguiling innocence of the lyric can take on a wider meaning, particularly within the context of the song’s trippy and ethereal sound

In his 1996 book A Day In The Life: The Music And Artistry Of The Beatles, journalist Mark Hertsgaard suggests that the lyrics to Dear Prudence are a continuation of an idea first espoused by Lennon in Nowhere Man in 1965, namely the notion of not hiding from life, of recognising that you have a reason to smile and to “wake up and play your part in the grand scheme of things”.

Lennon wrote Dear Prudence using a finger-picking technique he reportedly learned from Donovan in Rishikesh. Written in D major and played with a dropped D, the song opens with a drone-like arpeggio from Lennon and much of its enigmatic melodic power comes from the descending D-C-B-Bb bass line.

There’s a distinct groove to Lennon’s guitar motif, a flowing interwoven pattern which swings and flows with a syncopated bounce and builds a continuous rolling momentum that gives the song its hypnotic feel.

The Beatles demoed the song after their return from India at George Harrison’s house in Esher, Surrey in late May 1968, in preparation for recording of the White Album. It was one of 27 songs they had written in Rishikesh and the demo has a beautifully wistful feel.

They then recorded Dear Prudence over three days from 28 August to 30 August at Trident Studios and completed the basic track on the first day. This included Lennon’s chiming finger-picked electric part, which he played on his Epiphone Casino through a new Fender Twin Reverb.

The eight-track recorder at Trident gave them the luxury of being able to perfect and re-record their parts as the song was being developed.

On 29 August, McCartney laid down his bass part and Lennon recorded his vocals. In his 1988 book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, author Mark Lewisohn states that Lennon’s voice on Dear Prudence is manually double tracked for enhanced thickness and width of sound.

Other elements added that day were backing vocals, handclaps and percussion, including tambourines from Harrison and McCartney. The Beatles were joined for these additional elements by the band’s ever-present road manager and personal assistant Mal Evans, as well as recent Apple Records signing Jackie Lomax and McCartney’s cousin John McCartney.

On the third and final day of recording, McCartney added piano on the end of the song and Harrison added lead guitar, using his 1957 Gibson Les Paul Standard. In the opinion of author Ian McDonald in his 1994 book Revolution In The Head , Harrison’s Indian-style guitar parts were the “richest ingredient” in the arrangement.

Listening to Dear Prudence today, almost 60 years since it was created, there’s a remarkably sparse and skeletal feel at the outset, beginning with the lone, quiet finger-picked guitar. The structure gradually builds into a massive multi-layered arrangement, with the rhythm section being subtly introduced as the song develops.

In some ways. McCartney’s straightforward and slightly stilted drumming in the verses is what gives the song its edge and sense of unease. You can’t help pondering what it would have sounded like with Ringo Starr behind the kit, although there are some who believe that the cacophonous 10-bar extended drum fill on the fourth verse and outro is actually Starr.

Official Beatles recording logs credit McCartney. But that hasn’t stopped musicologists and fans speculating that the complex, shuffly fills at the end of the song were re-recorded by Starr at EMI Studios, Abbey Road. It is a debate that will doubtless run and run.

Unsurprisingly, it’s on the bass part where McCartney really excels. As Lennon’s arpeggio guitar continues its hypnotic journey, McCartney’s bass swoops and slides with graceful melodic lines.

There’s a real sense of movement within McCartney’s bass line as it transforms Lennon’s delicate guitar figure into something rhythmic, flowing and dynamic.

At 2:15, after the ‘Look around, round, round…’ middle section, twisted squalls of George Harrison’s guitar enter the mix, as a sonic counterpoint to Lennon’s vocal. And from there it just builds to a driving psychedelic rock crescendo becoming ever more dense, with high tinkling vamps of piano, handclaps and overdriven guitar motifs.

At 3:20, the descending bass becomes more direct and strident as the whole track thrusts towards a close and Lennon sings the final lines: “The sun is up, the sky is blue/It’s beautiful and so are you/Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?”

The song then segues into slow, gentle smatterings of the core guitar arpeggio, before gently and gracefully fading away.

Dear Prudence was released on The White Album on 22 November 1968 but was not released as a single. Its lush and hypnotic tones are largely regarded as one of the high points of that album. In a ten-star retrospective review of the album in 2009 Mark Richardson of Pitchfork praised the “spectral, floating mood” of the song, adding that it is one of the album’s songs “that will stay with you”.

Dear Prudence has been covered a number of times, but by far the most high profile cover version came in 1983 when Siouxsie and the Banshees added their own take on The Beatles’ simple original arrangement. Their cover reached No 3 in the UK in October 1983 and became their biggest hit.

Prudence Farrow would go on to become a film producer, a college professor, a writer, scholar and global traveller, but her true passion reportedly came from becoming a certified teacher of Transcendental Meditation. This was precisely why she had attended the course with her sister Mia at the Maharishi’s ashram back in 1968. “Being on that course was more important to me than anything in the world,” she told writer Steve Turner in his 1998 book A Hard Day’s Write.

It was George Harrison who first told her about the song Dear Prudence.

“At the end of the course, just as they were leaving, George mentioned that they had written a song about me but I didn’t hear it until it came out on the album,” recalled Farrow. “I was flattered. It was a beautiful thing to have done.”

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Splice is best known for its three-million strong sample library, a vast collection of sounds that have made their way into thousands of popular songs by everyone from Sabrina Carpenter to Kendrick Lamar.

In recent years, though, the company has grown into a multi-million-dollar music tech behemoth, diversifying into mobile music-making apps, virtual instruments and even soft synths. Today, Splice takes the next step in its evolution from sample platform and software marketplace to an end-to-end music creation ecosystem by releasing its very own DAW.

Launching in beta today for Mac users, Create is a fully-fledged digital audio workstation with all the functionality you’d expect (and some you probably wouldn’t), Splice’s sample library embedded directly into its workflow, and the most advanced AI-powered features we’ve seen in any DAW to date. It’s free to download, but exporting songs requires a Create Pro subscription, currently priced at $9.99/month.

Create’s workflow will feel familiar to anyone that’s used a DAW before. You’ve got a central timeline that can be populated with five types of track, including the expected audio, instrument and return tracks, along with dedicated tracks for the native Sampler and Drum Rack plugins. Below that you’ll find the mixer, or the clip editor, piano roll, sequencer, or device chain for each track, depending on what’s selected.

Create can host third-party plugins, and it arrives with five instruments included: the aforementioned Sampler and Drum Rack are joined by Splice’s INSTRUMENT, a virtual instrument released last year, and two stock soft synths. Synth is a new two-oscillator subtractive affair, while Astra is a hybrid synth with virtual analogue, wavetable, granular, FM and sample-based engines that was already available through Splice’s Creator plan. There’s a collection of 38 stock audio effects and utilities onboard, too, covering all the usual bases.

On the left-hand side of the interface is a browser that provides direct access to Splice’s extensive library of samples. Several DAWs, like Live and Pro Tools, already have Splice integration built-in, but the integration in Create is much deeper. Create an empty clip in an audio track and Splice will show a search bar that’s linked directly to the sample platform. Type in what you’re after, (“female R&B vocal”, for example) and Splice will choose a sample for you and load it up on the timeline, transposed and time-stretched to match the key and tempo of your project.

Select the clip, and a list of alternative Splice samples that fit your brief will pop up next to the clip editor below. Here you can search by similarity for sounds in Splice’s library (this even works with non-Splice sounds) or create Variations. This is an AI-based feature Splice added to the Splice Sounds plugin back in April that generates unique alternatives to an existing sound that are close to, but not the same as the original. Using an in-house model trained on Splice’s catalogue, Variations are covered by the same license as the original sample, and the creator of that sample is compensated when a Variation is licensed.

What’s more, Create lets you drag any sample into your project without automatically licensing a sample or using a Splice credit. They land in your project as MP3 previews, allowing you to build a track in Create using as many unlicensed samples as you want – when your track is finished, you’ll need to license those samples before you can export the project, otherwise they bounce as silence.

For producers that rely on Splice samples in their music-making, having this kind of direct access to the platform embedded into the DAW could prove to be a significant upgrade to their workflow – especially if their current DAW doesn’t already have Splice integration. The ability to audition samples on the timeline in the context of a project without licensing them or spending any credits is useful too, and means you don’t have to spend a dime on a sound until you’re sure it’s the right one for your track. On the whole, though, none of this is particularly game-changing.

Create is a perfectly serviceable DAW, then, and though it obviously doesn’t have the depth of Live or Logic Pro, it’d be well-suited to anyone that already works with Splice’s existing tools. What really sets Create apart, though – for better or worse – is its AI chatbot, Rheo.

Like most chatbots, Rheo can offer guidance on how to use the DAW and give you advice on music-making more generally. Where it goes beyond anything we’ve seen in other DAWs, though, is its ability to control the software, taking actions inside the DAW in response to the user’s instructions, whether that’s through text commands in the chatbot interface or voice control. This kind of “agentic” AI – AI that can control computers, make decisions and complete tasks for you, rather than just generating text – poked its nose into the mainstream in 2026 with the release of tools like ChatGPT Work and Meta’s Muse.

It’s creeping into the music production world, too: Image-Line was an early adopter with its Gopher chatbot in FL Studio, and Apple has just added an AI assistant to Logic Pro 13, which will be released later this month. Some users have already been getting ahead of the game on this, connecting DAWs like Ableton Live to third-party AI models via MCP servers, and it’s fast reshaping the world of hardware, too, as AI-powered ‘vibe coding’ tools are being used to write custom firmware, gifting synths and grooveboxes with new off-label abilities.

The level of control that Rheo provides is much deeper than anything we’ve seen in another DAW, though. Rheo can search for sounds, generate melodies, design synth patches, create arrangements, analyse audio and execute multi-stage tasks that would usually take minutes in just a few seconds, all in response to conversational, natural-language instructions. Using Rheo requires “Rheo units”, which are distinct from Splice credits, and cost $10 per 1000. (Free users get 100 units to start off with.)

Rheo has two modes, Assist and Point. Point shows you how to do the task you ask it to complete, not only guiding you through the process with text instructions, but actually pointing out each step with a glowing cursor on the screen. Not sure how to set up sidechain compression on your kick and bass? Struggling to get set up for recording a vocal? Just ask Rheo, and it’ll walk you through it, step-by-step. This will be immensely helpful for beginners, and it’s a welcome alternative to simply having the AI do something for you, which won’t help to build skills in the long run.

Assist goes one step further and actually executes the task for you. As we mentioned, the AI can do almost anything in the DAW, with a few exceptions: it can’t access third-party plugins and it won’t replicate material from commercial songs. (It will pull out a collection of samples from Splice to imitate a given artist’s style, though, which could prove problematic.)

This kind of agentic control can be a real time-saver, taking the faff out of routine or repetitive tasks. For example, you could ask Rheo to create a full multitrack session with subgroups and return tracks, ready to record a full band, or generate an arrangement layout with custom bar lengths and timeline markers for you to fill in with your own material.

It’s pretty good at understanding specific instructions: we asked Rheo to slice up a vocal loop into sixteenth-note chunks and reverse every other chop in an alternating pattern to create a fluttering, glitchy effect, something that would’ve taken at least a minute to do manually, and it nailed it on the first try. Admittedly, saving a few clicks on tasks like these isn’t going to make a dramatic difference to your workflow, but it’s still genuinely useful.

Of course, as well as these more practical tasks, Rheo can take on a more “creative” role. Ask it to design a TB-303-style acid bass patch in Astra, generate a MIDI clip with a specific chord sequence, or even polish up your mix with some EQ and compression, and it will gladly oblige. And yes, Rheo will even produce a full song on demand, pulling samples from Splice and building parts using its stock instruments. (There’s no Suno-style audio generation in Create, though – it’ll write MIDI and pick sounds for you, but it doesn’t generate audio from scratch, other than when it’s producing Variations.)

This is where things get more complicated. Many opponents of AI-powered musical tools justifiably take issue with how they were trained – AI music generator Suno’s early models were trained on millions of copyrighted songs without permission, leading to an outcry among musicians who feel their IP was stolen. Splice tells us that Rheo uses a combination of in-house models and third-party models, including “classic LLMs” that hold a conversation with the user and translate their intent into actions. We’re told that all models were trained using “fully licensed” data, but exactly what that covers is an open question, given that LLMs are typically trained on vast amounts of web data.

Training aside, though, there’s a more fundamental problem. Handing over creative control to an AI agent runs counter to the spirit of creativity – designing patches, writing melodies and digging out samples are the way that artists develop their own sound and imprint a unique personality on their music. They’re essential elements of the creative process, and if delegating them to an AI model makes us less creative, then our music will suffer as a result.

Create’s assistive features could be a real help for beginners learning their craft, but if the software makes it easier for beginners to ask for a melody instead of actually learning to write one, then perhaps it’s not pushing them in the right direction after all. (As one commenter on our Instagram wryly put it: why even make music when music can be made for you?)

For its part, Splice says that it wants Create to “amplify” human creativity, not replace it. “Most music tools either make the song for you, or assume you already know how to do everything. Create is different,” Splice CEO Kakul Srivastava says in a press release – but Rheo can make the song for you, if you let it. Splice wants Create to help you go “deeper into the creative flow”, but go far enough down the AI rabbit hole, and you might stop being creative altogether.

Regardless of where you stand on the ethics and utility of AI in music creation, Rheo is an impressive piece of engineering, and whether we like it or not, agentic AI is spreading fast across the creative software industry, not only in music-making but also apps like Photoshop and DaVinci Resolve. But should DAWs really be following suit?

Splice’s surge in popularity over the past decade has already opened the doors to a new style of paint-by-numbers production that relies on pre-made loops, a method some view as cheating, or at least close to it. We wouldn’t go that far – plenty of brilliant music has been made solely from samples. But this latest push into AI-assisted music-making feels like another step in the same direction, and one that some will see as a step too far. Create feels like music production on easy mode, but what if the hard parts are what make the music your own?

It happened one night in 1969 at Madison Square Garden in New York City – when one of the world’s most celebrated guitar players picked up a new trick from a young hotshot who was still in his teens.

Eric Clapton was on tour with Blind Faith, the supergroup also featuring Steve Winwood (ex-Traffic) on keyboards and vocals, Ric Grech (ex-Family) on bass guitar and Clapton’s former Cream bandmate Ginger Baker on drums.

The support acts on this tour were American duo Delaney & Bonnie, Irish guitar hero Rory Gallagher’s power trio Taste, and British blues-rock quartet Free.

Simon Kirke was the drummer in Free alongside singer Paul Rodgers, bassist Andy Fraser and guitarist Paul Kossoff. And as Kirke now tells MusicRadar, that Madison Square Garden show was memorable not only for the meeting between two great guitarists but also a frostier encounter between two great drummers.

“I'll never forget it,” Kirke says. “It was the end of the Blind Faith and Free tour, and Madison Square Garden was the final show.

“I think Eric had been watching us from the wings. We did about fourteen or fifteen shows with them. Clapton is quite a shy guy, believe it or not. But finally he sent a roadie to our dressing room to say, ‘Is it all right if if I come in and say hello to Paul?’”

Clapton was referring to Paul Kossoff, not Paul Rodgers.

Kirke continues: “So, Eric Clapton walks into our dressing room and says to Paul, ‘Show me how you do that vibrato.’ Paul says, ‘You got to be kidding me!’ This is one of the greatest guitarists ever, and he’s asking an 18-year-old kid to show him how he does what he does.”

For his part, Kirke was equally surprised when Blind Faith’s drummer walked into Free’s dressing room after Clapton.

“Ginger Baker was right behind him,” Kirke says. “I thought, ‘I’ve got to talk to him!’ So when he walked in, I said, ‘Oh, lovely to meet you, Ginger.’ I stuck my hand out and it just hung there. Ginger was all morose.

“I said something like, ‘What what do you use, calfskin heads or plastic heads?’ Some stupid drummer-to-drummer shit. And he didn’t even acknowledge me. I thought, ‘Well, fuck you then!’ Miserable bastard he was.”

In spite of that, Kirke does offer something in Baker’s defence.

“Quite honestly, Ginger had been saving the show every night. He did a ten- or fifteen-minute drum solo because Blind Faith only had about 45 minutes of material, and a big part of that was a twenty-minute version of Crossroads.

“So Ginger saved the night every night, and he was still very vibrant. He did drugs, but they hadn't overtaken him at that point.”

Sadly, Paul Kossoff would be overcome by a drug problem in his tragically short life. The guitarist was just 25 years old when he died on 19 March 1976 on a flight from Los Angeles to New York.

Kossoff recorded six studio albums with Free, from 1969 debut Tons Of Sobs through to 1973 finale Heartbreaker. The most famous and influential of those albums is 1970’s Fire And Water, which features the classic hit single All Right Now.

In Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, Paul Kossoff was placed at No 51. Rolling Stone critic Dave Fricke said of Kossoff: “He is admired by guitarists for the economy of his lines and the purity of his tone. He made his presence felt by what he did not play, and the exquisite way he sculpted what he did.”

Simon Kirke tells MusicRadar that Kossoff was badly affected by the period in the early ’70s when Paul Rodgers briefly abandoned Free.

“We were a band of brothers,” he says. “So when Free broke up for the first time, and Paul Rodgers went his own way, that really hurt Paul Kossoff. It tore him up because he adored Paul, and Koss was never the same after that.”

He adds: “I guess at the time we didn’t really know how good Koss was because we were so young. I knew that he was good. I just didn’t realise how good he was until I started playing guitar myself, and until a few years down the road after he passed away, when I began to listen to him again and again.”

It is now 50 years since Paul Kossoff died, but Simon Kirke still feels that loss.

“I’m getting all emotional now,” Kirke says. “The thing about Koss was he only had four or five years before the drugs came in and started eroding his talent. He passed at the age of 25 – but at his peak he knocked everyone sideways with his playing.”

It was Fat Monday, the eve of Mardi Gras, and the streets of New Orleans were a riot of colour and noise, and full of music. It poured out of bars and into the street, where its frequencies and rhythms co-mingled with costumed musicians on parade and partygoers.

Music was everywhere. In the Faubourg Marigny District, Queens Of The Stone Age were holed up in Rick G Nelson’s famous Marigny Studio, trying to capture some of the energy from the streets and make some music of their own. “The city was just exploding with intense energy and revelry in the streets. I mean, the place was alive,” says drummer Jon Theodore.

QOTSA were in New Orleans to work on their ninth studio album, Perfecth, but this is a town where business and pleasure can coexist. They would breakfast together, walk down to the studio together, go visit friends. They were just two blocks from Frenchmen Street, and all that jazz, and they lapped up everything Lundi Gras had to offer.

“We thrive on the vibe in our surroundings. We need to be inspired, too, especially in the recording process,” says Theodore. “The studio itself, Marigny, it has so much character. It’s been around for a century. It used to be an old jazz club, and a speakeasy, and a punk rock club. The city was so inspiring for us – it really invigorated us. I like to say that the city became the sixth member of the band. And it created just so much passion and inspiration for us that I can hear it in those songs.”

They did some tracking at Sound City in Los Angeles, but the idea was to get out of town; a change of scenery would do them good. It was guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen’s first time in New Orleans at Mardi Gras.

“We would be recording, and then you step outside and there’s a parade,” says Van Leeuwen. “Every amazing musician that’s in the town is marching down the street, and they’re playing. It’s just amazing.”

Theodore and Van Leeuwen are joining us on a bright summer’s morning in London, and it is a very different vibe. We’re in the Mirror Room at the Rosewood Hotel, where high-rollers are devouring eggs Benedict and chia pudding.

Sunlight is streaming through the window. Theodore and Van Leeuwen are wearing sunglasses, nursing their coffee. A stadium show with System Of A Down awaits in the evening. This story – and this setting – reminds us that rock ’n’ roll is a night-time activity. “My coffee’s starting to kick in,” Van Leeuwen assures us.

The last time we spoke with Van Leeuwen, he was getting readjusted to the light above ground after Queens Of The Stone Age climbed out from the Catacombs in Paris where they had just reimagined their catalogue acoustically to perform for the remains of approximately six million people and a small film crew.

This was a very different kind of location. Playing down there is an experience that leaves its mark. By all accounts, it nearly claimed frontman/guitarist Josh Homme’s life.

Homme had taken ill beforehand. He was running a 40°C fever during the Catacombs performance. But this was a lifelong ambition and there was no way he was going to bail on it. The next day, he was on an emergency flight back home and in surgery just hours after landing.

The remainder of their 2024 tour dates were cancelled. Between his illness, a successful battle with cancer in 2022/23, and his much publicised divorce, Homme had been having a hellish time of it in the first half of the 2020s.

Homme recovered. QOTSA released their Alive In The Catacombs EP in 2025, and toured it. And yet when Perfecth opens up with the haunting melancholy of It’s Only Love, it’s as though there’s still some dust from the bones on them. In the Catacombs, it was so quiet. The only ambient sounds were those of water droplets echoing off skulls, and they modulated their volume accordingly.

Theodore kept time with chopsticks and wooden blocks. This was QOTSA at a whisper. Perfecth was about building their sound back up again to a shout, to rock ’n’ roll. Hence the sombre opening of It’s Only Love.

It sounds like a lost recording from the Depression-era, by a band who, like Robert Johnson, have something on their trail.

“That’s actually a great observation,” says Theodore. “We were coming out of the Catacombs, where Josh nearly died. The veil between life and death was very, very thin, so that’s where it starts… It’s like, he almost died. You know? We cancelled the tour, and so we were going away and maybe never coming back.”

Perfecth was inspired by kintsugi, the Japanese craft of repairing broken ceramics with a glaze containing powdered precious metals such as gold, silver or platinum. The fundamental idea behind it is that the repair is not designed to hide the breakage. When you think about it, that is what music does. It heals us. It puts our scars on display.

Perfecth is like pressing shuffle on a dark night of the soul. It is an album of light and shade, life and death. First you get the nocturnal wheeze of It’s Only Love, then the louche after-hours groove of Insignificant Other.

Where The Goth Girls At? follows, and Homme’s falsetto is all kinds of woozy as it floats over the theatrically simple clang of high-voltage guitar and bass, casually referencing a near-death experience from his adolescence. It is the party jam with one eye cautiously on the morning to come.

But then there are songs that surrender themselves to abandon, such as Easy Street, which finds Homme in a shambling duet with country star Nikki Lane, and Sunday, which reworks the track he wrote for Iggy Pop’s 2016 album Post Pop Depression. “Kicking into Sunday, it’s like, ‘Man, we have been dealing with all of this death,’” says Theodore. “We came of the Catacombs – this austere, reverent, kind of vigil for life – and it was like, ‘Now it’s time to party!’”

On tracks like Where The Goth Girls At?, we hear QOTSA’s maximalist instincts wrestling with their practised discipline of restraint and minimalism, opening up the space between the guitar and drums, Mutt Lange-style.

“I was thinking more of like a Steve Albini recording – with the drum sound anyways. And the bass tone to me very much sounded like The Jesus Lizard,” says Van Leeuwen. “But it ends up being Queens at the end of the day. We have a lot of influences. There are a lot of influences being shown on our sleeves this time.”

That’s especially noticeable on Insignificant Other, where QOTSA are playing around with that Miss You-era Stones vibe.

“If you know anything about the recording process for Exile On Main Street, they just let the tape roll, and that was what we did with that song,” says Van Leeuwen. “I think we went over the arrangement once, and it was late at night, and we were tracking to two-inch tape, and all five of us were in the room, and that’s the second take that you hear on the record. That’s what that is, and that feels like what the Stones might have done.”

Insignificant Other was recorded in Los Angeles at the end of a long day. They just couldn’t nail the song they were working on. It was past midnight. They had a few beers to decompress. They started messing around with a riff.

“The lights were already out in the studio,” says Theodore. “We were all ready to leave. Some people had their jackets on… After a very short amount of time, we had a couple of parts, and then it was like, ‘Oh, let’s just record this for the night before we leave.’ There’s interplay. It’s free. It’s loose. We were literally calling out the changes as we’re taping it.”

Insignificant Other ended up being the album’s centrepiece. Homme had the rough idea for the song circa In Times New Roman… but decided to let it sit a while. It was too raw to be singing about relationship breakdown so soon after the fact. When they got to New Orleans, they thought they would take another crack at it, but couldn’t improve upon the original take. That night had the magic – and you sometimes you just can’t recreate that.

“We were like, ‘Oh, this sounds great.’ But when you listen to it, it’s definitely all of us doing what we look like without any pressure, or any sense of, ‘You have to do this right, and in a particular way,’” says Theodore. “We just did what we did. And we were listening very carefully. Like, you can hear the glue between us.”

Mono is a woozy exercise in subverting the stereo spread – a queasy fever dream before QOTSA close Side A out with From The Cliff, Homme and bassist/guitarist Michael Shuman dueting on acoustic guitars for a Cat Stevens-style jam that sounds like it could have soundtracked a picaresque New Hollywood movie.

“It may seem, at first listen, like a more melodic, more kind of acoustic record, but there’s depth and there’s darkness there,” says Van Leeuwen. “Instead of layering instruments and guitars and synths, the layering is in the intent, in the lyrical content, and where we would normally try to fill in every gap, and make every bit of the music like something’s happening, this is very open… So that was fun too, just to sit back and let things be a little more free.”

In any given QOTSA recording session, there is no shortage of effects pedals and gizmos for augmenting electric guitar tone. They have a trove of gear at their disposal. A large corner of the internet is dedicated to deciphering the tone secrets of QOTSA.

But Van Leeuwen says this wasn’t a record for going down rabbit holes and endlessly dialling in sounds. What mattered was the intent behind their gear choices. “We always have more than enough pedals, but it just sounds like, on this record, it’s a little less complicated,” he says.

His 12-string Telecaster was used on the brassy disco-pop strut of Sunday. His signature Jazzmaster saw a lot of action. The guitars were going through Van Leeuwen’s GMI amps that were designed by his amp tech Sean Romin. GMI’s Gabe Curry also made him a guitar that’s loosely based on his 1999 Gibson ES-135. They call it ‘The Zero.’

“I have an ES-135 from 1999, and it’s one of my favourite guitars, and it’s another guitar that I don’t want to take down the road anymore because it’s been beat up a little bit more than I like,” says Van Leeuwen. “And so we made our version of our 135/Gretsch-style hollow-body. It’s got a gold-foil pickup in the neck position, and it can do coil-splitting and phasing. It’s a workhorse guitar. You can get anything out of it, and it’s really built like a brick shithouse. It’s really solid. I used that one a lot.”

But sometimes it was the oldest and cheapest guitars that did the job, like the old no-name nylon-string with the “big, giant neck” that Van Leeuwen has had since he was 13 that he and Homme both used for Phantom Limb.

“Sometimes the brightness of something that’s a really nicely built guitar gets a little annoying unless you’re playing with fingers,” he says. “There’s something about those kind of nylon-strings. When you strum them like that, they have this deadness.”

This was a record that would have been killed by finessing every tone and every take. It’s like these songs are still being explored as they are were committed to tape.

Even Homme and Shuman’s production choices appear to change horses midstream, catching the listener off-guard – catching the band off-guard too. Theodore says they sometimes spliced two takes together, but this was about capturing the song and the performance and leaving it all in there. Even the mistakes?

“Yeah, are you kidding!? There’s a million of them,” he says. “Because we don’t use clicks. We don’t edit. We go into each take knowing 60 or 70 per cent of what we’re gonna do, so there’s 30 per cent with no net. And so I look back, all through the record, there are mistakes all over the place, but as long as it doesn’t disrupt the vibe, we leave them.”

“Basically, the title of the album should be ‘Happy Accidents,’” jokes Van Leeuwen. But maybe that would have just been too perfect, and this was not the record for that.

Reverb is an essential and ubiquitous effect. It provides a sense of depth and distance that allows us to stage our music in realistic – or surrealistic – acoustic spaces. It can bring shape, movement and life to a part. And yes, we do rather like it. But doesn’t it get a little... boring?

Historically, reverbs have fallen into two categories: convolution and algorithmic. The former can sound great, but the limited ability to shape and hone the reverb (short of loading a different impulse) is restrictive. Plus, any reverb generated from an impulse will sound fairly similar to any other reverb generated from the same impulse. It’s like ‘90s ROMplers but for reverb, and it’s just as boring.

Algorithmic ‘verbs can also sound great, but too many modern examples are simply emulations, rehashes of the same old “classic” algos developed by EMT and Lexicon more than 40 years ago.

Surely the untrammelled possibilities afforded by modern computing can be harnessed to do something new and interesting with this decades-old effect? Surely there’re some plugin designers out there with a sufficiently vivid imagination to come up with something fresh and exciting?

Of course there are! Below, we’ve gathered together seven of the weirdest 'verbs we could find to discover which unconventional approach to simulated reverberation would produce the most inspiring results. For each plugin, we've included five audio examples, with both dry and wet examples to demonstrate the effect.

1. AberrantDSP Lair

Formats: VST3, AU, AAX | Platforms: macOS, Windows, Linux | Price: $24 | Find out more

Lurking deep inside Lair you’ll find an algorithmic reverb generator, but things get weird from the get-go. Rather than run-of-the-mill algorithms for rooms and halls and what-have-you, we have a choice of “Devices”: Artifact, Mirror and Rift, which are (very) loosely based on spring, plate and hall/cavern algorithms, albeit warped and twisted in intriguing ways.

In addition (and announced just as we were about to publish!), the new Lair 1.5 update gains Cascade and The Swarm devices, these being more echo- or delay-like in their effect although, again, these are fascinatingly contorted compared to conventional algorithms. Also new in v1.5 is the ability to combine in parallel any two devices, with each having its own independent mix level and stereo spread.

Nevertheless, many of these controls also stretch their tendrils into unexpected areas of the chosen Device, eliciting quirky and unexpected responses that catch the attention and tickle the ear. Moreover, these parameters can have a very different impact depending on the currently chosen Device; taking the oddness a step further are a pair of modulators that insinuate their way into various areas of the plugin to add their own peculiar slant on proceedings.

Lair can be tamed to deliver conventional reverbs, but is at its best when its peculiarities are embraced. One doesn’t so much hone in on a reverb sound as fiddle around listening for interesting responses, an approach that sits perfectly with the more experimental side of music-making that is Lair’s natural domain.

As its name suggests, then, Lair is a deep, dark and brooding reverb plugin. Its gothic design, unconventional labelling, and peculiar under-the-hood interactions result in characterful and tonally complex reverbs that are endlessly fascinating, and the newfound ability to combine Devices – in particular, combining delay- and reverb-style effects – vastly extends the plugin's already impressive peculiarities.

2. ADPTR Utopia

Formats: VST3, VST2, AU, AAX | Platforms: macOS, Windows | Price: $150 | Find out more

“We weren’t going to make just another reverb, that would be boring”, says ADPTR Audio’s Marc Adamo – great minds think alike, I guess! Adamo’s search for a non-boring ‘verb led him to Signalsmith Audio’s Geraint Luff and an intriguing prototype for a reverb algorithm that he’d developed.

Rather than generating the same-old wash of delay lines, or harnessing convolution processing, Luff’s algorithm utilises a spectral processing engine to re-synthesize audio into “spatial textures”. So ADPTR and Signalsmith teamed up and, after a couple of years of R&D, came up with Utopia.

Utopia does an excellent line in conventional hall and room ‘verbs, its novel approach creating results that sound simultaneously familiar yet different to what you’ve heard before: richer, silkier, more sumptuous and, as a result, stunningly realistic. Where Utopia truly excels, though, is in the more colourful and elaborate ends of reverb: shimmering modulated dreamscapes, dancing reflections, otherworldly resonances, twisted echoing tunnels and so much more.

Despite this sonic complexity, Utopia’s basics are easy to work with, and the plugin features many familiar controls: pre-delay, decay, early-reflection level and so-on. There are some additional, more esoteric parameters on offer, and these can take a bit more effort to get to grips with. But experimenting with the large library of excellent presets, and keeping an eye on the tips shown at the bottom of the window whenever you hover over a control, helps make things clearer.

Rarely has a reverb plugin been as aptly named as Utopia! No matter the source (leads, pads, vocals, bass… whatever!) the results are sumptuous, rich and satisfying. Or weird and unhinged, if that’s your preference. Even its common-or-garden reverbs have a classiness that’s all their own.

3. Arturia REV Ocean

Formats: VST3, VST2, AU, AAX | Platforms: macOS, Windows | Price: $49 | Find out more

One tried-and-tested way of making reverb more interesting is to chain it with other effects and processors – delays, dynamics, pitch-shifters, choruses, etc. Throw in some modulation and ingenious routing and your reverbs can become bold sonic features rather than timid afterthoughts. The downside is that creating, configuring and fine-tuning such processing chains can be immensely fiddly.

Sailing to the rescue is Arturia’s REV Ocean. Although it’s an algorithmic reverb, the plugin doesn’t present a choice of reverb types, nor does it overwhelm with a plethora of settings for shaping the reverb. Rather, it wraps all of these finer details into a succinct and accessible interface that makes light work of dialling in basic reverbs of any flavour.

Where REV Ocean steps outside the norm is with its three so-called Macro Modes, these being hidden processing chains that enhance, colour and animate the reverb (accompanied by suitably aquatic animations in the plugin’s visualisation). Abyss adds layers of reverse reverbs and octave shifts; Foam fills the reverb tail with expanding resonant reflections; and Tide injects semi-random phaser-like filter sweeps into the ‘verb. A simple slider controls the strength of the chosen Macro Mode’s effect, but the conventional reverb parameters also impact on the character of the Macro Mode modulations.

The deceptively simple user interface makes it ridiculously easy to create complex and evolving reverbs, and the plugin itself is sufficiently versatile to complement a wide range of sources and situations, happily swinging from conventional acoustic space simulations through to shifting and animated reverbs.

4. BLEASS Spectral Reverb

Formats: VST3, AU, AAX | Platforms: macOS, Windows | Price: $39 | Find out more

Like all spectral effects, BLEASS Spectral Reverb works in the frequency domain, converting incoming audio to spectral data before processing it, but it doesn’t employ some novel or elaborate reverb generation technique: its spectral billing refers chiefly to the way each reverb parameter can be applied differently across the frequency spectrum.

The reverb generator itself is straightforward, even simple, with a pair of input filters for basic colouring and just three actual reverb generation parameters: attack, decay and width. This basic recipe allows the plugin to do a good line in conventional reverb sounds, from tight, intimate rooms to wide, echo-laden caverns.

The controls for these reverb parameters are accompanied by BLEASS' unique Spectral Map controls, which determine how the accompanying parameter's effect will be distributed across the spectrum. Clicking-and-dragging (or tapping-and-dragging if using the AUv3 version in iOS) in a Spectral Map creates peaks, troughs, or ascending and descending slopes across the vertical bars drawn within the map.

The resulting height of each bar represents the strength with which the accompanying parameter is applied at the frequency represented by each bar in the Map. The bars aren't individually editable, and are intended as a handy visualisation rather than a scientifically accurate representation of the spectrum. This may sound a bit confusing, but it's actually super intuitive to use. For example, creating an increasing left-to-right slope in the Decay time’s Spectral Map will cause higher frequencies to have longer decay times than lower ones.

Adding to the core reverb generation are four slots into which any of six different processors can be placed, all designed to do interesting things within the frequency domain, and many of which are rather novel. Some, such as Harmony Follow and Spectral Enhancer, modify the entire signal.

Others, such as Spectral Gate and Pitch Shifter, incorporate their own Spectral Maps that allow their effect to be varied depending on frequency. For example, the Pitch Shifter’s Spectral Map varies the amount of pitch-shifting that’s applied at different frequencies… which can sound kinda mad!

A large realtime spectrogram helps make sense of what the plugin’s doing, and dragging within this visualisation provides another tactile way to mess with the reverb’s spectrum. As a nice final flourish, the plugin’s spectral processing settings are always on-hand, so you can crank them up for pristine reverbs, or drag them down for some nice, dirty, lo-fi fun.

Blessed with BLEASS’ trademark tactility and immediacy, Spectral Reverb’s surface simplicity hides an endlessly fascinating reverb. The additional processors massively expand the scope for creating original and unique reverb effects.

5. Eventide Temperance Pro

Formats: VST3, AU, AAX | Platforms: macOS, Windows | Price: $199 | Find out more

Additive synthesis works on the principle that any sound can be deconstructed into a set of simple sine wave “partials”, and be accurately recreated by reproducing those partials. We mention this because additive synthesis is a close analogue to the novel Tempered Ambiance technology found in Temperance Pro and its little brother, Temperance Lite.

Tempered Ambiance constructs reverberations by combining many simple single-frequency resonances, or “modes of vibration”. This allows reverbs to be defined in terms of frequency resonances instead of delay and decay times; put another way, Temperance Pro operates in the frequency domain rather than the time domain.

Perhaps the biggest practical upshot of this approach is that it allows the reverb to be tuned, or “tempered” (hence the name!). Taking advantage of this, Temperance Pro offers three different Note Selection modes: manual, sequence and MIDI. Manual allows you to define a fixed set of resonant notes; sequence allows an up-to 64 bar sequence of notes to be defined; MIDI uses incoming MIDI messages to select resonant frequencies.

The strength of the tuning impact – or Temper – is adjustable from -100% to 100%. Positive Tempers enhance resonances around the currently selected note(s) while reducing other resonances; negative values reduce resonances around the current note(s) and increase other resonances; no tempering is applied when Temper is “0”. A Note Width parameter determines the bandwidth of frequencies that will be affected by the Tempering.

This is all very intriguing, and allows the plugin to produce various resonance-type effects alongside its main line in reverbs, giving it a broad range of creative uses. Sound quality is pristine, as you would expect from Eventide, and everything is beautifully presented (which is also as you’d expect). And of course the idea of a playable reverb is an enticing one, so it’s all the more disappointing that Temperance Pro isn’t as interesting as it should be.

Don’t get us wrong, it’s a good reverb processor – excellent, in fact – and its Tempered Ambiance technology does bring with it some useful abilities, most notably reducing frequency masking between a reverb and its source, and creating harmonised ringing within a reverb. It’s just that the originality of the results doesn’t quite match the novelty of the reverb technology that produced them.

In summary, then, Temperance Pro is a clean, detailed, high-quality reverb processor but, just as with its spiritual forebear, additive synthesis, the theoretical promise of its Tempered Ambiance technology doesn’t quite carry over into real-world results.

6. Lese Hikari

Formats: VST3, AU, AAX | Platforms: macOS, Windows | Price: $55 | Find out more

Lese Hikari’s reverb generator is a fairly standard affair, emulating ‘90s and ‘00s digital hardware reverb units, but what makes it interesting are the number of ways in which stochastic randomness can be introduced into proceedings (“stochastic” meaning the random generation is probabilistic rather than purely random).

The centre of the plugin window is occupied by a topographical map that can be dragged around manually, or an Autopilot can be engaged to cause the map to move by itself. Either way, the currently visible topography is used to seed the plugin’s random generators and, additionally, X and Y movement of the map can be assigned to any other reverb control as a modulation source.

The map features so-called Anomalies, randomly generated points where the processing changes, sometimes bringing in extra effects not heard elsewhere, and sometimes doing nothing at all. The closer the map comes to an Anomaly, the more noticeable the sonic impact should become. Arrows at the edge of the map point towards these Anomalies, and as you drag closer to them, the map changes colour to indicate their proximity.

The plugin provides a choice of different early reflection patterns, all the better for creating unique and off-the-wall effects. There are nine patterns in total, although these tend towards just three or four sets of closely related (and therefore largely indistinguishable) patterns. There’s also a gate that can be triggered manually or via a sequence/pattern, and damping to shape the reverb time across the frequency spectrum.

Finally there’s an Illusion parameter controlling a granular processor that stores audio grains from the input signal, reverses them, and then plays them into the reverb. This doesn’t deliver much in the way of desirable results, the most obvious outcome being that it can, for some inexplicable reason, choke off the reverb altogether.

Overall, then, Lese Hikari’s random colourations and adjustments ensure its sound departs decisively from the old-school Lexicon/EMT algorithms, and give it real potential as a creative and unconventional reverb. Sadly it doesn’t fully live up to that potential, the stochastic randomness at its heart tending to translate to relatively subtle changes in sonic outcome.

7. Soundtoys SpaceBlender

If you really want unconventional reverb, you'd be best placed to start with an unconventional reverb generation engine, and that’s exactly what SpaceBlender does with its implementation of a novel synthesis technique known as Swarm Synthesis.

Central to the plugin window is a so-called texture, essentially a waveform whose complexity can be varied from a simple pattern of individual transients through to a complex noise-like wave. The length of time represented by the wave can be varied from 100 milliseconds to one minute, and its dynamics – how its volume changes over time – are shaped by dragging a pulsing node across the waveform.

Incoming sounds pass through the texture (and are animated passing through it), interacting with it to generate shifting reverbs that follow the texture’s complex transient and dynamic patterns. When the sound reaches the end of the texture, it stops generating reverb. A simple set of dials allow the length and tone of the reverb to be adjusted, and for a touch of chorus-like modulation to be added.

From these basic ingredients comes a lavish banquet of rich, luscious, and wholly unnatural reverbs that truly tickle the ears, and that stand in contrast to the chunky and slightly simplistic look of the plugin itself. All manner of reverb types can be generated too, from sparse, almost delay-like echoes through to dense, complex washes that can stretch for up to a minute. The plugin’s speciality, though, is reverb pulses and gated reverbs, easily created by dragging the time and texture knobs to create the desired shape and length.

Overall, SpaceBlender is without doubt the most immediate and easy-to-use plugin in this roundup, so it’s impressive that its reverb sounds are also amongst the most pleasing too. It’s not really suitable for creating realistic ambiences and acoustic spaces, but if you want big, washy tails, easy density control, or timed reverb pulses and gates, SpaceBlender is the solution you’ve been looking for.

Working through this varied collection of plugins has restored our faith in the originality and inventiveness of reverb designers. All of them explore new avenues for creating ambiences and (sur)real acoustic spaces, and all try their best to come at things from a new angle, rather than just reinventing an already overly-reinvented wheel.

For this reason alone, each and every one of these reverbs is a sparkling gem (or perhaps, in Lair’s case, a seething monster), and far more worthy of your attention than the same-old common-or-garden convolution and algorithmic options that likely fill your plugin folder.

Of course, those conventional ‘verbs have their place, but when you need something richer, denser, wilder, more complex or more attention-grabbing, any one of these plugins would serve you well.

The biggest selling album of all time was released in 1982 – Michael Jackson’s Thriller. But the biggest selling album in America that year was a rather unlikely hit – created by four progressive rock veterans who had come together in a new supergroup.

The group was Asia, and for drummer Carl Palmer it was his second such project after his success in the ’70s as one third of Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

Joining him in Asia were guitarist Steve Howe (of Yes), bassist/vocalist John Wetton (King Crimson, Roxy Music, etc) and keyboardist Geoff Downes (Yes, The Buggles).

In a new interview with MusicRadar, Carl Palmer recalls the formation of Asia, how he was not the first choice of drummer for the band, and how they wrote and recorded the song that became their breakthrough hit.

He begins by acknowledging the key roles played in Asia’s career by two senior figures at Geffen Records – the company’s founder and CEO David Geffen, and A&R executive John Kalodner, who was also instrumental in guiding successful comebacks in the ’80s for Aerosmith and Whitesnake.

“John Kalodner started out as a journalist in Philadelphia,” Palmer says. “John used to write really well about the bands that played at the Spectrum, the big 20,000 seater in Philadelphia, and his journalism was really meaningful, accurate, not gossip. He was somebody who knew about music. He wrote very well, and he got picked up by David Geffen, who was always looking for a new kind of talent.

“Kalodner said to Geffen, ‘The progressive rock circuit is pretty stagnant. They don’t play prog music on the radio anymore, unless it’s three o’clock in the morning. You don’t get it on drivetime anymore.’

“Kalodner was brought in because there was a change – MTV, VH1, all that stuff had started. Geffen knew that he could use MTV or whatever and he could break something big if they got it right.”

As Palmer understands it, the creation of Asia began in 1981 when Kalodner orchestrated a connection between John Wetton and Steve Howe.

“I think those two got together with the help of John Kalodner,” Palmer says, “because Kalodner was a big John Wetton fan. Wetton had been in King Crimson after Greg Lake. He’d also been in the band U.K., and Kalodner liked that.

“Steve Howe got together with Wetton because Yes had kind of broken up, and then Kalodner said, ‘Let’s get a great drummer.’ Those was his words. They got Simon Phillips. Simon came in and played. And I don’t know why that didn’t work out, but Kalodner said, ‘We need Carl Palmer!’ So I come in and play and it’s great.”

He continues: “At that point it was the three of us, so we started rehearsing as a three-piece band. But at the place where we were rehearsing in London, down the hallway was Geoff Downes playing with Trevor Horn in a band called The Buggles, who’d had that big hit with Video Killed The Radio Star.

“Steve Howe said, ‘Hey, we had this guy in Yes for a little while with Trevor Horn singing. He’s a good keyboard player. Why don't we go and get him?’ I said, ’Yeah!’

“I’d seen Yes at Madison Square Gardens with Steve Howe and Geoff Downes and Trevor Horn. I flew over to see the concert because I thought I’d see what that was all about. I said, ‘Let’s try it with Geoff.’ So we hauled his keyboards up the hallway after Trevor had left one night, and we started rehearsing – and the rest is history. That’s how it came together.”

Downes turned out to be a major songwriter within the group. In partnership with Wetton he crafted all three of the songs that became singles from the Asia’s debut album – Heat Of The Moment, Only Time Will Tell and Sole Survivor.

In an interview with Classic Rock magazine, Steve Howe described two tracks, Time Again and Wildest Dreams, as “very progressive”.

But as Palmer says now, David Geffen wanted to hear songs that could appeal to a mainstream audience.

Palmer states: “Geffen said, ‘I’m going to find it hard to get the band on radio unless you’re prepared to cross over a little bit.’ And we decided that we would have a go at that.

“We still had some prog in there, like Time Again and Wildest Dreams, and Sole Survivor was a bit on the heavy side. But we needed a kind of pop song.”

John Wetton had something in mind, but it wasn’t originally a pop song.

Palmer recalls: “Heat Of The Moment was the last song for the album, and I think it was recorded at about two o’clock in the morning. It was one of those classic moments.

“John had said, ‘I’ve got an idea.’ We said, ‘Well, what is it?’ It was late and I was thinking, ‘I’m hungry and I’m tired and I want to go to bed.’

“But John was clever. After telling us he’d got an idea he said, ‘Could we just lay a rhythm track down for this?’ I said, ‘Well, once you put the drums down, if you change anything you’ve got to record the whole thing again.’ Because once the drums go down, it’s hard to edit them. You can, but it’s better to do it in a proper arrangement that’s got conviction behind it and you know that’s the one.

“Anyway, long story short, he says, ’It’s a country song that used to be in 3/4, and I think we can play it in a straight 4/4. Could we have a go?’ I said, ‘That sounds really interesting – but are you sure you know where you’re going with this?’ He said, ‘I got it’ – and he did. He’d got it all mapped out, and we started playing it.

“I said, ‘Steve, you need to play some rhythm guitar behind this.’ ‘Geoff, play some chords.’ ‘And John, give me a guide vocal. Give me the format.’

“He wrote the format down. You know, verse, verse, chorus, chorus, middle eight, out choruses, verse, verse, out, end choruses. And we laid it down, I think, in about an hour. The following day we came in and finished it off, and that was it. Job done.”

Palmer smiles at the memory: “John was very clever because nobody overplayed on it because everybody was tired, so he he got basically very straight, simple parts, which the song actually needed. Very clever.”

In 2011 John Wetton talked about the creation of Heat Of The Moment on the Kickin’ It Old School blog.

He stated: “The lyrics are an abject apology for my dreadful behaviour towards a particular woman – the woman I would eventually marry, but divorce 10 years later.”

Wetton described the time signature as 6/8 and explained: “When Geoff and I started writing together, we moved the time signatures around, and Heat Of The Moment emerged.”

In 2026, Geoff Downes spoke to Penny Black Music about his contribution to the debut Asia album.

“I was used to short songs,” he said. “Melodic, short pop songs. The band still retained the depth and musicality, so it wasn’t straight-ahead pop. We kept a good line between not-selling-out, but having that accessibility. More of a commercial level. That’s one of the things that was our strength.”

Downes also pointed to a surprising influence in Palmer’s drumming in the intro to Heat Of The Moment.

“That was inspired by Phil Spector,” Downes said. “That drumbeat with a fat snare with a tambourine, and Carl really embraced that idea.”

What Palmer himself recalls with great satisfaction is the immediate success that Asia enjoyed in 1982 as Heat Of The Moment shot to No 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, powering the album all the way to No 1.

“We made the videos, went on to MTV, and we got a hit right out the box with Heat Of The Moment,” Palmer says. “The album was number one for nine weeks in America.

“It was,” he recalls, “an incredibly exciting time.”

The poignancy of Love is a Losing Game - the Ivor Novello-winning fifth single from Amy Winehouse’s final album Back to Black - only seems to deepen with the passing years. To mark twenty years since Back to Black was released, we’re taking a closer look at this pivotal track, examining how Amy channeled her own heartbreak into one of her greatest ever songs.

Before we look at the song, however, we need to understand the context in which it was written. Amy’s second album Back to Black was made during a period of intense personal tumult for Winehouse. Her tempestuous relationship with boyfriend Blake Fielder-Civil had come to an abrupt end - leaving Amy despondent.

It was a factor, amongst other things, that pushed her deeper into an unhealthy fixation with alcohol and drugs. The pair had split a mere six months after beginning their relationship, with her mercurial partner returning to the arms of his ex. In the fall-out, Amy's feelings of utter dejection spurred her to write the lion’s share of Back to Black.

Meanwhile, Amy's label Island Records were growing impatient. Her debut, Frank, had been released to rapturous acclaim in 2003, however Winehouse was retrospectively disappointed with the record’s ‘smooth’ and polished sound - and what she perceived as a bungled marketing campaign.

“You couldn’t rein her in, you couldn’t tame her and there was no point in trying to. She wouldn’t comply, rightly or wrongly, and with the benefit of hindsight that’s someone that knows her sense of self,” remembered Island Records’ A&R legend Darcus Beese in an interview with Music Week. “She was one of those artists where you just had to get out of her way.”

Her next album then, would be something altogether more self-directed, and more in sync with Amy's increasingly varied musical touch-points. Back to Black’s 11 songs would present a more honest reflection of Amy Winehouse in the mid-2000s, both as a blossoming artist and as a battle-worn, fallible human being.

Initial recording sessions with Frank producer Salaam Remi bottled some true magic. Most notably, Remi and Winehouse crafted the sublime Tears Dry on Their Own (which we’ve explored in depth in a separate feature), Some Unholy War, Me & Mr Jones, Just Friends, and Addicted. But it was the portion of the record that Amy made with her new friend, upstart producer Mark Ronson, that would lead to Amy’s strongest-ever clutch of songs.

Meeting Ronson - with whom she shared a publishing company - the pair quickly hit it off on a creative level.

“Even though I wasn’t a big producer at that time I was just happy to have any gig,” Ronson told NME. “I remember people being like, ‘Oh, you’re working with Amy Winehouse, good luck with that. I heard she’s been working on that album forever’.

“The six songs that we did on Back to Black together, we did in five to seven days,” Ronson continued. “I always think, ‘Damn, I wish it did take longer’, because I would have more memories. Not that we didn’t spend plenty of time hanging out after that, but it was just so quick.”

Working with Ronson at his New York studio, Amy and Mark developed six new songs. Firstly, the gloomy, piano-based title track alongside lead singles Rehab and You Know I’m No Good. Then came Wake Up Alone (co-written with Paul O’Duffy) and He Can Only Hold Her (co-written with Richard and Robert Poindexter).

But, perhaps the song that would go on to have the most abiding resonance would be the shimmering Love is a Losing Game.

Written while Amy was processing the emotional shock of being abruptly discarded by the man with whom she had planned a future, Winehouse poured her feelings of fragility, and a sense of detached resilience, into a lament for love more broadly.

Lyrically, she pointed to the idea of love as being akin to a game, with two players taking a gamble on something impossible to know the outcome of.

In Amy’s hard-learned case, it was a risk that hadn’t paid off…

For you, I was a flame
Love is a losing game
Five story fire as you came
Love is a losing game
One I wished I never played
Oh, what a mess we made
And now, the final frame
Love is a losing game

To compound the analogy, Amy’s allusion to a ‘final frame’ recalled her penchant for a pool table, amid references to poker chips and a losing hand of cards. It was a strong and fitting conceit that revealed much about Winehouse’s own philosophy.

Beyond the personal specifics, Love is a Losing Game also spotlighted Amy’s wisdom. In her words, there's a sense of cosmic inevitability to the fractured promise of love. Her experience seemed to prove a universal truth, that love is always a game we're all destined to lose, one day…

Though, though, oh, I battle blind
Love is a fate resigned
And the memories, the memories mar my mind
Love is a fate resigned
Over futile odds
And laughed at by the gods

Despite the contemporary media portrayal of Winehouse as an off-the-rails hell-raiser, Love is a Losing Game's lyrics demonstrate, perhaps more clearly than anything else, that she was a mature songwriter beyond compare for her age.

Ridden with contemplative emotion, in conjunction with the wistful, jazz-informed chord structure that Amy had crafted the song within, it was firm evidence that Amy's abilities were flourishing.

“Amy’s musicality… she was like a monster, and I definitely want everybody to know that,” Mark remembered when addressing the crowd during an Amy Winehouse tribute performance alongside Yebba at London’s The Roundhouse, ahead of performing Love is a Losing Game.

“The chords were so complicated and jazzy, I was like, ‘Man, you just play this song. I don’t even know what I’m doing right now.’ So she did.”

Feeling that the song’s simplicity needed to be retained, Ronson recorded Amy performing the song with just an acoustic guitar.

It was perfect.

“I’d become so attached to it that I felt there was no way we could top that emotionally. But there was a part of me that still wanted to hear the sonic of reverbed drums in the background,” Mark remembered in an interview with Performing Songwriter.

Ronson turned to a couple of members of Amy’s then-backing band, the Dap-Kings to figure out if it was possible to develop the arrangement without tarnishing the song’s beauty.

“I sat with [Dap-Kings band members] Gabe [Roth - bassist/bandleader] and Homer [Steinweiss - drummer] and asked them, ‘How can we put a beat behind a ballad like that and not remove any of the sentiment?’ That was a real challenge: coming up with a beat that wouldn’t detract from the song and still become an integral part of it. With a song like Rehab or You Know I’m No Good it’s a lot easier because you can put something hard behind it that’s going to drive the track. Coming from DJ’ing, you’re always thinking about the beat but sometimes I have to shut down that side of my brain and remind myself it’s not about that.”

Realising that the jazzier heart of the song needed to be brought to the fore, Ronson, Winehouse and Roth devised a more instrumentally-coloured arrangement. A steady drum performance was laid down by Steinweiss, with a distinctive fill that opened the song and recurred before each verse. Crystalline electric guitar chops were applied by Binky Griptite and Thomas Brenneck, and understated bass from Nick Movshon.

Wanting to emphasise the emotion even further, Ronson and conductor Chris Elliot penned an orchestral backing. Originally, this was a little more overwrought than the subtler final result.

But Ronson wasn’t sure how Amy would take the idea, having previously heard her being dismissive of the concept of cheesy-sounding strings. Particularly considering the personal stakes behind this stark and deeply emotive piece.

Mark tried his luck…

“I said, ‘I’ll pay for it then. If you don’t like it, we can take it off’,” Ronson remembered in an interview with Red Bull Music Academy. “She was like, ‘Don’t waste your f**king money.’ She really just wouldn’t have it, so I had to do it without telling her. I did the strings without telling her. I went and did the arrangement.”

Having spent a day mixing the new arrangement, Mark was nervous about playing back the results to Amy.

“She didn’t know I’d put the strings down until we’re mixing the final thing. At that point we’d been mixing the song for the whole day. If she’d just come in and said, ‘Take the strings out,’ it would’ve been a pain in the ass and kind of ruined the record. So she’s listening with her head down in the console for two and a half minutes. And I couldn’t see the expression on her face and I’m like, ‘Oh, please, let her like it.’ And she just jumps up at the end of the song and goes, ‘Come here Ronny-chops,’ and gives me a hug”.

Although Amy wasn’t without notes…

“Without missing a beat she says, ‘Just take that Mariah Carey harp bullshit out at the third breakdown, alright?’ and walks out of the room. So that was that,” Mark recalled.

The story was also told to The Fader: “She had her head down on the desk, and I was kind of terrified. When the song was done, she looked up, beaming, and said, 'Okay, you can leave it in.'”

Amy's long-awaited second album was worth the wait, becoming nothing short of a phenomenon. Topping charts globally, it would, of course, go on to scoop five Grammys and sell over 20 million copies.

Love is a Losing Game would go on to become one of Back to Black’s immediate highlights. For many, it was the record’s emotional centre - the crux of the album's thematic exploration of heartbreak.

“I had never really made a hit record before,” Ronson reflected in an interview with the BBC. “It didn’t sound like anything else that was on the radio. It certainly didn’t seem like something that was going to be this huge commercial success. It just felt raw and honest.”

Sadly, Winehouse’s unexpected death at the young age of 27 on July 23 2011 tragically ended her journey. Love is a Losing Game, in fact, stands as her final ever single release - chosen as the fifth song to be put out from Back to Black on December 10 2007, well over a year since the best-selling album was released. Thusly, it entered the charts at a lowly 46 - as most people were already very familiar with it.

Even Amy herself apparently saw little point in releasing the single. Personally, things had changed a lot. Now reunited and married to Blake, she infamously never turned up for the song's planned video shoot.

Lifelong best friend Tyler James shared in his book My Amy: The Life We Shared, that on that day, the onus had been on him to ensure the increasingly unpredictable Amy attended the shoot.

“A huge, elaborate set was hired at Pinewood Studios, a street had been built, there were plans for fake rain,” said James. “As usual, it was all on me to try to get Amy there. Amy had stayed with Blake the night before; I got there in the morning, there were a hundred people waiting for her, and [director] Phil Griffin was frantic. ‘Please, please, Tyler, you’re the only person who can get her here.’”

After calling Winehouse and telling her how brilliant the design for the video looked, Tyler could hear Winehouse asking Blake whether she should go along. Blake said no. Options for how to proceed were limited…

“Me and Phil had to make the video for Love Is a Losing Game,” James recalled. “We had editing equipment installed in a spare hotel room and put the montage of images and performances together. We wanted Amy to be involved. She did come in once. She said, ‘I don’t care, you and Phil do it, you know what I like,’ walked out the door, swung the door back open, and said, ‘Make sure you put in loads of Blake!” And that’s why he’s in it.’”

Interestingly, musical titan Prince soon recognised Love is a Losing Game's beauty, and took to performing the song in his live set during his 21-night residency at London’s O2 arena in September 2007.

“I love the song,” Prince said during a press conference, and answered in the affirmative when asked if he’d be up for a live duet with Amy herself.

Once she learned of the prospective offer, Amy was flabbergasted. “I’m going to Minneapolis - see you later,” she joked when MTV informed her of Prince being up for a duet. “I hope I can do it, though - I’ll drop everything to do that,” she said.

Although they never shared the stage during Prince’s main stint at the O2, Winehouse did join the Purple One during one of his legendary after-parties on September 22 2007 at the neighbouring IndigO2 venue.

Prince and Winehouse performed the song together on stage (only this grainy footage remains, sadly) with the former in true form - elaborating on the song with a slew of slinky guitar lines and a vibrant solo. “I got tears - I’m gonna have to get my shades on,” Prince said after they’d finished their rendition.

Love is a Losing Game cuts to the very heart of Amy Winehouse, and remains a testament to her talent. Rightfully, it won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically And Lyrically in 2008. In the wake of her death, the song's emotions only hit harder.

“I was with her two nights before she died and I spoke to her on the phone two hours before she went to sleep for the last time,” remembered bassist and live musical director Dale Davis in a new interview with The Times. “I wasn’t worried. Completely the opposite. We had such a nice conversation. She rang up, she said, ‘I’ve been watching YouTube clips of myself, I can sing, can’t I?’ I went, ‘Yeah, of course you can sing, you’re the best.’”

Gavin Harrison is one of the finest drummers of his generation. He loves the creative process, and he likes to keep busy. But as he admits to MusicRadar: “Being in three bands around the same time is tricky.”

Juggling his recording and touring commitments between those three bands has proven a daunting task. His tenure with Porcupine Tree began in 2002, followed by King Crimson in 2008 and The Pineapple Thief in 2016.

“There was a quite a lot of time where I was in King Crimson and The Pineapple Thief at the same time,” Harrison says. “And I don’t like to come off one tour and then the next day go out on another tour. I need time to recover and to change my mental hard drive.

“These tours are planned so far ahead, a good 18 months in advance. So I would carefully select time periods. I would say to The Pineapple Thief, ‘We could do something in this period. I know King Crimson are not gonna be busy in this period.’ I already know that because we’re talking about shows booked long in advance. So that was easy to manage.”

Harrison recalls his negotiations with King Crimson’s guitarist and leader Robert Fripp and bassist Tony Levin.

“There might be times where Robert would have suggested, ‘Can we do a tour next fall?’ And maybe Tony would say, ‘Oh, I’m touring with Peter Gabriel.’ Or I would say, ‘I’ve already got a tour planned.’ And Robert would say, ‘Fine, okay, we’ll move it to the following spring.’ All these things had to slot together.”

Due to Porcupine Tree being on hiatus between 2010 and 2021, there was less overlap for Harrison to deal with.

“By the time Porcupine Tree came back , King Crimson had stopped,” he says. “Plus, we went through the whole COVID thing, so I didn’t really have to juggle Porcupine Tree and The Pineapple Thief too much.”

Harrison is on tour with The Pineapple Thief in early 2027. The band’s 16th studio album, Far And Wide, was released in October 2026.

As for the futures of King Crimson and Porcupine Tree, Harrison says: “Well, King Crimson is completely inactive. So, I haven't left it, I haven't joined it – it’s just inactive. There’s no news in the King Crimson world at the moment.”

Asked if he would work again with Crimson if Robert Fripp made the call, he replies: “Yeah, if I could, sure.”

Recently, Porcupine Tree’s frontman and leader Steven Wilson stated in an interview with Prog magazine that the band had not managed to complete much new music. “We’re a long way from it being an album’s worth,” he said, “so it could be years.”

Harrison gives MusicRadar a rather different story.

“Porcupine Tree is still an ongoing concern,” he says. “We are writing another album. And next year we’re hoping to get together and finish that album off.”

Looking back on his time with King Crimson, Harrison has named Discipline as the most challenging Crimson track to play. The equivalent in Porcupine Tree’s catalogue is the epic track Anesthetize from the 2007 album Fear Of A Blank Planet. It’s a track so quintessentially prog that it features a guitar solo from Alex Lifeson of Rush.

Harrison says of Anesthetize: “That a song is incredibly hard to play if you play the whole thing – 17 minutes. From a drummer point of view, your heart rate probably gets up to maximum in the middle.

“The hard bit is that when you play it live as a 17-minute song you play the first five or six minutes all on the toms. The muscles in your arms really start aching, because you’re only playing the toms. So if you haven’t paced yourself carefully, your arms are really, really tired by the time you get to the heavy section in the middle – the bit where you really need them.”

Another Porcupine Tree song that’s a favourite of Harrison’s is one that he co-wrote with Steven Wilson – Start Of Something Beautiful, from 2005 album Deadwing. “That one is really heavy to play,” he smiles.

He finds it difficult to pick favourites from his years with The Pineapple Thief.

“At the moment, I’m just concentrating on the new songs from the new album,” the says, “as we’re now rehearsing them. My head is full of those songs. But I’ve always liked Our Mire [from 2020 album Versions Of The Truth] and White Mist [from 2018’s Dissolution]. And the first song I ever recorded with The Pineapple Thief is called In Exile. We still play that song a lot, and it always goes down well.”

Harrison has a wide-ranging approach to recording and miking his drums.

He explains: “I’ve got this drum kit in my home studio close-mic’d. I also have some overhead mics, mics from the ceiling.

“I’ve got this massive hall. The room is about 50 foot high by 50 foot wide, and I have some microphones placed out there. So I’ve got this massive reverb and ambient hall sound. I record that on four different mics out in the hall.

“I’ve got options when I come to mixing. I can mix it dead dry, close mic’d. Or I can have more of an overhead sound. I can have a massive hall sound, or anywhere in between.

“For all intents and purposes it’s like you’re in a dry drum booth. So I’ve got that sound, and the big hall, and all this overhead stuff. I record on 20 mics, and then I can I can mix it any way I feel like.”

He works closely with The Pineapple Thief’s vocalist and guitarist Bruce Soord.

“The way we do it is I do a stereo mix of the drums, and I send that to Bruce, and he mixes everything else to my stereo mix. We keep updating. He’ll send me that mix with his mix on top, and then he’ll send me a drum-less version, and I’ll do another mix. That could happen 10, 15 times over a month for each song.

“So I keep refining the drums based upon how I’m hearing the guitars, the bass, the keyboards, the vocals. ‘Ah, okay, now I need a little bit more of the underside of the snare, or maybe the bass drum should have more attack.’ I make decisions, and then I'll print another stereo mix and send it to Bruce. I always mix the drums, and he mixes the rest of the band.”

From studio to stage, his kit remains unchanged.

“It’s exactly the same,” he says. “I would use exactly the same cymbals, the same tuning. I might use different mics on tour, only because I don’t want to take out these kind of quite fragile studio mics. Some of them are valve mics. They’re not really tour-worthy. We’ve got a slightly different selection of mics, but other than that, the drum kit is identical.”

He finishes on one small but important detail.

“I've always liked the K-sounding Zildjian cymbals,” he says. “I’ve always liked darker sounding cymbals, actually. I don’t need the super high-frequency shiny sort of quite brash things, and I know Robert Fripp doesn’t like that either. I remember putting up a post one day about Zildjian, because they sent me some new cymbals whilst I was on tour. And Robert said how much he liked Zildjian cymbals too.”

The Allman Brothers Band’s legendary live album At Fillmore East is widely acclaimed as one of the greatest of all time. Al Di Meola certainly thinks so – and with good reason.

“I was there,” he recalls to MusicRadar. “I was at the Fillmore East when the Allman Brothers recorded that live album.”

Di Meola was just 16 when the Allmans performed at the New York City venue in March 1971. The band played three nights. The album was pieced together using recordings from two of those shows.

The Allman Brothers Band line-up at that time featured Gregg Allman on vocals and keyboards, Duane Allman and Dickey Betts on guitars, Berry Oakley on bass, and both Butch Trucks and Jaimoe (AKA Jai Johanny Johanson) on drums and percussion.

Di Meola says that these performances left a deep impression on him.

“It was unbelievable,” he says. “You have to understand what that band sounded like in that room. Duane Allman. Dickey Betts. Gregg Allman. Berry Oakley. Butch Trucks. Jaimoe. The energy was incredible.”

The Allmans’ style of Southern rock might seem an unlikely inspiration for a jazz fusion artist such as Di Meola, but as the guitarist recalls, he drew on the experience of those Fillmore East shows when, as a 19 year old prodigy, he began performing in fusion group Return To Forever, led by pianist Chick Corea.

“There’s actually a direct line from hearing that music at the Fillmore to my first days with Return To Forever,” Di Meola explains. “When I first joined Return To Forever, Chick wanted everybody to play a solo feature. I’m nineteen years old and thinking, ‘What the hell am I going to play by myself?’

“So, during my solo, I started playing some Allman Brothers licks. The place went crazy. I mean, crazy. I came offstage, and Chick came up to me and said, ‘What was that?’ I said, ‘The Allman Brothers.’ He had no idea.

“Chick didn't know the Allman Brothers. But the audience certainly did. And that taught me something very early on. Music doesn't have to live in these little boxes. I could be playing with Chick Corea in Return To Forever, and something I’d absorbed from Duane Allman and Dickey Betts could come out in my solo and connect immediately with an audience. If it’s part of you, it’s part of you.”

A circle was completed for Di Meola in 2026 when he had the opportunity to play the actual 1958 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop used by Dickey Betts during those landmark gigs in ’71.

“What a thrill,” Di Meola smiles. “I got to play the original Dickey Betts Les Paul from that Fillmore East recording.

“Think about that. I’m a kid sitting in the Fillmore East hearing that guitar. Then I joined Return To Forever and played Allman Brothers licks during my solo because I’m trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to play – and the place erupts. And more than fifty years later, I’m in Chicago at a collector’s showroom, and the guy is handing me the actual Dickey Betts guitar to play. Those are the moments where you really feel the passage of time.”

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were hurtling along a freeway near Washington DC when Nicks glanced up and noticed a sign for Silver Spring, Maryland.

It was 1976 and Nicks’ and Buckingham’s band Fleetwood Mac were on tour to promote their breakthrough self-titled album, which topped the US charts in September that year. The follow-up album Rumours, released in February 1977, would catapult them to global superstardom.

The name Silver Spring struck a chord with Nicks, whose relationship with Buckingham was imploding just as the band were on their mercurial ascent. It inspired her to write a song called Silver Springs, with an additional ‘s’ – a break-up anthem about what might have been.

“I wrote Silver Springs about Lindsey… and I loved the name,” Nicks told MTV in 1997. “Silver Springs sounded like a pretty fabulous place to me. And ‘You could be my silver springs’ – that’s just a whole symbolic thing of what you could have been to me.”

The song was recorded as part of the Rumours sessions but never made it onto the album. It was relegated to the B-side of Go Your Own Way, after which it pretty much disappeared without trace.

It would take 20 years for the song to be released and take on a whole second life, when it was included in Fleetwood Mac’s live set during The Dance Tour and released as a single from the 1997 live album The Dance. Critics hailed this live version of the song, and for many Fleetwood Mac fans it was the first time they had actually heard it.

“I thought it was an old Buckingham Nicks song,” Courtney Love told Rolling Stone. “It really moved me. I was like ‘What the fuck is this?’”

Lorde, Florence and the Machine, Tori Amos and Lykke Li would all go on to cover the song live – and its themes of hurt, heartbreak, jealousy and emotional revenge would go on to speak to Gen Zers into the 2020s.

But it was the video of Fleetwood Mac’s live 1997 performance at the Warner Bros studio in Burbank, California that really resonated with audiences. At the song’s climactic end, Nicks can be seen turning to face Buckingham, glaring at him with a ferocious intensity as she sings the lines: “I'll follow you down ’til the sound of my voice will haunt you/You’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you.”

It’s a powerful scene, as noted by Rolling Stone: “That image… of Nicks singing the words at Buckingham, her eyes burning into his soul, as if casting a spell, 20 years after writing the lyrics and still meaning them – has become the stuff of legend.”

The video of that performance on YouTube has now racked up 88 million views and the collective obsession with it on TikTok has really gained traction. There is a sense that Nicks’s empowerment in the face of devastating heartache has really resonated among young people. As one TikTok user wrote in a caption over the clip: “Don’t just write a song about your ex, make him play lead guitar and sing it right to his face on stage.”

What is remarkable about Nicks’s performance is that it begins at a point of vulnerability yet builds to one of power. Once Nicks makes direct eye contact with Buckingham she doesn’t let up. There is anger, grief, defiance, and Buckingham is the direct recipient of it all.

“It was me realising that Lindsey was going to haunt me for the rest of my life,” Nicks told Rolling Stone, “and he has.”

But beneath all the drama and pain lies a beautiful and brilliantly crafted song from Nicks. Silver Springs is a graceful, stately affair with a country-tinged sound that set it apart from the soft rock strains of the Rumours-era tracks.

With a running time of 4:48 for the 1976 studio version and 5:33 for the 1997 live version, the song has room to breathe and it builds slowly, with two verses and a pre-chorus before the chorus finally comes in at 2:15.

“Time cast a spell on you, but you won’t forget me/I know I could have loved you/But you would not let me.”

Prominent guitar swells from Buckingham and lush flowing piano from Christine McVie intro the song, before Nicks’s voice enters, a warm plaintive timbre with a real sense of longing.

Nicks’s voice lends itself seamlessly to the lonesome country-tinged cadences in the song. The ascending chorus when it hits is rousing and triumphant, and Buckingham delivers a tasteful and beautifully understated guitar solo.

The backing vocals, sung primarily by Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham, add haunting counter melodies and raw emotional tension.

For Stevie Nicks, the release of the live version of the song as a single in 1997 was the culmination of two decades of struggle to have her song heard and recognised.

The basic track for Silver Springs was first recorded at the Record Plant studio in Sausalito, California, on 11 February 1976. In the 2012 book Making Rumours, The Inside Story Of The Classic Fleetwood Mac Album, co-written by the album’s co-producer Ken Caillat and author Steve Stiefel, Caillat recalls that the initial takes were laid down with drums, bass, electric guitar, a Fender Rhodes electric piano and a scratch vocal.

Two days later, the band recorded 19 more takes but none were deemed satisfactory. Caillat recalled that on 14 February 1976 the band began using a click track and Christine McVie switched from the Fender Rhodes to a grand piano, recorded in an isolation room to prevent spill. Buckingham’s guitar, meanwhile, was fed through an amp in one room and a Leslie speaker in another. Take 8 was the one chosen and used for overdubs.

Additional work was done at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco, where Buckingham redid his guitar part. Caillat noted that he highlighted the upper frequencies of the strings on Buckingham’s Stratocaster using a Lavalier microphone – traditionally used for TV broadcasts – which he says gave the guitar a “delicate, glasslike, music box-type sound”.

Caillat described Silver Springs as “gorgeous”, “powerful”, and “a masterpiece”. There was only one problem. “I knew the song was too long to fit on the album,” he said.

Silver Springs was eventually dropped from the album and replaced by another Nicks song, I Don’t Want To Know, which the rest of the band reportedly liked better and which was shorter.

It fell to drummer Mick Fleetwood to inform Nicks that Silver Springs would not be included on the Rumours album.

One day, towards the end of the Rumours sessions, Fleetwood asked Nicks to come out into the parking lot at the Record Plant in Sausalito.

“I knew it was really serious ’cause Mick never asks you to go out to the parking lot for anything,” Nicks recalled in a 1991 BBC radio interview. It was there that Fleetwood revealed that Silver Springs had been cut from the album for being too long and “a lot of [other] reasons,” according to Nicks.

Fleetwood wanted the lighter I Don’t Want To Know on the album instead. Nicks was incensed.

“I started to scream bloody murder and probably said every horribly mean thing that you could possibly say to another human being and walked back in the studio completely flipped out,” she continued.

According to a 2017 feature in Rolling Stone Caillat and the album’s other co-producer Richard Dashut tried to find a way to keep Silver Springs on the album, offering to edit it down or trim one of Nicks’s other songs. But the idea wasn’t pursued.

For Nicks, the omission of Silver Springs had another profound consequence. She had intended to give the royalty cheque for the publishing rights of the song to her mother Barbara as a thank you. Given the colossal success of Rumours, such a payment would have been substantial.

“Stevie was devastated for a number of reasons,” Caillat told Rolling Stone in 2017. “She loved the song, and by it not being on the LP, her mom didn’t make all the extra publishing because the single didn’t sell very much.”

When the decision was taken to put I Don’t Want To Know on Rumours instead, Nicks reportedly refused to sing it. But she eventually changed her mind.

“With a gun to my head, I went out and sang I Don’t Want to Know,” she told the BBC in 1991. “And they put Silver Springs on the back of Go Your Own Way.”

Nicks’ problems didn’t end there. In 1990, she began planning her greatest hits album Timespace – The Best Of Stevie Nicks. She had every intention of including Silver Springs on the album.

But her plan coincided with Mick Fleetwood’s own desire to include it on a forthcoming Fleetwood Mac boxset. This resulted in another heated exchange between the two.

“I told [Mick Fleetwood’s manager] that I want Silver Springs because it belongs to my mother,” Nicks told the BBC in 1991. “It didn’t occur to me that they wouldn’t let me have it back. I said to his manager, ‘You find Mick, and you tell him that if I don’t have those tapes by Monday, I am no longer a member of Fleetwood Mac.’”

Fleetwood got his way and Silver Springs appeared on the 1992 Fleetwood Mac boxset, 25 Years – The Chain. True to her word, Nicks quit the band.

It took an unlikely musical duet between Buckingham and Nicks in 1996 – on the song Twisted, from the soundtrack of the film Twister – to spark the reunion of Fleetwood Mac and the 1997 tour and live album The Dance.

Nicks’s performance on the live 1997 version of the song earned Silver Springs a belated Grammy nomination, in the category of Best Pop Performance. The song would remain a staple of the band’s live set until 2015. For Nicks, performing the song live with Fleetwood Mac on the 1997 tour was an experience she had never believed would happen.

“I never thought that Silver Springs would ever be performed onstage,” Nicks reflected during a 1997 MTV interview. “My beautiful song just disappeared [20 years ago]. For it to come back around like this has really been special to me.”

Another week bites the dust and that can only mean one thing… It's time for our run-down of red-hot music happenings in 10-question quiz form!

Each week, we dive through our back catalogue and pick out our greatest hits from the last seven days of MusicRadar.

Our quick quizzy recap will soon get you up to speed on who's rocking what, where and why.

Hit that play button and start the party!

Want even more quizzy action? Try our last bunch of weekly quizzes for size:

Quiz of the week 27
Quiz of the week 26
Quiz of the week 25
Quiz of the week 24
Quiz of the week 23

Rock legend Neil Young has gone into battle against Donald Trump over the US President’s continued use of Young’s song Rockin’ In The Free World.

In a $10 million lawsuit filed against Trump’s political action committee, Trump 47 Committee Inc., Young alleges copyright infringement relating to the use of Rockin’ In The Free World at Trump’s recent political rallies.

It is the latest twist in the story of this classic rock anthem.

Way back in the 1980s it was an off-the-cuff remark from guitarist Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro that gave Neil Young the title for the song.

When Young and his band The Restless were notified of the cancellation of a tour in the Soviet Union, Sampedro joked, “We’ll just have to keep on rockin’ in the free world.”

Young replied: “Well, Poncho, that’s a good line. I’m gonna use that if you don’t mind.”

Later, Young commented: “It was such a cliché. I knew I had to use it.”

Rockin’ In The Free World would be released in 1989, serving as the lead single for Young’s 17th studio album, Freedom. The song would also end up as one of Young’s most defining anthems.

In a 2018 interview with MOJO magazine, Sampedro said that Young had written a handful of tracks for this album when he realised he needed something harder-hitting, more up-tempo and direct.

The band were checking into a hotel room in Portland when Sampedro urged Young to look about the world around him for inspiration to help finish the track.

Sampedro remembered: “I said, ‘Look man, tonight, get in your room, think about all this stuff that’s going down – the Ayatollah, all the stuff in Afghanistan, all these wars breaking out, all the problems in America.’”

The following morning, as the members were preparing to leave on their bus, Young informed him that the song had now been completed, taking heavy influence from some of the political unrest across the globe at the tail-end of the ’80s.

Some of the ire was directed at the newly appointed George H. W. Bush administration, directly quoting lines about “a thousand points of light” and “a kinder, gentler nation” from his presidential campaign promises and inaugural address. Other political references in the song include the line “Don’t feel like Satan but I am to them” from the opening verse, which was born out of Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini’s proclamation that the United States was the “Great Satan”. There’s also a nod to Jesse Jackson’s 1988 campaign slogan “Keep hope alive” in the third and final verse.

Released in between the opening of the Iron Curtain and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Rockin’ In The Free World would become the anthem for the European liberation of its time.

In his 2013 memoir Waging Heavy Peace, Young reflected how this kind of social commentary was a “part of the process” for him.

He reasoned: “I just do what I do and keep my ears and eyes open. Things are happening all the time. You put it out there and shit happens.”

Interestingly, the main riff to the song has more in common with hard rock and early heavy metal than the folk scene Young had been part of. Palm-muting was used to deaden the strings and bring more of a staccato feel – a technique famously used by bands like Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Metallica. The palm-muting is abandoned during the verse and chorus sections, allowing the chords to vibrate and ring out naturally.

For his solo at 2:30, Sampedro uses the E minor pentatonic scale – though also chose to include a Bb blue note and a major second found on the 14th fret of his high E-string.

Rockin’ In The Free World has been performed regularly by Pearl Jam, who have also performed the track alongside Young – a man they’ve often described as their musical mentor. The members of Pearl Jam even served as Young’s backing band on his 1995 album Mirror Ball.

Given his strong political beliefs, Young has been notably particular about where his songs have been used. Rockin’ In The Free World was approved for the 2004 Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 – a harsh critique of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq the year prior – as well as 2015 film The Big Short, based on how reckless bankers, traders and advisors helped cause the 2008 recession.

When Donald Trump used the song in his announcement as the Republican candidate for the 2016 presidency, Young – who had sided with Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders – responded by saying its usage had not been authorised.

Trump’s staff then outlined how the campaign had obtained the legal right to use the recording through a licensing agreement with royalty collecting society ASCAP and agreed not to use Young’s music moving forwards. They also claimed: “Despite Neil’s differing political views, Mr. Trump likes him very much.”

However, Trump lashed out on Twitter later down the line, claiming Young had come “to my office looking for $$ on an audio deal” and “called me last week to go to his concert”. In his eyes, this made Young a “total hypocrite”.

Trump then went on to state that “Rockin' In The Free World was just one of 10 songs used as background music” and signed off with: “Didn’t love it anyway”.

Despite not performing particularly successfully as a single, the song would go on to become one of Young’s most iconic tracks, and covered by artists such as Suzi Quatro, Larkin Poe, Simple Minds and Bon Jovi, as well as Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen on their 2003 G3 tour.

“Starting Heaven 17 was like being set free from prison,” laughs Martyn Ware on the origins of the legendary electronic music group, a band he formed with Ian Craig Marsh after they both left The Human League in 1980.

“(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang was the first track we did and it meant a lot as all three of us [including vocalist Glenn Gregory] were political. It was a forbidden subject during the early days of The Human League. They were great but much more sci-fi and metaphorical.”

Originally hailing from Sheffield, Martyn Ware’s reputation as one of the great pioneers of synth-pop was forged in the northern capital of steel, through an almost scientific approach to music-making.

Initially a key member of The Human League then, after leaving in acrimony, Ware co-founded Heaven 17 with Penthouse and Pavement, the group’s debut record, following shortly after.

Right now, Martyn is celebrating that album's 45th anniversary, taking the record on tour alongside vocalist Glenn on a victory live jaunt across the UK. Ahead of the gigs, Martyn has also been developing a new album under the banner of the British Electric Foundation (B.E.F.), a production house he formed at the same time as Heaven 17.

Featuring 30 tracks and 22 artists, the as-yet-unheard record from B.E.F - Music of Quality and Distinction Volume Four - follows numerous albums unveiled over the years. This latest release features a huge cast of colourful characters.

“I honestly think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” says Martyn. “I know that sounds slightly delusional but it’s true. I’ve been working with Phil Oakey on music for the first time in 45 years [on new track Find Her], there's a track with Dave Ball before he passed, Marc Almond is on it and there are two tracks with ABC’s Martin Fry.”

“I’m looking for a label at the moment for it and I had a funny chat with Daniel Miller from Mute, he’s so sweet. The sound is slightly out of Mute’s wheelhouse but he seemed to like the idea of releasing a record featuring a pop star like Kim Wilde.”

Martyn describes this new B.E.F album as a “complete holy grail obsession” of recent years with a sound rooted in the musical world of electrofunk and soul. He has been working with bassist Julian Crompton and guitarist Tony Remy on putting the tracks together.

“I just felt like the world was becoming such a miserable place,” says Martyn on the record’s inspiration. “Rather than submitting to this inevitable slide to the grave, I wanted to do what might be the final B.E.F album as a tribute to the music I loved back in the day - so electrofunk and soul.”

Previous releases from B.E.F have featured cover versions and new interpretations of tracks by artists such as Nancy Sinatra and Lou Reed. But Martyn’s ambition for this record was to come up with original music, then reach out to various vocalists to co-write and perform with him.

“I had no idea if this would appeal to anyone,” says Martyn. “But it’s grown out of control to be honest, everyone was really enthused by the idea.

“Leee John from Imagination initially sang on two songs, then he wanted to do another and we’ve had to write more. There’s a mix of friends and newer artists but I’ve become so obsessed with this that I’ve done a statistical analysis of lifetime record sales for all the contributors. It totals more than half a billion sales of physical product.”

Martyn records and composes from a space at Tileyard Studios behind King’s Cross in London. For the most part, he works out of a computer, utilising Roland’s Cloud software alongside Arturia and Teenage Engineering.

“I only have two analogue synths left,” Martyn says. “One is my original Roland System 100 which I primarily use for basslines. Nothing else sounds like it, it has better filters and oscillators than anything else.”

“The other is the Korg 700S, a synth I used on the first thing I ever did with The Human League, Being Boiled. One thing I discovered that I can recommend is a plugin called Synth Bass Center from Audiolounge which is tremendous and exactly what I required for this B.E.F. album.”

The record features plenty of processing around the guitars and bass while Martyn has been experimenting with various workflows with Julian and Tony.

“For Julian’s bass, we designed a workflow where we simultaneously played his bass through a MXR bass synth pedal at the same time as the DI into the system, and balancing those two things really worked - you have the weight and the character.”

Martyn also utilises Spectrasonics Omnisphere when it comes to evoking emotive musical atmospheres and soundscaping. Alongside his artist material, he was also an early adopter of 3D sound design and spatial audio, co-founding Illustrious Co. Ltd. with Vince Clarke in 2001 to build and use their proprietary 3D AudioScape system.

“3D sound is still something I’m interested in and I’m in talks with the filmmaker Julian Temple on an immersive show he is planning,” says Martyn. “But it’s been healthy for me to take a step back and return to a traditional music project.”

Penthouse and Pavement was released in September 1981 and is still regarded as one of the finest moments in the Heaven 17 discography. Featuring the brilliant title track alongside (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang and the alternative pop of Play to Win and Let’s All Make a Bomb, the songs still sound fresh despite now reaching middle-age.

“We deliberately set out to make something timeless, that you couldn’t attach to a particular period,” Martyn explains. “A lot of other eighties records have aged poorly because they were more throwaway, but we had a different mindset. Which sounds ambitious but that is what we told ourselves back then.”

Part of the record’s appeal lies in its mechanical funk and electropop sounds. Martyn refers to what he describes as “the pocket”, a razor sharp rhythmic musical state.

“We used the Linn LM-1 Drum which had just come out,” he says. “You could create a rhythm which was so accurate, similar to the electronic regularity of a band like Kraftwerk.”

“When I was producing Vince Clarke’s I Say I Say I Say, I was explaining this concept to him and we decided to see what programming the same beat on his MC8 would be compared to Logic 5. Back then, Logic would drift and the funk is in the precision.”

(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang was Heaven 17’s debut single and became a minor hit despite being banned by the BBC after its release in March 1981.

“It has an important message which unfortunately still resonates today, we were like the Nostradamuses of synth-pop,” Martyn says. “Looking back, I’m eternally grateful to Virgin for putting their faith in us. With Penthouse and Pavement, we were a slow-burning act even though we didn’t have any big hits on that first album, we were in the top 40 for 45 weeks. They took a gamble on us and it paid off.”

Their follow-up, The Luxury Gap, followed in 1983 with much of the record demoed at home as the portastudio had just been released. The demos were then taken to Air Studios and transformed into their bigger, completed versions.

“You couldn’t get a greater contrast between a four-track cassette, then working at Air, one of the most heavily-equipped studios around. We had unlimited resources for the best session players and orchestras and I remember thinking it felt like all our birthdays had come at once.”

The city of Sheffield was also an essential ingredient in the primordial soup of Heaven 17. As was discussed in the recently-released documentary film, Heaven 17: The Last Temptation.

While their tastes always leaned towards experimental electronic and futuristic sounds, Martyn and his musical companions immersed themselves in the local scene.

“We were going clubbing to hear dance music imported from the US, then blues clubs too where we’d hear plenty of dub,” Martyn remembers. “Cabaret Voltaire were also a major influence, although this was more in their spirit than their music. We were great friends though and their relentless experimentation was so inspiring.”

Sheffield’s steel industry has often been cited as shaping the city’s music-makers with the sounds of the forges and factories somehow becoming embedded in their minds, then funnelled into their machines, synths and productions.

“At the time, we didn’t know anywhere else, so I first thought everywhere was like Sheffield,” says Martyn. “It was only when you’d go elsewhere that you realised how different it is - you don’t walk through the city centre and hear grinding sounds? Or the sound of the drop forges coming down the valley?

“It’s a big influence when you’re younger. As someone who grew up in this environment, I love it but I guess people who grew up in a bucolic environment, they like the quiet of the countryside. But the countryside freaks me out – there’s not enough noise!”

As Heaven 17’s story continues to be told via their current live tour and future projects, Martyn is grateful for how he was able to take advantage of opportunities when they came his way during the band’s early days.

“At the moment, it feels like we’re in a more fearful zeitgeist about everything, no one knows where the future is going,” Martyn says. “When I grew up, we had nothing to lose, industry had collapsed, there was big adult unemployment - so for us, it was all about experimenting and giving things a go.”

For those starting out in electronic music now, Martyn suggests aiming for productions to be close enough to you to capture what your identity is all about.

“Try and be authentic to your own muse and believe in yourself, you can play by your own rules,” Martyn states. “Those who succeed are different and stand out from the crowd. It’s not just about talent, it’s about how you forge opportunities and how daring you are. Try to ignore anyone cynical and do things because you believe in yourself and your music.”

For more info on upcoming Heaven 17 tour dates check out the official website.

Anyone who witnessed U2’s performance at Live Aid on Saturday 13 July 1985 will remember that their setlist did not go to plan.

In keeping with Bob Geldof’s stipulation that all artists perform no longer than 17 minutes (“Don’t get clever – just play the hits” as he bluntly warned Freddie Mercury of Queen), the band had chosen three songs to play – Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bad and Pride (In The Name Of Love).

Pride was their biggest hit at the time, and Live Aid was a golden opportunity to close their set with a song that the colossal TV audience would remember. But they never got around to playing it.

Instead, Bono went on walkabout to commune with the crowd – making an arduous clamber down from the stage to hug and slowly dance with a female member of the audience, 15 year-old Kal Khalique, who he suspected was being crushed against the front barrier by the surging crowd.

This meant that U2’s second and final song was an impromptu 12-minute version of the song Bad, from their latest album The Unforgettable Fire. Over the course of the song, Bono would ad lib snippets from the songs Satellite Of Love and Take A Walk On The Wild Side by Lou Reed, as well as Ruby Tuesday and Sympathy For The Devil by the Rolling Stones.

The band were reportedly furious that they had to scrap their performance of Pride (In The Name Of Love) and an argument allegedly broke out in their dressing room. Bono flew home to Ireland with his wife Ali, convinced he had blown it big time. “It was a great day but I thought I had fucked it up,” he told Rolling Stone.

But in the days that followed it became clear that U2’s performance of Bad was being viewed as one of the emotional high points of Live Aid. The themes of suffering and vulnerability that run through the song were particularly powerful in the broader context of Live Aid’s appeal for human compassion.

“It really took us by surprise when people started talking about U2 as one of the noteworthy performances of the day,” The Edge told Rolling Stone. “I thought they were joking, I really thought we were crap. But looking back, as I did a week later, I started to see what it was. It was the sense of real, total jeopardy, which is always very exciting for a live event, and Bono’s complete determination to make physical contact with the crowd and eventually getting there after two minutes of struggling over barriers. I think there was something about the effort he had to put in to do it that somehow made it even more powerful.”

Bono’s actions may have been perceived as indulgent and narcissistic by some, but that day he built an emotional connection with the audience and the 1.9 billion people watching across the world. Bad was the song that made it happen.

It remains one of U2’s most emotionally intense songs, and the band’s performance of it that day was a major turning point in their career. It introduced them to a colossal audience and paved the way for global mainstream stardom.

The song began as an improvised guitar riff during a jam session while U2 were living and recording at Slane Castle in County Meath in 1984, working on The Unforgettable Fire, their fourth studio album. The band had appointed Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois as producers and they in turn helped create a more ambient sound.

The results were radically different from their previous album, War.

“We were looking for something that was a bit more serious, more arty,” said Adam Clayton in the 2016 biography, U2 On U2, co-authored by the band and music journalist Neil McCormick.

Bono wrote the lyrics to Bad about heroin addiction, which was a devastating crisis in Dublin in the late-’70s and early-’80s. He specifically wrote the track about his friend Andy ‘Guck’ Rowen, who had turned to heroin after being traumatised by witnessing the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings.

For a long time, Bono didn’t specifically name Rowen, simply saying that it was written about a friend. But in later years he did. On 26 July 2011, at the final US show of U2’s 360° Tour at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, Bono paused before performing Bad, to deliver a direct tribute to Rowen, who was in the audience that night. “This is for a very special man, who is here in your city, who grew up on Cedarwood Road. We wrote this song about him and we play it for him tonight.”

Bono has said that the song explores themes of surrender, isolation and personal addiction. “If you twist and tune away,” it begins, “If you tear yourself in two again/If I could, yes I would/If I could, I would/Let it go/Surrender/Dislocate.”

In the biography U2 On U2, Bono talks about watching teenagers fall victim to the heroin epidemic in Dublin. “They gave up everything they held sacred to this drug,” he explained. “I tried to describe that with the song, Bad, what it was like to feel that rush, to feel that elation, and then to go on to the nod, the awful sleep that comes with that drug, and then scream, ‘I'm wide awake, I’m wide awake, I’m not sleeping!’ I can see what’s going on.”

Instrumentally, the song was developed by the band improvising on the riff that the Edge had developed. “Some of the songs had no structure to them until we started playing,” The Edge told Guitar Player magazine in 1985. “We actually improvised them as we were working. Bad is an example.”

Producer Brian Eno reportedly used an Oberheim DSX sequencer to add the distinctive sequencer arpeggios, which give the song an enigmatic heft.

Bad is essentially an anthem in the key of A major, simply built around variations of the A and D chords. It’s been described as one of the Edge’s “ultimate delay” songs. According to Amnesta.net he used his Korg SDD-3000 digital delay as his primary modulated digital delay, with a secondary shorter delay, set to a dotted eighth-note rhythm and this was sent to a separate amp.

Opinions vary on which guitar’s and amp’s he used for the studio recording of Bad. While he certainly went on to primarily use his Stratocaster when playing the song live, some of the studio tracking on The Unforgettable Fire was reportedly done on his 1976 Gibson Explorer and a 1971 Telecaster.

As for his choice of amp, a vintage Vox AC30 was central to the Edge’s sound. Across the album, he also increasingly used various muting techniques.

“I was experimenting a lot with damping my guitar strings, using felt or gaffer tape over the strings near the bridge to give zero sustain,” he told Guitar Player magazine in 1985. “Using echo, I found some remarkable effects.”

The basic track of Bad was recorded at Slane Castle in just three takes, but the studio recording of the song on The Unforgettable Fire was panned by some critics as lacklustre, with Rolling Stone magazine describing it as “forgettably muddy”.

In many ways, Bad was a song that only really came to fruition once the band began playing it live. There was a sense that the song had not been sufficiently developed and only when it was performed live did it begin to show its true greatness.

“That is potentially a truly great song… if I had finished it,” Bono said of the studio version of the song in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. “It was very difficult to do, almost an impossible collision of cultures for us. It was a different kind of songwriting, like Philip Glass meets Astral Weeks, Van Morrison crossed with German electronica. You have sequences which are rigid and metronomic and then you have a bass which is improvising all the way, and the voice too. We were struggling so hard to find that song.”

While the studio version was stilted, on tour, U2 would play it obsessively in soundchecks until the song really came to life. Which is why the version of the song that would become most played on radio was not the studio version, but a live performance, recorded on 12 November 1984 at the NEC in Birmingham, England. This was released on the 1985 four-track EP Wide Awake In America, a curious title given that the EP’s two live tracks were recorded in England and the two studio tracks were recorded in Ireland.

It’s not a great EP but the version of Bad that is featured on it has a fire and intensity that the studio version lacks.

In the years that followed, four other versions of the song would be released. An edit of the studio version from Unforgettable Fire appears on the band’s 1998 greatest hits compilation, The Best Of 1980-1990. It is the only non-single to appear on the compilation, with the exception of a hidden version of the song October.

A live version of Bad from U2's 1987 The Joshua Tree tour appears in the documentary Rattle And Hum and a version of the song from the band’s 2001 Elevation: Live From Boston Tour, along with a snippet from the song 40, appears in the concert film of that tour.

Another version of Bad is featured on the live album Live From The Point Depot, from the 2004 digital box set The Complete U2.

Bad became a central song in U2’s setlist and a fan favourite. And it kept evolving, a work-in-progress with a life well beyond the studio and with seemingly no definitive finish.

“In a way, I do finish it every night, live,” said Bono in the biography U2 By U2. “I change the lyrics. Poets have no problem with revising their work. Songs shouldn't be set in stone. If they are any good, they are living, breathing organisms.”

There’s been an incalculable number of words printed that venerate the Strokes’ seismic 2001 debut, Is This It And, with good reason. That turn of the millennium album both re-directed the course of guitar music and established the Strokes as the reigning kings of back-to-basics rock n' roll across the ensuing decade.

As the years wore on, a troupe of similarly minded, leather-clad guitar-toters tried to recapture the early Strokes' natural cool. From Arctic Monkeys to The Libertines and The Killers to Bloc Party, a truckload of bands were inspired to attempt to re-bottle the same magic they’d been consumed by back in 2001.

We sat down with the Strokes' pivotal first producer, Gordon Raphael, to find out more about helming the desk for the Strokes most important early work. From their first EP to Is This It to 2003's searing follow-up Room on Fire and swathes of 2005’s First Impressions of Earth, Gordon was the band's trusted studio godfather.

Surprisingly, as Gordon remembers, he wasn’t looking to work with the Julian Casablancas-fronted outfit at all when he first heard their music…

“When I first saw the Strokes performing in New York, I was much more interested in the band that opened up for them,” Gordon remembers. “Then a couple of days after I handed the Strokes my business card, Albert [Hammond Jr - the Strokes’ guitarist] came over to my studio to suss me out.”

It proved to be a fateful meeting for both parties and the ensuing history of guitar music was forever changed. The Strokes subsequently spent a weekend recording in Gordon’s Transporterraum studio in New York City, the result was a riveting three-track debut EP, The Modern Age. This fruitful first collaboration would cement a solid working relationship ahead of making their debut album proper with Gordon.

“I gave the Strokes a three-day, three song deal,” Gordon says of his initial connection with the band. “So come in on Friday, leave on Sunday night with three songs in your hands - and that was it. It was the music from that weekend that turned into The Modern Age EP. I thought it was just going to be a little demo and never even expected it would be heard by the public.”

As a teenager growing up in Seattle, Gordon fell in love with music from an early age, embracing the hammond organ, synths, string ensembles and any other sounds or pieces of kit he could collect. It was joining a band called Medusa towards the end of his teens in the seventies that ignited his interest in studio intricacies.

“The leader of the band had recorded incredible symphonic rock music with a four track reel to reel tape recorder, an Echoplex, a phase shifter and a bunch of instruments,” Gordon says.

“It sounded really good and inspired me to start hacking away at expanding my own understanding of tape recorders and synths. I wanted to write my own music and record it with no one watching me so I was free to do anything.”

Gordon used borrowed gear from Seattle’s music community to help him evolve his craft, recording any would-be collaborators he could find.

“It was a four track reel to reel for many years, later a MXR digital delay unit, then an Oberheim DMX drum machine and digital reverb,” he says.

“I learned a lot and recorded hundreds of songs as part of this community of extremely creative weird people,” Gordon continues. “Many artists in Seattle were a strange bunch, you could see the oddness in the grunge bands like Mudhoney, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. It’s the Pacific North West so it rains all the time, there’s nothing to do other than stay in and practice music.”

From the beginning of Gordon’s musical journey, the ARP Odyssey synth has been a particular favourite, and an instrument he dedicated himself to understanding.

“I was pretty hit or miss with it to begin with, then I started getting the idea, and within two years I could make any sound that came to my imagination,” he says. “I love it because it doesn’t have any memory, or digital parts, it’s all about making sounds by hand with sliders. You can change all these audio parameters randomly at will which is hard to do with digital equipment.”

While growing up in Seattle, Gordon remembers having a realisation that although he’d learned a lot in the city, the only way to get further ahead in the music industry was to move to either LA or New York.

“I didn’t see myself surfing or hanging out on the beach, I saw myself grinding away in the East Village with the other weirdos so that’s where I ended up,” he laughs.

He initially tried to move to New York in the eighties, then returned to Seattle and enjoyed some success with his grunge band, Sky Cries Mary. After the city’s scene collapsed in on itself, he headed to the East Coast again and this time stayed and started to make a name for himself.

“I had just been very successful in Sky Cries Mary, we’d toured, made videos, been on late night television, so when I got to New York I was feeling confident,” he says. “I found this digital/analogue space hybrid that was a brand new concept when I moved there.

“All of the weird things I’d done at home in little dusty four-track studios, that was all the information and sounds I had in my head that I could apply in New York, from using spacey effects to more aggressive sounds. Everything I applied I had learned from my earlier formative years.”

During the late '90s and the start of the 2000s, Gordon remembers how guitars had started to feel a tad out of fashion. Instead, cooler kids were into jungle, drum and bass and hip-hop rather than the now tired cliches of rock n’ roll. Still, he was determined to immerse himself in New York’s band scene with his studio handily located in the middle of the East Village.

“Where I lived was maybe a seven minute walk from Ludlow Street where all the clubs were, so places like the Mercury Lounge, Lunar Lounge, Maxfish and the Pink Pony coffee shop,” he says. “Whenever I needed to work, I’d go to these clubs and hand out my business card to any band that seemed cool.”

The Strokes ended up in Gordon’s basement recording via such a meeting. After a few failed studio attempts with other producers, it was his eccentric space and creative flair that appealed to the five-piece garage rock outfit.

“When Albert saw how strange and artistic my basement studio was with its silver walls, dark lights, old antique equipment and strange dolls hanging from the ceiling, he loved it,” Gordon states. “When the Strokes came in to record, I was so impressed by them, how seriously they were taking the music and how they let zero mistakes go by.”

The three songs that became The Modern Age were the title track, the soon to be ubiquitous Last Nite and Barely Legal. It was released in January 2001 without any edits from Gordon’s session.

Even though the band and their label Rough Trade loved the demos, they initially chose to enter the album sessions for their full-length debut, Is This It with a different producer. But these recording attempts never came to anything. Remembering how easy working with Raphael on their EP was, the band returned to work with Gordon and his signature lo-fi basement sound.

“Rough Trade and the band came back to me and we went on to make their debut album,” Gordon says. “My personal favourites from the record have changed over the years. When I heard Take it Or Leave It during recording, I was sure that it was a masterpiece and we’d captured something unbelievable in terms of its impact and aggression. Now I like Trying Your Luck, which is more subtle but magical in its rhythm.”

Is This It was an instant classic, and had a colossal footprint following its launch in the summer of 2001.

As a result of its popularity, Gordon found himself in London as one of the most in-demand indie rock producers. With his photo on the record’s sleeve, he was constantly recognised and being pulled in different directions to work with bands and artists.

“Everywhere I went in London, I was being asked to produce so many acts,” he recalls. “Then a big difference was every studio I was using, one of the ones was called The Garden in Shoreditch. It was a phenomenal studio with these giant SSL boards, they had great microphone collections and tape machines. Every band that came through, I recorded to tape.”

While working at The Garden, Gordon recorded Skunk Anansie’s Skin on her solo material and also parts of Regina Spektor’s critically acclaimed album Soviet Kitsch. Gordon’s nomadic lifestyle continued with another relocation, this time to Berlin courtesy of a connection with the German producer Moses Schneider.

“I just thought I could leave my UK rock and roll fantasy and start the European classical painting era of my life,” Gordon laughs. “But when I went there, no one was really introduced in rock music. In the mid-2000s, it was all about minimal techno and Ableton. Everything was needed except for me. I still enjoyed my time living there but I was flying around the world to South Africa, Belgium, Iceland, Mexico and Argentina to record bands.”

For Gordon, these globe-trotting adventures working with creatives, bands and musicians were what his younger self had always dreamed of doing

“Everywhere I went, no matter what language people would be speaking, I’d be talking in music,” he says. “Kick drums, guitar amps, distortion, vocals, mixing, speakers, every individual wants something slightly different but the currency is equal around the world.”

Fast forward to today and Gordon, now based in Hebden Bridge in the English county of Yorkshire, is busier than ever looking for new talent. He’s worked with The Abomic Toms and Widows of the Night, either from Leeds-based Eiger Studios or jetting off to different countries to record and produce. From his perspective, guitar music has never been healthier. A social media call on Instagram to work with new artists saw him inundated with production requests.

“I said, 'Hey, does anyone want to work?' I did this on Instagram and I got 60 bands in New York who all wanted to work with me,” Gordon says. “I wound up recording 20 of them, then I went six months later and ended up recording 20 more. There are so many amazing bands out there at the moment.”

Raphael feels new generations of music lovers are also discovering some sounds and styles for the first time.

“Some of these kids are so young, they think the new album from the the Strokes is like discovering a new band. It’s really weird that this is happening,” he says.

“Also, this generation were so impacted by the pandemic, actually, we’re over computer and internet stuff, instead let’s get out there and play electric guitar, start bands and do shows.”

For now, Gordon is content capturing raw energy and guitars in his Leeds studio. He’s been utilising the space for more than five years.

“It’s nothing super fancy but I have a lot of my gear there, there’s a very comfortable room where it feels good to make sounds and we get great recordings,” he states. “I’ve had bands from all over coming out to Leeds to work with me. As long as I can carry on meeting artists and new bands, then I’m going to be in good spirits.”

For more information on Gordon's studio works, career and current activities, head to his official website.

“We’ll let you guys prophesy. We gon’ see the future first,” says Frank Ocean on Nikes, the opening track on his genre-melting musical patchwork, Blonde.

Few more prescient lyrics have been delivered by an artist who has managed to remain deliberately elusive despite the over-exposed times we’re living through.

The record, released back in 2016, is rightfully regarded as Ocean’s masterpiece – a brilliantly woozy immersive world that has yet to be followed up a decade later.

Featuring a huge cast of collaborators including Beyonce, Andre 3000, Pharrell, James Blake and many more, the starry names belie the subtle and nuanced atmosphere that surrounds the album's 17 tracks.

Blonde was the long-awaited follow-up to Ocean’s 2012’s debut Channel Orange and landed amid much speculation, following hazy rumours and intrigue behind the record’s delay. Was it writer’s block or Ocean’s bid for perfectionism that lay behind it?

“I had the time of my life making all of this,” Ocean wrote on his Tumblr in the days after Blonde’s release, in posts that led to as much online discourse around the record as it did offer clarification.

“Thank you all. Especially those of you who never let me forget I had to finish. Which is basically every one of ya’ll. Haha. Love you.”

Although born in California in 1987, it was in New Orleans when Ocean first began writing music. Real name Christopher Breaux, it was in the aftermath of the devastation wrecked by Hurricane Katrina that his life’s direction changed.

With his home and studio equipment destroyed, Ocean chose to move to LA with the little he had left and began working in a series of day jobs while writing songs for major artists.

In an interview with the New York Times Magazine in 2013, when discussing these formative experiences, Ocean said: “I had a problem listening to anybody. I had a problem listening to A&Rs telling me how a song was supposed to sound, or what this artist's vibe was.”

Despite the creative and financial challenges, these years saw him write Quickly for John Legend, Justin Bieber’s Bigger and Scared of Beautifulfor Brandy among many others under the pseudonym of Lonnie Breaux (a collection of more than 60 tracks of this music ended up online).

These songs were game-changing for Ocean, ultimately finding their way to the ears of producer Tricky Stewart who helped him sign a songwriting and artist contract with the legendary Def Jam label towards the end of 2009.

Some months later, Ocean came into contact with the left-field hip-hop collective Odd Future, including Tyler the Creator and Syd, at a live gig in the Valley near LA. It proved to be another turning point after he started to feel increasingly creatively neutered by his label.

Speaking to journalist Jeff Weiss in 2011, Ocean shared how Odd Future ignited a new fire within him.

“It’s refreshing for me to be in sessions with them. When I started working with them, it was the first time in a minute that I’d had fun in a session. If you f**k up on a take, someone’s clowning you on it, busting up at you. In normal settings, it’s not like that. It reminded me that this is supposed to be fun.”

His frustrations with Def Jam led to the unveiling of his mixtape, Nostalgia, Ultra, in February 2011 as an independent release.

The genre-splicing mix featured Ocean rapping over tracks by The Eagles and Coldplay, with the former seeing the rock band threatening legal action. But it also led to greater visibility too. Ocean was subsequently called up to work on two tracks from Jay-Z and Kanye West's Watch The Throne album.

Nostalgia, Ultra attracted a cult status which, less than two years later exploded even further following Ocean’s debut album release, Channel Orange. It was a record that changed his fortunes forever.

Praised by critics, the album, in the words of Rolling Stone,displayed a, “kind of radical openness that would come to define a generation of young people who, like him, discovered their true selves with the help of the internet”, it debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 and sold more than 130,000 plus units during its first week.

At the 2013 Grammy Awards, Channel Orange was nominated for Album of the Year and won Best Urban Contemporary Album. Not only was the musical approach otherworldly, the teaser track Pyramids was ambitiously audacious - a nine minute masterpiece moving between ambience to electronic funk, it also came days after Ocean published an open letter on Tumblr detailing his first love with a man. The record marked a cultural moment, not only for shaping the innovative sound of contemporary hip-hop and R&B but also widening how artists in these genres could identify.

The record’s production was steered by Ocean alongside the likes of Om’Mas Keith, Malay and Pharrell. After three months of writing, the record was captured in the order the songs appeared on the record at a number of Hollywood studios including EastWest on Sunset Boulevard.

In an interview with Complex, Malay described how Ocean’s perfectionism saw him spend nine months on his vocals. The majority of takes were recorded using vintage microphones including a Neumann U-47 and a Telefunken 251. If a live feel was required, then a Shure SM-58 was utilised.

Keith said: “Channel Orange is one of the most incredible f*cking albums ever, and I’m just humbled to no end to have had the opportunity to participate in something so powerful and impactful.”

The record was a huge global success and one that meant Ocean was catapulted into the limelight, becoming much more in demand. He also caused intense speculation about what his next moves might be by telling the Guardian that Channel Orange could be not just his first, but also his last record.

“Storytelling's a different thing,” he said of his passions. “Like I said, it's the more interesting part about making music for me, or making albums and songs and stuff. So much so that I might not make another album. I might just write a novel next. I don't know!”

So what happened next? After the release of his debut amid its huge success, Ocean did the unthinkable for an artist of his stature at this point in the 2010s - he retreated from view.

Disillusioned with his label Def Jam and locked into a two-album deal, Ocean spent four years musically silent. Without any hints or teasers, fans and music journalists could only speculate as to what he was up to before he showed his hand in a dramatic move once again in 2016.

The first hints of what Ocean had been up to arrived via his website, which unexpectedly presented a live stream of a warehouse space. This mysterious black-and-white video loop ran for 15 straight days, and showing Frank silently building a spiral staircase in a warehouse. On the 15th day, Ocean unveiled his visual album Endless on Apple Music. Then days later, Blonde landed in what was described as one of, “the most cryptic album rollouts in music history”.

Unbeknown to the wider world, the working relationship between Ocean and Def Jam had completely deteriorated, with industry insiders telling Billboard that their final days were akin to a toxic, broken marriage where all the artist wanted was total independence.

The release of Endless in 2016 was described as the final move in what has been called "a seven-year chess game" with Def Jam Records. Having successfully fulfilled his contractual obligations, Blonde was released on his own label, Boys Don’t Cry. As a result, industry analysts believe that in its first week, Blonde saw 275,000 album sales and made Ocean more than $1m.

While the pre-release build up was unorthodox, the music on Blonde veered between elusive illusions and soul-baring emotion. It’s a blend that made the record so alluring back then and why, some ten years later, an album that explores the transience of our lives has so powerfully endured.

The records shifting title spelling alternated between Blonde and sometimes Blond, and was perceived as being a spearing of identity/masculinity and Ocean’s experiences with both men and women, recording for the album took place throughout 2013 and 2016 initially at New York's Electric Lady Studios. Then after a period of writer's block, he moved to London to work at Abbey Road Studios and in Los Angeles' Henson Recording Studios.

The themes of the 17 tracks hark back to Ocean’s past life as a teenager, reflecting on his relationships, sexuality, drugs and heartbreak. Nike is the opening track of the record, and, rather than announce Ocean’s return with huge bombast, is an all together weirder and more unexpected tune.

A stark drum beat, high-pitched vocals and synths evoke the teenage uncertainty and ambiguity surrounding how he identifies. The lack of drums on the rest of the record means it’s also aesthetically unusual within the hip-hop world.

In an exclusive statement provided to NME, producer Mysko talked about some of the Abbey Road sessions working with Ocean.

“During my time working with Frank it felt to me like we had embarked on a journey to find another world,” he said. “The path he chose was anything but linear and we travelled down routes to the furthest extremities imaginable. No rules applied and dimensions were explored that ended up bearing no relation to the eventuality. Somehow, at the end of it all, it feels to me like the planet he found is much like our own, it feels familiar and is full of beauty but contains wonders never seen or experienced by anyone before.”

Blonde’s musical palette is deceptively simple yet still tricky to pin down. The sonic landscape is built from guitar and loops with melodic highs and effects sprinkled liberally throughout from tracks Ivy to White Ferrari. At times, its psychedelia is more reminiscent of the Beach Boys than Ocean’s hip-hop peers.

Producer Malay, who worked on a number of tracks including Ivy, Siegfried and Pretty Sweet, said that it’s Ocean’s vocals that make the whole coherent. Instead of a traditional musical artist, his is a more magpie-like approach, compiling fragments of recordings and loops before fusing them together.

In an interview with Reverb, he said, “If you were to mute and go through the instrumentals on all the Frank Ocean stuff, it's super eclectic - the music, a lot of it, it doesn't connect at all. You could really [listen and say] there's no way that this should be with this, but it's just the subject matter, the feel, the vocal…”

One of the most revealing pieces capturing the creative process behind Blonde came from the New York Times. When Blonde and Endless were in the process of being made, Ocean reportedly carried the hard drives with his music in his backpack, and the backups, too. After suffering blocks in New York, he moved to London. Here he removed the flat he stayed in of everything but the essentials. Ocean then did the same at Abbey Road too, decluttering to focus solely on the music.

Speaking to the newspaper, Ocean said: “I just wanted to be able to walk around and not run into an end table or some useless piece of furniture.”

Alongside the two albums, Ocean also released his Boys Don’t Cry fanzine where the influence of cars was shared. Memories tied to drives ranging from late-night journeys on LA freeways to mushroom trips inspired the album’s sense of unstoppable forward motion. Still, there are some ironies to be found in how the popularity of an album defined by transience has continued to grow. He depicted the influence of cars in its production via Tumblr.

He said: “I found it romantic, sometimes, editing this project. The whole time I felt as though I was in the presence of a $16m McLaren F1 armed with a disposable camera. My memories are in these pages, places close by and long ass-numbing flights away.”

Despite the veneration that only continues to grow for Blonde since it turned 10 earlier this summer, at the time, some reviews were less than complimentary claiming the record was half-finished.

The Guardian declared 2016’s two albums as a “double dose of hookless morass that Ocean finally heaved on to the world”. The Independent gave the record two stars out of five, proclaiming it to be “a trickling bubble bath of an album that ultimately runs lukewarm”. Much as in the way critics struggled to comprehend Radiohead’s Kid A when it was released in 2000, it has since been universally applauded.

In the decade that’s passed since Blonde, Ocean still hasn’t released a third record. Instead, he appears to have been more preoccupied with other creative ventures into fashion and photography. But the impact of the record lives on despite Ocean’s silence.

As United Masters said, “from Omar Apollo to Daniel Caesar to Mk.gee, Frank Ocean didn’t just make an album, he opened a door that a generation of artists walked through.”

The fact that there is so much speculation surrounding and love for Blonde underlines his impact. Now DIY recording processes, surprise releases, stepping back from the limelight are strategies adopted by many.

What Frank might do next in music is anyone’s guess, but we can be assured that it certainly won’t be boring.

It was all going so well. Prince and the freshly assembled New Power Generation had put the finishing touches to Diamonds And Pearls album. They had performed a live set for Warner Bros and its staff at the Burbank lot in Los Angeles. Everything in the garden was rosy.

Then the phone rang. There was a call for Levi Seacer Jr, the New Power Generation’s guitarist and Warner Bros’ designated Prince whisperer. The legendary Mo Ostin, chairman and CEO of the label, was on the line.

Seacer was perplexed. What did Ostin want? Prince had done his bit.

Seacer recalls to MusicRadar: “When Prince was done with his version of Diamonds And Pearls, he sent it off to Warner’s. ‘Okay. Great songs, great music. We like it.’ We flew out to LA to do a patio show. And so they were like, ‘Oh, man, this is incredible!’”

But something must have happened after the show. This wasn’t a straight-up Diamonds And Pearls playback. Prince played a bunch of his earlier songs – Alphabet St., Purple Rain, Partyman, Let’s Work for the first time since 1983 – plus a cover of the Ohio Players’ Skin Tight.

This set featured just three tracks from Diamonds And Pearls – Daddy Pop, Jughead and set closer Get Off.

Seacer thinks the execs had got together again, and had gotten into each other’s heads. They wanted a radio-friendly single.

“As soon as I got home, I got a call from Warner Brothers, and it was Mo Ostin,” says Seacer. “He said, ‘Levi, we got a problem.’ I’m saying, ‘What’s going on?’ He said, ‘We need a first single. We got a solid record, but all the radio guys don’t feel like they have the first single.’ And I said, ‘Well, why didn’t you say something? We just left there!’ [Laughs]”

Well, Ostin and the higher-uppers at Warner Bros had their reasons. They also already had their lead single – they heard it on the lot when Prince played Get Off. But at that moment, clearly, they wanted more, another option. What else did the diminutive pop genius from Minnesota have squirrelled away at his Paisley Park HQ? Ostin would have asked himself, but you know how artists can get, it’s better they hear it from a peer.

“He said, ‘Well, you know, you’re close to Prince, and you have a way of talking with him, and you guys talk your music talk. Because if I say it to him, he probably won’t hear it the right way,’” says Seacer.

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“I said, ‘Oh, man, you’re his president! What can I do? I’m just a weasel! What can I do?’” laughs Seacer. “I’m like, ‘Man!’”

Ever the good soldier, he said okay. He accepted his mission but not with any relish.

“That was a hard one,” he says.

Seacer and Prince had struck up a good relationship. Seacer was exactly the type of player Prince liked having around. He could be in the studio for hours on end with no complaint. He could hang out. He also could play.

Initially, Seacer was drafted to play bass guitar for Prince as he put together a new backing band after the Revolution disbanded in 1986.

As the story goes, Seacer was playing bass in Shiela E’s band. He auditioned for Prince when he was looking for a guitar player for The Family, and he got the gig. Two days later, Prince changed his mind and Seacer is back on bass with Shiela E.

Upon their next meeting, Prince remembered Seacer and noted his surprise – not only at seeing Seacer again but seeing him on bass.

Seacer had been keeping himself busy in Prince’s rhythm section, but there was to be a change. Prince was bringing Sonny T back in on bass. He asked Seacer if he wanted to play guitar.

“Prince had a talk with me,” says Seacer. “He said, ‘Okay, well, we’re bringing Sonny Thompson in, so if you want to go back to guitar, you can.’ And I said, ‘Oh, yeah!’ ‘Well, our first rehearsal is tomorrow.’ I was so excited.”

The rehearsal didn’t quite go to plan for Seacer, but that is another episode that shines a light on his working relationship with one of pop’s most enigmatic personalities. Seacer, if anything, was over prepared.

“I brought every pedal you can imagine to the rehearsal,” he says. “And we started playing. I swear, this is a true story. The stage was about maybe five feet off the ground. It’s pretty high, and we’re in the big room at Paisley. Prince was across the room. He said, ‘Okay, Levi, take us home.’

“I’m like, ‘Oh yeah!’ I cracked my knuckles. I’m getting ready to go in. So, I’m soloing with my head back. I’m all into it, man. This is in another world! And I feel something tapping my toes and I’m like, ‘What the hell?’ And I opened my eyes, came out of my zone, and I looked down.

“Prince was looking at me from the floor of Paisley – y’know, because [the stage is] five-feet higher. He was looking at me, tapping on my toes, and he said, ‘I do the rock thing. You play the funk and jazz. Got it?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I got it.’”

Seacer knew who was in charge. And there he was, with Ostin’s words ringing in his ears, giving Prince the bad news. Historically, things do not go well for the messenger.

“The next day, Prince was in the studio working, and I just kind of popped in,” says Seacer. “He said, ‘Hey, Levi, what you doing here?’ I said, ‘Uh, we need to talk about something right quick. I said, ‘I talked to Warner Brothers… I talked to Mo, and, umm, they love the album, but they don’t feel like they have a first single.’”

Prince was incredulous.

“I said, ‘I didn’t go behind your back. They called me.’ And he knew I had a relationship with them, and every now and then I would talk to Mo,” Seacer adds.

Prince understood this. He could trust Seacer. Nonetheless, he was not best pleased. Which artist would be?

“He was kind of hot about that,” says Seacer with a chuckle. “‘What? What do you mean? We just left there – and we slayed them!’”

Some reports put the numbers of Warner Bros employees in attendance at 400. That’s a memorable afternoon at work. These days, table football, fruit bowls and a fridge full of pop is the sign of a cool office. This was ’91. Labels had money, and money means clout. Warner Bros could call in Prince to play for the rank-and-file. And now this? So much for gratitude.

Prince said he didn’t believe it. Seacer did his best to explain. He told Prince: “The radio guys listened, and they loved it. They love it! But they need a lead-off signal. I’m just a messenger!’”

Having duly delivered the news, Seacer made good on his exit.

“He was a little frustrated,” Seacer admits. “I just left. I don’t think I even said goodbye to him.”

Prince was left to stew in the studio. Seacer didn’t have to wait long to hear from his boss again. The phone went the following morning at 7am. The New Power Generation were many things but they were not morning people. They were used to playing through the night if the session demanded it.

“I was just waking up,” says Seacer. “It was a lot earlier than we normally do sessions.”

But the day previous, Prince was steamed. He wanted Seacer’s ears on something fast. Prince had a track to play him.

“I said, ‘Okay.’ I came in. I’m tired,” says Seacer. “ I sat in the chair and he played Cream for me, on 10. It was loud. I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ He said, ‘Well, what do you think of that?’ I said, ‘Oh, man, they gonna love that.’ I mean, I knew it right when I first heard it. I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, they gonna be happy!’”

The story of Cream, or at least the order of events that led to its creation, has a whiff of the apocryphal. There is an interview with Billboard which NPG vocalist Tony Mosely is quoted as saying that they wrote it on tour in Europe, but that timing doesn’t quite fit.

Seacer’s own accounts have differed over the years. He told Rolling Stone that Prince wrote it in six or seven hours, and Wax Poetics that he sent the band out of the room as he scribbled on something and needed an hour to get his head straight and the idea for the song down on paper.

But we've got to appreciate that everything happened so fast with Prince. Seacer said that the basic tracks for Diamonds And Pearls came together in a week-and-a-half. They tracked Money Don’t Matter 2 Night, Willing And Able, and Horny Pony all in one night. Paisley Park was open all hours to contain this great efflorescence of Prince's creativity.

One thing is certain. When Seacer heard the propulsive funk by way of glam-rock stomp of Cream, he knew they had a hit. He could feel it in his bones.

“Yeah, I just knew. You know when you. You can tell,” says Seacer. “You’re like, ‘Yeah, whatever that is, that’s the magic. I mean, it hit all the check marks when you listen for a hit. When Prince comes out with something, the first thing fans are listening for is for something kind of funky, something up-tempo, something with slight religious or spiritual twist to it, and something with nice lyrics and catchy. And that song checked off all the boxes.”

And it ended up in a box. This was the analogue era. They stuck a recording into a package and sent it via FedEx to California. Then they waited.

“Today, you can just email stuff. We couldn’t do that,” says Seacer. “So we had to wait a day. And when Mo got that heat, oh man, they were jumping up and down.”

As ever, the critics were divided on Cream; it was often the way of it with Prince. But champagne was getting opened in Burbank. “You could hear all the corks coming out the bottles,” laughs Seacer. “Pop, pop, pop!”

Cream had the magic. It would become Prince’s his fifth (and final) number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100, a classic cut in a discography full of them, and Mo Ostin and Warner Bros got their hit.

• Timeless is out now via Legacy Recordings and comprises 10 tracks of rare and unreleased studio recordings from the Prince archive.

As with many artists who have passionate fanbases, The Smiths’ die-hards generally don’t rate the band’s still widely-popular breakthrough single This Charming Man in their hallowed upper chambers of favourites.

But, regardless of taste, the importance of this undeniably infectious single was immense. When it burst into the charts during the dying months of 1983, it served as an introduction to a different kind of rock offering. The Smiths might have been wildly out-of-step with what was then going on in both the alternative and the mainstream, but before long, they'd become indie’s foremost act.

Set off by Johnny Marr’s chirping riff, This Charming Man’s pulsing momentum indicated that this Manchester four-piece had a singularly distinctive musical palette. Marr’s lithe and precise guitar work was backed by Andy Rourke’s robust yet nimble bassline and Mike Joyce’s tightly-controlled beat. Above it all, Morrissey delivered a tale of illicit temptation in his trademark baritone.

The Smiths had crafted a sound that hinted at a jigsaw of half-remembered, ghostly influences. Familiar, yet also something entirely new.

As the band’s second single, released before their eponymous 1984 debut hit shelves, This Charming Man's arrival was the moment the Smiths’ journey into the annals of history truly began.

First forming as a result of a now-fabled doorstep meeting between 18-year-old guitar wunderkind Johnny Marr and former punk turned reclusive wordsmith Steven Patrick Morrissey, the Smiths had worked hard to build something that could go all the way.

In Morrissey, Marr had found the perfect intellectual foil for his ambidextrous guitar melodicism, and in Marr, Morrissey finally had the vehicle in which to frame his increasingly elaborate lyrics.

“Morrissey and I had started our partnership” Marr remembered in his autobiography, Set the Boy Free. “Whatever it was that we had it was ours and it was totally unique. We were two people who had already dedicated most of our young lives to becoming what we wanted to be. We’d both worked obsessively on what we were doing in a way that no-one else around us could come close to, and we recognised in each other the same commitment and emotional need to follow our visions.”

Morrissey and Marr, despite their wildly different personalities, were bound together by their shared goal. Before long, Marr’s friend Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce rounded out the rhythm section of the band that would become known as The Smiths (by all accounts, this was the least-disliked option out of three distinctly ‘ordinary’ names suggested by Morrissey).

“I’d never heard anyone or anything like Johnny before. It was unique,” said drummer Mike Joyce in his autobiography, The Drums. “He sounded like four guitarists all at once. I’d never drummed to music like this before. It had a mystery to it, like it was a secret waiting to be unlocked.”

As with all hopeful bands of the period, gaining traction depending upon endless gigging and maintaining a high bar when it came to songwriting, all in the hope of attracting a label.

Having been turned down by both Manchester’s iconic Factory Records and EMI, upstart independent label Rough Trade (who’d previously broken one of their acts, Stiff Little Fingers, into the top 20) decided to take a punt on this intriguing (and persistent!) new band, eventually releasing their first single Hand in Glove on May 13th 1983.

Although the band knew they’d written a gem, and the song was popular on the local scene, it sadly failed to even get within touching distance of the main UK singles chart.

Back in the days when guitar bands had a legitimate chance of becoming the next big thing, it was a disappointing start. But it served as a major lesson for The Smiths. To be in with a chance at consistent radio play, the next single would need to be something altogether poppier. Something much more welcoming, but no less alluring…

Around this point, Marr had heard other Rough Trade signings Aztec Camera’s sublime and peppy Walk Out to Winter, and felt in it a suggestion of what the Smiths’ direction of travel should be.

With positive press attention for the band building, and a vaunted BBC John Peel session rapidly approaching, Johnny settled in for one of the most prodigious evenings of his entire songwriting career, wherein he wrote the basic shape of This Charming Man alongside future Smiths’ debut album cuts Still Ill and Pretty Girls Make Graves.

“My competitive urges kicked in. I felt that we needed something upbeat and in a major key for Rough Trade to get behind. That's why I wrote it in the key of G, which to this day I rarely do,” Marr recounted to Mojo magazine in 2008.

Going into greater detail in Set the Boy Free, Johnny explained his thought process during the writing of This Charming Man…

“I’d noticed our label mates Aztec Camera were getting a lot of radio airplay, and I wondered if it might be because their songs were more breezy and upbeat. The sun was coming through the window, and I picked up my guitar and strummed a chord sequence that conjured the feeling I was trying to evoke,” Johnny stated.

“After a minute of playing, another sequence appeared under my fingers from nowhere, and after following that for a while I had what I thought was a song.”

Quickly tracking this network of layered guitar ideas on his TEAC-3 cassette machine, Marr was confident that it could form the basis of an attention-grabbing single.

Handing the demo cassette over to Morrissey, Johnny was intrigued to see how his blossoming songwriting partner would respond. He wouldn't be disappointed…

As would soon be typical of Morrissey, the resulting lyrics of This Charming Man were inspired by a plethora of his literary and cinematic influences, one of these was a late-night BBC screening of the 1972 British film Sleuth, which Morrissey tuned into during a break from touring.

During the film, British screen legend Laurence Olivier pointed a gun at a young Michael Caine, calling him a “jumped up pantry boy who doesn’t know his place“. Morrissey’s ears pricked up at the line, (a line that Caine repeated later in the film when the roles are reversed). The idea of a young upstart, not knowing ‘their place’ resonated with the class-conscious 24-year-old.

Another element that informed the song’s central hook of ‘I would go out tonight, but I haven’t got a stitch to wear’ harked back to the 1961 film adaptation of Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey, wherein Rita Tushingham’s Jo responds to being asked whether she’s going to a dance by saying, “I haven’t got any clothes to wear for one thing.”

Morrissey could empathise…

The idea of not having the ‘right’ clothes to wear chimed with Morrissey’s own experience of living frugally, as he reported to Undress the year following its release…

“For years and years, I never had a job, or any money. Consequently, I never had any clothes whatsoever. I found that on those very rare occasions when I did get invited anywhere I would constantly sit down and say, ‘Good heavens, I couldn’t possibly go to this place tonight because I don’t have any clothes, I don’t have any shoes.’ So I’d miss out on all those foul parties. It was really quite a blessing in disguise.”

With these themes in play, Morrissey wove a narrative of trepidatious self-discovery set within the repressive constraints of working-class life.

Beginning with an image of a stranded youth alone on a hillside, breathing a sigh of relief as a car rolls up to assist, Morrissey suggests more than a lift home from this knight in shining armour:

Punctured bicycle
On a hillside desolate
Will nature make a man of me yet?
When in this charming car
This charming man

As the song unfolds, the homoerotic subtext of This Charming Man becomes more apparent. However, Morrissey’s use of terms informed by kitchen-sink drama, and the antiquated language of faded glamour echoed the ordinary, invisible longings of repressed northern life more generally.

“I didn’t think Morrissey was overtly homosexual in anything he did,” wrote Mike Joyce in The Drums. “The Smiths spoke to all outsiders, whoever you were, whatever your sexual or social persuasion. It was our great strength and our great attraction.”

Upon hearing these compelling lyrics, Marr was overawed. He knew This Charming Man was going to push the band even further.

Accentuating the brightness of Johnny's riffs with Rourke’s driving - and Motown-inspired - bassline and Joyce’s durable beat, the new song was successfully tracked at the BBC’s Maida Vale studios on September 14th 1983 for the aforementioned John Peel session (It was this version that would later appear on the band’s beloved 1984 compilation Hatful of Hollow).

To get the single laid down properly, the band decamped to Matrix Studios in Fulham, London to try and cut the definitive studio version.

Prior to this, the band had already attempted to make their debut LP with The Teardrop Explodes’ Troy Tate sitting in the producer’s chair at Elephant Studios in Wapping, London, however the band were dissatisfied with the meek sounding results.

Enter former Roxy Music bassist and production polymath John Porter, whom Johnny had met at the BBC. An able producer with an impressive CV, Porter was recruited to re-record the entire debut, and, while he was at it, properly cut This Charming Man.

Last year, John talked to us at MusicRadar about his memories of these early sessions with The Smiths, with whom he’d go on to make two iconic albums.

"They were very much a Manchester-based band and they didn't like leaving Manchester. So, I decided to go up to Manchester and we re-recorded their debut at Pluto Studios,” The Leeds-hailing John remembered.

“I felt that when I first came to London, I'd been a clueless kid from the north, and I recognised - as far as making records was concerned - that they were also clueless kids from the north. But I had a few years on them and had been doing it longer. I did have a lot of input into the arrangements.”

Despite their obvious talents, neither Marr nor Morrissey had much clue how anything worked in the studio.

“They didn’t know about overdubbing or about song structure or anything,” Porter explained to us. “Johnny would just play a riff which would go on for two and a half minutes, Morrissey would sing over it, and that was it. I tried to bring in some light and shade, because they didn't necessarily have verses and choruses as such in their songs, so I used to try and arrange the dynamics of the song. That's why we came across a sort of formula of having a guitar intro, a breakdown in the middle and a ‘re-intro’”

For the This Charming Man brief specifically, Porter and the group were not fully happy with an initial attempt to track the single, which was undertaken at Matrix Studios in London.

John remembered feeling that the rhythm section in particular should be much tighter and punchier. Luckily, he had just the right bit of then-innovative new tech to rectify the issue…

“With This Charming Man, the timing on the original track that we recorded at Matrix Studios was hard to work with. I think I'd edited between a few takes to get one good take (which was not unusual), but you did that anyway in those days,” John told us.

“I went back up to Manchester, and booked a day at Strawberry Studios [in the town of Stockport]. I’d recently got a LinnDrum [a Linn-LM-1, to be precise] and I copied Mike's drum parts from the track we'd done in London, and asked Johnny and Andy to play along with it. I overdubbed the drums last. My theory always was (and still is) if you can’t dance to it, it’s no good. So we recorded the song again - the track was a bit simpler, but the arrangement was the same. The London version had the same basic arrangement, but what we did in Manchester was a bit smoother and a bit cleaner.”

These inaugural sessions also allowed Marr and Porter to begin experimenting with widening the scope of Johnny’s guitar sounds. This first stab at a multi-tracked morass of melodies, chords and, erm, knife-on-guitar sound design, he’d later dub the Guitarchestra.

“I’ll try any trick. With the Smiths, I'd take this really loud Telecaster of mine, lay it on top of a Fender Twin Reverb with the vibrato on, and tune it to an open chord,” Johnny told Guitar Player in 1993. “Then I'd drop a knife with a metal handle on it, hitting random strings. I used it on This Charming Man, buried beneath about 15 tracks of guitar.

“[This Charming Man] was the first record where I used those highlife-sounding runs in 3rds. I'm tuned up to F# and I finger it in G, so it comes out in A. There are about 15 tracks of guitar. People thought the main guitar part was a Rickenbacker, but it's really a '54 Tele. There are three tracks of acoustic, a backwards guitar with a really long reverb, and the effect of dropping knives on the guitar – that comes in at the end of the chorus.”

“With This Charming Man, John Porter had taken what I could only dream of in my bedroom and made it a reality,” Marr later said in Set the Boy Free.

“When the sessions for This Charming Man were finally being completed, I sat behind the console and listened to our new single in awe. I was impressed by what we’d done but more than that, I was really impressed by the band. The vocal was fantastic, the bass playing was completely original and the drumming kept it all together perfectly and was right on the money… I thought my band were the best. We were eccentric and subversive, and we were about to gatecrash the mainstream.”

Porter told us that recording the single marked the start of a hugely rewarding creative relationship with Marr, which would flourish across future Smiths’ gems How Soon Is Now? and 1985 album Meat is Murder. Sadly, John was fired and replaced with Stephen Street ahead of the recording of the band’s third album, The Queen is Dead…

“I really enjoyed working with The Smiths, but Morrissey was always difficult,” remembers John. “When I first met him, he was very polite and would send me postcards saying how much he'd enjoyed it, thanking me. This quickly changed to complete disdain. I don't think Morrissey liked me. I don't think he liked my friendship with Johnny,” Porter shared with us. You can read our full interview with John here for more of his insights into his time with The Smiths and beyond.

As predicted, This Charming Man was significantly more successful than its predecessor. Backed by its stripped-down, rehearsal-room video (wherein Morrissey iconically swung a bunch of gladioli - an increasingly familiar feature of their live shows) - the song’s infectious bounce and lyrical ambiguity captivated a portion of the record-buying public.

Although only making it to No. 25 on its initial release, the song would gain popularity as the band continued their critically venerated rise, eventually muscling into the top ten via a re-release in 1992 (where it peaked at No. 8). The debut album, ably re-recorded with John Porter, was released in February of 1984, and the rest is history…

“[The release] changed my life and the life of everybody else in the Smiths,” remembered Marr in Set the Boy Free. “The record quickly went into the national charts and suddenly we were known not just in the music press but in the suburbs and schools. It felt like we had arrived from a different dimension to take over the pop scene, and because we were so different and very distinctive we got the country’s attention and everyone had an opinion about us, whether they liked us or not.”

Outside of the historical context, Marr would later share his retrospective opinion of This Charming Man as a song. In an interview with Q Magazine he said, “I wince a bit when I hear it now. It only tells the shiny side of the story, it in no way epitomises what was good about the band in the long term. But God bless it though, it seemed to catch on with a lot of people.”

Scott LePage has just appeared on the screen but it’s a little hard to make small talk right now so soon after listening to Polyphia’s new album, Be Not Afraid, front-to-back.

Be Not Afraid is the sound of iconoclastic Texan instrumentalists at their most radical, most maximalist; it is the sound of LePage and his coconspirator, Tim Henson, sending the electric guitar through the post-modernist wormhole.

To experience it is not unlike doomscrolling on peyote, letting the biblical deluge of the information age pass unfiltered into the soft underbelly of your consciousness. Death by content. It was a mistake to consume this record so soon before conversation with others.

Be Not Afraid might similarly be unsuitable to listen to when driving, or operating heavy machinery. It is not dinner party music. By the time Fear God brings the album to its conclusion, who can tell whether they are pre, post or perhaps mid-seizure?

LePage, who’s nursing a head cold and waiting for DayQuil’s recuperative dunt to kick in, knows the feeling, and he actually made the thing.

“Thanks, man. It’s, um… yeah, I kind of feel like that, too, after listening to it,” he says. “I just kind of go like, ‘Damn! That’s one hell of a thing I just heard.’ Not in a toot-my-own-horn way at all.”

Tim Henson has joined the chat. Henson and LePage have done more than most in recent years to radicalise quote/unquote guitar music, but now their betcha-can’t-play-this set-pieces have given way to a grander vision.

Be Not Afraid does not have lyrics per se, and yet it feels lyrical; it is strewn with samples, gospel preachers’ sermons set to jacking beats just as deep house producers in Detroit and Chicago did in the ‘90s – Polyphia’s own Can You Feel It? even borrows its title from Mr Fingers. Henson assures us there is a theme; there is a story running through the album.

“This is the first record that we’ve ever done that has had, like, actual deeper meaning beyond ‘look how crazy this thing is that we’re playing’ but, yeah, as far as it being lyrical, we are certainly telling a story through the samples,” he says.

The story isn’t that easy to describe. “Hence why we made the album,” shrugs Henson. But how it makes you feel – exhilarated, unclean, anxious, ecstatic, obsolete – is what’s more important. There’s something about these compositions that speaks to living in a time of digital excess, tech capture of our wants and desires, algorithms greedily documenting our every move, our feelings manipulated 24/7, nerves exposed.

Be Not Afraid reminds this writer of listening to Slayer’s Reign In Blood for the first time as a young teenager, on vinyl, on a Sunday night after band practice, and feeling as though some secret knowledge had been attained, a lapsarian moment after which nothing will be the same again.

“Real quick, I just wanted to touch on that, what you just said,” says Henson. “About it makes you feel like the first time, as a young person, hearing Reign In Blood. That right there is the feeling that we wanted to capture.

“For me in particular, like, I remember the first time that I heard Skrillex. I was, I don’t know, 12 or 13, and it just absolutely blew my mind, and that is exactly the feeling that we wanted people to have, to feel like a kid again, discovering something new, so yeah, I’m really stoked you said that.”

Yeah, but it’s not an altogether pleasant experience, and that’s by design. Be Not Afraid is a challenging work, a full-court press of electronic beats and digital processing. The “RJ Sauce,” ie, the co-production work from RJ Pasin, sends it over the top. This is the kind of aesthetic hyperbole that Paul Verhoeven would be proud off.

The song titles reference Christian theology and prayer. There is a song called J-BOMB. Jesus is on the cover, and is there, on record, in spirit. There is this constant seesawing between fleeting ecstasies and inevitable comedowns, the bliss of salvation and the brutality of damnation.

“I think that those two opposite ends of the spectrum were things that we really, really wanted to touch on,” says Henson. “Like, obviously, this album is a Jesus record. We have Jesus on the cover, every title is biblical. When you think about CCM, Christian Contemporary Music – this is not that by any means – but it feels super Rated G, and very family-friendly.

“They don’t touch on the actual issues. We are touching on those really, really dark aspects of the world. And that’s why we have these two opposing vibes on a record that just is constantly switching back and forth, like you’re just being torn from one thing to the other.”

Be Not Afraid all started with a gift, a weird-ass guitar a fan gave them during a VIP meet-and-great. It was made by the Japanese brand Seed and it had a super long-scale. LePage calls it “the negative five,” and as soon as he plugged it in and started playing, the ideas started coming.

This fan should know that his gift kick-started the album. “He was like, ‘I don’t know what to do with this, but I know you guys would know,’” says Henson.

LePage wrote Let There Be Light on the Seed. Henson ordered a second one and got to work, too. It gave them this foundational guitar sound from which everything else flowed. But all the travelling this Japanese-built guitar had done had not served it well. There was something wrong with it.

Henson puts it down to the “insanely long” scale length, but the neck started bowing, and not convexly as a normal neck would do. “It started bowing towards your face,” laughs Henson. “I don’t know how! The guitar became unplayable at a certain point. But while it was playable, it was a really cool guitar. It was actually kind of shreddy, and felt nice to play while it was working.”

They retired “the negative five” and realised they had a workaround in Ableton live, dropping the dry signal and “pitch-shifting the shit out of it”. That’s the warped faux eight-string you hear as Let There Be Light breaks the seal on your pre-Be Not Afraid life. Be not afraid, but there are more crazy guitar noises to come.

LePage is like Herbert West or Crawford Tillinghast, the mad scientists of low-budget horror summoning an evil into being that he barely knows how to control.

“Man, a couple of years ago, before I moved, I would sit in my room, and have a bottle of scotch next to me, and I would just tweak guitar tones, and try to just experiment with tone matching by myself,” says LePage. “So that’s kind of where the heavy stuff came from. And then the weird noises and stuff was just me being, like, ‘I wonder what a wah pedal would sound like with a guitar tone that is pitched down 17 semitones, and the EQ on the high-end of the spectrum is boosted to shit because of the low pitching, the compensation, and what would that sound like if I did that here?’”

And what does that sound like?

“It just gives you that gurgly, weird, hissy fucked-up sound,” he explains. “And it’s stuff like that, where you think, ‘What is the use case for something like that? Let me just experiment and try and see what happens.’”

Henson had the use case for that noise. It was one of those moments where what they put down on tape freaked both of them out when they heard it back through the studio monitors.

“There are a couple moments on the record that freak me out a little bit,” says LePage. “We were trying to come up with a transition from one song to another, and Tim, called me up, and he’s like, ‘Hey, uh, here’s the prompt: Can you make something that sounds like the devil throwing a tantrum?’ And I was like, ‘You know, I think I have access to enough freaky sounds on the guitar and whatever I have on the pedalboard today that I could make that sound.’”

Here’s the prompt, it’s like Henson speaks to LePage as though he’s an LLM. ScottGPT. But this is how they’ve always spoken to each other, pre-LLMs, pre-AI. Prompt isn’t the right word, they say, but it describes the collaborative process to a tee.

“If you think about Remember That You Will Die – and again, that is prior to ChatGPT, at least one year before actual large language models, or whatever those are came out – it was like, ‘Okay, what if Polyphia is the thing, the filter that whatever is ran through,’” Henson explains. “For example, our song ABC, it’s very much like a J-Pop/K-Pop song, but Polyphia, right? So it’s like, you run the J-pop/K-pop song through the Polyphia machine – which is us, a machine made of humans – and then out comes a song like ABC.”

The same goes for Playing God, Polyphia’s nylon-string bossa nova track that really did transform guitar, with the Ibanez nylon-strings in the video suddenly the hottest guitars on the market – and to think Henson had to persuade Ibanez that, yes, these were a good idea and people would buy them.

This was how Henson and LePage wrote their 2014 debut LP, Muse, listening to tracks on the radio that caught their ear and then asking themselves: ‘Okay, what is the Polyphia version of this?’ They make riffs for the chorus and consider the solos as verses and bridges.

So there were “prompts” as before. What made Be Not Afraid was the communal aspect, the fact that they got together in a rented Airbnb, away from all distractions, spitballing ideas, and in effect egging each other on to compose something more outré, to see how far they could push a sound that was – let’s face it – already pitched out there on the outer limits.

The real-time connection was critical, to the album’s energy, to the ideas.

“The way that this happened was I really wanted to base the sessions off of Kanye doing My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” says Henson. “He would basically fly everybody out to Hawaii and make everybody pull up to the studio wearing suits, and then he’d put rules on printed out on paper and taped to the wall, like, ‘No Twitter!’ No this, no that, just to create this super-sacred space for the creation.

“He would make everybody wake up at the same time and eat at the same time, work out at the same time, and then lock in on the music at the same time. And that’s essentially what we did.”

There was not Grand Theft Auto either. There was a sense of discipline, no fucking about. Between takes they shot hoops out back. That kept the blood flowing.

“It was just us here,” says Henson. “We are waking up at the same time. We are eating at the same time. We were playing basketball… Grand Theft Auto is more of a pacifier, and basketball is more of an energiser. I think that really made this record super special because of – like you said – that communal aspect of just feeding off of each other, and to the point where we just ended up with a really insane-sounding record.”

There are no guests either. Henson had floated the possibility that System Of A Down frontman Serj Tankian would offer vocals. Japanese pop-metallers Babymetal were also on the list. Remember That You Will Die was full of guest appearances, with Steve Vai offering guest shred on Ego Death and Chino Moreno of Deftones also turning up on Bloodbath.

The aforementioned ABC featured Sophia Black. But Polyphia wanted this one to be just them. No guests. No distractions. Just LePage and Henson making body-horror out of guitar with Clay Gober on bass, Clay Aeschliman on drums.

“It’s like, ‘Well, all right, let’s just give them us, us in our most raw form,” says Henson. “And I say that loosely because the sound design on this record is so insane, and there are so many moments where it was just, like, ‘How can we make sounds that literally tear your mind apart?’”

Henson describes the approach to guitar as being like a vocalist tearing their vocal cords in a screamo band. The assaultive production then takes us places sonically where the guitar can’t go, as Be Not Afraid whipsaws between R&B and hip-hop and propulsive EDM. LePage presenting us with pitch-shifted metal riffs bent all out of shape.

Some of these riffs were written in the same spirit of Polyphia’s 2013 EP, Inspire. “A lot of these parts, I was thinking, ‘What would I do if I was a 17-year-old kid?’ The riffs at the end of Can You Feel It?, I literally was thinking to myself, ‘What would I do if I was writing this for Inspire?’ And I started to go off those chord progressions.”

“Yeah, I think to add to that, the biggest driving force behind this record was fun, having fun and funmaxxing with our friends and ourselves,” says Henson. “What Scott’s saying and what you said at the beginning of this conversation about feeling like when you were younger, hearing Reign In Blood for the first time, it’s to capture that same feeling of being a kid.

“Every 14-year-old kid is, like, ‘The BC Rich with the sharp-as-fuck lines and the Line 6 insane tone, that’s cool as fuck!’ And it’s to capture the essence of what it’s like to be that kid again, where everything is just the most maximal that it could possibly be because that’s fucking cool. Our inner child – our inner children, were very happy during the making of this record.”

• Be Not Afraid is out now via Rise

Shara Nelson was midway through recording vocals at Coach House Studios in Clifton, Bristol when the vocal melody and lyrics for the song that would become Unfinished Sympathy came to her.

It was the summer of 1990 and Nelson was guest vocalist on the debut album Blue Lines by Massive Attack, the Bristol trip-hop collective formed in 1988 and featuring Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja, Grant ‘Daddy G’ Marshall and Andrew ‘Mushroom’ Vowles.

On the day Unfinished Sympathy came into being, they had been struggling to record a track called Safe From Harm.

“I couldn’t concentrate very well,” Nelson told Uncut magazine in 2010. “So we were told to take a break, have a cup of tea.

“I didn’t drink tea at the time, so I just stood in the corner and started trying to put together this idea that had been going around my head for a while. I started mumbling to myself, half singing the lines, ‘I know that I’ve imagined love before.’ The melody and the words started to come into shape.”

In the studio with Nelson at that moment was producer Jonathan ‘Jonny Dollar’ Sharp and Andrew ‘Mushroom’ Vowles.

Nelson recalled: “Mushroom heard what I was doing and said: ‘What’s that? Sing up, girl.’ So I started to sing and Mushroom put some beats towards it and Jonny Dollar started playing synthetic strings, and that was it. It was a real rogue track.”

The song, co-written by Nelson, Vowels, Del Naja, Marshall and Dollar, would become the second single on the album.

With its heart-rending vocal and sweeping strings, Unfinished Sympathy showcased a unique fusion of musical styles that were as emotive as they were chilled.

The song and the cutting-edge video that accompanied it, would propel Bristol’s unique music scene into the global spotlight.

The musical climate that forged the Bristol sound can be traced back to 2 April 1980, when police raided the Black and White Cafe in the heart of the St Pauls area of the city. The heavy-handed tactics of the police became a flashpoint, sparking a riot, fuelled by community grievances, racial tensions and the government’s controversial ‘sus’ laws.

The outpouring of anger from the St Pauls community took the police by surprise and they were soon outnumbered. In the aftermath of the riot, the police gave St Pauls a much wider berth and this created a climate where communities would come together through impromptu street parties, with custom-built sound systems.

These sound systems provided the musical backdrop to inner city Bristol and would become a unifying force for young people, regardless of their skin colour.

“Sound system culture was all about DIY,” said Roni Size in a 2016 BBC documentary Unfinished: The Making Of Massive Attack. “It was about learning how to string up amps, how to cut the wood, how to load the speakers onto the van properly, even [learning] how to drive a big HGV lorry down the narrow roads in St Pauls.”

The sound system culture shared a DIY ethos with punk and there was one seminal post-punk Bristol band, The Pop Group, that would have a huge influence on development of the Bristol sound.

The Pop Group’s sound was aggressive and avant-garde, incorporating elements of funk, free jazz, and dub. Their tours took them to New York, where they became entranced by the emerging hip-hop culture.

“We were virtually living in New York,” recalled former singer and founder Mark Stewart in the Unfinished documentary. “Suddenly, somebody says there's a really cool radio show on this thing called Kiss FM and WBLS.

“We used to have big ghetto blasters of double cassette machines back in the day. We copied these tapes, brought them back to Bristol. Copied, copied, copied.

“3D would draw on them. Suddenly, everybody was getting into hip-hop in Bristol. London was not even aware of it.”

By the mid-’80s, the Bristol scene was thriving and its epicentre was the now legendary Dugout club, in the city’s Park Row, where the Wild Bunch performed a regular slot and dominated the Bristol club scene.

In 1988, Massive Attack was created as a spin-off group from the Wild Bunch and featured Daddy G, Mushroom, 3D and, in the early days, Tricky.

3D had been a co-writer on Neneh Cherry’s song Manchild.

Along with her husband, singer, songwriter and producer Cameron McVay, Cherry would help Massive Attack to record Blue Lines, which they started work on in 1990.

“One of the things that made Massive Attack into the phenomenon they were was meeting and knowing Neneh Cherry and Cameron McVay,” said Sheryl Garratt, former editor of The Face. “They supported them financially and gave them lots of resources and really encouraged and nurtured their talent.”

Cherry also injected the drive necessary to cut through the chilled-out languor of the Bristol scene.

For all their talent, Massive Attack were not driven by ambition or any desire to be celebrities.

“We were lazy Bristol twats,” Daddy G told writer Ben Thompson of The Observer in 2004. “It was Neneh Cherry who kicked our arses and got us in the studio.

“We recorded a lot at her house, in her baby's room… what we were trying to do was create dance music for the head, rather than the feet. I think it's our freshest album, we were at our strongest then.”

By then, the sound that music journalist Andy Pemberton would define as ‘trip-hop’ in the June 1994 issue of Mixmag magazine was taking shape, a melding of New York hip-hop with homegrown dub, soul, funk, jazz and electronica, and all imbued with an achingly melancholic and laid-back feel.

This was the sound that would distinguish Blue Lines and would first come to prominence on Unfinished Sympathy, released as a single two months before the album.

“Blue Lines kind of had this impact where they recognised Bristol having a sound,” recalled Roni Size in Unfinished. “It was that underlying sub-bass from the dub. It was the breaks from hip-hop and the two gel together. It just summed up the culture and I think Massive Attack really tapped into that.”

Once Mushroom, Nelson and producer Dollar had worked up the basis of Nelson’s vocal melody and lyric, Massive Attack worked on the song during a jam session.

The song’s title, Unfinished Sympathy – a pun on Franz Schubert's 1822 Unfinished Symphony No.8 in B minor – was decided that same day.

“I hate putting a title to anything without a theme,” said Robert Del Naja in Select magazine in 1992. “The title came up as a joke at first, but it fitted the song and the arrangements so perfectly, we just had to use it.”

The song’s arrangement incorporates scratching and drum programming from Mushroom.

Chilled hip-hop beats set the tone and there is a percussion break sampled from jazz trombonist, composer and arranger JJ Johnson’s 1974 instrumental Parade Strut.

One major decision taken in the early stages of the song was to use a real orchestra on the track.

“The synth sounded too tacky,” Mushroom told writer John Robb of Sounds in 1991. “So we thought we may as well use real strings.”

Dollar contacted the music producer Wil Malone (who had worked on Iron Maiden’s debut album in 1980) to arrange and conduct the strings, which were recorded in Studio Two at Abbey Road Studios, London.

A 42-piece orchestra was hired to perform the surging string arrangement. Dollar had instructed Malone to “do what you feel like” with the string arrangement.

“My approach for Unfinished Sympathy was that it’s a really open track,” Malone told Uncut magazine. “Basically it’s just a groove – keyboards, and a great vocal by Shara Nelson – so you just let it drift, just let it chill.

“With most string arrangements that I do, the strings are ‘put back’ in the mix. In other words they are so quiet you don’t really hear them, or they’re mixed up, so that you can just hear the top lines.

“But on Unfinished Sympathy, the strings are exposed. You can really hear them and I think that makes something different.”

Vowles told John Robb of Sounds that the orchestra “were really good [but] it took them about five takes to do it because they were slightly behind the beat”.

The orchestra is a haunting and enigmatic addition to the song.

Unfortunately, as Massive Attack never set out to use a full orchestra on the album, they hadn’t budgeted for it. Mushroom had to sell his car – a Mitsubishi Shogun – to cover all the hiring costs for the orchestra.

One surprising aspect of Unfinished Sympathy is that there is no actual bassline on the original album version of the song.

The bass is provided by the orchestra.

Unfinished Sympathy was released on 11 February 1991, in the midst of the Gulf War.

On the advice of their record company and management, the group dropped the word ‘Attack’ from their name, to allegedly prevent the song being banned by the BBC, releasing the track simply as ‘Massive’.

Unfinished Sympathy was groundbreaking and hugely influential, a unique blend of electronic and orchestral elements that is both melancholic and uplifting.

The song is justifiably considered a masterpiece, one that set the template for the trip-hop genre, with its ethereal strings, dub-heavy bass and shuffling beats.

It’s a sophisticated arrangement elevated by Shara Nelson’s effortlessly emotive vocals.

Commercially, the song fared well, reaching No.13 in the UK singles chart and No.1 on the Dutch Top 40. But critically, it received widespread acclaim.

Melody Maker named Unfinished Sympathy its Single of the Year, concluding that that it would “unquestionably stand as one of the greatest soul records of all time”.

In a retrospective piece in 2005, BBC journalist Stuart Bailie later wrote that Unfinished Sympathy had “an emotional power that was hard to figure. It sounded anxious and lost. But there was a grandeur in the music also. People who came across the record became obsessed, spinning it endlessly.”

In 2012, the enduring emotional power of the song was also noted by John Bush of All Music in a retrospective review.

“Unfinished Sympathy remains one of the most elegant, sophisticated works in the history of electronic dance.” he wrote. “The emotional effect is extraordinary when coupled with Shara Nelson's searching vocal.

“A sleek, catchy drum programme and a little shadowed scratching (the only reference to their b-boy past) complete this simple, but tremendously moving, dance production, a tribute to the continuing emotional tug of great music – whether the source is organic or electronic.”

In September 1985, British band the Blow Monkeys, led by smooth-voiced, sharp-suited and floppy-fringed frontman, Dr. Robert, released the single Forbidden Fruit - a sophisticated and heavily-layered pop-soul track, with chiming guitar, horns, strings and female backing vocals.

It was a key song for the group, who were signed to the RCA label, and also featured band members Mick Anker (bass), Neville Henry (saxophone), and Tony Kiley (drums), as it saw them developing a lusher, more well-rounded and confident sound.

It was a natural progression from their 1984 critically-acclaimed debut album, Limping for a Generation, which was described in the band’s official biography as ‘an edgy mix of sinister post-punk, sensual glam rock and dramatic late ‘60s pop.’

Forbidden Fruit was released almost a year ahead of the album it came from (1986’s Animal Magic) but it wasn’t a hit, only reaching a paltry number 94 in the UK Singles Chart.

Speaking to the website Superdeluxeedition in 2023, Dr Robert (aka, Robert Howard) said: “Limping… got good reviews, it got us noticed and it got us on the circuit, but it wasn’t a hit album. Forbidden Fruit was the first single [from Animal Magic]. It crawled into the Top 75 [sic]. RCA was spending a little bit more money on us and giving us bigger budgets for videos, so I could feel that something was happening.”

What changed everything was the follow-up single, Digging Your Scene, released in February 1986. It was a classy and irresistible blend of infectious, slick and summery soul, jazz, funk and pop that peaked at number 12 in the UK Top 40, was a hit in America - 14 in the US Billboard Hot 100, and reached number 10 in New Zealand, 16 in Australia, and made the Top 30 in Germany.

But beneath the song’s electronic, ‘80s gated snare sound, and its smooth and shiny, saxophone-and-string-soaked surface, there was a dark undercurrent and pointed social commentary.

With lyrics like ‘Tell me why is it I'm digging your scene, I know I'll die, baby’, the track addressed the 1980s AIDS crisis, the associated stigma and the hate and prejudice directed towards victims. In particular, the oft-targeted gay community.

It was one of the first mainstream songs to tackle those issues.

In writing this retrospective, we spoke to Robert himself about his memories of making this song. He tells us that, “The lyrics were inspired by the gay scene and the clubs that me and my friends were going to, like Taboo and Heaven - although I wasn’t gay, I went there because that was my friendship group and it was a brilliant vibe. It coincided with the horror story of AIDS and the way it was being sold to the public by the government - it was awful.

“Donna Summer [allegedly, Ed] said it was ‘God’s revenge,’ although she retracted it later. That gave me the line in the song [‘It'll get you in the end. It's God's revenge’], but it kind of went under the radar, I don’t think anyone picked up on it at the time. It was quite easy to just take it as a love song, but I knew where it came from.”

The poignant line, ‘I just got your message baby, so sad to see you fade away’, is stark reference to people Robert knew who were suffering from the virus.

“I had friends who had AIDS, it was a death sentence, but the way it was being portrayed in the press was as if it was a plague. Princess Diana changed a lot of that,” Robert tells us.

The lyric, ‘Every day I walk alone and pray that God won't see me,’ is about those people who were ostracised for being gay.

“They were made to feel guilty, it was a dark period,” says Robert.

When he wrote the song, he had split up with his wife and was living in a basement flat in South London, on Nightingale Lane, near Clapham South Underground Station.

The musical inspiration for Digging Your Scene came from the sparse arrangement and the syncopated rhythm of Marvin Gaye’s 1982 electronic soul ballad, Sexual Healing, one of the first hits to use a Roland TR-808 drum machine and written when Gaye had relocated to Ostend in Belgium, during a period of self-imposed exile.

“I had the [Roland] Drumatix and the Bassmatix that went with it, they were quite hard to program. Sexual Healing had that kind of drum thing going on, so I copied the pattern and wrote the song over the top of it. That would’ve been around 1985,” says Robert.

“I watched a Marvin Gaye documentary where he’s playing darts in Ostend, that always appealed to me. It’s great, there’s footage of him rehearsing with that guy Deon [Estus], who played bass for Wham! Marvin is lying on the sofa, ad-libbing and it’s just amazing. He’s as far away from his comfort zone as he could possibly be, but I identified with it because of what I was going through.”

Robert was attracted to the simplicity of the drum machine groove on Sexual Healing and recorded a four-track home demo of Digging Your Scene for the rest of the band to hear.

“I did a demo using the drum machine, my arrangement was simple too because I couldn’t figure out how to program it!,” he says, adding: “I sold my Drumatix and Bassmatix years later because during Acid House they became really valuable.”

Digging Your Scene’s chords were written on an acoustic guitar.

“I had a horrible old Spanish guitar, the chords aren’t complex, but I was influenced by soul changes. That was definitely coming into my sphere of thinking during the Animal Magic time,” Dr Robert says.

“If you listen to What’s Going On or Let’s Get it On, and those early Al Green records on Hi Records, those chord progressions in Digging Your Scene are a classic soul thing. I’m thinking of Band of Gold or Midnight Train to Georgia, those mid-tempo songs.”

On the hit single version of Digging Your Scene, which was remixed and rerecorded in New York, there’s also a choppy and funky electric guitar. “We got a guy in called Ira Siegel, he played some of it and I played some of it,” says Robert.

“I was watching him, he was a proper New York funky dude, and he influenced the way I approached things for a while after that. He was using a Strat with an in-between pickup sound, which was funky and percussive. I had a guitar called a Harmony Rocket, it was awful and it never stayed in tune. In 1984, we did a whole tour supporting Lloyd Cole and my guitar was out of tune for the whole tour because it had a whammy bar. I fixed it, but I also used to play a Telecaster quite a lot.

"These days, it’s a Gibson 335 and I’ve got a Strat that I use quite a bit in the studio. I’m not a guitar geek - I’ve given guitars away. I don’t keep them - the only expensive thing I’ve got is a Fender Coranado bass. I played it on Paul Weller’s Changing Man and Stanley Road."

Robert continues, "I bought [the Coronado] on Denmark Street in 1987. It’s a semi-acoustic from 1967. Most proper bass players wouldn’t play it - but I’m not a proper bass player," Robert admits.

"When Paul Weller asked me to step in and play bass for him, I turned up to rehearsals with it, and his roadies looked at it and said: ‘Oh, mate, we’ve got one of Bruce Foxton’s Precisions in the back if you want to play it.’ I said, ‘No - don’t make me play that.’

“Paul walked in and said, ‘I like your bass,’ so they shut up,” Robert laughs.

For the Animal Magic album sessions in London, The Blow Monkeys worked in a small studio in Victoria called The Point, they also tracked at Solid Bond which was at Marble Arch and at Stanhope Place, which was the studio owned by Paul Weller that had formerly been the Philips Studios. There, many ‘60s pop acts, including the Walker Brothers and Dusty Springfield, had made records.

The strings for the album were recorded with producer Pete Wilson at Solid Bond. On the original version of Digging Your Scene, recorded in London, which finally saw the light of day in 2012, as a bonus track (the Pete Wilson Mix - on the deluxe 2CD Cherry Red reissue of Animal Magic) the orchestration is more prominent and lusher, the song is much more cinematic than the single version, and there’s less sax.

“You know more about it than I do, because I haven’t listened to that version in years,” says Robert, laughing.

He adds: “Pete Wilson’s string arrangements for Animal Magic were extraordinary, he did some beautiful stuff, but his strength wasn’t in getting the bass and drums, the low end, tight and funky. He was brilliant at the top line; he showed me little tricks, chords I might not have known, and he was very patient with me as a singer.”

Recording the original version of Digging Your Scene, Robert didn’t think it would work as a single, he figured it would remain just an album track.

“When we were doing it at that time, I don’t remember thinking ‘This is a single…’ I thought there were other things on the album that were more immediate, like Aeroplane City Lovesong, but that just shows you that I don’t know what I’m talking about half the time. It was Korda Marshall [at RCA], who had sort of become our A&R man who picked up on the potential for Digging Your Scene."

So, with that in mind, in 1985, Robert jetted off to New York on his own for two weeks to record a new, radio-friendly remix of the song at Arthur Baker’s Unique Studios. He didn’t end up working with the innovative hip-hop, electro and dance music producer, but, funnily enough, he did work with recording engineer and mixer, Michael Baker (no relation!)

“I did meet Arthur Baker and I had a look around the studio. I realised something was different - there were no instruments. It was wall-to-wall samplers and MIDI leads, and people with headphones, making bleeps,” he says.

“This mad guy walked in - he was wearing those ear protectors that people who drill in the street wear. That was Michael Baker, he was a nutter, but a great nutter! I worked with him and a German guy called Axel Kroll, who was a drum programmer, they introduced me to a new member of the band, the LinnDrum!

“Axel was also a brilliant drummer, he knew what he was doing because he had a special feel; he wasn’t robotic. Everyone said you needed that Hall & Oates snare drum sound to get the song played on the radio, so they added the LinnDrum, brought another guitarist in and cut the sax up.

"They had a bit of Neville’s sax and some by someone else, and they got some other backing vocalists in, who really elevated it. The whole thing was just so energetic, and it had that New York vibe. I was used to working in studios in England. It was a different atmosphere.”

He adds: “I also went to D&D Studios, which later became world-famous for hip-hop and the Beastie Boys. I tried to do a new vocal, but it didn’t work.

“When we went to D&D, the musicians came in to perform… they were in and out, and they had so much energy. It wasn’t drug-induced, it was just being in New York: bang! I was really excited by what was going on - the early hip-hop that was coming out of there at that time.

“It was a great time to be exposed to that music, which was groundbreaking. I seriously considered moving to New York, I had a look at a flat there. I just fed off the energy.”

Returning to London with the newly-remixed version of Digging Your Scene, Robert took it to the rest of the band: “I said to them, ‘The good news is that we’ve got a hit, but the bad news is that you’re not on it!'”

After their initial shock of being removed from the song, the other members of the group soon learned to love the new mix - especially when it broke the band on both sides of the Atlantic.

“I think it must’ve been quite difficult for them at first, but once they realised how it was going to change everything for us, they went, ‘Yeah’,” says Robert.

“The song was a life-changer for us. Suddenly we got on the Wogan show and it started to take off everywhere, including America. We did Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, we toured with Robert Palmer when he was number one with Addicted to Love. We did some gigs with the Psychedelic Furs, and we played quite a lot of gigs on our own,” Robert remembers.

“After we did Top of the Pops, I went to a fish and chip shop in Brixton, and the girl behind the counter said, ‘Did you see that band on Top of the Pops last night?’ She was talking about us, I wanted to say, ‘That was me,’ but I didn’t - I just ordered some gherkins.”

More than 40 years since Digging Your Scene was released, the song's true meaning is now more widely understood.

“When we started putting out compilations and Best Of albums, more people started asking me what it was about and the penny dropped, but that was probably because I started talking about it more. I didn’t say anything at the time because I got swept up by suddenly being a pop star. Because the record company made me look like Morten Harket on the cover of Animal Magic, I took my eye off the ball because we were touring so much, we started to get teenyboppers coming to our gigs, who took one look at us playing live and thought, ‘Who the f**k are this lot?’

“Although Digging Your Scene was pop, we still had one foot in my obsession with bands like Laughing Clowns and The Birthday Party, and we were still playing songs from our first album, which the teenyboppers didn’t dig at all. The record sleeves encouraged a different perception to what we were, but the warning signs were there when we did the video for Forbidden Fruit. I turned up, there was a model there and someone said: ‘We want you to frolic on the beach.’ I was thinking, ‘hang on…’

“I’m not saying I didn’t go for it and enjoy it, but there were murmurs in the background at the record company, with people saying: ‘You could do a George Michael, go solo and be really big.’ This sounds egotistical, but because of the way I looked, they thought, ‘OK, we’ve got a pop star on our hands.’ But I was too spiky and not very good at doing the ‘happy, happy family of pop.'"

In the heavily rotated promo video for Digging Your Scene, a suited and booted, makeup-wearing Robert (with his razor-sharp cheekbones) and the band and some backing singers, perform the song on stage in a club, against a sparkly gold backdrop, to an audience of cocktail-supping punters.

The barman tosses Robert a guitar, which he catches and then throws away, and then said barman, and a waitress, join Robert, who has three costume changes, on stage for a dance routine. Robert also goes over to a table and sings the song to an ecstatic middle-aged woman, while gazing into her eyes, and even finds time to twirl a pink parasol.

“I don’t remember where we filmed the video, but I do remember thinking, ‘Oh, the budget’s gone up on this one… I think something’s happening,’” he recalls.

“I knew the barman and the waitress from the club scene, and I had to go to Pineapple Dance Studios to learn the dance routine. I thought, ‘This is new.’ I was just having fun really, at that point in my life, I was unattached. I had come out of my first relationship, and everything was taking off. I enjoyed camping it up for the cameras a bit.

“The video broke us in America. In those days, MTV would either give you a thumbs up or a thumbs down, but they went for it. So that, coinciding with the fact that college radio picked up on the song, meant that all of a sudden we had a hit in America, and it was taking off all around the world. I think the video had a lot to do with it doing well internationally, but, although the song didn’t do as well as It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way or Wait, it seems to be the one we’re best known for.”

In 2026, the Blow Monkeys are still touring regularly, including UK dates this year, to support 2025’s well-received studio album, Birdsong, which was recorded at Paul Weller's Black Barn Studios in Surrey.

Digging Your Scene remains a permanent fixture in their live set.

MusicRadar asks Robert how he feels when he performs the song these days and if it brings back memories of the friends he lost from AIDS in the ‘80s.

“I always try to connect with them," Robert reflects. "I try to find a place and put myself back into the lyric while I’m singing it, but you can’t do that every night. I just enjoy singing it. We’re able to get away with playing new stuff as well as older songs, and after 40 years, or whatever it is, that’s what I’m after. So, of course, I’m not going to not play Digging Your Scene. As long as we can express ourselves and keep putting records out, and enough people buy them, so we can make the next one. It’s great to see the excitement that people get.”

But does he have to change the key when he sings Digging Your Scene now?

“I haven’t changed the key, but I can’t hit the high bit in the chorus (Nev does that). Obviously, it’s more stripped-down now - it’s just the four of us. There are no strings or keyboards on it, but Nev plays the sax. When he’s not playing sax, it’s just a three-piece - it’s like a garage-soul version, which is cool. I’m down with that. I don’t need all the embellishments.”

When he’s played solo shows, Robert has stripped the song back even more, doing an acoustic version of it. “If the song stands up, you can do it many ways,” he says.

We ask Robert if he ever wonders what would’ve happened if he hadn’t got on that plane to New York in 1985?

“I would’ve carried on trying. The one thing I do have is stamina and determination. I wasn’t very good when we started out as a band. I knew people who were a lot better than me, but they couldn’t stick at it. A lot of it is to do with staying power. I was quite disciplined, I used to stay in and write songs. I never got hung up on drugs or drink, and I was always wanting to get better, so I stealthily stayed at it.

“When you get somewhere and you start getting reviewed, it’s a weird place to be,” Robert tells us.

“Getting criticised in public is a funny job. You’ve got to have a little bit of a thick skin and keep your eyes on the prize. I suppose that was my strength - as I carried on, I got better. I don’t think I would’ve given up easily, I would’ve kept going until a door opened.”

Al Di Meola has always loved to surround himself with the very best musicians. In a stellar career dating back to the early ’70s, the virtuoso guitarist has recorded and performed with prodigious talents such as bassist Jaco Pastorius, drummers Steve Gadd and Phil Collins, pianist Chick Corea, keyboardist Jan Hammer and fellow guitarists John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucía.

As Di Meola explains to MusicRadar: “I didn't want anonymous great players. What’s the point of that? I wanted personalities.”

Di Meola’s big break came when he joined jazz fusion group Return To Forever, led by Chick Corea and also featuring bassist Stanley Clarke and drummer Lenny White. Di Meola’s debut solo album Land Of The Midnight Sun, released in 1976, featured Jaco Pastorius and Steve Gadd along with guest spots from Corea, Clarke and White. The follow-up album Elegant Gypsy (1977) included Di Meola’s first collaborations with Paco de Lucía and Jan Hammer.

1981 saw the release of the legendary groundbreaking live album Friday Night In San Francisco, performed by Di Meola with Paco de Lucía and John McLaughlin. And on his 1983 studio album Scenario, Di Meola was assisted by two famous drummers with roots in progressive rock – Bill Bruford and Phil Collins.

Di Meola is full of praise for these fellow musicians as he looks back on the first decade of his recording career.

JACO PASTORIUS

“Jaco was unbelievable. He had this thing where he’d walk up to other musicians – great musicians – and say, ‘I’m the best bass player that ever lived.’ And we’d all kind of look at each other like, ‘Yeah, that’s probably true.’

“There really wasn’t anybody like him. Jaco played on my first solo album, Land Of The Midnight Sun, on Suite Golden Dawn. This was before the whole world knew Jaco as Jaco, but everybody around him knew.

“You couldn’t hear that guy play and not know something unusual was happening. He didn’t think like a traditional bass player. He heard melody, harmony, and rhythm all at the same time. He could hold down the entire bottom of the music and then suddenly become another lead voice.

“That was Jaco. He had unbelievable confidence, thinking, ‘I’m the best bass player that ever lived.’ It sounds incredibly arrogant – except he could back it up. And the funny part was, nobody really argued with him.”

STEVE GADD

“You didn't need to spend a month teaching Steve Gadd a drum part. You showed him the music. Steve got it.

“There’s a reason everybody wanted him. I used Steve on Land Of The Midnight Sun, then on Elegant Gypsy, Casino, Splendido Hotel, Electric Rendezvous, Tour de Force. I was using musicians who could walk into a studio, look at very difficult music, understand it, and play it.

“When Steve plays a groove, you don’t have to think about where the time is. It’s there. And Steve could read anything. That’s something people don’t always understand when they hear those records.

“Steve is just unbelievable. You can give Steve something extremely complex, and he doesn't make it sound complex. That’s the genius. His time is so deep that everybody else can sit inside of it.”

PACO DE LUCÍA

“Paco was like a brother. I miss him. I still miss him.

“What Paco did took tremendous courage because flamenco was a very closed world at that time. There were people who didn’t want him playing with jazz musicians. They didn’t want him moving outside of the tradition.

“But Paco was curious. He wanted to grow. He respected where he came from, but he wasn’t going to let tradition put him in a box.

“Rhythmically, he was frightening. And he couldn’t read music. Think about that. We had some very complicated arrangements, and Paco learned everything by ear. His memory was unbelievable.

“People know the serious Paco with the guitar and that incredible intensity. But there was another side of him. There was a sweetness to Paco. We spent so much time together. I loved him.”

JAN HAMMER

“Jan is one of my favourite keyboard players – a monster. People who know Jan mainly from Miami Vice may not understand what kind of player he was. Jan could make the synthesizer function almost like another lead guitar. There was aggression in his phrasing. Attack.

“So, when Jan and I traded things, it wasn't guitar with a keyboard behind it. It was two strong voices coming at each other.

“He played on Elegant Gypsy, and later we worked together on Scenario, when I was getting very interested in sequencing, synthesizers and all this new technology that was coming in. We were experimenting. That’s what you're supposed to do.”

JOHN McLAUGHLIN

“I knew John’s playing long before I knew John. Miles. Bitches Brew. Tony Williams. Then Mahavishnu. I saw Mahavishnu when I was still basically a kid, and it blew my mind. Nobody had heard anything like that.

“The energy. The odd meters. The level of musicianship. It was almost frightening. Then, years later, I’m sitting next to John, playing acoustic guitar with him. John is competitive. So am I. Paco was too. And I think that was good for the trio.

“There was this healthy competition where you'd go onstage, and somebody would do something, and you'd think, ‘Okay, I heard that. Now watch this!’ Not in a nasty way. It elevated everybody. And the audience got the benefit of it.”

CHICK COREA

“Chick changed my life. There’s really no other way to say it. I was 19 years old. I was at Berklee [College of Music] and Chick heard a tape of me playing with Barry Miles. Then I got the call. Return To Forever. Suddenly I’m with Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White. These were my heroes. And I’m 19. It was insane.

“Chick taught me an enormous amount without ever sitting me down and saying, ‘Okay, Al, today I’m going to teach you this.’ You learned by being around him.

“His time. The syncopation. His writing. His discipline. And his attitude toward music. Chick could write music that was incredibly sophisticated and still have joy in it. That’s hard.

“He had a massive influence on me as a composer. I wouldn’t have had the career I had without Chick. Period.”

PHIL COLLINS

“Phil was on Scenario. That was 1983, and I was fascinated by what was happening with technology – sequencing, synthesizers, drum machines, the Fairlight. All these things that were completely new. That record had Jan Hammer, Tony Levin, Bill Bruford and Phil Collins.

“Think about those personalities. You don’t call Phil Collins because you need somebody to hit a snare drum. You call Phil because you want Phil Collins. He had a sound. He had a feel. You knew it immediately. That’s what I always wanted from musicians on my records.”

Going For Gold by British indie outfit Shed Seven is one of the Britpop era’s standout songs - an infectious, guitar-and brass-fuelled anthem that balances an uplifting sound with introspective lyrics. Arguably, it has become the band’s signature song, so much so that their 1999 greatest hits compilation was named after it.

Released as a single in 1996, the track, which was taken from Shed Seven’s second studio album, A Maximum High, became the band’s biggest hit, peaking at number eight in the UK Top 40.

Opening with a gorgeous, twangy, country-flavoured guitar riff that recalls Suspicious Minds by Elvis Presley (when Shed Seven play the song live, they often segue into a version of the Elvis classic) it soon builds into a stadium-friendly epic, powered by soulful brass, which is credited to The Phantom Horns, a horn section featuring session musicians including saxophonist Gary Barnacle and trumpeter John Thirkell.

“We were accused so much of ripping off Suspicious Minds that we thought, ‘why not just play it anyway?’” says Shed Seven’s snake-hipped frontman and lyricist, Rick Witter, speaking to MusicRadar on Zoom from his home in York, the city where the band was formed.

Rather fittingly, behind him on the wall is a framed gold disc given to him for 250,000 sales of A Maximum High, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year - the band are touring to support the milestone and playing the album in full.

Reflecting on writing Going For Gold, Witter tells us: “I don’t really remember Paul [Banks, guitarist] giving me the riff, but I’m presuming that at the time we probably thought it was very similar [to Suspicious Minds], but it’s just the opening riff and then it turns into its own lovely beast. Over the years, people have mentioned the Elvis connection, but I can think of a lot worse people to pay homage to.”

The initial writing sessions for the song took place at the band’s rehearsal space in York, as Witter explains: “After the first album [1994’s Change Giver], we lost the place where we used to rehearse and write, and we were struggling to find somewhere to bash things out. As a rule, me and Paul will get together in one of our houses and get the basis of a song going, but, as a full band, you need somewhere to bash things out.

“So, Tom [Gladwin], our bass player, got friendly with this lad whose dad owned Cockerill’s potato plant - it was in this area just outside of York where, after all the potatoes had been picked, they’d be bagged up. There was a disused office block as part of the potato plant, and when this guy heard we were struggling, he said, ‘You can use it for free and be as loud as you want’. So, a lot of the album [A Maximum High] came together in a potato plant. I can remember looking out of the windows and seeing tractors with loads of potatoes in the back.”

He adds: “The great thing about this story is that long after the company moved, the building got knocked down and they built a B&Q [A British DIY store] there, and do you know what? Where the office block was is where they now sell the sheds.”

Going For Gold didn’t come together that easily to begin with. “I think it was one of the first batch of new songs for the album, and I seem to remember that even the record label [Polydor] wasn’t really into it,” reflects Witter.

“We had Bully Boy, and the MD of Polydor really liked that, but he couldn’t see past Going For Gold. I wasn’t convinced at the beginning [either], but then we re-demoed it and put loads of brass on it, and it really lifted the song out of the mire, so to speak. The whole of that album is quite brass-heavy.”

The brass gives Going For Gold a Stax-inspired feel, reminiscent of Elvis Presley's late-1960s Memphis recordings. “That’s exactly what we were after, and a lot of it was a fluke - we probably had discussions while we were recording it: ‘Shall we put a bit of this or that on it?’ We had the time and the money because the record company would throw it at you,” explains Witter.

The lyrics of Going For Gold touch on introspection, love, loss and emotional betrayal, with lines like, ‘Are you here for my pleasure / Or are you going for gold?’, ‘I never said never ever/You took the words right out of my mouth,’ and ‘You took the shine right out of my smile.’

We ask Witter where the inspiration for the lyric came from.

“I used to carry a notebook around with me - I was constantly jotting things down. I do have a memory of being sat on a bus - a long time before we wrote Going For Gold - and hearing two old ladies having a chat. I’m convinced one of them said, ‘Oh, never say never, love,’ or something like that, and I thought, ‘That’s a nice phrase’,” he says.

“When Paul comes up with a new riff or a set of chords, the first thing I do is to think of a melody and usually the first thing that comes into my head is the thing that sticks and wins, and then I’ll start piecing together a storyline around the melody. Going For Gold is self-explanatory.”

So, it wasn’t inspired by the TV game show of the same name? “No, but we got asked that a lot at the time. It was nothing to do with the TV show. However, over the years, we’ve had a lot of songs that could potentially be [named after] TV programmes. We’ve got a song called Stars In Your Eyes,” he says.

Talking of TV shows, the band did their fair share of them promoting Going For Gold, including an appearance on middle-of-the road UK daytime programme This Morning, co-hosted by husband-and-wife duo, Richard and Judy (Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan), but it wasn’t one of Shed Seven’s proudest moments.

“It was in Liverpool and it was pre-recorded - my memory is of us arriving the night before because they wanted to film us before the show went live, so we had to mime at nine in the morning, which meant getting into the studio for eight. We stayed overnight in a hotel in Liverpool and got too drunk. I remember just being thankful that we were miming,” he remembers.

Going For Gold, along with the rest of A Maximum High, was recorded at the legendary RAK Studios in London, with producer and mixer Chris Sheldon at the helm, who was known for making rock records.

“We wanted to make our sound more gritty and hard - it was great working with Chris, and, funnily enough, years later, he’s still mixing our albums and coming up with the goods for us,” says Witter.

The promotional video for Going For Gold has the band performing the song against a red studio backdrop with imagery of women painted in gold, dancing in flames, inspired by the opening credits of the classic ‘60s James Bond film Goldfinger.

“It’s one of our better videos to be honest with you,” says Witter. “It was quite simple. I believe the cover star for the single was Jo Guest, who used to be a model. It’s her body [painted gold] on the sleeve of the single.”

We ask Witter if he sees a substantial increase in his royalty payments during an Olympic year. Surely Going For Gold is a surefire song to be played as part of the TV coverage…

“I had a bit of a moan about that one summer,” he admits. “We were playing a festival, and I think the Olympics must’ve been on… I had a moan on stage about why it’s always Spandau Ballet. We’re always the bridesmaid to Gary Kemp!”

On the enduring appeal of Going For Gold, Witter says: “It’s a standard, really - there are certain songs that we couldn’t not play as part of a setlist, and that’s one of them. Other songs come and go, depending on how we feel at the time, but Going For Gold has to be in the set every time, and it always goes down well. Everyone looks like they’re absolutely loving hearing it. We’re a very lucky band in the respect that we could be in Blackburn on a Monday night, or London on a Saturday night, and, inside that venue, for two hours, the atmosphere is always incredible.”

More than 30 years into the band’s career, that’s something to be proud of, isn’t it?

“As long as I’ve still got the hips and my health… Look at Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger - they’ve got 30 years on us and they’re still at it. Hopefully we’ll be celebrating 60 years of Going For Gold,” he says.

In January 2027, Shed Seven are releasing their seventh studio album, which, appropriately, is called Shed Seven. The band have enjoyed a remarkable resurgence in recent years, achieving their first ever number one album in 2024 with A Matter of Time, followed just 10 months later by a second number one with Liquid Gold, placing them alongside such artists as The Beatles, Elton John and David Bowie, who also achieved two UK number one albums in a single calendar year.

So, do they feel any pressure to repeat that success with the new album? “No - it’ll do what it’s going to do,” says Witter. “Obviously everyone wants it… It took us long enough to get there in the first place. What I want is for people in 40 years’ time to still be listening to it and loving it - I don’t care where it goes [in the charts.]”

So how does he feel about revisiting A Maximum High 30 years on and playing it in full?

“I suppose it’s nice to reflect… There are five Top 40 singles off the album, so a lot of the songs are played at nearly all our gigs,” he says. “It’s nice to revisit the album tracks that we might not have played for years, but then, saying that we’re just a good live band, and we’ve got an awful lot of hits.

“It’s slightly frustrating when you have to lower the mood sometimes when you’re playing a song you’ve not played for 18 years, and only half the crowd knows what it is… That’s why I’m looking forward to Shedcember [a run of UK shows this November and December] because that will be a hits-heavy tour and you’re more assured that you’re going to keep people up there all the way through it - I don’t like the dips and troughs; it’s got to be hammered out.”

Going For Gold is now an indie staple, but Witter doesn’t think it’s Shed Seven’s definitive song. “I think Chasing Rainbows beats Going For Gold as our most well-known song - it didn’t chart as high, but Chasing Rainbows is the quintessential Shed Seven song, and we always play it last at gigs,” he tells us.

“We always drop out at the end and let the crowd sing it, and it’s such a moment. With Going For Gold, I always like to mime shaking the maracas to that one because that’s what I was doing in 1996. Our fans who come to see us know that potentially they’re going to get a maraca because I give them away every night.”

Does it feel like three decades since A Maximum High and Going For Gold came out?

“These big anniversaries seem to come around quite quickly, but I don’t really give them much thought until I’m told,” he says. “Our comeback album, Instant Pleasures, was released in 2017 - that was the first new music we’d written in 16 years and now that’s nearly 10 years old… It’s like, ‘where has that 10 years gone?’ Incredible.”

We suggest to Witter that in a lot of cases, it’s record companies, rather than artists, who are concerned about celebrating album anniversaries. Most artists are concentrating on their latest records rather than dwelling on the past, but the music industry is capitalising on reissues and nostalgia.

“Of course - it’s all about the pound signs,” he says.

Going for gold, anyone?

For more info on Shed Seven's UK tour and upcoming seventh album, check out the band's website.

Many artists with careers spanning decades will at some point in their lives have had to make major stylistic changes to adapt to shifting trends.

The ’80s in particular saw a number of artists from the ’60s and ’70s completely reimagine their sound.

Steve Winwood realigned his R&B, soul and blues roots into a sophisticated, synth-driven pop sound with polished digital production. Tina Turner also transformed her visceral R&B and soul sound into a sleek, high energy blend of pop, rock and contemporary R&B.

And then there was Elton John, who in 1983 released the album Too Low For Zero, his first album to feature synths, drum machines, electronic textures and modern production techniques alongside his classic acoustic piano sound.

The song from that album which really thrust him into the public consciousness was I’m Still Standing, a thumping, driving and exuberant rocker with defiant lyrics and infectious hooks.

I’m Still Standing introduced John to a whole new generation of fans and gave him a fresh, energetic pop identity for the ’80s. The song would go on to become a highlight of his live set for decades to come.

By the time Elton John started work on the Too Low For Zero album, his career had experienced a significant lull. His previous five albums had failed to yield any international hits and sales were disappointing compared to his string of hit records in the first half of the 1970s.

For the first time since the Blue Moves album in 1976, John reunited with lyricist Bernie Taupin, to work on Too Low For Zero, his 17th studio album.

“We both knew that we wanted to work together again, but we had to wait until it just fell into place,” Taupin told Music Connection magazine in 1989. “We knew that when the time was right it would just happen.”

John also reunited with his backing band from the early ’70s, featuring guitarist Davey Johnstone, drummer Nigel Olsson and bassist Dee Murray.

“It was such a great buzz playing with those guys again,” said John in an edition from the 1983 Rock Star Interviews series, entitled Elton John: Reflections On A Decade Of Hits. “And that was the most successful band that I ever had, with David, Dee and Nigel. And I just thought if we were going to do an album it would be a great idea to just do one with Bernie and go back to that formula again and record an album how we used to record it. That is to say we did the album more or less in two weeks, written and recorded. It really worked.”

George Martin’s AIR Studios in Montserrat was the studio chosen to record the album and this was where John and Taupin wrote the ten songs that made it onto the album. “It was like a little factory again down in Montserrat,” said John in the Rock Star Interviews series.

The producer selected for the album was Chris Thomas, who had worked with The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Roxy Music and the Sex Pistols among numerous others. It was Thomas who reportedly encouraged John to use synths.

“All the songs were written on synthesiser," John told Paul Gambaccini in 1984.

“My biggest hang-up has been writing rock ’n’ roll songs. I’m not very good at it, because if you’re a pianist it’s a totally different concept [compared to] playing guitar. It’s very hard to write three-chord songs on a piano. So I get this synthesizer, which sounds like a guitar on some parts, and I can write three-chord songs all of a sudden.”

While I’m Still Standing has become synonymous as a song about Elton John’s resilience and his triumph over adversity, Bernie Taupin actually wrote the lyrics as a message to a former girlfriend.

“It's perhaps one more example of the original idea being interpreted by everyone into something quite different,” Taupin told Smooth Radio. “I think people see it as an anthem based on Elton’s strong sense of survival in the face of adversity. Which, believe me, is perfectly fine by me. In fact, it’s probably infinitely more interesting, perhaps, than what it was initially written about. Which, if my memory serves me correctly, it was a sort of kiss-off to an old girlfriend. You know the sort of thing, ‘Don’t you worry about me, I’ll be perfectly fine.’ Unlike George Jones’ She Thinks I Still Care, where, in fact, he really did, I really didn’t.”

In his 2019 memoir, Me, John explained how Taupin’s title for the song took on a whole new meaning for him.

“I’m Still Standing sounded like the whole album’s calling card,” he wrote. “The lyric was about one of Bernie’s exes, but I also thought it worked as a message to my new American record company – who were, quite frankly, turning out to be a terrible pain in the arse.”

John’s label, Geffen Records, had reportedly been disappointed by the sales of his previous two albums, The Fox (1981) and Jump Up! (1982) and were allegedly extremely open with him about their level of disappointment.

“I didn’t like the look of any of it,” John wrote in his 2019 memoir Me, “and thought I’m Still Standing sounded like a warning shot across their bows. It was a big, swaggering, confident fuck-you of a song.”

From the first few bars, I’m Still Standing has a driving, infectious intensity. It’s also irrepressibly catchy. Bright, brassy staccato synths, bouncy piano and punchy slap bass predominate in the mix of this high energy pop-rock track. It’s a big, bold sound and the production is glistening and crisp.

The core refrain on the line “I’m still standing better than I ever did…” is anthemic and uplifting while the counterpoint backing vocal chants of “yeah, yeah, yeah” in the chorus provide classic singalong fare.

Structurally, there’s a real authority to the individual sections and John’s rapid-fire rhythmic phrasing bolsters the song’s breakneck 177 bpm delivery. It’s a powerful, soulful vocal performance from John, who belts out the lyrics with real conviction, backed by the flawless harmonies of guitarist Davey Johnstone, bassist Dee Murray and drummer Nigel Olsson.

It’s uncanny how Taupin’s lyrics inadvertently lend themselves to John’s own narrative of surviving against all odds, as Lindsay Planer of AllMusic observed.

“Taupin’s lyrics perfectly capture the behind-the-scenes struggle that was concurrently going on between the artist and his relatively new label Geffen Records,” wrote Palmer. “The chorus contains a perfect example of the duality within John’s defiance and insecurity.”

1:55 into the song there’s a searing rockabilly-tinged guitar solo from Davey Johnstone – with double-stop licks and sliding sixths – that cuts right through the piano- and synth-driven mix. The solo lasts just 15 seconds but it re-energises the song and sets it up perfectly for the chorus that follows.

There is an irrepressibly joyous, life-affirming feel to I’m Still Standing, which is reflected by the video.

This was shot in and around Cannes and Nice although the bulk of the shoot took place outside the Carlton Hotel in Cannes, a town well accustomed to lavish spectacle.

It’s a witty, vivacious video in which John performs alongside various body-painted dancers on the Carlton Hotel’s sun-baked private beach and along the Croisette. It is ’80s excess at its finest, but there’s a likeable tongue-in-cheek feel to the whole thing, thanks to Arlene Phillips’s inventive choreography.

The video shoot wasn’t without its drama. Things allegedly got out of hand when John happened to meet Duran Duran, who reportedly introduced him to vodka martinis.

“Depending on who you believe, I had either six or eight more of them in the space of an hour,” John wrote in his 2019 memoir Me, as reported by Ultimate Classic Rock.

Later that evening, John allegedly trashed the hotel room of his personal assistant Bob Halley. The following day, he woke and saw the damage, as he recalled in his memoir. “‘Fucking hell,’ I said. ‘What happened?’” he wrote. “Elton,” replied Halley after a long pause, “you happened.”

The drama continued when the video’s director Russell Mulcahy accidentally fell into the sea with a camera after walking backwards while filming. This meant that much of that day’s footage had to be reshot.

But despite such incidents, the song and the video enhanced each other seamlessly. The video showed that John was willing to embrace the new format, unlike some established stars at the time. And pivotally, it introduced him to a whole new, younger fanbase.

I’m Still Standing was released in April 1983 in the US and on 22 July 1983 in the UK. The song was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, reaching No 4 in the UK and No 12 in the US. It topped the charts in Canada and Switzerland and went top five in Australia, Ireland, Israel and Luxembourg.

John had re-emerged with a thumping rocker of a song and in the process reignited his career.

“Both the lyrical content as well as the driving tempo heralded a return in spirit to John’s rock and roll icon status, which had been wavering since the late ’70s,” noted Lindsay Palmer of AllMusic,

On 13 July 1985, almost exactly two years after the UK release of I’m Still Standing, Elton John strode out onto the Wembley Stadium stage at Live Aid and kicked off a killer set with I’m Still Standing. It has remained a staple of his live set for the rest of his career.

On 30 January 2018, artists such as Miley Cyrus, Ed Sheeran and Lady Gaga paid tribute to John by covering his songs at the Madison Square Garden concert, Elton John: I’m Still Standing. The show ended with John and the other artists performing the song.

In many ways, the song became a brand of sorts for Elton John, conveying his struggles, his triumphs and his endurance. Ultimately though, it remains a timeless anthem, whose empowering lyrics and infectious melody have energised and uplifted audiences across the globe.

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If Chuck Berry was still alive, he’d have celebrated his 100th birthday on October 18 this year. Sadly, the pioneering guitar legend and father of rock ‘n’ roll died in March 2017, aged 90, but his incredible legacy lives on.

Berry created the blueprint for modern rock music, and was a huge influence on The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen - all those young aspiring musicians who first picked up guitars in the mid-to-late ’50s and early ‘60s were in awe of him. In fact, John Lennon once famously said, “If you tried to give rock ‘n’ roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry."

As well as being an extraordinary guitarist and a master of showmanship - Berry drew influences from blues, R&B and country and western, popularised double-stop riffs, put the guitar in the spotlight and became known for his ‘duck walk’ signature stage move - he was a gifted songwriter who created an exciting and rebellious new sound that appealed to post-war teenagers.

To celebrate Berry’s 100th birthday, maximum rock ‘n’ roll duo His Lordship, James Walbourne (guitar, vocals) and Kris Sonne (drums, vocals) - with some help from bassist and engineer/mixer Dave Page - have recorded an inspired album of re-workings of tracks from Berry’s back catalogue.

Called Promised Land, after the Berry song of the same name, it’s made up of both well-known and obscure Berry tunes, but His Lordship have put their own stamp on them, incorporating elements including proto-punk, garage rock, grunge, doo-wop, and New York girl-group harmonies, albeit with a modern twist.

Promised Land is ferocious, frantic and feral at times, but also great fun - it certainly sounds like the band must have had an absolute riot recording it.

To find out about the making of the album and the enduring influence of Berry, we caught up with Walbourne - who is also the guitarist with The Pretenders, one half of folk-rock duo The Rails, and currently a member of Primal Scream. We also got him to share some of his thoughts on another guitar legend, Johnny Marr, whom His Lordship supported on a US tour earlier this year.

MusicRadar: Hi James, let’s start off by talking about your love of Chuck Berry - you saw him play at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, when you were six years old. Your dad took you to the gig we understand?

James Walbourne: “Yeah - it was ’86 or ’87. I was very much in love with rock ‘n’ roll when I was a kid. That was my thing: Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis… I was enamoured with it and it just consumed me - that was the start of me being involved in music. I used to watch videos of those guys over and over at home, and I was fortunate that my dad took me to see some of those people that were alive in the ‘80s. I think the first gig I saw was Fats Domino at the Royal Festival Hall.”

MR: Can you remember anything about that first Chuck Berry gig you went to?

JW: “I remember waking up in the morning and thinking, ‘Oh my God - it’s eight hours before we see Chuck Berry!’ I remember there were Teddy Boys there and an underlying air of violence about the place - it was very different to what it would be like now.”

MR: I was going to ask you how much Chuck Berry has influenced your guitar playing, but, in a way, he’s subconsciously influenced every guitarist, hasn’t he?

JW: “That’s exactly right - you can’t get away from it, especially if you play some form of rock ‘n’ roll. His double-stop thing on the guitar… It’s like reading Shakespeare - you know how much Shakespeare influenced the English language? I guess it’s the same thing… He [Chuck Berry] is like the Shakespeare of rock ‘n’ roll, isn’t he?”

MR: Thanks to his showmanship, like his famous ‘duck walk’, Chuck Berry was one of the first artists to bring the electric guitar to the fore, rather than it being a background instrument, wasn’t he?

JW: “I think it had been going on before that with T-Bone Walker and Guitar Slim, but, I guess, until the advent of TV, no one had seen it. You read things about Guitar Slim and you think, ‘Oh my God - I would’ve loved to have gone and seen him’. Chuck Berry was playing rock ‘n’ roll pop music, and, suddenly, it was consumable for a much bigger audience.”

MR: He also embraced different genres, like blues, R & B and country…

JW: “And jazz… all of it. You can hear a lot of country in what he did. It’s a melting pot - a whole gumbo of musical styles. Elvis was the same.”

MR: Chuck Berry influenced The Beatles, The Stones, Dylan and Springsteen…

JW: “He’s almost too big to discuss in that regard… It’s like he wrote the book.”

MR: Last year, you played in St. Louis, Missouri - birthplace of Berry - as part of Chuck Berry’s Birthday Bash, with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. How was that?

JW: “It was a brilliant show, with Doug Wimbish and Will Calhoun [from Living Colour] on bass and drums, and Chanel Haynes, who sings with The Stones. Lawrence Rothman did it, and Maggie Rose. I found it difficult to play Chuck Berry with an orchestra - it was challenging. I met Chuck’s family there - they’re a great bunch of people and funny. I got on very well with Charles [Berry Jr.] who is Chuck’s son.”

MR: So, how did the new His Lordship album, Promised Land, which is a Chuck Berry covers record, come about?

JW: “I came back to England, and we realised it was his 100th birthday [this year], so we thought, ‘Why not? It’d be a great thing to do to honour Chuck.’ We’ve got our own studio, [Karma Studios, London], so we thought we’d just do it. There wasn’t much thinking about it - we had the means to do it, so we did it, and the Berry family seemed into it; that was part of it. But we did f*** around with the songs quite a lot!”

MR: You’ve certainly put your own stamp on them, which is great. That’s what cover versions should be - not a pale imitation or a straight copy of the original…

JW: “As it’s the holy grail, I’d rather not do it like that… There’s been enough cover versions of those songs… I think the first song we did was Promised Land, which is my favourite [Chuck Berry song]. So, we started playing it and when we listened to it, it was quite disappointing because it was normal. I thought ‘the world doesn’t need this - it just sounds like us playing Chuck Berry’, so we decided we had to tear up the rule book and do it how we would approach our own songs, which is in a very different way. We had to deconstruct them, for want of a better word. That would be a better way of showing respect - what would Chuck Berry do in that situation?

“We had to try and reimagine the songs. That took a while to do. The journey was interesting and we had the luxury of the studio, so we could just go in and record - just the three of us; me, Kris Sonne and Dave Page. Dave is a great engineer and mixer - he understands it. So many times, you go into a studio, and people don’t understand what you’re after.”

MR: Tell us a bit about Karma Studios, where you made the album…

JW: “We originally got it to rehearse in… We rent it, and it’s got a great, big live room. We don’t have loads of old gear - we’re not that type of band. We’re very much into the modern style of recording. We didn’t want the album to sound like an old record.”

MR: You played a white Japanese Guyatone guitar that used to belong to Ry Cooder on some of the songs on the album, including the title track…

JW: “Yeah - it was hanging up in the studio, and we were told it was Ry Cooder’s - from an auction that he had not that long ago. It’s on a lot of the tracks - it didn’t sound like any other guitar; it’s very strange. I don’t think Ry Cooder might’ve used it like we did. It’s a mad old thing. I’m after one - I’m going to buy one…. It added some different layers and textures to the record.”

MR: Your version of the song Promised Land is quite grungy - it has layers of stacked-up guitars and sounds like Dinosaur Jr. meets Neil Young…

JW: “Because it’s my favourite song, I didn’t know how to approach it. The first time we did it we sounded like three guys playing down the pub! We went back several times to try it and, at some point, I just started playing it slow and finger-picked, almost like a folk song. I think we captured something a bit different there. It’s almost sort of Neil Young and Dinosaur Jr., with the screeching and loud guitars. They take over everything.”

MR: You’ve covered some well-known Chuck Berry songs on the album, like Roll Over Beethoven, Memphis, Tennessee and Brown Eyed Handsome Man, but there are also some deep cuts…

JW: “We didn’t want to play Johnny B. Goode - what’s the point? We listened to everything - several times - and I reacquainted myself with Chuck Berry a lot. I did a deep dive.”

MR: The album is fun to listen to. Was it fun to make?

JW: “It was, but at some points it was quite challenging - we went around the houses a bit to try and reimagine the songs. It was like, ‘How would Kraftwerk do Chuck Berry? OK - that sounds pretty good; let’s do that’. I’d go away and do a demo at home and then come in and play it to the boys, and then we’d go in and record it.

“The actual recording of the tracks we would only do a few times - it was very spur of the moment. We didn’t re-record and re-record… Once we’d found what we wanted, we’d only do a couple of takes - all live.

“There were only a few overdubs, we recorded some [extra] guitars on the song Promised Land, because that’s what it needed, but what you’re hearing [on most of the album] is a live band and live singing. I didn’t even have earphones on - none of us had them on - and I had a little monitor. We just recorded like they would’ve done back in the day, but we modernised it with the sounds we were using. The initial recording took five days, then we went back… The master tapes got nicked somewhere along the way! Luckily, we had made initial mixes that we loved and that’s what we had to use.”

MR: The album opens with Come On, which features Lisa Kekaula from The Bellrays on guest vocals, and is blistering proto-punk-meets-New-York-girl-group…

JW: Part of it was born out of frustration - how the hell do we do it? That one took a while… After going round the houses, we got a burst of energy and I said, ‘Let’s just stay on two chords’, and it worked - we just went full throttle for two minutes.”

MR: How did you hook up with Lisa?

JW: “We love the band, we asked her to do it and she said yes - it was as simple as that, and she adds a lot to it. I’d love to do some more stuff with The Bellrays.”

MR: Your version of I Want To Be Your Driver is frantic and ferocious…

JW: “It nearly killed Kris… That was a great one to do; it was inspired by Hendrix and Buddy Guy - the sound of those old recordings was wild, and I wanted to get that across.”

MR: Too Much Monkey Business is fast and garagey, with you spitting the lyrics out…

JW: “Yeah - I was totally spitting them out because they’re so great. There’s not any flashy guitar playing on it - it’s just purely about the song.”

MR: Little Star is a ballad with a doo-wop feel. It’s a Chuck Berry deep cut - an early ‘60s B-side…

JW: “Yeah - his version doesn’t sound anything like ours; there’s a girl group singing on his. For His Lordship, I wanted to make it sound like Lonely Saturday Night by Don French - for me, it’s the holy grail of how to make something sound: it’s a very haunting, slow and strangely played and recorded rock ‘n’ roll song. It was on an Ace Records compilation that I found when I was a kid - The Golden Age of American Rock ‘n Roll Volume 4. I would play it over and over again. Subsequently, I found out it [Lonely Saturday Night] was one of John Peel’s favourite songs. I had no idea.”

MR: On Jaguar and Thunderbird, you’re rapping…

JW: “I am. I was a little unsure about it, but the others pushed me into trying it. We had a lot of fun doing it and I think that comes across. We had to do our own thing with it - it’s quite far out; almost like The Beastie Boys meet Chuck Berry.”

MR: For Brown Eyed Handsome Man, you created a new guitar riff and a new melody…

JW: “That’s the one where we went quite far with reimagining it - I thought it needed to be completely different. It took a while to come up with it, but I was imagining Kraftwerk… even though it’s not… It’s that relentless riff that goes around. The whole thing with this album is not to concentrate on the sound of Chuck Berry - the big red ES-335 - but it’s more about his songs and how we reinterpret them. I didn’t want to sound like a facsimile of Chuck - I wanted to focus on his songwriting.”

MR: The last song on the album, Let It Rock, is a big way to end the record - it’s raucous, intense and unhinged…

JW: “It was unhinged. We were thinking along the lines of Jim Dickinson and those Memphis records he did with Alex Chilton, which were unhinged and played wildly. We just didn’t think about it - ‘let’s just f***ing play it!’ We were all off on a different planet - that’s the sort of rock ‘n’ roll we like. You don’t know where it’s going and there are mistakes in there. It’s a journey.”

MR: As well as the album, you’ve also made a 7in single for the resurrected Chiswick Records label - your version of Chuck Berry’s Nadine with his version on the B-side…

JW: “Yes - I’m finally on a record with Chuck Berry! It was an honour to be asked to do it.”

MR: Your take on Nadine is great - it’s very menacing…

JW: “It’s very straight-ahead garage rock. I think Nadine would’ve influenced all those Chiswick Records bands. I grew up playing in pubs all over London - that’s how I learnt the craft of playing in a band, and Nadine was one of those songs that everyone played. It was a massive song - the Wonderwall of pub rock!”

MR: What do you think Chuck Berry would make of your interpretations of his songs?

JW: “He’d either love it or hate it. We didn’t want to play it safe, so I think Chuck would possibly get off on that.”

MR: Do you think how you approached making the Promised Land album will influence how you make the next His Lordship record

JW: “Absolutely - our approach to it was a lot more free musically - we weren’t constrained by anything, and we thought out of the box. Now we can f***ing do anything - it doesn’t matter!”

MR: Earlier this year, His Lordship supported Johnny Marr on his US tour. How was that?

JW: “It was great - I love Johnny! Since I’ve got to know him, he’s been a tremendous supporter. What can you say about Johnny Marr? He’s obviously a great musician and a great songwriter, but he’s an even greater bloke. He’s very generous with his time.”

MR: He invited you on stage to play How Soon Is Now? with him and his band…

JW: “That was a real honour, and I was very proud to do it.”

MR: Were you tempted to buy any of his guitars when he put them up for auction this year?

JW: “I was away in the States… I couldn’t have bought anything at that price, but I’m glad they went. I could maybe have stretched to a poster. I was pleased that Johnny sold everything… Guitars come and go for me, but I’ve got my favourite SG and if anything happened to that it would kill me.”

MR: Did you play the SG on the Promised Land album?

JW: “Yeah - it was the SG and the Guyatone. When I first joined The Pretenders in 2008, we went to LA and recorded an album called Break Up the Concrete and we rented a bunch of guitars. I never thought I was an SG guy, but I picked one and I ended up f***ing around with it and using it on the whole record - I loved it! So, when I got back to London, I went to my mate Andy Hackett’s shop, Angel Music, in Denmark Street, which is now gone, and he had two SGs in there, so I bought one and I’ve had it ever since.”

MR: Have you bought any guitars or guitar tech recently?

JW: “I’m the worst person for this sort of thing - you need Johnny for this stuff! He would talk to you about pedals… I’m just not into the tech side. I tell you what, though, I bought a pedal called an Eventide H90 [Harmonizer], which is great - Troy [Van Leeuwen] from Queens of the Stone Age put me onto it. It’s a guitar processor pedal, which has many different sounds. It’s got me experimenting with a few things - it’s very powerful.”

MR: What’s the latest on The Pretenders?

JW: “I can’t say much about that yet, but I’m always working with Chrissie [Hynde] and writing songs. We’re having a bit of time off because we went quite hard for a few years, so we’re going to have a little break for a while.”

MR: You’ve been playing in Primal Scream this year - how’s that been?

JW: “It’s been great. It’s funny for me stepping into another band at this point - I haven’t joined another band for a long time. I’ve been playing in The Pretenders for 18 years and I’ve done The Rails… You never know what it’s going to be like, and you hear all these stories about the madness that goes with it, but everyone’s been great.

“They’re music lovers and I’ve learned a lot of new stuff from Bobby [Gillespie] - he plays records all the time. I love playing guitar with Andrew [Innes] - it’s great to play with another guitarist, because in all the other bands I play in, I’m the only guitarist. Andrew’s a great guitar player and I’ve loved hanging out with him.”

His Lordship’s Promised Land is released on November 13 on Psychonaut Sounds / PIAS. The album will be preceded by a one-off 7in single of Nadine, on Chiswick Records, with Chuck Berry’s version on the B-side (released October 30).

Next month, His Lordship are playing two nights at London’s legendary 100 Club. For more info head to the band's official website.

On paper, the second album by 80s sensations Frankie Goes To Hollywood should have been a nailed on cert. Released 40 years ago today, Liverpool was the sequel to the triple-platinum double-album excess of Welcome to the Pleasuredome and this was a band that finally had the time and money to grow and make good on their early, rough-and-ready promise. So when and how did Frankie’s wheels fall off and why does Liverpool only now get a glimmer of the credit and love it deserves?

To find out, we’ve got to go all the way back to 1984. Circa ‘84, Frankie were riding high. Their debut single Relax had just been deliciously banned, and they were about to score a simultaneous number one and number two when its bombastic sequel, Two Tribes, dragged Relax back up for a second ‘coming’.

For fledgling record label ZTT, Frankie were the golden goose, and for label owner and soon-to-be-superproducer Trevor Horn things were only ever on the up.

Horn had learnt his trade under the cosh of '70s producer Biddu and playing second fiddle (bass, to be exact) in a string of mildly successful bands. Not least his own Buggles, whose Video Killed the Radio Star wound up soundtracking the entire MTV era.

A fiercely enthusiastic proponent of new technology Horn had – part by right-time, right-place chance, part by virtue of his talent – found himself as the figurehead of a new way to make music. And as head of his own ZTT label alongside the talents of engineer Gary Langan, Fairlight operator JJ Jeczalik and keyboard player and arranger Anne Dudley, he’d found ready and willing compatriots.

Horn’s early-adopter suspicions – sharpened through his ‘fake band’ Buggles exercise – that recording studio technology was about to explode had been proved 100% right. And so, by 1984, with first-mover advantage, he’d sidestepped the naysayers, proved the old guard wrong and won the war.

However, that war wasn’t without its casualties.

Step up Frankie Goes To Hollywood. While Horn had ‘plucked them from obscurity’ following their lucky break appearance on The Tube and hits had ensued, post-Pleasuredome comedown, things weren’t as fluffy and fun as they seemed on the surface.

The Frankie we loved were a screen-hogging cultural behemoth able to top the charts non-stop for nine weeks, hold two singles in the top five and take a pricey double album to number one for their debut.

In reality, however, they were a mismatched, rag-tag, five piece funk/pop/rock/whatever gaggle of semi-friends who had inadvertently strapped themselves to a rollercoaster.

While having hits was ‘great’, and seeing the world from a first-class window was certainly an experience, the small matter of not receiving any credit or – worse – any money, had, by 1985, begun to rankle.

“We were denigrated for the fact that it was machines on the records, whereas New Order made Blue Monday and were hailed as the best thing since sliced bread,” lead vocalist and frontman Holly Johnson moaned to The Times. Famously, Horn and team had feverishly worked non-stop for days on tracks for Frankie’s debut without the band in attendance because they were forced to return to Liverpool once a week en masse in order to sign on and secure their unemployment allowance.

Johnson recalled to Q: “I went to my bank, the NatWest, and I put my gold disc down and said ‘This is my collateral, now will you give me a 500 quid overdraft?’ And he said ‘Let me show this to somebody’ and he came back, and he wouldn’t let me have it.”

You’d be forgiven for thinking that with Horn as producer, studio owner, record company and band confidante, the route from cash register to the band’s back pocket would be more direct than usual. However, thanks to the unique way in which Horn’s empires were structured, the opposite was actually true.

Money for nothing

It worked a little like this:

Fledgling label ZTT (owned by Horn and his wife) was financially propped up by Island Records. And, as soon as ZTT’s first single broke – Frankie’s Relax (let’s not count experimental 12”-only EP Into Battle With The Art of Noise) – both parties were coining it in.

And flush with Frankie cash, ZTT would pay for Sarm studio time (also owned by Horn and his wife) so that Horn could make more Frankie hits. Horn could have his pick of new technology and duly spent hundreds of thousands on Fairlights and – later, and essential for Pleasuredome’s completion – a Synclavier hard disc system. Suitably tooled-up, as one of the world’s top recording studios, Sarm was – in return – able to charge ZTT a mint for recording time. And round and round the money went.

Meanwhile, as per every recording contract, a label ‘gives’ money to an artist in the form of an advance. This money is a) to keep them sweet and put some food on the table and b) cover their recording expenses, put their videos on TV and designer clothes on their backs. And Frankie were, of course, on the receiving end of such a deal. Never forget that on paper Frankie were a huge financial gamble, all leather and spunk and little else, and so ZTT were very much putting their money where Frankie’s mouth was.

The aim was, of course, to have a spectacular hit and if that hit happened the incoming mountain of money would pay off any and all bills and everyone would be a winner. Most specifically the band who, finally free from the debt mountain their contract had saddled them with, would finally get their share of the profits.

But work at Sarm’s coalface, cranking out the hits that would make everyone rich, was more laborious than usual. Instead of quickfiring singles at the chart and rinsing the band for a fast buck, Horn and his ZTT had other ideas.

Free from record company pressure (Horn WAS the record company) he would painstakingly spend days fine-tuning and experimenting. Free from shackles, Horn was hellbent on pop perfection, all the while earning a fortune on a tab that would only ever be picked up by the band.

Surely a ZTT bean-counter must have been chomping at the bit for new product? Watching hundreds of thousands disappearing into a studio with only a ‘it’ll be ready when it’s ready’ promise of salable material in return doesn’t sound like a great business plan. But when the label owner, studio owner, producer and band ringmaster are the same person, things can get a little muddied.

Frankie’s impending financial dire straits were clear from the off. There had been a lengthy seven months in the studio between the release of their debut single Relax and its follow-up, Two Tribes. And with a 24 October 1983 release for Relax and a 29 October 1984 release date for the band’s debut album, the band had already unwittingly been saddled with an entire year of recording costs.

So how much were Frankie in hock? Estimates place that bill at around £760,000. Further speculation suggests that Horn ran up another £80,000 in costs for mixing alone, bringing that total to £840,000. And given the amount of second and THIRD 12” singles of each release, it's clear that Horn and ZTT LOVED a remix…

But never forget that the magic worked. Welcome to the Pleasuredome – Frankie’s overblown debut album – was a huge success. It sold a quarter of a million copies in its first week alone in the UK, reached number one and enjoyed similar success all across Europe.

And this was a double album. At a time when single (hit) albums would retail for £4.99 in the UK, ZTT were able to charge upwards of £8.99 for Frankie’s double-helping – a figure that more than paid for that gatefold sleeve and extra vinyl (but which in actuality only contained 13 songs, including one instrumental and four cover versions).

And thus debts were cleared, and the band got paid. However, by this point, much of the damage was done.

It’s safe to say that Frankie hadn’t particularly enjoyed their rocket ship to stardom. Not being allowed to play on their own records, working non-stop on endless promotional duties, being publicly perceived as Trevor Horn’s puppets AND watching their share of the profits dangled on the end of an ever lengthening piece of string had, sadly, rather taken the shine off their success. And it’s this atmosphere into which – by late 1985 – thoughts of a Pleasuredome sequel were tentatively being launched. But this was a band that had scored three number-one singles and a number two. Plus a number one debut (double) album. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, pretty much everything.

Banned in Britain

Come late 1985, thanks to the state of UK taxation (with the band potentially losing 60% of their hard-fought Pleasuredome earnings) Frankie had decamped to Borris House in County Carlow in Ireland, as many UK pop stars did. The band would hang out with a similarly exiled Def Leppard and Spandau Ballet, learning from (and drinking with) pop’s pros. Besides, time away from the limelight would be an excellent opportunity for the band to come up with a worthy successor to their (filler-laden) debut.

However, forcing the band into seclusion together would only exacerbate divisions that – during a year on the promo path and a UK and American live tour – had already begun to open.

Behind the scenes, vocalist Johnson was growing rather tired of a band finding its feet and determined to prove its worth. ‘The Lads’ as they were known – drummer Peter ‘Ped’ Gill, guitarist Brian ‘Nasher’ Nash and bassist Mark O’Toole – had, thanks to their live appearances, grown in musical stature and were – second time around – determined to play on their records.

Johnson, meanwhile, had no such qualms with Horn’s grip and felt that ‘he’ was the true voice of Frankie anyway. “You’re hearing the sound of my voice and the melodies I wrote and the lyrics that I wrote – and that’s what most people listen to when they hear a record. Relax might have amazing production values, but it’s really the sound of the vocal that makes it exciting,” Johnson told The Times. Meanwhile, co-vocalist Paul Rutherford would skillfully dance the fine line between the two camps.

In short, Johnson had decided that the rest of the band and their producer were to be tolerated rather than collaborated with. “In Ireland our days of playing or jamming together were gone,” writes Nash in his Nasher Says Relax autobiography. “Holly didn’t have the patience to hang about while we kicked around arrangements and we didn’t have the patience to listen to him warbling and complaining that everything was “too loud”.”

Nevertheless, working on a four-track in the ballroom downstairs and passing tapes to an aloof Johnson upstairs, music did begin to happen. “Rage Hard was written there. Ped had been influenced by the drum feel from Ratt’s Lay It Down which was on heavy rotation during our time in America. We were suckers for a bit of metal, however cheesy it might be,” Nash explains. “Is Anybody Out There? was also written during this period… But those were the only ones that ended up included on the Liverpool album.”

Certainly, Ireland had made Frankie ‘a band’ rather than a studio experiment, but a band insistent on “developing” and “finding a new sound” for “a record that would have to be as good – if not better – than our debut”. And all the while they were falling apart from the inside.

“The elephant in the room was the fact that only Holly, Paul and Mark were actually on the records. Not putting them on the record was, I freely admit, a mistake on my part,” Horn admits in his Adventures in Modern Recording. “With a little bit more effort I could have figured out how to feature them and not doing so was a lapse of bedside manner on my part.”

Horn had spent all of 1984 under the cosh, crafting pure gold from raw musical iron. And now, at the end of 1985, with the band getting busy in County Carlow, with an increasing sense of dread, Horn realised that soon he would have to do it all again.

Or not.

Faced with a band whose passion for and confidence in Horn’s skills and business methods were tangibly on the wane, and seeing a year-long slog snaking ahead, Horn – perhaps with his successful reputation, record company and studio under his belt and with little else to prove – simply, unbelievably, instead, chose to pass.

Horn would not be producing Frankie’s follow-up. End of. And with Horn effectively the boss of everything, there was nothing that anyone – fans, band, manager – could do about it.

Wanted: Producer

But with Horn off the table, who would (could?) take his place? The answer was right under Horn’s nose. Stephen Lipson had been appointed to replace Gary Langan after Langan had departed to produce ABC’s second album (another sequel which Horn had mysteriously passed up). In a short time Lipson had proved his worth, going on to entirely produce Propaganda’s debut album for ZTT following Horn’s working and reworking of their Dr Mabuse debut single, as Horn himself became too embroiled with Frankie.

It’s Lipson that laboured with Sarm’s new Synclavier on the late stages of Two Tribes and Pleasuredome after it had sat unloved and misunderstood at the studio for weeks. Having mastered its intricacies, he would go on to construct (and deconstruct) Grace Jones’ classic Slave To The Rhythm single and something-out-of-nothing LP entirely within it. While it’s Horn’s name in capitals on the sleeve, it’s Lipson’s lower-case ‘Assisted By’ credit that follows immediately after.

So the more Horn squinted at the Frankie problem, the more simply having Lipson produce the Pleasuredome sequel looked increasingly like a formality. Sure, not stepping into the driving seat and crafting another Frankie classic might disappoint fans (and would perhaps deny the world another '80s classic), but at the end of the day he would still get paid via ZTT and Sarm exactly as before.

Besides – by perhaps over-indulging his ZTT uberlord title a little – Horn could dip in and ‘fiddle’ as much or as little as he liked. He could be ‘Executive Producer’ instead – dodge the hard stuff and still get the credit. This wasn’t a questionable about-face. This was an undeniable ‘win-win ’.

So perhaps Liverpool was doomed from the off. “We all knew it wouldn’t be as good,” admits a typically weary Lipson on the 80sography podcast. “It was a poisoned chalice. Nobody wanted to do it. I did it because the boys were happy with me. It was never going to be like the first album. It couldn’t be.”

Thus, it’s Lipson, not Horn who locked horns with a newly invigorated and educated Frankie at Amsterdam’s Wisseloord Studios in November 1985. He shipped over his Synclavier and they began building an album that had to keep everyone, from the band, to their fans, to their label, to Horn, happy.

“They’d write the backing tracks [the lads] and he’d figure what to do [Johnson]. It was very disjointed,” Lipson admits. Nevertheless, Lipson put the hours in, working alongside the increasingly studio-savvy drummer Peter Gill to craft backing tracks from fragmented recordings while Nash and O’Toole busied themselves drinking, phoning transatlantic sex lines and making countless model aircraft, purchased from a nearby shop.

“We donated our plastic masterpieces to the studio, and they hung the planes above the bar. I wonder if they’re still there?” muses Nash.

Gill, on the other hand, got busy with different hardware. "I've got an old Roland TR-808 drum machine which has a set of trigger outputs and I use these with either a Dynacord Percuter or a Roland DDR30,” Gill explained to Sound On Sound. “Once I've got a nice little groove happening along with the track we've already recorded, I use an SRC Friendchip synchroniser to lock the two together so that I can add a few electronic drum sounds to the basic three-piece foundation of guitar, bass and drums already recorded. I also use a Roland Octapad and assign the outputs to play samples on the Emulator.”

Free from tax exile, Lipson would sneak back to Sarm in the UK sporadically to employ the talents of keyboard players Peter Vettese and Pleasuredome mainstay Andy Richards to build upon the band's Wisseloord recordings under Horn’s watchful eye. Slowly but surely, the album that would become Liverpool began to take shape.

Johnson however, remained elusive and aloof throughout. And despite the band being totally at ease with Lipson at the controls, Johnson had other ideas.

“Holly was not happy with the sound of the tracks and thought they were too “heavy rock” and we were having too much influence in the direction of the music,” writes Nash. “Despite this he would never make suggestions as to how it should sound… On the other hand we would have probably ignored him anyway…

“Holly wondered why the producer wasn’t there… Trevor had told Holly that he would be producing the second album. The rest of us had been told that Steve Lipson was producing. Steve had been told that he was the producer…” Chinese whispers threatened to derail the entire project.

“Holly was – to put it politely – a little negative about the whole process,” explains Lipson. “He used to say to me “I need two days' notice if you want me to sing”. It was all just difficult. He wouldn’t participate. He wouldn’t be there with everyone. He had a new boyfriend, and they were loved up and good luck to him, but he made the album really hard for me. I was only trying to get it good. I felt like the enemy and I could never understand why.”

Confronted (and ever so slightly ambushed) by a band desperate to heal the rift, things were about to get even worse. “We just wanted answers,” Nash writes. “Like it or not, our futures were intertwined and we wanted to know what was going to happen down the line. Holly lost his rag – maybe he thought the best form of defence was attack – and he started shouting and told us to get out. We left. The crack had just got a little bit wider.”

So wide that – perhaps being a little stir crazy thanks to their Amsterdam exile – the next day the band decided that they needed a new vocalist. But who should they call? Simple: Simon Le Bon.

“The Power Station was doing its own thing and although the remaining members of Duran [Duran] had formed Arcadia there didn’t seem to be any firm plan about their collective future,” thought Nash, and soon O’Toole had tracked Le Bon down to an apartment in Paris.

“Do you fancy being the singer in Frankie Goes To Hollywood?” O’Toole probed. “I would be the perfect singer for Frankie Goes To Hollywood,” Le Bon responded, before explaining that “being the gentleman he was” he could not leave his fellow band members at such a time. “Simon’s loyalty lay with his mates. He said he was flattered, but declined our offer,” Nash writes.

And minutes later, a call to old friend Pete Wylie of Wah! drew a similar negative. “We got blanked twice in one night. We must be shite!” reasoned Nash.

Band on the run

However, the Frankie show had to go on and taking a break for their own sanity, the band collectively decamped to their next tax hideyhole on the island of Jersey. There, the band wrote Watching The Wildlife and laid down the grooves for Lunar Bay and For Heaven’s Sake.

But the tensions within the band were only getting worse. So much so that when The Lads and Paul decided to install themselves on Jersey, Johnson chose to live on Guernsey instead.

“The songwriting was laboured, bordering on the farcical. We had deteriorated into two camps writing on two separate islands off the coast of France,” admitted Nash. “We would prepare backing tracks and post them to Guernsey. We would not get to hear Holly’s input until we returned to Wisseloord weeks later.”

It’s a miracle therefore that, back at Wisseloord, Lipson had pieced together the band’s fragments and come up with eight coherent tracks – mercifully just enough for an album. Finally everyone’s nightmare was over, and a release would be a formality.

Everyone, however, was to be proved wrong.

Throughout Liverpool’s recording, Horn had been little more than a watchful eye. Voicing opinions on which of the band’s demos should make the cut and which should remain in the studio and ensuring that Lipson treated his investment with care. Now, with all the hard and painful work done, back in London, it was Horn’s cue to get busy. And that meant spending more of the band’s money.

Wisseloord had cost the band £300,000 already but in order to complete the task of putting together what would become Liverpool, Horn required another Sony 24-track digital recorder. Having two meant that he could move huge swathes of music between them, bouncing, extending and appending without any loss of quality. The price of such power? A total hire charge of £100,000. At the end of the day, poring over the bills, the band discovered that it would have been cheaper if he’d simply bought one.

Similarly, eight AMS digital delays were hired at a cost of £40 each a day. “How many do you need?” reasoned Nash. Meanwhile, a huge Marshall stack sat in the studio, hired in, but completely unused for the entire project. But the bitterest pill? The band had innocently borrowed Horn’s Roland TR-808 for a couple of days. Months later, examining an invoice, they saw that they’d been charged for it. Ouch.

The total bill for Liverpool would – just like Pleasuredome before it – come in at £800,000. This meant that, with the band earning around 80p from every album sale, they would have to sell over a million copies before any of them earned a penny.

It had better be good then. However… It wasn’t.

“Towards the end there was panic, because it wasn’t as good,” admits Lipson. “It was chaos. It was all hands on deck at this point. We knew that we didn’t have a smash like Relax or Two Tribes. It was patently obvious to me. And then they sort of pinned their hopes on Warriors of the Wasteland… But it was inevitable.”

And there was no going back. The show must go on, and Frankie’s long overdue comeback needed a suitably grandiose launch. Step up the Montreux Golden Rose Festival of May 1986.

The Montreux festival of pop excess had, by 1986, become an '80s institution. Featuring live (aka mimed) performances by the world’s biggest rock and pop acts and broadcast to a huge trans-European audience, where better to re-launch an all-new Frankie? Thus, versions of Rage Hard and Warriors of the Wasteland were rushed into service and on Saturday 10 May 1986 Europe’s Frankiephiles settled in to watch the band’s long-overdue return with their first new material since Pleasuredome 19 months earlier.

But while fans lapped up Frankie’s return, their new, more serious, ‘rockier’ sound was an unexpected party crash. Set opener Rage Hard, in its Montreux mix form, featured an extended (boring?) drum intro and so anyone expecting Relax-style dancefloor fireworks was immediately disappointed. Likewise, the early Warriors of the Wasteland traded Two Tribes’ machine-gun bassline and drum machine in favour of ‘real music’ on ‘real instruments’. The whole performance came across as ‘Def Leppard Lite’ for Frankie fans whose tastes had been finely tuned by the band's technology-fuelled excess previously.

More remarkable than the music would be the Lads’ decision – following a drunken afternoon watching Liverpool beating Everton 3-1 in the FA Cup Final – to smash up their gear at the end of their performance. Their exploits would win them some pitying tabloid coverage as they laid waste not only to the ruse that they had performed live, but also to a one-off, hand-made Levinson bass guitar, lent to O’Toole for the gig. “You f__king asshole, that was a $1,500 bass! I’ll sue you, motherfucker,” Levinson moaned as O’Toole took three attempts to crack its neck across the kick drum.

Nevertheless, with the cat now officially out of the bag, Rage Hard and Warriors single releases (and an opportunity to start earning back what they owed ZTT) would surely be a formality? But Trevor Horn, once again, had other ideas.

Back to the drawing board

Instead of trading on the Montreux hype, Rage Hard would endure months more of Horn tinkering and wouldn’t surface in stores until 25 August 1986. This meant that fans had waited 22 months for new Frankie material. Worse, in the absence of a single release, the Frankie faithful had watched their VHS recordings of the Montreux performance on endless loop for three and a half months. Even they were bored of Rage Hard by the time it was released.

Lipson and Horn did have one surprise up their sleeves, however. Rage Hard’s Young Person’s Guide To The 12” mix would go some way to explaining and making up for the delay. A pun on Benjamin Britten’s educational Young Person’s Guide To The Orchestra, in which a narrator introduces the various elements of the orchestra, Horn’s 12-minutes-plus remix of Rage Hard does likewise, with a sexy female voiceover introducing elements such as “the perky percussion”, “the sequencer” and “the godlike bass guitar” as Rage Hard (in barely recognisable form) ebbs and flows beneath them.

Originally, actress Joanna Lumley provided the voiceover from a script written by wordsmith and ZTT's antagonist-in-residence Paul Morely, and while Horn, Lipson and the band thought her performance was excellent, Lumley, subsequently thought otherwise. Having second thoughts about the sexual references she’d committed to tape she prudishly prevented them from using the recording. Instead, comedian Pamela Stephenson was commissioned to replace Lumley and lent the track her best newsreader voice.

While the mix would reward the Frankie faithful (and came in a beautiful cardboard collector's box giving fans somewhere to put all of Rage Hard’s many mixes and formats), the 7” moved only slightly from the Montreux mix months earlier. “I don’t think there were major differences between the two,” complained Nash, “apart from one costing more money than the other.” Teamed with the delay to the track's release – with rabid fans literally unable to buy it following its Montreux debut – Frankie’s big comeback only debuted at number six in the UK.

Sure, it would go to number one in Germany and reach as high as four in the UK (seven in the Netherlands, 12 in Austria, 19 in Sweden and 32 in France) but following the band’s hard work on breaking America with Pleasuredome promo, its inability to hit any kind of Billboard chart in the big money market, came as a huge disappointment.

But with lead single duly deployed, there was nothing for it but to reveal the real fruit of their labours. Liverpool, the band’s sequel to their ground-breaking debut, was released in the UK on 20 October 1986, a date almost perfectly mirroring Pleasuredome’s release two years earlier.

And, from day one, things did not go well.

While Q magazine liked the album (Q itself had only just launched and were perhaps afraid of heaping ire on such a monster so early in their tenure) everyone else wasn’t quite so sure. James Brown called it “a predictable piece of rock junk” in Sounds while David Quanitck asked “What do you do when you've made a completely excessive double album which made history as highly moderate filler?” in NME.

Liverpool was impressive, certainly, but ‘good’? Arguably and demonstrably not. Common consensus suggested that by and large, Liverpool was the band being someone else. A new Frankie that, whilst being perhaps a more true, ‘real’ Frankie, wasn’t the Frankie that everyone in the mid-80s signed up for.

The infectious, trashy glamour of singles such as Relax and Two Tribes was gone. Instead of more hedonistic dance-pop brilliance, fans were served tense, self-conscious stiff rock posturing. Perhaps, above all else, Frankie simply weren’t fun any more. Serious in being taken seriously, they’d allowed their annoyance at their perception to break the fourth wall and be visible right there on the front of the box. And like a knock on the door during lovemaking, with the band’s finger pointed at them to comply, fans proved unable to keep up their enthusiasm.

It’s unsurprising, therefore, that chart-wise Liverpool never matched its predecessor. While the album entered the chart at number five, it would spend only a single week in the top UK 10. And while it would go on to achieve Gold status in the UK, Pleasuredome’s triple Platinum rating cemented Liverpool’s standing as forever a flop.

And following Rage Hard and Liverpool’s moist squibs, it was only ever a case of diminishing returns for the rest of Liverpool’s singles. Warriors of the Wasteland (released 10 November 1986, three weeks after the Liverpool album and a full six months after its Montreux debut) only reached number 19 in the UK. While Watching The Wildlife, the third and final single release from Liverpool (and Frankie’s last ever release) only reached number 28 despite a blizzard of remixes across a cassette single and THREE different ‘fan-pleasing’ 12”s.

Special mention to Liverpool’s last stab, Wildlife’s Die Letzten Tage Der Menschheit mix (“The Last Days of Mankind”) which sets the otherwise perky and cheerful track to a stern teutonic backdrop over which the actor John Hurt dishes out doom-laden warnings about 1986’s ensuing AIDS crisis.

Johnson had wanted to call the album From The Diamond Mine To The Factory, a line from his Warriors lyric that spelt out the band’s journey, but – predictably – the rest of the band disagreed. Instead, Paul Morley suggested simply Liverpool, which met with reluctant approval. “In hindsight I would have picked Holly’s title because it was at least connected to the content of the album,” Nash would later admit.

And the final word on Liverpool? It’s perhaps best summed up by Johnson’s final words, emitted as its last track, Is Anybody Out There? – very much Liverpool’s Power of Love – melts into delicious, overblown reverb mush. At the end of it all, Johnson reflects: “I’m looking for something and I don’t know what it is.”

Buddy. You’re not the only one.

When you’re an up-and-coming artist, it’s safe to say that you’re going to take any work that’ll keep the lights on. But always bear in mind that when fame does eventually strike, your top priority will become making sure that your skeletons in the closet stay there.

So the story goes for Madonna Louise Ciccone, an up-and-coming singer/dancer/whatever who thought she’d finally found her lifeline when just-ahead-of-the-curve Was (Not Was) came looking for a vocalist who could seal the deal on their first real hit.

The track in need of a front was called Shake Your Head (Let’s Go To Bed) and despite Madonna’s subsequent best efforts to ensure that you never heard it, it remains alive, well and a still-gossiped-about '90s hit across Europe – if only on account of it having one of the most tortuous musical backstories ever.

Let’s take a step back.

Back in 1983, rising pop funk curio Was (Not Was) were on the cusp of greatness. Garnering major record company attention following their 1981 self-titled debut album, brothers Don and David Was were able to court sizey backing for their follow-up, Born to Laugh at Tornadoes.

So much so that despite having tracks already in the can, the perfectionist pair went into overdrive to ensure that every track was a big hitter.

One such effort was their amiable groove, Shake Your Head. Stuck for a vocalist, the track’s producer Stephen Bray had put his girlfriend in the booth – an as-yet undiscovered, pre-fame Madonna – and while Madonna’s performance was perfectly suited to the track's sass and charm, the Was brothers had bigger ideas than giving Bray’s girlfriend a break.

What if they could get someone bigger, they pondered? What about… Ozzy Osboure? After all, putting Ozzy on Shake Your Head has got to be better than… Er… What was her name again?

“She did a great job… but it didn’t sound like Was (Not Was) to me anymore,” Don Was told Rolling Stone, opting to have Ozzy rework the song as more groove-based rap.

And incredibly – through a multitude of machinations and string-pulling – it is indeed Osbourne who voices the first public airing of Shake Your Head as track four, side one on Born To Laugh At Tornadoes, an album which also features such vocal talents as Mel Tormé, Mitch Ryder and Doug Fieger… And which only ever peaked at number 134 on the U.S. Billboard chart…

Third time lucky

Back to the drawing board for album number three then. And – finally – some hits! Walk The Dinosaur, Spy In The House of Love and Anything Can Happen fired up 1991’s What Up Dog album, and with the band finally in the spotlight, their prodigious and powerful (but by-and-large unknown) previous output was ripe for re-release.

Thus came the compilation, 1992’s Hello Dad, I’m In Jail – a crude mash-up of the best of the band’s unknown work thus far, with one track garnering particular attention. Who was that girl on Shake Your Head again?…

With Madonna by now at the height of her powers, Was (Not Was) were effectively now in possession of an unreleased vocal by a megastar and their label couldn’t believe their luck.

“We realized about eight years later that we had Ozzy and Madonna on parallel tracks," explained Was. "So we gave it to a remixer.”

However, its release would require the newly minted Madonna to sign off on her pre-fame performance from almost a decade earlier, and with memories of being snubbed in favour of Ozzy Osbourne still living large, she unsurprisingly opted to exact her revenge.

A Shake Your Head single featuring the Queen of Pop? Forget it.

Nevertheless, undeterred, and knowing that they had a hit on their hands, the band typically flipped to an unlikely plan B. It was time to call Kim Basinger.

Batman star Basinger was midway through a relationship with the creator of its soundtrack, Prince, who, after becoming smitten, had written and recorded an entire (unreleased) album for her.

With the pair keen to kickstart a second coming as a music star, Basinger stepped into the studio for Shake Your Head and – perhaps a little green as to what was required – dutifully copied Madonna’s vocals syllable for syllable.

Time for the finishing touch – a remix by the so-hot-back-then Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley who gave it the luxe house treatment he’d been serving all over hits like A Little Bit More for Kim Sims and Got Love For You for Jomanda. And Hurley produced an awesome mix… With one small problem. He used Madonna’s vocals rather than Basinger’s…

“When they sent me the vocals and all their master parts, I didn’t know the backstory, so I just thought that Kim Basinger sounded like Madonna,” Hurley told S+S Chicago. “So when I sent them the remix, they loved it but I used the wrong vocals. So I had to get the new vocals from them and create the mix over again with Kim’s vocals.” And Hurley didn’t stop there.

With Osbourne’s 1983 vocals still on the multi-track, Hurley turned the track into the most bizarre duet ever… “But all the extra time put in was worth it,” Hurley reckoned. “It ended up being Was (Not Was)’s biggest record, reaching number four on the UK singles chart.”

Incredibly, despite its all-star line-up and European and Australian success, the track never earned a US release and to this day remains a much-whispered about Ozzy anomaly in the country that took him to its heart.

And thanks to one more mix-up – in which Hurley’s original, top secret, Madonna-blocked remix was accidentally sent to, and included on UK dance compilation Now Dance 92 – Doh! – we can all enjoy the track as everyone (except Madonna) intended below.

There’s no denying the power of the modern digital audio workstation.

Armed with nothing more than a laptop, a single piece of software and enough determination, you can create radio-ready tracks able to compete with anything made by the world’s biggest producers. DAWs are amazing, but spend enough time staring into a computer screen and wiggling a mouse, and you may start to feel more like an accountant than a musician.

That’s where hardware comes in. Although DAWs can, on the whole, deliver the same sounds, what they can’t give you is that tactile hardware experience. That’s what we’re here to rectify today.

Hardware can be intimidating, however, especially if you’ve only ever worked with a computer. It can be expensive, too, and there’s so much choice available that it’s tough to know how best to spend a limited budget when you’re venturing into hardware-based music-making. As a beginner, how do you know where to start?

We’ve done the hard work for you and put together some suggestions of beginner-friendly – and budget-friendly – gear. And, to make things easier, we’ve broken them down by genre. No matter what kind of music you make, there’s something here for you.

Note that this assumes you already have a computer and DAW, plus studio monitors and an audio interface. If you plan on plugging in multiple pieces of gear, like synths and drum machines, you’ll probably need a mixer too.

The harder they come: Why hardware?

Why bother with hardware anyway? There are many reasons to take a step outside the walled garden of the DAW. Tactility is something that’s already been touched on (pun obviously intended). Laying your hands on a real piano-style keyboard, banging out beats on drum pads and opening up a filter with the twist of a knob: this kind of hands-on music-making can greatly enhance the creative process, in both the results you end up with and how much fun you have doing it.

Then there’s portability. A lot of modern gear is not only small and lightweight, it’s also battery-powered, meaning you can throw it in your bag and take it on the go. The ideas you come up with in a coffee shop, at the park, or on the train are going to be very different to the ones that arrive in the studio. Plus, there’s the opportunity to jam with other musicians.

Don’t forget the sound of the instrument, too. While DAWs can do a lot, one thing they can’t do is analogue. Emulations sound great, but to many producers’ ears, nothing compares with the warmth and character of an analogue synthesizer. Even digital devices like samplers and FM synths sound different when they're run through digital-to-audio converters and a mixer. You can drive a mixer, too, for real analogue saturation, or add a couple of effects pedals in to your set-up to spice up your sounds.

Ultimately, working with hardware is about finding new ways to be creative, venturing outside the box to discover a new perspective on your music-making. Your music will thank you for it.

1. Hip-hop beatmaking

Sampling is at the heart of hip-hop and beatmaking. If you make beats, you’re likely already working with samples into your DAW. From there, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump into the world of DAWless beatmaking – and with the recent release of the Akai MPC Sample, it’s never been more affordable to get into hardware hip-hop.

Akai’s samplers have been at the center of hip-hop production since the MPC60 dropped in 1988. Over the years they’ve grown ever more complicated, and at the top of the range, they’ve effectively become hardware DAWs.

This year, Akai went back to basics with the MPC Sample, and it’s proven to be a big hit. Although it’s extremely affordable, it’s still a capable machine, with 2GB RAM and 8GB internal storage, 32 stereo voices, a Chop mode for slicing up loops, internal effects, and of course those famous 16 RGB MPC pads. You don’t even need a mixer, as it’s handily equipped with an onboard audio interface.

While the MPC Sample can emulate the sound of classic samplers, it can’t do true 12-bit recording. If you’re a lo-fi head or looking for a sound closer to classic boom-bap records, check out the LIVEN LoFi-12 from Sonicware, a sampling groovebox with a decidedly grungy character. Like the classic samplers of the 1980s, it captures audio at 12-bit, which has less fidelity than the modern standard of 16-bit. This imbues it with that warmth and grit you associate with classic hip-hop. And, as it’s a groovebox, it has a sequencer already built in.

Finally, if trap is your thing and 808s are key to your sound, you may want to skip the sampler and go straight to the analog source. Inspired by the classic Roland TR-808 drum machine, Behringer’s RD-8 recreates the sounds and workflow of the original at a significantly reduced price, including those instantly recognizable boomy kicks. It also adds a Wave Designer for punchier hits and an analogue filter for further sound-shaping.

2. Techno, house and UKG

Though the TR-808 sits at the heart of hip-hop, it’s another Roland drum machine that occupies that spot for genres like house and techno. This is the legendary TR-909. With its punchy kick drum, sharp hats and pummeling snare, it provided the backbone for countless club hits, leaving a trail of dancefloor destruction that leads all the way back to its debut in 1983. Accordingly, any hardware setup for house, techno, or UK garage would do well to feature some sort of 909-adjacent machine, but an original unit will cost you thousands of dollars.

The most versatile modern alternative would be the TR-1000, Roland’s recent analogue-infused remake of the 808 and 909. It’s also eye-wateringly expensive, though, so for now, file the TR-1000 away in the “aspirational” folder and look instead to Roland’s TR-8S.

With circuit-modeled takes on the 909 and 808, alongside other drum machine favorites like the 707, 727, 606 and CR-78, it’s got everything you need to make club-rattling beats. It’s also a sampler, so UK garage producers can sequence vocal chops to their heart’s content. The TR-8S is also on the expensive side, however. If it’s looking beyond your means, check out the TR-6S, a six-track version of the machine with less hands-on control, limited connectivity and no velocity-sensitivity. They both feature internal audio interfaces too.

Prefer analogue kicks and snares? Then you might want to point your credit card at Behringer’s RD-9, a reasonably-priced remake of the TR-909. The original drum machine used a hybrid combination of analogue kicks, snares, clap, toms, and rimshot, plus digitally-sampled hats, crash and ride. Together, these form the blueprint of modern dance music. Behringer’s RD-9 adds the same Wave Designer from the RD-8 for transient-shaping, and the filter as well. Modern 909 sounds – particularly those used in techno – have been heavily processed, so you might be surprised by the raw sounds that come out of the box. You can use it for classic ‘90s sounds, then, or hook it up to an effects pedal or two to give it a more unique character.

Unless you’re making modern techno that’s heavy on the rumbles, you’ll need a bassline to go with your beats. Roland’s S-1 Tweak Synth is a fantastic – and super-affordable – little synth that does not only bass but also melodies and chords. It’s inspired by the SH-101, an iconic monosynth used on countless techno and house records. You can expand on its virtual analogue sound with two oscillator modes that let you draw your own waveforms or chop them up, emphasizing the harmonics for more metallic tones. You also get a 64-step sequencer for acid-style basslines.

3. Drum ‘n’ bass, jungle and breakbeat

Sample-based hardware music producers tend to fall into two camps: those that swear allegiance to the Akai MPC series, and those who fly the flag for Native Instruments’ Maschine. With the MPC’s hip-hop roots, and Native Instruments long part of the European dance scene, it’s not surprising that user demographics tend to shake out the same way. This is not a hard-and-fast rule, mind you, but speed up the BPMs and you’re probably going to find more Maschine power users than MPC fiends.

If you’re an aspiring drum and bass, jungle, breaks or dubstep producer, then, the Maschine ecosystem is calling your name. Maschines have been around since 2009, with a variety of hardware devices coming and going, but as it stands right now, three are on the market: Maschine Mikro 3 and Maschine 3, which act as controllers for software on your computer, and Maschine+, a standalone device. What they can do is the same; the difference lies in the amount of control and, in the case of the Maschine+, where the magic happens.

In much the same way that modern MPCs are essentially standalone DAWs, Maschine software is similarly capable, with sequencing, built-in instruments and effects, stem separation, modulation lanes, and more. Maschine+ lets you achieve all of this away from your PC, and even houses NI plugins and Play Series Kontakt instruments. Maschine+ is the way to go if you’re on the road often.

As powerful as the Maschine is, there may come a time that you want to dive into the analogue world. And for bass-focused producers on a budget, the number one choice for a low-end synth is Novation’s Bass Station II. There are quite a few analogue bass synths in this price range, but none are as flexible or fun to use as the Bass Station II.

Key to its power is the oscillator section. Oscillators generate the sounds, and with two of them, you can blend different waveforms like sawtooth and square for complex sounds, or even detune them against each other for extra fatness. There’s also a sub-oscillator for additional low-end weight. And, while most synthesizers provide a filter for tonal shaping, Bass Station II actually gives you two of them, letting you dial in some really unusual sounds. There’s even an Aphex Twin-designed mode that puts a different patch on each note. So many wild possibilities!

4. Ambient, experimental and soundtracks

Soundtrack composers and musicians working in ambient and experimental music typically have very different musical needs than beatmakers and dance producers. Drums are less of a focus, with sound design taking center stage. For the sonic explorer, a solid synthesizer will be of tantamount importance, ideally one that allows for easy editing of sound parameters.

Let’s start with something for the composer. Whether your medium is film, television, or video games, you’ll probably require an instrument with a little bit of everything. Samples of bread-and-butter instruments, orchestras, and special effects are all required. You’re going to need a decent keybed too. Put these requirements together and you arrive at Akai’s MPC Key 37 G2. Armed with both keys and pads, you can whip up whatever the job requires, and the generously-sized display makes it easy to sequence and arrange. Though it’s not exactly cheap, the MPC Key 37 G2 is probably more affordable than you imagine.

For the ambient musician, the focus will be on tone and texture: think drones, pads, and loops. Sonicware comes to the rescue here, with the aptly-named LIVEN Ambient Ø. Part of its LIVEN groovebox series, the Ambient Ø brings a novel sound engine called Blendwave Modulation Synthesis for generating fluctuating and undulating tones, a noise and loop section for adding texture, and of course effects like massive reverbs and delays. It’s pure outer space. Combine this all with the on-board sequencer and set it all in motion via the Relaxation Playback Mode, a feature that can be used to create your own personal sound bath or meditation music background player.

When it comes to making experimental music, Eurorack offers a wealth of exciting opportunities. Getting into modular synthesis can be very expensive though. Why not dip your toe in the pool with a two-piece set-up of Eurorack-inspired hardware from Stylophone? A drone oscillator and filter unit, the CPM DS-2 and CPM DF-8 pair up nicely to create the basic building blocks of synthesis.

In the DS-2, you get two oscillators, a sub-oscillator, and a filter, plus LFOs and patch points to experiment with creative modulation. Get the oscillators singing and ride the drone, then combine it with the DF-8. With its two filters, you can tonally shape the drones. And, should you wish to play the two together like a mini synthesizer, get the two envelope generators involved and shape the oscillators and filters over time. All you need is a controller to trigger notes and you’re off to the races. Should you decide someday to take the Eurorack plunge, you can discard the chassis and install the units in a case.

Recently, this writer was lucky enough to attend a quite unusual screening of Queen’s newly remastered Budapest concert film at London’s Roundhouse. Encouraged to respond as if we were attending an actual gig, we readily allowed ourselves to be putty in the hands of the late, great Freddie Mercury. Alive again, albeit via a massive LED screen.

It’s the only time I’ve ever experienced the thrill of being a part of Radio Ga Ga’s signature call-and-response crowd double-clap-along. It gave just a small taste of what it must have actually been like, seeing Queen during the height of their mid-eighties pomp, at a time when their moustachioed frontman was at the peak of his performing powers.

It also made this writer fully realise just how perfectly geared for a crowd the song was…

Ostensibly a democratic unit when it came to divvying up the songwriting, Radio Ga Ga was - surprisingly - the first Queen single to be penned solely by drummer Roger Taylor. Mercury, bassist John Deacon and Brian May would all be integral in shaping Taylor’s initial idea into the setlist pillar that it became, however.

Radio Ga Ga was born at a time when the band had returned to the studio after taking a year out to creatively re-energise following 1982’s lacklustre Hot Space. But Queen were struggling to land on exciting ideas…

Early sessions for what would eventually become 1984’s robust eleventh album The Works at LA’s The Record Plant were arduous, and an ever-fastidious Mercury was particularly underwhelmed by Roger’s initial song suggestions, telling him so in no uncertain terms…

“Roger wrote three or four songs… as far as I was concerned, some of [Roger’s songs] weren’t good enough. I just said ‘Go back and write some more’” Mercury said following the album’s release.

“I was desperate for inspiration!” Taylor told Sounds magazine at the time. “Then one day the radio came on in the house and my three year old son Felix came out with ‘radio poo poo’ I thought that sounded good so I changed it around a bit and came up with Radio Ga Ga.”

What Felix - the bilingual son of Roger and his French girlfriend (and eventual wife) Dominique Beyrand - had actually uttered was, ‘radio ca-ca’ - the French term for faeces. It wasn’t a million miles away from the song’s eventual name. ‘Radio Ca Ca’ in fact became its working title.

Having previously been famously sceptical of their value, Queen had finally opened the door to exploring the abilities of the synthesizer - and other electronic instruments - during the making of 1980’s The Game. Running with the 'Radio Ca Ca' idea, Roger locked himself away for a three-day stretch with both a Roland Jupiter-8 and a LinnDrum, hammering out a basic arrangement for a wistful, but powerful, new song.

With Felix’s innocent dismissal of the radio as the foundation, Taylor began to reflect about just how much he owed to that crackly old plastic box - once his central conduit to those foundational songs that changed his life. Roger also lamented the radio's diminishing relevance, as television and music video were becoming the higher priority concerns for 80s musicians.

“The song is a bit mixed up as far as what I wanted to say,” Roger later remarked to Modern Drummer. “It deals with how important radio used to be, historically speaking, before television, and how important it was to me as a kid. It was the first place I heard rock n’ roll. I used to hear a lot of Doris Day, but a few times each day, I’d also hear a Bill Haley record or an Elvis Presley song. Today it seems that video, the visual side of rock ‘n’ roll, has become more important than the music itself - too much so, really. I mean, music is supposed to be an experience for the ears more than the eyes.”

Beyond music, Taylor’s lyric evoked some particularly iconic radio moments, from Orson Welles' historic pandemonium-causing reading of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, broadcast in 1938, to Winston Churchill’s ‘Finest hour’ speech. The lyric was a pointed, almost romantic dedication to the very box that had shaped his formative years.

I'd sit alone and watch your light
My only friend through teenage nights
And everything I had to know
I heard it on my radio

Taylor thought it was a stronger start than most for a song, but when he brought his new demo for the band and producer Reinhold Mack to listen to, Taylor was more than a little surprised by Mercury's immediate fixation with 'Radio Ca Ca'.

However, the architect of Bohemian Rhapsody had big ideas for what he wanted to do with the song’s shape. Not least working up that epic-scale call-and-response chorus that would soon energise crowds the world over.

Freddie was also certain that with a bit of fine-tuning, this could be Queen’s best single in years…

“I just instantly felt that you could build that into a really good strong saleable commodity, and I think Roger was just thinking of it as just another track, so I virtually took it over” Mercury told Westwood One.

“I’m an instinctive musician. I can play keyboards, guitar and drums, and I can write songs,” Taylor remarked in an interview with Making Music in 1988. “I have a facility for writing music, but I don't want to know anything particularly technical - like what the chords are called. Even in Radio Ga Ga, there are some very difficult chords. I don't know what they're called, but it doesn't matter. I'm a much better guitarist than I am a keyboard player, but now I find melodically it's much easier to write on keyboard. Radio Ga Ga was a completely keyboard-written song. I defy anyone to write that on the guitar because you wouldn't find the chords, they wouldn't come naturally to any guitar player I know.”

While Roger was away on a skiing holiday, Mercury set to work on building up the arrangement, crafting a wider scope to the now - more sensitively - re-titled Radio Ga Ga, alongside Canadian session keys-man Fred Mandel.

“It's basically [Roger's] song, you know, he had the ideas altogether, I just felt that there was some construction elements in it that were wrong to start with and he just said, 'OK, you do what you want.'" Mercury told Westwood One. "He wanted [to have a hit] very badly and I think he deserves it.”

The lyrics got a tighten-up, too…

“Initially it was to deal with the radio being too old or whatever, and I just said, 'I think you should change the lyrical content,’” Mercury was quoted as saying. “In fact, we went totally the other way, so, I mean, Radio Ga Ga… we were actually trying to say that video is trying to take over, what's the radio going to be?”

Musically, the other elements continued to be built atop the insistent, almost motorik beat that Taylor had conjured on his LinnDrum. This was later developed to incorporate cymbal accents and a heftier playing style. Building out the rhythm section, Mandel developed a swirling and throbbing bass part which later informed John Deacon’s eventual impactful line.

“Roger had done the original sequence bass part and I put down a piano part and then a synthesizer part on top of that, plus the bells you can hear throughout,” Fred told Queen Online. “Before I left the studio, I wanted the track to be more complete so I put on some bass parts, some of which were ideas that John later retained on the record.”

To heighten the paradoxical collision of nostalgia and futurism, Mercury opted to harness the then fashionable vocoder (Roland’s VP-330) to process his (and Roger's) backing vocals, with Mandel channeling their backing vox tracks via his Jupiter-8.

Oddly enough, the backing vocals still actually sing the track's original title, 'Radio Ca Ca';

Roland's colourful powerhouse synth was also relied on for the song’s distinctive arpeggiated rising-and-falling cascade of notes. Even at the time, this kitsch ‘futuristic’ sound felt - for want of a better word - naff, but these robot-like bleeps served to embellish the childish naivety of Taylor's lyric.

Not naff at all were the song’s stratospheric pads, which were also generated by the Jupiter-8 and stretched out each chord's thundering impact to gargantuan proportions.

Freddie's new chorus section stripped away many of the arrangement elements to emphasise his punchy delivery of the following lines:

All we hear is radio ga ga
Radio goo goo
Radio ga ga
All we hear is radio ga ga
Radio blah, blah
Radio, what's new?

This part of the chorus's stilted melody was balanced by Mercury's passionately delivered, descending line…

Radio, someone still loves you

Crucially, these lines were punctuated by double handclaps, responding call-and-response style. We'll come back to that…

Bolstered by a yearning, Roxy Music-inspired searing slide guitar solo from Brian May as the song nears its conclusion, Radio Ga Ga was undoubtedly the best thing the band had conjured since 1981’s stirring Bowie collaboration, Under Pressure.

It all but demanded to be released as the record’s lead single. And so, on January 23rd 1984, Radio Ga Ga hit the airwaves - and small screens - across the globe. Reaching number 2 in the UK chart, Ga Ga went on to top the charts of 19 countries globally.

The single was backed with a David Mallet-directed video which leaned into the wide-eyed nostalgia of the lyrics with clips from Fritz Lang's innovative sci-fi masterpiece, Metropolis (alongside other newly shot Metropolis-esque clips and eerie archive footage). These clips were interspersed with studio-filmed sections where the band traversed this long-forgotten vision of tomorrow in a flying car.

As we indicated earlier, the video also stressed the live-power-potential of its chorus by depicting the band performing live to 500 extras from the Queen fan club, each of whom enthusiastically engaged in the synchronised handclap-ritual in tight unison. It demonstrated to viewers at home how to behave when the band played this song on their next tour.

“One of David Mallet’s great contributions, of course, is when the chorus comes you get a hand clap. It was repeated electronically, on the record, and so it sounds like a double handclap. And Mallet kind of seized upon it and made it a double handclap done by the audience." Brian May said in the Queen web series The Greatest. “I think it became one of the first great proofs of the power of television.”

However, the bright red-clad band and vaguely fascistic aesthetic of Mallet's video put off some. In fact, more than a few (the NME in particular) suspected the band were being a little too casual with this perceived Nazi-esque totalitarian cosplay…

“That was so absurd,” Roger said in the Queen web series The Greatest. “It was meant to mirror the film… the oppressed workers. The Nazi thing is laughable. People will always find an agenda if they need one.”

Queen devotees were all-in, however.

This was evidenced across the band’s ensuing live dates when the hook-laden Radio Ga Ga became a fresh new centrepiece of the live set - with the crowd eagerly responding to Mercury’s lines with gusto.

First the hardcore, then the world…

Live Aid not only re-cemented Queen's status as one of the world’s most beloved stadium rock bands (and lock-in Freddie as the frontman for the ages in the eyes of the public) but it also was the perfect platform for Radio Ga Ga to reach its full potential.

The shots of the tens of thousands of Wembley attendees double-clapping in tandem to the song meant that it very quickly became not just another one to chalk up for Queen’s next Greatest Hits, but one of the most well-known songs around the globe in the mid-1980s.

Ironically, this paean to the waning wireless found its largest audience via a global television event.

“Freddie rose to the occasion,” Brian May recalled in an interview with Mojo magazine. “He was already a master of the art of communicating with a football stadium full of people. And when we did Radio Ga Ga and the whole audience all did the double handclap thing, I remember getting chills in that moment.”

RECORDING WEEK 2026: Recording studios tend to be acoustically perfect, atmospherically or sonically sealed, and quiet environments for getting the best recorded take. They also tend to be non-moving and building-based. So why would you consider sticking one on a bus? Or in a Nando's restaurant? Or on a 100-year old boat on the Thames? Madness this way surely lies!

From wheels to fried chicken, here are some of the wackiest and imperfect places to record music.

1. Timbaland's Bus

The idea of setting up a recording studio on a bus is weird, obviously, especially if you are considering setting it up on one of those public transport-style busses complete with a driver and 1950s-garbed ticket collector.

It's perhaps not so weird if you have the kind of cash to splash as Timbaland obviously did back in 2010 when he decided to convert a bus (actually a luxury touring style coach, if we're honest) at a cost of $1.3million dollars.

He ended up with a fully-fledged, SSL-based pro studio that just happened to have an engine and some wheels underneath.

The studio was fitted out with some of the best gear of the time, including an SSL Matrix desk, a 24-in/24-out interface, and seven SSL XLogic X-Rack preamp, EQ and compressor modules.

Monitors came by way of Genelec and KRK, and there was even a gold-plated Neumann microphone on board. Of course there was.

The studio had all of the other luxuries you might imagine, with multi-coloured strip lighting, gadgets and big TVs galore. It was actually one of the coolest vehicles you could possibly imagine, but we are talking about Timbaland here, so what did you expect?

The MMG (Mosley Music Group, Timbaland’s label) bus first hit the streets (literally) back in 2010, although it's not known whether it's still a-rocking, a-rolling and a-recording these days, but its SSL Matrix desk was reportedly sold in 2021.

We can only imagine that the yearly MOT was not only complicated but expensive, so it's probably unlikely that this is a bus you can still hitch a ride and record on these days, but here's a video tour of the vehicle from 2010 anyway.

2. LMS

Timbaland wasn't the first music maker to think that sticking wheels on a studio was a good idea. Previous to his bus, several mobile studios were trundling around the UK, used more obviously to record live events, but some so well spec'd that they became 'proper' recording venues in their own right.

Ronnie Lane's Mobile Studio (LMS) was the Small Faces bassist and songwriter's mobile studio. It was created in 1972 using an America Airstream trailers most often seen camped in by very rich people at music festivals. Or used for the supplying the kebabs and chips at the self same events.

The curved structure of the trailer apparently helped reduce standing waves, making the vehicle excellent for recording bass, handy considering Lane's vocation.

Producer/engineer Ron Nevison kitted out the mobile with a Helios desk, a Studer A80 8-track recorder (later upgraded to 16 tracks) and various bespoke pieces of outboard gear.

LMS was used to record Lane's Anymore for Anymore (1974) and One for the Road (1976) albums, but later attracted other (very) high profile musicians including Bob Marley, Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Eric Clapton, Rory Gallagher and The Who.

Lane subsequently sold the studio to Teddy Roffey the owner of Escape Studios in Kent in 1982. The studio was apparently overhauled in 2009 while owned by a company called LMS Vinyl, but now appears to be owned by Mark St John who is a collector of music memorabilia among other things, and can be seen with the studio in the background of this 2022 video.

You can also find our more information courtesy of The Music Locker here.

Or get the full LMS history here.

3. Mobile RAK

In 1974, TV talent finder Mickie Most was also getting in on the mobile studio action. His mobile RAK studio existed before he created his stationary, building-based RAK studios, a beautiful facility based near Regent's Park in London, which is still doing business and winning awards to this day.

The mobile studio was mostly used by RAK along with TV clients including the BBC and Thames Television. However, as it was fitted out with an API desk, a couple of 3M multitrackers and decent outboard including, limiters, compressors, and an echo plate reverb, it eventually attracted artists into its fully air-conditioned environment including Hot Chocolate and Donovan, with the studio operated and engineered by Doug Hopkins and Tim Summerhayes.

RAK Mobile's most notable recording, though, was one of the biggest tracks of the 1970s, Mull of Kintyre by Wings. Summerhayes was an assistant engineer on the recording, alongside Geoff Emerick explaining on Facebook that “we took the mobile to the farm a few days before the sessions and spent some time preparing the control room and recording room. We'd unload the equipment and carry them in a wheelbarrow to an improvised control room supervised by Geoff.”

But as important as that particular mobile recording studio was in the history of music, it didn't get a mention in the finished song. But our next entry most certainly did…

4. RMS

Yes, as famous as LMS and RAK's mobiles certainly were, they don't get the lyrical shout out quite like the Rolling Stones Mobile Recording Studio does, so this takes our 'top recording studio with wheels' award.

Rolling Stones Mobile Recording Studio, or RSM, was created in 1968 and so was the first mobile studio of its kind. It was essentially designed to be a wheely version of the Stones' favourite studio, Olympic, so featured top end gear like a 3M M79 tape machine (itself costing half a million dollars in today's money), and a custom built Helios desk.

The Stones recorded 1971's Sticky Fingers and 1972's Exile On Main St in the truck, but also let it out to other acts including Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Bob Marley, The Who and Black Sabbath.

Deep Purple are the notable names here, as they immortalised the studio on the iconic Smoke on the Water, which includes the lines 'to make records with a mobile' and 'The Rolling truck Stones thing just outside'.

Beat that RAK and LMS!

5. Churches

Next up, there are a surprising number of recording studios located in churches around the world, and why not, when you consider the inspiring atmosphere, the wonderful – if possibly over-the-top – acoustics and the fact that most are empty a lot of the time bar Sundays. Might as well stick some mics up and get some atmosphere recorded, right?

Famous ex recording studio-based churches include Blackwing Studios in London, which was part of a church known as All Hallows. This was a studio created by engineering genius Eric Radcliffe and became the location in which many seminal Mute Records albums were recorded. These included not only Depeche Mode's debut, Speak & Spell, but – and because it was based on the first floor of the building – the aptly-named Upstairs at Eric's debut long player from Yazoo.

The studio building is still there, as is the church garden, but it closed for recording business in 2001. Rumours suggest it might be being turned into flats - grrr.

Currently you can hire hire several holy (or ex holy) spaces to record in across the globe should you wish, including the south Wales-based StudiOwz (based in a converted chapel), The Nave in Leeds or, among many in the States, The Church studios in Palm Springs and The Church Studio in Tulsa.

However, to our minds, the holiest of holy studios – and also rather aptly called The Church Studio – is in Crouch End, London. It was converted, opened and owned by Dave Stewart of The Eurythmics in 1984 and was subsequently sold to David Grey, then Paul Epworth, who owns it today.

Check out Annie Lennox being interviewed in the studio here. She plays the organ, sings in it and everything…

Producer Paul Epworth brought the studio up to speed in 2013, adding a 72-channel vintage EMI/Neve console and eventually recording artists including Adele at the facility.

Other artists who have recorded there include Blur, Pet Shop Boys, The Kills and Bombay Bicycle Club.

Find out more here.

6. Boats

Believe it or not, along with wheeled-based transport, boats have also been considered and actually used as mobile options for recording studios.

Before he turned his attention to the initially much more practical (but actually not as it ended up) location of Montserrat for a recording studio, George Martin considered a 160-foot boat to fit a studio out in. His thinking was that it would be a lovely isolated studio, probably away from all of those pesky Beatles fans who were already covering the walls of Abbey Road with hearts at the time.

Common sense prevailed and Martin opted for what seemed like a safer, quieter and certainly warmer bet of the island of Montserrat for his next studio venture. Unfortunately, maybe that boat would have been a better option as two god-like forces of nature in the forms of a hurricane and volcano would eventually close his studio, albeit after he'd produced some iconic recordings there.

One person not to spot the disadvantages of boat-based recording was Pink Floyd's David Gilmour. In 1986, he bought a 1912 houseboat - although it was more 'block of flats' boat, to be honest - called the Astoria. Gilmour and Nick Mason recorded Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason there. Future Gilmour solo albums like On an Island and Rattle That Lock were also recorded on the boat.

“I got it on a mad whim really,” Gilmour says on Pink Floyd's YouTube channel. “Eventually the idea came that we could make a recording studio out of it. When you've spent your life in recording studios where there are darkened windowless rooms, to be in a place like that [the boat] where it's all glass, all windows and you've got the beautiful river flowing outside… It still is a magical place to work.”

The boat has been recently refitted and is still used by Gilmour – you can find out more in this video.

7. Nando's

Finally, you won't believe our last 'out there' recording location… It's none other than a Nandos restaurant. The famous restaurant chain is famous for its spicy chicken-based and good value dishes (yes, we want a discount!) but perhaps not for its musical output. That might well change thanks to the studio based in the basement of its Soho branch.

“All the best ideas start over PERi-PERi (or so we heard),” the chain said in 2018 when they opened the studio. “That’s why we’ve brought together two of our favourite things – chicken and tunes – for our first ever restaurant recording studio.”

We're not sure we quite understand the connection they're making there, but we like chicken and tunes too, so we're going with it.

Apparently the studio has been quite the success. It's free – but you don't get a sharing platter, which would be good – to the point where bookings seem to have ceased. We love the idea, though, and look forward to inevitable copycat ventures like McDonald's Music, Toby Carvery's Tunes and, of course, Burger King's Bangers.

RECORDING WEEK 2026: “I used to make these punk cover versions of records I loved as a kid,” Rob Cavallo, Grammy Award-winning producer, tells us when asked about his initial route into music-making.

“My dad was in the business, he managed Prince for a time and accidentally played my version of When You Were Mine to him in the car when he once collected him from the airport. Apparently, Prince looked confused, then demanded I join his band, The Family, in Paisley Park. My dad said he couldn’t have me – I was only 16.”

Despite his dad denying this early opportunity for him, Rob went on to become a true heavyweight producer in the world of rock recording.

His stellar CV speaks for itself, being the studio mastermind behind myriad best-selling albums including Green Day’s most cherished canon; Dookie, Insomniac, Nimrod, American Idiot - all made under Rob’s watchful eye. Goo Goo Dolls’ Dizzy Up the Girl and My Chemical Romance’s era-defining The Black Parade, too.

Rob’s career began in earnest during the late eighties and has seen him navigate various technological changes, surfing the wave of opportunities afforded by software and the arrival of Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs).

“I was one of the first guys to ever use Pro Tools, Green Day’s song Brain Stew was recorded on that when the DAW was only two tracks and 16-bit,” he says.

“In my studio now, I have a computer filled with every single sound and every single DAW. But despite technological innovation, the end results still boil down to your taste and how you take the listener on a journey from the beginning of a song to the middle, then end. It doesn't matter if you’re programming or talking to a drummer in a room with 16 microphones set up, the producer’s job is still the same gig.”

Rob was brought up in a musical family with his dad, Bob, a hugely successful industry figure who, as we said earlier, worked with Prince as well as Earth, Wind and Fire and the Lovin’ Spoonful.

While Rob was finding his own feet in the industry, he managed to secure some work experience in LA with George Massenburg, an influential producer in the studio universe.

“He was one of the great engineers of all time, and I was like the third engineer guy, I didn’t even know what a studio was although I learned quickly,” Rob explains. “George was amazing, he was so tough, and it was a gift he was like that.”

Rob made some demos during the holidays when the studio was closed to the public. Warner Brothers and their crack team of influential executives and producers - Ted Templeman, Lenny Waronker, and Michael Ostin - got wind, heard one of the demos he’d worked on, then offered Rob a job as an A&R.

“I really needed a job at the time and I was so just so in love with music,” Cavallo tells us. “I was going to all the clubs, listening to every band I could find and involved in a network of people. I knew who was playing the Troubadour, The Music Machine, the Roxy, Madame Wong’s, all these old LA clubs.

“This combined with me making records and being a player - I could play bass, drums and guitar - it all made sense and fit together for Warner Brothers.”

As a producer, Rob’s discography is full of huge, global success stories from early on in his career. Green Day’s seminal 1994 major label debut Dookie was one of his very first production gigs. Making the record with the three young men who’d soon become a global alternative phenomenon, Cavallo was driven by a vision of what the album should ultimately sound like.

“When working with bands, you need a clear goal of what you’re trying to make - and be as balls out as possible,” he laughs.

“With Dookie, it was the second record I ever produced and people were telling me not to work with a punk band. But I had this feeling about it, I wanted to sonically create something where there would be higher BPMs and it would still be clear for you to hear.”

Rob came up with a way to record the drums using an SM57 microphone and used a tube direct box to ensure that “the bass cut through all the way into the guitars”, Rob recalls.

“I devised a way to capture the first reflection of the drums so it would be aggressive but it wouldn’t be too roomy so the next snare drum would avoid being on top of the prior one,” Rob tells us.

“For the drums, it’s an SM57 pointed an inch away from a hard surface at a ninety degree angle to the snare. It really helps the drum set grow teeth and you can quite clearly hear it on Dookie.”

Alternative rock bands like Green Day and Nirvana both had similar trajectories, working on indie imprints at the start of the nineties before signing with majors. Green Day’s preceding (independent label) LP Kerplunk! had a raw edge that Rob leaned into when translating Green Day’s live sound into a chart-friendly, radio-ready sound.

“[Nirvana’s debut] Bleach and Kerplunk! are similar because they were recorded and mixed in the studio, live off the floor, so everyone played together, there were minimal overdubs and it was recorded, mixed and finished in three or four days,” says Rob.

“Now what would be interesting with today’s modern studio software would be to take a band into a rehearsal studio, rehearse them so they sound great, then make a record like Bleach where it’s recorded in a handful of days. You could make something that sounds almost as good as Dookie with today’s tech. The possibilities it offers are so great.”

Beyond Green Day, and another pop punk troupe owe their finest hour to Mr. Cavallo. My Chemical Romance recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of their landmark emo concept album, The Black Parade, and Rob was at the helm of the original recording sessions.

Infamously, some of the record was made at LA’s Paramour Mansion in Silverlake where the band’s frontman Gerard Way suffered recurring night terrors.

“I think environment is important in the writing and production, and the mansion was a cool, spooky place to go,” Rob says of the sessions. “It was absolutely haunted and freezing in there as there was no heat in the giant basketball sized living room. We put a PA in, hung a couple of fancy mics in there to record them stereo live.”

Rob also worked with Dave Matthews Band on their album, Big Whisky and the GrooGrux King in New Orleans while Green Day recorded much of their 2024 Saviors album at RAK Studios in London.

“With Dave Matthews Band, I convinced them to go to New Orleans and you can hear how the city rubbed off on them for that album, we even recorded some of the sounds of the city,” Rob explains.

“London is one the favourite cities for me and Green Day to work in, it’s such a vibe there, the people are amazing - and the microphones are pretty good too,” he adds.

“Culturally, people in the UK love rock music, they respect it, it’s a high art-form, you feel embraced and loved when you go to the UK as a music person. The energy is infectious.”

My Chemical Romance’s Black Parade and Green Day’s 2004 conceptual opus American Idiot both bristle with plenty of big ideas, although Rob feels they were born from quite different creative places…

“With Green Day, we didn’t like how iTunes, one of the biggest retailers at the time, would take your record and chop it up into 14 $0.99 dollar songs,” says Rob. “So we wanted to combat this and make an album that had to be heard as a whole.”

“With My Chemical Romance, Gerard is such a prolific writer, he has backstories for all his records, he just doesn’t show you - there are other things going on in his head that he’ll let you know when he’s ready.”

Rock music has gone through peaks and troughs over the years and Rob has rode the waves firsthand, including what he sees as today’s peak. At the moment, he’s working with a young band called Riff Wood who have just released their Butterfly In Black And White album after becoming a viral sensation.

“Guitar music coming off the stage is still the most powerful thing, you still feel it physically and emotionally when it’s performed there - more than any other genre,” he says of the sound’s enduring popularity.

“During Covid, more guitars were sold than ever before too, people needed something to connect with. And songs still find new audiences due to streaming. A song like Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls, I cut that in the mid-nineties, it was their biggest streaming song in 2025 and younger audiences love it.”

Rob might be known for the big guitar outfits but he’s also worked with American rappers 03 Greedo and the late Lil Peep too.

“I always think there’s room for everything and innovation,” says Rob. “Lil Peep was the first emo hip-hop artist to ask me to collaborate with him, it was a tough one when he passed.

“I thought he could be so big due to how smart he was and as an artist, he asked if he could take one of my guitar riffs and put it to one of his FL loops. The first thing we did was Benz Truck and I love the sound of that record.”

With so much experience behind him and still in the mixer when it comes to new talent, Rob is well-placed to share some studio advice. He believes all producers should make sure they remember their purpose is to serve the band, not themselves.

“You want your artists to love what you’re working on,” says Rob. “I want whoever I’m working with to be over the moon with how the record sounds. What’s really smart about that, when you’re done, they’ll want to promote it, and serve it up to the world for the next few years, even the rest of their lives.”

Dookie might have been an early triumph for Rob, but the album's popularity - which includes Green Day staples Basket Case, When I Come Around and Longview - has an influence on guitar music that lives on and continues to inspire new generations of bands.

“After Billie Joe had sung about 90% of the record, he invited this couple to the studio and he played them the tracks,” Rob remembers. “I watched the look on their faces, their jaws hit the floor, they’d heard something they couldn’t believe, it was like a hit happened on the first listen.

“Then I remember Wendy Griffiths was in charge of promotions for MTV, she told me how the channel was looking for something faster and colourful after two years of grunge, maybe with a sense of humour. I was sitting on Dookie at the time, and just knew it would work.”

Rob is now busier than ever - he’s working with a string of acts including Henry Morris, and Riff Wood. He’s also trying to break Japanese band One Ok Rock in the US and Europe.

“Ultimately, your role as producer is just to try to serve up the record that meets the standards of every record you’ve ever heard,” he says in his final words of wisdom.

“Everyone has their own list of favourite bands - your goal is to make a record or sign a band that is as good as those. If you can compete, then you’re onto something. And of course, it might sound easy, but it’s definitely not.”

RECORDING WEEK 2026: While it might sound like something of a cliché, Erol Alkan is an artist for whom ‘the music’ always seems to come first.

Between his seminal mid-noughties clubnights Trash and Durrr, his production credits for the likes of Late Of The Pier, Mystery Jets and Klaxons, his numerous DJ accolades and his countless remixes and collaborations, he has had plenty of opportunities for self-promotion over the years. Yet Alkan’s is a career built not on his own ego, but on using every outlet available to share, nurture and promote new music.

He’s also one of that rare breed of musicians whose talents aren’t confined by genre, with a career touching upon indie, electro, house, techno and beyond, with seemingly little regard for trends or fashions, even when he’s caught up in the middle of them.

2013 saw Alkan setting up his first purpose-built studio space, The Phantasy Sound, a North London hub for himself and the artists on his Phantasy record label. This played a major role in birthing a pair of stunning, yet very different albums: the lo-fi pop of Connan Mockasin’s Caramel and the warped electronic experiments of Daniel Avery’s Drone Logic.

It also resulted in Alkan’s first proper solo release, some 20 years into his career, in the form of the intricately-produced, club-focused Illumination EP.

A few years back, we headed up to North London to meet Alkan and take a nose around his studio. We republish the complete tour and interview in full below to mark MusicRadar's Recording Week 2026.

We started with Erol's DAW of choice…

“I use Pro Tools when I record bands, especially if I’m tracking drums, but Logic when it comes to using MIDI or anything like that.

“I tend to use the native plugins within Logic as I think they’re fine. To be honest with you, I haven’t found a stereo width plugin better than Logic’s one. EQ wise, they’re pretty good transparent EQs which seem to do exactly what you need an EQ to do. I tend to find that, if you’re not getting what you want out of a sound at that stage, maybe the EQ isn’t the main problem - maybe it’s another aspect of it? So I tend to use all of them in a pretty simple way, rather than expecting miracles from plugins.

“I don’t use any particularly esoteric plug-ins. I’ll focus more on what’s going in; that’s about 90% of it for me.”

That said, pride of place in the top slot of the rack is Alkan's own homemade compressor. “The Mustapha SSL-4000. It’s basically just an SSL clone that I’ve built with a Neve width module.

"If you whack it all to the far right you lose all the signal and you can check out your clocking as well. If your clocking is a bit dodgy, and it sounds all MP3-ish and digital, then that’ll tell you.”

Likewise Alkan has nothing but love for Pioneer's Rekordbox software.

“Ever since rekordbox came along, it’s meant that I can pool all my music together and organise it in a way I understand.

“The great thing is that you can come up with your own system of working. I do feel a bit guilty about being able to turn up somewhere with a pair of headphones and a USB key, when you see bands with trucks full of gear and a crew of 30 people to play the same stage, but that’s the way DJing has gone. I still believe that DJing in its greatest form is just as creative and exciting as what bands can do. It’s just a great system, though.

“I’m curious as to what the next thing is going to be. I know that you can do a lot of things with mobile phones now, but I don’t trust them!"

For crucial listening Alkan leans on those old favourites – a pair of Yamaha NS10 monitors. “I just have them because they sound so bad. As they say with NS10s - if it sounds good on them, then it’ll sound good anywhere," he explains.

“I’m a big fan of the Effectron delays from the ’80s. They’re great, unpredictable delays. I like to send stuff to them and have it very, very low in the mix.”

And while the Effectrons are best described as 'quirky' the next essential in Alkan's studio is only ever regarded as a classic: A Roland TB-303 bassline.

“This is a recent purchase and something I’ve been wanting for a while. I’m in love with it - not just for the fact that it’s a 303, but also because it’s got cool things like CV out, so you can actually write a pattern inside of it and send that to other synths.”

Likewise another new addition to the studio is this Korg Mono/Poly dating from 1981. “So far I’ve just been messing around with it," Alkan says.

Something that regularly gets a workout in Alkan's studio however, is his trusty Roland SH-1.

“It tends to do bass like no other synth I have. I’ve a trick that I do with it, that I don’t want to reveal, but there’s a workaround if you experiment with the patching capabilities. You can get some pretty amazing, deep, cranium-quaking bass from it!”

And who else is going to team all of the above with a Formanta Polivoks?…

“I’m fascinated by Russian synths, in the sense that they were built to try and mimic what Moog was doing at the time. They kind of didn’t get it right, but they came up with something quite different.”

When you play an electric guitar with a single-coil pickup, it is a fact of life – an iron law of physics – that sometimes you will plug in, crank up your amp and there is a whole lot of hum in your sound.

This 60-cycle hum could be from the lights. It could be from the AC power. And oftentimes whatever is engaged on your pedalboard only makes it worse.

Over the years, Fender has tried to find a solution, and with each successive generation of Noiseless pickups it has got closer to the acme of hum-free single-coil tone. But even so, it was receiving feedback from players who said that there was still some compromise – the Noiseless pickups lost something from the high-end. And so the Fender R&D team kept at it.

In 2021, it started work on a fully passive solution that it says has solved this 80-year-old problem. The Fender Silent System has been trialled on a limited run of American Classic Professional Telecasters and Stratocasters, and features a large dummy coil fitted under the pickguard.

MusicRadar caught up with Fender’s director of product management, Allen Abbassi, who shares the story behind the development of the Silent System, and explains how it works.

Tell us a little bit about the history behind this, because it’s nothing new. The press release even says the Silent System is the solution to a 80-year-old problem.

“Everybody knows that Fender is the forerunner in single-coil pickup design. One of the challenges, of course, is the 60-cycle hum, and we’ve tried many, many different ways to get rid of that hum.

“The main design that we've been using for the past X amount of years is the Noiseless pickup – and we have actually used dummy coils as well in the past, but to us, the form factor and the development of the Noiseless pickup achieved really, really good results for us.

“We’ve been doing this for a couple of decades plus, and that stacked-coil design we’ve evolved over the years – I think we’re on our fifth iteration of the Noiseless pickup right now – and we’ve done everything from adjusting the size of the stack coils, removing magnets out of the dummy coil that bucks the hum, trying different wire, different plates that separate the two coils of our stacked design, all these different things. And we’ve gotten ever closer to achieving no noise with true single-coil tone.”

There’s a ‘but’ coming here.

“There’s always a compromise. A stacked-coil design, or even using a dummy coil, often cuts a lot of high-end off, and it kind of sucks a little bit of the organic, transparent nature of the pickup. You can tell when you’re playing.

“The response, the feel, and even the tone, you can tell that you’re not using a true single-coil with all these different methods of noise cancelling. So, we’ve been working at this issue for decades, literally. And up to now, the single-coil Noiseless pickup was our answer to that question of how to get rid of the noise.”

And then you came to the conclusion it was time to look beyond the pickup itself for the answer?

“In 2021, we started experimenting with other ways of doing that. One of the goals with this new Silent System was to be able to use true single-coil pickups and not have to rely on the pickups itself to get rid of the noise. And the dummy coil was the natural progression of that thought.

“Again, dummy coals have been used in the past. I think what’s unique about ours is the size and shape and the type of wire. All those different elements are key to making this system as successful as possible. This noise cancelling has been something that we’ve been working on for decades. This Silent System has been in development since probably 2021.”

The Noiseless pickups do a pretty good job though. If they were good enough for Clapton, then they’re good enough for the rest of us hacks. Did you consult with artists when developing the Silent System?

“Yeah, I mean, I agree with you that the Noiseless pickups do sound fantastic. We did get feedback from people that they noticed that that the design of our Noiseless pickup sometimes isn’t as sparkly and doesn’t retain as much high-end as a true single-coil. Also, the response to your pick attack and the transparency of the tone is affected a little bit.

“We work with a lot of different artists that have very fine-tuned ears, and they all say these pickups are great – and like you, a lot of artists are completely happy with the Noiseless pickups that we make – but we did get a lot of feedback from a lot of people that thought we could do better, that we could reduce more noise and retain more of the single-coil tone – and we believe that ourselves.”

A lot of these artists, like you say, have a great ear for this, and they are also listening to them in a studio environment, through hi-fidelity monitors.

“I think there are a lot of people whose feel that Noiseless pickups are a compromise. They recognise that they don’t feel as organic and transparent. There’s a little bit of high-end loss. The response is a little cloaked with the noiseless design. Subtle for sure, but a lot of people do notice this.

And so, just like Leo, we’re always talking to artists, and people that we work with, and always trying to evolve our designs and make them better, and respond to what the artists and players are asking for. This is a perfect example of that.

If we think of hum-free pickups, we immediately might think of what a brand like EMG does with active designs featuring a preamp to kill the hum.

“An active system requires a battery, and it is very effective at cancelling hum. But one of our goals was we didn’t want to saddle the guitars or the players with having to worry about a battery. We wanted something completely passive so that it works forever. You don’t ever need to worry about opening the guard and changing a battery. We didn’t have to rout an extra cavity with a little battery box. We didn’t want to deal with anything related to active systems.

“That was one of the absolute requirements of this project. We want to reduce as much noise as possible, retain as much single-coiled tone as possible. We wanted it to work with any Fender model and any Fender set of pickups, and we didn’t want to use a battery.”

How should se talk about it? For all intents and purposes, this is a large dummy coil secreted under the pickguard, adjacent to the pickups. It’s about the size of a Wide Range Humbucker. What makes it so different to dummy coils we’ve seen before?

“Yeah, it’s very different than the average dummy coil. A lot of systems just use another pickup, like a Strat pickup wired in series and reverse-wound to cancel the hum. In all our development, we discovered that the key to cancelling the noise is the size of the bobbin. It’s the shape of it. It’s very wide, and there are a lot of turns of very thick gauge wire. So all these elements are part of the recipe.

“We use very thick wire, and it’s a very wide coil. It’s kind of like a bucket in the rain, the wider the bucket, the more rain you can catch. Similarly, with the pickup, the wider it is, the more cancellation you get. So our pickup is much wider than an average single-coil pickup, it’s much deeper, and it uses much thicker wire.”

“Otherwise, the functionality of the coil is similar to what people understand. It’s wired, wound in reverse to the pickup that’s selected, and then phase cancels the hum. So it’s working just like a normal dummy coil would work.

“The key to our development was it had to fit under all the different pickguards of fender instruments, and it had to reduce as much hum as possible, retain as much single-coil tone as possible. And the size and thickness of the pickup was very important to that end result, as well as the thickness of the gauge of the wire.”

You raise a good point. The size matters if you’ve got to route the body and hide it under the pickguard.

“Also, another element was weight. You know, with all the experimenting we did, the bigger the pickup is, the more hum you get rid of. But once it gets really, really large, now all of a sudden, the route doesn’t fit under the pickguard, and all of a sudden it’s very heavy. Depending on how much wire you’re using, pickups can get very heavy. And that was also important to us to not burden the guitar with too much extra weight.”

That’s the next question – how heavy is this system?

“Only two, three ounces heavier than a set of our Noiseless pickups. I think we did really well in that respect.”

You have rolled out it in these limited edition American Professional Classic Telecasters and Stratocasters. But you mentioned it is compatible with all Fender models.

“We route an extra cavity right next to the pickups. Some guitars, it’ll be in between the pickups. I think if you mounted it on a Jazzmaster, you’d probably have to mount it in between the pickups. But again, we wanted to make sure that, whatever we arrived at, the size and shape of this bobbin has to fit under the pickguards of all our models.”

That’s interesting, so so if I were grab my Telecaster, scoop out a tangerine-sized bit of ash, then stuck this system in, then theoretically, it should work just the same?

“Yeah, absolutely. It’s passive and it works with all different fender pickups. The only thing you might have to concern yourself with is the phasing, because the phasing is really what accomplishes the noise cancelling. The pickup that it’s paired with has to be wound in reverse.

“If a pickup is reverse wound or not, sometimes you might have to mess with the wiring a little bit to get the phasing properly. But it works with any pickup set that we sell right now, and we’ve tested it with a lot of different pickups.”

How did you test it? I could imagine you recreating Ritchie Blackmore’s rig or something like that, and going at it.

“The guy who really developed this system, his name is Steven Casado. He’s one of our best engineers, and he started in 2021 at the beginning of the project. We literally would have him build us a guitar with different versions of this system. We’d load in the current version of the coil into a guitar, and then we’d plug it in and compare it to the noise level of other guitars that we make.

All the different guitars, and we would just plug them in and see how much noise was reduced, and how much of the single-coil tone was maintained, compared to other guitars that we make. We were obviously plugging into vintage-style amps, like Deluxe Reverbs and Twins.

We tried all different shapes and sizes, so many different iterations. Probably 23-plus different versions. We build a guitar and throw the pickup into it, and then test it at the factory. There are a lot of areas in the factory that have fluorescent lights and a lot of noise, so it was a great environment to plug into and test.”

RECORDING WEEK 2026: Touring rock musician turned film-score composer, Tyler Bates found his music-to-picture footing in the dark with 2004's Dawn of the Dead, then carried on with Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects and the Halloween films, where John Carpenter's iconic theme was refashioned into something grittier.

Notable credits include television’s The Exorcist, its notorious demonic dread stretched across ten episodes; a mountainous hybrid score for John Wick: Chapter 4; and a longstanding association with director Ti West on the slasher trilogy: X, Pearl and MaXXXine. His latest collaboration with West, the Johnny Depp-starring Ebenezer, is due out in November.

Beneath his experimental studio craft, however, sits a conviction to build sound around an emotional gesture or single vocal timbre. Always serving the scene, Bates believes learning starts with listening, a habit that never stops for a composer who first became enraptured by sound when layering up recordings on cassette tape as a boy.

For Recording Week 2026, we caught up with Bates to learn more about his route into film, his approach to recording technology and fascinating tales about working with William Friedkin, the legendary director of the original Exorcist movie…

MusicRadar: You began layering sound on cassette recorders as a kid. What were you trying to achieve with that setup before you had any sort of formal recording gear?

Tyler Bates: “It was clearly ignorance and experimentation. As I was composing my first music, I wanted to hear multiple parts and realised that I could play live into a cassette recorder while dumping tracks from another one simultaneously. Of course, the recordings were pretty muddy, but it was an opportunity to hear a multitrack of an idea, which was very inspiring and really set me on course to becoming a songwriter.

“I delved deeply into electric guitar after starting my musical journey on alto sax and was intrigued by sonority, song arrangements and developing song ideas that were more than me just strumming or hitting a guitar riff and yelling over the top of it. I began this period of experimentation out of pure curiosity and passion for sound and music.”

MR: Was there a specific moment when you had to make a decision between pursuing rock stardom or a soundtrack composer?

TB: “When I moved back to Los Angeles in the early ‘90s, I'd already been asked to do some cues for a movie because they had no money. I told them I didn't know anything about it, but I’d give it a shot if they really wanted me to, so the people working on the film shared their perspective with me, which is how I began learning about the craft and the purpose of music for film.

“At the same time, I was developing my band Pet, which signed to Atlantic Records, but I had to pay rent, right? People kept asking me to do scores, which kept me housed and gave me the opportunity to continue to make music for both, but before I knew it, I'd done 15 movies, and my 15th film was a jazz/bebop score that Blue Note ended up releasing.”

MR: What movie was your first big break?

TB: “Get Carter with Stallone and Michael Caine. It flopped terribly, but was such an incredible experience because it was among my first working with orchestras and hybrid scores, which set me on course for a lot of what happened afterwards.

“I had my lows - I was still painting houses between some of these projects until Tom Kapinos asked me to do Californication, which brought a true rock element back into my work scoring for film. At the same time, I was just starting on 300 and those experiences completely opened my mind to having a cinematic rock vision for music.”

MR: One of your transformative soundtracks was Dawn of the Dead. Was it a dream to soundtrack a film that was indirectly part of the George A. Romero canon?

TB: “To this day, I have to tell you I had such a good experience on that movie. I was up against a number of composers who had repertoires that were probably more appropriate because I hadn't had a tremendous amount of orchestral experience or any creepy music in my repertoire, but Zack Snyder believed I was the right person for the job.

“Once I was hired on Dawn of the Dead, I didn't have much time to do the movie and it was a massive challenge for me. It was right before Christmas 2003 and I was able to score a couple reels over the holiday break. They put the music into a test screening of the same cut they’d previously tested and the movie scored 25 points higher. They didn’t change one note about the score, and although I recognise my mistakes, I think the concept and tone were really distinct.”

MR: Does working on a score like Dawn of the Dead, or The Exorcist TV show, require a very different suite of tools to your ordinary movie?

TB: “If you look at most horror films, the horror exists inside of a drama, so if there's a really good dramatic story, there's a chance that the movie will be considered seriously and last the test of time. The Exorcist is really a drama - it just happened to scare the hell out of people. I've certainly learned a lot about that because I scored William Friedkin's final film, which was an extraordinary experience on so many levels.”

MR: Presumably, that was Killer Joe?

TB: “Yes, and I was hired under auspicious circumstances to work on Killer Joe. Billy had already hired someone who did a score for the movie in defiance of the producers, who then approached me at a party and asked if I’d be open to it. I asked them if Friedkin was amenable to it, so Billy came over to my studio and - I don't know if you've read his book or watched any interviews with him, but he was a very intense and highly intelligent but salty character.

“He came into the studio, sat on my sofa and said, ‘Tyler, I don't know why the f**k you're spending your time with me on my little f****g movie when you do all these big blockbusters’. I said, ‘Look Billy, the producers approached me and if you're open to seeing if we can do something that might suit the movie better, then I'm good, man.’”

MR: Having already done the score for The Exorcist TV show, you must have discussed the making of the original The Exorcist with William

TB: “In our conversation that day, I asked him about The Exorcist, and he told me the story about how he threw out Bernard Herrmann's score. He didn't want an organ score, but Herrmann didn't listen and sent the movie back with an organ score in it. That wasn’t going to work, so Billy fired him. I'm like, ‘Okay, so perhaps the greatest film composer of all time just got fired!’

“So then he hires his good friend Lalo Schifrin and tells him he wants a chamber orchestra, but when Billy showed up to the Warner Bros. sessions, there were 80 players and 5 percussionists. He said, ‘I don't want this crap in my movie’, so after a day and a half of recording Billy stopped the sessions and fired his good friend Lalo. At that point, Warner called Billy back into the studio and said, ‘Look, we'd really like you to use the music that we just paid Lalo to score and we're out of money, so either use that or look in the Warner Bros. library.’

“So Billy picked up the music reels, unspooled them in the parking lot right outside the studio and said, ‘Nobody's going to use that music.’ He was basically down to whatever he could find in the library and then happened upon Mike Oldfield's instructional album on the sonority of bells, which had the composition Tubular Bells.

“When Billy heard that, he said ‘That’s it!’ It’s crazy that a record that no one should have ever known about became a massive seller because Billy put it in the most successful horror movie in history. The Exorcist made $400 million in 1973 based on a $3 ticket price.”

MR: I understand Pro Tools is your hub for scoring, but you also lean on Logic and Ableton. How do you decide which platform a given musical idea belongs in?

TB: “I started on a PC because they were cheaper at the time, and Macs weren't fully developed until the end of the ‘90s. I went from Cubase to Digital Performer to Logic, but eventually realised that after they'd been playing back from Tascam DA-88s, all the dub stages had moved to Pro Tools and to deliver a score that was compatible, I needed to be on the same platform.

“For people just coming into movie scoring it’s way more cost-effective to work in Cubase or Logic. Ableton is fantastic for developing a passage or loop, and you can do things with effects that you can’t do elsewhere, especially when affecting a stereo sound. I basically use Logic as a sample playback platform for all of the bespoke sounds that I've made in the last 20 years.”

MR: We understand that you work quite closely with Wolfgang Mathis on creating sound design libraries?

TB: “He's still my dear friend and collaborator, but now lives in Canada. We used to set up multiple modular rigs in my studio, have our nerd jams, record stuff live, take the good moments of them and develop pads and pulses.

“I was always on a quest to have sounds to work with that nobody else had and would implement these conceptual ideas, but sometimes the clock would run out on me before I was able to manifest them as I’d envisioned. Sometimes it worked, like on the score for The Devil's Rejects, but that's a noise score really and it took a lot of tweaking to get that to land appropriately for the film.

“I do like to keep things interesting, because every time I experiment I learn more about the potential of sound synthesis and Wolfie really introduced me to thinking about the potential of a sound. It may start off as a bongo or some kind of bell or voice, then through experimenting with various synthesisers or modular synths, I learned the various permutations of sound and what the possibilities are. Now it’s part of my calculus when I'm thinking about what's appropriate for a TV show, movie or game.

“Sometimes that’s going to leave people scratching their heads, so as much as I love to experiment I have to make sure that the people I’m creating a score for can identify with it. They have to understand what it is, what it does to the picture and how to relate to it psychologically and emotionally. If they don't feel it right away, it's not a successful idea.”

MR: What will you focus on to nail those core psychological and emotional elements?

TB: “When I collaborate with different artists, especially singers, I'm thinking about the story they have to tell. Sometimes that’s intimated in the way they express themselves as much as it might be lyrically - or it might be encrypted, but it's important to understand how to help a person tell their story.

“With rock music, the riffs come when we need them and I never have had a shortage of riffs because I don't place all the weight on them. I place it on the storytelling, the song structure and how to best serve and frame a singer's voice.

“That could mean finding the right key for them to sing in to discover where their voice resonates best, but when I'm scoring on film, the actors are my singers. The timbre of their voice impacts my selections for various instruments and sounds because I don't want to compete with them; I want to make sure that the music complements the important aspects or frequencies of their voice.

“If the actor’s a baritone, I want to make sure that I clear the way for their voice to really resonate because that's going to empower their character and their dialogue the most. The whole thing is very much like a dance.”

MR: Looking at your studio - out of everything available, what do you like about using the Moog Muse?

TB: “It's very warm and sounds really good, but I've actually started working on this new TV show and have gotten back into using my Access Virus. It's kind of like a rekindled romance because I got away from this thing for 15 or 20 years, but even though it's an old synth, you can’t tell because of how I EQ and process it. If I run it through an overdrive pedal or delay, it takes on another life.

“But the Moog Muse has been great for really low tones. They're so rich and deep, and so many beautiful harmonics can emerge, even from a drone. The Dave Smith Evolver is another great one. If you want to do something weird or create some really crunchy pulses, that's an amazing instrument – and it’s favourably priced too.”

MR: You’ve mentioned that John Wick: Chapter 4 was the Mount Kilimanjaro of hybrid scores. What made that project a bigger technical challenge than anything else you previously worked on?

TB: “For anyone attuned to the properties of sound, the John Wick films have quiet dialogue, yelling and gunshots – and there’s a lot of Foley in John Wick 4, including car crashes and all that stuff. We also applied some orchestra, which didn't feel natural to the preceding three films, but the scope of it was so broad that we needed to engage an orchestra for some of it.

“At the same time, we still had all of these non-orchestral idioms that have been applied through the entire franchise that needed to be present – like all the crunchy synth pulses and atmospheres, and the hybrid rock/electronic orchestral score had to dance around all these frequencies. Believe me, gunshots always win, dialogue always wins, and in the case of John Wick 4, the cars win, so you have to factor in all that production sound.

“Mark Stoeckinger is a brilliant sound designer and a great collaborator - his sound design is so dense and compressed that there's no way I can beat it, so I had to be more like water in a stream. By being aware of what's going on in the sound package, you can negotiate a little bit by saying, I don't think you need all of those low synths in your sound package, but I’ll stay out of the way of your tyre screeches, crashes and engine revving.

“Mark and I would work on that and make sure that when they get to the final dub, all the required sound is represented by the two of us. It used to be, you're the composer, here's the picture, now write the music. Now the picture is moving even after we deliver the final score, so the whole time you're working on a movie like John Wick 4, it's literally like the tailor fitting the pants on the running man.”

MR: How do you mix a project when the compositions are continually changing?

TB: “When you’re working with pure orchestra, all those instruments are naturally harmonically balanced, but when you're using a ton of hardware synths, soft synths and playing guitars, mandolins, electric bass and drums, you've got so much going on. It's fun, but it's a nightmare to mix because you don't have much time.

“When we're delivering a score to a dub stage, it's all in stems and there’s some additional frequency management that takes place. They place the music into its appropriate context, depending on whether the sound is an enclosed space, a wide open space or a cavern.

“We have to factor all that in so that it's not only appropriate, but gives the mixers some latitude. If I slather a big reverb on everything, they’ll have way less latitude to get creative with how they place the music in the overall mix, so I want to give them options and make it a joy to work with as much as possible so people can actually hear the music in the movie.

“It's not like mixing a record. You have 25 minutes, and there might be 160 tracks of audio in a queue, so you've just got to do your best and rush through it, but sometimes we'll circle back around to the music when we do the soundtrack so it sounds a little bit more refined.”

MR: Once a film is released, can you totally relate to the score you made?

TB: “What you hear in the film is not necessarily the entirety of a composition. When I went to the premiere of John Wick 4, the music had definitely been thrown around to the point where cues that Joel J. Richard and I had done separately were intermingled and we didn't recognise a lot of our own work.

“We hear ourselves in it, but we're like, ‘I didn't do that’. That can be frustrating if you're emotional about the work, so I pour that into my songwriting where I know that what we're writing and recording in my studio is going to be on the final product. It's incumbent upon me to do that type of work so that I don't develop a bad attitude or become jaded about the fact that film is an entirely different process to what it was 20 years ago.”

MR: Do you have a bucket list of movies you want to work on?

TB: “I don't look at it that way. It’s an extreme privilege to work in this industry, because there are very few of us who have viable careers. I'm working a lot, so I prefer to just work on whatever I agree to do and not fantasise about the next thing.

“It would be fun to do a really interesting horror film because, creatively, you get away with murder and introduce concepts that would be inappropriate for any other style of movie, except for maybe an action movie. Having said that, doing a character drama would be cool!”

For more information on Tyler Bates, visit his official site.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer created some of the most accomplished and acclaimed progressive rock music of all time during their imperial phase in the ’70s. But if drummer Carl Palmer had to pick just one track that captured ELP at the very peak of their powers, what would it be?

Palmer has spoken to MusicRadar while preparing for his next set of shows in which he performs classic ELP material live – synchronised with 1992 video footage of his late former bandmates, keyboardist Keith Emerson and bassist/guitarist/vocalist Greg Lake.

These upcoming shows are billed: Welcome Back My Friends – An Evening with Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The drummer is joined on stage by Paul Bielatowicz on guitar and Simon Fitzpatrick on bass and Chapman Stick.

The setlist will of course feature the landmark tracks that established ELP as leading lights of progressive rock and also one of the biggest selling bands in the world.

But which of those tracks represents the absolute peak of the trio’s artistry?

Palmer smiles and tells MusicRadar: “When people say, ‘Can you can you tell me what Emerson, Lake & Palmer was like? What was it?’ Somebody who doesn’t know it. I’ve only ever come up with with two answers.”

First, he names the definitive ELP album, a classic from 1973.

“If you want the pinnacle of the creativity, I would say Brain Salad Surgery was the top end of that creativity.”

Then he names their greatest track – an interpretation of a famous English hymn that served as opening piece from Brain Salad Surgery.

“If you want to get the band in a nutshell, there’s the Englishness of it – because Greg had a choir boy voice, it wasn’t a bluesy soul voice. And we were keyboard-driven, not by guitars. Very unusual at the time.

“I would have to say the grandest piece that displays absolutely everything – our connection to classical music, and our connection to the big production – I would say it’s the track Jerusalem. Because that fulfils everything. We did play it on stage, not all of the time, but that to me just opens up the door and says, ‘That’s what ELP sounded like.’”

He continues: “Yes, there are other tracks like Fanfare [For The Common Man]. Yes, there are other big tracks like Lucky Man, C’est La Vie. But all in one, where you get the full blast of Keith Emerson, of Greg Lake, myself, I would say Jerusalem would always be the track that I would refer to as being The One.”

Palmer is hugely proud of what he achieved with ELP and proud of the show he is currently taking around the world. He does admit, however, that he wasn’t entirely happy with the last show that the legendary trio played together as Emerson, Lake & Palmer – headlining the High Voltage festival in London’s Victoria Park on 25 July 2010.

Palmer admits: “The band wasn’t in good health by the time we got to that concert. But we rehearsed for about five weeks. We got as much done as possible, and that was it.

“Really, after what everyone had gone through in the band, we knew we couldn’t actually tour again full time. We were offered other stuff, other shows, but it just it never felt right to me at the time, and I know that Keith and Greg felt the same as well.

“We knew that it wasn’t practical to tour with like three weeks off in between dates. So, truthfully, I think that High Voltage show was a way of saying goodbye to all of the English fans.”