Renew Your Audio Media Subscription for 2009!
Renew Your Audio Media Subscription for 2009!
Renew Your Audio Media Subscription for 2009!
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
�<br />
A friend took me round to meet a producer,<br />
who was a friend of his. We went into his studio,<br />
which was quite impressive, and he said, simply,<br />
‘What do you want?’ I said, “Well, we’re covering<br />
these Led Zeppelin tracks, doing the drums;<br />
they’re sounding a bit crap, and I’m trying to<br />
make them sound more like the original.’ And he<br />
said, ‘Well, what Zeppelin tracks are you doing?’<br />
I said, ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You.’ And he said, ‘Well,<br />
I’ll tell you how the drums were done, because I<br />
did that!’ And I immediately knew who he was:<br />
Glyn Johns!”<br />
The seasoned musician, recording engineer,<br />
and record producer, famed <strong>for</strong> working with the<br />
likes of Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones,<br />
The Eagles, Eric Clapton, and Led Zeppelin must<br />
have been impressed by the cocky teen standing<br />
there be<strong>for</strong>e him, subsequently taking him under<br />
his wing to teach him the recording ropes in a way<br />
that no music technology course ever could.<br />
Matthews’ stock rapidly rose as a direct result,<br />
as he readily admits: “...I become desirable merely<br />
by association, working at least half a month,<br />
initially, then solidly on projects that I was being<br />
employed on.”<br />
Next stop, London: “I took a job at Nomis<br />
Studios... it was an important insight into people’s<br />
personalities, and how to get on with people…<br />
“During that whole period I was still racing<br />
around everywhere, finding out what I liked and<br />
didn’t like – and saving as well. I bought a house<br />
down in Sussex. It took me three years to pay off<br />
the mortgage – which is a major reason as to why<br />
I’m here now.”<br />
������������������������������������������������������<br />
MONKEY PUZZLE HOUSE TO THE MANOR BARN<br />
Home Is Where The Art Is<br />
Matthews then decided to go it alone and cast<br />
his potential property net far and wide – from<br />
northern France right up to Scotland – be<strong>for</strong>e<br />
finally settling in Suffolk: “My patience had started<br />
to run out, then I saw this place; it had a load of<br />
barns at the back, which, I thought, had a good<br />
shape to them, so I got pretty much all the local<br />
architects to come round and have a look. I chose<br />
the one I thought was most exciting – be<strong>for</strong>e I<br />
even bought the place, but they all said the same<br />
thing: knock down the original barns, because the<br />
building cost to renovate what was there would<br />
be very similar to what it would be to knock it<br />
down and start again.<br />
“So I bought this place right at the end of 2000,<br />
then had a hell of a struggle getting planning<br />
permission, because it’s a very small community<br />
here; when it went to committee, the main<br />
objection was that there was no bus stop nearby,<br />
so how on earth would people get to and from<br />
the studio? Obviously there was a severe lack<br />
of understanding about what the studio would<br />
actually be!”<br />
Objections duly dealt with, a planned oneyear<br />
build stretched out over seven long years.<br />
“The building got bigger, the budget went out of<br />
the window," says Matthews. "And my nice little<br />
nest egg turned into a remortgaging nightmare<br />
as I had a lot of bad luck with the builders.”<br />
For all the pain though, it's a lovely place –<br />
from an aesthetic, ergonomic, and, of course,<br />
sonic standpoint: “As far as the design goes,<br />
I had my favourite places – Glyn’s own studio I<br />
really had an affection <strong>for</strong>, and Ridge Farm, but<br />
one name that was prominent through all of that<br />
was Keith Slaughter, who designed Abbey Road,<br />
the original Olympic, Air, Ridge Farm, and more.<br />
He’s retired, but I went to see him, presented<br />
him with some drawings; he said they were okay,<br />
though his main contribution was saying that the<br />
height of the control room was too high – in his<br />
opinion, even though I’d taken Ridge Farm and<br />
Glyn’s studio and kind of meshed them together.<br />
But Keith came up with the suspended curved<br />
ceiling idea, which we followed through.”<br />
Not that Matthews wasn’t working during this<br />
unintentionally drawn-out, costly construction<br />
process, mind you: “I had a big console – a<br />
Soundcraft 3200 – here in my living room, which<br />
was acting as a control room, while I recorded<br />
drums that I could hear through the floor. ...I still<br />
had people coming and spending serious money,<br />
but one of the projects I did was more of a pop<br />
album, which didn’t even get released after a top<br />
ten and two top 20 hit singles. This highlighted<br />
to me the changing face of the music industry<br />
during the crap years between when I started<br />
building this studio until it was finished.”<br />
�������������������<br />
�����������������������������������������������������<br />
����������������������������������������������<br />
������������������������<br />
�