I
only met this genius once. It was on the 24th of October 1966 and it is one
of those days that sticks out in my mind. CHAS CHANDLER,the bass player with
THE ANIMALS had booked a cutting session with someone he was producing. I
was looking forward to meeting Chas,who was well known both sides of the Atlantic.
He was a big man,but what I first noticed was the equally big black man who
was by his side. Dressed in multi coloured clothes he looked like the "typical
pop star" who were in and out of the studio chasing success. He must
have had a lot of bottle to walk around like this and as I laced up the tape
for playback I wondered if he was any good or just looked the part. The first
few bars of "HEY JOE" blasted through my Lockwood speaker and I
turned and looked at the man who would in a short time take the world by storm.
I remember saying "nice track" or something like that and he looked
embarrassed as he smiled. We cut the track and the B-side "STONE FREE"
and then he was gone. Chas must have been satisfied with the cut as I went
in to master "PURPLE HAZE", "THE WIND CRIES MARY", "THE
BURNING OF THE MIDNIGHT LAMP" and the album "ARE YOU EXPERIENCED",usually
unsupervised by either the artist or the producer.
Many years later my path crossed
with Chas again,as I will relate later. JIMI HENDRIX went on to become one
of the greatest guitarists in the world and his early death left millions
of fans devastated. Meeting him was one of the highlights of my years at
IBC and cutting his records gave me enormous pleasure AND I was getting paid
for something I enjoyed doing!
