Working in rock recording studios in the 60s and 70s was a test of stamina as much as skill. Island Records engineer Phill Brown recalls his eventful career in the control room
As the house recording engineer at Island Records' studios in London during the early 70s, Phill Brown was used to the long hours and the poor pay (he got �25 a week). On the other hand, the clientele was varied. One day it might be Led Zeppelin or David Bowie, the next day Mud or Cat Stevens. On 20 February 1973, Brown was recording Bob Marley & the Wailers' album Burnin', taking parts from different sections of three takes of I Shot the Sheriff and literally sticking them together ? a complex manoeuvre. When the Wailers' bassist, Aston "Family Man" Barrett, offered him a massive cone joint of pure cannabis, Brown naturally accepted. He remembers the moment he set fire to one of Bob Marley's most famous songs as if it were yesterday.
"I had done the first edit and had the joint in my mouth," he says. "I was just about to cut, when the joint fell apart. It melted the tape. Outside the door are Bob Marley & the Wailers: heavy street guys from Trench Town ? they weren't a bunch of kids from Epsom. I don't know what would have happened if they had seen it, but I managed to repair it, and no one ever heard about it."
Almost as remarkable as this story is the fact Brown can remember it. Notions of health and safety have not been paramount during a career that began in 1967 as Olympic Studios' tape operator ? where within months he had worked with Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones ? and saw him embrace the demands of a job where stamina was as important as skill. Sessions at Island were driven by high professional standards and the routine abuse of cocaine. Brown's tenure there ended in 1976, shortly after his wife Sally suffered a miscarriage, with a strung-out Brown working 20-hour days and living in the studio. Yet his subsequent existence as a freelance engineer was no less intense, as he careered across America with noted bon viveur Robert Palmer, ate opium with John Martyn and emerged from making two Talk Talk albums in total darkness with both his sanity and marriage somehow intact. "Sally won't let me play Talk Talk in the house," he says. "She's a phenomenal woman."
In the spring of 1995, while convalescing from surgery that removed 12 inches of his colon, Brown told the Bob Marley tale to an astonished friend, who urged him to write a book. Finally released after being cold-shouldered by publishers and delayed by yet another health scare in 2006, Are We Still Rolling? is an evocative account of one man's love affair with music and the slightly demented people who make it.
"The book was cathartic," Brown says. "With guys from that era slowly fading away, I thought it would be nice to get some of this down. I remember Muff Winwood taking over as Island's studio manager, saying: 'How can this work? This is just mayhem.' But in fact, there was so much product coming out. As soon as the record companies started trying to control and change that, in a way, they got less."
Now 60, Brown's enthusiasm for recording is undiminished, the zeal possibly a function of never landing the huge royalty pay-out that a more calculating ? or luckier ? operator might have secured for, say, his work on Dido's albums No Angel and Life for Rent.
"My wife and I laugh about it. Albums I've had a percentage on have died a death and others, like Dido's, which sold 20m, I've had nothing. It's fine. Working with the biggest acts brings baggage. I've turned the Stones down twice. I hate the circus: all the assistants on mobile phones, who've got nothing to do with making the record. I've reached the point where I want sessions to be enjoyable, and I'll take less money to do that."
? Are We Still Rolling?: Studios, Drugs and Rock'n'Roll ? One Man's Journey Recording Classic Albums is published by Tape Op.
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