this awful booming sound in here,’ said Robert from the other side of the glass. “You’ll have to stop using that bass drum! You can’t record bass drums. You know that!” Did we know that?! Also on the other side of the glass were Ken Taylor and Hal Saunders. Ken Taylor had a twisted smile on his face, which could not be mistaken for happiness by any means! Hal just looked worried.
“The drums are still too loud!” said Robert. “We’ll have to put them outside the door!” By this time the office staff had left so there would be no noise from the giggling typists. Evidently this worked for Robert and became the way they recorded drums (or at least Barry’s drums) for quite a while.
“Things don’t seem to be quite in time,” said Hal, “I think I’d better come in and conduct you.” He was probably right considering that timing wasn’t one of Barry’s strong points. So, Hal came in and conducted us. I can still see Hal now, eyes closed, hands outstretched, conducting a rock’n’roll band like a symphony orchestra! Hal liked to run in and conduct everything, we found out later, whether it was in time or not. I think Hal just liked to conduct. After a few more tries, Robert said, “Rolling” and we ‘put one down’. “Come in and have a listen,” said Robert. We were now evidently allowed into the inner sanctum of the recording studio — The Control Room.
“Wow, it’s like a spaceship,” said Boogie. It was indeed like a spaceship to us. There was a huge two-track Ampex tape machine about the size of a washing machine, many and varied knobs and dials, and a gigantic, green speaker cabinet bigger than a refrigerator. Robert wound back the tape and we listened to ourselves for the first time.
Most engineers of that day had the impression that all rock’n’roll records should be swimming in echo and Robert was no exception. We were indeed DROWNING in echo! To us that was fine, especially for me. Guitars were supposed to be like that. “Shit!” I said, “I sound just like Cliff Gallup (Gene Vincent’s lead guitarist)! How do you make an echo like that Robert?”
“We have an echo chamber of course,” said Robert as if everybody knew that. I later found out that the “echo chamber” was a disused room with a mike on one side and a speaker on the other and as the sound was fed through you got a pretty good echo. Even some of the later sophisticated digital echo units cannot reproduce those old echo sounds. The only trouble with the fabulous “echo chamber” was that it was situated right next to the dunny and, every time someone flushed or farted, the sound of it would come out on tape if you were recording at the time.
We were most impressed with our sound but there were a few little mistakes to clean up so we did a few more takes, had a few more listens and finally the instrumental backing was down. “Down” was the operative word as we were to find out later on. Now came time for Dig’s vocal to go on to the second (and only other) track. “Can we stay in the control room and watch?” asked Barry.
“Definitely not!” said Robert. “No!” said Ken Taylor. “You might put Dig off. “Besides, I can’t work in here with all you lot getting in the way,” Robert whined. “It’s lovely to feel so wanted,” whispered Peter as we left the sacred control room.
“There’s a good hamburger shop up past the lights,” said Uncle Hal, “Why don’t you go up and have a bite to eat, you deserve it.” We took Uncle Hal’s kind advice and not only found the hamburger shop but a pub as well. We celebrated our newfound status as “Recording Stars”.
Upon our return to the studio we found that Dig had just finished the vocal and they were all listening to the playback. We were ushered into the sacred control room to hear the final product. Well, we couldn’t believe our ears! The beautiful instrumental backing that we had worked so hard on and were so pleased with, had almost disappeared. I didn’t want to appear too forward at this time, being our first session, but I just had to say something.
“Robert,” I said, “what happened to the backing? Where are all those clever little things we did?”
“No, that’s the way it should be,” said the studious one. “We can’t have you buggers drowning out the star now, can we? It’s him they want to hear you know, not you guys!”
Well, it was around about this time that we discovered that these people that we looked up to for musical guidance knew fuck-all about rock’n’roll! They had turned out to be ACME Productions! We were trying to get the American sound where the backing is loud and rocking and the vocal is at just the right level, not screaming above everything else with this pissy, mamby-pamby bullshit in the background. Now Dig agreed with us but, being the kind of guy he was, he was trying to please everyone as usual. Don’t get me wrong. Dig was no pushover. He was very good at dealing with management-type people. He could handle the Ken Taylors of this world. I never could and we dared not let Barry get near them or we would be out the door in two seconds flat.
Dig said to Ken Taylor and Hal that the band was a little soft (to say the least!) and a compromise was worked out. The band level came up to a dull mumble. This was the first of many battles to be fought for the honour of rock’n’roll with Festival over the next year or so as we would very soon become the staff recording band, backing all the artists on Festival and Rex labels.
The only other record we were to make before Leon joined the group was Dig’s first album. This was a very successful record and had the famous “lightning flash” jumper that Dig wore at the Conway Twitty Stadium Show, on the cover. Unfortunately, about the only good rock’n’roll songs on it were Johnny B. Goode, Carol and Jive After Five. The rest of the album consisted mostly of soppy songs picked out by ACME Productions. These songs were loosely referred to by Peter as ‘commercial trash’. After this first album, Leon joined and we became a very professional recording band. We were now “session musos” but not stars!
AMERICA Vs. AUSTRALIA
Being now the proud possessors of a hit record, we scored a support band slot on the Conway Twitty Show at the Stadium and toured the country. Also on the show were Lloyd Price (Personality), The Kalin Twins (When), Linda Laurie (Ambrose) and Col Joye & the Joy Boys. Lee Gordon called this show “The Battle Of The Big Beat” and it was on July 25, 1959. It was designed to be a battle between the Yanks and us. Technically I think they won! With experience, equipment and worldwide fame they had a head start but a patriotic feeling for our own bands was starting to emerge.
Consequently, two months later, this show was a great boost to the record sales of everyone on the show. The Top Forty for September 1959 shows:
No. 1... Col Joye — (Rock’n’Rollin’) Clementine
No. 2... Conway Twitty — Mona Lisa
No. 3... Lloyd Price — Personality
No. 7... Dig Richards & the R’Jays — I Wanna Love You
Col’s Bye Bye Baby was also No. 15 and going down after having been No. 1 and in the charts for twenty weeks.
Conway Twitty’s band had us completely amazed. We had never seen Americans before, let alone actually spoken to them on equal terms. They were southerners. Blackie, the bass player, could fill the Stadium with his double bass. Boy, could he slap that mother! The lead guitarist was Joe E. Lewis who just knocked my socks off. He played things for me in the dressing room that I couldn’t believe. Hoe down guitar pickin’ like my favourites, Joe Maphis, Merle Travis and ilk. I guess, although they were playing rock’n’roll, they were really country boys at heart. Conway and Joe both had the small solid body Gretsch guitars, like a Gibson Les Paul. Joe’s had a Bigsby whammy bar, which a lot of Gretsches and Gibsons had fitted. It was from looking at Joe’s whammy bar
