I call this one "The Invisible Engineer"
After work one Friday in February 2019 I ambled away to meet Grant “fuck parmesan” Gordon. We caught up over merlot and crisps, and once back at the
Gordon homestead set to making a veggie chilli and waiting for Gary “how did I
not know about this, frankly extremist, position on parmesan?! Weirdo!!”
Mackenzie. Waiting for Gary is an important part of being in a band with Gary,
but is a small price to pay in order to spend some time and make some music
with such a wonderful chap. In the meantime, I got to hang out with Grant and
family which was an absolute joy. I even had a drum-off with his young son, and
was roundly defeated…
Gary arrived late in the evening, and after chowing
down on din-dins we started the serious business of talking about what we
wanted to achieve. Gary made a particularly mind-blowing chart of the
ten-minute ‘Horse’ which features some funny time-signature moments, and we
decided on BPMs and such. Before we knew it, it was bed-time.
THUNDER
We loaded in at the studio and got to work! THERE WAS A SLIDE! We played
sort of ‘in the round’, though Gary was behind glass and our amps were
elsewhere to achieve separation. We’d decided to record the instrumentation ‘as
live’, so what you’ll eventually hear is the live band, one complete take, with
minimal overdubs and vocals. We did ‘Alexander’ first; it’s only 3 minutes 30
seconds, so as Grant said after one of our rehearsals “…It’s a hit!”. Once we
had a good start-to-finish take we downed tools, listened, and then plopped the
guitar solo over the top. The guitar solo on ‘Alexander’ is, in actuality,
mostly the guitar solo from an as-yet-unreleased The Mighty Handful track which
ended up fitting quite well over Grant’s riff. Not quite Zappa-level xenochrony,
but almost!
Then it was on to ‘Sea Peoples’. This was a tricky
one; the (honestly) self-indulgent instrumental second half is a bit silly in
terms of time signatures, so it took a bit of careful tempo-track time
signature mapping to get the click track ready before we started. Plus, it’s a
bit of a pig to play; we did it in two sections, although it was more than a
few takes before we were happy with the performance. It took some time, but we
got it. Another guitar solo went on top, and it was time to down tools for the
day.
While waiting for the other two to pack up, I sat at
the piano and had a tinker to try and get ready for the next day. I think I
surprised Grant by revealing my love of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds whilst at
the piano. You could be forgiven for thinking I was a pure prog-metal-and-nothing-else
kind of bloke, but I’m a teensy bit more complicated than that! One of my
favourite of his songs is called ‘Darker With The Day’, the last track on 2001’s
wonderful ‘No More Shall We Part’ which was, incidentally, the first Cave album
released after my fandom started and the first I bought on day of release. Any
time a piano is in front of me that song seems to come out. Anyway, I digress. We repaired to the pub for
a couple of Guinness’ and a debrief, before heading home for a nifty takeaway curry and a long, protracted argument about Morrissey and
The Smiths…
Day two was all about ‘Horse’. The crew had moved the
piano so that I could see Grant and Gary while playing. I did a quick guide-vocal-and-piano
take to help get everyone through the five-minute first half, and then we were
off. I’m not much of a piano player; I usually describe myself as “a keyboard
player with a club-fisted left hand”, but I’m actually quite proud of the way
this song came out. We did more than a few takes but I think we achieved the
right Bad Seeds / Ben Folds Five vibe I was aiming for when writing it, and so
it was time to get on to the rockier second half. I managed to break a string whilst
trying to do the guitar solo, so Al the Engineer presented me with a studio
Jackson guitar which he described as “a shredding machine”. It did the trick!
Grant’s significant other, the fabulous Donna, came along with their son and
listened in for the last bit of the day. I think the boy was a little bit
bored, but Donna said some very nice things about the guitar solo which meant a
lot to me – she’s a proper musician and everything!
Grant had an idea that there should be a piano-and-vocal
outro on ‘Sea Peoples’, so we did that at some point. Then, after making sure
we were happy with the take and the solo we packed up and said our goodbyes. While we were packing up, Al told me that the 'suitcase' Hammond organ I'd been admiring all weekend once belonged to Duran Duran! Or, as he added, at least that's what the guy who sold it to him said...
Gary very kindly offered to drive me back to sarf-east Laahhndon, and even whilst
en-route we received bounces of the tracks from Al via Gordon. Technology!
Marvellous.
It was a properly lovely weekend, and exactly what I
needed at the time. We all had a great time, seemed to enjoy each other’s
company, and it was a real pleasure to spend a weekend in a studio which is
something I haven’t done in about ten years! As I write this we’re on the
second round of mix notes, so we’re nearly there! Hopefully anyone reading this
who wants to hear the music will hear it soon!
Over and out!
Chris “cheese wimp” Harrison
P.S. Since the recording weekend, we've decided that the band is called 'Echoes of Ilion', not 'HGM' as previously billed. Hooray! We have a name!
P.P.S. Did I mention there was a frickin' slide?!
