My father is a musician (McGuinness Flint, Ronnie Lane and the Slim Chance Band, Gallagher & Lyle) so pretty much grew up around it my house. From the moment I saw a string section being recorded in Air Studios Oxford street at 5 years old, I kind of knew what I wanted to do.... My father was surprised I even remembered it down to which way the Neve desk was facing. Fast forward to age of 9/10 I was recording with my father punching in on a Brennell 1 inch 8 track with acoustic guitars regularly. Two years later I was recording for his friends, one being Gordon Hunte the guitarist from Sade. Carried on doing a plethora of recordings with this equipment until we donated it to Brixton prison. Spent the only four hours I ever have spent in a prison setting it all up.
First recording outside of home was Billy Connolly "A Wreck on Tour" which was recorded off live desk with Malcolm Kingsnorth (Status Quo live engineer) at the Palladium in 1985 with a Sony F1 digital betamax. This was more assisting and didn't really engineer, outside of home setup, until getting a gig at demo studio in Acton called Triple X in 1986/87. Where I had the pleasure and opportunity to meet Yossou N'Dour, Bill Campbell doing Soca and Calypso, Glenn Matlock (ex sex pistols) , Kuljit Bhamra recording Bhangra albums and even a session with a minimalist musician with sea conches and glass screwdrivers being dragged across drum skins.
In 1988 I was offered the position of assistant engineer at PRT/PYE studios. The hours were extremely long but satisfying, I would be assisting Stakker "Humanoid" with both Brian Dougans (F.S.O.L) and John Laker producing and then be doing Michael Nyman recording Peter Greenaway film soundtracks with Michael Dutton or an album with Uriah Heep with Richard Dodd for four/five months solid using 2" tape pre Protools. It was a very diverse and varied time for me in music using an old Neve in studio 1 and a new Neve V1 in studio 2 at the time.Also used to work with Ray Prickett engineer on most of Kinks, Richard Dodd Producer/Engineer
In 1990 PRT/PYE closed it's doors and Peter Waterman bought the equipment so off I went to work at PWL studios as an assistant doing just about al the Boybands, Girlbands and pop artistes there were of the day. Worked with most of the production teams there at one point or another - Stock, Aitken and Waterman, Harding and Curnow, Pete Hammond etc. Some work was with Matt Bianco, Jesus Jones with Harding and Curnow or Kylie Minogue SAW. Phil Harding asked me to mix SFX featuring Alan Murphy (Go West, Level 42) with Felix Krish in the Bunker studio. Around this time I also engineered and mixed Zoë "Sunshine on a Rainy Day" with Youth in the Borough studio. If I recall correctly the automation went half through the session, computers don't you love them. Did various Ministry of Sound projects with Masters at Work both at PWL and later when freelance. Been freelance since 1994 doing various diverse projects and started doing orchestral recording again hooking up with Michael Dutton in 2006/2007 doing location recording.SIncve then have recorded over a hundred classical albums on location and in Abbey Road studios