Grumpy Old Rock Star: and Other Wondrous Stories (15 page)

By now, of course, although their bladders were entirely empty, they were all most definitely pissing themselves.

To this day, I still get letters from techies and musos asking me where on earth I got the amazing waterfall sound from on
No Earthly Connection
. I simply say, ‘All you do is get your band to piss in a tin bath in an echoey cellar in northern France.’

My expertise in studios didn’t just extend to sound effects. In 1980, I started work on a new record – to be called
1984
– at Morgan Studios in Willesden. I’d worked there before on various projects, including
King Arthur
, and the studio owner was a lovely fellow by the name of Monty Babson. On this particular occasion we were assigned a really softly spoken engineer who we nicknamed Albert. Now, Albert was about thirty-odd years of age, drove an old Rover and was very much of the old school. A really lovely guy.

A brilliant engineer but not very rock ’n’ roll, to say the least.

By way of neat contrast, as a group of individuals we were putting huge amounts of drink down our necks.

Huge
.

Each day, Albert would quietly get on with his work and he seemed immune to distraction by our inanities and lifestyle. We couldn’t help noticing his reserved manner and he quickly became the topic of conversation. We surmised, through entirely speculative conjecture, that he was almost certainly a virgin and was, in fact, clearly married to his work.

You’d have thought we had better things to talk about. Chaka Khan and Steve Harley were both regulars in the studio, adding their vocals, along with Tim Rice who wrote all the lyrics. It was a real melting pot of global talent.

But the burning question was,
Had Albert ever been given a right good seeing to?

We thought not and determined to do something about it. Most days started around midday and went on well into the early hours of the next morning as we preferred to work long after midnight – we just seemed more creative and productive that way. On this particular occasion it was getting well into the small hours and
there were only three of us left standing: myself, my drummer, Tony ‘The Greasy Wop’ Fernandez, and good old Albert. Everyone else had gone home, in fact the rest of the studio had been locked up. Albert was still working industriously on some mixes when myself and Tony headed down to the bar to get a refresher. It was left open for us and we just made a note of what drinks we’d taken for the people who ran it to add to my ever-rising bar bill for the duration of the recording.

‘So, Tony, do you think Albert’s ever been set upon by a woman?’ I asked.

‘Nope, can’t see it meself,’ came the reply.

‘Well, listen, as a gesture of goodwill and thanks for all the wonderful work Albert has done on this album, I think he deserves a present. Where do we find a woman who can do the honours at this time of night? . . . Hey, I know who will know . . .’

I called my mate Kenny Lynch who I knew would still be up at this unearthly hour.

‘Hey, Kenny, Rick here, I need a woman.’

I kid you not, he said, ‘What for?’

‘Look, it’s not for me, it’s this friend who hasn’t been sorted and we want to give him a present . . .’

‘Oh, yeah, sure . . .’

‘No, look, listen . . .’ And so I explained my idea.

I was then given a number which I duly called and explained to a very pleasant-sounding lady about my friend Albert.

‘Look, it’s not for me, it’s this friend who hasn’t been seen to . . .’

‘Oh, yeah, sure . . .’

‘No, look, seriously . . . my friend and engineer Albert is, how shall we say, a little shy in the female department and he’s worked really hard for us recently so as a present . . . you know. Can you help?’

‘I will bring someone with me as you’re a new customer,’ she said,
‘and payment is by American Express.’ (When it showed up on my credit-card statement, her ‘personal services’ showed up as a jewellery company in Mayfair, but I certainly didn’t buy Albert a bloody necklace.)

In no time at all, a beautiful Rolls-Royce glided up to the front of the studio and a young lady in a fur coat was helped out of the car by this enormous black guy. We went inside and sat down, where I explained that I’d like her to be introduced just as a friend who’d come to listen to the mixes and for her to strike up a little chat with Albert. Then me and Tony could leave and she could, you know, sort him out.

So off we went into the studio and I duly introduced Albert to this woman in a fur coat. He hardly batted an eyelid and politely said, ‘Hello.’

After a couple of minutes, I said, ‘Er, Albert, me and Tony are just popping down to the bar for a drink. We’ll be back up soon.’ Turning to the young lady, I said, ‘Why don’t you sit next to Albert and he will show you what he’s doing? That all right, Albert?’

‘OK, Rick,’ said Albert, completely unaware.

Twenty minutes later, this lady came back down the stairs, by which time we were desperate to find out what had gone on.

I couldn’t contain myself. ‘What happened? What happened?’

‘Bizarre, absolutely bizarre,’ she replied. She sat down and proceeded to recount the details of her liaison with Albert.

‘I sat down next to Albert and, yes, he is rather shy, isn’t he? I gave him a few minutes and then let my coat fall open so that my tits were fully exposed – I have nothing on underneath you see.’

I could imagine. In fact, I already had.

‘Go on. What did he do?’

‘Well, we carried on going through pleasantries so after a while I just grabbed his balls.’

Tony and me were howling with laughter by this point.

‘Then I said to him, “What a very nice pair of balls you have, Albert.”’

I was gasping for breath from laughing. ‘What did he say?’

‘In the politest voice possible, he gently said, “Thank you very much, and you have a very fine pair of breasts yourself.”’

By this point, the tears were streaming down my cheeks.

‘He still made no move,’ she continued, ‘and I thought we might be there all night, so I pounced on him and had him over the mixing desk.’

Albert duly seen to, the young lady excused herself and left the premises. Tony and myself went back upstairs and walked into the studio where Albert was seated at the desk, working on the mixes exactly as we’d left him.

‘Hello, Albert, you OK?’

‘Hello, Rick, yes, I’m fine, thanks. Have you known that lady very long, Rick? She’s quite forward, isn’t she?’

‘Er, yes, I guess.’ I was barely able to contain my sniggers. ‘Anyway, Albert, how are the mixes coming along?’

Without a hint of irony or sarcasm, he said in that quiet voice of his, ‘Well, to be honest, Rick, they are a bit jerky.’

My ‘relations’ with Morgan Studios didn’t end that night. The day after the young lady in the fur coat took Albert’s virginity, we turned up at the studio but he wasn’t there. Most unusual. I walked into reception and the studio secretary – a very nice lady called Pat who ran the place with a rod of iron – fixed me with a grim stare and said, ‘Rick, did you have a prostitute in here last night?’

‘I did not personally have a prostitute in here last night, no. Why?’

‘Monty wants to see you upstairs immediately.’

I went into his office, followed by Pat who said, ‘Monty, do something. I know he had a hooker in here last night. Think of the reputation of the studio, Monty. Do something.’

Monty looked up from behind his desk and said, ‘Pat, leave us. I need to deal with this very firmly in private with Rick.’

Pat left the room.

‘Rumour has it she came dressed in nothing but a fur coat and was an absolute cracker . . . Is this true, Rick?’

‘I have to own up, Monty. Yes.’

‘Leave me her number and we’ll say no more about it.’

I stood up and opened the door. I could see Pat lurking close by. Monty’s voice bellowed after me, ‘So I hope that’s the end of it, and that punishment I’ve given you will teach you a lesson!’

Pat smiled outwardly.

I smiled inwardly.

About five years later, I heard that Morgan Studios was having some financial problems and had in fact been bought out by another company. I was living in Camberley by then and one day a letter from a solicitor popped onto my door mat saying that I owed the new owners of the studio £6,400. This was 1985, so we were talking about a lot of money. Now, I knew that I had paid all the studio bills fully, there wasn’t a note of music from those sessions that hadn’t been accounted and paid for. I’d had orchestras and choirs in, all sorts, all paid up. Surely it wasn’t anything to do with the hooker business and Monty being so angry? I was completely bemused.

I phoned this solicitor and he explained that there was indeed a debt of £6,400 showing from the 1984 sessions. ‘It can’t be possible,’ I said, and explained how I’d paid for every single note. He didn’t have specific details of the debt so I got my accountant on to it, a man called David Moss. He very quickly confirmed that every studio bill had certainly been paid. We informed the lawyer and he set about working out what the outstanding debt was for. About a week later, he phoned me and said, ‘Rick, I’ve finally got to the bottom of all this. The debt is correct and it’s
from the last eight weeks at the studio, but it’s not for studio time . . .’

‘Well, what the bloody hell is it for, then? What could I have possibly spent nearly seven grand on in two months?’

‘Rick, it was your bar bill.’

The
1984
album also had its fair share of odd live performances. Well, one in particular. As you now know, I get requests from all over the world to play shows, and shortly after this album was released I got a call asking if I would travel to Portugal to promote the record. On the surface, you might think that I’d have been delighted.

However, me and Portugal had a history.

Rewind to the mid-1970s. Border control was complicated: we are talking way before the European Union made it easier to travel across the Continent. And you had to carry paperwork for every border and every country’s regulations. So, quite often, mistakes were made. Loads of shows got cancelled and the kids wanting to watch concerts by British bands in particular were starting to get very frustrated and angry. There were even some quite serious riots. Like the time we were due to play to 5,000 in Portugal.

My tour manager Fred had the unfortunate task of breaking the news. ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, Rick, our truck with all the gear is stuck in Portuguese customs at the border and isn’t going to be allowed out just yet.’

‘Well, I’m sure we can speak to the right people and speed it up for tomorrow’s show, Fred. How long do they think the delay will be?’

‘Five weeks.’

Shit.

Frantic phone calls to the British Consul came to nothing.

‘What shall we do?’

‘A runner?’

‘No, we can’t do that – people who’ve bought tickets will go nuts. We need to think of something.’

Then someone came up with the brainwave of putting an appeal out on radio for equipment. Then, if we scoured every music shop in the vicinity as well, we reckoned we might just be able to pull it off.

The radio appeal went out and, remarkably, by mid-afternoon we had actually got a near-full stage set-up . . . with what could best be described as the leftovers from a car-boot sale. There was some pretty appalling stuff. If I remember rightly, there were a couple of half-decent keyboards and the rest was just ancient, half-working crap. The guitarist seemed happy enough, although the bassist was most disgruntled. There were no monitors and the PA was made up of about forty pieces of unrelated speaker cabinets of varying sizes strapped together which buzzed like a plane going overhead, but it did just about work. If you weren’t worried about the appalling lack of any quality.

‘What we doing about lighting?’

‘I just saw the promoter,’ said one of my crew, ‘and he said it’s all done, something like “No problem, no problem, many, many colours”.’

I walked onstage and noticed, above the junk and clutter that was now our gear, a single wire stretched across one side of the stage to the other with about a dozen coloured outdoor Christmas-tree bulbs on it at eight-foot intervals.

I sought out the promoter.

‘Err, what’s that?’ I said, pointing to this festive decoration above my head.

‘It’s the lighting rig, Rick,’ said the promoter.

‘Didn’t get it from Pink Floyd, did you? Well, how does it work?’

He walked over to a light switch on the side of the stage. He flicked it down and the lights went on; he flicked it up and the
lights went out. I realised that I wasn’t going to impress the Portuguese audience with a spectacular light show.

We did the gig, all those odds stacked against us – terrible gear, exhaustion, a very confused crowd who were expecting a state-of-the-art performance, and the world’s worst light show – and I have to be honest and tell you . . .

. . . It was bloody dreadful.

So fast-forward to 1981 when I was invited to Portugal again to promote
1984
and you can perhaps now understand why I was a little hesitant. Nonetheless, if everything went to plan, I could fly in, do some quick TV and radio interviews, and fly home the next day, having had a nice easy evening out in Lisbon. It sounded like fun so I agreed. But when I got there the whole set-up was completely shambolic. I was having flashbacks and the only thing missing was a set of outdoor Christmas-tree lights.

I did a few radio interviews and then the guy organising the press junket said that I was due to play at an open-air show that afternoon.

‘What open-air show?’ I asked, immediately concerned.

‘Oh, is local event, but live on national radio. About 20,000 people, all very excited you playing a piece from
1984
, Rick . . . The overture.’