DGM HQ.
My Father's birthday. Happy Birthday Dad! Thanks you Granpop & Granma for giving life & birth to my Father!
The morning session, for Jeff & Yo of Immediate Music, was scheduled for 10.00.
I arrived punctually but they were busy & I hadn't received the messages to arrive for noon. Which was fine with me: I needed to practise. This is one of the pieces I needed to practise --
Abbey Road has a constant stream of visitors who take photos of the pedestrian crossing & write messages (aka grafitti) on the white front wall. The walls inside the building have many photos of famous EMI artists at the studio several decades ago: a young Cliff, Shirley Bassey, Charlie Drake, Morecambe & Wise among them. This morning, in the canteen, Bruce Welch of The Shadows walked by.
The Immediate Music session was in Studio One, a large room for orchestral sessions & originally built for Elgar --
Just after noon, we set me up in the control room...
As a 21 year-old professional musician, recently moved to London, it never occurred to me that I would be anything other than successful. This was not a conceit: my Sister and I both knew that if we worked hard enough for long enough, we would succeed. This was mainly an outcome of our upbringing, a kind of Wimburnian work ethic, of children brought up in trade by parents who had crossed the Great Divide between the working class & lower middle class.
It didn't occur to me that success would be in the public domain, nor that I would be a member of a famous group. Success as a session man seemed more likely. My aim as a semi-pro musician was to be good enough to play with better players. My aim as a young professional was to be able to play anything that I was asked to play, like this --
So, here in a premier world studio, working with Hans Zimmer's first call engineer, with leading producers in the field of movie trailers, working to tracks of primo orchestral players & singers, it seemed that I had arrived pretty well where I aspired to begin --
Except that I am not, in this world of top class studioing, at the standard that is required. That is, I am not on top of my session game. I am not presently able to walk in and read difficult charts, play in unison with orchestral strings and deliver burning solos to order, in worlds that are not specifically of my own devising.
Rather than being a character who could play anything to order, I became a character called upon to be Fripp; by Eno & Bowie for example. In the world of Fripp, I continue to be Fripp. But in the world of primo session players, I am secondo - but giving it a good shot. Once more time, please --
Around five, I began to zone out. By 17.20 I was unable to play even simple lines. Fried. Jeff, Yo & Alan were very generous & supportive.
Split Yer Hands! --
-- and they will be able to make the most of what I played, good & bad.
Then, while waiting for the traffic to settle, T was in the area & popped in to say hello - yippee! I left for DGM HQ at 18.25, arrived at the M3 junction with the M25 around 19.35, arriving DGM HQ at 21.00.
"Craft is a universal language."
