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IN THE STUDIO DAY 1
SATURDAY 21ST AUGUST 2010In The StudioI arrived at Air Studios at about eleven forty five on Saturday morning. No drinking last night, I wanted to be in the right frame of mind for the recording process.
So I made my way through the pretty huge studio’s and was kinda overwhelmed, photo’s of these legends who’ve recorded there on the walls of the building people like Elton John, Paul McCartney, The Stones, Rush and Dire Straights, it‘s a bizarre feeling to be in a building where an album as iconic as Brothers In Arms were recorded.
So I head over to reception and they offer me a coffee which I accept, the young receptionist walks me along to one of the recording spaces, as we’re making our way along the corridors of the building, I realise that this place is fucking huge, very intimidating.
We arrive at my designated studio, it has my fucking name on the door, how crazy is that, I was out of my mind at that point. “Make yourself comfortable, Miss Walton.” I head into the room and I study it for a moment. I take a seat, begin drinking my coffee and flick through the free magazines.
I peek out of the door to see if anyone’s around outside of the room, there’s nobody around, so I sit back down and light up a cigarette, it’s a no smoking building, that’s the worst part about being in the UK but rules are there to be broken I guess.
I hear a knock at the door just as I set down a magazine and as I glance over it’s Danny Allen and Jason Smith, “Hey how you doing.” Danny asks. I reply, “I’m doing good, it’s big fucking building though, isn’t it.” After we sit down and discuss what I want to achieve from this album, we begin work.
20 minutes later and there’s another arrival in the shape of Eric Quillington, frontman of Infinite and all round legend, I’ve met him quite a bit over the past couple of months and every time I meet him I’m always so nervous. He says hi and we all talk for about 5 minutes.
I head over to the sound booth and record a couple of rough vocals and things begin to flow, as the day kicks on things start to fall into place, we’ve got a rough version of each of the vocals and on Monday I’m gonna be joined by my touring band and hopefully they’ll help give the songs that extra bit of power, so after the first day of working I’ve got a pretty positive feeling about things.
It wasn’t a long first day, a couple of hours just to sort of kick things off and then on Monday that’s when the hard work starts.
Next on the agenda, the pub across the street.IN THE STUDIO DAY 2
MONDAY 21ST AUGUST 2010In The StudioWell it’s the second day of recording and it was pretty basic but interesting, I arrived at Air Studios at about 11:00am. Danny was in the studio’s already, he arrived at 9:45am and was just sort of doing his weird geeky thing, I wouldn’t know where to begin with some of the technology in the studio but Danny is complete techno geek. It’s amazing how he can be so cool and popular when really he’s a complete geek but he’s good at what he does I suppose.
On the agenda today is just listening to the demo’s and seeing how to improve on it, later on in the day my backing band is coming in to begin their part in the recording process, I think it will give the songs a bit more power which is good. So for now it’s just me and Danny, we just talk and do whatever until the other guys come in.
It’s 12:20am and Jason and Eric arrive at the studios together, we all sit around the table and chat about what we think will improve on the songs, 25 minutes later and we’ve got a pretty good idea of the direction of each individual song.
My backing band arrives 15 minutes later and we hit the sound booth and begin the recording process fully. The first song goes incredibly well and it appears that there won’t be a lot to do with it in terms of production, just making the sound a little bit clearer but that’s about it for The Sun Always Rises. We record the next two tracks which went ok, a couple of mix ups at the beginning of it but we sorted that out. So three songs are recorded and that’s todays work over with, Danny will be staying in the studio for another couple of hours and he’ll be playing around with it to see what he can do but all in all it was a pretty easy days work.
I didn’t expect things to go so smoothly but I’m not complaining.IN THE STUDIO DAY 7
MONDAY 28TH AUGUST 2010In The StudioAmazing, 7 days into recording and it’s nearing it’s competition, I have no frame of reference but this seems to have gone very quickly, it’s been incredible. There’s been some arguments and today it got to a pretty high level.
We were stuck on one track and Eric and Jason had one opinion on how it should sound and myself and Danny had another anyway, voices were raised and finally I had to say something, “FUCKING SHUT UP FOR TWO MINUTES, IT’S MY ALBUM AND IT’S MY DECISION.” admittedly I wasn’t the easiest person to be around at that point, we had the majority of the album recorded and we had been working on this one track for almost 4 days when finally, “You know what fuck it, I’m dropping it from the album, I’ll perform it live or put it as a B-Side, it’s worth the fucking arguments.”
Four drinks later and we were all best friends again, “So Jason, Who would you rather fuck, Susan Boyle or Simon Cowell.” as expected I didn’t get an answer from him.
And everyone left at 6:45pm and I was left alone in the studio, debating on whether I should include a new song I had written called The Young & The Restless, 45 minutes later and no decision. I left the studio and went out into the pounding rain of London.IN THE STUDIO DAY 10
TUESDAY 31ST AUGUST 2010In The StudioWell it was decision time and I had to decide whether to include the Young & Restless on the album, we had a go at recording it but we just weren’t feeling it, for some reason something was missing, something different, something fresh, and it was at that moment when I realised that what was needed was fresh blood,
Stacey: “A collaboration.” I yelled.
Danny: “YES, But who?”.
Stacey: “Well you’ve got connections, who do you think would be a good choice.”
Danny: “What about someone like Glamazon or G2L.”
Stacey: “First of all, this is an acceptable track, I’m not gonna go to Glamazon with just an acceptable song, If I ever work with Glamazon it has to be on the best song I’ve ever written. And you know how I feel about girl groups, so no G2L in this album.”
Danny: “Well how about someone new and unexpected.”
Stacey: “Yeah someone like maybe, Michelle Green.”
Danny: “I can make the call.”
Stacey: “Yeah sure, get Michelle over here.”
Danny made the phone call and Michelle arrived two days later and even though we were in the studio we didn’t do too much with our time. The album was finished but for three tracks which would later go on to be the Bonus Tracks.IN THE STUDIO DAY 12
THURSDAY 2ND SEPTEMBER 2010In The StudioIt’s almost time for the album to be completed, yesterday we managed to finish the album apart from The Young & The Restless and to celebrate, Jason, Eric, Danny and myself had a few beers and decided to lighten up Air Studios and the small shopping centre next to the building, we celebrated … by running naked, yep, we ran naked through the halls of Air Studio’s before heading to the shopping centre and people got a surprise to say the least, anyway all four of us spent two and a half hours in a local prison before we could leave, not good but worth it.
Today the production team have taken time off, Michelle is heading to the studio to record a track with me.
After arriving, we spend some time chatting about all sorts of things the song included and what I wanted from it. We recorded the track within about thirty minutes and spent the rest of the day inebriated. We celebrated recording the track by having a couple of drinks in the studio, I wasn’t a good influence but she enjoyed herself, she got a little drunk as did I and needless to say her father wasn’t too pleased when he came to pick her up.
So the recording was complete and it was time to see what Eric, Jason and Danny have managed to do with it, but that would have to wait until Saturday.IN THE STUDIO DAY 14
SATURDAY 4TH SEPTEMBER 2010In The StudioSo the final day, Jason, Eric and Danny had completed the album and we listened to it from start to finish and I was delirious with the finished version, I couldn’t have been happier with it, the recording process was over and the album was everything I wanted it to be, to celebrate we went out to a restaurant and had a meal and then I arranged a impromptu visit to a local strip club and that was an eventful night and maybe one day I’ll tell you all what happened - believe me it was crazy and I’ve had some crazy moments - but right now you’ll just have to look forward to the album.
I want to thank Eric Quillington for his beautiful mind, Jason Smith for his experience and humour, Danny Allen for always staying calm and cool and Michelle Green for an enjoyable afternoon recording and drinking.>>> ALSO LOOK OUT FOR AN IN DEPTH INTERVIEW WHICH IS PART OF A TIE-IN WITH THIS STUDIO DIARY OOC: Sorry that it isn't everyday and it's not very in depth but it was more tricky than I expected and I didn't want to include too many boring parts, it's essentially the highlights of the recording process. |
