Was it at your first studio session with Tubeway Army, when you saw a synth in the corner that would ultimately change the way your music would sound?
Yeah, pretty much. We were signed as a punk band in 1978. We were just that – a little three-piece with guitar, bass, and drums. I didn't really want to do that; but I noticed because of the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and the whole punk explosion, that there were a lot of labels being set up that catered specifically to punk at the time. I didn't really know what I wanted to do beyond that. I signed with Beggars Banquet [Music Ltd]. When it came time to go make our debut album, it essentially would have been a 45-minute live set. We got to Spaceward [Studios], in Cambridge in the eastern part of England. I'd done one session there already, so I did know the man there, Mike Kemp. I went in to say hello and introduce ourselves, and that's when I saw a synthesizer for the first time. He had a [Moog] Minimoog in the corner of the control room; I'd never seen one before. I'd never been massively interested in electronic music. I liked a bit of Kraftwerk. I liked what [Brian] Eno [Tape Op #85] did with [David] Bowie – the Low album. But I was still very much guitar driven. When I saw the synthesizer at Spaceward for that first time, I was fascinated by it in a nerdy way; but I didn't have any expectations from it at all. He said, "Have a go." He turned it on; I didn't know how to set it up so I just accepted whatever sound it had. I pressed a key and it blew me away. This hugely powerful, growly sound came out of it. The control room shook with the weight of the sound. I'd never heard anything like it. I just thought, "Fuck me! That's unbelievable!" I'd only ever heard prog rock or Kraftwerk-y, bleepy music. I'd never heard anything that had any real power to it. The boys had finished unloading the van into the recording studio, and Mike was out there setting up microphones. He'd left me alone with the synthesizer in the control room, and by the time that was done I was absolutely converted. I was already trying to figure out how I could convert my guitar-based rhythms into electronic grooves; all very basic and very amateurish. Over the next three days I turned that entire album [Tubeway Army] into a pseudo-electronic guitar album, and that's what I took back to the record company. That's how it started for me. That moment effectively changed my entire life.
You produced those early albums yourself?
Yeah, most of the early ones.
What was that like recording to tape?
My first two albums were done on 16-track, 2-inch. I was fascinated with the whole thing; outboard gear and what compressors did. I didn't understand any of it. "You've got to put some compression on that." "What does that mean?" I had no idea what people were talking about. I was learning as much as I could, as quickly as I could. I was really fascinated by the way that you could manipulate sound. There was a whole world opening up to me that I was relatively unaware of. My whole interest in music up until then hadn't been technical at all – it was just tunes and melodies. Because I moved into electronic music pretty much from day one, I think it added an interest in the technical side of it that hadn't been there before. Although I produced all those earlier records myself, I never felt that I was particularly good at it. It was more about being uncomfortable sharing it with other people. I don't mean in a control freaky way, but I've got Asperger's [syndrome], so I don't always interact particularly well with other people. It's not intentional, and I don't mean to be rude or awkward in any way; but if someone does something I don't like, I'm not very good at the diplomacy that's needed to move that position forward. I'd just say, "No, I think that's shit," because that's what I think and what I mean. I'm not good at blurring the edges, and I was much worse then. I learned as I've gone through life how to be more tactful; but back then I was raw, pure Asperger's. Everything was black, and if it wasn't black, it was white. It's not the best way to get things out of people around you. I was a dictatorship, I'm afraid. I can't work in a band. I can't work within a group of people all chipping in ideas. I know exactly what I want. I'm going to unintentionally upset everybody because I don't know how to be diplomatic. It was difficult a lot of the time. I got a reputation of being arrogant, and a bit of a control freak, but I never was. I was misunderstood.
Yeah. But you're making decisions, and that can be a good thing.
Rightly or wrongly there was a very clear direction, that's for sure. Even with this new record, and with the 20-odd albums I've made, I still essentially work alone. I collaborate now in a much better way than I've been able to do before, but I'm still at a distance. I work on songs in my studio at home, and produce them up to a certain point to give them a clear direction. Then they go off to Ade Fenton, who produces with me now. He has a clear direction for what I've already recorded, and then he does his thing. He works alone in his studio, because he's not that much different from me, funnily enough. He likes to work alone. Then he'll send me back what he's done, and we may have a little argument or two. It depends on where it's gone. Although we work together, we work in isolation – if that makes any sense. We don't ever sit down beside each other in a room and discuss things until it gets to the very last part, roundabout the mix time where we'll make the decision of whether "that needs to be there or not," but we've already agreed that all the sounds and parts need to be there. It's just fine-tuning at the very, very end of it. That's the only part where we actually sit down together. I can't ever imagine that being any different. I've been doing it so long, it's never going to change. I've always worked better on my own, in terms of the studio.
What gear do you have in your home studio?
Not much, actually. I think I'm probably going to be something of a disappointment to a lot of people. In terms of hardware, I have an old Alesis QuadraSynth keyboard, a Moog Voyager which I didn't actually use on the record, a Minimoog, which I didn't use on the record either, a Roland keyboard I didn't use, and an Access [Music] Virus I did use, a little bit. The bulk of the album is all software [synthesizers]. [Spectrasonics] Omnisphere is the main one, with some Native Instruments as well.
Do you track with [Avid] Pro Tools?
Yeah. Ade uses [Apple] Logic in his studio, and I use Pro Tools in mine. We exchange audio files and MIDI files. When I send songs to Ade, I send him all the audio. I send him a complete list of what the MIDI is: a MIDI file with the breakdown of what every single sound is, because we do share Omnisphere. Our software packages are fairly synced, so everything that I've got, he's got. He's able to recreate the song very quickly in his studio, and see what's going on. He can start to do his particular magic on it from that point. The fact that I'm Pro Tools and he's Logic is not a problem at all.
What vocal mic do you like to use?
It's called a Saturn, by Sontronics, a British company. I was using an [Shure] SM58 for years. I did loads of albums with an SM58. Ade was always giving me shit about it, saying that I've got to get a better mic. I got the Saturn, and it's made a big difference. Sometimes the things I do are so amateurish that I'm an embarrassment to myself.
When did you first start a home studio?
I bought into a studio. I did an album called Telekon in 1980, and I recorded that in a place called Rock City [Studios], which was a studio inside the Shepperton Studio Centre complex in England. I really loved it. There were a couple of rooms, a nice big office, storage for the tape, and all kinds of useful things for me. I bought a share of it, and in a year or two I'd bought the whole thing. We actually ran it for quite a few years as a commercial studio, and I would leave my gear there. Sting used it, and all kinds of people used it as well for a while. Then we found it very difficult to operate as a commercial studio, because someone from a record company would ring up and say, "Oh, have you got the latest SSL-whatever?" Before you could say, "No, but we've got something just as good," they'd put the phone down. We became a victim of ignorance. People would want the latest flavor of the month; a half a million-dollar desk. We'd have to spend ridiculous amounts of money just to be the flavor of the month. People are ringing up asking about studios who know nothing about studios. I sold it and decided to set up one at home. I had a pretty nice one for a little while, but then I ran out of money. From the late '80s through the early '90s, I'd completely run out of money. I sold everything. They tried to repossess my house. I was in a terrible state money-wise, and my career was finished. I had one of those 12-track [AKAI] 1214s. That's all I had. I had to sell most of my furniture just to survive. I did an album called Exile on that little 12-track Akai studio. It came out pretty good, actually!
