David Gilmour met Unicorn at a wedding, and asked to sit in on "Heart of Gold" with you guys. Was there anything else you played together at that event?
No, he just asked if we did that. He came up to me and said, "There are numbers out there I didn't recognize. Are they original songs?" And we said, "Yeah." And he said, "Do you do 'Heart of Gold?'" And we didn't actually do it in the act, but it's something we all jammed on. He asked, "Can I come up if you're going to do that?" He came up, we did it, and at the end he said to me, "Give me your phone number." He didn't say why, but I gave him my number! A week later he phoned me up and said, "I just had this studio put in my house. I wondered if you guys wanted to come and put down some of your original songs so you can demo them. It's new and I'll be experimenting, but I won't charge anything for it. Do you want to do it?" No, why would I want to do that? Get lost, you nasty man! [laughter] So, we all turned up there with a van for the gear, pulled up out in the back, and he said, "You can bring in what you like, but do you want to have a look at what's in here? You can use any of it." I walked in the room, and he's got them hung up on the wall like that... Jesus. A '60's [Fender] Strat, a '53 [Fender] Telecaster, and a Fender P Bass! "Yeah, okay. We'll use those."
Those will do!
He had two [Fender] Twin Reverb combo [amps]. He'd changed the speakers in them from the Fender speakers to Celestions; he preferred them. Bass I DI'd. There was a Wurlitzer electric piano in there. I remember it was an American one, because he had a transformer to knock it down to 100 [volts], because we're at 240 [volts]. There was a lovely maple Ludwig kit, and he said, "Pete [Perryer, Unicorn drummer and main vocalist], you can use that." At Christmastime we'd done some live BBC Radio [appearance], and David had said, "Do you want to take the Ludwig kit? Sounds better than your Trixon." So, Pete borrowed it, and I think I phoned David up to say, "When do you want the kit back?" I happened to mention, "It's Pete's birthday." And he said, "Tell him to keep them. I've been wanting to get a Gretsch kit." I went 'round to Pete's house. Pete was one of 12 children, and it was like bedlam in his house. He was still in bed, and I said, "Hey mate, you've got a Ludwig kit." He said, "What do you mean I've got a Ludwig kit?" I said, "David's given you the Ludwig kit." And he went scratching, "Have I woken up or...?" [laughter] All Pete had to do was buy some cymbals. That's the sort of guy David Gilmour is.
Back to the playlist... we've gone from Gilmour's productions for Syd Barrett into meeting you guys at the wedding. I tucked in Monty Python's "Gumby Theatre." You'd mentioned Gilmour played that during a session, as an icebreaker.
It wasn't just the "Gumby" thing. It was a matter of watching Monty Python again, after a day's recording that had gone really well. His girlfriend [Ginger Hasenbein] cooked us a meal. I remember meatloaf – I'd never had meatloaf before. She was American, his first wife, Ginger. It was before she was his wife. We had that and the strange-smelling cigarette we puffed. David had this early version of a video recorder and played Monty Python. When you see it the second time, you spot things you hadn't seen the first time. I think he was laughing so much at the way we were laughing. A magic moment. I can picture the room and everything. He has a great sense of humor.
Toward the end of the Unicorn tracks on the playlist, I included Unicorn's original version of "No Way Out of Here." Then there's a Steve Miller track included from Fly Like an Eagle.
Yeah, he really liked that album.
Rebecca Turner: Oh, "Rock'n Me."
He liked the feel of the album. One of the things he pointed out to me that he liked, as he told me, "It's nothing they've gone to town on. They're just playing."
The Unicorn song, "British Rail Romance," is next on the playlist because David produced half of that album [One More Tomorrow].
He produced about four tracks. He basically finished it, and EMI Harvest [record label] said, "You need a single." The managers said, "We need someone that's had success making singles." They asked a few people. Muff Winwood was interested. He'd had some massive hits, but with people like the Bay City Rollers. He also had a big hit with the Mael brothers, Sparks, with "This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us." We met Muff and he was a really nice guy. Because Steve Winwood was one of our band's heroes, we spent a lot of time talking about how great he was and everything. I remember one time Muff got fed up, and he said, "He can't write words you know!" [laughter]
RT: Did Gilmour say a lot, or was he a man of few words in the studio?
Oh no; he didn't force anything on you. He'd make suggestions, but as he said on his notes on Laughing Up Your Sleeve, he wanted to make it the best possible version of how we wanted it. I remember once – I think it was when the Too Many Crooks album was nearly finished and was at the mixing stage. He always used to phone me up to find out what Ken [Baker, Unicorn guitarist and songwriter] was thinking. He was going off on a tour and he said, "I've gone to the States. Ask Ken what he thinks – I'd like to take the tapes with me and mix them while I'm using the studios out there." So, I phoned Ken up and he said, "No way. I'm not having my songs done when I'm not there." Ken and Pete were like that. "No, you've got to be there when your music's being mixed." Definitely Ken – you probably noticed that there's not lots of reverb and echo used on them. They're pretty dry; Ken hated "productions." He wrote most of the songs, so he got the final say. In fact, what we used to do when we were mixing them, Ken and Pete would go off somewhere, play pool or go to the pub, and me and David would be sitting there. He'd get to a certain point and then say, "Go and get them." [laughter] I'd find them in the pub. They'd come in and say, "Yeah, that's all right. But can you do this, this, and this?" That's how it worked.
