231027 Collection Digital Cover 1 - Flipbook - Page 114
“Pink Floyd, during their session for ‘The Dark Side of the
Moon,’ subsisted on the studio’s canteen fayre of sausage,
egg, chips, and beans with a mug of tea, a slice of apple
pie without the crust and, diva alert, a glass of milk for
guitarist Dave Gilmour.”
But standards were improving. These early Gramophone Company
releases, all printed with the distinctive ‘His Master’s Voice’ label,
were noticed by the rival Columbia Recording Company who, in 1920,
made a crucial breakthrough in their electric recording methods
by successfully capturing on disc the dedication of the Grave of the
Unknown Warrior at Westminster Abbey on Armistice Day, 1920.
The two companies, merging to form EMI, knew they quickly needed
a studio space that could make the most of the new electric technology.
Whereas Fred, in his early days in London, needed a small room where
musicians and singers would cluster around an acoustic ‘diaphragm,’
now the wealth of electric microphones meant that depth and space
were needed so the musicians and singers could spread out.
A movie set type space was needed. It was found at number three, Abbey
Road in the form of a family home that was close enough to the West End
to be an easy ride for stage singers and musicians. It also looked grand
enough to not shame opera stars of the day who were often repelled
by the shabbiness of Fred’s Maiden Lane studio.
For two years, as the roaring Twenties ebbed into the nervous Thirties,
work on converting the studio continued. On completion, EMI called
it ‘London’s Latest Wonder’ and with cause; it genuinely was one of the
most technologically advanced facilities in London, containing three
studios, four and a half miles of electric cable, reception areas and
even some ‘retiring rooms.’
Opening night on 12th November 1931 saw Edward Elgar conduct
the London Symphony Orchestra in front of an audience that included
George Bernard Shaw.
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Instructing the assembled musicians to play ‘Land Of Hope And Glory’,
“… as though you had never heard it before,” the presence of Pathe News
cameras led Elgar to quip that, if he was required to speak as well as
conduct, then he would be submitting a separate invoice.
As the biggest stars of the stage, screen, and classical world formed an
orderly queue to record in NW8, their legacies would, in the intervening
decades, all come to be all but buried underneath the weight of history
and continued fasciation that still looms over the years The Beatles spent
in Studio Two.
Abbey Road, as The Beatles have all attested over the years, was never the
most comfortable place in which to record. Studio Two, still looking much
the same today as it did when the Fab Four worked there, is a draughtylooking, school gym-sized space with nothing in the way of subtle lighting
or well upholstered chaise longues for weary pop stars to recline on.
The spartan nature of the place seemed to suit the humbler culinary
tastes of rock’s landed gentry down to the ground, though. The Fab Four
famously recorded ‘Sergeant Pepper’ on a diet of tea and jam sandwiches
at Abbey Road while Pink Floyd, during their session for ‘The Dark Side
of the Moon,’ subsisted on the studio’s canteen fayre of sausage, egg, chips,
and beans with a mug of tea, a slice of apple pie without the crust and,
diva alert, a glass of milk for guitarist Dave Gilmour.
Although the cuisine on offer may have been lacking in complex flavours,
the riches that were created have more than compensated in almost every
musical genre imaginable.
