Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. by Viv Albertine

Author:Viv Albertine [Albertine, Viv]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9780571297771
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2014-05-11T23:00:00+00:00

Dennis relents and has his picture taken with us. Ridge Farm, 1979

54 CUT

1979

We work on the tracks that are going on our precious first album for a month in the rehearsal studio, then pack our bags and head off to the countryside to record.

Ridge Farm is a big old country house. The whole set-up is run by a talkative, charismatic guy called Frank Andrews. I’m more interested in his wife though, she fascinates me; she’s pretty, petite, pale blonde and has a strong personality, the opposite of her looks – but the thing that really intrigues me is that she’s on some sort of fast where she doesn’t eat anything and only drinks her own piss. She looks perfectly OK on this diet. Maybe a little pale, and her skin is so translucent you can practically see her skull, but apart from that, nothing out of the ordinary. She says she’s going to do it right up until after Christmas. I try and imagine her serving Christmas lunch to Frank and their little girl and then sitting down to join them with her cup of piss.

We all eat on site. The meals are cooked by a girl called Denise Roudette, huge heaps of food, vegetarian shepherd’s pie, lasagne, fresh vegetables: I’ve never eaten so much or so healthily before. Denise is one of the sweetest, calmest, smartest girls I’ve ever met, she does a lot towards making the atmosphere at Ridge Farm harmonious. She’s also a bass player and Ian Dury’s girlfriend. Lucky him.

The recording studio is in a barn near the house. It’s not what I imagined a barn would look like, it looks more like a country church inside. There are very high ceilings with wooden beams and wooden posts. The control room is up in the roof, the engineers look down on the studio through a plate-glass window. We all crowd around the mixing desk in the control room, pushing and shoving each other behind Dennis and Mike Dunne, the engineer, giving our opinions enthusiastically about the atmosphere of the songs, the sound of the guitar, the bass and the backing vocals.

The excruciating bit comes when we have to actually play. Up until now we’ve only recorded the Peel Session and ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’; both those times we played live as a whole band. Now we’re laying down the instruments separately and it’s a completely different experience. First Budgie and Tessa do the backing track. Dennis keeps stopping them and making Tessa play her bass part over and over again to get the timing right. Every single second has to be in time. Every beat spot on. He’s right of course, but she hasn’t been playing that long, it takes years to get that sort of precision – still Dennis will accept nothing less than perfection. I go quiet as I stand behind him, looking down at Tessa in the studio. I know it’s my turn next and I’m beginning to dread it. When

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