Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd by Nick Mason

Author:Nick Mason
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Music, Composers & Musicians, Entertainment & Performing Arts, General
Publisher: Phoenix
Published: 2005-07-15T04:04:59+00:00

PERHAPS INFLUENCED by the stately grandeur of Knebworth, this was the period we embarked on a little light empire building. We bought a building at 35 Britannia Row, just off the Essex Road in Islington. Britannia Row was a three-storey block of church halls which we in due course set about converting into a recording studio and storage facilities for our ever-expanding quantity of stage equipment. We were not dissatisfied with Abbey Road, but we were spending so much time in the studios that it seemed worthwhile creating an environment we could customise for our needs. It was also the mood of the times for bands to build their own recording studios: Pete Townshend had Eel Pie Studios and the Kinks owned Konk Studios.

The original deal we had agreed with EMI – where we had taken a cut in our percentage in exchange for unlimited studio time at Abbey Road – had lapsed, and so we were conscious that we might start incurring escalating studio costs. Somehow we convinced ourselves that Britannia Row would be a money-saving move. Indeed, we probably had dreams of a successful commercial studio, despite the substantial capital outlay it entailed.

At the time Roger and I were the only London-based band members – David was still living north of London near Royden in Essex and Rick was now up in Royston, south of Cambridge. So the location of Britannia Row in London N1 was reasonably convenient for David and Rick, quite convenient for me (I was living in Highgate, a few miles north-west), and annoyingly handy for Roger, whose place in Islington was only a couple of hundred yards away. Inconveniently for him, with the demise of his marriage to Judy, he was soon on the move to south-west London.

Of the three floors in the building we had bought, the ground floor was required for the studio. This meant that the main storage facility had to be above, which in turn entailed installing a chain hoist system to lug tons of equipment up and down, augmented with a fork-lift truck that teetered dangerously between the street and an unprotected trap door. The top floor became an office and home to a billiards table, which was one of the first pieces of equipment Roger insisted we needed. This helped him through the duller moments of recording; and thereafter billiard tables have tended to manifest themselves wherever he records. Should he tire of the lure of the green baize, he could sustain himself with the substantial fare offered by the studio caretaker – Albert Caulder, the father of one of our former roadies, Bernie – who devised a magnificent hamburger generously laced with garlic.

Our master plan for Britannia Row was to glide into becoming kings of the rental business on the assumption that other bands would be desperate to lease our equipment. Regrettably most of them did not need the wildly elaborate kit that we insisted on building for our shows, and most of the lighting towers and

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.